The Boy in the Tunnel

Fall 1997, Chapter 34: Renee

"Alex isn't your friend either."

"We're friendly." Taylor raised the glass to his lips again. He paused, bracing himself, and threw it back.

Renee sat on the couch, a black velvet thrift-store find, deep into the pocket where the back met the arm. She'd read that magicians used black velvet for their curtains and props, because it swallowed the light. It could make things disappear. She felt like a wisp of silk, ready to vanish into the void.

"Alex said you wanted to wrestle him," Taylor said. "Or you wanted him to wrestle you."

Renee drew up onto the couch and coiled them beneath her. Her hand found her ankle and she grabbed it, steadying herself. "You boys," she said. "Is this what you talk about?"

"Is it true?" Taylor had a half-smile, a hopeful, hungry smile, a wolf's smile, framed by the stubble that never grew. The Tempter's smile. He wanted it to be true, and he couldn't hide it. He wanted her. He had never tried to hide it, and that desire was as seductive and obvious as a ripe apple.

"I asked him to suplex me."

"Why?"

She tried to recall why. She sank into the couch, into the fathomless dark of the velvet, into her dark gallery, the walls draped with more light-drinking black velvet. Hidden spotlights illuminated the pictures hung on the velvet and nothing else. Photos she remembered taking, photos she didn't recognize, more Moreaus, the early products of the Work. A few plinths dotted about the floor displayed abstract sculptures of black vinyl, shining malevolently. At the far end of the gallery was a picture of Renee herself, suspended in a white void, her body a perfect arc from her toes to her hair, her eyes closed and mouth open in pleasure or terror. At the bottom of the picture, two anonymous hands were splayed open, as if they'd just released her.

"It doesn't matter why," she said.

"Alex is worried. He seems to think it means something."

"It can mean whatever he wants it to mean."

"What do you want it to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything, Taylor. It was a stupid thing. They were watching wrestling. I thought it would be funny or sexy or something, I don't know. If Alex thinks things are weird, it's because things are weird. His brother's a fucking asshole, and he doesn't know how to deal with that." The couch was a black hole. It had too much gravity. She wanted to feel weightless, to feel thrown. "Fuck. Pour me a vodka."

Taylor poured and handed her the glass. She swallowed it all. "Bring the Goose with you next time. Us commoners can't afford it."

"I could do it, you know."

"What?"

"Suplex you. If you still wanted it."

"What do you think your friend Alex will think that means?"

"We're not that close."

Renee stood up, freeing herself from the gravitational pull of the couch. She took the three steps across the room to Alex and reached past him to set the empty glass back on the bar. He wasn't wrong. He probably could suplex her, and do a better job than Alex. The arms of his t-shirt tightened around his biceps, and his pectorals stretched the thin fabric so much she could see the shadow of a nipple.

"How would you do it?" she asked.

He motioned to her bedroom. "In there. You need something to land on."

"Just show me first. In here."

"Turn around." She did. He moved forward until his chest was touching her back. He squatted a little and wrapped his arms around her waist. "And then I pick you up and throw you backwards. This is a German suplex."

"What makes it German?"

"Beats me."

"Did you do this in high school? Were you out there rolling around with other boys in your tight little leotard?"

"It's called a singlet."

"You did."

"Only for one season. Wrestling was my dad's thing. It built character."

"You should have stuck with it." She could feel the power coiled in his hips, waiting to explode. She leaned back into him, settling her ass into the curve of his hips, letting her wifebeater ride up a bit so his hands rested on her bare stomach.

"What does this say?" he said. "'Your fear itself of death removes the fear?'" He was reading the words tattooed on her shoulder.

"It's Satan. In Paradise Lost."

"Wow, Satan. Just how goth are you?" She elbowed him in his hard, flat stomach. "Fine, Lydia Deetz. You want to get suplexed for real?"

"Wrestling is about trust," Alex likes to say on Monday nights after he's had enough PBRs to awaken his inner philosopher. "It's not like boxing or this ultimate fighting shit. The point there is to make your opponent look like shit. To dominate them physically and destroy them as quickly as possible. In wrestling, the point is to make your opponent look good. The best wrestlers are the ones who make their opponents look the best. That takes trust. When you do a moonsault off the top turnbuckle, you have to trust that the other guy is gonna break your fall. Sports are selfish. Wrestling is selfless. That's why it's not a sport. It's art."

Renee squirmed around in the circle of Taylor's arms until she was facing him, her stomach touching his, chest pressed against his. Underneath the vodka his breath smelled sweet, almost too sweet: watermelon bubble gum, maybe. She looked up at him like Moreau's sphinx looking up at Oedipus.

"I don't trust you," she said.

"That's smart," he said. His hands, clinched at the small of her back, relaxed, and his thumbs found the sacral dimples on either side of her spine. From there he slid his hands down to her ass, and she pressed into him harder. She lifted his shirt so her skin could touch his, the flat plane of his stomach glancing off of hers, generating heat from the friction. His erection pushed against her thigh. He moved his right hand to the button of her jeans but she took it and guided it instead under her shirt to her breast. His hand was warm and soft and she wanted him to leave it there forever.

She raised her face to his and he bent to meet her. His lips sank into hers and she fell back into the dark gallery. The pictures were gone. The gallery was empty, save for a single plinth in the center of the room. A tower rose from it, cast in bronze, jutting defiant into the black atmosphere of the gallery. Everybody lives in the Tower, she heard a voice say. She looked down at her own body, naked in the cold room. She was on a plinth herself. She tried to move her legs but they were made of marble, and as she strained to move, cracks appeared in the veined stone.

Everybody lives in the Tower.

Renee broke the kiss. She licked her lips, tasting the residual sweetness. She stared at him until he didn't know what to do.

"What?" he said.

"Throw me," she said. She took his hand and guided him into the bedroom.