Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13050177.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage, Rape/Non-Con
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Rope_(1948)
  Relationship:
      Phillip_Morgan/Brandon_Shaw
  Character:
      Phillip_Morgan, Brandon_Shaw, Rupert_Cadell
  Additional Tags:
      Consent_Issues, Codependency, Abuse, Intimations_of_past_childhood_abuse,
      Police_brutality_(in_fantasy), protip_if_you_find_yourself_thinking
      'perhaps_I_myself_am_a_Nietzschean_Übermensch', this_is_a_guaranteed_sign
      that_what_you_are_in_fact_is_a_hopeless_asshole, with_bad_reading
      comprehension
  Collections:
      Yuletide_2017
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-12-18 Words: 9692
****** As terriers shake a rat ******
by breathedout
Summary
     "How do you feel," he asked, "about the killing?"
Notes
     Happy Yuletide, Elfgrandfather! Thanks for requesting this fandom,
     which took me down some really interesting research paths I otherwise
     wouldn't have explored.
     General FYI: This story is patterned heavily on the historical
     murderers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who were the explicit
     inspirations for Phillip Morgan and Brandon Shaw. There's a lot in
     the Leopold and Loeb history that is politically uncomfortable for
     someone reading & writing in 2017. I've tried to walk the line with
     regard to delicate political stuff, but if the above makes you
     nervous, by all means either skip it or message with further
     questions. As always, with any of my stories, depiction in no way
     equals approval. If you find yourself in a relationship bearing any
     resemblance to the one depicted, please get out.
     Huge thanks to my stalwart, long-suffering beta and partner in
     (figurative!) crime greywash for her last-minute once-over while on
     VK.
See the end of the work for more notes
*** THE PROSECUTION: Now, which is responsible for the murder in this case; the
emotional man or the intellectual man?
THE WITNESS: Well, you cannot split a man up that way into two parts. You can
look at each aspect of him, but when the man acts, he acts as a whole, with all
of his powers. ***
 
 
Franklin leaned back in his seat. "How do you feel," he asked, "about the
killing?"
"How do I feel."
"Yes. About David Kentley's murder: how do you feel?"
The car was moving now; St. Patrick's loomed up on the right. Howling; rushing;
alone; and his other, his—no—Brandon. Call him Brandon; that's his name. All
the way over in the other car. Behind him, a lane over. Not here. Smiling,
probably. Gesturing with his cigarette, to his own reporter, who was asking
about the murder too, no doubt.
"Well," Phillip said. "It doesn't concern me."
"It doesn't concern you."
Speak with that voice. Remember how it feels: bring it back by act of will. His
broad hands, broad fingers over Phillip's fingers on the steering wheel then
fumbling the screw top on the flask of his top-flight gin driving back from New
Haven that night after the game.
Phillip turned to Franklin, and smiled.
"The murder was—it was an experiment, you see. Superstitions, moral beliefs,
emotions: they're all irrelevant to the intellectual." His own cigarette he
twirled unlit between skin-stretched knuckles. "You have to understand," he
told Franklin. "The pursuit of intellectual knowledge is always admirable. A
boy who pulls the wings off a dragonfly: he learns, doesn't he, about—about the
limits of fly-ness. The best guide to conduct is a thirst for experience. We
wanted to have the experience, you understand. The experience of murdering
another human being."
"It's that simple?" Franklin said.
Roaring; rushing. In the other car, was the other journalist leaning forward?
Elbows on knees? Listening, while his eyes went half-mast? Here in front of him
Franklin was still leaning back: his pen to his lips and his eyelids half-
lowered. Three bars between them.
"Yes," Phillip said. All the air let out of him: head against the glass. "That
simple."
Central Park inched past on their left. A good impression, Phillip thought,
bleakly: Sumner was allowing this press gambit, he knew, so that the two of
them could make a good impression. It was so they could take the Times firmly
by the hand and lead them around to the right way of thinking; and Phillip had
the borrowed grip but he couldn't reach out. The other journalist was younger,
the one he'd got. He was laughing, probably. Laughing with him, with, with,
with Brandon as they passed the zoo.
"Oh, I can't understand!" Phillip said. It burst from him. David had bored them
over drinks two weeks before about how he'd taken his young nephew to view the
sea lions. The boy had thrown rocks. Now Phillip felt half-blind, and very
cold. "I can't understand why everyone is making this out to be such an
atrocious murder."
Franklin's pen went tap-tap against his lips. "Was it necessary for you to kill
Mr. Kentley?"
"It was," Phillip said.
"Why?"
But Phillip shook his head. Tha-thump, tha-thump, went the car wheels on the
pavement of Fifth Avenue.
The crush of traffic constricted around them; squeezed them down. They passed
the Met at such a crawl that Phillip could have thrown open the door and
stepped quite calmly onto the pavement. He imagined himself, emerging into the
sun of the gladiatorial ring, prepared to enter into battle. Oil-anointed, his
muscles would gleam. He would brandish his chains above his head; and though he
might at any moment break them, he would not. His king on his throne, square-
jawed, would bow down. He would stride through traffic, a conquering hero,
drawn like the tide to the other car.
"Perhaps I wouldn't understand," Franklin said, at last.
Phillip didn't answer. A bad impression: he knew it, but he couldn't stop. And
all the while he was back there, all the way in the other car, showing his
bright eyes and his shining teeth to the young blond journalist.
"Did anyone else understand why it was necessary?"
"What?" Phillip said. "No."
"So you corroborate Mr. Shaw's statement," Franklin said. "His statement to the
court and to the press, that the whole thing was your idea. That you talked him
into it. That he never understood—"
"It was all his idea," Phillip cried out, though that—that wasn't what he
meant, quite. He was caught off-guard by the question. Howling; alone; though
he'd told himself—since the hearing, when they'd stood by side with the
prosecutor above them and he'd imagined how he could whisper to him and they
would laugh—ever since that afternoon he'd told himself it was fine and he held
nothing against him… nonetheless he could hear his voice rising. He could hear
himself, almost shouting: "It was his idea. I can't believe he's—he called
David that day to get him around to the club for drinks, he decided on the
chest and the candlestick and the party after. It doesn't make sense to think
it was me. I was the only one with anything to gain by going along. It was him,
all him from the start. And he said—but now he thinks—"
What did he think. After his high-wrought laugh; his broad hands on the
steering wheel, that night after Sigma Alpha; he'd been giddy and wild and he'd
swept them along shouting into the night and Phillip had wanted—God he'd have
said anything, he'd have said—Let's make it a—but no. Brandon needed everything
his way.
"He thinks," Phillip told Franklin, "that by painting me as the slayer, that
he'll go free."
"Hm," Franklin said. He made a note in his book. "But it was you alone, you
admit, who pulled taut the rope around David Kentley's neck."
"Yes," Phillip said. Exhausted; desperate. "But it wasn't supposed to be."
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: In the course of my conversation with Mr. Shaw, while I was
trying to formulate my opinion as to his emotional makeup, I discussed the
possible outcome of this whole arrest and trial situation. We spoke of the
possibility of terminating his life by hanging and he said in a most matter of
fact way, "Well it's too bad a fellow won't be able to read about it in the
newspaper." ***
 
 
As soon as the doors swung open: a wall of bodies; a wall of sound.
"Morgan! Mor—Mr. Morgan! Mr. Shaw!" Notebooks outstretched; bodies converging
on the two of them, pushing them back up the steps. Crowding them together.
Phillip's trousered hip crowding needily against his.
"Mr. Shaw!" Just in front of them: a short man. Horse-faced, hollow-shouldered.
His badge said Brooklyn Eagle: not very impressive. But he'd locked eyes with
Brandon; he was fixed on Brandon. He waited on Brandon, quivering with
eagerness. "Mr. Shaw," the man shouted. "Were you surprised when Mr. Sumner
entered a guilty plea? Or were you aware of the strategy all along?"
"We're not allowed to talk about that," Phillip snapped, next to Brandon's ear;
although the reporter hadn't asked him. Brandon felt giddy. Felt like punishing
Phillip, and felt like laughing.
"I bet we're on the front page," he said.
"Don't talk about that," Phillip hissed. Brandon felt himself grin. Then
Phillip jumped. Brandon looked back: only a hand on Phillip's shoulder.
"Mr. Morgan," said the prosecutor. "Mr. Shaw." He stood between them, gazing
out somberly as the camera-shutters snapped. There was Sumner, behind him,
looking on. And two other men with him. Cheap haircuts, department store suits.
Their badges said The Times.
"Mr. Shaw," the prosecutor said. "Mr. Morgan. These are Mr. Salter and Mr.
Franklin: they'll be riding along as you take us through the reconstruction of
David Kentley's final day."
The suits stepped up and put out their hands. Brandon pumped them both in turn,
with a smile and a firm grip. Phillip, more limply, crowded behind him to do
the same.
"Are you running us on the front page?" Brandon said, to the younger of them.
"You will be, won't you? There sure was a stir about that plea."
"Don't," Phillip said. Brandon felt his grin brighten.
"I bet you'll be right there the whole time," he went on. "Won't you? I bet
you'll be there noting it down when the judge says, what is it? I find you—"
"Shut up!" Phillip yelled. Brandon laughed, merrily. Looked to the reporter
Salter, who wasn't laughing back but who was smiling, a little, holding open
the car door for Brandon to get inside.
The two of them folded themselves down onto blue upholstery. Brandon breathed
deep. Free, he felt, suddenly. They had shut Phillip up into the other car:
free. Then the irony of that hit him, and he started to chuckle; and all at
once the whole thing seemed so comradely: himself and Salter, gentlemen
together in the back of a hired car. He took out a cigarette from his case,
then, in the spirit of comradeship, offered one to Salter. Salter took it,
tapped it once against his notebook, and then put it behind his ear.
"So," said Salter. "Mr. Shaw. How are you feeling about the guilty plea just
entered by Mr. Sumner on your behalf?"
"Oh, I suppose Mr. Sumner knows what he's doing," Brandon said. "Don't you?" He
flicked his lighter, drew until the thing lit, then a long measured exhale. It
was really so good to be able to stretch his legs. To talk with someone new.
"Really quite extensive qualifications the man's got, after all. I'll spend a
few years in jail, of course. No way around that… Be a good time to catch up on
my reading. Then a fresh start. New life. You know, I think I'll go to work?
Amount to something. Make a career!"
He laughed, gesturing magnanimously with his cigarette at Salter. Salter was a
journalist, after all. It was only right to acknowledge he knew a thing or two
about working for a living. Salter, however, was drawing his eyebrows together.
"But Mr. Shaw," he said. "You have taken a life. You've killed a classmate in
cold blood. The prosecution—well, Mr. Campbell fully intends you to hang. The
best you could hope for is life in a mental institution."
No, thought Brandon. No, this was meant to be—well. Salter hadn't understood.
That was all. There was a piece of tobacco on Brandon's tongue. His hands
fluttered about his mouth, trying to remove it.
"Well," he said. What was he meant to say? Where was Phillip, what would
Phillip say? Brandon was meant to be appreciated. Recognized. He said, at last:
"I suppose—you and I will both just have to wait and see on that score, Mr.
Salter."
Salter studied him. Brandon met the man's eyes. Let smoke slide out his
nostrils in puffs. Then he leaned forward and smiled, wide. Phillip's breath
would catch at that, without fail.
"Does it make you nervous," he asked, in a voice half-low, half-taunting.
"Riding along with me, now?"
"No," said Salter.
His mouth quirked. Only a bit, but Brandon caught it: that edge of Salter's lip
curving up. Phillip wouldn't like that. Would be watching for it. Would clench
his fists. Would hope that Brandon hadn't seen: so Brandon, solicitous, ducked
his head to make it clear he had.
"Mmm hm," he said. That lazy, plummy tone, that could slide so easily into
tipsy. (If Phillip heard it—) He flicked his cigarette: a piece of ash fell on
Salter's trouser leg. Brandon reached down, leisurely, and brushed it off.
"Now you're contaminated," he said. "You've been touched by a murderer."
Salter laughed—high, surprised—then made it a cough. Brandon grinned; leant
back in his seat and watched Salter, pink-faced, compose himself; thinking of
Phillip, doing the same.
"Tell me about Phillip Morgan," Salter said.
"Why, Mr. Salter," Brandon said, eyebrow up. "What do you want to know?"
"What's he like?" Salter said. "His character?"
"Oh, Phil's smart," Brandon said, earnestly. "One of the smartest men I know.
He's got a head for details, you know. Contingencies. I really admire that
about him."
"Did he lead you into crime?" Salter asked. "Dominate you?"
"Dominate me." Brandon repeated. He exhaled, long, like a whistle. "Well. I
guess there might have been some of that. I guess I went along with him. Guess
I never could say no to Phil. Yeah, maybe you could say he was the dominant
type."
"Was Phil a pervert?" Salter asked, too fast, aggressive, and Brandon felt his
own smile slide off his face. For the first time, he looked out at the street:
there were the open doors of St. Patrick's. He was surprised the car hadn't
gotten further uptown.
"I don't know anything about that," Brandon said, and stubbed out his cigarette
in the ashtray of the door.
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: Mr. Morgan said he could illustrate it to me by saying that he
felt himself "less than the dust beneath Mr. Shaw's feet," quoting from one of
the poems of Lawrence Hope. He told me of his abject devotion to Mr. Shaw,
saying that he was jealous of the food and drink that Mr. Shaw took, because he
could not come as close to him as did the food and drink. ***
 
 
"The motive of this, you say, was what?"
Campbell, the prosecutor: an ugly man. White hair in his ears. Sitting there,
in front of them and above them: as if he had the right to any throne. Phillip
had the urge to elbow Brandon. To whisper to him about Campbell's ears, and his
snorting breathing: how the both of them would laugh. But then, Phillip
remembered, Brandon had betrayed him. Hadn't he. In his separate interrogation
room, cut off from Phillip, where Phillip couldn't hear him and couldn't speak
to him and couldn't touch him, Brandon had gone against their plan, so
carefully laid out; Brandon had thrust Phillip away from him; Brandon had said—
But no. No, it was too much, it—it didn't matter. It couldn't matter what he'd
told them. Not now that the two of them were back together, next to one
another, joined again by this beige court bench and the ugly Mr. Campbell in
front of them—now that all that was true, Phillip couldn't hold it against him.
Couldn't hold himself separate, after everything. And anyway they'd told them
together, really, hadn't they. Whatever one had told, they'd both told: that
much was self-evident, even if the telling hadn't gone to plan. They were one
and the same, weren't they, and Campbell had the notes to prove it. Locked up
tight together in the courthouse safe: Phillip's written confession with
Brandon's marks all over it, Brandon's hard-pressed pencil-strokes in all
Phillip's margins; and Brandon's confession, scrawled over with Phillip's
slanted pen. They had done it together, in the end, even from separate
interrogation rooms: just as they'd always planned; and now here they were:
king and slave and slave and king here again, warm again, joined again, chained
tight against each others' sides.
"If you please," Phillip said, but Campbell raised a liver-spotted hand to stay
him.
"Mr. Morgan," he said, "the court will first hear from Mr. Shaw. You will then
have your turn."
A surge of—fury; Phillip could hardly breathe. You will then have your turn. We
will first hear from Mr. Shaw. As if they weren't—as if either of them couldn't
say anything the other might—Phillip's nails bit into his palms.
"Mr. Shaw," the prosecutor said again. "What, again, do you say was the motive
for this heinous crime?"
"I—I don't know," said Brandon.
Phillip's flinched. That wasn't Brandon's voice. Not the voice he'd given
Phillip, not the voice Phillip used when he needed. Not the voice Phillip knew,
not that full-bodied Harvard drawl that he always used when—not the one he
wanted. He wanted him to speak from inside Phillip, and right now Brandon
sounded far away. Like a weak, mewling child; like an idiot lost in a strange
land; like the weeks when he had when he had first come to St. Andrew's
and—Phillip couldn't stand it. Had never been able to stand him sounding like
that. He didn't sound like that.
"You did not stand to gain financially from the death of David Kentley?"
Campbell said.
"No," said Brandon. "No, we—no." His deep breath wavered. Phillip pressed his
lips together.
"Perhaps you had quarrelled with Mr. Kentley? Some manner of disagreement?"
"Nothing like that."
"Or—something he had, that you wanted?"
"No," Brandon said.
This last had been too quiet for the prosecutor to hear. It was almost too
quiet for Phillip to hear. Phillip braced himself for this to go on: another
question, another denial in that strange weak voice, and he, Phillip,
disallowed from saying anything at all.
"Oh God!" Brandon burst out. "I don't know! Now that I think about it, I don't
know, I don't—it all seems impossible. How could I possibly have got into such
a thing? I feel so sorry. I've asked myself a hundred times and I don't know, I
don't know! How could it have happened?"
Campbell, looking across his desk at them, cleared his throat. He let a long
moment go by in which the only sounds were Brandon's wracked breaths. Phillip
could hear them and the prosecutor could hear them; even the goddamned
stenographer with her cotton cardigan and her three dollar shoes was treated,
for seconds on seconds, to the sound of the tears of Brandon Shaw.
"And you, Mr. Morgan?" said the prosecutor, at last. "Can you enlighten us as
to the motive for this crime?"
"Yes sir," said Phillip.
His upper arm pressed to Brandon's upper arm through cotton shirting and wool.
He reached down and took his hand. Next to him Brandon started; recoiled—but
then his breathing evened out: just as Phillip had known it would.
"Yes," said Phillip again, resolutely. "I think I can."
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: I asked Mr. Shaw to name specifically the objectives that he
had in this crime, and this is the order in which he gave them:
- First, the joy in planning it.
- Secondly, the thrill in committing it.
- Third, the anticipation, pleasurable anticipation in waiting.
- Fourth, the publicity.
- Fifth, the discussion, that is, his own discussion among the various people
who were interested, with the knowledge that he possessed the key to the secret
and none of the rest of them did. ***
 
 
Face leaking down his neck and his accordion chest Brandon couldn't, why were
they asking him to, where was Phillip, why didn't they ask Phillip, why
wouldn't they leave him alone—
"I told you," sobbing, "I didn't know David's body was in that trunk; I
didn't—why are you holding me?"
"Because," said the detective, in a kind of a bored drawl, "in addition to the
remains of the deceased found at your apartment, in a trunk owned by you—"
"I didn't—"
"—and the grey wool hat owned by David Kentley, with initials DK monogrammed in
the brim, which your housekeeper informs us was not in your coat closet two
days ago, when she straightened, but which Mr. Rupert Caddell—"
"Oh, Rupert—"
"—has testified to seeing there on the night of the party, when David Kentley
was reported missing and later found dead. In addition to this, I say, the
clerk in Acme Hardware store, one Miss Beverly Munro, has identified Mr. Morgan
from a photograph—"
His breath—caught. Between sobs: balanced on the verge of tipping—collapsing—
"My God," he murmured. Too quiet to hear. "Is that possible?"
"—as a customer who came in between two and four o'clock that same afternoon,
to purchase a length of rope."
The detective looked down at his notes. He wet his finger, and turned a page.
The shaking wetness of Brandon's breath was loud in his ears; he hiccuped; the
detective looked at him, eyebrows raised. Brandon shook. Shook his head. A
rocking: forward-back. Forward back.
"Furthermore," the detective went on, "we have now confirmed, via both phone
records and eyewitness statements at his club, that Mr. Morgan lied to the
police about not having seen or talked to David Kentley for several days before
the murder. And since you have told us that you were with Mr. Morgan all that
afternoon, there is a strong implication that you lied as well."
"My God," he heard himself say. "My God"; and this wasn't how it was
meant—there were meant to be other people here. A crowd. They were meant to be
amazed; dumbfounded; intrigued beyond their ability to hold themselves still at
the mystery of how he had done it: how he had pulled it off: how he had managed
a feat of such daring and complexity. The men, stroking their moustaches in
thoughtful respect. The girls, pressing themselves up like cats against the
bars of his cell. The police who would beat him, who would come into his cell
with their barrel chests and their blasphemies and beat him with truncheons;
who would strip off his clothes, bruise and debase him—all because he struck
fear into them. All because they knew, they knew that he was—special. They
could see it, and they feared it. They would beat him down, bruise him and flay
him; without a sound he would take it and the admiring crowd. Murmuring;
pointing; hands clutched to hearts. Brandon would twist his body in just such a
way and certain members of the crowd—hidden in plain view, his criminal
cartel—would know it for the signal it was. They would nod, curt, and take his
orders back to their headquarters as all the while Phillip, in the cell across
the way, stood gobsmacked with that expression on his face as if he'd never
breathe again if Brandon told him not to—
And instead: this. A filthy beige room in the bowels of the 19th Precinct
station. A yawning Italian and a mousy girl with Coke-bottle specs.
"I will tell you everything," Brandon said, nevertheless.
The detective gestured to his left with a hand; the mouse shuffled over with a
hard chair and a steno pad and commenced shorthand.
"You wish to confess to your part in the murder of David Kentley?"
"Yes," he said. He needed a cigarette, he needed. God. He needed Phillip, or—or
Rupert—
"And this statement, you verify that you will be making of your own free will?"
"Yes."
He breathed in—in—and out. His face was itching, now. That girl could get him a
cloth, but she didn't. Just kept jotting and jotting, with her head down: not
even glancing up at Brandon, sitting here right on the other side of the table.
"I just want to say," he said, "that I offer no excuse; but that I am fully
convinced that neither the idea nor the act would have occurred to me, had it
not been for the suggestion and the stimulus of Phillip Morgan."
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: He and Mr. Shaw he refers to as relative supermen, and despite
the fact that he knew that Mr. Shaw lied to him about his marks in school, was
boastful and untruthful and made himself out to be a better student than he
was, Mr. Morgan nevertheless says that Shaw not only approached perfection, but
far surpassed it. And in a chart of the perfect man which he drew up, he gave
Shaw a scoring of ninety, himself a scoring of sixty-three, and various others
of their mutual acquaintances various marks ranging from thirty to forty. In
discussing later on this appraisal of Shaw as far surpassing perfection, he
stated upon one occasion that he had begun to have some doubts about it, and
upon another occasion he said—very characteristically, I think—that he was very
skillful in blinding himself to certain facts of reality. ***
 
 
"You remember that afternoon, before the party?" the detective was saying, in
the dirty little interrogation room off 68th and Lex, and Phillip pressed both
hands to the cool mica tabletop thinking the next room, beyond the door, the
next room, beyond the door just in the next room, keeping his cigarette in
place with only his lips so he could stop his hands from shaking. It kept him
from speaking, too, with the wrong voice. (His own voice.) Kept him from
cracking; kept him from saying, This is indecent. Saying, Fetch the rest of me.
"You remember placing a call that afternoon from your apartment, to David
Kentley's club?"
"No," said Phillip. He flicked his cigarette into the tray.
"You were with Mr. Shaw the entire day, you say. You went down to the beach, in
Mr. Shaw's car?"
"That's right," said Phillip. He smiled. It was quite a charming smile: he'd
always thought so, before he borrowed it. Just on the other side of the wall,
he might be smiling it too.
"Which beach was this?" the detective asked, and Phillip said "Rockaway,"
feeling more solid the more he spoke. Just next door, another voice, the same
voice, was saying Rockaway in just the same tone as Phillip was saying
Rockaway. It was steadying to know. Despite the sound-proofing of the
interrogation rooms he could almost hear it. To the calm, aristocratic tones of
it. The almost joking slant of his shoulder, quirk of his mouth: the unsaid
Come now he could always get across: surely you don't really believe, officer—
"We picked up a couple of girls," Phillip offered, still smiling. Still
listening to the silence on the other side of the wall. Knowing what he ought
to say.
"Girls," repeated the detective.
"Yes," said Phillip. His borrowed voice wavered; he cleared his throat. "Yes.
We took them to a film."
"Hm," said the detective. "What film was this?"
"The Lady from Shanghai," Phillip said, in chorus with the voice next door; and
saying it now he could almost join up, again, with the earlier version of the
two of of them, stretched out on his bed, shoulder to shoulder on their
stomachs with the paper spread out in front of them. Crossfire, he had said,
because he could never resist a mystery, but so he had asked him, Would you
really take a pair of girls to a Robert Mitchum picture? and he'd let his chin
jut out and said, Sure I would, they clutch you in the gunfire don't they, and
Sure, he'd said back, Sure, but they like some glamour to warm them up, and
talked him around to Rita Hayworth with a recount of pistols in a hall of
mirrors. He smiled, now, remembering. No doubt he was thinking about the same
thing, next door.
"Mr. Shaw a ladies' man?" the detective said, at last, and Phillip—trembled. A
small shockwave: there and gone. Phillip had offered, he had, he'd said, that
night, Let's make it a girl, and Brandon had said—but the way he'd shouted, at
the apartment, before Rupert had fired that gun. But. They'd spoken, since.
They had their story, stretched solid between them. It was all right now, he'd
told him, like he always told him, and it always had been, hadn't it. More or
less.
"Sure," Phillip said, blandly, to the detective. Sure, Brandon might be saying,
next door.
It would be all right, he knew. They would stand together till the end.
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: At one time in our conversation during the examination Mr.
Shaw evidently showed a desire to give me the facts in the situation and said
with perfect honesty—what appeared to me to be perfect honesty—"Doctor, I
really don't know how this thing happened. I have been lying to myself so long
that sometimes I cannot tell exactly what is a lie and what is not a lie." ***
 
 
Window down loot in the back seat flask in his hand tipping gin straight to the
back of his throat with the speedometer cresting up and up Brandon wanted to do
more things than he could—more things at once than he could—
Shouting! Into the night!
—wasn't enough so Brandon one hand on the wheel hoisted himself up: foot down
head up, out, face forward into the cold night-rushing air
"WAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOH" yelling at stone-walled fields and cows, probably,
probably offended chickens; and a distant pair of taillights turning a bend up
ahead that he could catch, he could catch them up if—bracing a hand on the
window ledge, thigh against the wheel, pressing his foot down the car shooting
forward, "YEAHHHHOOOO"—and he felt the wheel being turned against his thigh.
So.
Brandon slapped open-handed on the top of the car and then slid back down.
Shoulders back through the window, head back through the window. The wind
rushed past his left ear but everything in the car was stiller: Phillip's
slender hand tight-knuckled on the right side of the wheel like some ghostly
shackle, reaching back from some other place to grip them tight. To keep them
straight. Brandon tipped back more gin, looking at it. He lifted up his own
right hand and traced finger-pads between Phillip's clenched knuckles. Even
over the rushing air he heard that click in Phillip's throat. When he looked
over, Phillip was swallowing. Mouth tight; eyes still on the road. Brandon
started laughing.
Phillip would get cross and that made him laugh harder. Look at him: laughing,
Brandon pressed his foot down all the way to the floor and laughed around the
mouth of his flask watching Phillip, jaw clenching, stare into the night so
earnestly, huffing angry breath at Brandon and the unrolling road. And yet when
Brandon clamped his hand harder around Phillip's hand on the wheel, Phillip's
mouth still came open. His eyes would have rolled back, Brandon knew, if he'd
let them.
"Yeah," Brandon said. Then: "Yeah!" yelled into the pre-dawn. He punched up at
the roof of the car, both hands. Then rested his head back; closed his eyes.
Flexed his right calf, foot still pressed to the floor, and "Jesus" Phillip
muttered, but he didn't say stop.
"Imagine them coming back," Brandon said. "Those Sigma Alpha guys, drunk after
the big game. Their money gone. Their clothes all moved to different closets.
Trying to figure what happened. They'll have no clue!"
"The missing typewriters will make them wonder," said Phillip. But his voice
was tight. Unsmiling. Brandon wanted to shake him; he sighed. Then: quick as
blinking, telegraphing nothing, foot from the gas to the brake and he
slammed—tapped—slammed—tapped—
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Phillip yelled, at last, and Brandon with
his eyes still closed laughed and laughed and laughed.
"There's my boy," Brandon said. Laughing. "Very good, Phillip, very good."
He opened his eyes and Phillip was looking at him, away from the road; though
infuriatingly, as soon as he saw Brandon looking, he looked away.
"Goodness," Brandon said. "Temper, temper, Phillip."
"Oh, for—"
"Rupert would be disappointed in you."
"In me," said Phillip. "You really—if precious Rupert were here, you think he'd
be impressed you had us drive all night to break into your own old fraternity
house, just to—to steal sixty bucks and some old typewriters?"
"Don't forget the part with the coats," Brandon said.
He waggled his flask at Phillip, who pressed his lips closer together. Absurd,
transparent hypocrisy when Phillip was—Christ. Ostentatiously, Brandon tipped
the rest of the flask into his mouth and swallowed—swallowed. That click again
in Phillip's throat. He'd be looking now, wouldn't he. Brandon tossed the flask
in the back seat where it clanked against typewriters on its way to the floor
and then pitched his voice low and Harvard plummy and three times drunker than
he really was: hand on Phillip's knee.
"Phil," he said. Words slippery. "Phil I don't feel so good, Phil."
Phillip cleared his throat: flushing up. Brandon slid his hand up; did not
smile.
"I think I need to—to pull the car over. I think I need to—if I pull over will
you help me, unnnnh." Leaning his face on Phillip's shoulder; Phillip still
grim-faced to the road. "Blankets in the back," Brandon slurred, "keep it
running. You'd keep me warm wouldn't you Phil? Just—keep me warm, nothing else,
I don't want—please, I don't—I don't like it when—"
"God, fuck," said Phillip, almost too quietly to hear, and Brandon laughed,
then dropped the drunk act.
"Don't pretend you get nothing out of it," he said.
Phillip shifted in his seat. Shifted again.
"Yeah," he said, at last. "I know."
Brandon could feel Phillip's hand loosen, under his own hand on the wheel. It
rotated sideways, slightly: almost interlaced the fingers. Lopsided: whisper of
an embrace. An apology, Brandon knew. Phillip wouldn't go for a cuddle on his
own.
"In fact," Brandon said, "a fellow could argue that you get the most out of
this little arrangement of ours. Leave to me all the idea work, all the
planning, and fine-tuning and problem-solving when things go wrong, and all you
have to do is show up and collect your perverse little reward when we—"
"I like the planning," Phillip said over him.
"Oh, do you." Brandon pitched his voice again half-low, half-tipsy. "Not as
much as—unnnnnh. Phil. Not as much as what comes—"
"I helped with the planning for tonight." Phillip was turning red again, but he
was fighting a smile, too. He found Brandon charming. Well, Brandon was
charming: nobody else would take as much convincing as Phillip did. Phillip
added: "Not that there was all that much planning to do."
"Why, Mr. Morgan," said Brandon. "Anyone would think you desired to deepen our
criminal intimacy."
Phillip snorted. "Shut up," he said.
"Mmmm."
Phillip shot him a look. His face, closing up again.
"You think I wouldn't," Phillip said.
"My dear boy." He heard Rupert in his own voice too late; Phillip scowled.
"No, really," Phillip said. "You think I wouldn't. Is it because I want—because
I—I mean. I mean, I was studying with your Rupert before you ever came to St.
Andrew's, you know."
A sour taste. Brandon cleared his throat. Suddenly cold, he took his hand from
Phillip's hand on the wheel; turned and rolled up the window. In the enclosed
car the air was very still. Their breaths fogged the air; his fingers were
numb. He wanted a cigarette.
"Your degenerate propensities," he told Phillip, "have nothing to do with my
certain knowledge that you, Mr. Morgan, have neither the backbone nor the
testes for anything resembling—"
"Let's do it," Phillip said.
"Do what."
"Well—what. The perfect murder, isn't that what you and Rupert always like to
go on about when you're—"
"Really."
"—up late discussing German philosophy? Well why not?"
Brandon looked at Phillip, sidelong. His eyes were on Brandon now, completely.
Mouth open, wet lower lip. No longer riveted to the road: that was all
forgotten. He was leaning forward, practically over the gearshift. He would
bend over it, if Brandon asked. He would sit in Brandon's lap. He would press
himself up against Brandon as if Brandon were a planet, with a gravitational
force all his own. As if Phillip would happily orbit him, crash-land into him;
be ground to dust on the surface of him. Really this suggestion on his part was
unsurprising, Brandon supposed, with his blood nonetheless skimming thrumming
hot under his skin. If they did this thing then they would be joined together,
undeniably. Inseverably. And Phillip, who after so much as a housebreaking or a
little light card-sharping or even that first bout of arson back at St.
Andrew's had always sulked, and whined, and needed to bind them fast together,
would want that, of course. He would want the close-knottedness, the
foreverness; so that Brandon could never get himself free. Though that was
nonsense, of course: Brandon would be able to free himself; nothing a bit of
ingenuity wouldn't solve. And the adventure, in the meantime—! And watching
Phillip… and watching Phillip watch him—! Of course, Phillip wouldn't like the
doing of it, Brandon thought. He might even try to weasel out of the doing of
it, when it came down to it. Well: there would be none of that. He thinks he
can tie me, Brandon thought: I'll make him work for every knot.
"No reason at all," Brandon said.
"Plenty of planning for both of us, in a thing like that," said Phillip. He
sounded breathless. His fingers tightened, between Brandon's fingers. He really
was almost leaning his hips into the gearshift, now. Would probably press
himself against it in another minute, if Brandon said the right thing.
"It'd have to have flair," Brandon said. "Complexity."
"Yes," Phillip breathed.
"We'd have to get every detail correct, of course. Not because of the cops, or
anything, but it would—it will be our masterpiece."
"And we could—let's make it a." Phillip swallowed. Didn't go on. Brandon
glanced over and Phillip was sitting there with his mouth open, hand on his
throat, like he was choking. "Let's make it a girl," Phillip said, at last. "We
could—pick up a girl, tie her to the table." His chin wobbled; Brandon almost
laughed. "We could—cut her clothes off. I've always fantasized about a French
girl tied to the kitchen table while a whole group of soldiers—"
"No," Brandon said. He was amusing to listen to, but it was too ridiculous. The
man had patently never fantasized about any such thing. Phillip's shoulders
slumped, though his lip still wobbled.
"No," Brandon repeated. "Cutting the clothes off girls is no part of how I
imagine this."
"Oh," Phillip said. Breathed in long; and out. "Well then we could—we could
make it a boy?"
"The identity of the victim wouldn't be the important part," said Brandon,
giving the impression of being off-hand. He was hardly looking at the road, or
at Phillip, or at the taillights that still twisted up ahead. He could almost
see Rupert's study: the low light, the snowfall out the window. That first day
at St. Andrew's, when he had dragged himself and his books down the hall: his
cold toes, his raised fist. He had knocked, and opened a door, and there they'd
been: closeted together, Rupert marking his place in Murder Considered as One
of the Fine Arts, which Brandon at the time had never read. Which he had never
even heard of. Now, in the car, he could hear Phillip's shaky exhale.
"The important part," Brandon said, choosing his words like a painter from his
palette, "is that we'd be in the thing together, you see. That we would each
have an equal, ironclad part in it. That way we'd be bound to it, and to each
other; and neither of us could ever say anything about it to anyone else."
Phillip, as far as he could tell, was holding his breath. Brandon said,
"Something that would make the act itself a kind of—a kind of oath. Something
like… oh."
He went quiet and kept quiet until Phillip leaned further forward; kept quiet
until Phillip, eyes boring into the side of Brandon's face, made a desperate
curious little sound. Until Phillip, unable to stop himself, put a hot
inquiring hand on Brandon's leg.
"We'll strangle him, with a piece of rope," Brandon said. Phillip's fingers
tightened on his thigh. "A piece of virgin rope: we'll buy it just for this
purpose. We'll take it up to our apartment. And when the time comes," he told
him, "you'll hold one end, and I'll hold the other."
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: It is worthy of note, that each one of these boys brought into
the background the fact of having been, as children, isolated from any society
apart from that of their teachers, whose dominion over them was very great;
each one has brought into the background the unique distinction of having been
the two youngest graduates of their shared preparatory school; each has been
fed upon and undoubtedly conditioned by a curious series of imaginations which
through their persistence all this time have acquired the force of compulsion.

I am convinced, however, that in their development, the final relation of their
development to the Kentley situation was made possible by this peculiar and
strange compact which arose between these two boys at about the age of fifteen.
***
 
 
"And so it's settled," Phillip said. He had to raise his voice over the noises
Brandon was making with the gas can. "Mother phoned the headmaster so that it
would all be above-board, and Rupert is coming to us for the school holidays."
"Get those rags closer to the door," Brandon said, around the new cigarette
lighter in his mouth.
Phillip nudged at the rags with his toe, but didn't pick them up. He
wanted—more. Something. This had been his coup; he'd spent the past day and a
half picturing what Brandon's face would look like when he told him. Phillip
had wanted Rupert so that he could get Brandon, too. Brandon, he had imagined:
in pyjamas, in Phillip's childhood bedroom. (Because Rupert, of course, would
have the best spare room; and Aunt Elizabeth the second-best; and surely,
Phillip prayed—or would have done, if he and Brandon and Rupert still went in
for such things—that one of his father's orphaned law students or other, one or
more of whom nearly always took refuge at the Morgan home during the winter
holidays, would be given the last spare room.) He pictured: Brandon, cheek
pillow-creased, borrowing Phillip's bedroom slippers. Brandon, tobogganing with
him down the Stuarts' hill. Brandon and Rupert and Phillip, reading by the
fire, speaking collegiately, while Mathilda brought them all hot toddies with
real whiskey. Brandon, in bed with Phillip, talking to Phillip about Rupert,
while Rupert himself read by the light of the spare-room lamp just down the
hall. All these things had flashed across the backs of Phillip's eyes the
moment his mother's voice, on the telephone, had told him that Rupert had
agreed to come up to New Canaan for the first week of the break. He had
thought, surely, that they would flash across Brandon's, too; that there would
be no difference between them; that in this, they would be the same. He hadn't
thought of a way to make the images come to Brandon, if they failed to on their
own.
"Phillip!" Brandon said. "C'mon, the rags!"
Phillip bent, and gathered up the rags. He staggered over, clutching them.
"Finally," Brandon said. "Twist them together, make a line."
"A line?"
"A line, a line, a—give them here."
Brandon let the gas can clunk hard on the shack floor; gas sloshed out the top
onto his lovely new shoes. If he noticed, Phillip thought, he didn't seem to
mind. He plucked two rags from the bundle Phillip still held in his arms,
absurdly, like an over-burdened washerwoman; Phillip thought forlornly of the
king and his slave. Phillip wanted to be the slave; he always imagined being
the slave. It was only that, when he imagined it, the price of his servitude
was always dignified, despite everything. He would be cast into the gladiator
ring, to fight four strong men at once. He would emerge victorious, brow
bloodied, golden chains raised above his head; and later, his king would salve
his wounds, reverential fingers lingering on Phillip's skin. You saved the
kingdom from dishonor, the king would say, mouth brushing the curve of
Phillip's shoulder like Phillip, though enslaved, was too precious to be
touched except glancingly, worshipfully. Brandon, here in this shack, teeth
clamped on his new cigarette lighter, was twisting two rags together in a way
that suggested ringing the neck of a chicken. He had a pimple on the side of
his nose. Phillip sighed, and put the rags down, and started twisting two
together like Brandon was doing.
"That's more like it," Brandon said. Phillip gave a sort of a limply sarcastic
'hurrah' gesture, lifting up his rags, and Brandon snorted. Phillip felt he
could breathe, a little. He twisted on another rag.
"Hey," Brandon said. Phillip looked up: Brandon was holding out a bottle.
"Roger got it for me," he said. "Take the chill off."
It wouldn't take the chill off, Phillip thought about saying. He thought about
saying how it brings blood to the surface of the skin but lowers the core
temperature of the body and lowers the sharpness of the perceptions, thereby
increasing the risk of hypothermia even while the drinker feels warmer. But
Brandon hadn't said this, so he might not know it, and definitely wouldn't like
it. And anyway, the two of them were meant to be the same. So Phillip laid his
rope braid on the floor, and took the bottle, and took a swig. It was heinous.
Brandon made a little "go along" gesture at him with his hand, so Phillip took
another little nip before he passed the bottle back. Brandon gave him an
approving smile, and lifted the bottle up to take a longer swig than either of
Phillip's. Phillip felt himself grinning back. It did make you feel warmer,
anyway.
"Think you can keep doing that?" Brandon said.
"Think I can manage."
"Good man," said Brandon. It was the tone Rupert always used, in class, when
you grasped a difficult point. Good man. Phillip looked at his hands, twisting
rags, and thought of the expression on Brandon's face when Rupert said it to
him: Good man: eyes shining, chest broadening. Hands moving like he didn't
quite know what to do with them in his pleasure. Thank you, sir, he would
always say: and that thread of connection, communion, stretched between them,
excluding everyone else. Phillip often felt he might just bolt from the room at
such moments; bolt from the school, and nobody would notice he'd gone. He
shivered, hot and cold at once; then jerked in surprise to find Brandon, back
at his side, nudging him again with the bottle.
He looked up while he drank. Brandon had ringed the baseboards of the abandoned
room in twisted-together, gas-soaked rags. Here by the door the rag snake
joined up with itself: head and tail twisted together. Phillip added his last
few rags to the line, so that it led back almost to the threshold; then looked
up at Brandon, fingering his lighter, looking at the room. Phillip passed over
the bottle and Brandon drank.
"The best place to watch," Brandon said, "would be right there. Dead center.
Middle of the room."
Phillip laughed; Brandon looked put out, and a stab of—fear, or—
"Imagine," Brandon said. He sounded dead serious. "The flames coming up around
us on all sides."
"Come on," Phillip said, uncertainly. "We'd burn up."
Brandon looked at him; his eyes narrowed, and tipped up the bottle again.
Phillip felt the last of his own smile being reabsorbed achily into his face.
He shifted from one foot to the other. Surely Brandon wouldn't ask—not really?
And if he did?
"Yeah," Brandon said, at last, "all right, come on," and led the way out the
door.
Outside the wind cut through Phillip's coat; he tugged his hat down over his
ears. Brandon shooed him back from the door; meekly Phillip went. Brandon
passed him the bottle and Phillip stood and held it. He could feel a single
point of glass, cold against his thumb through a hole in his mitten, as Brandon
knelt down near the door opening, flicked open his new lighter so the little
flame caught, and then tossed the thing on top of the gas-soaked rags. The
FLOUMP roar of ignition came before it could even have landed and the wave of
heat—
"Shit!" Brandon shouted, laughing. "Get back, damn, get back!" and he took
Phillip's mitten in his bare hand and they half-ran, half-stumbled together,
back to a safe distance as the shack door filled with fire.
They collapsed on a hillock a hundred yards from the shack. Brandon's shining
face was illuminated by the blaze; he punched the air, watching the flames lick
up past the bottoms of the windows; and Phillip watched Brandon. Brandon still
held Phillip's hand in his. Phillip could feel the skin of Brandon's palm
through the hole in his mitten. He took another swig, and Brandon looked at him
with exhilaration and something that may have been fondness and said, "Pass
that over," so Phillip passed it over. He was warm now, from the fire and the
booze and his own terror and Brandon's hand.
"That was your new lighter," he said, which was a stupid thing to say.
"Worth it," Brandon said. He shrugged. He was still looking at Phillip. "I'll
buy a new one."
"What if they find it?" Phillip said. A rising wave of—panic, of—too-much-ness,
of—the flames were climbing up around the outside of the door, now, so it
wasn't just the rags and the gas: the house itself had caught. It would burn to
the ground. Phillip asked, "What if they know it was yours?"
Brandon laughed, and drank again. "They won't," he said. "God, you worry."
Phillip wanted to shake him. To push him, to—how, he felt, could they go back
to school, now, like nothing had happened? Or like—like more had happened. Like
Phillip understood what it all meant. Or like nothing more could happen, and it
was all over, and there was nothing more he could do. Nothing more they could
do. What if the woods caught, Phillip thought? What if St. Andrew's burned?
Brandon, breathless, grinning, looking down at the blaze, was still holding
Phillip's hand.
"How much have you had to drink?" Phillip asked him.
Brandon held the bottle up to the flames: about a quarter of it was gone. If
Brandon had gotten through that much on his own, he might be drunk indeed.
"Dunno," Brandon said. "How much have you?"
Phillip took the bottle from him, and tipped it back. It felt like a decision.
Like getting one up on Brandon for just a moment, like—"All right!" said
Brandon, and whooped, and reached across Phillip to take the thing back from
him and take an equally decisive swig. He turned, grin wolf-wide, trickle of
gin down the side of his chin with the right side of his face glowing in the
flames, hot on their sides as their other sides froze and Phillip, no longer
one up on anyone, lunged forward, thinking with undirected anxious fury get it
and make him and at the same time God and pushed Brandon back: tackled him to
the ground.
Back to the frozen earth, Brandon laughed out loud.
"Shut up," Phillip said. "Shut up, shut up—"
He wanted to hit him, make him stop. Brandon was grinning, laughing; he looked
thrilled, looked happy and blade-focused and at ease like he never looked for
Phillip, like he never even looked for Rupert or anyone Phillip had ever known.
"All right," Brandon said, "come on," still grinning, and Phillip, furious,
shifted to slap him, to punch his face, could almost feel the smack of skin on
skin but Brandon knocked his elbow sideways so crumpled chest to chest he
punched him with his mouth, instead.
Split lip bloody teeth Phillip shoving down and Brandon going shocked-still
beneath him, letting him, letting Phillip open his mouth and fill it up, fill
him up, burning up and the flames—
"Shit," someone saying, Phillip, pulling off mittens blinking shoving Brandon
down and everything around them coming in flashes: the gin bottle overturned
mostly-empty on the ground; the bare trunks of the sugar maples flickering in
the flames as something crashed inside the burning shack and Phillip's own
hand, moving as if automatically, as if to choreography known in his bones,
pulling at Brandon's shoulder, pushing him over, pushing his face to the ground
hand flat to the back of his head while reaching around to yank his fly open,
yank his trousers down, panicked incandescent Phillip could still feel Brandon
laughing.
"Shut up," he gasped, and then "Shit, oh shit—" and pulling his own trousers
and his boxers down to his thighs and shoving himself between Brandon's legs,
shoving him down into the leaves and the frost and the frozen mud of St.
Andrew's grounds with the fire roaring up all around them, inside him, inside
Phillip who couldn't breathe, who couldn't see, who buried his face in the back
of Brandon's neck and came instantly, skinned and gutted and turned out with
all his guts on display, transformed, forever, still in his birthday parka,
plastered to Brandon's back.
Shit, he thought, again, and rolled off him. God. Staring. Cold air and smoke
in his lungs; couldn't catch his breath.
Brandon turned over. His face showed nothing. Nothing that Phillip could read.
What would it be like, he thought, to have such a power of blankness. Brandon
cleaned off his thighs with his monogrammed handkerchief and put himself back
together. Trousers back up and belt done up, he still looked the same as he had
before. He felt around on the ground until he found the gin bottle, which when
tipped back upright still had three inches in the bottom of it. He sipped from
it, then squinted across at Phillip.
"Well," said Brandon. "Better?"
To save his own life, he couldn't have said—what could he answer? He wanted to
hide. To apologize, abjectly, on his knees. To run away from St. Andrew's,
forever; until the thought of Brandon stopped making him want to vomit on the
ground. To do it again. To do it worse, harder. To make it hurt. To do it so
violently that Brandon would be forced to understand. So that he would. To
force himself into Brandon until he could put on Brandon's blankness, like a
coat. There was a scrape on Brandon's cheekbone, where Phillip had shoved his
face into the rocky ground.
"You should come too," he said, at last, looking down at the little shack, now
engulfed in flames. "To New Canaan, over the holiday. When Rupert's there."
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: Speaking of personal loyalties, Mr. Morgan said, "I was trying
to break down any feeling that I had for those around me. I have tried to kill
affection for many years." ***
 
 
Brandon's sodden toes squelched in his boots. They were thawing, and ached with
it. The long corridor of this place—of St. Andrew's—stretched out forever:
chill draughts through his coat-buttons. Chill puddles on the hardwoods: some
of them still studded with melting snow.
He shifted his satchel from one shoulder to the other; looked at the little
piece of paper in his hand. Room 30-A, he was meant to be looking for. 56-B,
the plate read above the room nearest him. The next one was 58-B. Was he in the
wrong wing? On the wrong floor? The hall was empty; and anyway the other boys
were so much older. Huge. He shrank away from them. You know your way, of
course, don't you dear, the woman at Admissions had said, and Brandon hadn't
argued. He preferred to find his own way in any case, as a general rule. Though
his satchel, now, was heavier than usual; and the rest of him colder. His
fingers were still clumsy with cold.
He turned a corner into a side-hallway; almost a little niche. Just two doors,
not numbered at all, but labeled Thompson and Cadell. Brandon paused in the
hall. Under the crack of one of the doors, he made out the flicker of a fire.
He hesitated, hand lifted to knock. There were no voices behind the door, that
he could make out. Maybe Cadell, whoever that was, was out. Perhaps he'd left a
fire burning, and Brandon could warm up by it for a moment before continuing
on. Still.
The door was of heavy oak; solid. He had the impression that his little knock
was swallowed up by the wood long before it could have emerged on the other
side. There was a sense of paddedness. Muffledness. No response. Brandon turned
the knob, and pushed the door open a crack. Then a bit more. Then stopped.
Cadell wasn't out. He was sitting here, upright, salt-and-pepper-haired, in an
overstuffed armchair by a roaring fire, his index finger between the pages of a
book he held closed with the other fingers of his right hand. At his feet, on
the hearthrug, a slender-dark-haired boy, almost as young as Brandon himself:
his body angled toward Cadell's body. He was frozen, half-risen to his knees.
As if the moment before, Brandon thought, he'd been about to reach forward to
take the book from Cadell, or to lay a hand on Cadell's knee. Faced toward each
other they made a closed circuit, warm and secure.
The boy had twisted, when the door opened, and Cadell had looked up in
surprise. Brandon stood there, ridiculous, excluded, dripping on Cadell's
office floor, as two pairs of eyes under raised eyebrows took him in.
"Hello there," Cadell said. "Phillip here was about to make some hot cocoa,
before we continue on with the De Quincey. You look like a man who could use
some."
"I—yes," said Brandon. "Sir," he added, lifting his chin.
"Good then," Cadell said. "Good man." And he smiled.
 
 
*** THE WITNESS: Mr. Shaw also looks forward to the experience of considering
himself objectively as a murderer. He finds, as a matter of fact, after all,
that that is not so exciting, because no material change has happened.
Murderers think and feel very much like anybody else.

He thinks and feels very much like he did before. ***
 
 
End Notes
     All trial snippets are taken largely verbatim from the Leopold and
     Loeb trial transcripts, which are available in their entirety here.
     The names have been changed and a few key words have been altered.
     Many of the events, exchanges & fantasies in the actual text are also
     patterned heavily on ones detailed in Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of
     It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago.
     The title is taken from the (kind of terrible) Laurence Hope poem
     "Adoration," which Nathan Leopold quoted to psychiatrist Bernard
     Glueck in an attempt to describe his simultaneous idolization of, and
     identification with, Richard Loeb.
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