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CRIMINAL WORLD
You never told me of your other faces, you were the widow of a wild cat
And now I know about your special kisses and I know you know, that is that
I guess I recognize your destination, I think I see beneath your makeup?
What you want is so-separation, this is no ordinary, this is no ordinary world
What a criminal world, the boys are like baby-faced girls
What a criminal girl, she'll show you where to shoot your gun
What a typical mothers son, the only thing that she enjoys
Is a criminal world, where the girls are like baby-faced boys
You've got a very heavy reputation, but no-one knows about your low-life
I know a way to find a situation and hold a candle to your high-life disguise
You caught me kneeling at your sister's door, that was no ordinary stick-up
I'm well aware just what you're looking for, I am no ordinary
I am no ordinary boy
…
What a criminal world
What a criminal
Criminal
- David Bowie, “Criminal World”
Chapter 1: Harlem, March 1985 // Desire, April 1983
1985
The time is changing. The seasons are at war with themselves - resulting in an almost balmy unexpectedly grey day succeeding to nightfall with an extraordinary onset of purple, pink twilight in the east, and to the west a last defiant streak of bright orange sky. He’s standing on the commuter train platform at E 125th looking down the long Harlem thoroughfare and thinking unexpectedly of Cape Cod. The sunsets there, how he craved that light and a bygone sky in his early days as a prisoner at Club Cod, the irony in how rarely he pays it any mind these days when Cain Blood makes his approach up the stairs and onto the elevated train platform, leaving his guys behind him at the passageway entrance to meet Ash on the gangway.
“Unusual place to call me out, man.”
“Cain,” a nod of respect, his name given appropriate weight and recognition. He waits for Blood to choose his ground.
“Ash… Lynx, ain’t it? Funny name for a white boy.”
Ash shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly and turns a peridot gaze from the sea of brick buildings to the west to fully take in Cain Blood as he halts his approach a respectable distance away. Cain is 200 pounds of solid muscle and rage anchored firmly behind a cool and tempered personality. He projects the perfect solemnity without abandoning a casual relaxation in his body language that other people could disregard as indicative of his self-assurance or naivety. Ash knows this ease is to allow for sudden violence - to be present and responsive in the face of continuous threat. Admirable. Familiar.
Here stands Ash Lynx who could change his threads to a quality suit and be sooner mistaken for a lost financier’s son looking for a train back to Connecticut. Hartford, maybe.
Ash, who knows that Cain is calculating enough to catch the outline of his Colt in his waistband as his shrug lightly shifts the fabric of his oversized white t-shirt.
“I like the view.”
“Word.” A pause. “You here alone is the only thing stopping this from being damn near suicide. You gotta know that.”
“I don’t have plans to die uptown. But I figure … the way things are happening… ” Ash finds as he says it that this is something more meaningful to him than he could have imagined possible two years ago. Here it is, a moment engineered for what seemed like ages: he is starting to feel that Dino has made a stupid and significant mistake elevating him from “favored toy” to “wild young heir” or “untamable trophy wife.” He’s something more now. Something that allows him to move through this city like one of its very own currents - electric and dangerous. A demon. Beside Cain it feels good to think of what that demon might do to show Dino the error of his ways. “This is a good opportunity. It’s time we met.” Things are finally on the move.
“You look like you’re live, but you talk like a suit. So, what the hell we got to meet about … Ash Lynx?”
He can’t help but laugh a little, a capo, a cartographer.
“I don’t think we have any business. I’m not intruding in any of Sabbath's deals. And you’re clear of my part of town: which is now everything northeast of Chinatown and below 14th street.”
Cain waits behind increasingly unnecessary shades, listening and inscrutable as he takes in this news. Ash reads the silence as good an invitation as any to continue.
“I want to meet Fly,” he says.
1983
Blanca is gone. Ash isn’t prepared to feel anything in his wake so when a feeling strangely close to “bereavement” creeps its way through Dino’s compound and starts to wind, serpentine and suffocating around Ash’s chest — he surprises himself by making a demand of Papa.
“If he’s gone, that means I’m ready. To work.” He leaves the word work hanging there seductive and mysterious. And terrifying. It’s back to the street but he’s been changed by Blanca’s training. Surely it wasn’t to end up back on his knees in a cheap hotel off Times Square, or on all fours in silk sheets in Jersey.
He can shoot with such surgical accuracy that even Blanca was unnerved. He admitted it in that laconic and scholarly distance his sociopathy had adopted in his role as private tutor to a princeling. “I don’t know what’s more frightening: your precision or your speed. But they’re both going to ensure you become who you decide to be. Aslan.”
It wasn’t for nothing or Ash will start screaming and screaming and won’t be able to stop in this hollow loneliness he only felt once before – when Griff was drafted.
Dino is sedately standing before the mirror unwinding his tie, and watching Ash on the bed. He is unmovable, no matter how much screaming Ash might have liked to indulge in. A reversed image of every John Ash has ever watched departing for their facade of normalcy at home later with their own wives and kids …. preparing to turn in for the night. Massive, strong hands still moving so deftly as to be gentle with each expensive garment. Ash feels Dino’s eyes on him, even if the gaze is leveled through the intermediary of a reflective surface like a firebrand. They are so much more possessive than any other client – and equally shrewd. “Already dissatisfied with me, sweetheart? I was looking forward to having more time with you, now.”
Ash’s mouth is dry but he keeps his shallow breath steady. He can’t show what he wants in this way. Dino’s perverse desire to shape him like another orchid in his greenhouse is still so dangerous. Papa’s success in doing this so far has been the chief pleasure of his rotten, putrid life — and it gives him only more power over Ash. Infinite control.
The only control he can muster in return is to play on Dino’s desires first.
Ash pouts. “I want some real excitement …” He leans back against the headboard, a coquette who can now kill as easily as kiss. How much longer can he lead this monster on?
Dino turns with a rumbled hum of pleasure with equal undertones of amusement in the sound. He knows a negotiation when he hears one, but he wants this, wants to see Ash persuade.
It will all be for his own ends, after all. What he wants, and what he has designed for Ash to want.
Ash knows the script by heart.
...
Hours of Dino’s brand of “excitement” later, Ash ends up set back on the streets for the first time in months. Dumped in a seedy hub of unhoused miscreants in the Lower East Side like a stray by Marvin, of all people. Marvin, who first grabs the waistband of Ash’s jeans to pull him back and hold him in place in the leather seat before he can flee out onto Ave A— to have the last word. Ash has to resist the compulsion to buck his hips in a knee-jerk and learned response when he feels himself made to sit back again. The thrill of this familiar horror sets his nervous system sickeningly alight. Will his own instincts always betray him? The thought now makes for a momentary rise of panic before he can control himself. “Let go a-me! Fucking now!” He has to stop an immature “I’ll tell Papa!” from slipping past his bruised lips, and he swallows down the sentence like he’s swallowed every bit of piss and poison that’s ever come his way. Takes a breath. Remembers Marvin is a fucking swine.
He’s earned a small amount of dignity from his teacher and he means to keep it. So he settles down.
Marvin leers but does not let his meaty hands move over Ash’s body though they both know he wants to. “Papa Dino might think of you different now, but I know who you are. Movie star.”
One foot out of line and what - Marvin spreads the word out about his past to undercut his efforts at winning respect? Ash goes back to the small, strangely lit rooms and damp beds, listening to the shutter of a camera capture his distress as pleasure? Never again.
“You really ought to get a life, Marvin. You got lucky once or twice but it’s not going to happen now so you might as well let go.” When it doesn’t happen immediately, Ash lets the dangerous animal in him forward into his gaze, but remains still and stony under Marvin’s weight so as not to give him one ounce of enjoyment of any physical struggle. “Let go. Now.” They wait in silence for a moment, gauging one another. Ash would like nothing more than to slaughter this pig.
“When Papa wants you home, and when I come to pick your sorry ass up, you better not give me any trouble, you hear me? Pretty boy?” He’s so close Ash can feel his hot breath and spittle on his cheek. He can feel his own wrathful heartbeat. It would be easy, so easy now to simply slip a knife from his pocket and drive it upward into Marvin’s neck. As easy and as smooth as a lover’s caress. What he’s best at.
Ash keeps his granite expression one more moment, close to making a mistake already. A voice disturbingly similar to Blanca’s whispers warningly, Ash … you can’t afford to be baited so easily— so Ash listens and shifts his manner accordingly, letting his temper cool and bestowing Marvin with an angelic smile and a breezy sweet voice. “Geez, Marvin. That’s all it is? You’re wound awfully tight about this. You need to relax. I know the rules.” They all know the rules, don’t they? Marvin included.
Rule number 1: Ash belongs to Dino.
“Don’t fuck me over, you slut.” He releases Ash and leans back into the driver’s seat fully, frowning and maybe a little sweaty. Like this proximity was suddenly too much for him. It would be fucking funny if Ash didn’t know better about the consequences of being capricious and clever to such men. It’s a game they love to play … until they don’t.
Ash throws open the car door to a cold bright morning immediately and clambers out. Waves at him with a cheery, slightly fruity, and surely frustratingly cute, “bye bye!” before escaping into Tompkins Square Park.
The clock is ticking in his head.
He feels dirty.