The Return (The Original Sinners) Read online

  That got a laugh out of Madame. And Kingsley, too, who laughed silently behind his hand. A very good answer.

  “Like a father playing favorites... You see yourself as their father?” Madame asked.

  “In a way, I suppose. Eleanor is fourteen years younger than I am, so it’s only natural we have that dynamic. Kingsley would say I created him. And he certainly acts up like a rebellious child sometimes.”

  “A prodigal son. Except you went back to him, didn’t you? Not he to you.”

  “He left me,” Søren said. “And I found him first. Eventually.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “He was wounded in the line of duty and I was the next of kin listed on his medical forms. Someone in his agency called our old school and said that it was an emergency. I was contacted and told Kingsley’s condition and whereabouts. I went to him then, immediately, but briefly. I’m still surprised he remembers that day. He was barely conscious. A year later we reunited in New York when I needed his help with something.”

  “If you didn’t need his help...would you have gone back to him?”

  A long pause. Too long. Kingsley wanted them to speak as fast as auctioneers. He wanted questions and answers and as many of them as possible.

  “I don’t know,” Søren finally said. “Honest answer, I don’t. After how badly things ended between us... I wasn’t sure he would want me in his life. I am cruel and sadistic, I admit without shame or prevarication, but I’m not entirely remorseless. I’d failed him. I didn’t wish to fail him again.”

  “And?”

  “And...” Søren continued, a begrudging note in his tone. “He tempted me. Even after ten years apart, my desire for him was acute. I didn’t trust myself to be with him. I didn’t have enough self-control. He didn’t have any boundaries or limits. If we’d become lovers again then, I thought I might kill him. I thought he might let me, the shape he was in emotionally.”

  “Self-destructive?”

  “He was drinking heavily and using drugs, having unprotected sex with half of New York. In the early 90s at the height of the HIV epidemic. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  Yes, Kingsley was very lucky to be alive. And he was only alive because Søren had come back to him at the right time.

  “If we’d started sleeping together again then,” Søren said, “it wouldn’t have been healthy for either of us. The last thing he needed was another lover taking advantage of his craving for pain and self-destruction. I did offer to take him back, however, with conditions. He wouldn’t accept my conditions.”

  “You offered to be with him again and he turned you down?”

  “I required fidelity. He couldn’t agree to that.”

  “Did you mean it or were you simply manipulating him?”

  “I meant it. My life would have turned out very differently if he’d agreed. His too, I imagine. And Eleanor’s. Now I know it’s for the best he turned down my offer, but it did hurt. And I did punish for that rejection by holding myself aloof from him for years. Though...I did give in one night a few years later.”

  “A good night?”

  “One of those nights that comes to you when you least expect it and knocks the breath from your lungs. Yes, it was a good night. Eighteen years ago. It still leaves me reeling sometimes. And now it’s 9:29.”

  Kingsley breathed through his hands. This was a mistake, hearing all this, hearing Søren’s version of events that was so different from his own. He’d told himself that Søren didn’t mean it when he offered to be with Kingsley again if he would be faithful to him. Was that why he said no? Kingsley’s heart pounded. Madame was about to ask another question. Kingsley didn’t want to hear it or the answer.

  He couldn’t stop listening.

  “This will be my last question,” Madame said. “And it will take all of our time, I think, for you to answer it.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “Kingsley told me a story about you and him, about a night you spent together when you were still school boys. You’d punished him by making him sleep on the floor. He remembered going to sleep on the floor but woke up in the bed with you. He told me this story because he wanted to know if I thought you’d picked him up in the night and carried him into your bed, like a child. He didn’t think you, or any true sadist, could be capable of such tenderness. I agreed. But I think I lied to him. So that’s my question to you. What did happen that night? Tell me everything. And don’t pretend you don’t remember. We both know you do.”

  Silence again. The clock was ticking and this time the clock was Kingsley’s heart.

  “I remember,” Søren said.

  “Go on then. Begin at the beginning. When does it begin?”

  “That morning,” Søren said.

  “What happened that morning?”

  “I’d received a letter from my father. A difficult letter.”

  “Why difficult?”

  “My father was a sadist, too, the sort without a conscience. Even worse, he was incredibly wealthy, which made him one of the more dangerous men alive. I used to imagine my father kept a checklist of his favorite people to abuse and manipulate. He’d work his way down the list and then start over at the top. My name was at the top. And it was apparently my turn again.”

  “What did the letter say?”

  “Demands, lies, manipulations, casual cruelties, threats. The usual.”

  “Any particular threats or cruelties you recall?”

  “My half-sister Elizabeth was doing well, finally, at a new school. That my father mentioned it meant he was willing and able to use it as a weapon against me. If I didn’t do as he asked, whatever he asked, my father would see to it that she was removed from that place and sent, like me, to a faraway boarding school, something I knew would destroy what little happiness she’d found. She’d told me many times I was the only person in the world she could trust. He taunted me about that, too.”

  Kingsley was astonished. He had no idea Søren’s father had sent him letters at school, taunting and threatening him.

  “You say your sister was finally doing well. What does that mean?”

  “That is a Pandora’s box you don’t want to open, I promise you, Madame.”

  Kingsley was glad Søren put his foot down.

  If Madame dared asked one more question about Søren’s father or sister, Kingsley would stand up, open the door, say “We’re leaving” and they would leave. No one, not even Kingsley, deserved a window into Søren’s childhood. No one.

  “Go on. The letter troubled you, as it would.”

  Kingsley breathed in relief.

  “Before Kingsley, receiving a letter like that would haunt me for days. I would be ill, physically. Unable to sleep. I was unbearable company most of the time. After a letter from my father, I was dangerous company. Thank God for the woods outside our school. I’d retreat into them and run until I made myself sick. Or I’d walk for miles, barefoot if it was even slightly warm enough. It made me feel better when my feet would bleed. A release, in a way.”

  Behind the door, Kingsley rested his forehead on his knee. A wave of nausea, of sorrow, set him shuddering.

  “Pain relieved the pressure, the feeling I might erupt or explode or...”

  “Or?”

  “Or walk until I reached a cliff and kept walking.”

  Kingsley’s eyes burned.

  “What stopped you?”

  “My faith, such as it was.”

  “Your Catholic faith?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still Catholic?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “Devout?”

  “Some might say that.”

  Kingsley nearly snorted aloud. Søren had a gift for understatement.

  “You seem too intelligent to be beholden to such an archaic religion.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Simply an observation.”

  “I see a painting and know there’s a painter. God is th
e name we give to the force who painted the painter who painted the painting. I believe creation is good therefore the creator is good. No good apples ever fell from a poison tree.”

  “The world was an accident of random chance, atoms and molecules and trillions of years of things bumping into each other. A billion monkeys beating away at a billion typewriters. That’s what I see. But you see artwork hanging on the walls and a Great Grand Being in a jaunty beret, merrily painting wars and rapes and famines.”

  “Kingsley was no accident of atoms.”

  “A work of art then, was he?”

  “A masterpiece.”

  Kingsley looked up as if he could see the heavens from his hiding place on the floor of the bathroom.

  “Besotted fool,” she said. “I thought better of a fellow sadist.”

  “I might be insulted if you weren’t lying in your dead husband’s bed instead of your own, with a photograph of the two of you on your wedding day next to your pill bottles.”

  “Deep calls unto deep,” she said. “I was talking about us both. Tell me the story. I want to know if I know you as well as I think I do.”

  “I received the letter from my father and as I did with all his letters, I burned it before anyone could find it and read it. Before Kingsley I would have risked burning it in one of the school fireplaces, but we had cleaned up the old hermitage to use for our trysts, if you want to call them that. I took the letter there that evening to burn it. I hadn’t asked Kingsley to come that night. The mood I was in, I didn’t want to be near anyone. The letter was turning black in the fireplace when Kingsley opened the door.”

  Kingsley closed his eyes.

  He remembered.

  Chapter Six

  Kingsley opened the door and saw Søren standing in front of the fireplace. A fire was already up and burning.

  “Thank fuck,” Kingsley said. “It’s freezing out there.”

  He strode over to the fireplace, past the rough wood table and chair, past the cot with the institutional plain white hospital-grade sheets and the threadbare patchwork square quilt, past the duffel bag on the floor that held their “supplies”—rope, a teacher’s old telescoping pointer that made a brutal cane, and lubricant. A lot of it. Kingsley had stocked up before school had started.

  He stood next to Søren at the fireplace and knew immediately he was in trouble. Six weeks into the fall term, Kingsley had figured it out. If Søren was in a good mood, he’d say all sorts of horrible awful things to Kingsley. Silence meant a bad mood.

  And if Søren said anything nice or kind? Well, then he obviously had a brain tumor and needed immediate medical attention.

  That evening he was silent.

  “Uh, I saw you walk into the woods,” Kingsley said. Søren had his suit jacket off, and his hands in his black suit trouser pockets, and his eyes were trained on the flames leaping off the hickory log on the iron grate. “Was I not supposed to come tonight?”

  Kingsley tried to sound cool when he asked the question, like the answer didn’t matter, like he wouldn’t lose his fucking mind if Søren told him to go away.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Søren said. His eyes remained trained on the fire. What did he see in those flames that Kingsley couldn’t? He saw only the burning log, some ashes from the paper he’d used as kindling. He noticed then that Søren was barefoot and there was mud on his usually pristine feet.

  Did Søren walk barefoot to the hermitage? Through the woods? In Maine in October when it was already dropping below freezing at night?

  “You walked here barefoot?” Kingsley asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t know.” Kingsley shrugged. “Seems like it would hurt, that’s all.”

  “So?”

  “So...I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  Seemed obvious to Kingsley. Why wasn’t it obvious to Søren?

  “I almost told him about the letter right then, why I was hurting, why I’d hurt myself. The way he said it—‘I don’t want you to be hurt’... He sounded so young, and I felt so old.”

  “Making the fire’s my job,” Kingsley said. Joking. Teasing. Changing the subject.

  “You weren’t here.” Søren’s voice was flat, emotionless.

  “I’m here now. So...should I stay? I mean, I don’t care. You tell me.”

  Tell me to stay. Tell me to stay. Tell me to stay. Before St. Ignatius, Kingsley couldn’t remember ever saying a prayer. Now he said them all the time. But not good prayers though. Not even prayers to God. Just prayers about Søren for Søren to Søren.

  “I could tell Kingsley didn’t want me to make him leave. He was trying so hard to seem indifferent. Terrible actor. Can’t imagine how he ever survived as a spy.”

  “A good spy from what I heard. Mostly because he didn’t really care if he lived or died. But with you, he cared. Harder to hide from the ones who know us, deep to deep.”

  “That’s why I wanted him to leave. I was scared to tell him more about my father. He knew a little, and it was already too much.”

  “Did you tell him to leave then?”

  “I wanted to. No, that’s not true. I wanted to be strong enough to make him leave, but I wasn’t. The mood I was in, I knew I’d say or do something to him that night I’d regret. For his sake, I told myself, make him leave. Make him leave before I told him what was in the letter, before I told him how sick and how...poisoned it made me feel.”

  “Poisoned? Such a strong word.”

  “There’s a story we read my freshman year of high school—Rappaccini’s Daughter, by Nathanial Hawthorne. Beatrice is raised in isolation by her father, a scientist who studies poison plants. She grows up in a poison garden, and as she grows, she becomes immune to the poison garden and yet poisonous herself. She cannot be kissed, because even her lips carry that poison. A man, Giovanni, falls in love with her and kisses her and he too becomes poisonous. He drinks the antidote which cures him...but it kills her. Giovanni was poisoned. Beatrice was herself...poison.”

  “You didn’t want to poison Kingsley.”

  “There is no antidote for some poisons.”

  “But you didn’t send him away.”

  “I was only eighteen. And who wants to be all alone in a poison garden?”

  Kingsley stared at Søren, waiting for the verdict. When it didn’t come, Kingsley did what he always did when Søren gave him the silent treatment.

  “Fine. Fuck it. Fuck you. I’ve got homework.”

  Sometimes that worked, telling Søren to fuck off. Not that evening. Kingsley grabbed his schoolbag off the floor and started for the door. He walked quickly, before Søren could notice how red Kingsley’s eyes suddenly were...

  “You can stay,” Søren said as Kingsley reached the door. Kingsley turned to Søren. Søren turned to Kingsley. They faced each other across the faded wooden floor. “In fact, I insist on it.”

  Something in Søren’s eyes, in the knife-edge to his tone...Kingsley almost wished he had been sent away.

  He had a feeling this was going to be a rough night.

  “I love you,” Kingsley said.

  Søren glanced up at the ceiling, in obvious and profound disgust. “Could you be any more pathetic?”

  “I’m only saying it now because I think I’ll hate you too much later to say it then.”

  Across the room they met eyes. Kingsley’s back to the door. Søren’s back to the fireplace mantel. What did Søren see when he looked at Kingsley? Kingsley would have given his left hand to know (the right hand, far more important). A nuisance? Probably. A toy? Definitely. A distraction? Maybe. A slave? His slave? Forever and ever and ever?

  Hopefully.

  What Kingsley saw was a blindingly beautiful monster. A shapeshifter. A solid rock wall by day when they had to pretend they were nothing to each other. A fire at night when they were alone together and were free to burn. Only a human after the fire was out when Kingsley knew it was safe to
lay his head on Søren’s stomach and the hand that ran through his hair wouldn’t hurt him.

  “I love you,” Kingsley said again. This time out of sheer humiliating gratitude that Søren wanted him to stay.

  “Come here.” Søren pointed at the floor in front of him.

  Kingsley dropped his bag again. He walked to Søren and stood where he’d been told to stand. His breathing turned shallow and his heart raced as Søren started to undress him. Jacket down the shoulders, down the arms, and onto the floor. Quick dexterous fingers made quick dexterous work of his stupid fucking school tie he was forced to wear. Also on the floor. With Søren occupied, Kingsley let himself stare. He stared at Søren’s strangely dark eyelashes that framed the steel-colored eyes. And the too-perfect blond hair that glimmered like polished gold when it caught the sunlight between the trees. The mouth, also too perfect with the bottom lip just a little fuller than it needed to be for Kingsley to be able to concentrate on anything really, ever. And those lips slightly parted as if to invite a kiss. But Kingsley knew better to fall for that trap. He might lose his tongue.

  And he needed his tongue.

  Søren opened the top buttons on his shirt but stopped there. Kingsley tensed, waiting for the inevitable command. But there were no commands.

  Søren kissed him.

  For a split-second Kingsley was disoriented to be kissed like that, just kissed. Instinctively he knew it was a trick but he didn’t care. He opened his mouth to the kiss, the pressure of the lips and the tongue on his tongue. Then he felt Søren’s hand on the back of his neck, gripping him. And then Søren’s other hand on his throat, pressing.

  The kiss went on but as it deepened, so did the pressure of Søren’s fingers on Kingsley’s neck, the pressure of his palm on his larynx. The kiss started to hurt. Badly. Badly enough sounds escaped Kingsley’s throat that, even to his own ears, reminded him of the whimpers of injured animals. How did Søren do that? Turn a kiss into cruelty? And why did Kingsley love it so much? Because it was so cruel? Or because, even cruel, it was still a kiss?