Pick Up the Pieces

by Tinnean

  “Sweetcheeks. That’s my name now.”

  He sighed. “Families can really fuck us up.”

  I nodded, intent on carefully slitting the flap.

  “Wait a minute. You have a sister?”

  “Yes.” A sudden thought hit me, and I stared up at him. “Suppose she didn’t want to hear from me? Suppose she tells me never to write her again? Suppose she tells me that as far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t have a brother? Suppose….”

  “Sweets, suppose you just read the letter and see.”

  I swallowed. My hands were shaking as I took the single sheet of loose-leaf paper from the envelope.

  My very dear brother….

  “Read it out loud, Sweets.”

  “Sorry. My very dear brother,

  “We have often wondered what became of you and have prayed for you every night since Poppa sent you from our home. He said you’d be back, that you couldn’t get a job, and so how would you feed yourself? But you never came home. Momma was sure she had seen you once, a few months after that horrible day, but that could not have been you getting into a stranger’s car.”

  I looked up at Paul. “It probably was me. I’m glad my mother never realized what I was doing.”

  He patted my arm. “Go on.”

  “Poppa is still very angry and will not permit your name to be mentioned. I have heard him and Momma fighting. They do not know I know this, but for a long time after you left, she would not let Poppa sleep in their room. He would pretend to have gotten up early, but I saw the sheets and pillows on the sofa more than once before he could put them away.

  “We miss you very much and hope that someday you will be able to come home to visit. Or if not, Momma asks if perhaps we could meet with you somewhere close by.

  “I miss you, my brother, and hope to see you again one day. Please write to me.

  “Love,

  “Your sister, Acacia”

  “Ah, Sweets.”

  “I can’t go home.” I didn’t realize until Paul put his arms around me that I was crying.

  “Will you write her back?” He ran his palm up and down my back soothingly.

  “Yes.” And then I panicked. “What do I tell her if she asks what I’m doing?”

  “Tell her you’re going to school. It’s the truth.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” I let him continue petting my back. “But what do I tell her if she asks how a student can afford to buy a house?”

  He brushed the hair off my forehead and gave a lopsided grin. “That you won the lottery? Worry about it if she asks. Now, go wash your face and then we’ll eat. We’ve got to go to work soon.”

  JOHN DIDN’T have much luck renting the studio apartment. Possible tenants would look at the neighborhood—the gentrification project had fallen through—the odd configuration of the apartment, the flights of stairs, and would quickly ask to see something else.

  “See?” I groused to Paul. “We could have gotten away with a double bed!”

  “Patience, grasshopper. You’ll see!”

  It wasn’t until about six months after the last of the workmen had left that John brought someone to take a look at it who didn’t have a problem with the floor plan or the fact that he’d have to walk up three flights of stairs because there was no elevator or that he’d have to have his laundry sent out. I’d put my foot down about a stackable washer and dryer for the studio. “There’s not enough room.”

  I got a look at the man as he was leaving. Tense and wiry, with an underlying air of danger about him—something guaranteed to lure a client interested in walking on the wild side—he was competition we didn’t need. I told John not to negotiate a lease with him. Because both Paul and I were underage—we’d lived a hundred years but still couldn’t sign legal documents—John, via the dummy corporation, handled all that for us.

  We learned the man had already signed the lease when Paul and I were about to go out one evening and saw him moving in. Not that he had much to move… some boxes that held his clothes, I guessed, a long, flat case, and a big statue of a dog. He saw us standing there with our jaws hanging open—well, mine was; hadn’t John heard what I’d said?—and gave us a cool once-over and a nod and proceeded up the stairs.

  “Well, that’s a fine kettle of fish.” Paul stared after our newest tenant.

  “Very funny.”

  “Really? I wasn’t trying to be amusing.”

  I scowled at him. Tomorrow wasn’t Wednesday, but I’d give John a call and see about meeting him at his office. I had to talk to him about this… this… kettle of fish.

  THE NEXT day at 10:00 a.m., I arrived at John’s office. Fortunately, his secretary was on a coffee break.

  “Hi, Sweetcheeks.” He rose and came around his desk. “Uh… I missed you.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. Oh, and hey! I got the apartment rented out!”

  “Yes, you did. And I believe I told you I didn’t want that particular man for a tenant?” I was tapping my foot, and he eyed it nervously.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Sweat beaded along his hairline. “I don’t know what it was about that man. He walked around the place, took out a tape measure and measured it. I went to take a phone call, and when I came back, he was crawling out from under the bed. He even looked under the sofa and chairs. Then he said, ‘I’ll take it on one condition. No one uses the storage.’ I’ll tell you the truth, Sweetcheeks. I was scared to tell him ‘no.’” He held out the lease agreement with a weak smile, and I took it and looked it over.

  “Mark Vincent. What does he do?”

  “I… I think he works for the Huntingdon Corporation.”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell. Okay, Paul and I will wait until he leaves for work, then go into the apartment and see what we can learn about him.”

  “Be careful, okay?”

  “Do you think we’re kids? We can handle ourselves.”

  “Just be careful.” John swallowed. “Um… Sweetcheeks? Baby? You’re not too mad at me, are you?”

  “What?”

  “Are we still on for Wednesday?”

  I wasn’t happy about this situation, but John was a very good real estate agent. Something about the man must have really shaken him. I patted his shoulder. “No, John, I’m not too mad at you, and yes, John, we’re still on for Wednesday.”

  He hugged me, his smile lighting up his face. He was a good-looking man, and I couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t snapped him up already. Well, their loss was my gain. It was one of my easiest hours. He never asked for anything beyond a blow job and a straightforward fuck, although he did like to talk sometimes.

  PAUL AND I waited until Vincent left for work, then tiptoed up the stairs. For some reason, even with the man out of the house, we felt the need for caution.

  The key I used—tried to use—to get into the studio apartment didn’t work. The son of a bitch had changed the lock!

  “If we ask him why he changed the lock, he’ll say if we know it was changed we must have tried it,” I said to Paul.

  “Yeah. And if we tried it, then we know why he changed it.”

  “We’ll just have to keep an eye on him.” We gave joint sighs and went back down to our apartment.

  PAUL RAN into him on the stairway one evening when Vincent was going up and Paul was going down, and he told me about it.

  “What do you want?” Vincent had growled when Paul planted himself in front of him. I was proud of him for that, because even with Paul’s latest growth spurt, Vincent still had almost eight inches on him.

  “I want to make sure you keep your mitts off our johns,” he’d growled back. “It took us a long time to get such an elite group of clients, and I don’t intend for anyone to steal them away from us!” I could picture Paul giving him a Clint Eastwood squinty glare, poking Vincent in the chest, trying to make him give ground.

  Only Vincent hadn’t. “You think I’m a rent boy? I’m flattered. I think. Listen, kid�
�.”

  “Kid? I’m no kid. I’m almost eighteen.”

  Vincent had laughed. “Listen. I don’t work the streets. I have no interest in working the streets. Your johns are safe from me.” And he’d gone up to his apartment, shaking his head and muttering something about more guts than brains.

  Once it was settled that he wouldn’t be competition for our clients, we relaxed, but we still kept an eye on him. He never brought anyone home with him. That wasn’t too unusual. We figured he probably took whoever he was seeing to a motel or else went to their house.

  Yeah, we discussed Vincent. Quite a bit. We’d never met anyone like him.

  We learned he was a troubleshooter for Huntingdon, although we had no clue what he troubleshot. He came and went, and came and went. Sometimes he’d be gone for weeks at a stretch, but his rent was paid on time, and he never harassed any of the boys if they ran into him.

  And if Paul or I ran into him on the stairs, we’d say “Hi,” although it seemed to me that Paul ran into him more than any of us, even though he’d been the first to say, “This is one dude we’d better leave alone.”

  “You’re not falling in love with him, are you, Pretty Boy?” I deliberately used his working name.

  “He’s not a john, Sweetcheeks.”

  “You’re not falling in love with him, are you?”

  “Who do you think you are—Tim?” He blew out an impatient breath. “No, Daddy, I am not falling in love with him. Okay?”

  “Okay.” But I wondered if I could believe him.

  Chapter 6

  ON NEW Year’s Day, 1993, I turned eighteen. The night before had been a busy one—and the Escorts’ Gala New Year’s Eve ball wasn’t the half of it—but I had the day off, and I didn’t even have to do the cooking. Paul ordered a couple of six-foot heroes, a big birthday cake, and invited all the boys to stop by for a bite. It was as if our apartment had a revolving door as they came and went. We played poker for slices of the salami, pepperoni, and provolone from the hero, and we danced to cassette tapes I’d been given as gifts.

  It was a great birthday.

  And a few weeks later we did it again for Paul.

  “WE PROTECT our clients.” Tim had pounded that into us, and even after he left, I followed his policy.

  We had a high-end clientele, which was why boys wanted to join us. New boys were carefully screened, and if they were accepted, they were assigned to men who didn’t have much to lose if they were outed. They weren’t given access to our important clients until we were sure they were trustworthy. These men depended on us not to reveal their identities, and we made damned sure we didn’t.

  Occasionally, they’d ask us to take on a friend or colleague, and we’d do that as a favor to them.

  That was how we got to know Mark Vincent a bit better.

  The john who came to us had the correct password, a system we’d instituted in order to make sure that while we might have a violent john once, it would only be once. It was also to avoid undercover vice cops and reporters who wanted a juicy story.

  I didn’t like the manic look in the Russian’s eyes or the flush on his cheeks—but he had the password.

  The Russian gave the boys the once-over. “Him.” He picked out the Kid, who was slight, fair, and looked about twelve years old.

  “Would you like to have dinner?” the Kid asked. “A glass of wine?”

  “I no want to date you. Want to fuck you.”

  The Kid gave his easy smile. “Yes, sir. If you’ll come this way?” They went to his room, and the rest of us went back to getting ready to go out for the evening.

  It was the Kid’s shocked, pained cry that alerted us to the fact that something was wrong.

  As I’d promised, I’d blacklisted the johns who were into pain—our pain. There were other stables that had no problem catering to them.

  Still, this john had been recommended by one of our regulars—he knew the password—so it behooved me to deal with the situation in a diplomatic fashion. I opened the Kid’s door quietly instead of bursting in as I would have otherwise.

  “Kid, are you…. Dammit!”

  The Kid was on the bed, blood dripping from his nose and splattered on the bedspread. The Russian’s fist was raised to smash into the Kid’s face.

  All thoughts of diplomacy flew out the window. I threw myself at our now former client, knocking him off the Kid, who rolled out of harm’s way until he could catch his breath.

  The Russian was impossibly strong, and I knew I was outclassed. So did the Kid, but even as he shouted for backup, Paul, Tom, and Mike came racing in, in various stages of dress, and jumped on top of the pile—causing the bed to collapse.

  The battle spilled into the living room. There was no way we could handle him, even though there were five of us, and I was ready to resort to fighting dirty.

  Vincent heard the ruckus and came to see what it was all about. His expression, the single time I was able to focus on him, was bored. He rolled up his sleeves, pulled the Russian off us, and clocked him, leaving him bleeding from his nose on the really nice area rug I’d found in Rockville.

  “Call a cab, would you, Sweetcheeks?”

  Couched as a question, it was an order nonetheless, and I didn’t think twice about obeying him. I did wonder briefly how he’d managed to get in, then decided one of the boys must have forgotten to lock the door after admitting the Russian.

  Vincent dragged the man down the stairs by a leg, muted thuds announcing each time the Russian’s head hit a riser, and out into the street.

  “Take this miserable piece of shit to the Russian embassy and let them deal with him,” Vincent told the cab driver and gave him a handful of bills.

  As a way of saying “thank you,” I gave Vincent carte blanche with any of the boys. “We owe you, man. You can have your choice, any of us you want, for however long you want, gratis.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “It is necessary. I don’t know how you knew we were having a problem with that bastard….”

  “I was on my way out,” he said blandly.

  “Damn good thing for us. Man, you saw what was happening. We would have been out of work, and the Kid might even have needed to be hospitalized. The offer is open-ended, Vincent. It has no expiration date.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You going to change your policy about having clients over?”

  “Because one john got overexcited? One of the hazards of the trade. Doesn’t happen often, and when it does, we deal with it.” I wasn’t going to tell him about the password system we had instituted. It was obvious we’d need to revamp it.

  “It’s not the best trade to be in. But you’ll do what you want to do.” Vincent shrugged. “If you need help, bang on the pipes next time.”

  “What pipes?”

  But he was on his way back up to his apartment, rolling his shirt sleeves down and examining his knuckles.

  “When I find out who gave that crazy Russian bastard our password and address,” I muttered, “he’s never gonna get another boy ever!”

  “I’ll back you on that, Sweets.”

  “C’mon. Let’s see how much damage was done.”

  I looked around at the mess the living room had become. Well, I was getting tired of the Country French décor anyway.

  And it could have been worse. The boys could have been injured.

  A MONTH or so later, we had reason to call on our tenant again.

  I’d just come in, having decided to make an early night of it, when Paul came barreling out of his bedroom.

  “Whoa, babe! What’s up?”

  “It’s the congressman!”

  Congressman Franklin was a steady client of Paul’s, and in spite of his age, he was pretty feisty.

  I was about to tease Paul about that when I noticed the tears in his eyes. “Fuck it, did he hit you?”

  “No. Oh God, Sweets, he… he wet the bed. I think he’s having a heart attack.”

  “Oh God!”

&
nbsp; “What do I do?”

  “Get back in there and make sure he keeps breathing. I’ll… I’ll do something.”

  We couldn’t call 911. The fallout would be horrendous, not only for Congressman Franklin but for us as well.

  I looked up at the ceiling. Vincent seemed to know everything about everything, and best of all, I knew he was home. I raced out of the apartment and up the stairs.

  I pounded on the door, and when Vincent opened it, holding a cannon in his hand, the only thing I could think to say was, “Were you serious about us banging on the pipes if we needed you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m banging on the pipes.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Pretty Boy’s client—”

  “Son of a bitch! Didn’t I—”

  “Don’t say ‘I told you so.’ You were right, you did, but we did, and now the shit’s hitting the fan.”

  “Did he get rough with Pretty Boy?” He headed for the stairs, rolling up his sleeves, muttering about beating the shit out of him.

  “No!” I almost stepped on his heels. “He’s a congressman.”

  “Like they have some kind of patent on not hurting people?”

  “You don’t understand.” I wanted to shake him, and if he hadn’t been six inches taller than me, I would have. “Pretty Boy’s fine; it’s his client. He’s in a lot of pain. He pissed the bed. And not because he was into water sports.”

  He threw me a look over his shoulder. “Jesus.”

  Vincent strode into Paul’s bedroom. Paul looked up from running a washcloth over the congressman’s face. “Vince….”

  “It’s okay. I’ll deal with it.”

  And he did. He got Congressman Franklin out of our place and to the hospital without anyone learning where he had been when he’d had his heart attack.

  Afterward, I said to him, “Vince….”

  “No thanks are necessary.”

  “Maybe not, but thank you anyway.”

  EVERY TIME I saw Vincent after that, I renewed the offer.