by Zack
Mike managed to tug Jim around to face him properly. He lowered his voice under the tuneless piano. “You’re not planning to palm me off on these blokes, are you?” He shuddered.
Jim leaned in confidentially. “Look. The nearest is Guy D’Aubusson, shit-hot on the West End stage—the other’s Ernest Haines.”
Mike’s look of faint puzzlement had barely left his face since entering the A&S Club. He’d never heard of an actor called Ghee Doberson and the last name left him no more enlightened.
“TV producer here and in the States and—” Jim leaned in even closer, “—a very good friend of Rock Hudson, who is often here in town.”
A name Mike certainly did know, and he understood the emphasis Jim placed on the name. Get in with Ernest, and Rock’s your uncle. Well, he’d wanted to get into movies, but via the bedchamber of an old Hollywood star hadn’t been on the agenda.
Ernest and Guy quickly monopolized him as Jim discreetly stepped aside “to let the two fruits handle the goods for a bit.” Mike leaned back against the bar trying to concentrate on the buzz of conversation and the few dancing queens with their trade on the flickering floor while his new companions, who manhandled him to stand between their bar stools, fondled his basket and the uninterested cartso inside. He spent a minute wondering how Jim, a BBC A.F.M. and part-time pimp had learned the peculiar gay-speak argot they called Polari—and why he hadn’t really come across it before.
The meschinger on the bloody strillers had given up, the piano fallen silent to be replaced by a sub-Mantovani-style string orchestra issuing from a tinny sound system. As—he thought it was Guy—wormed a hand under the waistband of his pants to cup his balls, Mike became aware of a pair of eyes across an angle of the dance floor, which he realized with a shiver had been staring at him for a while. It was hard to make out much detail through the haze of tobacco smoke and the blood-colored light cloaking the far booths, but those eyes were calling. He rubbed his right eyebrow with a knuckle, shook his head as if to clear it, and then pulled away from Guy’s groping before thinking of what he was doing. He saw the start of Jim’s warning look from the corner of his eyes but ignored him as he moved in a daze around the edge of the snogging couples swaying to the string serenade. He came to a standstill, feet apart, jaw clenched, and glared back down at the man seated on the edge of the bench. Mike had no idea if the young man seated opposite Gimlet-Eyes was with him or not and didn’t care. Their interlocked focus stretched out into seconds. Mike saw a powerful, seven o’clock-shadowed, square-jawed man with a thick topping of black hair. Although it receded at the temples, the bold quiff and his unlined face suggested he was years younger than most of the club’s antique clientele. Mike thought he resembled a slightly more mature and neater Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. He had seen a rerun at the Academy in Oxford Street not long ago. Very slowly, one devilish pointed eyebrow arched up questioningly and the man slid back a little on the bench. As though hypnotized, Mike eased down on the end of the seat, aware of the pressure of his knee against the man’s be-jeaned thigh as they continue to stare into each other.
“What’s with the silly stud in your ear?”
The deep, growly American voice came as a shock which jarred Mike out of the weird reverie his interrogator had cast him into. He raised a defensive hand to his ear and gave the slightest of shrugs. “It was a gift from a friend.”
“Yeah? Well you don’t need it any more than you need those two neighing nellies running their hands over you. James Rosen.”
Mike nodded as though he knew that and spoke his own name quietly but above the soaring strings.
James Rosen raised his head to follow the violin strains with a shark’s grimace. “Christ, this place gives me the creeps. What are you drinking, Mike?”
“I think it was scotch with water.”
The American swung his leonine head at his other young companion. “Ross, two bourbons—get yourself one—and tell that preying mantis she better have the real stuff or I’ll have her gonads sliced off.”
Mike sensed resentment coming off Ross, but he reacted with alacrity.
Rosen turned his gaze back. “I’ll get to the point, Mikey my boy. I don’t have time to waste, and I usually get what I want. That’s why I summoned you.”
That was news. Eyes across the room… that was a summons? Well it had got him over. “Mr. Rosen—” he began only to be stopped with a forefinger laid across his lips.
“Call me James. In this dirty little gin-joint, you stand out like a Cape Cod lighthouse in a Force Ten storm. I have specific sexual needs, and I want you to fulfill some of them. And I pay good money for good service.”
Ross returned with three small tumblers and put them down. James picked one up and examined it for cleanliness. It didn’t appear to pass muster, but he tossed the contents back in one. “Drink up. Let’s split.”
Mike raised his glass and drank. The sharp bourbon made his eyes smart, and when he opened them Jim was standing over him with an anxious expression.
“Mike! Ernest Haines… You can’t just run out on him—”
“Haines is a barrel of shit. Couldn’t produce a kids’ Christmas parade.”
At the American drawl, Jim paused, blinked twice, and then a smile spread across his face. “Why, Mr. Rosen! I— I’m so happy to meet—”
“This your boy? Here!” James pulled several bills from a wallet and held them out across Mike. “Now get the hell outta my way. Up!” The last was to Mike, who shot to his feet and stepped back to let James out. Ross stood as well and then looked crestfallen when told he needn’t leave yet. “Stay and have some fun… if you can with the raving queens in this place.”
Jim didn’t count the money but Mike could tell from his expression that it was a lot as he stuffed it away with a wide-eyed gesture meaning I’ll see you later.
“Take your coat off and let’s have a good look at you. Strip!”
Mike was still in a daze from the chauffeured limousine drive from Soho to the Hilton on Park Lane, being whisked to the twenty-seventh floor suite, and a view over Hyde Park from one of the corner windows and into the grounds of Buckingham Palace from the other. If I can see the Queen, can she see me? Probably not. God save the queen, we mean it man, we love our queen.
He kicked off his high-heeled Oxfords, one of the prizes of ill-gotten gains, and unbuttoned his shirt, feeling suddenly shy under the calm, determined gaze of the man who had brought him here. James Rosen lounged casually against a chest of rosewood drawers, and beheld Mike with a dark, unblinking gaze. And then an amusing thought crossed Mike’s mind. Mister Smith, have you any thoughts as to your future? Oh yes. High-class escort, operating out of Mayfair, servicing wealthy male tourists…
So here he was, with an obviously wealthy tourist, in Mayfair. Silly as it was, the thought calmed Mike, and he moved sexily to slip arms from the pale blue high-collared Apache shirt. He held it out and let it drape over the end of the massive bed. He sucked on his lower lip and started unbuckling the knitted white belt threaded through the loops of his slim-fit, high-rise trousers, which he knew showed off his package— basketful of cartso, hah! —to great effect. The pants, a current favorite, in a deep navy with widely spaced white vertical stripes, had so overheated Guy and Ernest. The wiggle required to shuck the trousers brought James Rosen to his feet and across the small space to reach hands out. Mike shivered at the warm contact. James spread his fingers to stroke all over Mike’s chest, arms, stomach and over the bulge in his briefs.
“You belong to a gym, Mikey-boy?”
“Not since I left school, but I kept up with the swimming at the Swiss Cottage public baths.”
“I’ll fix you with a place I use when I’m in London. It’s on Old Bond Street.”
“The Burlington,” Mike said to sound knowledgeable.
James nodded curtly as he slid both hands under Mike’s armpits, a sensation Mike found irresistibly erotic, and his hitched breathing made the man smile. There was n
othing very nice in it, more of a grimace of possession, and again Mike was reminded of a shark rolling over for the kill as James twisted his head down to bite the left nipple. He ran a hand down under the briefs between Mike’s legs and brought it up to cup his balls, then pressed the thumb down hard onto the junction between scrotum and cock shaft. Mike was very hard and he knew James was in a similar state.
After a few seconds of chewing on his erect nipple, James pushed Mike to the bed and at the same time almost tore off his briefs. “Lie down.” In another minute the American was stripped down naked. His powerful tool stood up straight. Mike took in the dark pelt on his chest and the way a trail of it snaked down to meet his pubic hair. The man was fit… and dangerous. Mike admitted his uneasiness, and yet there was a magnetic force at work, one which held him in its thrall and made his balls ache with the need for release.
James reached into a drawer to produce a tube of what Mike instantly recognized as KY Jelly—which meant only one thing, since Mike doubted James wanted to get fucked. The first and last had been Jez McGowran and he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about the implied penetrative threat. But first James placed one knee on the bed beside Mike’s shoulder, leaned over, and without another word held the back of his head in a strong grip. He raised him up forcefully while bending his straining cock down with the other hand until the crown pressed against Mike’s lips. “Take it!” came the grunt.
And Mike did.
He opened his mouth as wide as it would go and slid forward onto the American’s chunky meat. James responded by pulling back on the short hair at the nape of Mike’s neck and then jerking his head forward in a regular rhythm. Each time he did this, James slipped Mike another inch of cock until he had him gagging on the entire length. It had the desired effect. Mike ran saliva until it lay thickly on his chest. James fucked his throat for a few minutes and then released his head. Mike fell back, coughing on his own slaver. James moved quickly between his thighs, spread them wide, wiped his cockhead drenched in Mike’s own drool, then slapped a good squirt of KY on his shaft and greased it up.
The penetration was like the man, little as Mike yet knew him—fast, efficient, and very powerful. No foreplay, no fingering to loosen him up. Just straight in and a vigorous fuck that soon had Mike swooning from the intensity of his prostate getting banged to buggery. He hadn’t even touched himself—and neither did Rosen—when he came off violently. After the first emission, the second squirt of jizz slapped his cheek, he was coming so hard. James had a Burt Lancaster-style square-mouthed grin of bared teeth, and he panted at the same frantic speed of his fucking. He lifted Mike’s rump up higher to bear down harder until Mike was staring straight at the flaring slit at the tip of his cock as it continued to cream his own lips.
And then James vented a drawn-out groan which seemed to come from his heaving belly as he loosed hard into Mike. The pumping slowed only slightly, and gradually James let his torso fall down between Mike’s still raised thighs until his head rested against Mike’s chest. He felt James’s tongue move against his flesh, licking at his spunk and slowly eating it with small slurping sounds. When James pulled, out Mike felt his insides contract like a deflating balloon with the removal.
He expected to be sent packing with a hand out, but Mike woke up in the suite’s second, smaller bedroom, having been ordered to be ready at nine sharp for a shower. Rosen had made it clear that if he fucked in two, he slept as one. “None of that crummy lovey-cuddling stuff.” The hotel call service broke into his weird dreams at ten minutes to nine. He staggered naked from the bed and remembered how reamed he’d felt after Jez had plowed his furrow. This was worse. As he made his way out to the bathroom he passed a full-height wall mirror and almost laughed out loud at his bow-legged cowboy swagger.
The American was already in the huge walk-in shower, soaping up a good hard-on. “I… I’m not sure I can take another, James,” he started lamely, which only aroused another of those wide rectangular smiles.
James reached out, pulled him bodily into the enclosure under the water, soaped up his ass quickly, and then fucked him again for five or six minutes. But this time he did reach around, hug Mike into his stomach and chest as he fucked, and stroke Mike expertly to a satisfying orgasm before shooting his own load deep inside.
By the time they dried and Mike dressed, James was seated at a table in the suite’s sitting room, sipping orange juice between conducting a loud telephone conversation and contemplating a series of silver-domed breakfast dishes. He waved Mike to a seat with a help-yourself gesture. The sex had made him hungry, starving in fact. A few words on James’s end of the conversation caught Mike’s attention. There seemed to be a fair bit about locations, settings, production storyboards. Movies, in other words.
They exchanged no words because James was never off the phone, but with breakfast over he walked Mike to the door, one arm draped over his shoulder. And then he spoke. “I’m in London two more weeks, Mikey-boy, and I want you every night. Right?”
“I—”
“Take this and buy yourself some decent clothes. I’ll see you here at five this afternoon. Come dressed for a high class restaurant.”
And with that Mike was out in the wide hallway staring at the closed door. He glanced at the envelope James had stuffed in his hand, withdrew a sheaf of bills. His eyes widened at the sight. He counted. A hundred twenty…! Shit! After a long ride down in the elevator, he crossed the lobby to a discreet row of payphones and rang the shop to apologize to Daniel Jude for being a bit late. Then he got hold of Jim.
“Best be quick. I’m on duty in twenty, got a cab waiting outside. So how did it go last—”
“What did he give you?” Mike interrupted, and when he heard the amount he had to believe Jim wasn’t fudging. “A hundred!”
“What’d you get, then?”
Mike didn’t feel ready to share details and mumbled about it being a bit more, actually a lot more.
“Really?” Jim said with some astonishment. “And what’d you have to do for all that?”
“Oh, nothing really. This Rosen guy just throws money around all over—man, you should see his hotel suite—”
“Listen, dumbnuts. Don’t you know who you pulled last night?”
“I know he’s something to do with movies.”
“Christ! I thought you were into the things. Ah, sorry. I forgot.” Even down the phone line Jim’s sarcasm dripped. “You only go for the arty stuff. James H. Rosen is only the hottest hot-shot film producer on both sides of the Atlantic. Don’t you read anything? I mean, those two camp old fruits last night… forget ’em, they’d be good for a few regular quid, but Rosen. Shit! It went okay? Tell me it went okay. He wants to see you again?”
Yup, Jim’s right out of it. He’s not even twisting my arm demanding I bring him his share of the cash. “He wants me every night for two weeks, until he goes back to America, I think.”
“The cabbie’s yelling at me. I got to go, sunshine. Well done. Play the man for all he’s worth. This could be our real killing.”
Yeah if the big hottest hot-shot fucker doesn’t fuck me to death in the meantime. But Mike just said, “Yes, okay. Keep your hair on. I’ll keep him sweet.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A New Direction
“Jeez, Mike my man! What’re you doing to him?” Jim couldn’t hide the amazement at seeing how much money Mike handed over. Again. “Means I can lash out on prezzies this Christmas.”
“Look, that’s the last.” Mike fixed Jim with a serious frown as he saw his words sink in.
Jim glanced down again at the wad of five pound notes in his hand, and then up again. He saw Mike meant it and his frown turned to a scowl. “That’s not the deal—”
“It is now, Jim. You’ve had more out of me this past two months than out of everyone put together for years. I mean, it’s not like I’m not grateful. You’ve been pretty good, looking after me and the others. But time’s up. For one thing, James doesn’t want me
seeing anyone else, and when he says it, he means it. For another… well, he’s sending me to the London Film School. I got enrolled last week. The first term starts on January eighth. It’s a two-year course, so I’ll be finished December 1979.”
“Film school, is it?” Jim thrust the bills in his jacket inside pocket angrily.
“It’s what I always wanted, and James is paying—”
“Parents happy with that cozy little arrangement?”
Mike dipped his head and scuffed the toe of his boot over a raised edge in the paving slabs. He pushed his hands deeper into the recesses of his warm jacket. The December weather had turned suddenly freezing cold after an unusually warm fall. They were stood in Leicester Square outside the Empire cinema, a hop, skip, and a jump from Piccadilly Circus— the office, as Jim put it. “I’ve been working hard, told ’em I won a bursary to attend. It’s not like most students who have to rent expensively. I gave up the studio flat, so I’m back home—”
“When you’re not getting screwed by Mr. Big-Man Rosen in one of his penthouse suites.”
“Don’t be bitter. You’ve done okay, Jim. Better than okay. Time to let me go. Anyway, James isn’t always here. Not that often, in fact.”
“So why give up the game when he’s not around?”
“I don’t want it any more. And I promised. And I want to be a proper student and concentrate.”
Jim spent a few moments chewing the flesh of his inner cheek with flinty eyes fixed on the skeletal trees lining the center of the square. In the summer the racket from the starlings, when they returned to the leafy boughs after a day scavenging food, could be deafening until they settled with the dusk. He shrugged, three times in irritation. “Okay. Mind’s made up, I can see.” He freed his right hand and pointed, a fleshy pistol aimed at Mike’s face. “But this time, if it all goes pear-shaped and Hop-Along-Hollywood boots you out on your ass, don’t think you can come running back to me. Right?”