Page 26 of The Black Table
I drop my saber with a clatter. Lanz eyes theKINDLY DO NOT DROP WEAPONSsign and lets out the tiniest sigh.
“Big plans for the evening, then?” I stretch back out and put my hands behind my head, watching him. If I can’t fight him, I can at least be a pain in his ass.
Lanz shakes his head. “No. I mean, there’s a cap tonight, but?—”
My ears perk up like a bloodhound in a burial ground. “Say what now?”
Caliburn’s ofcoursetoo good to have normal college ragers, so instead, we have caps. I’m not a joiner—Camlann House being the notable exception. And generally, if you ask me, all the forced merriment—the balls, the formal dinners, the symposia and teas—is just a way to waste tuition dollars and maintain elitist bullshit.
But this gets my attention.
Because on a night like tonight, when my blood feels too hot in my body and I’m ready to crack some skulls?
Any party’s a good party. Even a Caliburn party.
His shoulders tense up like he regrets saying anything. I’ll bethe does. “There’s a cap tonight,” he says. “At the Porter’s Club. But I, uh…I don’t think I’m going.”
I sit up straight. Alight. Interested. Piqued. “Oh, I think you should.Weshould.” I jump to my feet, strip off my lamé so I’m just barechested in my fencing trousers, and point at him.
This time, Lanz actually looks at me. “Why?”
I pause. He has a point. Why? Why, given that the prerogative of any college party—get laid—is off-limits for us?
My instincts and impulsiveness are a snowball cascading down the hill. A spark on bone-dry tinder. Now that I know about this, I need to have it. That’s just how my mind works, and I have no way of explaining that to anyone.
I can only shrug.
“Because it’s there.”
I duck into the lockers, take a swig of my emergency Mezcal, and hit the shower, ice cold.
I close my eyes as the water flows over me, shoulders and back and limbs, aware of every inch of my body.
Fact is, I’m human. Male. Robust, red-blooded, heterosexual. And as such, I love girls. Women. Ladies. Love their bodies, their faces, their long hair and soft skin and the way they smell. Fuck, even thinking the words is stirring up my cock a little, and that’s in the middle of a literal cold shower.
It’s not like I want to tempt fate or challenge myself to resist. A party’s not supposed to be some forty days in the desert thing to test my mettle.
And I’m not scheming to figure out how close I can get to the line without crossing, either—seeking out literal backdoors like some kind of repressed Evangelical trying to get his dick wet without a blight on his conscience. Not that I haven’t had the opportunity, since there’s more than a few lovely coeds who’ve dropped anvil-sized hints they’d like toimprove their gradesin the Early Modern Art History seminar that I TA. As much as it painsme, I resist entirely: no furtive handjobs, no above-the-clothes action, not even so much as a sweet little kiss goodnight.
No, for me, the restraint, the choke of the leash before anything gets interesting, is part of the fun. I get off on my own blue balls. Sick fuck that I am.
And when fencing won’t do the trick to keep the demons in my brain at bay, that’s where I go.
Straight into the crucible.
Which, tonight, means a party.
I emerge a few minutes later, toweling my hair in my street clothes, to find that Callahan has joined Lanz in the salle, whatever conversation they were having dying instantly as soon as I walk in.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account.” I chuck the towel onto a bench and give my head a shake, smoothing the sides of my hair with my palms. “What’s good? You down for a cap tonight, big guy?”
Callahan says nothing. Man of few words. Just looks at Lanz.
I crack my knuckles and bite back a groan. “I can’t geteitherof you fuckers to go to this thing? Come on.”
“You’re a TA,” Lanz mutters. “Shouldyoueven be going?”
Next to him, Callahan grunts from behind his book.
