A Dangerous Game

by Rick R. Reed

  “I lost my job,” Wren sighed. “And to make the day that much more perfect, I lost or had my wallet stolen too.”

  “They let you go? I thought you were doing so well there.”

  “I was. I was. Too well, and I think that was the problem.” Wren explained how he was taking too long with his calls, helping the customers sort out their problems.

  Linda shook her head. “That makes no sense.” She smoked thoughtfully for a minute. “Well, we’ll be okay. You can probably find something else soon, huh? And you get unemployment benefits too.” She looked at him. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Ma. I didn’t do anything that would prevent that. And I got a couple weeks’ severance.” Wren winced as he thought of the live check his boss had given him. It was folded up in his wallet. He shook his head. Yet another problem to sort out.

  Linda got up and went into the kitchen. Wren heard her open the fridge and then the beeps signaling she was programming the microwave. The microwave began to hum. In a couple of minutes, she returned with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, steaming. She set it in front of Wren, along with a beer in a chilled mug.

  “You didn’t have to do that. I could have done it myself.” Wren took a bite of pasta.

  His mother sat back down on the couch, regarding him. Wren stopped eating long enough to look over at her. It was then he noticed the worry on her face, the way it creased the area between her eyebrows, her mouth open as if she was poised to say something but was still considering how to say it.

  “What is it, Ma?” Wren swallowed some of the beer and pulled another smoke from the pack, lit up. He pushed the plate away, no longer hungry. There was a sudden tension in the air, and Wren didn’t think it was because of the news he had just dropped.

  Linda looked away, down the hallway where their two bedrooms were, staring for a long time, as if she were contemplating what color would look nice on the walls.

  Wren shook his head. “Is something the matter? We’ll be okay. I’ll get something else. There’s always opportunities for guys like me. Remember, I am a high school graduate,” he quipped, self-importantly.

  Linda didn’t laugh. She looked back at her son, and her green eyes revealed concern and something else Wren couldn’t identify. Worry, maybe?

  “Are you okay?” Suddenly Wren imagined his mother telling him she had cancer. His friend Josh’s mother had gotten breast cancer last winter and had died from it. She had only been forty-three. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “No! You know me, fit as a fiddle, healthy as a horse, happy as a clam.”

  “Don’t forget cute as a button.”

  “That too,” Linda said, finally grinning. “That’s what you got from me.” She moved closer to Wren on the couch. “Listen, honey, I had some news today too. I was thinking it was going to be pretty good news before I heard yours.”

  “Okay.” Wren had no idea where this was going.

  “Not to make you feel bad or anything, but, uh, I got promoted today.” Linda gave him a wan smile. The worry still danced around her eyes.

  “That’s great. More money?”

  “Oh yeah. Almost a grand more a month.” Her eyes cut away. “Plus some other perks.”

  “What’s going on, Ma? You said you had good news, and this sounds great. So why are you acting all weird?” The extra money, along with his unemployment, should mean they would be just fine; no need to run up credit card debt. But Wren could tell there was more to this particular story.

  “Well, it’s like this. My new job is a management position. Front desk, bar, restaurant, and housekeeping. Don’t be impressed. I’m sort of like Alice on The Brady Bunch.”

  Wren gave her a blank stare.

  Linda chuckled. “Never mind. Anyway, one of the perks is a small apartment in the hotel. They call it a perk, anyway.” Linda rolled her eyes. “I think it’s more so I can sort of be on call 24-7. The beauty of it is that the place comes rent free, all utilities paid. And it’s really cute.” Linda cast her gaze away from her son once more and said, “But it’s really small.”

  “Room for one?” Wren asked.

  “Maybe we can work something out. It’s only the one bedroom, but you could sleep on the couch, just until you got back on your feet. Lord knows we’ve shared smaller before. I’ll talk to Harry.” Linda seemed uncertain. She gnawed on one of her fingernails, ruining her French manicure. Finally she lit another cigarette.

  Wren sighed. “So when I came home tonight, you were all set to throw me out?”

  Linda put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “Don’t say that.” She moved back to her place on the couch. “You know I would never ‘throw you out.’ I love you, Wren, and I think we get along great. Frankly, on the ‘L’ on the way home tonight, I was thinking that you’d be relieved because this would mean you could finally get your own place.” Linda paused to stub out her cigarette. “Of course, that was before I heard your news.” Linda patted his leg. “We’ll work things out.” She repeated, referring to her boss, “I’ll talk to Harry.”

  Wren knew that bringing him along to the small quarters Linda was being given as one of her promotion benefits would be starting off on the wrong foot. He knew that without being told. His mother was far too kind to ever mention something like that. But if the apartment was small, with only one bedroom, Wren was certain it was intended for one person—or two, if they were a married couple or something.

  Wren said, “Don’t worry about it, Ma. I still may have some other options.” To conclude the conversation, he picked up the remote and turned the TV back on. House Hunters and House Hunters International always ran in pairs or groups, so Linda could almost go back to where she left off.

  And she did.

  She probably didn’t want to discuss this any more than Wren did. He got up and went to his room, feeling even lower now that he had rained on Linda’s parade. Of course she would never voice it, but she was probably looking forward to living on her own—at last. She had given up her youth to raise and take care of him, and now she had a chance to be on her own for the first time in her life. Wren got that, and it made him feel rotten that he would be a burden to her, maybe even making her look like the wrong choice for her new promotion.

  No, he was twenty-three. It was time to stop sponging off his mom and to begin making his own way in the world. It just so happened that this decision, one Wren had played with for months, maybe years, was suddenly thrust upon him at the worst possible time.

  But he would have unemployment coming in. Customer service workers were always in demand—probably, Wren thought, because it was a thankless, suckass job, at least in his experience. So the bright side was he would find something soon.

  In the meantime, he had friends. He could couch surf for a while.

  He lay down on his bed, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and fatigued beyond measure. He knew the cocktails at Tricks and the beer at home helped, but it was only minutes before he fell asleep.

  Just before he did, he thought that when he got up, he’d tell Linda not to worry, that she could go on to her promotion alone.

  He would find his way.

  She deserved that after all she had done for him. And maybe she’d be proud of him.

  Chapter Four

  WREN DIDN’T have as many friends as he thought. At least not when it came to friends who wouldn’t mind him sleeping on their couches for a week or three, just until, as Wren put it over and over, “I get back on my feet.”

  Cody had a new boyfriend. “We’re just starting out, dude, and it would be kind of awkward, having you stay here, especially since the place is so small. Did you try Mark?”

  Mark was moving back in with his parents in Arlington Heights at the end of the month because he found, after a few months, that he couldn’t afford Chicago city rents on a storefront theater publicist’s salary. Mark suggested he call Sheila.

  But Sheila never answered his calls or responded to his
texts. Wren figured Mark had warned her.

  After calling half a dozen people he thought of as his most likely prospects and having no luck, Wren began to worry he might have to impose on Linda and come with her to her new apartment at the Clairmont. He hated to have to consider the possibility, especially when he recalled her thinly veiled delight when he told her he could manage, some way, to stand on his own two feet.

  “I’m getting too old to be playing house with my mother, for cryin’ out loud.”

  Linda had expressed disappointment and had even said, “If anything changes, honey, you always have a place with me,” but Wren could see the relief in her eyes.

  Wren also didn’t expect she’d be moving almost immediately, so that didn’t give him much time to make other arrangements. He even tried the roommates’ section of Craigslist and quickly found that roommate seekers were just as particular about having people in their homes with full-time jobs as landlords were.

  Wren stared out his bedroom window. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Linda was off at work, and August had decided to finish out the month with a brutal heat wave. Forecasters were predicting they’d hit a hundred by this afternoon.

  It was no wonder Wren felt bleak and hopeless as he pondered his lack of prospects, staring out at a sky that offered no relief from the heat. No beauty either—the sky was a dingy, overcast white, bordering on yellow. It looked sallow and sick.

  Wren sighed and turned back to his laptop and phone, the tools through which he was hoping to find at least temporary housing, lying atop his desk, a battered dark-wood affair he and his mother had rescued from a thrift store. He spun the phone around on its scratched surface, then ran his fingers lightly over the laptop’s keyboard.

  There was one person he could still call, the last resort, as it were.

  Devin.

  Ah shit, no. Not Devin! Wren’s inner voice cried out, at once appalled and full of warning. You call that guy and you know it’ll mean trouble. You just know it. For one, Devin is a sex addict. You learned that when you and he dated way back when, and the bliss of your new love lasted only long enough for Devin’s head to be turned by another bulging basket and tight ass, which was about a week. But damn if he wasn’t cute, so you stuck with him, betrayal after betrayal. Even after you caught him in bed with the next-door neighbor. You even agreed, quite rashly, to attempt to have an open relationship with the guy, way against your better judgment. That worked until you got the gift from Devin that keeps on giving—crabs. At least it was something curable….

  Oh yes, Wren remembered, Devin was a true delight. More than once he thought they had slipped up on his birth certificate, and that final N in his name should have been an L. Devin was never too shy to describe himself as hot as hell, and Wren knew that was because hell was where the guy hailed from.

  The thing about Devin was, he was charming, he was gorgeous, he could make you feel like you were the only person in the world who mattered, until you weren’t anymore. For Devin being fickle was a way of life, and he thought of it as part of his charm.

  Wren knew Devin had a one-bedroom in the North Side Lakeview neighborhood everyone called Boystown, extending loosely from Belmont on the south end to Irving Park Road on the north, with the lake as its eastern border and maybe Wrigley Field as its western. He was certain there were more homos in that neighborhood than you could shake a stick—or a dick—at, and that was probably why Devin lived there. Just about anytime, day or night, Devin could walk out the door of his apartment on Cornelia Avenue and find a hookup right there on the street. He didn’t even need the bars or online hookup sites.

  Right. So you see what you’d be letting yourself in for? You know Devin’s apartment will have a turnstile instead of a front door to accommodate all the horny traffic making ingress and egress—in more ways than one! Good Lord, you’ll never get any sleep. And forget about your belongings being secure. Devin wasn’t known for his choosiness. He consorted with everyone from princes to the scum of the earth. He told Wren on more than one occasion that rough trade had its allure. His life was the modified call of a rooster come early morn: “Any cock’ll do.”

  No, Devin simply wouldn’t work.

  But what else could he do? It wasn’t as though he had a long list of friends to continue calling, looking for a place to stay. He was about at the end of his rope, which was just the time when Devin came in handy for lots of things. Sex, drugs, a couch….

  Devin was reliable in his unreliability. He was also reliable in just how giving he was. Ask any man on the street along Halsted Avenue and they could probably verify that fact.

  Devin also didn’t have a bad place. It wasn’t huge, but it was comfortable, and Devin, who plied his hours when he wasn’t on his back as an interior designer at the Merchandise Mart, knew how to beautify a home. If Wren remembered right, he had a big, curving sofa that would serve as an excellent bed for Wren until he found a job and then a place.

  Oh, this is a mistake, a big old monster of a boner, and not the good kind either. Wren picked up his cell, scrolled around until he found Devin’s name in his contacts, and touched the screen to connect him to his old friend and once-upon-a-time lover.

  Devin picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, sexy,” he breathed into the phone, and Wren could swear he could smell come and Terre d’Hermes cologne coming through the phone. “So should I ask my favorite question? What’s up?” Devin gave a low, throaty chuckle that made Wren want to take a shower.

  “Oh, you! You’re incorrigible.” Wren let loose with a nervous titter he thought sounded like it came from a six-year-old—a six-year-old girl with pigtails and a Little Mermaid fetish.

  “And proud of it. So, what’s going on? I was just about to leave for work, a little late, but if this is a booty call, I can make it even later. It’s been a while since I’ve tasted that fine ass or felt it squeezing down on my cock.”

  Wren could feel heat rising from his neck, up until it enveloped his entire face. Soon beads of sweat would pop out on his forehead.

  Wren wondered how to even have a normal conversation with Devin, or if he had ever had one before. Now that he thought about it, the only real back-and-forth discussion they’d ever had was over things like whether they should go the baths together or invite a third, or fourth, guy back to Devin’s apartment when they were out at a bar. The single weightiest debate they’d ever had was Devin asking if he could fist Wren.

  The answer had been no.

  But how would Wren ask this huge favor? He drew a blank when he tried to remember if the pair of them had ever had a conversation that didn’t revolve around sex.

  “So?” Devin prompted. “You want to come over and feel my man meat driving deep inside your sweet ass?” Devin chuckled. “Seriously, bro, what’s goin’ on? You’re very quiet this morning.”

  It occurred to Wren that he hadn’t yet been given a chance to speak, but he thought it would be impolite to mention it, seeing as he was about to request a favor. Wren sighed. There was no small talk that would help him ease into things, so he simply blurted it out. “I lost my job on Friday. My ma is moving to her own apartment. And I have no place to live.” That about summed it all up, minus the lost wallet. On his to-do list for today was the work to replace its contents.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s simple, buddy. You do—you have a place. You come and stay with me. I’ve got room. You can share my bed, as long as you’re willing to clear out when I bring a hottie home.”

  “Uh, I was thinking more along the lines of your couch,” Wren said, then added, “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Whatever. You wanna come over today? Like I said, I’m headed out to the old nine-to-five, only today it’s more like eleven-to-five, but I can leave a key with the building manager downstairs. Come on over when you like. Make yourself at home. Pay no attention to that dildo on the floor of the shower.”

  Devin chuck
led, and even though Wren was mortified, he laughed right along with him, just out of relief.

  “Great. Thank you so much, Devin.”

  “I’m sure I can think of a more proper thank you, but right now I gotta run!” And with that, Devin clicked off.

  And with that, a deal with the devil is struck. Wren set down his phone and stared out at the oppressively hot day.

  Chapter Five

  DEVIN’S APARTMENT looked as though a set designer for a modern-day Boys in the Band had decorated it. It couldn’t have been gayer if it had rainbow-hued hardwood planks installed on the floor, a touch Wren would keep to himself because he was afraid Devin might actually implement it.

  Wren set down the duffel bag he had brought and surveyed the small but orderly space. As promised, Devin had left a key with the building manager, and Wren was grateful for the arrangement, glad Devin wasn’t home to greet him. It was nice to have some time alone before Devin’s innuendos, roaming fingers, Listerine-scented tongue, and eight-inch dick began trying to probe him.

  It was nice to simply sit for a minute and rest. He plopped down on the couch, noting the neatly stacked copies of the Advocate and Architectural Digest on the glass-topped coffee table, the framed Herb Ritts and Robert Mapplethorpe posters on the wall, the latter of which were triple X-rated and caused Wren’s heart to beat faster. He took in the leopard print faux-fur rug on the floor, the black leather sofa on which he now reclined, and the sterile-looking stainless, granite, and melamine kitchen beyond a breakfast bar decorated with dolls all tricked out in leather drag.

  “There’s no place like home,” Wren said. He allowed himself to lean back into the soft leather cushions for a bit, closing his eyes. The last few days had been so stressful. He let his hand loll along the surface of the leather, and his forefinger caught on something cotton and elastic. He looked over, giving a tug, and extracted a jockstrap, crusty with dried come, just about concealed between the cushions.