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softly back for a second; then the door swung wide and the refrigerator light clicked on.
     
    A fresh wave of rot washed over him. Maybe Justin hadn’t been lying about meat gone bad. The contents of the fridge were meagre and depressing: a decimated twelve-pack of cheap beer, a crusted jar of Gulden’s Spicy Brown mustard, several lumpy packages wrapped in foil. A residue of rusty red on the bottom shelf, like the juice that might leak out of a meat tray. And pushed far to the back, a large Tupperware cake server, incongruous among the slim bachelor pickings.
     
    Suko touched one of the beer cans. It was icy cold.
     
    Something inside the cake server was moving. He could just make out its faint shadowy convulsions through the opaque plastic.
     
    Suko slammed the door and stumbled away. Justin was just coming back in. He gripped Suko’s arms, stared into his face. ‘What’s wrong?’
     
    ‘Nothing -I—’
     
    ‘Did you open the fridge?’
     
    ‘No!’
     
    Justin shook him. The strange lilac eyes had gone muddy, the handsome features twisted into a mean mask. ‘Did you open the fucking fridge}’ Suko felt droplets of spit land on his face, his lips. He wished miserably that they could have got there some other way, any way but this. He had wanted to make love with this man.
     
    ‘Did you —’
     
    ‘No!!!’
     
    Suko thought he might cry. At the same time he had begun to feel remote, far away from the ugly scene, as if he were floating in a corner watching it but not caring much what happened. It must be the rum. But it wasn’t like being drunk; that was a familiar feeling. This was more like the time Noy had convinced him to take two Valiums. An hour after swallowing the little yellow wafers, Suko had watched Noy suck him off from a million miles away, wondering why anyone ever got excited about this, why anyone ever got excited about anything.
     
    He had hated the feeling then. He hated it more now, because it was pulling him down.
     
    He was afraid it might be the last thing he ever felt.
     
    He was afraid it might not be.
     
    * * * *
     
    Justin half-dragged, half-carried Suko into the bedroom and dumped him on the mattress. He felt the boy’s delicate ivory bones shifting under his hands, the boy’s exquisite mass of organs pressing against his groin. He wanted to unzip that sweet sack of skin right now, sink his teeth into that beating, bleeding heart. . . but no. He had other plans for this one.
     
    He’d closed the door to the adjacent bathroom in case he brought the boy in here still conscious. Most of a body was soaking in a tub full of icewater and Clorox. Suko wouldn’t have needed to see that. Justin almost opened the door for the extra light, but decided not to. He didn’t want to leave the bedside even for a second.
     
    His supplies were ready on the nightstand. Justin plugged the drill’s power cord into the socket behind the bed, gently thumbed up one of Suko’s make-up-smudged eyelids and examined the silvery sclera. The sleeping pills had worked fine, as always. He ground them up and put them in a glass before he left. That way, when he brought home company, Justin could simply pour him a drink in the special glass.
     
    He used the scissors to slice off Suko’s shirt, which was so artfully ripped up that Justin hardly had to damage it further to remove it. He cut away the beads and amulets, saving the tiny wooden penis, which had caught his eye back at the Stag. His own penis ached and burned. He pressed his ear against the narrow chest, heard the lungs pull in a deep slow breath, then release it just as easily. He heard blood moving unhurried through arteries and veins, heard a secret stomach sound from down below. Justin could listen to a boy’s chest and stomach all night, but reluctantly he took his ear away.
     
    He crawled on to the bed, positioned Suko’s head in his lap, and hefted the drill, which was heavier than he remembered. He hoped he would be able to