The Definitive Albert J. Sterne

by Julie Bozza

  “I’ve missed your enormous hungry black cock,” Fletcher replied. He loved this all-encompassing, protective, possessive hug. And then the familiar clothes-shedding tumble down the corridor to reach the bedroom. They were both hot and eager, as was usual between them - though Fletcher took a moment to regret Albert at his best, with his endless, gentle, beautiful foreplay.

  In bed, naked, exactly where Fletcher wanted them. Xavier murmuring, “Feels so sweet, sugar man, ice cream skin on a hot summer night.” A finger, cool with lube, exploring, insinuating itself into Fletcher’s ass. “And your hot blue eyes catch fire when I do that. Why doesn’t your man ever do this for you?”

  “I don’t know.” Fletcher moaned, trying to capture the teasing finger. “Don’t talk about him. Not like this.” He turned to watch as Xavier rolled a condom onto his penis, moved close to begin pushing into Fletcher. Already this didn’t hurt, the smell of rubber familiar, the welcome fullness easing inside and hinting at future pleasures. Fletcher sprawled ungainly, letting Xavier take his time. Surely this was almost everything that he’d ever wanted.

  Stairs: dizzy endless flights of stairs, a double helix twisting in empty blue sky; Fletcher clinging on desperately to the smooth angles, hands slippery with terror, equilibrium shot to hell. If he let go he’d spin off into nothingness, the blue fading to vacuum, the cold inaccessible stars oblivious to his slow torment. I’ve lost my balance, Albert.

  Footsteps echoing, vibration felt through his entire body. Fear at who might approach, what they might do - dislodge him and let him float away, grasping desperate, gasping thin?

  Feet, bare dark chocolate brown, caught the corner of his eye. Carefully lifting his head, Fletcher saw Xavier standing on the steps - not above, because up and down had no meaning, there was only the treacherous stairs and the slow horrible nothingness - Xavier superbly naked, smiling confident.

  The man crouched, offered a hand, within reach if Fletcher would loosen his tenuous hold. “Come on, Agent Ash,” Xavier chided. “Stand and walk. There’s nothing to it.”

  “Can’t,” Fletch muttered, though his gaze never left the other man’s, beseeching. Can you save me?

  “Look -” and Xavier pointed to somewhere beyond Fletcher’s sight, dizzying - “we can reach the White House from here.”

  “No.” A drop of blood squeezed from beneath one of his painful digging fingernails, slid spiraling across the smooth surface as the stairs twisted. Fletcher closed his eyes, but that lost him even the illusion of up which was surely where Xavier was.

  “Come on, sweet man.” Cajoling. Loving?

  When Fletch looked again, almost unbalancing as he tilted his head, Xavier was offering both strong arms. Fletch unlocked his right hand from the stairs, stretched out his talon fingers, reached across the inches - Xavier’s hand met and held it, sure and firm. Fletcher’s second hand, and then his body lifting also naked, his feet walking up the stairs, so he stood just below Xavier, confidence flowering.

  “I knew you could do it, sugar man. Now, get that lily white ass up here.” And, dropping one of Fletcher’s hands, Xavier turned to lead him - into the blue nothingness.

  “No!” But it was already too late. His other hand slipped from Xavier’s and Fletcher felt himself float away, the stairs receding into distance, and his lover there standing, hands on hips frustrated, feet planted solidly on blue sky. Vision dimming, oxygen thinning. “No!”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Xavier said, annoyed.

  Darkness, and hands shaking him, a shadow man looming. Xavier’s white sheets twisted around his hips, the expanse of bed bearing him. Fletcher sat up abruptly, forced away the last sensation of falling, pushed away the hands. Just a dream.

  “The neighbors will think I’m a sadist at this rate,” the man was complaining.

  “Sorry,” Fletcher muttered.

  “What the hell was that about?”

  Xavier reached out again, and Fletcher shied away by instinct. “Bad dream. I get them sometimes. Sorry I woke you.”

  “Christ, you scared me.” Matter-of-factly, but shaken. “And you wouldn’t come out of it.”

  Fletcher wished for Albert’s no-nonsense comfort, wondering whether his other lover had also tried and failed to wake him during a nightmare. He’d never mentioned it, perhaps showing a little mercy. “Sorry,” he said again, lying down, hoping Xavier would settle.

  Silence for a few tense moments, before Lachance lay beside him, carefully not touching. “Can you get back to sleep?”

  “Yes,” Fletcher lied. “How about you?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” No endearments. “Goodnight.” Xavier rolled away, his back to Fletcher, and was soon snoring.

  Left alone, Fletcher waited grimly for dawn. He really shouldn’t be scared by a dream, he really shouldn’t give it any thought at all. These nightmares had never taught him anything.

  The phone rang, and Fletcher panicked for a moment, eyes following the tangled cord through his apartment until he located where he’d last left the receiver. “Hello,” he said once he’d picked it up, “Fletch here.”

  “This is Albert.”

  Fletcher let out a laugh. It had been years of, This is Albert Sterne, so the abbreviated greeting was an improvement, though Albert still maintained an uncomfortable formality that Fletch found comical. “Hello.” But Fletcher’s laugh had also been born of relief, which required vocalizing. Fletch said, “It is so good to hear you.”

  A deadly silence.

  Perhaps Fletch had surprised them both with that. He offered, “I’ve missed you.”

  The silence continued, until Fletcher thought Albert might decide to hang up, although it seemed unlikely he would be quite that rude. At last the man said in a tight voice, “I am calling from Seattle in Washington State. I’ll be working on a case here for the next day or two.”

  “What’s the case?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you.”

  “Since when did that stop you, love?” Fletcher asked.

  A moment, and then Albert said, “I thought you’d agreed to be more circumspect. There’s no reason for you to use a blandishment that is open to gross misinterpretation.” And then unwisely betraying resentment: “It is inaccurate.”

  “Really,” Fletcher said, a flash of annoyance destroying the brief moment of happiness. As if you know all about love, Albert.

  “Really.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “Simply to let you know where I am.”

  Fletcher took a breath, and began pacing slowly around the apartment. He couldn’t bear it if they were reduced to nothing but this meaningless bickering. “Look - I’m glad you called. I’d really like to talk with you.”

  “Then talk,” was the only encouragement provided.

  “All right.” Every topic was, of course, fraught with danger. Work would ordinarily be the safest, especially now that Xavier’s arson case was closed, except that Caroline’s convoluted warnings still echoed in his ears. She’d treated Fletcher no different from normal since then, but he’d trod warily, no longer relaxed in her company. But of course she hadn’t been convoluted at all - Fletcher was retreating behind his guilt and resentment, blaming her for the situation rather than himself, indulging unrealistic wishes of how things should be. He sighed, still wholly unwilling to confess his blunders to Albert.

  “Perhaps you should call back when you’ve thought of something to say to me.” So urbane, so sarcastic.

  It would have to be work. “I’m catching up on federal security clearances at the moment, running around tidying up all sorts of odds and ends. It’s pretty tiresome. I don’t think Caroline’s going to put me back on the money laundering thing. The trial date’s been postponed, so it’s not as urgent.”

  “That should allow you plenty of time to work on your pet serial killer.”

  “No,” Fletcher said with a frown, fearing where this was heading. “No progress.”

  “Are you w
orking on the case at all?”

  “What exactly are you asking me, Albert? How I spend my evenings? Is this the first night I’ve been home to answer the phone?” Silence seemed to confirm Fletcher’s suspicions. Easily finding it in him to match Albert’s sarcasm, he said, “I have laundry to do. Why don’t you call me back when I’m in a better mood?” And he slammed down the phone.

  Within five minutes, Fletch was in the basement of his apartment building, throwing shirts and shorts and socks into the washing machine, waiting for the phone there to ring. He and Albert had only done this a couple of times, when they needed to talk long distance with the surety of privacy and Albert wasn’t at home. Fletch waited impatiently, unable to make an out-going call on this line - no one in the building had been able to agree on how to pay the resulting bill. Surely Albert had taken the hint. Surely he had the number with him.

  The phone finally rang during the second wash cycle. Fletcher picked it up and said, “What took you so damned long?” A silence greeted him, but he didn’t for one moment doubt who the caller was. “Just say what you wanted to say, Albert.”

  “You’re frittering your time away with your pet politician.”

  Fletch swallowed various angry responses, amazed that Albert would voluntarily raise such a contentious issue. Finally he said, “You don’t really want to hear the truth.”

  “I assume that’s a reply in the affirmative,” the man said immediately, as if that was only what he’d expected. “You should reassess your priorities, Ash. How will you feel when your pet murderer tortures, rapes and kills yet another young man, and you remember what you were doing instead of catching him?”

  Gripping the phone so hard he might break it, Fletcher said, “That was totally uncalled for. You can’t force me away from Xavier like that.”

  “If I’m attempting to force you to do anything, it’s to remain focused on your goals and to consider the ramifications of not working towards them.”

  “Admit what your real agenda is, Albert. I’d prefer your honesty, no matter how brutal, instead of these heavy-handed tactics.”

  “I explained my purpose a moment ago.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Albert. It’s only been ten days since I met him. The serial killer case won’t suffer because I’ve ignored it for ten days.”

  “Perhaps not, but when are you planning to return to it? Another ten days? Or ten weeks?”

  “And may I remind you that it also got ignored last weekend while I spent time with you?”

  “When will you start working on it again?”

  Fletcher took a deep breath, trying not to give in to the temptation to yell. “There was plenty of time for recriminations on the weekend. Why didn’t you get all this off your chest then?”

  “I’m not interested in recriminating you for breaking a promise I never required you to make.”

  “Don’t give me that garbage again, Albert. This whole conversation has been about you trying to stop me seeing Xavier. Admit the truth.” And he did yell - “Tell me the truth!”

  Another silence, and then Albert said very deliberately, “Listen to me, Ash. You react as if everything is centered on Xavier Lachance. But, in this instance, you’re wrong. I am talking about you.”

  After a while, during which he began to suspect he’d been a little foolish, Fletcher said in a small voice, “What about me?”

  “It used to be that the most important thing in your life was catching your pet serial killer. That now seems to have changed. If I’m the only one who’s thought about these issues during the last few days, then you’re no longer who you wanted to be.”

  “Damn it -” Fletch cried out. He wanted to hang up. He wanted to burst into frustrated tears. He wanted to ignore the whole horrible thing. But Albert was waiting on the line, patient despite all that Fletcher had just said to him. Fletcher didn’t want to confront this, but he had to.

  He lifted himself up onto the sorting table, to sit cross-legged by the phone. And then he said in as reasonable a tone as he could manage, “Look, I wasn’t achieving anything, I wasn’t making any progress in catching the man.”

  Albert didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, it was obvious this was difficult for him. “I realize you weren’t progressing the case but you were working on it. You were concerned about your priorities, and how you might best devote your time and energy.”

  “I was so tired of it, Albert.” Fletcher sighed. “Anyway, it’s another eighteen months before he’s due to kill again. That feels like a lifetime away.”

  “Three lifetimes, Fletcher.”

  A startled pause - Albert spoke his first name so rarely - and then Fletch thought about what the man was saying. “There are three unsuspecting boys out there,” he extrapolated in a murmur, “whose lifetimes are only another eighteen months long.”

  “But you can’t rely on it being only three deaths, and you can’t rely on him waiting that long.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You still have hundreds of suspects to work through on your own.”

  “Albert -” A deep breath. “What if I don’t want to do that anymore?”

  Silence.

  Fletcher hadn’t really faced this himself, hadn’t really taken his flirtation with the idea seriously. “At long last, I’ve fallen out of love with the Bureau.”

  “That’s hardly surprising. I suggest, however, that we discuss the serial killer case separately from your feelings for the FBI. From this perspective, the serial killer is the priority.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you decide to devote your time to the case again, then you will need to remain with the Bureau.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  A pause. Then: “I don’t like to consider the consequences for you. I suggest that I come to Denver for a few days, en route from Seattle to Washington DC. We can review the current status of the case and devise a strategy to which both of us can work over the next few months.”

  “No,” Fletcher protested quietly. “Give me a little time, Albert.” He sighed and leaned back against the cold of the wall. “I know we’re supposed to be talking about the serial killer and the Bureau, rather than Xavier specifically, or my personal life in general, or our relationship - but the whole lot is tangled up together. I’m only just realizing that. I can’t talk about the Bureau without talking about Xavier, I can’t talk about the serial killer without talking about you. It’s all linked. Maybe I wouldn’t be having an affair with him if I weren’t so unhappy in other areas of my life.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s not news to you, Albert. We’ve been making each other miserable, and I for one have been unhappy about everything else as well.” There was no response, so Fletcher continued, “You surprised me last weekend, love. I thought you’d finally give up on me and call it quits, but you didn’t. Now you’re surprising me again. I was afraid we couldn’t be friends anymore but we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we weren’t.”

  “Don’t rely on that, Ash.”

  Fletcher almost smiled at the routine protest. “I continue to rely on it, Albert. But don’t come here for a while, don’t visit me. It wouldn’t be fair. I’ve done something horrible to you, to us, and I don’t want to rub salt in your wounds. Or mine.”

  “We need to progress this case. No one else will.”

  The washing machine had finally spun into silence. Fletcher whispered, “Are you bargaining for my body, or my soul, or both?”

  An audible sigh. “If you insist on using such melodramatic language, I assure you I’m only interested in your soul at present. It seems your body is freely available.”

  Fletcher did smile then. It had been far too many years since Albert was that nasty to him. And of course he had the ideal retort: “Yeah, I told Xavier you’re perfectly capable of insulting me to death.”

  No reply. Perhaps that had been a bit much - Albert was far more vulnerable than Fletcher when it came to trading insult
s, after all.

  Fletcher continued, “Well, maybe I just can’t handle this serial killer case anymore. There are better ways of spending my life. This way hurts, Albert.”

  “Really.” As if the hurt should be easily bearable.

  “You never did believe in me and my instincts, did you? So you can’t understand how tempting it is to never again think of murder and torture and rape, to never put myself in this man’s place and feel how it would be, to never again imagine how that bruise was dealt, or why that skin was torn, or how long before death that bone was broken. To never speak to the parents, being calm and in control for their sake, all the while seeing in my mind everything that had been done to their child. Never again fear that I have more in common with this vicious and cunning killer than I have with my colleagues.”