by Damon Suede
“Al wounded and hopeful. Shit.” Loretta roled her eyes, grabbed her big purse, then tossed it into the parlor like a scorpion. “I want a cigarette so bad my lungs hurt. But Dante would kil me.”
“Because of Nicole?”
“Nah! ’Cause of his floors. These took him, what, a month? Brazilian cherry.”
Griff remembered that. It had taken so long because they’d done it in pieces. Other guys from their firehouse had come over whenever they weren’t with their families or girlfriends, passing through after tours to help Dante out.
Griff had spent every day helping where he could, and it had almost broken him—Dante in cutoffs offering him a bottle of lemonade; Dante on al fours with a malet pounding the boards into place; Dante, covered in stain and glue, stripping in the hal for a shower and holding his junk protectively with both hands. By day three, Griff was jerking off in the downstairs bathroom just to keep his shit together.
“There!” Loretta was suddenly right in front of him with her wild curly mane. “You’re doing it again. Your eyes get al gooey-silver when you think about her.
Sheesh! Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
Griff fled for the front room, wishing there were more dishes for him to clear so he could escape to the kitchen, away from Loretta’s affectionate probing. But she just ambled after him, her nose for drama twitching. This was the way to crack criminals: sit them down for fresh cioppino and talk gently to them til they begged for mercy.
He looked out the window. “I should get home. My dad is probably waiting.”
“Bulshit. Your dad? C’mon, Griffin, be straight.”
Yipes.
Griff could barely move, even though he knew what she’d meant. He sat down before he said something dumb.
Loretta’s eyes shone caramel-sweet at him. “I want to be happy for you. You’ve been so lonely since Leslie left. Before she left even.”
“You never liked Leslie.”
“She never liked you. So who’s this girl? She likes you, huh.” Loretta nodded knowingly.
Griff stood up, wanting to escape the tender inquisition. Loretta folowed him into the parlor and onto the couch and stared til he spiled.
“Not like that. I don’t think it’s anything. At least, if it is, I’m crazy and it can’t ever happen.”
“She married?” Loretta reached down to pick something up under the coffee table, a bent nail. She spun the nail, her eyes locked on his. “Is she a cocktease?”
“No!” Griff spread his sturdy hands, smoothing the air between them. “Look, there’s no girl. I promise. I’m just happy right now.”
“You don’t look happy. Wel you do, but happy-miserable. Like a hero in an opera, kiling himself over some diseased hooker.” That made him laugh, hard enough that she looked confused. He didn’t even try to explain what he’d been thinking when she arrived looking like a Staten Island Valkyrie. He just laughed because it felt good, and then she joined him even though she didn’t know what was so funny.
Family.
As they fel quiet again on the couch, Loretta’s eyes scanned his face so closely that for a second he was afraid she would be able to read the truth there under his skin. As if his longing for her brother were written in raised letters on the bones and the muscles.
“Loretta?” Griff looked through the dining room toward the kitchen. He could hear the sounds of the tap running and Dante chatting baloney with the baby.
He smiled at Loretta, and his heart felt hot under his sternum.
She play-poked at him with the bent nail. “We worry about you. My brother especialy.” She tipped her head toward the sound of Dante crooning. “We al want you to be happy. If you can’t be selfish for yourself, be selfish for us.”
“I wish I could be.” Griff felt even worse teling her these near-truths than just lying outright, if such a thing were possible. Ugh.
Loretta wasn’t buying it, not totaly. She knew him and he knew it. “Whoever she is, she doesn’t deserve you. If I wasn’t such an asshole, I would’ve built a perfumed tiger pit in high school and claimed you for myself.”
Griff stiffened, suddenly aware of how close they were sitting—just what he didn’t need. “Gah! You’re like my sister.”
“I am not your sister, Griff.”
“Okay….”
“Stop. I don’t mean it like that. But believe me, I was not thinking sisterly thoughts about you in those footbal pants. Oof.” She brushed imaginary crumbs off his shirt, remembering something. Loretta had been wild in high school, a couple years younger. “That red hair. We used to cal you Gingerbread. Spicy sweet.” She laughed at the nickname, and at herself fifteen years ago.
“Bulshit.” Griff felt like a cartoon dupe conked on the head with an anvil. Seriously?
“Girls kept pictures of you. Serious.”
“I didn’t know.” He couldn’t imagine anyone having a crush on him back then; he’d been such a quiet hulking mess. In every picture, he’d been stuck at the back, towering over people with his flaming hair, silently begging to be invisible.
“You didn’t want to know. You don’t always pay attention to the right things, Griffin Muir. Which is why you were a perfect crush: you were on hold for no good reason and gorgeous to boot. Stil are, huh?”
“I’m not on hold. I’m happy, Loretta.”
“Pfft! Clocks don’t stop for anyone. And now I’m happily married to a telephone cal and eating at my brother’s ’cause I get scared being alone every night.” Loretta stood up and tracked down her purse over near the bay window. On the way back, her caramel eyes kept digging in his for the truth. “I mean, maybe this chick is waiting for you to make a move.”
Dante and the baby laughed in the kitchen; the sound hovered between them in the air, high and bright. Loretta was silhouetted in the window. A car passed outside; its headlights swept over the ceiling for a second like someone was xeroxing the entire block.
Griff watched her rummage for something in her bag. “I don’t think so, Loretta. I think this one’s waiting for me to get over it and move on and quit being a moron.”
“I’m just saying, don’t waste time, Griffin.” She dug out a pack of Luckys and slid one free, setting it on her lip to dangle. Standing there, she looked like a film noir poster in the tight dress and the wavy hair, except the mystery that needed solving was beating under his ribs. Where is Humphrey Bogart when you need him?
Griff nodded and even smiled some.
“Listen to me.” She jabbed two fingers at him like a sexy accusation. “Don’t wait for your ship to come in. Swim out to it.” She slipped out to the front hal, pausing by the coatrack to turn back to him.
He could only see a slice of her face in the shadows by the door as an oath passed between them.
She pointed at the unlit cig in her mouth. “Just don’t tel anyone. For crissakes don’t tel Dante. Promise? He’d kil me.” And she was gone.
He’d kill me.
“Same here,” he whispered to the empty room.
Griff listened to Dante murmuring nonsense in the kitchen. He could smel the day’s smoke on his skin and the sweet musk of Dante in the cushions. And through the enormous windows, he could see the bright orange dot of the cigarette as his almost-sister inhaled-inhaled out there like she was in a horned helmet getting ready to sing herself to death.
Chapter 6
COME to find out, gay bars are just like every other bar in the world.
Griff wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d headed into Manhattan. He felt like an idiot. He didn’t even know if he was dressed right. He’d put on black jeans and a new black shirt hoping it would make him blend a little bit. The shirt was a short-sleeve polo his ex-wife had bought him, and at the colar, the rusty hairs on his chest were just visible; the knit hugged his thick triceps and pecs. He figured he looked good enough.
It was October tomorrow, and tonight was the night that the HotHead scene Dante had shot for Alek would appear on the actu
al website, as the “Stroke of Midnight.” Dante had bragged and ribbed him about it al week. He was the only person who knew and he was also the only person who was tempted to go see.
Dante didn’t know that, but stil….
For his own safety, Griff needed to be as far away from the Internet and his computer as possible before he lost his mind and did something he couldn’t take back, or saw something he couldn’t forget. This Manhattan fieldtrip felt like a perfect two-birds-one-stone solution for a lapsed Catholic: Life-wrecking temptation? Run away!
Time to get some answers. Time to deal with the reality. At a time when he needed to be far, far away from his computer and the temptation to “just check” HotHead.com. He could survive buying a beer in a gay bar to get a handle on what his dick was doing. Plus, pubs didn’t have Wi-Fi Internet, did they? He wasn’t going to ask.
Maybe he was just gay. Maybe something in him had just changed since the divorce. Maybe there was a whole side of him that had been waiting to come out. Maybe he had started batting for this other team without realizing. It happened sometimes, right?
As Griff headed out the door, he checked himself in the hal mirror. Good enough. He’d combed through Time Out’s Nightlife listings for something like a gay pub and found a place caled the Pipe Room. A pub seemed safe: beer and dudes outside of Brooklyn. Except in this place it would be dudes-only, and they’d be openly creeping on him, and while on the premises, he was supposed to be doing the same to them.
Ack.
Stil, anything was better than logging on to that goddamn website and spying on Dante— betraying their friendship, betraying himself.
There were a couple of gay bars in Brooklyn near his place, but hel if he was gonna risk that. Better to head across the bridge into the East Vilage and pay a couple bucks more for his beer than risk being seen in a gay bar by someone he knew. Or worse, his dad hearing about it. Gah. The thought made Griff queasy.
The subway station at Carrol was empty for a weeknight, and he plunked himself down in a plastic seat so he could panic in peace. He had to figure out if this whatever-the-hel with Dante was a phase, and he wasn’t a fucking coward. He ran into burning buildings, forchristsake!
Griff took the F train from Cobble Hil to Second Avenue. These days the East Vilage was fancier and more populated than he remembered. He spent ten minutes walking around the block before he worked up the nerve to climb the three steps into the dark bar.
Chill out, freakshow.
By the time he did, it was nearly eleven. Treading those steps, he could feel the panic rising in him, hands sweating as he ducked through the door. As he stepped inside he almost walked into a chubby man with a white beard who was headed outside. Santa Claus hits the bars. The older guy stopped short, then smiled and nodded at him before heading out.
Griff took a second to get his bearings. He had half expected al the heads in the joint to swivel and glare at him like an impostor, but once he was inside, it was just… a bar. Not that different from the Stone Bone, actualy. The windows were tinted, the brick wals worn, and the decor was early ramshackle comfy. He had heard Green Day playing from the curb, so nothing strange there; now he could see it came from an honest-to-God jukebox. The patrons wore a mix of jeans and suits and sweats, like everyone had come from work or home to meet their buddies. These guys were gay?
Except for the pricier neighborhood, it could have been one of those old family-run cop bars in Bayridge or Staten Island. A bunch of dudes hanging out together ordering pitchers. Except that there were no women inside, as in none. Stil, if he hadn’t been paying attention, he might not have noticed for a while. In fact, he could almost imagine that everyone’s girlfriend had just gotten up and gone to the bathroom at the same time.
Almost.
It felt so much like his own stomping grounds that he almost pretended to himself that he was waiting for his crew in one of their hangouts. No big deal. New York City had banned smoking a while ago, so even if this place looked like a grungy dive, the air was clean, the crowd was professional, and the old bar looked like it had been seeing use for fifty years or so. Had this place been a gay pub fifty years ago?
He stil felt like an intruder—this wasn’t his hood, this wasn’t his crew, and the only thing he had in common with them was that he wanted to make out with someone who had the same equipment as he did. Did that make them al instant friends? Was he automaticaly a member of the club? He felt like a bridge-and-tunnel moron.
Griff wiped his hands on his jeans and headed for the bar; everything was easier with a beer in your hand, right?
In the center of the room, wel-built guys leaned against high tables in friendly clumps, joking and talking. On one wal, a tal Asian perched on the arm of a lumpy sofa said something to his friends that made them nod appreciatively as they watched Griff navigate the man maze.
He knew that his rugged frame and red hair always attracted attention. And in here, he realized, the black shirt looked kinda dressy and made him stand out more. Duh. He could have just worn a T-shirt and sweats, but they were eating it up apparently. Thank Christ he hadn’t worn the kilt!
Griff felt flattered. Some of the dudes scoping him were way better looking than he was… on a purely objective level. But some of them were just regular, shlubby guys. Again, people checked out firefighters al the time, so that didn’t seem strange either. He could totaly do this. And come to think of it, he had noticed a couple cute guys on the way in, so maybe his problem wasn’t Dante.
Through a gap in the crowd, Griff just caught a bartender’s eye checking to see if he wanted something. Griff nodded a yes as he nudged through the men and stepped up to the bar. Pressed against the wood, he realized the bartender was shirtless and underwear-model lean. Over one pierced nipple, a sticker badge on his slick chest said “My name is… STICKY . ”
Whoa.
“Sticky” gave him a warm smile, hands in his back pockets. He was alabaster pale, with white-blond hair and an elaborate Celtic tattooed sleeve spiraling up one corded arm in stark blue-black. And the smile was a little warmer than it would have been in Brooklyn, like he knew he was good-looking and he wanted Griff to know it too. Sticky wet his lips; his tongue was pierced.
Griff didn’t flirt back. “Uh. Hi. Yeah. Can I…? Beer? Uh, stout if you have it. You can pick.” Was that the wrong thing? Why was he looking at Griff so intently? Oh. Yeah. He’s one of them. Us. Whatever.
“Yessir.” Sticky winked and went to pul it from the tap, the knotwork tattoo flexing over his forearm. Griff leaned back against the bar, pretending this was normal.
Four stocky guys in rugby shirts and shorts came in, sweaty and muddy and leaning against each other as they headed toward a rowdy mob of other players huddled around a couple pitchers of beers on a high table. As the shortest teammate passed, he clocked Griff’s scrutiny and returned the favor with a cheeky grin.
With his buzzed hair, USMC tattoo, and cute-ugly face like a trol dol, this little fireplug checked Griff out head to toe and back, stopping right on his cock, then winked.
Jeez.
Griff pretended to cough and turned to look back toward the back of the bar, where a pool table was set up. A group of hammered colege guys was shooting a game and play wrestling; NYU was around here, so this was probably a hangout for them. Gay students. They hung on each other more than they would have in Red Hook, but no more than a bunch of joeys cutting loose down the Jersey Shore. It didn’t seem weird; it seemed sweet.
Trouble was, none of the men around him made Griff horn up. None of these guys had made his dick so much as twitch. Not gay? Maybe he only had a thing for Italians? He scanned the crowd for someone Italian enough to turn his crank. But if he let himself imagine Dante getting busy on that website right at this moment, his boner got hard enough to pound nails. Stop that. Apparently, he was having some kind of localized erectile malfunction.
“You from out of town?” The raspy voice in his ear startled him. He turned to see that S
ticky was back and bending toward him over the scarred counter.
The slim bartender was passing a foamy dark pint to him from behind. His tattooed arm brushed against Griff’s bigger one, the fine hairs dragging together gently enough to cause goose bumps—pale gold on rust.
Griff took the glass, but Sticky left his arm where it was, just brushing, until he shivered. Griff turned to break the contact.
“Nah. Brooklyn. Born and raised.” Talking to this gorgeous kid, Griff felt the tips of his ears get hot. He must look like such a rube: wrong clothes, wrong drink, wrong background. And his dick was definitely not reacting to attractive guys around him. He was even more confused than he’d been an hour ago.
“Seriously? I figured you for a farm boy. Somewhere they grow apples or goats or something.” Sticky was reading Griff’s body from behind the safety of the counter, a slow head-to-toe appraisal with scenic detours. He laughed, but he wasn’t teasing, just being sexy and friendly. “And you got to nap a lot in the hayloft with your cousins. They built like you?”
“Yeah. No. I mean. That sounds nice, but I’m 100 percent city mouse.” Griff sighed and took a careful sip of his beer.
Why wasn’t he turned on? Griff could tel this hipster underwear model was interested, but apparently his own interests were stuck somewhere else. Like over the Brooklyn Bridge.
These days he couldn’t sit next to Dante without popping wood, and he couldn’t check his e-mail without itching to go to that damn pornsite.
Hel, Sticky was probably a fucking HotHead member and would be downloading Dante later for his personal use. Griff tried not to feel angry and possessive, but the panic weled up in him again.
“You’d look hela fine in overals, bub. That blazing hair and those cannonbal shoulders and nothing else. Trust me. I gotta pair.” Sticky winked. Even his eyelashes were platinum around his hazel eyes.
“Thanks.” Griff winked back and nodded because it seemed polite, but he didn’t want to lead the bartender on. Was that what he was doing? It felt so weird for other men to mack on him like this. If Dante could see this, he’d piss himself laughing.