Anders’s phone buzzed. He slid it from his pocket and felt everything inside him contract. Frank was calling him. She’d told him. He mumbled something to Jonah about a work call and stumbled from the table. He stepped out of the restaurant into sunlight, the phone still buzzing in his hand. It was an unusually warm day for February; even without his jacket, he was sweating. A group of girls walked past, singing along to a pop song playing tinnily from their phone. His thumb hovered over the answer button. He could not move. He willed his thumb to press down, but he was paralyzed. He stared at the name. Frank. Frank. Frank. Then the screen darkened. He’d missed it. The girls crossed the street, their music fading with them. He exhaled, patting his pocket for the cigarettes he already knew he’d left with Cleo. His phone vibrated again and declared a voicemail. He lifted it to his ear, his heart racing.
“My brother!” Frank’s voice said. “I’m back. Best seafood I’ve ever had. Octopus legs as big as my arm. You would have loved it. Anyway, I’m about to get food with Cley. She wants to eat during the Arsenal game, of course. Come meet us! Or if you want a drink later …”
He heard a murmur in the background, a low female voice. Cleo.
“Anyway, call me back,” Frank said. “I’ve missed your handsome Danish face.”
Anders returned to the table. He felt relief and disappointment wash over him in waves, one sensation gaining force as the other retreated. She had not left him. She would not. He had been spared one sadness, only to be given another. He sat down, looked at his bloody steak without appetite, then stood back up.
“I’m just going to run to the restroom,” he said in answer to Jonah’s puzzled look. “Don’t eat my steak while I’m gone.” He attempted a smile.
He locked himself into a stall and unbuttoned his jeans, leaning one hand against the wall and positioning himself over the toilet bowl. He closed his eyes and saw Cleo. She was kneeling in front of him, naked, and smiling up at him. He rubbed his shaft and imagined reaching down to smooth the part of her golden hair. He stroked her breasts, pinched her nipples. Then he squeezed hard. He shoved his cock in her mouth, feeling her gag on it. He was gripping the back of her head, cramming himself deeper down her throat. Tears were sliding down her cheeks; he pulled out and slapped one side of her face, then the other. He was fucking her from behind now, hands spreading her cheeks apart. He was ramming into her puckered pink asshole. He was spanking her, spitting on her, pulling her long hair. He was flipping her over, yanking her legs apart. He was sinking back into her pussy now, smashing into her wet cunt. He was jamming his fingers down her tight red throat. He was pushing his thumbs into her eyes. Then he was punching her face, her beautiful, irreverent, heartbreaking face, pound pound pound, until his fist smashed through, into the hollow beneath like a china doll, and there was nothing but a black jagged hole where her mouth and nose had been. And then he was fucking the hole, fucking it, fucking it, fucking it, fucking the space where her face had been until, with one long ropy spurt, he fell into it and disappeared completely.
Somehow he made it through the remainder of lunch with only the slight mishap of distractedly agreeing to get Jonah a credit card. Christine would be irate, but he would deal with that later. They walked back from the restaurant up Columbus Avenue, stopping to wander around the flea market on Seventy-Seventh. Jonah was traipsing behind him on his phone, blind to the hodgepodge of junk on display. Anders felt the urge to throw his own phone in the trash. He drifted over to another table and leafed dispassionately through a stack of i-D magazines from the 1980s until, with a start, he found himself staring back.
The picture was in an alleyway in SoHo, black and white and deliberately grainy, so it appeared even older than it was. He had no memory of it being taken, but that was hardly surprising. He flipped back to the front cover: 1982. He’d been twenty years old. He was wearing an oversize pair of slacks and a suit jacket with no shirt, slouched against the brick wall, hands in pockets, in the timeless pose of youthful insouciance. He was impossibly slender; hollow cheekbones, hollow chest, pale hair flopped over one eye, the other staring straight into the camera, into him.
“Hey Jonah, come look at this!”
He held the magazine open so he could see.
“That you?”
“It appears so.”
“There’s a kid in the grade above me who’s a model,” said Jonah, slumping his shoulders. “Everyone likes him. Was it, like, fun?”