by Doug Weaver
“Got a cigarette?”
Blood rushes back into Rogarth’s face and he scrambles, as if his life depended on it, to offer an acceptable answer.
Why!? Why did he have to stop smoking on this weekend before coming to this bar? He’s smoked his ration of weekend cigarettes – all four of them.
But Rogarth is, if anything, pretty much a straight up guy who knows deep down that lying at such an important and momentous moment wouldn’t do, so he answers:
“No…but I used to,” an answer whose effect is like a curtain closing on the first act of a stage play of great potential, but has turned out to be a particularly boring technical exercise. The cowboy’s smile disappears and without even a shrug or any acknowledgement at all, he heads off to greener pastures.
Rogarth slurps the remainder of his latte through his straw, then faces Gallagher and says: Let’s just improvise – just see how we feel if they ask us if we wanna party.
And they both head off toward Antonio’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
You might think Jimmy’d be pretty much ecstatic by the way Moishe Silverstein is responding to his pretty much overtly homosexual overtures. He’d finally stood to face the young Jew, and had actually grabbed his own crotch with his free hand while he grasped Moishe’s hand to shake. Moishe, it seemed to Jimmy, was at least ripe for the taking, if not actually beyond the sell date – overly ripe actually, a possibility that acted as a lullaby to his engorged cock, because this was supposed to be a conquest. He was supposed to hunt, to finagle his way through layers of refusal – and not just the normal garden variety straight-guy-dangling-his-toes-into-Lake-Buttsex refusal, but the much more delicious kind of refusal that tasted like sanctimony and had been baked in the oven of indignation and religious dogma. At best, he thought, this so called conquest was going to turn out to be mere pantomime because this kid was just too easy – there would be no conquest at all, much like having sex with a fake cop – just a step or two above mere theater – or what all those thousands of people experienced who’d traveled for miles and miles one August afternoon to go to Echo Park to see the Lotus Festival only to see one pathetic little lotus plant languishing at one end of the lake.
Jimmy’s hard cock has wilted completely, but he’s still holding Moishe’s outstretched hand, and it’s pretty obvious the kid is trembling. Jimmy knows he could torture this kid mercilessly by employing various delaying tactics – withholding cock from the needy – the cock deprived young Jew.
A question tries to escape from Moishe’s mouth, but since all moisture has dried up in his mouth, all Jimmy hears is a breathy, anemic-sounding nondescript guttural phrase of sorts, but Jimmy knows exactly what he’s trying to say:
Can we go to your house…now?
Jimmy releases the kid’s hand and steps back – doesn’t say a thing – just looks him up and down. Then with unmistakable resolve, Jimmy again takes a step toward Moishe, raises his arms and clamps his hands on both of the kid’s shoulders and slowly pulls him close. He nuzzles the kid’s neck with the kind of passion he didn’t think he could muster anymore – the youthful brand of passion he’d almost forgotten about. And right there inside this 7-Eleven, under the bright unforgiving illumination of its fluorescent lighting, he bites Moishe’s neck, then finds the kid’s mouth, bites his lower lip, then kisses him deep and hard – he feels the kid’s hard cock straining through his pants and against his thigh. And for a few moments they’re lost in the passion of the moment, devouring each other’s lips and tongues and necks and spit. Then with unmistakable resolve, Jimmy cups Moishe’s cock and balls in one hand squeezes hard, which really shocks the hell out of this kid, but the kid endures the pain like a trooper – just the slightest whimper escaping his mouth. While still applying pressure to the kid’s genitals, Jimmy blows his breath over the kid’s neck, then moves to his ear and whispers:
“You go home now, Moishe. I’m not what you’re looking for.”
He pushes the kid away, and without looking back he leaves the store.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gallagher and Rogarth head inside the burrito place. It’s quiet. No music; no kitchen sounds, just the vague sound of somebody murmuring to himself. The fat guy with WOOF printed on his shirt steps up to the counter:
“How you doin’? What can I get you?”
Gallagher says, “A chile verde burrito and a Coke,” and Rogarth orders the same thing, except with a Diet Coke.
Rogarth peeks inside the patio area and doesn’t see anybody. He asks the WOOF guy about the two guys who were here a few minutes ago.
“They’re gone,” the WOOF guy says.
“What do you mean they’re gone?” Rogarth asks, a little annoyed. “Where’d they go?”
“I don’t how else to say this: They’re not here. They’re gone – outta here – lost. Who knows. You want these to eat here or to go?”
Rogarth tells him that they’ll take them out.
“You got it,” the WOOF guy says.
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