by David Sharp
“You caught that.” Jason winked. “Somewhere inside she does.”
“If you say so,” Adam said shifting in the seat.
Jason hoped he had not messed things up by touching him and kept talking. “Do you think it is right?”
Adam glanced at the clinic then back to Jason with his hazel eyes. “No, it’s probably not.”
“I think the same, except I also feel like it is not my decision to make for somebody else.”
“True, you have to make your own decisions and change them when wrong.”
“Are you talking about us running away?”
“Yep, you heard what they said. They are going to leave you.”
“I want to stay.”
Adam seemed uncomfortable for a moment. “If you stay, promise me you will keep away from Liev.”
“Why? Is he your boyfriend or something?” Jason briefly closed his eyes regretting his remarks.
“No, sometimes he is there for me. But he can be cruel if he doesn’t know you.”
“Oh,” Jason said tapping his fingers on the dash.
“Why are you so curious about me?” Adam stared intensely.
“I just want to know you. I always have.” Jason felt exposed.
“No you don’t”
“I do.”
“Jason, maybe you should go home when they do. There’s nothing for you out here, nothing good.”
Jason tried a different tact. “You said Liev knew my brother, Trevor.”
“He did. I only heard stories about when they used to run around later on. Look all of it was before I was even out here.”
“So, you don’t know where he went.”
“Not really.” Adam seemed conflicted. “Liev said he took off some time ago.”
“I should talk to him. Well, maybe after you talk to him first.”
“Are you crazy? I told you that’s not a good idea.”
“What about…?” Jason was confused.
“What is it, Jason? You are not going to find the brother you grew up with after all this time. And there is nothing here but trouble.”
“I like trouble.” Jason winked.
“What?” Adam shook his head weighing something and chuckled. “I guess I knew it the moment I handed you my knife.
A couple of thick rain drops splattered on the windshield. The grey skies were threatening to open up a deluge.
“Is there anything you can tell me about Trevor?”
Adam thought for a moment and said, “He used to stay on Dolphin Street.”
“You mentioned it before, what is Dolphin Street?”
“It is this place where there are a bunch of rundown vacant houses. The street punks stay there from time to time.”
“I have never heard of a Dolphin Street before.”
Adam laughed. “That’s because it doesn’t exist.”
“How can a street not be?”
“When it is a metaphor,” Adam said.
“Tell me something real.” Jason sighed.
“The vacant houses are real only the name is not. Dolphins are what we call runaways new to the streets. They usually only stay a short while to party till they run out of money.”
“Dolphins, that’s funny.” Jason frowned. “Am I a dolphin?”
“Yep, you are definitely not a shark, not yet.”
“Whatever. Why do they go to those houses?”
“Because they are places to crash, some have electricity, while most have running water.”
“A place to get cleaned up and rest and we’re not there right now.”
“It has been one night and you feel dirty already. Now, that is funny.”
“Take me there.”
“Alright, we got some time to waste. Your friends are going to be waiting most of the day in that clinic there.” Adam tapped the thick glass of the windshield.
“Cool, cool, cool,” Jason said. He rocked back and forth in the seat. It was a nervous habit he had since he was little.
Adam clicked on the wipers and put the car into gear. The Mustang cruised down the neighborhood streets under his sure hand.
Jason thought about how awesome it was to be going to where his brother had stayed. I am following in Trevor’s footsteps. He had searched the papers and never found a word about his brother, only the sordid clippings about the street punks. Somehow, he had to get Liev to talk to him. There has to be another side to Liev. That was not going to be easy, but he was determined to find out what had happened to Trevor once and for all.
On the other hand, he wanted to know more about Adam. How long has he been on the streets? Especially since, he did not seem to mind about what had happened in the car earlier. The thing with Adam and Liev disturbed him. Their relationship, whatever it entailed, made no sense. He tried to imagine it as he watched the rain pelt the window.
Adam gripped the wheel in control of the car on the wet streets and their destiny.
Jason wondered if Adam had to do things to survive, things like River Phoenix had done in his favorite movie, My Own Private Idaho. The car stopped at a red light and Jason took a stab in the dark. “Are you a hustler?”
“What?” Adam was taken aback and recovered quickly. “If you are asking if I ever get in a car every once in a while then yeah, but only when I have to.”
“I don’t know if I could do that.”
“If you stay out here long enough, you will be surprised to find out what you can do.”
“And, what about John, did he…?”
“Quit asking questions.” Adam roughly grabbed Jason and kissed him on the mouth.
The moment was like the dream of the alley and it stunned Jason. “Okay,” Jason said slack jawed when it ended. He could taste Adam on his lips and thought, Oh my God, that was hot.
The light turned green and Adam punched the gas. His demeanor had changed. Adam seemed rough and totally in control. “Not another word till we get to the house okay?”
He is so demanding and knows what he wants. I just wish I knew what that was.
“Okay.” Jason was intimidated, yet fascinated by the difference in Adam. Putting his hands in his lap, he bit his tongue in silence. This is really going to happen.
The Mustang was driven off the main road into a down trodden part of the neighborhood. The scenery went by fast until the car slowed down.
“We are going to the last house on the left.” Adam pointed out an unsightly two story house.
Everything about the house was decrepit. Even the way it was mentioned reminded Jason of a horror movie he had seen once. It did not help that Adam had not said a word since they had left the clinic parking lot. Jason looked down the row of houses through the wet windshield, most if not all of them seemed vacant. He got a chill and shook it off. How could Trevor have stayed in such a place?
“So this is Dolphin Street?” Jason broke the stillness.
Adam cleared his throat. “Partly, there a few blocks back here that it is made up of.”
Jason looked for a street sign to find the real name of the block and there was not one. The paint had peeled from the structures. Yards were unkempt. Some were even overgrown enough to be trouble to cross on foot. He tried to imagine Trevor staying in one of the houses two years ago and could not fathom it. Trevor who had played baseball and seemed to always be on the straight and narrow. I wonder what Trevor was really like. The idea did not fit the Trevor he remembered, so he put it aside. Jason saw that no one was out or about and got another chill. They only come out at night.
“Is anyone going to be in there?” Jason took a breath to keep from creeping himself out.
Adam rolled the Mustang to a stop in front of the house, slid the shifter into park, and said, “Not if we’re lucky.”
Jason looked at Adam awash in nervous excitement. “What are we going to do?”
Adam’s hazel eyes sparked in mischief. “Nothing until we get in the house. Come on, follow me and keep quiet.”
“If you say so,”
Jason said knowing he would have followed Adam anywhere.
“Shush,” Adam said, exited the Mustang, and looked around like he was seeing if the coast was clear. Impatiently, he motioned his head to the side for Jason to hurry up.
Jason opened his door and it groaned softly, the metal grinding on the car’s body. Outside was wet and humid. The rain had softened to a drizzle. His heart was racing. The dream in the alley came back to him. Here he was again following Adam after a rough kiss into a dark building. At least the front door is not ajar.
Gravel crunched under foot. Adam avoided the front and led Jason down the side of the house. The windows were boarded up. The tall grass pulled at Jason’s ankles leaving his pants wet in its attempt to hold him back. He was particularly glad there were no animal sounds, not even a catcall whistle, to greet their arrival. He strained his ears and could hear nothing, but the wind and soft rain.
The silence between them was killing Jason. They passed through a broken chain-link fence into the backyard. The grounds were jungle-like with wisteria vines having taken control of the all of the trees and structures. Jason barely had time to register a gazebo buried in the fauna, before Adam pulled his arm and stopped him. Jason opened his mouth, but Adam signaled with a finger to his own lips to stay silent. Adam let go of Jason’s hand and moved stealthily ahead through the trash to the backdoor. Jason consciously raised his jaw having realized it had dropped as he tried to follow.
The house was freaky, especially under the rainy gray sky. Jason stopped, felt the warm sprinkles on his face, and closed his eyes for a moment. From behind his eyelids, he heard a sound of wood rubbing on wood and opened his eyes to find Adam gone. Jason had not realized how comfortable he had become, whether earned or not, with Adam. His unexpected loss brought a tide of conflicting feelings. Self-doubt was creeping in among them. He was anxious at being alone in a strange place without his belongings, particularly his skateboard, yet he was also was excited that Adam had kissed him in the car, something he had wanted to do for a long time. More urgently, fear played into the fact that the street punks were no friends of his.
Who was in the house?
Jason touched the door and pushed it farther open. The wood groaned in protest. Almost immediately, he was encompassed with long hanging sheets of plastic. Dim light played through the material that was close while other sheets were dark and foreboding.
“Adam,” Jason called out once and instantly regretted it. His voice was too loud to his ears in the stillness of the house.
“Come on, I’m in here.” Adam’s voice echoed faintly.
Jason put his hands out and pulled back the plastic. It rustled in his grip sending waves along the sheet. He pushed through and was greeted with another opaque wall. Walking to its edge, he turned a corner and there were more walls. It was a maze not set up by workers, the idea of repair seemed abandoned like the building, but by the vagrants who inhabited the house from time to time. Jason heard the faint noise of footsteps creaking on the wooden floor boards. He froze and listened. He wanted to call out to Adam, but wondered if someone else was in the house. The plastic rustled from a breeze from the open door. Jason swallowed and focused on walking out of the maze. He found a slit and reached out to pull it apart when the sound of something, or someone, rushing by came from behind. Jason whirled around vaguely aware of a hulking shadow that had appeared right where he was about to open the plastic. The tingling sensation crept up his spine, but he saw no one waiting for him.
Jason parted the way and found the stairs to the second floor. He was glad there were no animal sounds or he would have had a heart attack right then and there in the flophouse parlor. The light was dim where he stood, but some of the windows of the second story seemed not to be boarded up and shed a brighter grey light from above. Graffiti lined the stairwell. Colorful and articulate in the discourse of trash, it painted the way up.
“Quit fooling around and get up here,” Adam said loudly from somewhere up there.
“I’m on my way,” Jason said with obvious relief in his voice. As he walked the steps, Jason could hear the sound of running water. Filtered daylight came through the windows casting patterns on the walls. On the last step a creaking sound caught his attention from below. Jason looked back the way he had come and listened. He could not pick up any noise except the running water which had to be a shower.
It is so weird to be in this strange place searching for Adam… so like the dream.
Jason doubted himself. It was too late to turn back, since all his stuff was locked up in the car. He crossed a foyer and went into a bedroom through a missing door. The sound of the running water was more defined, definitely a shower. There was less light in the room and the shadows became deeper towards the opposite side.
Jason cleared his throat to find his voice and said, “I’m here.”
Adam appeared out of the shadows naked and he was not shy about it. “Take your clothes off and get over here.”
“No way,” Jason trailed off briefly musing before abruptly taking off his shirt and kicking off his shoes.
“This is what you want.” Adam slunk back into shadow.
“Yeah.” Jason followed sliding out of his jeans as he did. The tile floor was cool on his bare feet. A shaft of grey light hit the center of the bathroom. There was no shower curtain. A cold mist came from the nozzle. Jason stared at Adam’s body and felt self-conscious of his own. “It’s cold.”
“I said get over here,” Adam demanded.
Jason stepped across the room towards his dream eerily come to life. Adam, exactly the way he thought about him in the dead of night in suburbia, was there in the flesh. Fear did not abate his excitement towards Adam’s hard and lean, dirt streaked body. The rough feeling against the wall at the party, the moment in the car, the wordless desire, all of the remembered flashes of Adam’s charisma were overwhelming his senses. Jason reached out with a shaky hand and touched Adam’s chest, grazing a nipple. Farther down, he slid his fingers across Adam’s abdomen following the trail of hair.
Adam grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled him around roughly slamming him against the crummy tile wall. “There’e no turning back now.”
“Wait,” Jason said breathlessly and was engulfed in the spray. The water felt like a cool wave. Jason felt the grip on his arm and the pressure and warmth of Adam against him.
“See, this is what you want.” Adam kept the grip on Jason, one muscular arm wrapped tight around while the other free hand explored.
Jason dared not move in fear the moment may pass if he did. He wanted to say something and was stopped by a hand to the back of the head pushing his face against the tile.
“Now you’re going to get it.” Adam held him strong, flesh to flesh, putting a watery finger to his lips.
Then it happened. Jason had no idea it would hurt the way it did. The pain peaked then passed and Jason felt a feeling he had never experienced before. It was more than self-gratification in the middle of the night. Images swirled in Jason’s head — the jocks at the gym he coyly had watched in the showers, the towering look of power and hate on Mike, Chad and Brian’s faces he had seen being kicked and beaten, and a collage of Adam imagery filled his head from the late nights of charting the possibilities. The image of Adam wearing his tight muscle shirt in the park came to him from the sensory sea. In it he saw Adam raise his arm up exposing the soft downy hair of his armpit and the smell of his musk. Against the tile, he could smell the same smell in his mind and was to the edge. It was happening with Adam. The near tantric experience was almost tainted by another image, one of Liev, vivid and dangerous, who casually grabbed his ripe crotch and said, “Your ass is mine.”
The coolness of the water and tile was in opposition to the warmth of Adam’s (Liev’s) body pounding and tensing to his. Jason was out of breath and turned to make sure it was Adam who was panting. Silently, they kissed again. It was a kiss of pent up passion. Under the torrent of cold water, Jason reached the zenith wit
hout touching himself. It felt like the world was pumping out of him while Adam slammed him forward, lost in a frenzy of his own.
The aftermath was anticlimactic in every way, since Jason was unsure of what was supposed to happen next when Adam shook off the water all tense like he was ready to fight. Jason found his clothes on the dirty floor and watched as Adam got dressed. He did not know what to say. It was good, good as he had ever imagined it, yet something was wrong (your ass is mine). He felt a cool vibe coming off of Adam in waves, or was that only his perception. Regardless, he backtracked to the other room.
In the bedroom, he found a squalor nest he had not noticed before. Used blankets and pillows lined the floor along with empty cans and wrappers. Jason let his eyes travel the floor. A wooden box in the corner caught his eye. Jason bent down and opened it finding an assortment of pictures. He thumbed through the faces of strangers, all street punks by the look of them. One caught his breath. It was of his brother, Trevor. A Trevor he had never seen before, a little older and haunted looking, but Trevor all the same.
Adam put a hand on his shoulder. Only briefly looking at the photo, he said, “Do you know him?”
“That’s my brother.”
“Oh,” Adam backed away subtly. “He must have come through here.”
“Why would somebody have a picture of him?”
“People are strange out here,” Adam said dismissively.
“I bet Liev knows where is.”
“Look Jason, you shouldn’t get messed up with him. And I probably shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“But you did.” Jason looked into Adam’s hazel eyes trying to gauge where he was coming from. “What we did, that was hot.”
Adam bit his lip. “It was. I like you, but this is no place for you. You should go.”
“Go where?”
“Anywhere, but here,” Adam said, stopped, and listened. “It can be dangerous.”
“You could go with me.” Jason felt desperate at the thought of losing his new mate.
“I don’t think I can. It’s too late for that.”
“If I can leave suburbia, you can leave, Dolphin Street.”