Chapter Text
Billy hates the fucking dog.
It doesn’t even look like a dog – it’s mostly naked with a grey speckled body and a shock of white hair over its ears and down its neck (a dog with a fucking mullet). Its eyes weep, its tongue sticks out at one side – truly the ugliest fucking creature on God’s green earth. It puts him in mind of that urban legend about the tourists who visit South America and adopt a sad little street mutt, only to discover that the pet they’ve been lavishing their kindnesses upon is a native species of giant rat.
As far as Billy can tell, the loathing is mutual. As soon as he steps foot inside the spacious townhouse apartment, the dog heaves itself from its bed in the corner of the kitchen and lunges at him in a frenzy of yapping. Mrs. Wolcott points one finger at the creature and announces “Chester… bed!” in a forbidding tone, whereupon the rat-like dog puts its tail between its legs and retreats back to its blanket-lined wicker basket. It continues to glare at Billy with its head on its paws, growling and yipping intermittently.
“Now, now, Chester, that isn’t very friendly,” Mrs. Wolcott trills, click clacking her way across the floorboards.
“Is he going to be ok?” Billy asks, glancing back over his shoulder. The animal looks like it’s going to shake itself apart.
“Oh certainly – he’s just nervous around strangers. Aren’t we all?” she waves a hand dismissively. Billy doubts that this is the case for Virginia Wolcott – she lives safe in the knowledge that her money and connections will allow her to bulldoze her way through any social occasion. That’s how Billy finds himself in this bizarre situation in the first place (housesitting for a woman he barely knows simply because he happened to be in her eyeline when the idea occurred to her).
Billy took the summer job at the exclusive spa-resort in Saratoga Springs because sweet-talking bored rich ladies seemed vastly preferrable to returning to Shithole, Indiana for the college break and having Neil breathe down his neck. It was easy work for the most part – no screaming kids, just women of a certain age wanting to be flattered and pampered and to have something nice to look at while they take their afternoon dip in the mineral baths. Everything went smoothly and predictably up until yesterday afternoon. He had been sauntering to his lifeguard chair while giving the ladies his standard heated gaze over the rims of his aviator sunglasses when a querulous voice called out: “you, there! I say, young man.”
Billy stopped and turned to see a woman who looked to be in her late fifties with a Jackie Onassis-style turned-out bob of steel grey hair tied back with a designer silk scarf and large oval sunglasses. She was reclining on one of the teak poolside chairs wearing a linen tunic and enough jewelry to make an eighteenth-century countess feel underdressed, a martini glass sweating with condensation on the table at her elbow.
He forced his voice into its customer service register: “can I help you with something, ma’am?”
The woman gestured vaguely, tracing one blood-red manicured fingernail in a circle. “I’ve seen you around. Benny, isn’t it?”
“Billy.”
“Well Billy, a very distressing thing has happened.”
“Really?” Billy prompted. He didn’t put enough effort in to make it seem like he gave a shit, but the woman ploughed on regardless.
“Ye-es. My housekeeper has been called away unexpectedly. Her elderly father fell down some stairs and broke his hip and now she’s on the next plane out to California.”
Lucky her, Billy thought. “So sorry to hear that,” he said with a pleasant lilt.
“But you see, it’s Chester. He’s very particular and he doesn’t cope well with change.”
Billy frowned, sensing this woman might actually be wacko. “Chester is your… son?”
“Oh no, dear – he’s a pedigree Chinese Crested.”
“Is that some kind of bird?”
“No, no, dear! It’s a dog, and extremely valuable one. And you see, I’m driving out to the Hamptons tomorrow and I simply must have someone to watch him. I can’t take him with me, why Algie would throw a fit.”
“Algie is… another dog?” Billy ventured.
“No, Algie is my brother. He’s allergic – or so he claims. I think he just says that to spite me. Always did have to be the center of attention – middle child, you know,” she looked over her sunglasses confidentially. “My parents sent him to no end of therapists, but it didn’t do him any good. He ought to get a hobby, not sit around all day watching his stocks and fretting.”
Billy could feel the encouraging smile on his face becoming frozen in place. “Ok. Do you want me to ask the front desk to bring out a telephone so you can call a sitter?”
“A sitter? Some kind of stranger? No, no that wouldn’t do at all! I need someone dependable. You, for instance. You have first aid training, don’t you?”
“Well, for humans–”
“–And they had to get references and so on, didn’t they? They wouldn’t hire just anyone at a place like this.”
Billy is reasonably sure no-one looked twice at his resume, given that he was hired to be ornamental. “Sure.”
“Then it’s perfect. Come tomorrow afternoon around three and I’ll give you a walk through.” She opened a pocketbook in navy blue crocodile skin and took out a piece of card, offering it to Billy slotted between her first two fingers.
Billy took it and discovered it was a calling card – a bizarre relic of more genteel times. It said ‘Mrs. Virginia Estelle Wolcott’ in copperplate and an address and telephone number followed by the day the bearer was ‘at home’ to visitors (Tuesdays). The address listed was on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
“This says New York City,” he said, puzzled. “That’s at least a three-hour drive.”
“Well, of course you’ll be well compensated for your time...”
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t be able to get there and back in time for work every day.” He offered her the card back but she made no move to take it, instead giving a high trill of laughter.
“I should think not. You’ll stay, of course – as I said, Chester has a lot of special requirements. It simply wouldn’t do for someone to drop in on him once a day and fill up his bowl. Now dear, don’t worry about having to let the club down – they know me here, I’ll explain and it’ll be quite alright. It’s only for three weeks, four at the most.”
“You want me – a total stranger,” Billy enunciated slowly, feeling himself in danger of telling this crazy old bat where to get off, “to come and live in your house and take care of your dog?”
She smiled complacently, clearly delighted with the neatness of her own plan. “Don’t worry, I have excellent intuition, Billy. I’m never wrong about people – never, never! I can tell you’re an industrious and honest young man. I’m sure you and Chester will get on like a house on fire.”
“I don’t think–”
She gasped as if receiving a revelation from on high. “Oh, of course! Just because I trust you implicitly doesn’t mean it goes both ways. How about a retainer? That is only fair, given the demands made upon your time.” She dipped back into her purse and emerged with a check book in a matching shiny crocodile-skin cover and a slim gold pen. “What did you say your surname was?”
“I didn’t, but it’s Hargrove.”
She carefully wrote out the legend and signed it off with a loopy signature before tearing off the perforation and handing it over to Billy. “Now, a retainer, as I said. That’s just to get your foot in the door. I’ll give you the balance in full as soon as I return. What do you think would be fair?”
Billy was still staring dumbly at the check in his hand, thinking she must have misplaced the zero before reading the longhand: William Hargrove Esq. Two hundred dollars only. A/C payee. “Huh?”
“I said fair, dear. For instance, what do they pay you here – the going rate per day?”
The real answer was three-fifty an hour, plus tips. “A hundred,” he lied, mostly out of curiosity to see if she would swallow it.
She raised her eyes to do some quick arithmetic. “At four weeks, including weekends, that’s just under three thousand. Yes, we’ll round it up. How about it, Billy – are we in business?”
“For three grand?” he had to push down a hysterical laugh. “Sure.”
So now Billy is being shown around a veritable palace – ten-foot ceilings, dark wood floors waxed to mirror shine, furnishings like a glossy magazine layout.
“This is my little pied-à-terre. I trust you’ll be quite comfortable. The cleaners come on Monday and Thursday, florist on Wednesday; grocery boy… yes, Friday I believe. My housekeeper Gloria normally does the cooking and day-to-day management, of course. However, I trust you’re quite self-sufficient? Most young people are nowadays,” she affects an airy laugh.
Billy favors her with an insincere smile. “Entirely.”
“Now Gloria has put together a binder for you of everything you’ll need to know – security alarm, emergency contacts, Chester’s diet and exercise plan, the building amenities…”
“You said there’s a gym?”
“Why I do believe so, though of course, I haven’t used it myself. Now, the garden… yes, the best view is from the balcony, come through here.” She opens a set of hinged double doors and steps out onto a balcony bigger than Billy’s entire freshman dorm room. “Rather quaint, isn’t it?”
To Billy’s eyes it might as well be the gardens of Versailles – rose beds, manicured box hedges, neatly laid out paths and a fountain with a urinating Cupid. He looks over to his left and spots an adjacent balcony – he had assumed that Mrs. Wolcott’s would be the only apartment on the top floor. “You have neighbors?”
“Well, ye-es, technically – I believe he’s some kind of artist, travels a lot – as do I, of course. I’ve met him once, but since then we’ve never quite managed to cross over. Most likely, you’ll have the entire place to yourself. I hope you brought your summer reading,” she laughs trillingly again.
The tour passes in a blur, and before long Mrs. Wolcott is giving a disgusting kissy-faced goodbye to the rat-dog and directing a concierge about the disposition of her luggage (yet another matching set in navy-blue snakeskin).
“Oh, cash for incidentals is in an envelope next to the phone. Let me know if it’s insufficient, I can always send a wire!” with that Mrs Wolcott is gone, click clacking down the hallway to the elevator with the sweaty-faced concierge in tow.
As soon as the door closes, Billy rips open the envelope and finds five hundred fucking dollars in crisp fifties. This is going to be the easiest racket of all time – he’s going to be living like a king for the next year just for sitting on his ass for a few weeks eating some rich bitch’s caviar.
“Listen up, rat,” he tells Chester, still shivering and growling with all the fury his tiny body can hold. “There’s been a change of regime. You better fall in line or you’ll be getting a one-way trip to the pound.”
The dog snaps at him and for a moment Billy thinks he spots a glint of true malice in the depths of those shiny button eyes.
*~*~*
Billy never before understood why people made such a big deal out of having kids; why they walked around looking frazzled, zoning out in the grocery store with a thousand-yard stare as some little snot-nosed goblin in Spider-Man pajamas has a meltdown right next to them. Just feed the thing, give it some toys, put it to bed – it’s not like it’s hard. You’re bigger than a toddler – if it starts bitching and crying just pick it up and take it elsewhere.
If his own battle with the Rat is anything to go by, it’s not as simple as all that. He flicked through the binder of instructions that first afternoon and snorted in derision at the many steps laid out for the creature’s daily routine. The level of detail and specificity (where to go on each walk, how to mix and serve its food, the set times for each activity) was truly fucking ludicrous. Why anyone would dance around a dog like this is beyond him. It’s a dumb fucking animal – feed it, give it water, take it outside before it pisses itself – simple. Who gives a shit about its preferences?
Well, the thing is loud, for a start. The first three days the yapping is fucking relentless. Billy would rather live next to a construction project than spend another minute trapped in a luxury penthouse with this thing. The noise really ramps up around the Rat’s dedicated ‘walkies’ times, and eventually it’s just easier to clip the leash on and leave the apartment than it is to sit there and have his eardrums assaulted for another hour.
On the first day, he dumps dry food out for it, not wanting to deal with the mess and precise mixing instructions for dealing with the wet stuff. The Rat scampers up to its bowl and then flops down, whimpering sadly like a dying man in the desert who has fallen a few feet short of an oasis and lacks the strength to go on. Billy ignores it at first, figuring the thing will eventually get hungry enough to eat what it is given. No dog is going to let itself starve to death out of principle. He comes back three hours later to find the Rat in the same exact position he left it, sprawled out like the last turkey left in the store on thanksgiving. The pile of kibbles is undiminished.
“Fucking unbelievable,” he mutters, snatching up the bowl and ripping open the instructional binder to find out what gourmet menu he needs to conjure up for this stupid fucking creature to eat.
This is Billy’s life now: in thrall to a five-pound sack of skin, hair and no fucking braincells. He does, in his darkest moments, occasionally think about giving the thing a kick just to show it who’s boss. But then he remembers that its essentially three thousand dollars yapping and mincing around in front of him and he can put up with a lot for that kind of payout. So now when Billy feels the red mist descend, he takes himself out to the balcony to smoke a cigarette and calm down. Thankfully the doors are relatively soundproof.
The level of inconvenience posed by this gremlin only truly reveals itself the first time he brings someone back to the apartment.
First, there’s the time window – between the Rat’s final constitutional at 10 p.m. and when it starts whining and threatening to piss on the floor somewhere around 6 a.m., there’s precious little time for Billy to go out, find a suitable dive bar, a willing partner, then close the deal and get himself back to home base. A lot of people he meets in the local bars either have some kind of weird roommate/family situation that prevents them from inviting him home, or live a considerable subway journey away. Great, fine, Billy can host. He’s willing to bet the penthouse will prove to be a real panty-dropper, in fact.
The first time he gets a potential hook-up back to the apartment by a respectable 2AM, he feels a surge of pride. The woman is older than Billy – maybe late 30s – tall, athletic and gorgeous with abundant dark brown curly hair. She’s wearing a short black miniskirt that he’s itching to get his hand up. She lets out a gasp once she gets through the front door, her heels click-clacking on the hardwood as he peers into rooms and marvels at the tasteful décor. She wants to know Billy’s secret – is he a rockstar? A Rockefeller?
Billy gives an enigmatic smile and says that he works in ‘asset management’ as a prelude to getting his hands on her particular assets.
He pours her a glass of wine, pulling a bottle at random from the temperature-controlled racks in the kitchen. He leads her to the couch; they cozy up and Billy starts edging his hand higher on her tanned thigh. She’s smiling and blushing as she looks at him, her eyes dropping to his mouth. He’s about to lean in and clinch the deal when an ungodly howl makes them both jump and causes the woman (Sandy? Cindy?) to knock over her glass and have it smash to pieces on the coffee table.
Before Billy can do anything to mop up the shards and the red wine rolling inexorably towards the edge of the table and the white area rug beneath, a grey blur appears, zooming around the corner like a homing missile. The Rat comes bearing down on them both with furious bloodlust in its eyes. The woman screams and tries to hide behind Billy, gripping his arm and digging in with her long nails. The Rat stops short of actually attacking them, but stands quivering and slavering and emitting the loudest yap, yap, yap it can muster.
“Is that your dog?” the woman asks, her voice muffled in Billy’s shirt. “Is he friendly?”
“No, it’s not mine and it’s a fucking psychopath,” Billy says, pushing her off and getting up to grab the Rat by its collar. He then scoops it up under one arm to shut it in the nearest bathroom. This only enrages the animal further – it starts to whimper and howl, making a real Oscar-worthy performance of it and throwing itself at the bottom of the door with repeated thuds.
“He’ll tire himself out in a minute,” Billy says, pushing a hand back through his hair and trying to regain some of his poise. He clears up the mess and tries to settle back into the intimate tête-à-tête on the couch, but the thumps and howls are really difficult to ignore. He kisses the woman with all the sweetness and promise he can muster before he suggests: “it’ll be quieter in the bedroom if you want to move?” He goes in for another soft peck and she allows it for a second, then breaks the kiss by turning her head and putting a staying hand to Billy’s chest.
“I’m sorry. You seem like a nice kid, but it’s… yeah. That’s a mood-killer. It sounds like the poor thing is being tortured.”
Billy sighs with defeat. “Yeah, I’ll call you a cab.”
He might be imagining it, but Billy detects a sort of pride in the Rat’s demeanor when he finally opens the bathroom door to let it out once his guest departs. It trots off to its bed with tail held high and an air of satisfaction in a job well done.
A few nights later, Billy sets off with a renewed sense of purpose to a gay bar in the East Village. He feels confident that a guy will be less squeamish about any noise disturbances: if he has learned anything at all based on his previous encounters with his own sex, it’s that there’s no force on earth that can stop a properly-motivated man from getting his rocks off.
The guy he ends up hooking up with is in no way his type (preppy, blond, seems to genuinely enjoy the godawful disco music the bar is playing) but at this point he’ll take literally any warm body over another lonely, frustrating night with nothing but his own hand.
Blondie (they either never exchanged names or Billy instantly forgot it between grinding on the dancefloor and hopping in a cab) looks around the apartment in thrilled amazement. Before he can get too transported by rapture, Billy cuts him off with: “I’m just watching the place for a friend. And keep it down – the next-door neighbor’s a real asshole.”
Blondie smiles and bites his bottom lip as he gives Billy an appreciative glance. “Well, I’ll try to keep quiet. I have a feeling you’re going to make that a real challenge though, stud.”
Billy grins, pushing him up against the closed front door to kiss him and get a hand on his crotch to confirm they’re in business. Yeah, he can definitely work with this. The guy doesn’t seem like the kind to top, but maybe he’s open to suggestion.
He pulls Blondie into the nearest guest room and quietly pulls the door to behind him. The guy has a nice enough body once he gets his stupid polo shirt and chinos off – lean, with a little bit of definition on the torso (nothing compared to Billy’s gains, obviously). His eyes light up when Billy pulls off his sleeveless tee and he feels up Billy’s shoulders and chest with open appreciation. He even lets out a groan of excitement as he sticks his hand into the open front of Billy’s jeans and maps out the shape of his hard-on. “Fuck, I want to get my mouth on that.”
“Yeah?” Billy gives him a challenging look and pushes down his jeans and underwear before flopping back on the fully made-up bed, one knee bent and a hand behind his head.
Blondie climbs on top and kisses his way down Billy’s chest and stomach. Billy rubs his fingers through the strands of his fair hair, faintly slick with some kind of product. The guy’s eager – maybe almost as hard-up as Billy. He takes hold of Billy’s dick, hand flexing around the base, and gives it a friendly lick before diving straight in. He’s practiced at this – knows just how much he can take before pulling back and then swallowing him deeper.
Billy lets out a heartfelt groan. Fuck yes, this is just what he needed. Even if a thorough blowjob is all he gets out of this night, it’s more than worth it. He mutters some encouraging words, cupping the back of the guy’s skull, but not trying to push him – Blondie knows his way around a dick, he doesn’t need any backseat driving. Billy watches him as he takes it in, cheeks hollowed to suck and a steady hum of enjoyment in his throat. Masterful.
Billy relaxes enough to close his eyes, shifting to get comfortable. He hears a faint creak from somewhere in the apartment and it dimly occurs to him that he didn’t actually latch the bedroom door. This seems unimportant in the heat of the moment, though. There’s a strange wheezing sound that Billy attributes to Blondie taking more than he can handle, but then suddenly a loud growl erupts from somewhere nearby, ending in a yelp as a blur of grey and white launches itself over the end of the bed.
To his endless credit, Blondie doesn’t bite down. Instead, he pulls off with a gagging noise and tumbles off the edge of the bed onto the floor, hitting the hardwood with a painful-sounding thump.
There’s a split-second of utter confusion before Billy hears him shriek: “what the fuck?! Did your dog just bite me in the fucking face?”
“It’s not actually my dog,” Billy says as he lurches up to grab the Rat’s collar and haul it away from the defenseless, semi-naked man on the floor.
“You think I give a shit who owns it? Fuck, what if that thing has rabies!”
“Calm down, it doesn’t have rabies. It’s a pedigree lap dog and it’s bitten me like twelve times already.”
Blondie’s ashen, horrified face appears over the edge of the bed, his hand anxiously kneading his cheek. “Am I bleeding? God, I could’ve lost an eye!”
“You’re fine, it didn’t even break the skin,” Billy insists, holding the animal at bay with his foot in addition to the hand on its collar because he very much does not want to have his dick mistaken for a chew-toy. “This thing weighs like five pounds soaking wet. I don’t know what the fuck its problem is – inbreeding probably. I’ll lock it in the bathroom and then I’ll make it up to you.”
Blondie scowls. “No offence, man, I’ve put myself in some pretty crazy situations for dick, but getting bitten in the face is my limit. I’m tapping out.”
Billy sighs while the dog continues to struggle to escape and maul (or at least lightly nip) the stranger. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
Another cab is called, the Rat has vanquished yet another threat to hearth and home, proudly returning to its bed and the sleep of the just. Billy truly fucking gives up.
It’s weirdly freeing to admit defeat. In a break between dog-duties, Billy takes himself off to Times Square. In the few minutes it takes him to traverse the garbage-strewn block of peep shows and porno theatres, he is accosted by two women who take him for a john, as well as one man who thinks Billy’s the one for hire, but he eventually shakes them off and finds what he came for – an erotic novelties store. He buys some porn, lube, and two dildos in the sizes ‘regular’ and ‘ambitious’, then he trudges back to the apartment with the anonymous brown paper bag under his arm in order to take stock of his life.
This is an opportunity, he decides. It’s the training montage part of the action movie, where the hero struggles and must submit to the humility of failure, then through his persistence, thrives. The new regime is this: he will feed and walk the fucking dog, he will work out in the basement gym, and he will read his boring-ass textbooks. He’s going to treat this like a religious retreat, withdrawing from the everyday world only to emerge infinitely richer and more ripped. He is going to bide his time until he returns to college in the fall and then he’s going to plough a relentless furrow through the senior co-eds. He just has to stick to the routine and he will be unstoppable.
*~*~*
The tentative peace is broken one morning at 3 a.m. The first thing Billy is conscious of is the rumbling vibrations and in his half-asleep mind he thinks it’s an earthquake before he remembers he’s on entirely the wrong coast for that. The regularity of the thumping begins to dawn on him, but it’s only when he hears high-pitched laughter and the murmur of conversation that he recognizes the sound for what it is – the bass from some truly top-of-the-line speakers. Good fucking music too – he can make out the wailing of heavy metal guitars. The mystery neighbor has returned from his travels and he’s brought a party with him.
For a moment, Billy thinks about getting up and going next door to investigate, maybe charming his way inside, but then the idea of having to make small-talk with artsy-fartsy types seems tedious. Instead, he pulls a goose-down pillow over his head and falls back into an uneasy doze.
A few hours later, Billy is having his morning coffee and smoke on the balcony when he hears a clatter – the French doors of the adjacent apartment open and a figure bursts out. It’s a man with a prehistorically wild tangle of dark brown hair, wearing dark sunglasses and a full-length bathrobe of bright red silk with an embroidered Chinese dragon on the back. He staggers to the railing and fumbles at the opening of the robe, then starts pissing off the edge while Billy stares at him in mingled wonder and disgust. At least the guy has a good arc going, because he’s not sprinkling on anyone’s patio furniture – just giving the garden a little extra nitrogen.
There’s something familiar about the stranger, though the shades and framing of his hair make it hard to discern his facial features. He’s incredibly pale with a long face and square chin. He turns his head and finally seems to notice Billy, and in doing so he reveals one badger stripe of white hair. Suddenly Billy knows exactly who this is: Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson, frontman of notorious glam rock group Corroded Coffin. Aka ‘the devil’s hellion child’ (according to his own hype); ‘the most hated man in America’ (according to Christian Mothers Against Heavy Metal); and ‘our secret shame’ according to the remaining residents of Hawkins, Indiana.
Munson was a year above Billy in high school but disappeared just a few months after the latter’s forced relocation to Hawkins, so Billy never actually met him in person. All he knows of him are the legends that sprang up in the aftermath of his abrupt departure: that the guy was a satanist; that he practiced black magic out behind the trailer park; that he sacrificed small woodland creatures and maybe even a baby to the devil in exchange for fame and fortune (whose baby? Nobody knows). Also, that he corrupted innumerable members of Hawkins’ youth by brainwashing them into occult practices via the popular roleplaying game ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, where he served in the sinister role of ‘Dungeon Master.’
Billy considers all these rumors to be horseshit, except maybe the Dungeons & Dragons thing – there were definitely nerds at school obsessed with all that elves and gnomes crap. Most likely the guy was just a heavy metal fan with a grating personality and the rest is pure hysteria.
The moral panic followed Munson out of Hawkins and into the wider world, however. Corroded Coffin burst onto the music scene in 1985 with their debut album ‘Hellfire’. Concerned parents across the nation clutched their pearls at the tight, gender-bending outfits of the band, the blatant satanic and S&M imagery on the cover (the album backdrop featured a sexy devil girl tied to a rack and whipping herself with her tail), and the band’s gleeful odes to fucking, partying and fame. Billy bought a copy himself and was blown away by their energy and the rawness of their sound – in particular Munson’s voice, which had a raspy, hard-bitten quality more befitting some depression-era bluesman than a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old. Billy only got to listen to it twice before Neil found the tape on his dresser and went on a rant about ‘high heel-wearing faggots’ and threw it in the trash.
“Enjoying the view?” Munson asks with an insolent grin. He finally finishes, giving his dick a brief shake before tucking it away.
“Not really,” Billy retorts, refusing to give this fucker the satisfaction of seeing him star-struck. “Doesn’t your penthouse come with a bathroom?”
“Several. Somebody’s passed out in one of them, a couple are fucking in another. Last one people were using to cut lines, so it seemed rude to interrupt.”
Billy shrugs. “You trying to shock me or something?”
“No, just giving you the unvarnished truth. I’m Eddie by the way,” he reaches out his hand and then looks down at it and laughs, clearly recalling where it’s just been. He sticks it back in his robe pocket and leans against the railing instead.
“Billy,” he returns with a nod.
“Can I bum a smoke?”
“Sure,” Billy slides a cigarette from the pack and hands it across the four-foot gap. Munson takes it with his left hand and leans over so Billy can light it. He breathes out a plume of smoke and coughs. “Fuck, Marlboros. This shit messes with my throat, you oughta switch.”
“You know what they say about beggars and choosers.”
“Sassy little shit, aren’t you? So, what happened to the old lady – you her grandson? Sugar baby? Squatter?”
“House-sitter,” Billy says.
Munson whistles. “Sweet gig. I’d kill to be able to sit around doing nothing for a few weeks. Just napping and watering the plants.”
“Hard work being a party animal, is it?”
“Well, you know, decadence is not a full-time gig. I’m in a band, so sometimes I have to actually show up and do a night’s work. Plus, the record label is breathing down my fucking neck about getting into the studio to lay down the new album. I told them I had all the songs written and that might have been a teensy-tiny exaggeration,” he holds his thumb an inch apart from the two fingers holding his cigarette.
“How many have you written?”
“Hmm. I’ve got maybe three riffs and some bar napkins with lyrics scribbled on them. Just as soon as I sober up and figure out how to read my own handwriting, we’re in business.” He pulls down his sunglasses and flashes Billy a grin that shows a dimple. Billy absolutely refuses to be charmed. This guy might think he’s hot shit now, but he still rose from the primordial ooze of Hawkins, Indiana like all the other hick morons Billy went to school with. He’s not even handsome – his face is average bordering on goofy, with a wide nose and blotchy skin. His eyes are very dark and hypnotic, though – and there’s something else, that ‘x factor’ of confidence and charisma. Billy gets why groupies scream and faint at the sight of him.
“Eddie, baby, where are yooooou?” trills a coquettish feminine voice from somewhere inside the apartment. “I’m lonely and the bed is getting cold.”
Munson crushes out his cigarette and flicks it over the balcony. “Nice talking to you, kid. Duty calls.”
“Don’t work too hard,” says Billy. Munson cackles and Billy has to tamp down a completely un-cool surge of pride at having genuinely amused him.
The entourage apparently clears out some time around noon – all is silent when Billy returns from taking the Rat from its afternoon walk. It’s so quiet, Billy thinks Munson himself must have gone with them until late at night when he’s stacking the dishwasher and hears the faint strumming of an acoustic guitar floating through the open balcony doors. He stands still and listens – it’s a quiet, soulful ballad, nothing like Corroded Coffin’s stock in trade.
It unsettles him somehow – knowing that there’s someone pacing the adjacent rooms like a ghost. He tries to jerk off to settle himself down for sleep, but he feels weirdly self-conscious about it. In the end he gives up and rides the elevator down to the basement gym, where he lifts the free weights until the muscles in his arms are sore and quivering with exhaustion.
The next day he’s taking the Rat for its morning laps around the garden when he spies a familiar figure reclining on one of the benches with one heel on the ground and the other propped up at an acute angle. Munson is dressed in tight black jeans that are more rips than fabric, a white t-shirt that says ‘Hellfire Club’ with a demon’s head on it, a black leather jacket covered in band pins, and the ever-present sunglasses.
At first Billy thinks he might either be dead or passed out, but at Billy’s approach he rouses himself enough to turn his head and point.
“What the fuck is that?”
“According to the old lady, it’s a pedigree Chinese Crested.”
“A Chinese Crested what?”
“Some kind of rodent, for sure.”
“A fearsome hellhound, is that what you are?” Munson asks, sitting up with his hands dangling between his spread thighs. The Rat growls and yips, but there doesn’t seem to be much energy behind it. He doesn’t even bother lunging at Munson’s face.
“Maybe. It hates everyone and everything, including me.”
“Wow, you’re a buzzkill, huh? A bad vibes merchant?” Munson asks the dog in a stupid baby voice. It is dawning on Billy that this guy is kind of a dork.
“Where’d your groupies go?” Billy asks.
“Banished, alas. My manager says if I don’t deliver demos by the end of the month the record label will, in fact, fire me and sue my ass.”
“Think they really would?”
“Oh absolutely. These lizards don’t care about anything but the bottom line. They don’t understand Art,” he presses a hand to his chest as if wounded.
“Those real deep tunes you churn out about fucking and fame?”
“Oh, so you have heard us?” Munson seems edified.
“You’re pretty notorious. Unavoidable, even.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Munson grins. “I have to thank all those good Christian moms telling people to burn my records, I really do – better than any PR firm.” He pulls down his sunglasses to give a rakish wink.
“And how’s it going – the songwriting?”
“Ugh, don’t ask. I can’t work like this – I need stimulation, variety! This boring, bougie atmosphere brings me out in hives. It’s a soul-killer.”
“Can’t you leave?”
“Yeah, but I’m in deep shit if I go on another bender and my manager finds out. Plus, it’s kinda hard to keep things on the down-low, looking like I do. The curse of fame,” another dramatic gesture, back of one hand to his head. The Rat is chewing on his loose shoelaces.
Billy snorts. “I hear Michael Jackson once shut down a supermarket so he could go shopping like a regular human. Just choosing things off the shelf and putting them in a basket was some great novelty for him. The rich man’s Disneyland.”
“I used to work at a gas station,” Munson says with a nostalgic sigh. “I hated that job, it fucking sucked. There were hotdogs on that roller older than me.”
Billy thinks he knows the exact gas station in question. “They’re probably still there.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. But you know, those overnight shifts were a gift in a way. Wrote down my first songs in the lonely hours before dawn – the smell of gasoline and grease in my nostrils. But then I quit to sell weed which is like a thousand times easier and more lucrative.”
“Unless you get caught.”
“Right, but I didn’t,” he clicks his tongue. “So, what do you do, Billy?”
“I’m going into my senior year at Ohio State.”
“A gentleman and a scholar! You like it there? I hear it’s a party school.”
“Sure, shit gets wild at the frats.”
“You joined one?”
“Fuck no, shit’s for losers that need to buy friends.”
“And you’re Mr. Popular?” Munson lowers his sunglasses to give Billy a lingering up-and-down glance. “Yeah, you must be. Big man on campus, chicks falling left and right. Bet you play team sports.”
“Basketball.”
“You’re not crazy tall so you must be wily and mean. I never gave a shit about the games in high school, but I sure loved seeing the boys in action at pep rallies. Those shorts and sleeveless tees, mercy!” he fans himself like a Southern belle overcome by the summer’s heat. Definitely a colossal fucking nerd.
“So it’s not just for publicity,” Billy observes, “you really do swing both ways?”
“Equal opportunities pervert, that’s me. What about you?”
“I’m celibate.”
Munson brays with laughter. “Bull fucking shit!”
“No really,” says Billy. “The Rat goes insane the second anyone steps foot into the apartment. It’s really put a dampener on my sex life.”
“Now aint that a shame?” he croons in fake sympathy. “And you in the prime of your youth.”
“I’ll make up for it,” Billy says.
Munson gives him one last heated look before pushing the sunglasses back up. “Oh, I just bet you will.”
The Rat finally gives up worrying at Munson’s shoe and starts tugging Billy towards the exit, yapping piteously.
“Looks like your break’s up,” Munson comments, lying back down and folding his hands on his stomach. “Mine too. Gotta get back to daydreaming.”
“See you around, neighbor.”
“Oh yeah. Don’t get too lonely now.”
Billy walks away with as much casual swagger as he can muster with the damn dog trying to asphyxiate itself. He wonders if Munson’s staring at his ass behind those darkened lenses like all the thirsty bitches back in Hawkins.
It’s not that he wants to fuck Munson – the guy is in no way Billy’s type. Frankly, Munson doesn’t know how lightly he got off by skipping town before Billy really made his mark, because if Billy had known him in high school, he definitely would have bullied him. Even Munson’s elevation to rock god and public enemy #1 of the Christian Right can’t dispel that faint whiff of overexcited theater kid he carries around. Not fuckable, not even if Billy’s desperate (which he increasingly is).
Besides, it would hurt Billy’s ego to be in the ‘groupie’ category. To be forgettable, one of a long line of easily impressed, easily-bedded youths. He likes to have the upper hand; to be sure that his partner is appropriately grateful for his attention – and appropriately forlorn when it is taken away.
“Celibate,” he repeats to himself as he prepares the Rat’s stupidly elaborate breakfast. He will not let anything interrupt the hard-won peace of his routine.
*~*~*
Billy goes through his activities that day with truly monastic devotion: walks and feedings of the Rat, reading a few pages of his textbook, listening to the radio as he smokes an afternoon cigarette, then retiring to his room to absolutely go to town on himself with the more modest of the two dildos he bought. After that, a workout and then dinner. He doesn’t hear a peep out of Munson, not even the faint strum of a guitar.
He’s about to head to bed when he hears a rap at the door. He peers through the peephole and sees a familiar brown wavy mop with one white badger stripe. He thinks about ignoring it, he really does.
“I can see you standing there,” comes the familiar voice.
“No you can’t,” Billy retorts.
“Your feet make a gap in the light under the door. See, I passed the perception check.”
Billy rips the door open. “What do you want?”
Munson smiles wide as he folds his arms and leans against the doorjamb. It’s the first time Billy’s seen him without his sunglasses and he looks dorkier than ever. His feet are bare and he has black polish on his toes. “Well now, that’s not very neighborly. What would Mrs. Whatsherface say?” He twists his hair self-consciously against his cheek as if he thinks he’s cute.
Billy scowls. “The only thing she cares about is that mangy mutt, so I doubt she’d say anything.”
“You know,” says Munson, cocking his head to one side, “you look so familiar, somehow. Where are you from?”
“California.”
“And yet you high-tailed it clear across to the Midwest for college – strange. Oh well, guess I must have known you in another life.”
“Can I help you with something, or is this a social call?”
“Oh social, social,” Munson says airily, pushing past him to enter the apartment. “Wow, this is trippy. It’s just like my place, but flipped. Also… way cleaner and less full of crap.”
Suddenly roused from sleep, the Rat heaves itself out of its bed with a satanic howl and launches itself at Munson. Munson catches it in mid-air like a football intercept and deftly deposits it in one of the guestrooms, closing the door behind it. “And you can stay in there and think about what you’ve done.” The dog yaps in fury and scrabbles at the door but Munson just shakes his head and makes a ‘T’ sign with his hands: “timeout.”
Billy smiles at him with grudging amusement. “They say animals can sense evil.”
“Well, you said it hates you too, so what does that mean? That we’re cut from the same demonic cloth?”
“Must be.”
Munson pulls something from behind his ear like a magic trick and holds it out for Billy’s inspection. It’s a well-packed joint. “Wanna smoke? Helps me think, but only in company. If I tackle this bad boy alone, I’m likely to pass out and burn the place down.”
“Sure,” says Billy, “but we’d better go out to the balcony. I’m sure Mrs. Whatsherface doesn’t want the place to smell like a drug den.”
They pull a couple of chairs from the dining set and settle down to stare out at the cityscape. He watches Munson produce a silver zippo with a skull and crossbones etched into its battered surface. His face is uplit by the flame, cheeks made hollow and his eyes deep wells of shadow. For a moment he looks tired, though it might be a trick of the wavering light. He breathes out a slow stream of smoke and settles back with a grunt before handing it off to Billy. Billy takes a drag and determinedly does not flinch or cough. This shit is lethal.
He watches Munson fuss with his bangs, combing them out with his fingers before scratching his crown in apparent irritation. Must be hot under there – it’s early August and the city is sweltering.
“What’s the deal with the hair?” Billy asks.
“Huh? Well, I’m in a rock and roll band, long hair kind of comes with the territory.”
“I get that. I meant the stripe.”
“Oh, haven’t you heard the rumors?”
“What, that you sold your soul to the devil and came back ‘changed’? Sure. But I’m pretty sure the devil doesn’t leave an inch of dark roots.”
Munson grins at him as he hands off the joint. “You’re kind of a rude bitch, anyone ever tell you that?”
Billy arches his eyebrow. He thinks about what he would have done if Munson said something like that to him back in Hawkins.
“It’s just a fucking gimmick, man,” Munson shrugs defensively. “Lots of long-haired freaks about, you gotta do something to stand out. What’s the deal with your look, anyhow?”
“What look?”
“Hair metal pretty boy. Not a criticism, I dig it. I guess the girls do too – chicks go wild for a hint of genderbending, it’s marketing 101. That’s why I have to roll my ankles in those fucking thigh-high platforms every time I get up on stage.”
“I’m not a pretty boy,” Billy insists with a scowl.
“You’re the movement’s poster child, baby: the loose curls, the earring, the tight jeans, the rakishly unbuttoned shirt – peacock behavior. Bet it makes ‘em weak at the knees for you.”
Billy snorts. “A lot of guys dress like I do.”
“Hustlers, sure.”
“Fuck you, man.”
The chair creaks as Munson contorts himself in it, one foot propped up and his arm wrapped around his knee. “You really think you’re not doing anything different from the average red-blooded American youth? You think the frat boys use hairspray and cinch themselves in at the waist? Come on. I can respect a fellow performer, kid – you love to stand out.”
“It’s not like it’s hard. Where I went to high school, everything was so fucking ugly and drab. People called you a faggot if you wore anything but baggy blue denim.”
“Sounds familiar,” Munson nods. He slides down in his chair and crosses his bare feet at the ankles, flexing them. “I don’t know if I would have made it if it wasn’t for music. First time I heard Accept all the hair stood up on my arms, you know? It was like a message in a bottle, or a transmission from outer space – there’s other worlds, other sounds out there, kid. Don’t give up hope. Me and my friends used to gather round my shitty tape deck and play that first album like it was our Sunday service.” He takes another drag and the paper crackles, the cherry flaring and dying back.
Billy thinks of the first time he heard Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe – the raucous, sleazy, unapologetic sound. The brash confidence of men with wild manes of hair and black leather pants. He didn’t even know (or want to know) that he was queer back then – the mingling of his desire for these men and to be these men made his stomach twist and flip. “Yeah. On the radio everything was Madonna and fucking bubble-gum pop. I used to wonder how they could stand it.”
Munson hums in agreement. “I used to think: aren’t you angry? Aren’t you fucking boiling inside? Don’t you want to turn an electric guitar up loud as it goes and just scream forever?” He breathes out unsteadily through a laugh and passes back the joint. “Not everyone does, apparently.”
“Freaks,” Billy says, taking a cautious drag.
Munson grins at him, his eyes dark and shiny like chestnuts. “I like you, Billy. You get it. You’re switched on, as the kids say.”
“I don’t think the kids fucking say that.”
“Maybe not, I’m kinda out of the loop. Fame will do that to a guy,” he lets out a histrionic sigh.
“You like it – being famous?”
“It sure beats being a nobody. But it makes your world so much smaller.”
“Bullshit – you’re out touring and partying it up across the globe.”
“You don’t see shit on tour. Auditorium after auditorium, the inside of an airport lounge or – God forbid – a bus. I have to put a piece of tape on the back of my guitar to remind me what fucking city I’m in so I don’t insult the crowd while I’m supposed to be hyping them up. Everyone gets so tired – of travelling, eating shit food, just staring at each other’s pasty faces. No wonder musicians get drug habits – it’s two hours of pure adrenaline every night followed by twenty-two hours of sheer fucking tedium. How’s a person meant to level that out?”
“Poor little rich boy,” Billy croons.
“I am, I am!” Munson laughs. “Listen, it’s not all bad – it’s really a trip hearing the crowd roar. That part never gets old.”
“You get mobbed when you go out? Begged for autographs and shit?”
“Sometimes, yeah. Most of the fans are cool, but some get weird about it. I just play guitar, I never asked to be treated like Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t think anyone thinks you’re Jesus. The opposite, pretty much.”
“Yeah,” Munson giggles. “It’s so fucking easy, yanking the chains of those godly types. They shit their pants at the sight of a little eyeliner.”
“So, you didn’t sell your soul to the devil at the crossroads for talent and fame?”
“I wish. I had to fucking practice.”
Billy tilts his head back and laughs. The weed is really getting to him if he’s starting to find Munson charming. He hands it back and gets up to go in search of something to drink. All is quiet behind the guestroom door; he cracks it open and finds the Rat has made a nest for itself on the foot of the bed under the ornamental comforter and is snoring. He pulls the door to again and withdraws quietly like a parent trying not to wake a factious baby.
He finds some chilled bottles of Swiss mountain spring water in the huge stainless-steel refrigerator and takes them back out to the balcony, handing one off to Munson who thanks him and takes a few thirsty gulps.
“You know what I could really go for?” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Chili fries. But specifically the ones from Benny’s back home. God those really hit the spot when you were blazed out of your gourd.”
“Can’t help you, Munson. Best I got out there is a hundred-dollar cheese plate with like five types of designer mold.”
“Rich people are disgusting,” he says, then he snaps his gaze over to Billy. “Hey, call me Eddie, would you? You sound like my school bullies when you use my last name.”
“Ok.”
“Say it now,” he says, elbowing Billy. “I wanna hear it.”
Billy shakes his head, staring determinedly ahead. “No, you made it weird.”
Munson looms closer, grinning in his face. “I’m a socially disconnected freak, humor me.”
“Eddieeee,” Billy sighs, mimicking the high voice of the unseen groupie from the other morning. “There, satisfied?”
“For now,” he sits back.
“Why do I feel like you’re going to be thinking about that later while you’re jerking off?”
Munson gives an indelicate snort. “Because I definitely am.”
“Pervert. Hellion. Devil child.”
Munson yelps with laughter and kicks his heels on the ground. “Oh yeah, keep going baby… give me all that bad publicity like I deserve.”
“Shh! Behave yourself or I’ll toss you out.”
“Oh no, don’t toss me, Billy.” He gets his giggles under control and offers the joint again but Billy holds up his hand in refusal. “Yeah, probably a wise decision,” Munson takes one last drag and stubs it out on the ashtray Billy has left on the railing for his cigarette breaks.
He grumbles as he lies back, unfolding his lanky body. His arms are the only part of him with any strength and definition – Billy can see how sinewy they are from where his t-shirt sleeves are pushed up. He has a collection of black ink tattoos in typical metal-influenced designs (spider, skull, bats) and his long fingers are weighed down with chunky silver rings. His shirt rides up as he stretches himself out, catlike, and Billy’s eyes are drawn to his soft, pale skin with a dark line of hair leading from his navel. When he breathes in his stomach is concave, a dark hollow under his waistband from where his jeans are too loose.
Billy has a sudden intrusive thought where he imagines himself just getting down on his knees and unbuckling Munson’s belt. Taking a big breath of the musk down there before pulling him out of his underwear and sucking him to hardness. Grabbing Munson by the ankle and pressing the arch of one bare foot to his own crotch. He has to physically shake his head to dispel the image. He clears his throat before he asks: “so did it help, the weed?”
“Help with what?” Munson asks innocently, his eyelids drifting closed.
“Your creative process.”
“Guess we’ll wait and see. All my ideas are half-baked, unlike me right now.” His eyes suddenly flick open and snap into lucidity. “Oh, you want to be in one of my songs?”
“Me? What the fuck for?”
“For immortality, my child. So that for aeons to come the people may sing the ballad of hot, mean Billy who smoked weed with me once.”
“Pass,” says Billy.
“Well, if you don’t want to take up my generous offer, I’m going to have to write one for the dog. ‘Cockblocking Hell Hound’, I’ll call it.”
“Catchy.”
He gives a soft, lazy smile. “A-side material, for sure.”
Munson leaves without a protest once he finishes the water, stretching and contorting himself when he gets up from the chair to show even more of his flat, pale stomach and the furrow of his hips. He shushes himself and giggles as he passes the door of the imprisoned Rat but there are no growls from within – for now, the beast slumbers.
Billy hears the faint strum of an acoustic guitar as he closes the balcony doors and he smiles faintly before heading off to bed. The weed gives him strange, lucid dreams. In one of them he is standing in the bedroom looking at the back wall. The scalloped art nouveau leaves that form the interlocking patterns of the wallpaper start to wave in an unseen breeze. He frowns, trying to imagine where and when these leaves belong – in some dark, damp primordial forest. Then all of a sudden, the hairs stand up on the back of his neck and he feels a jolt pass through him. He isn’t alone – on the far side of the wall, beyond the leaves, a figure stands. Human but Cro-Magnon in attitude, a thick mass of curls falling beyond his shoulders and hiding the eyes Billy can feel searing into him. The man is naked, with long limbs and corded arms, patterns crawling across his shoulders in what might be ash. In the way of dreams, it both is and isn’t Eddie Munson – it’s the million-year-old template for him. The figure reaches up a hand and starts to tap on the wall with his fingertips and the heel of his hand, a slow, hollow thumping like beating on a skin drum. The leaves of the wallpaper wave and flatten as the unseen wind picks up. Billy knows instinctively that he is being summoned.
Billy wakes up with a gasp, the back of his neck uncomfortably wet with sweat. It wasn’t a nightmare, not really, so why is he shaking? The room is silent except for the unobtrusive drone of the air conditioning. He gets up and walks naked through to the kitchen by only the light of the cityscape streaming through the floor-length windows. He drinks a glass of tap water (filtered, nothing in this townhouse is left unfinessed) and then quietly props open the door of the guest room so the Rat can go back to its bed whenever it wakes and it doesn’t bother him with its whining and scratching. He returns to the bedroom and gives the wallpaper behind the bed a fleeting, suspicious glance, but it remains static. Then he lays his hand on it just to reassure himself of its cool solidity. He thumps once, lightly, and then he climbs back into bed.