Snug heaviness of his arm lay over me to comfort me and he slept beside me the deepest sleep.

  In the morning grieving he carried my body in his arms to the bathtub where warm soapy water awaited and in this water he lowered me and there he bathed me so tenderly, with such love no one had bathed me in my life.

  Tears fell into the warm soapy water, his heart was wrung with sorrow.

  Tenderly he would take pictures of these moments. For such moments did not last and must be preserved.

  Why did he hurt Starboy if he had loved me so, he would explain he’d had to hurt me in order to kill me, had not wanted to hurt me but there was no other way to kill me and he’d had to kill me, love for Starboy came so strong he felt his soul tugged from him, a vise tightening around his chest so that he could not breathe.

  God inside him pushing and pressing him to know of what he was capable—such courage is required, to know how far you will go, if God does not stay your hand.

  But now he would take Starboy to a special place, he promised. He would display my innocence and beauty to the world that was such a crass cold place. He would lay me on the ground gently, he would place my arms across my chest, he would arrange my (naked) body so that all who gazed upon it would stare in awe and wonderment at my beauty. And my (laundered, ironed) clothing he would fold and place beside me.

  And kneeling beside me, final photographs. The most beautiful.

  Because no one else had loved Starboy, as he had. Because no one else deserved me, as he had.

  When I died all this would become known to me.

  When we die all becomes known.

  Ponytail

  Fuck, yes! Never say no to Hawkeye.

  Not the first time Hawkeye has called Ponytail in an emergency, won’t be the last.

  Expedited, Hawkeye calls it. He’s needing something expedited.

  Now that Ponytail is staying at a place on West Warren near downtown Detroit. Three years ago at eighteen aged out of Saint Vincent’s but keeps in touch with Father McKenzie and some of Father McKenzie’s pals, he’s available anytime almost, as needed.

  His reputation is: Reliable, doesn’t ask questions, and keeps his mouth shut.

  “Jesus!”—Ponytail whistles seeing the woman sprawled on the unmade bed like maybe she isn’t breathing?—that’s why Hawkeye called him to the Renaissance Grand Hotel, to help dispose of the body?

  No wonder there’s the sign outside the door—DO NOT DISTURB.

  But no, there’s breath. She’s breathing.

  Also, her (swollen) eyes are opening. Trying to open.

  A woman in her late thirties, early forties, old enough to be Ponytail’s mother if his mother were alive which (probably) she isn’t. Not bad-looking except she’s (maybe) drunk or overdosed, breathing thinly through a mouth battered like a fish’s mouth after the hook has been torn out. Blinking and squinting in Ponytail’s direction as if there’s a blinding light in her eyes. Face sickly pale, flushed in patches. Whiff of vomit. Soft bruised flesh beneath her eyes, disheveled and matted (blond) hair, expensive clothes that look as if they’ve been put on her, hurriedly, negligently, by another person.

  On her limp wrist, a watch with a platinum band, tiny diamonds. On her fingers, glittery rings. Wedding band.

  On the bed beside the woman, a pair of fancy stiletto heels.

  One of Hawkeye’s women? Ponytail has heard rumors. But he’s never seen Hawkeye with a woman, in fact he’s never seen Hawkeye with anyone, female, male, in a way you’d describe as intimate.

  Some kind of connection with the weirdo rich guy with the mustache they called “Mister R__”—but probably not friends.

  At the time, at the Mission, where he’d been “Mikey,” he’d been clueless about so much. Excited to be included in Father McKenzie’s special parties he’d been hearing about for years, grateful for the money, the drugs, the attention, all-night parties to which only VIP boys were invited, who also knew the value of keeping their mouths shut.

  “Mikey” had been a naïve kid but he’d caught on fast.

  Either you did—catch on, fast—or you did not, and you were dropped.

  Ponytail has been staring at the woman sprawled on the bed. Pathetic! On her back like that and legs half spread, arms flung out like she’s in the air falling, saliva at the edge of her mouth—Ponytail feels a twinge of sympathy for her, or pity. Must’ve been Hawkeye who half dressed her, silk shirt only partway buttoned, badly wrinkled linen trousers bunched at her hips, soiled. Ponytail tells himself probably the woman is a bitch, fuck feeling sorry for a bitch …

  What Hawkeye has been to her, who the woman is—Ponytail doesn’t intend to ask. Not his business.

  Could be it’s a test of Hawkeye’s: See how cool Ponytail operates, minding his own business, not showing (much) surprise.

  Ponytail is cool. All this while without hardly turning his head or even moving his eyes much he’s been taking note of the setting: luxury suite, sixty-first floor of the Renaissance Grand Hotel.

  Enormous bedroom, “king-sized” bed the size of the room on West Warren Ponytail is sharing with another guy, mirrored closet doors partly opened, a man’s clothes hanging inside, and at the foot of the bed an expensive-looking leather suitcase—Ponytail figures the suite is Hawkeye’s, not the woman’s.

  The woman is the visitor, and it’s time to eject the visitor.

  Why Ponytail has been summoned, he figures.

  Wondering: Where’s the camera? Hawkeye wouldn’t miss the opportunity to record whatever happened on that bed.

  Might be there’s a camera on a high shelf in the closet, hidden beneath a stack of pillows, just the miniature lens exposed, so positioned that it can take in the entire bed when the door isn’t quite closed, and that’s why the door isn’t closed.

  Or, maybe, attached to the bedside radio clock, close to the bed.

  At the all-nighters on Woodward, Ponytail helped Hawkeye with surveillance and recording. Many hours of recording. Including a few minutes of the baby-faced kid named Michel, the night he’d met his special friend Mister R__.

  Later, Ponytail helped Hawkeye’s assistant at the time, light-skinned Hispanic guy nineteen years old they knew as Tryk, before Tryk (also) disappeared no one knew where and Ponytail took his place.

  Nervous joking about guys who’d disappeared. You’d hear yourself sniggering, then you’d swallow hard.

  Nobody missed them, or mostly not. Father McKenzie reported them missing—“runaways.” But no one was going to look for them, try to track them down.

  Plenty of boys where they’d come from, and all eager. Each one thinking Hey, I’m special.

  Ponytail had to laugh, the fat old fags—“Friends of the Mission”—never seemed to realize they were risking blackmail. Arriving already drunk or high, eyes shining like pond scum. Must’ve suspected but pretended not, crazy about Father McKenzie’s “beautiful Mission boys.”

  He’d been one of the Mission boys—Mikey Kushel. But none of the fat old fags had put their hands on him.

  Not one! Father McKenzie cautioned him, you can make your own way, Mikey. You are not like the others.

  Then, hairs like wires started sprouting at his underarms and crotch, pimples broke out on his face, his voice changed, and he wasn’t so beautiful any longer, and not so young.

  Smooth hairless jaws they’d preferred, not jaws needing to be shaved. Smooth backs, asses. Not a pimple, not a glaring red bump! Boy penises like something soft, skinned, helpless, a baby bird fallen out of its nest, a baby rabbit you could crush between your fingers …

  Hey!—Hawkeye snaps his fingers in Ponytail’s face to get his attention.

  Hawkeye asks him is he listening? Is he high on some shit because if he is, he’d better admit it, and Ponytail insists no, hell no, he is not high on any kind of shit, he is stone-cold sober.

  Okay says Hawkeye, taking pains to speak slowly and carefully: “Mrs. J__” needs to be driven home and Ponytail is the designated driver.

  Ponytail will drive Mrs. J__ (in her own car) to Far Hills, approximately twenty miles away, north on I-75 to her house, leave the car at the house, in the garage; leave everything pertaining to Mrs. J__, including her handbag, intact; and Hawkeye will arrange for a car to pick him up and bring him back to Detroit.

  Typical of Hawkeye: no explanation, just instructions.

  Hawkeye hands Ponytail the woman’s address printed in block letters large enough for a slow-witted child to read: 96 CRADLE ROCK ROAD, FAR HILLS.

  Plus, a ticket stub for the hotel parking garage.

  Ponytail swallows hard. Ponytail is feeling—kind of edgy. He’s going to do all this shit—alone?

  Take a staggering-drunk-looking (white) woman down to the garage, a woman with a wristwatch edged with diamonds, get the car from the attendant—alone?

  That’s right, Hawkeye says. He isn’t going to be involved.

  Ponytail draws a deep breath. It’s a test of his courage, he knows.

  Not asking what Hawkeye intends to pay him. As if, at this moment, being paid hasn’t occurred to Ponytail, it’s something like masculine pride that is at stake.

  Between Hawkeye and Ponytail, mutual respect. Ponytail needing to live up to Hawkeye’s expectations of him, or he’s fucked for the future.

  It isn’t driving some stranger’s car that is freaking him out, it’s getting a woman who isn’t a hooker down in the elevator in this classy hotel, to the parking garage, to pick up her car. Like he’s in a movie—the camera’s on him. How in hell’s he going to pull this off?

  Wanting badly to ask Hawkeye to come with him to the parking garage at least, anybody happening to see them might think that Hawkeye is the woman’s husband, but seeing Ponytail with her, Christ … But Ponytail knows better than to ask, seeing the look on Hawkeye’s face like a grating pulled down over a store window.

  Recalling that once Hawkeye tells you something, once his mind is made up, Hawkeye isn’t going to change it. Like being in the army. You’re a soldier, you take orders.

  At Saint Vincent’s he hadn’t caught on, not right away. How serious some things could be. (Like Michel, what happened to him.) (That nobody would ever talk about.) And no way to change things back to what they’d been, before.

  He’d been Mike then—“Mikey.” Short for his age. Goddamned short legs, like the bones had not grown right. It was shameful to him, some of the kids thought he was retarded, but Father McKenzie knew better, it was just sadness.

  If Father hadn’t taken notice of him and protected him the way he protected his special boys, Mikey would surely be dead by now, overdosed, crack cocaine, or his head broken in a fight, or pushed downstairs so a dozen vertebrae broke, and some coke-crazy old fag fucked him in the ass until his guts oozed out and he died on the street miles from Saint Vincent’s discovered by the six A.M. sanitation workers and nobody would remember his Goddamned name three months later.

  Kids who died at the Mission of what a medical examiner would call natural causes, if they didn’t have relatives to take their bodies and pay for a real burial, were given a single mass in their memory in Saint Vincent’s Church on Woodward then buried in plain pine coffins in the cemetery behind the residence. Old broken grave markers dating back to the 1800s. Trees that never sprouted leaves and their bark peeled off like leprosy but never actually died, weedy trash graves bordering on Railroad Avenue. Bones were scattered everywhere in the soil, it was said. Mixed together, dozens of boys, maybe hundreds, and animal bones, and chunks of concrete, plastic, Styrofoam, and nobody gave a fuck about you if you didn’t have a mother or any relatives to care for you and if you did, why would you be a “homeless juvenile” at the Mission?—you wouldn’t.

  But all that is past. Ponytail isn’t a kid now—he isn’t Mikey. Ponytail has his own place, pays his own rent, hires out for the kind of work not just anybody can do. Ponytail’s a Goddamned independent entrepreneur.

  Good-looking like somebody in the movies—he’s been told. A young Jack Nicholson with that weird crooked smile, the thing with the eyes—eyebrows. Carries himself like James Caan in Rollerball.

  Built as dense and compact as a wrestler at five feet seven, weight at one hundred fifty pounds, Indian-black hair to his shoulders he ties back in a ponytail, three-day growth of beard on his jaws but a classy dresser, he thinks—torso-tight black T-shirts, black cargo pants (with deep, button-down pockets), black Nikes, dark-tinted aviator glasses that hide the shrewd glisten of his beetle eyes.

  Women are attracted to Ponytail. Even as Mikey Kushel they’d been attracted to him, you could tell. Their eyes swarming on him like hungry ants, on the street. Public places (this ritzy hotel)—crossing the lobby. Eating him up with their eyes, Ponytail thinks, grinning.

  Though in actual life, if he’d met them, like, face-to-face in someplace like a restaurant or a bar, women are (he guesses) a little afraid of him.

  Certainly girls his own age are afraid of him. And younger.

  Hell, he’d be afraid of Ponytail, that cool sexy assassin look he has cultivated.

  Hawkeye respects him, Ponytail thinks. Mutual respect between them, Hawkeye doesn’t have to spell things out, Ponytail is one to take the initiative.

  You’re listening, right? You’re taking this in?

  Yes! Yes he is.

  Urgent he drives the woman home without any incidents. No reckless driving, no bullshit tactics on the interstate, showing off in her car. Let the truckers pass him, fuck them let them go, ignore them, the goal is to drive to Far Hills without getting stopped by law enforcement. Keep his speed at the limit, no more, don’t take chances passing, don’t use the Goddamned horn, if he’s pulled over by police he might be accused of stealing the car, even kidnapping the woman if she becomes excitable, you never know how a woman will behave and especially you won’t know how this woman will behave. Don’t expect Hawkeye to bail him out if he gets in trouble, he will not. Also no talking to the woman. Absolutely no conversation in the car. Help the woman into the back of the car so she won’t interfere with his driving and she can pass out. Make sure she isn’t lying on her back, if she starts to puke she will choke. Keep an eye out. Drinking all afternoon, she’s an alcoholic, something might’ve happened to her, there’s a kind of wheezy sound in her chest, she’d been passed out for twenty minutes or more. Some kind of blackout—just maybe, if she’s lucky, amnesia.

  Blackout. Probably the bastard was choking her, Ponytail thinks.

  Probably he’d almost killed her. That’s why Ponytail was called on such short notice.

  Feeling for the moment protective of the foolish woman, old enough to be his mother. Jesus!—pathetic.

  Hawkeye warns Ponytail not to paw through the woman’s handbag. Don’t even think about taking her money or credit cards, stay out of the handbag altogether, got it?

  Okay, Ponytail says. Got it.

  Seeing the handbag is one of those fancy soft-leather designer bags, could be worth two thousand dollars. What’s the label?—Prada.

  One of the Friends, when Mikey had been living at the Mission. Patrician old Mr. Valentine, prissy, sniffing and snuffling, rumored to live in a big brick home in Grosse Pointe, rumpled clothes but expensive, an old worn leather briefcase (stuffed with fresh underwear, socks) but still you could see it had a fancy brand name—Prada.

  Ponytail has “expedited” for Hawkeye in the past. Mostly drugs, pickup and delivery, short-haul drives for (exclusively male) customers too wasted to drive themselves home but in the vicinity of downtown, or possibly Grosse Pointe (the suburb nearest to downtown Detroit). Not all the way out to Far Hills where Ponytail has not actually ever been.

  Beyond Ferndale, Royal Oak—the northern suburbs. Not much past Eight Mile Road is familiar territory to Ponytail.

  If the woman lives out there, she’s rich. Husband’s rich. You wouldn’t have to look at her to know she’s white. Makes sense, Hawkeye has some investment in her.

  “Ah! Très bien, ma chere!”—Hawkeye is speaking to the woman, who has managed, after much effort, and a little help from Hawkeye, to rise from the bed, and to stand beside it, unsteadily.

  “Mrs. J__”—Ponytail wonders what her last name is, assumes that Hawkeye knows.

  She has only just noticed Ponytail now—a quick sidelong glance, startled. A look of chagrin, fear.

  Checking her clothes—silk shirt, creased linen trousers—as if to see Am I dressed? Fumbling to button the shirt correctly, adjust the trousers.

  Ponytail guesses, she’s naked inside the clothes. Hawkeye hadn’t bothered with underwear. Twisted into a ball, kicked beneath the bed for the chambermaid to discover in the morning.

  Ponytail sees the bleached-blond hair, bloodshot dazed eyes rapidly blinking as Mrs. J__ tries to determine where she is, what has happened. One of those dreams where you are lost, no idea where you are. Swiping at vomit on the trousers, a stricken look. Smudged mascara like somebody pushed her face into a pillow, hard.

  But she has discovered the stiletto shoes, which she’s going to put on her (naked) feet. Try to put on. Has to sit on the edge of the bed, sits heavily, try to maneuver the shoes on her feet.

  Sexy shoes, Ponytail thinks. Pathetic.

  Steeling himself waiting for Hawkeye to order him to help her—kneel on the carpet and help Mrs. J__ put on her shoes like a Goddamned shoe-store salesman—but no, after a few misses the hard-breathing woman manages to strap on one shoe, then the other.

  Pitiful, rich cunt hardly able to walk in the silly, sexy shoes, wounded eyes and a face like some sick-pale meat that’s been pounded.

  Ponytail’s gaze drops to the woman’s hips, pelvis. Creased linen crotch. Probably she’s all bruises inside her clothes. A woman who has been fucked, in all ways.

  But maybe she’s got kids. Maybe she’s a mother. Christ!

  Actually trying to smile! Insisting she can drive home by herself, she’s feeling “much better” now.

  Hawkeye shakes his head no. Just—no.

  As if it might be a matter for discussion Mrs. J__ repeats the same words in the same pleading voice but Hawkeye shuts her up with a scowl—I said: no.