Smoke and Mirrors

by
Melody Clarke

Part Five

But there wasn't a decentrist alive in Washington, no matter what their constituents were told. Brother love of the CIA was part of the system, too. Bureaucracy's purpose was spawning pushers and addicts, pushers and addicts, and that was the name of the wheel of the world and it just kept going on forever.

One mile and two-thirds down the right road to the left was a huge yellow house.

Frank's stomach knotted as his numbness waned. He had staved off hope for so long now, he wouldn't let himself believe.

But he didn't know, not yet. And he had to know. And a textbook ambush was a friendly lure toward a behind-the-lines assault.

McPike slipped his .38 from his shoulder harness and clipped it.

The door to the house was standing open.

A humid hallway enveloped him, a warm wall of flowers and spice. And as he stepped forward, saying grace with his weapon, he was suddenly surrounded by fog. And then he saw the boiling hot tub ahead of him and stepped stealthily around its cloud.

"Vince?"

He wiped his glasses clear and scanned the house.

The sight of the room almost shocked him out of posture.

This one solitary room would have swallowed his whole house back in Shrewsbury. Teeming about him was an interior decorator nirvana of green, glossy plants in big wicker baskets. The plant leaves shimmered lightly from sunlight through atrium windows. At the heart of it all, the waiting hot tub that had steamed up his glasses.

Against one wall was a fireplace, against another a glass-walled stereo breathing George Winston into the warm, sweet air.

And beyond the tub was one of those curious furniture continua some marketing savant dubbed a "conversation pit." The big kahunas of the world sprawled about them, sipping their Napoleon brandy, speaking of Fante and Bukowski. It was a vast phalanx of eternal sofa. welcoming with promises of ultimate comfort. And whenever Frank saw one he wanted to crawl into the midst of it and sleep away the winter. Which is why Frank didn't own one. He had a mortgage to pay...a couple of 'em. And he really hated Fante and Bukowski.

Someone was already sprawled across this one, though - a someone who, with Frank's entrance, sat up with his back toward him, then rose carefully to his feet - someone with long brown hair cascading down the shoulders of a white terry robe.

"Hold it there:' Frank said. "A loaded .38 is aimed straight at your skull. I am but a nervous Fed with miles to go before I sleep. So you call a field goal nice and slow and gently tum around."

The hands went up.

The other man turned.

And Frank almost dropped his revolver.

"You gonna shoot me for the hair, Frank," the man's blue eyes sparkled with his words, "you better remember I've seen your pictures from Woodstock."

The trigger went numb in Frank's hand. He freed it, packed up the .38, hamessed it.

The voice had kicked over a buried memory. Like smiling Dr. Rannery, a nerve he'd forced to numbness: this mourning for the misplaced smile of a friend for life. A friend now walking slowly toward him, lowering his arms. But there was no smile to warm Frank, only huge remorseful blue eyes that promised to consume him. And the dark waves of hair that swept down around broad shoulders now, summoning Frank's hand to comb the locks gently, to prove that they were real.

Then the- hand dropped into a fist and Frank swung blindly.

Vinnie blocked it.

And McPike stared down at his wrists to find them immobilized, to see them gripped tightly by large young hands. His mind was a whirlwind in his head, with love and thankfulness and forgiveness refused. the urge to cry forbidden.

"You selfish bastard," he whispered, yanking free his hands to clutch at handfuls of flesh and hair. "I cried with your mother.  l cried at your funeral."  

Vinnie's eyes glistened, filling swiftly. He looked away. "Frank."

"I blamed myself. I didn't want to live anymore. I did a day full of rosaries asking God if I should kill myself for lettin' you die..."

"Frank," Vince gasped in a small child's voice, from the pain of Frank's fists and Frank's voice and Frank's words. ''You gotta listen to me. I didn't have a choice - "

"Don't you say it, Vince, 'cause' I'm not listenin'.- Frank battled tears, shook his head hard. "I'm back there dyin', dyin' by the hour and by the inch. And then l get a message by the . Maelstrom, a message sayin' that it's from Vincent Terranova, though I knew for sure it can't be. It can't be, 'cause my sweet Vinnie is dead."

Frank clutched through hair into shoulder, hands clamping harder into muscle. "But I walked three thousand miles of bad road on the chance that it was you, thinkin' god make it Vince, please God just make it Vince, but it can't be Vince 'cause Vinnie wouldn't do that to me. He wouldn't leave me to hurt like that and not tell me. Not my Vinnie."

Part Six

"Frank please," Vinnie said, pulling away to draw Prank's haggard gaze to his. "I know you're angry - "

"Oh, no, I'm not angry. Anger's for stealing and murder and the small stuff. This is one bell of a lot bigger than that."

"Okay," Vince said, his own voice tightening in his chest, "you're more than angry. But I did the only thing I could, Frank. The same thing you would've done." Vince's voice slumped again, his countenance darkening as he forced the words through tightly-set teelh, "But if you're dead-set to hate me, Frank, then you got my permission."

"Too late."

All the other times when Frank got mean, there was a mitigating softness to him, a little humor. But now Frank's stare was damning him with emptiness. Hiding everthing behind a fortress of suspicion. Like mailer over anti-matter, that numb state extorted agony from every victim.

The ground fell out from under him as Vince's world gave way. Everything he worked for, everything he was. The one thing he needed above all was gone.

"You don't mean that, Frank," Vince murmured through tears masked behind a hand. "You don't mean it. Please, god, tell me you don't mean it."

A reticent touch soothed a tangle of hair and Frank raised Vince's face toward his. He swept away a tear.
Bearing down on Vince was what he needed most - the sweet, steady light of McPike compassion. No hate in it, no anger left, and Vince recalled again that all McPike rage was built on greater love.

The anger was gone. A little relief peaked through. Frank shook his head, touched Vince's face. 'Where in hen you been. Vinnie?"

Vmnie sighed, revelling in the caress. "In a real, dark place without you, Frank"
And Frank's hands surged up through Vince's hair, through long black strands flowing like watersiJk through his fingers. All reticence gone, wise fingers moved curiously and passionately through supple brown locks, Vinnie's pain melting like first frost beneath their warmth, a warmth that spread downward through him.

Frank crushed his lips to Vince's forehead, against his face, against the soft bend of his lips.

"Frank," Vinnie moaned, surging up to whisper their mouths together just as Frank yanked away.

McPike staggered back. He caught the wall.

He shook his head. "Jesus, Vince, I'm ...Shielding his eyes, he traded the vast, light room around them for a small and dark one. 'This place is making me crazy,"

Vinnie rubbed a hand across his face. ''Not crazy, Frank," he whispered, reaching for wrists to pull him close again. "Sane. It's makin' us sane. What we came from is a drug, Frank.. And l'm finally clean."

"This isn't dean, Vince. You're just on the Brother Love meth plan." He surrendered against Vince's shoulder, safe for the first time in days. "But I don't care. You're alive and I'm alive and I missed you so goddamned much,"

"I missed you, too, Frank," Vince whispered, tenderly stroking the head on his shoulder. "Tired?"

"To the bone."

Vinnie wrapped him in his arms, then leaned back toward the sofa, linking his legs around Frank to bind them together. "Then corne with me," he whispered, and drew Frank with him over the side of the circular sofa, into its white and cloudy depths.

Part Seven

Frank surrendered fully to the body beneath him, to the arms that enveloped him. Distantly, in the hazed, habitual reaches of his mind he was probably still afraid, but his threadbare thoughts were ragged with the truth. And he needed Vince. More than life, he needed Vince.

The fingers plucked free his tie, carressed his mouth a moment, removed his glasses. The hands worked him free from his suitcoat then settled him down again, one gentle hand rubbing at the taut muscle of hisstomach. The hand warmed him tenderly to life, then moved up to ponder on a nipple that stiffened against the palm.

"Feel good?" Vinnie whispered.

"Wonderfull," Frank murmured distantly. "What's goin' on, Vince?"

"Just love, Frank. Just makin' you feel good. Now go to sleep."

"But I think - "

"You think too much."

"Ym no....1 don't.....

"I know."  Vince brushed his lips against Frank's mouth which gently, mindlessly responded. And then his fingers caressed a nipple, then another, both budding hard and tight to his touch. Vince smiled softly into Frank's unknowing eyes. "Just enjoy what I'm doing and get some sleep, okay?"

And then Frank shifted against him, to escape the troubling pleasure of Vince's touch, but pressing their bodie's still closer together.

"I'm not bi, Vince," Frank whispered distantly.

But a hard, feverish thickness confessed itself to Vince's thigh. Like the heat growing in Vinnie's own blue jeans. Like the knot constricting Vince's throat.

Vinnie's eyes shined down, unseen, at the man nestled gently in his arms. He tenderly kissed his brow. "I know, baby, I know."

Part Eight

Frank stood up, looking around for his clothes. "Show me to my monkeysuit, and I'll call the organ-grinder. The Uncle can spring us Fed ducats out of here as the crow fIie. The sooner I get us home, the sooner I get to go sane again. Gear up, 'cause we're bugging out now."

"Frank," Vince said simply.

McPike froze, knowing to his soul that this road had seemed too easy from the start. He slowly turned back to him, sighing. "Yes.. Vinnie"

"I'm not goin' back. Not now at least."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did I just step through the looking-glass? You wanna play that for me one more time, Vincent?"

Vinnie's pout resolved into conviction. "I said I'm not going back. At least not yet. I owe Jordan Earl. Frank, I owe him my life. He made everyone at Revelation play by the rules and I'm not just gonna forget about that."

"Rules? What rules? Vincent, we are talkin' Puzzle Palace castaways here. Ex-ClA and NSA and KGB and FBI. Their dinner jackets tie in the back, Vince."

"Maybe."

"Maybe?" Frank muttered, pushing up his glasses for dramatic effect. "You mean this is for real? Nobody put a pod in your basement? You have truly learned to love Big Brother Love?"


"I didn't say I loved him, Frank, I said I owed him."

''Vincent," Frank sighed, rubbing at his eyes. "Do you know what Brother Love declared before the House Investigations Committee into Espionage of 1975"

"No, but I'm sure you know it by heart."

Frank scowled in reply. "He testified, Vincent, that half the KGB was deep cover CIA and vice versa. Therefore, he told Congress, the loyal half of the KCB was working for the false half of the CIA, because it was really KGB. And the false half of the KGB knew that, so it was working against the loyal half of the KGB. Same thing with the CIA. And. then the false half of both teams started infiltrating the loyal half so that they were all fighting both halves at once. Where it ended up, said he, was that the KCB was the CIA and the CIA was really the KGB, are you dizzy yet?"

Vince lifted his proud chin defiant1y.
'"Sounds S.O.P. to me, Frank. How do you know he's not right?"

"Because, Vince, if I really believed that for five minutes I'd have to live in a-decompression chamber, not to mention keep one helluva scorecard. The point, Vince, is you can't trust a man like that on your team. He probably thinks you're an unindicted co-conspirator."

"You sound paranoid., Frank....

"I am a Federal Agent. Paranoia is part of the job description."

"Is that it? Or are you just scared? And why are you trying to avoid the point where we started this conversation?"

Vinnie smiled softly, then slung his leg across to mount the sofa, his robe falling open to a naked thigh. He smoothed back his long dark hair, then reached a hand into his robe-pocket.

"You don't even feel it, do you. Frank?"

"Feel what?" he asked, fear nibbling at a numb spot.

'The burn on your hand. That second degree burn. The one you got from the hot coffee. The one you don't even feel because what you remembered about last night scared the hell out of you."

Again Frank's mind went dark. He stared dully down at his hand, at the burgeoning border around a red stain. "It's not that bad."

"It's bad enough." Vince removed a tube from his pocket and squeezed its pale gel into his palm. He captured Frank's hand, tenderly smoothing the gel across the heat. This is pure AIoe Vera, It'll take away the worst."

"Feels good," Frank confessed quietly.

"Not as good as last night."

Before Frank could pull away, Vinnie slid down to the sofa beside him.

He insinuated his Aloe-slick hand against Frank's chest. "Remember yesterday? Somethin' almost happened right then and you know it. But you got scared, until I pushed you to the edge."

Frank's throat hitched closed with fear. He couldn't remember why he was scared - he wasn't even listening to Vinnie - he wasn't listening to Vinnie. He was just standing there feeling this odd urge to run.

"I was half asleep, Vince," he heard himself whisper.

"You were awake, Frank," Vince said, drawing close enough to share Frank's quickening breath. "Maybe for the first-time in your life."