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Fletcher takes Neiman to see a show.
It’s already very clear by this point that Fletcher hates him, really and truly, in that sick sort of way that horseshoes around towards love, and Neiman is the same. They are no longer pussyfooting around this.
Neiman gets to the club twenty minutes early and waits outside, unimportant people shuffling in and out, trash blowing against his shins from their updraft. The night is balmy. The show tonight is one he would have considered himself great to play in only a few weeks ago. He doesn’t think of things in those terms, now. There’s only one litmus test that matters.
He’s wearing a polo shirt he pulled out of the back of his childhood closet at his dad’s place last time he went to visit. It’s blue. He didn’t know what to wear, and, watching the people queued up to get in, wonders if he should have tried to look a little bit nicer. He can’t wear a single piece of his old suit anymore, the one his dad thrust on him after graduating high school— the real world suit — not the shirt, the shoes, socks, nothing, too thoroughly consecrated by the blood in the wrists. The irremovable dark pit sweat. He couldn’t throw it away, because he felt like he’d lost his virginity in it, or something. The virginity losing actually happened a little while later. But that suit was always the thing he did it in for the first time, that night at Carnagie. Like he’d been fucked and fucked back in it. If his dad notices it hanging up in his apartment when he comes over to visit, he still hasn’t said anything.
Neiman shakes against the wall inside his underwhelming shirt. He can feel light passing through the little slips of scotch tape holding him together at his conjoined pieces but that’s fine, that’s usually how things are, these days. He’s here, he force-fed himself leftovers on his nervous stomach, then dragged himself over on the train, and he made it. He’s picked up a few extra shifts as a barback so he can have longer days open to practice around the restaurant shifts, working himself to a desperate, bloody pulp on his drum kit. But that job’s just a few weeknights, right now, because he’s new and not great at it, yet. Saturdays are free. He’s back to being sore in all the same old ways and also some new ones. He’s only good for shit-gigs, Fletcher says, but seemed at least not incensed when Neiman booked something only a week or two after the JVC.
Elevator music. Small studio stuff.
He hadn’t asked Neiman to come to the show so much as commanded him via text, right in the middle of Neiman’s pathetic Tuesday morning jackoff, squeezed in after waking up and before work:
saturday. eight thirty. A name that Neiman would find out belonged to a club on the upper West Side, when he Googled it, later.
The messages, sitting innocuously on Neiman’s lock screen, made him come suddenly in his hand. He’d been replaying the greatest hits of that previous weekend in Fletcher’s apartment, namely that Fletcher had made him cry during sex, like really cry, destroyed by a torturous edge. There had been fingers squeezed around the base of his dick, and three more mean ones crammed up inside him for God knew how long. Fletcher had fucked him on them until Neiman sobbed hot tears. He leaned close, then, and asked if Neiman needed to suck on his chest, if he had mommy issues, if he had to be coddled and kissed like the pussy he was, and Neiman cried out, no, fuck you, no, and then did anyways, latched on and mashed his face into his old man pec as he rutted futilely on Fletcher’s thigh, and Fletcher took the hand off his dick to grip his hair, not ripping him away but not pulling him close either, just holding, until Neiman came in a tortured, ruined way like a shot. It was weird. Something his high school psych teacher would describe as Freudian.
Fletcher had immediately rolled Neiman over and fucked him until he came inside in short, tough little thrusts, muttering stuff in his ear. Mommy left you, you little weirdo, fucking sadsack headcase. Neiman, stupefied, lay there and took it. He didn’t really know what to say about what had just happened— so he said nothing. It was still hot enough that Neiman’s indefatigable dick tried to rise again against the bed before he was done.
They’d both stewed there in their own juices for a minute or two, afterwards, until Fletcher had sighed and thrown an arm over his face, called him a freak. Told him to get out once, then snapped it again, so Neiman staggered to pull up his pants and comply. Fletcher’s place was big enough that there were multiple doors he had to go through to get to the one that led out into the hall of the apartment building.
He was disgusting, Fletcher claimed. That wasn’t unusual. Then he didn’t talk to him for three days. That was less usual. Neiman took it out on the kit, practicing demonically, snapping a drumstick like a toothpick by accident when he cast it to the ground after a particularly brisk– hasty, Fletcher would have said– fuck up of ‘Cousin Mary’. That wasn’t easy to do, and annoying to remedy. He didn’t believe Fletcher could honestly cut him off cold turkey, not really, he thought, but it had been long enough of a radio silence to start making him nervous.
When he saw the texts, the hot stab of specialness, of recognition, pushed him over, surprising him into orgasm. Heaven opening its piercing eye onto him for a second.
He pulled his hand out of his wet boxers, once he was capable of it, and typed:
so we’re back on?
‘So you like me again?’ would have sounded pathetic and not have been true in the first place. There has been no response.
Thusly, Neiman had obeyed.
Through the other New Yorkers barrelling their way down the sidewalk, he sees a couple out on the other side of the street, passing a cigarette between them. Their heads are leaned in, swaying close together. They look young, maybe highschool or college aged. Maybe they aren’t a couple at all, just friends. He can’t tell. He watches them swap the cigarette back and forth, remotely, until– there’s Fletcher, stepping out from around a corner, precisely on time.
Instantly, Neiman’s attention snaps rigid-straight. He becomes clearer. More defined, coming into the sensations of his own body. The gurgle of his stomach. The tightness of his underwear under his slacks, the wrinkle of his toes inside his sneakers. He may not have fully existed, before. He becomes attuned down to the last micro-millimeter of his flesh around Fletcher. This is so he can be ready to play one square inch measure of ‘Caravan’ twenty times over no exaggeration or throw a clenched fist or lay down fully on the ground and die on command so Fletcher could step over the inert lump of what was once Andrew Neiman.
“Hey,” he says, once Fletcher is close enough to spit on.
“New shirt?”
“Sort of.”
“Looks like shit. You look fuckin’ twelve.” Fletcher’s wearing the same two hundred dollar black t-shirt as always. Black slacks. Neiman figures that’s a part of being old; you learn what you look good in and don’t deviate. His hands sit lightly in his expensive pockets.
“Pretty messed up for you to want to fuck someone that looks twelve,” Neiman counters, late.
“Who says you’ll get to be fucked?”
Neiman swallows, taking the threat that is on the chin. Tally one. He lost this exchange.
“Prick,” he mutters.
Fletcher gives a stoic shug, glacial solid.
“Not my fault if they don’t let you in. Nothing I can do.” Like sneaking Neiman into a club underage is the worst thing being done, here. Fletcher looks him over again, once, and turns on his heel to walk into the venue. He’s wearing black leather shoes, matte. Neiman, like a mouse freed from under its trap, stumbles after him. Fletcher seems to be in a good mood tonight, but Neiman is learning to see beyond how he seems, and looks more closely at why he seems. No signs forthcoming, yet, but he’s watching.
The bouncer lets them both in without trouble. The way he talks to Fletcher, they must know each other.
Neiman follows him silently into the new, more curated quality of darkness, different from the street outside. As a rule, if Fletcher wants to talk, he talks. If he wants to stay quiet, Neiman shuts the fuck up. Sometimes Fletcher’s loud during sex, constant commentary, arguing with him about any possible topic, getting redder in the face from half-screaming at Neiman than arousal. Sometimes he’s completely, gravely silent, tendons in his arms and neck taut with the quiver-grip of control. Either way, Neiman is always always trying to catch up, until he’s fed up, and things inevitably devolve, afterwards– generally, the sex they have in Neiman’s apartment that his dad helps pay for isn’t good or bad, but brutal, in an unadorned way. Pure, even. He’s everything he was in the studio band all over the place, green to the core. Fletcher seems to like this and simultaneously be frustrated by it. He only invites Neiman over on rare occasion, and having virtually everything else happen at Neiman’s place should make him feel more in control but just makes him feel more helplessly invaded, instead. He has a new manifesto every week regarding their hookups, a new creed he adheres himself to.
This week he wants to suck Fletcher’s dick like he wants to punch him in the face, he thinks, watching his old man ass climb the steps to the second floor in front of him. No, revise; he wants sucking Fletcher’s dick to be like punching him in the face.
The light inside the club is low and there are a lot of people, sitting and standing around the five piece band on stage in the corner, watching. It’s old time-y— all of Fletcher’s clubs are, a dreadful purist— with lots of tasteful wood and dark upholstery, somehow smoky even though indoor smoking has been illegal in New York for twelve-odd years.
“Got us a table,” Fletcher says, but doesn’t tell him which one, and doesn’t move forwards, so Neiman just sort of walks towards the stage, feeling the hot prickle of Fletcher’s gaze on the back of his neck. This is a classic test. His legs brush expensive coats thrown over the backs of chairs as he wades among them. Everything smells like perfume. He sees the glow of a few phones, and almost smiles, because that shit drives Fletcher absolutely ballistic.
When he almost goes to the wrong empty table, even though it’s fucking impossible for him to know the correct one (messing up, another loss), Fletcher guides him with a touch at the small of his back. A prod.
“Over there, Neiman,” he commands. Tally two.
“Oh,” he says, correcting course.
He thinks about how Fletcher can’t actually be rough with him when they’re around other people, or at least people that aren’t his students, which should be a comforting thought but just makes him jog his leg impatiently once they sit down. It’s a cute setup, actually, made for two, tucked just to the side of the stage. He looks at Fletcher when he settles across from him, and realizes that it’s a place he would’ve taken that girl from the movie theater on a date, if he was trying to seem older than he is. He would’ve pointed out to her all the things the band was doing well or poorly, who they were covering, how the sax player learned how to improv for that solo. What kind of high you’re riding, to do that— how ballsy you have to be to take up everyone’s talent, their valuable sonic real estate, and how pissed everyone else will get if you fuck up. Maybe he’d reference the hallowed Yardbird cymbal-throw. She would’ve smiled faintly with her thin lips and nodded at him and not have understood a word of it. The thought makes him kind of angry.
He tries to pay attention, instead, for once, eyes flicking over from Fletcher to the stage. Sax, bass, trumpet, drums, piano. All going hard. A few, he recognizes from the local scene, but not well enough to name.
Someone comes to take their order and Fletcher gets them both drinks, Neiman doesn’t catch or care what. Having their own table with a little candle in the middle is kind of romantic, he thinks. Is it? He isn’t well versed. He watches Fletcher steeple his fingers and tilt over, razing the band to the ground with his focus. There’s probably a reason he wants him to listen to these guys, specifically, but Neiman’s frayed mind wanders. He wonders what Fletcher will do to him later. Maybe he’ll make Neiman suck his dick with smack-swollen lips. Maybe he’ll edge Neiman until he actually falls apart, this time, spear him on his dick, nails dug into the heavy white flesh of his hip hard enough to scab so the pain beats the pleasure back, the only thing that can defend against it. Call him a freak again, press on the pinkened mommy-issue bruise. Fletcher seems to like anything that gets a rise out of him, so long as he can shape it himself. He’s good at making Neiman feel like a freak for how often he wants sex and how much he gets off during it, what makes him lose it, but Neiman figures he’s still nineteen— which sometimes feels confusing because he’s been slaving under Fletcher’s thumb for one hundred years, at least—and can’t be blamed.
The group rolls off from one song to the next with a smattering of applause, the sax player holding up a hand to count them into something quick, which the drums leap to. ‘Countdown.’ They’re good, well experienced, but Neiman’s probably watching Fletcher out of the corner of his eye more than he’s watching the performance. Actually, he for sure is.
Fletcher makes a tiny, imperceptible shift with his body, crossing one leg over the other, and Neiman tenses in response. He settles. Nothing comes of it. Neiman settles again, too.
The drummer is fine, he decides, watching him hash his way through it. Whatever. Nothing to write home about. He’s young, maybe not that much older than Neiman, which makes him jealous automatically, quick to count his infractions, tallying them up in his head as he sits there. The guy’s got a jumpy way of hitting the snares that makes his shiny, floppy hair bounce, and he hopes Fletcher is annoyed by it. He wonders if Fletcher finds him attractive.
The trumpet player steps up and starts to rip off a riff.
“Tell me any fuckin’ reason why I shouldn’t just throw you in the garbage,” Fletcher demands. He’s still looking at the stage. It’s in a conversational tone. Almost intimate. Nobody would ever assume they were talking about anything but pedantic shit. Jazz. Neiman, who’s prepared to answer this question— who is always answering this question constantly with every second he’s in Fletcher’s presence from the moment he was playing those scales in the back room till now— trips.
“I m-make you come.”
Fletcher laughs, more like huffs through his lips. “Like you have a monopoly on that.” He’s looking at the drummer pretty pointedly, now, tip of his shoe bouncing in time where he’s got it crossed. Neiman tries not to think about the possibilities.
“You’d have nothing to do. Nothing that mattered,” he adds.
“What the hell does that even mean, Neiman?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
Neiman blinks. He doesn’t think of himself as particularly intelligent– never has. Actually, he’s pretty sure that he’s getting dumber, that drumming is leeching any flush of life from anything that else that isn’t that. Fletcher is probably concussing him when he smacks him, micro bruising, all sorts of little capillaries getting busted. He doesn’t mind. Part of him wants to be brain dead, drooling, just as much as he wants to be magnificent. Fletcher hates Neiman stupid but that’s how he’s made him, stupid for his dick, stupid for his impossible tempo. Embracing that fully would be an achievement. He thinks of Charlie Parker’s three broken ribs and fractured spine.
By the expectant silence, Fletcher’s said something.
“What?”
“I said,” Fletcher sighs, “suck my dick.”
“Now?”
“No, next week. Yes, fucking now, Neiman. Get under the table.”
Fletcher’s still watching the show like nothing is happening, legs uncrossing, leaned back to casually spread his knees below the skimpy tablecloth. The table itself is no wider than one of the trays Neiman would stack across his arms as a food runner at his restaurant job. Impossible. Just the idea itself is mortifying.
“Fuck you,” Neiman says, starting to sweat. “No.”
“You couldn’t even give me one reason.”
Fletcher doesn’t even sound disappointed, per se.
Their drinks come, and he immediately takes a swig, which Neiman mechanically mirrors. It’s hard, dark liquor. Neiman’s palette isn’t refined enough to say what sort it is, let alone if it’s high shelf or not. It’s got to be high shelf, though, if Fletcher is drinking it.
He takes another bigger, burn-y-er swallow, and thinks that the waiter should have given him a weirder look for so obviously watching the man across from him instead of watching the show. He thinks of his father, and how he looks at his son with vague confusion, these days, or worse, a tired sort of resignation. He thinks of his princely cousins and their Harvards of the Midwest, their striving and achieving. For some reason he thinks of his fucking therapist, the one his dad made him go see for a few sessions in high school after a particularly tough string of trips to the school counselor. He can hear her talking to him and his dad on the couch in her office after their first session. Difficulty self-regulating and connecting with others, she said, touching her pen thoughtfully to her lower lip. Depressive tendencies. Proprioception issues, whatever the hell that means.
He sets his glass on the table.
“Alright, fuck it, sure,” he says.
It’s like the penultimate moments before he tackled Fletcher to the ground in front of the jury, his consciousness coming in popping spurts, the pressure in his head about to explode. It’s probably bad that he’s beginning to recognize the sensation. His pulse throbs in his ears– that’s rhythm– as he pushes his chair back and starts to rise, scraping back his chair legs on the floor.
At once, there’s something on his knee, a sudden warmth, blocking him from getting up. Fletcher’s hand. It isn’t a kind hand, over-firm, almost like a bruising squeeze, and it weighs heavy. Set off balance, Neiman’s knees automatically give up from under him, and he falls the awkward few inches back into his chair. Their glasses jump. Someone else in the audience probably glances over at him, but who cares.
“What the hell,” he says, out of reflex, though his mouth kind of doesn’t feel like his own at this stage.
“Jesus, Neiman.” Fletcher hasn’t looked over once. Neiman can see the tense posture of his shoulder, the upsettingly defined muscle there flexed where he’s craning his arm under the table. The trumpet player’s solo ended long ago, and the piece of Coltrane is trundling to a close.
They stay there for a moment, Fletcher’s hand still on his knee. Neiman licks his lips, slowly relaxing, unspooling into his seat, less likely to get up and suck Fletcher’s cock, or strangle him to death, every second, more aroused than anything else.
“Does it get your dick hard? That I would do it?” he asks. Having Fletcher’s hand on his leg is definitely starting to get his dick hard.
“Of course it does.”
The hand moves, sliding up, up. It takes Neiman a second to figure out what’s happening.
When he does, he grows hotter, until a bead of sweat rolls down his ribs and hits his hip beneath his shirt, his whole body buzzing. A full-bloomed nervous system response.
Fletcher is holding his hand under the table.
His limpdick fucking hand that never had a purpose until Fletcher made it shredded and snarled around a drumstick. Until now, by holding it. He might as well cut the other one off, he thinks, instantly. His legs, too. It’s painfully obvious that Fletcher had fucked Sean Casey. But has he ever held his hand? Neiman’s mind is boggled by the great mysteries of the universe.
He holds utterly still in his seat. He can feel every part of his body that is touching Fletcher’s with perfect recall. He usually can, sex or slaps, the brush of his fingertips when he passes Neiman new sheet music for his folder, but this is even more intense. He’ll be able to remember what fingers sat next to what fingers, the texture of the skin. How his blisters rubbed on the light calluses on Fletcher’s fingertips from playing piano. His own hand is sweating profusely but Fletcher’s is cool and leathery, like the touch of all old men that work professionally in music or art. If he focuses, he thinks he can feel Fletcher’s heartbeat, but maybe that’s still just his own, thrumming hard in triple time.
It won’t end so long as the song doesn’t end, Neiman realizes.
He tries to open his ears to the song, to finally actually hear it, and oh, shit, it’s ‘Night Tide.’ There are only a few kings Fletcher will consider. Ellington, Coltrane, Parker, Parker, and Parker. But a Jones will do alright. Maybe Carmell flecked blood, too.
He can’t tell what’s happening, blinking furiously at Fletcher’s profile to try and eke out some answer and getting none. Fletcher is watching the show like nothing is happening, breathing calmly. Is this— what is this—? It’s like they’re fucking dating, holding fucking hands. It’s like Fletcher is about to squeeze him so hard that the bones inside his hand will grind together into dust and he’ll never be able to hold a drumstick again. It’s like they’re in love with each other. This gesture, he realizes, scares him more than anything Fletcher has ever done to him.
They sit there and listen politely, Fletcher holding onto Neiman, fingers tangled together on his trembling thigh.
Neiman swallows, heart in mouth, petrified to move. He blesses every measure Jones had ever written into this thing, this smooth well-oiled testament to the artist’s own remarkable misery, or whatever compels people to participate in the production of jazz music, Jazz with a capital ‘J’.
They watch the show. It’s the crack of the kit, the flash of the archangel’s sword, and the song goes on and on.