by Rick R. Reed
“You party?” I ask, hoping he’s into it. Then I won’t feel so ashamed.
He smiles, and the gap in his front teeth makes me weak. I’ve always loved that.
“What are you doin’?”
“A little cola,” I say, pulling off my pants, poised to head for the secretary. “You wanna bump?”
He stares at me, a little grin playing about his lips. “I don’t know. I don’t really do that shit.”
He continues grinning, and the grin is unnerving because it has a lot more ridicule in it than it does humor. There’s something unkind about it, and all at once I wish he would leave.
“It’s good stuff,” I mumble. “The guy I get it from, he doesn’t cut it.” I don’t know this for sure, but I assume it’s so.
“Nah, I’ll take a pass.”
He glances down at my limp dick with its sheen of whitish grease and watches for a minute as I pull on it.
I sit, light another smoke. “Make yourself comfortable.” My hand is trembling as I set my cigarette in the ashtray.
Jason sits down in the rocking chair after throwing the clothes there on the floor. He stares at the screen and makes no attempt to loosen his belt, unbutton any buttons. This is getting just a little strange, and I’m starting to think about asking him to leave. But how to say it? When I’m high, if you’ll pardon the pun, I like my gentlemen callers to be in and out. Sometimes they’re back down the stairs before ten minutes have passed. When I’m high I’m more interested in quantity than quality. Jittery, y’know, always ready to move on to the next thing.
I get up and kneel at Jason’s feet. He’s wearing Asics running shoes, baggy jeans with a frayed brown leather belt, and a plaid shirt, open, with a gray tee underneath. He looks boyish and manly all at the same time. His belly lops out a little over the belt. If he weren’t so sexy, I would send him on his way, but I have to at least make the attempt.
But first I should fortify myself. It’s no secret what I’m doing since I’ve already offered him some, so I bring out the stash and put it back on the glass-topped table. I scrape across a small mound with the razor blade and form four neat lines on the glass. “You sure you don’t want some?” I pick up the straw and poise myself over the blow.
“No.” There’s almost a chill in the air.
“Okay, hang on, then.” I snort up two lines, exhale, sniff, and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I run a finger around in the fine dust of coke on the table, rub it on my gums. I consider doing the other two lines but decide to wait. I glance at the clock and see it’s ten after ten. I will not do those next two lines until eleven.
I scoot back over and reposition myself at Jason’s feet. I can feel a light sheen of sweat breaking out on my forehead, and my hair feels damp. I reach for his belt, smiling up at him as I do so.
He smacks my hand away. The sting causes me to draw back my hand, more in surprise than pain. I look at him, my brows coming together in confusion and affront.
“What did you do that for?”
“Don’t be so damn eager, you fuckin’ addict.” He shakes his head. “You party boys are all alike. You with your coke, him with his G, him with his K, him with his tina… don’t you guys get sick of it? All of your fuckers wantin’ to take it bareback… wantin’ the load.” He makes his voice falsetto. “Sperm my pussy.” Jason shakes his head again, the disgust oozing from him. “You guys make me sick. You deserve to get AIDS.”
I wonder if Gabe is downstairs. My heart is pounding, and I don’t know if it’s the coke or the sudden fear I may have let a psycho into my apartment. The scariest thing is he’s half right about everything he’s saying. I’ve thought the same things myself, especially on the day after a binge.
“Listen, man.” I scoot back and lean against the couch, light another cigarette. I try to take a swig of beer, but my hand is shaking so much I end up spilling it down my front, eliciting a “Sheesh” from Jason. “Listen, man, why don’t you just get out? It’s obvious you don’t want to be here.”
He smiles, and it’s funny how something I had thought was so beautiful could become so ugly. There’s so much hatred in that smile.
“Hey. You invited me over here to play.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem you’re much interested in that.” I swallow any self-worth I have and say, “But if that’s what you want to do, why don’t you get out of those clothes and let’s go in the bedroom and fuck.”
“Oh yeah, I bet you got a real nice ‘pussy.’” He throws back his head and laughs.
I blow a stream of smoke toward the ceiling and stand. “C’mon. Let’s go.” I start toward the door, but Jason doesn’t move.
As I said, he’s a big guy. I feel cold all of a sudden. I know I couldn’t forcefully move him. I cock my head. “Are you coming or not?”
“Not.”
“What do you want from me, then?”
He stands and seems even taller than when I let him in. I wonder again if Gabe is downstairs. An idea. “I gotta use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” At the very least I can call Gabe. Maybe if he came up it would defuse this nutcase.
But I feel a painful grip dig into my shoulder as I turn to exit the living room. “I thought we were gonna fuck.”
I try to shrug away his hand, but when I do, he grips tighter. My mouth is dry. I have to pee. “I don’t want to anymore.”
“Isn’t that what that stuff does to you? Make you wanna get fucked like a woman?”
Bile churns in my stomach. Breathlessly, I say, “Sure. Let’s do it.” Maybe if I just go through with it, he’ll leave.
We go into the bedroom. I reach for his belt again, and he pushes me hard to the bed, so hard my head bounces off the mattress.
“Don’t touch me,” he hisses.
He drops his pants. His cock, big and thick, would have delighted me fifteen minutes ago. Now I’m scared. Scared he’s going to do just what he proceeds to do, push my legs up and ram it in dry. It isn’t easy, but he breaks through the ring of muscle, sending white-hot needles of pain throughout my entire body. I scream, and he clamps one of those big hands over my mouth. I know my eyes must be huge above his fingers.
It’s over quickly. He tightens, closes his eyes as he fills me up. It feels warm and wet at the back of my thighs, and I wonder if it’s blood or come or both.
Both. Probably both.
He hurls a glob of spit at my face and pulls his pants up. I want to cry, but I can’t let him see that. I lay there waiting, listening as he storms through the dining room, praying that in a second the door will slam.
There is a crash. Glass breaking. A flurry of stuff falling to the floor.
Then the door slams.
I get up, glance behind me, and see the pool of blood on my white comforter, but for the moment I don’t care about that.
In the living room is a worse tragedy.
The coffee table is shattered, and the coke is spread all over the rug, irretrievable.
I sink to the floor, asshole throbbing, and weep.
The phone rings. I pick it up without looking at the Caller ID. Gabe. His tone is light.
“One of yours?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“What was that crash? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I knocked something over is all.”
“Dizzy queen.” Gabe laughs and begins to say something else, but I hang up. I’ll deal with the consequences later.
Right now I need to clean myself up and call Sam.
Wren didn’t even realize he was crying until he reached up and felt the damp on his face. The whole thing, this whole story—and he hoped to God it was just that, a story, but he knew it wasn’t, knew it deep in his gut—depressed him, making him feel more helpless and vulnerable.
Why wouldn’t Rufus come back? Wren had a need to help him, even if Rufus wasn’t aware of what he was doing.
What emerged on those pages had not been the portrait of an addict but a picture of
a very lonely young man who was desperate for contact and didn’t know how to get it. It made Wren’s heart ache, both from sympathy and empathy. He himself had stayed away from the allure of drugs, but he’d had his chances, and who’s to say he wouldn’t one day fall into the same traps Rufus had?
He wouldn’t now.
Rufus, without even knowing it, had warned him away more than sufficiently.
Wren looked at the screen of the computer, which had gone dark. Should he read more? Finish the book?
He just didn’t think he could take any more despair. Not today. Once again he secreted the laptop at the bottom of Rufus’s duffel. He had decided he would tell Rufus the truth about what he had done—and read—simply so he could let him know he had a friend, someone who cared, someone who knew his history and didn’t judge him for it. But that decision now seemed rash and unwise.
He could never let him know the truth. It was too big an invasion of privacy. They were too new to one another. Telling Rufus he had snooped into his laptop would be tantamount to pushing himself away from the man forever.
Some things, especially early on in knowing a person, were unforgivable. Wren suspected this would be one of them.
Wren got up, stretching, and looked out at the summer day spread out before him, all sparkly and innocent. In the distance he could see children frolicking in the surf and the waves rolling in. When had he ever been that young? That carefree? Now it seemed eons ago.
Could he ever go back to a time when he would not be plagued by the worries, fears, and the depths of his own soul?
He didn’t know.
What he did know was that he needed a shower. He stunk. He felt stiff. Lethargic.
Hot water was an amazing cleanser.
When he emerged a half hour later from the steaming shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, Wren was surprised to see Rufus sitting near the bank of windows, long legs stretched out in front of him, staring out at the day. He toyed with a box of unopened Marlboro Lights.
The vision seemed at first a mirage, like something Wren had wished so hard for he had made himself see it.
But Rufus was there, with all the earmarks of reality. Wren realized he was holding his breath, as if he feared Rufus noticing him would startle the guy away, like a deer spotted in a forest.
“Little man, I can feel you staring. It makes the back of my neck prickle. It’s creepy.”
Rufus turned. When their eyes met, Wren could tell, sense, whatever one wanted to label it, that Rufus was okay. In his absence he had come to no harm. Rufus looked alive, hale, hearty. There were no dilated pupils, reddened nostrils, or other signs of drug abuse.
But the best part was that he was alive.
“Sorry.” Wren hurried to sit down beside Rufus, drinking him in but afraid to touch. He wanted to cry with relief, gather him up in his arms as a mother might gather a missing child.
But he knew, even from his very limited experience, that Rufus would bristle at such smothering behavior. Instead he said, “I was worried about you.”
Rufus sighed, staring out at the bright blue summer sky and not looking back at Wren. “Yeah. Well, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to make you fret, but I needed time to myself. Evan was a good friend, and this whole murder thing, well, it’s just fucked up, you know?”
Wren wanted to tell Rufus he didn’t need to throw the attitude, to put on the act, that Wren knew Rufus was smarter and more sensitive than that. Instead he said, “I know. I know. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. Are you gonna stay with À Louer? I mean, now that someone’s been killed, I don’t know.”
“We don’t know that this killing had anything to do with the service. Hell, Evan could have been stabbed by a gangbanger, by someone after his wallet or that fancy watch he always wore.” Rufus looked pointedly at Wren. “I can’t afford to leave À Louer. I’m not gonna ‘do’ anything. Why, are you?”
Wren had been certain Rufus would come back and say he was through with the escort business, that it was too dangerous. That’s what he wanted to hear, anyway. It set him off on imagining all sorts of scenarios, all of them including him and Rufus in some future together, whether he had a basis in reality for it or not.
Wren blew out a breath. “I don’t know that I can do this. I don’t know that I want to.”
“Because of Evan’s murder? Dude! Like I said, it probably had nothing to do with the business, and even if it did, it was most likely an isolated incident. Chillingsworth will keep an eye out for us. We’ll be okay.”
And Wren realized it was not so much because of the murder—although that horror was validating—but because the night before, when he had lain in Rufus’s arms and felt him deep inside him, when their eyes had connected in mutual passion and heat, he had fallen in love with the man.
There could be no one else for him now. Paying customer or not.
Wren knew—as though he’d had an epiphany—he was not cut out to be an escort, although the idea had come to him gradually as Rufus gently kissed his neck.
“I can’t do it,” Wren said.
“Are you crazy? Chillingsworth will have a shit fit. Why would you want to stop? We’ll get paid today! You’ll be surprised at how much! We’ll have more assignments today.”
“No. I won’t.”
“Well then, little man, I guess I should be the one asking you, what are you gonna do?”
And suddenly those jobs out there, the ones in customer service, telemarketing, retail, even fast food, seemed refreshingly light, innocent, honest money for honest work. Wren craved putting a headset on or asking someone browsing in a store, “May I help you?” or simply being a nine-to-five wage slave again, if only to escape this insane and sinister world.
But what of Rufus? How could Wren move their relationship forward? Without the escort service in common, how would he advance things with Rufus? Would the man simply cast him aside if he was no longer part of the program? Yet Wren knew he couldn’t prostitute himself for the sake of getting closer to Rufus.
He would have to find another way.
Wren shrugged, wanting to confide in Rufus, to try to see if Rufus wouldn’t allay his fears and worries, but he knew that might come across as weak, and he also knew Rufus had no motivation to help him, especially not now.
Could Wren rely on fate? That seemed too risky.
“I don’t know. Craigslist is full of customer service jobs—and I have that dubious experience. I can probably pick something up by the end of the week.”
Rufus regarded him, a lazy smile curling up one corner of his mouth. He slowly shook his head. “Really, dude? Really? You haven’t even been out on a call yet by yourself. How do you know this won’t work for you? You’re turning away when you could make in a half hour what it will take you a week or more to make in some shitty customer service job.”
How could Wren respond that at least the latter was honest money, something he could do without feeling ashamed of himself, without feeling he had to hide it from his mother and his friends? If he responded that way, he would be insulting and hurting Rufus, who saw no shame in exchanging money for sex.
The difference for Wren was that he couldn’t, he knew now, separate love from sex. Sure, in the heat of youthful passion, he could make an exception when it was just about sex and not money. Who couldn’t? The body needed what it needed.
But it was cold to use sex as a commodity, as a form of commerce.
It wasn’t for Wren.
It was easier, though, to tell Rufus that he was afraid he’d end up like Evan, so he did. By the end of his explanation, in which he brought up all sorts of horrors that could befall him should he stay in this business, including slow murder though sexually transmitted killers, Rufus was halfheartedly convinced. Wren could see it in his eyes.
Rufus got up and crossed to the kitchen. “I’m gonna make a pot of coffee. Will you want some?”
“Sure.” This was not the response
Wren had been expecting. He stood up and joined Rufus in the kitchen.
Rufus began making coffee and then pulled the cordless phone off the counter. He quickly punched in some digits and held it out.
Wren’s eyebrows came together. “What?”
“Talk to Chillingsworth. Tell him you quit. He’s not gonna like it.”
Before Wren had a chance to think, the phone was in his palm and then up to his ear. He listened to the distant ringing, wondering if Rufus was somehow challenging him, putting him in a push-has-come-to-shove position, testing him to see if he’d really go through with it.
And Wren knew he had to. The decision had been made, perhaps much earlier than when he consciously thought of it. Wren hoped he would get voice mail, but no such luck.
“Davidson Chillingsworth here.”
“Dave?” Wren let out a little high-pitched bark of laughter that embarrassed him. “Dave, man, I have something to talk to you about.”
“Go ahead. But I have to tell you, I don’t have much time.”
Chillingsworth’s voice was so cold, so aligned with his name, that Wren wondered if he somehow knew already what he was about to tell him.
“Okay. I’ll make things brief. What happened to Evan last night scared me, really bad.” Having just given this speech to Rufus made it easier for Wren to give the same to Dave. The words flowed out, as though he himself believed it was the horror of a slain colleague that scared him off being part of the escort service. Of course that was part of it—how could it not be?—but Wren knew in his heart the real reason stood right next to him, close enough to touch, though Wren dared not.
Chillingsworth was silent when Wren came to the end of his speech. In fact he was quiet for so long, Wren wondered if the man might simply hang up, or if he already had.
“Hello?” Wren wondered softly into the receiver.
Chillingsworth made a “tsk” sound. “And you have thought this through, young man? And this is your final decision, despite all of our earlier conversations?”