by Damon Suede
A lie.
Andy didn’t know he had been outside watching, so Ruben nodded but said nothing. He didn’t say anything about the unconscious porter in the service elevator. Things could’ve gone much worse. One thing he knew: Andy wasn’t boxing with shadows.
“Bauer, those goons talked plenty. I saw them. I watched them grilling you. And they looked ready to pitch you off the balcony over something.” The screwed-up thing was that Ruben cared too much to stop.
Andy looked haggard now. The rings under his eyes purpling under the clammy sweat. “Yeah. Uh. Yeah, I guess so.”
“Good guess!” Ruben clenched his sweaty, sore hands over and over. Obviously he had failed to connect some dots. If Andy wasn’t paranoid, if the threat was real, then he had no business guarding anyone. They needed real security, pronto, and Ruben needed to get Andy out of harm’s way.
He swallowed. “We gotta call the police, Andy. We gotta file a report. This is serious.”
“No!” Wide eyes. “No cops. I said no cops. I can’t have folks in and out of here digging around. There’d be a record later.”
“What are you ashamed of? I’m not gonna say anything. I work for you, remember.”
Andy rinsed his face at the bar and dried with a linen napkin. The bruises on his temple and ribs had darkened. “Oso, I need to talk to you.”
His heart sank. About the kiss.
“Ruben.” Andy sat down and took a breath. He closed his eyes and opened them. “You made a serious mistake. About me, I mean. I haven’t exactly been forthcoming but I let you believe—”
“Say it.” Ruben braced himself for the shame and the dismissal. He’d admit it. He’d apologize. He’d take whatever Andy dished out because he’d taken advantage of a situation that was his fault. “Andy, those assholes were ready to—”
“You’re right,” Andy snarled, using the dickhead-executive tone he used on the phone with pushy clients. “They talked. We talked.” The insistence made it sound like a lie. “Business. This was theater. They want to scare—”
“They did!” Ruben glared, irritated and protective and stupid as hell. “The porter was out cold downstairs. This isn’t just you, man. They broke in. The building knows.” He picked up the house phone.
“They haven’t called up. They haven’t knocked. And we keep them from calling the cops.” Andy dug a few hundred dollar bills out of his wallet. The blood on his nostril had dried to sticky brown-black. Pellets of duct tape adhesive matted his hair.
Sick relief flooded Ruben. Part of him felt gratitude that they’d be ignoring the kiss, and part was queasy at the thought that his insane feelings would stay unspoken and unacknowledged after all. “Then we obviously need to call it in.”
Andy’s stare had gone brittle and cold as tin. A muscle ticked in his clamped jaw. His hand clamped on Ruben’s wrist. “No! No, Ruben.” Not scared, but embarrassed.
“They’re the fucking bad guys. They left evidence out the ass. They broke in and assaulted you, man. Pretty fucking clear, there.” Ruben held up the phone and dialed. Nine, one—
“Ruben, put the goddamn phone down!” Andy’s voice snapped like a whip.
Startled, Ruben looked up. The dial tone from his hand seemed far away. “But why?”
“’Cause I’m the bad guy.”
The dead silence slithered around them like a bathtub of slugs.
“What?”
Andy’s laugh was shaky, and he only looked up into Ruben’s face after a few seconds.
“What the hell have you done, Bauer?”
Reaching out, Andy touched Ruben’s lips briefly and came away with blood on his fingers. Andy’s blood. “I could ask you the same.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IF AT first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have left him alone to go swimming. I shouldn’t have ignored my gut from day one.
Ruben shook his head and looked at the floor, trying to figure out exactly how he’d let everything get away from him.
Andy paced in his bedroom, blotting his bloody face with a seven-hundred-dollar hand towel.
Ruben’s lips still stung from the stolen kiss. “I should go.”
When had he taken the first insane step? Letting his guard down with an employer? Not quitting in the limo when he’d first suspected his feelings? Taking the job against all his better instincts?
Rewind, rewind.
Keeping shit bottled up only gives your feelings a chance to ferment. The only thing that could have saved him from caring about Andy was never seeing him in the first place. If he had stayed in Florida? Stayed with his wife? Stayed a drunk? Regret was worthless.
“I shouldn’t have done that. That was shitty.”
“Done?” Andy opened his mouth to weigh in. “What?”
Ruben nodded to himself. Once he said the words, he could take the next step. Keeping a tight rein on his emotions had churned misery into disaster. “Kissed you.” Ruben swallowed. Saying it aloud felt panicky and good.
“You did.” He didn’t sound angry, at least. Then again, he’d left the lights off.
“Mmph. Everything happened so fast. I didn’t have a weapon and they were all over. But then you were okay and I kissed you without thinking.”
Andy bobbed his head and blinked sheepishly. “About that….”
“I just—I got spooked and then I saw you safe—”
He grinned. “S’not a big deal, man.”
“No. It is a big deal. It was a big deal.” Ruben didn’t let himself look away. “I shouldn’t be here at all. I should’ve left the night of the museum.”
“What museum?”
“When they attacked Hope.” Ruben shook his head at the hallway carpet, where he stood just outside Andy’s bedroom. “Even then I knew that I couldn’t get hold of myself. Acting like a drunk and too stubborn to stop. Addicted. ’Cause it felt good, y’see? Idiot.”
“Ruben, you’re wrong.”
“I swear it won’t happen again.”
Andy frowned. “Why?”
“I’m gonna leave. You’re gonna hire someone who knows what the hell they’re doing and keeps their private lives private.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request. I’m telling you, man. I’m giving notice.”
“No. Ruben, I trust you. That’s what matters. Look, investment banking is a piranha tank. You decide who you think you can trust and you cross your fingers.” Andy held up his hand and did just that.
Ruben frowned. “I don’t understand. What is this?”
“S’complicated. Business.”
“Bullshit, Andy! You’re gonna tell me those goons were dissatisfied clients?”
“This kind of wealth is always a motive.” Andy waved an arm at the expensive wallpaper and the Kandinsky on the wall. “A lot of people would like me to drop dead for a lot of reasons.”
“And for that, two hedge-fund assholes tied you to a chair and beat you? Because of your apartment? I knew one of them. He mugged you that first day.”
“They are angry. For a good reason. Good enough.” Andy shrugged. “I have a situation that needed handling. A—uh, y’now—client with some ugly friends who I screwed over.”
“Are you saying what I think—?”
“Not the mob, or whatever. Like on TV? That mafia doesn’t really exist anymore. Not like movies make it seem. No, he’s a prep-school tight-ass like me.”
Ruben’s hands shook even when he crossed his arms and jammed his fists into his cold, sweaty armpits. He felt exposed in his boxers. “You know him.” Not a question.
“None of this was supposed to happen.” Andy pressed the heels of his hands over his eye sockets. “I fucked everything right up.” He looked guilty.
Ruben got very still. “Some Wall Street ninja shit.”
“H’yuh. He was displeased with the outcome, to say the least.” Andy laughed, dry as dust.
“Leg
ally, you mean.” Ruben knew bullshit when he heard it.
“Sure. But in finance, legal gets pretty fucking ugly. Truly.”
Ruben scowled. “Guilty is guilty. Prison is prison.”
Andy flashed his Sears-dad grin. “White collar crime operates outside anything like law. Because the laws that get written protect us because we buy the politicians we need to keep doing business and we pay to keep the gray areas intact.”
In Ruben’s world crime was pretty straightforward. People were crooked, and when you got caught, you went down. “What are you saying, Andy?”
“I’m a hitman.” The unblinking blue-gray eyes made a joke of the word. “A financial assassin. I mean, not Glocks and snipers or whatever, but I destroy people.”
“For money.”
“Of course for money. I’m not running a charity.” Andy huffed. “Being a sociopath is expensive.”
“You’re not a sociopath, Andy.”
“Maybe not. Well, not more than the average prep-school douchebag.”
Ruben had misread everything. “He was your victim.”
No response.
He couldn’t wrap his head around it: Raggedy Andy the criminal mastermind.
“They’re taking revenge.” Ruben found himself pacing and forced himself to stop. “A small crime hiding a larger one.”
Andy shrugged. “It’s complicated. When you actually kill someone, they can’t come back and kill you.”
“Apparently not. Seems like all your metaphoric bullshit has gotten plenty literal, jackass.”
“I’m not the villain here, exactly.” Andy swallowed with effort. “These are bad people, you understand.”
“So you have killed someone.”
“Not like, in a coffin, but I’ve destroyed a couple lives metaphorically. To the point that life as they knew it became impossible.”
“And you’ve done this kind of ‘assassination’ for exactly how long?”
“Fifteen years. First time happened almost by accident. A broker bankrupted my parents, and so I returned the favor. With dividends. I just took him down because I could. Then I saw the potential.”
“That fucking people up is lucrative.”
“No. Not like that. I only go after the assholes nobody can touch. Sleazy funds. Hell, I’ve lost more than they have.”
“Because you can afford it.” Ruben snorted. “What a prince.”
Andy looked hurt. “Since the recession, things have gotten messier. Traders skate the edge and all the play money’s gone. I may have… misjudged someone.”
“Then this Apex shit has to stop. You could get killed. I could get killed.”
“Not really. That was the beauty of it. Everything was aboveboard. Right out in the open with the SEC keeping score. Enough to keep me in custom shirts. I make most of my clients a lot of money.”
“Until you don’t, huh. Until you piss off some cokehead with anger management issues and no conscience.” Ruben poked him in the chest. “You’re not a sociopath, you’re a suicide waiting to happen.” His blood ran cold and thick in his veins. His skull throbbed like a tom-tom. “They beat you because you deserved to be beaten.”
“I’m not a psycho. More like a vigilante for hire. Financial muscle.”
Like you. Andy didn’t say the words, but they hung there written in money and promises invisible to the naked eye.
“Yeah, right.” Suddenly Ruben needed a drink. Now. For the first time in almost a year, the tender oblivion seemed worth all the hell it would cost him. Halt. “No sweat. Till you end up so, so paranoid you’re carrying a gun to the john and taking one-eyed naps.”
“Ruben, I never meant for you to get messed up in this part of my life. The whole point of executive protection was that once they saw you they’d back down.”
“Fucking dangerous. When were you gonna tell me?”
“I did! I did tell you. I kept telling you. From day one I’ve been saying I was in danger. I told everyone who would listen. No one would believe me. Hell, I went and hired a bodyguard because I knew physical danger was possible.”
Me. Ruben nodded. He means me.
“You screwed all that up.” The scratches on Andy’s face had stopped bleeding. He’d need ice for the shiner coming up. “You were supposed to be some ugly asshole who got hurt to prove a point.”
“Great.”
“That’s not what—” Andy looked down. “I didn’t know you, Ruben. I hadn’t met you, and I went to Empire because I figured they were all thugs who could take a punch. Some ex-cop who’d get salary and bonus for a little roughhousing.”
“Thanks. So I was supposed to be tied to a chair and beaten bloody?”
“No! To take a punch, to scare ’em off. I may have been a dick that first day, but then everything changed. Because of you.” Andy hugged himself. “I liked you. More than I expected. Way.” Blink. “So the plan went to shit because I refused to get you hurt. Everything changed.”
Ruben walked to the windows and looked out over the dark city and the organic fuzz of Central Park.
“Say something,” Andy whispered.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How? I didn’t know anything at first. How could I? Apex was golden. You were gonna hang out, get paid, go home with a shiner and a thick wallet for sitting around. Looker and leaper. Real danger wasn’t part of the deal.”
“I was a dupe.”
“You weren’t anything! I hadn’t met you, didn’t know you, couldn’t have known.” Andy licked his bruised lips. “How I’d feel about you.”
Silence.
Ruben grunted, his hair on end. “You watched me swim, man. Naked.” The unspoken desire curled up between them like a drowsy tiger.
“You know I did.” Andy flipped a hand at the room. “I made sure you knew. Left every kind of signal, so you could signal back. I mean, if y’wanted.”
The animal was staked right out in the open where they both could see.
“But you never did till tonight.” Andy sat down on the bed as if his legs wouldn’t hold him. “I fucked up so many other things, and I didn’t want you caught up in it. I just wanted you.”
Ruben didn’t move for fear he’d do something wrong to break the spell.
“Jeez. I never… I didn’t know I could be attracted like that. You were so strong and good and clean. You’ve built this whole life out there with your two hands, and I was this rich wimp. I kept flying closer and closer. Windshield, bug. I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t have if I could.”
Ruben nodded. He paused in the doorway to Andy’s room, not sure of his best next move.
The bodyguard in him knew he needed to secure the principal and phone for backup. The alcoholic in him wanted to drink a fifth of gin and catch a cab to JFK, just to ditch all this for the kind of fucked-upness he was used to handling. But the man in him needed to love Andy Bauer, and save him, and fuck him, and protect him, and wake up with him for the rest of their lives even if the world thought he was a disgusting homo. He cared so much that there was no room to care about what anyone else thought.
As if Andy had heard the smile, he turned.
For a few moments they watched each other, wary and happy.
Andy cocked his head and whispered, “C’mere.”
“I can’t.” His voice sounded loud to his ears.
“Not to do… anything. Just come here, man.” Andy scooted up till his back was braced on the headboard.
Ruben crossed the miles between the door and the bed and stopped at the edge of the mattress. Andy’s biscuity sweetness seemed stronger here, probably embedded in the pillows by now. He sat down on the mattress, looking at the floor.
How could the power dynamic ever return to normal when it had never been normal?
Andy’s hand touched his back. “S’no big deal.”
“It is and you know it.”
“Doesn’t have to be.” Andy’s fingers rested warm and sturdy on his back. They didn’t stroke or clutch at hi
m. Then they were gone.
Ruben sat breathing, ashamed of how good the faint touch felt. His heart knocked uncomfortably and his throat tightened. His hands were shaking.
Andy wasn’t just a theory or a paycheck. Improbably, hope sat propped up a yard away, smelling of warm bread, all that smooth skin fleeced with soft gold.
“I’m not making anything happen. Just chill out with me, man. Maybe we’ll be able to sleep.”
“Okay.” Ruben swung his legs onto the bed. “Feels weird.”
“Sitting in bed?”
“With my boss. Who’s a dude. When we both know—”
“Stop.”
Ruben grumbled. “I don’t know what’s supposed to happen.”
“Let’s take our time, huh. I didn’t expect any of this.”
Ruben scooted himself back across the cool sheets by inches. He expected Andy to touch him, to pat or squeeze him, but true to his word, he gave Ruben plenty of space.
My move.
His voice caught in his throat at first. “Ha—How’s your head?”
“’Kay.” Andy sounded anxious as well. “Stronger than I look.”
Ruben chuckled. “Dumber too.”
“The worst is my arms.” He raised the right for inspection.
Ruben held it gingerly. Sure enough, he could see a broad welted stripe of raw skin. He didn’t have any words that could be said aloud.
Andy sat rigid while Ruben inspected the mark with choked tenderness.
I’m crazy. I’m crazy.
The air shimmered between them, all the bright, hard possibilities catching the light like terrifying glitter. One thing to imagine, quite another to give in or give up.
Ruben stopped stroking and just squeezed the muscular forearm. “You have a boner.”
Andy raised his legs. “No.”
Ruben raised his knees as well. “Wasn’t a question. I got my own to deal with.”
They sat side by side that way, legs bent like bums on a stoop.
Finally, Andy yawned. “I think… I may try to sack out. That okay?” He yawned again, and ended on a smiling sigh. “Feels good to have you here. Closer.”
Ruben nodded. “Me too. I mean, yeah. That’s good.” I’m crazy about him.