by John Inman
“In case we get bored,” Dilly murmured, leering theatrically, “I did bring along a nice selection of scented lubes and a couple of sex toys.”
“Ooh. My baby really knows how to pack,” Boz cooed, nuzzling close.
They raced each other to the front porch, and there, Dilly dug Puffer’s key from his trouser pocket. The door rattled open, and they hurried inside, leaving the piney woods, and hopefully most of the mosquitos, behind.
Much to Boz’s amazement, the interior of the one-room cabin was really quite charming. A hand pump for well water stood in what could be jokingly described as the kitchen. A massive stone fireplace covered almost an entire wall, with a tall stack of chopped firewood piled alongside, ready to be set to flame for light and heat, although since it was summer, they would more than likely be making their own heat. A sly little leer and a shudder of expectancy washed over Boz when that thought hit him broadside.
There were a few feminine touches scattered around the interior of the cabin, probably thanks to Estelle, who looked like the froufrou type to Boz. Frilly curtains with a cherry-blossom pattern on the two windows placed at either side of the front door, which was the only way in or out. A well-worn but beautiful Amish-style quilt draped cleverly across the sofa back, which Boz was pretty sure Puffer would never have been able to execute quite so aesthetically in a million years. As a final touch, a colorful rag rug dominated the floor underfoot.
Even inside out of the elements, the scent of pine and honeysuckle permeated the single room. And it didn’t even come from a can of Glade. Dilly turned toward Boz from where he stood on the other side of a long sofa, which Puffer had told them folded out into a queen-size bed. His voice was almost trembly with wonder. “My God, this place is great. And it’s ours for two whole weeks!”
Boz laughed. He couldn’t believe it either. Suddenly awash in exuberance, he climbed over the sofa like a four-year-old, clutched Dilly’s hand, and dragged him toward the door. “Let’s go for a walk. Wash the city air out of our lungs. Check out the woods. Then we’ll come back, unload all the canned crap and snacks and booze from the trunk of the car, build a fire, cuddle naked on the bed, and listen to the bears try to break down the door.”
“You’re joking about the bears, right?”
Boz cackled maniacally. “Yes, Dilly, I’m joking about the bears.” Then with a mystified air, he cast his eyes on the nearest window and added with an undertone of doubt, “More than likely anyway.”
They shared an apprehensive glance, gave their heads a shake as if to say, “Nah, no way,” and forgetting about the bears completely, shrugged out of their backpacks and started settling in.
They had made a late start leaving the city, what with grocery shopping and all. They leashed up the pets and set out to explore a foot trail strewn with cones and pine needles they had seen driving in. The sun was already beginning to slip behind the treetops. The walk was slow because Grace and Leon had to stop and sniff every single bump and weed and rock along the trail.
Finally, they cut their walk short, knowing if they arrived back at the cabin too late, they would have to do everything in the dark. As it was, they barely had time to figure out the workings of the kerosene lamps and stoke a nice cheering fire in the fireplace without burning the cabin to the ground, as Puffer had begged them not to do. As an afterthought they hung a pot of canned stew from the arm that swung over the fire for heating food.
Soon the golden glow of the hissing lamps and the flames on the grate chased away the lengthening shadows of dusk. The delicious aroma of stew bubbling over the grate made them feel at home and set their salivary glands into overtime, since they hadn’t eaten for hours. They settled down in front of the fire, legs crossed, knees touching, to gobble up dinner. Grace and Leon meanwhile snoozed side by side on a pillow in front of the fire, their heads together, the red of the flames coloring the tips of their ears, both their paws twitching as they dreamed.
Boz pushed his plate away and sprawled belly-up on the floor atop the Amish quilt. With Dilly sitting over him, looking down, they studied each other’s features in the shifting firelight.
“I’ve never been this happy,” Boz said, striving to drag some strength into his voice. He was so relaxed he could barely string three audible syllables together. Down through the chimney they heard the cry of some sort of night bird, an owl maybe, cooing and hooting about the sort of day he’d had. Both Boz and Dilly smiled listening to him. Even Grace lifted her head to hear.
“I wonder why Puffer doesn’t live here all the time,” Dilly pondered. “If this place was mine, I would.”
“Kind of a long commute,” Boz said. “And living without electricity or cell phone coverage might seem like fun for a while, but I doubt if the fun would last more than a few days. After a while you’d start missing ice cubes in your scotch and a decent reading light.”
“I guess,” Dilly said.
He set his plate aside and slid into Boz’s arms, rested his chin on Boz’s chest and stared dreamily into the fire. Boz gazed at him, mesmerized by how beautiful he was.
“We’ll be bathing out of a bucket, you know,” Boz ventured.
Dilly playfully dug his chin into Boz’s sternum. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Actually, so am I.”
They grinned quietly; then both turned to stare into the flames. Boz’s hunger for Dilly—met instantly by Dilly’s—brought them closer together. Mouths touched, and hands began to move. The forest sounds around them were forgotten for a while as they stripped naked, folded out the hide-a-bed, and snuggled together under the covers.
They made love with the flames painting the ceiling over their heads in shifting tones of rose and copper.
Grace and Leon never lifted their heads once to see what all the ruckus was about.
Later, as night deepened around them and Dilly napped in his arms, Boz fended off thoughts of Bobby Mayfield when they tried to creep in. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the images every time Bobby’s furious face came back to haunt him. He knew the misery from Bobby wasn’t anywhere close to being over yet, but he desperately tried not to think about it. He focused all his senses on the man lying in the darkness next to him. Dilly’s scent, Dilly’s warmth, the gentle rustle of Dilly’s breath. They all helped him push the truth away that Bobby Mayfield was still out there, and he was still a danger.
Lost in thoughts of Dilly, Boz barely noticed when rain clouds gathered and blocked out the stars hovering over the treetops outside the cabin windows. Tucked comfortably under the covers and basking in Dilly’s heat, he cared not at all that the night air grew damp and cool as rain grew near. As long as he could watch Dilly sleep peacefully in his arms, what else in life really mattered?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THE COTTAGE stood dark and silent. Boz’s car was nowhere in sight. Bobby quietly dragged a trash can into position in the back alley and climbed up to peer through Boz’s kitchen window. He couldn’t see a thing, but somehow he knew the joint was empty.
Off in the distance, across a couple of miles of bustling city streets, he could barely make out the faraway scream of fire trucks. He was pretty sure he knew where they were headed. So shit was real now. From this point on, there was no turning back. Kind of a shame that only now did he begin to see the mistakes he had made in killing Angel. He should have waited and taken out the roommates too. Tied them up before he set fire to the house. They were illegal immigrants, the lot of them; no one would have given a shit. At least dead they wouldn’t have been able to rat him out before their asses were deported back to the third-world cesspool of a country they came from.
Surprisingly, at that moment, a spasm of remorse wrenched Bobby’s gut. The spasm was so intense, it almost doubled him over. He fought for air, remembering how pathetic Angel had looked, hunkered over dead on the floor, that little trail of blood seeping slowly away from his still body in a perfectly straight line, following a crack between the boards.
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He stood in the dark alley now, night air blowing over him, cooling his fevered face. Without intending to speak at all, he heard himself mutter between panting breaths, “I’ve killed a man. I’m a murderer now.”
Oddly, hearing the words didn’t seem to mean much, so he shook them off.
In the midst of another spasm, this one brought about by a thirst for meth, Bobby spotted the flick of a curtain in a window of the cottage next door. Someone must have heard him out here. He climbed down off the garbage can, gave it an angry kick just because he felt like it, and watched it clatter away, tumbling end over end, spilling crap everywhere. The curtain moved again, and Bobby wondered if the person behind the curtain was about to call the cops.
Not wanting to wait and find out, Bobby spun around and loped through the shadows until he was out of the alley. Since it was late, the traffic was light. He jaywalked straight across the street and headed for the little googly-eyed bastard’s apartment.
Once there, he found the porch light unlit on the front stoop. There was no foot traffic to be seen in any direction, neither in the apartment compound, nor out on the city sidewalk, so Bobby stood in the shadows and pressed his ear to Dilly’s front door. As at Boz’s cottage, he was met with only silence.
Taking a last look around to make sure he was not being watched, he rammed his shoulder against the door, splintering the frame. The noise was not unduly loud, but he froze for a moment anyway, listening to see if any nosy neighbor would come running or start screaming to high heaven. When neither of those things happened, Bobby pressed the tip of a single fingertip to the door, pushed it quietly open, and stepped inside out of the night.
He stumbled around in the dark until he found a light switch, then flicked it on and surveyed the premises. As he’d figured, the place was a dump. One room to live in, a tiny walk-in kitchen, a bathroom with chipped porcelain and some godawful green floor tile that must have been installed back when Theodore-fucking-Roosevelt was on the job.
There was a food bowl on the kitchen floor for the cat… but no cat. Like there had been no dog at Boz’s cottage. The two little faggots must be off for a romantic getaway somewhere. Just the thought of it made Bobby furious, his anger rapier sharp.
Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he began to systematically search the apartment. He upended everything from dresser drawers to wastebaskets, searching for a clue as to where they might have gone. He found nothing.
It was suddenly hard to think. When his stomach began to cramp and sweat erupted across his forehead, he knew he needed a hit. He parked himself on the edge of the crappy Murphy bed, which was neatly made and still folded down from the wall. With the sweep of a hand, he brushed everything off a rickety night table standing beside it. When the tabletop was clear, he poured out a couple of rocks of meth and diligently chopped it to powder with his trusty razor blade. The bed squeaked under his ass as he bent forward and sucked the powder deep into his lungs.
As soon as the burn released him, he stood and turned, staring down at the bed he’d been sitting on. Pulling the bedspread and blankets aside, scraping them onto the floor and out of the way, he raked up the sheets that were left and pressed them to his face. Closing his eyes, he sucked in the scents left behind by Boz and the little faggot’s lovemaking. His cock shifted in his pants, and an almost overwhelming urge to fuck somebody, anybody, left him all but breathless.
He whirled around, flinging the sheets across the room. Then he stood there, staring down at his feet, still smelling Boz’s pheromones in the air and on his hands. It was a smell he would recognize anywhere, a clue from his past that would be with him until the day he died. Perhaps for the very first time, he began to realize how much he was truly drawn to the guy. How much he really… loved him.
And how he had done everything wrong in trying to prove it.
“Why?” he berated himself, staring into the empty room, fists clenched, trembling with guilt and a sudden mind-numbing loneliness that had somehow never touched him before this very minute. “Why?”
As always, when Bobby began to blame himself for all the bad things happening in his life, the other part of his brain—the angry part—the Bobby Mayfield part—found ways to fight back. It was all Boz’s fault, after all. Not his own. If not for Boz, Angel would still be alive. If not for Boz, Bobby wouldn’t be waiting for the law to catch up to him. And make no mistake about it, sooner or later they would. He knew the workings of the law well enough to know that much. So if he intended to make Boz pay for what he had done, now was the time to do it. He’d be damned if he’d go down without a fight.
And he’d be damned if he wouldn’t take a few others down with him.
He walked through the crumpled bedclothes on the floor and entered the kitchen. At the sink, he twisted the nozzle to turn on the water and leaning low, splashed water on his face. While he was at it, he sucked some of the water up his nose to better disperse the meth he had already snorted. It was getting harder and harder to achieve a decent high from the shit. He’d been taking it too long. And he’d been snorting up way too much. He supposed it would probably kill him one day. But not yet. Not tonight.
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a napkin holder standing in the middle of the kitchen table. Instead of napkins, it held letters. The little faggot’s mail.
Bobby snatched up the letters and riffled through them, dropping them on the floor one by one as he went. They were bills mostly. Phone bill, light bill, crap like that. It was a greeting-card-sized envelope that finally snagged his attention. The envelope was empty; the card gone. Bobby trailed his eyes around the kitchen and spotted a card standing on top the fridge.
It was a blank card with a picture of a bunch of balloons on the front. Inside it read, in a spidery hand that looked like it was written by someone about a thousand years old, Have Fun in the Cabin.
Bobby stared at the card. Cabin? What cabin?
It took him a minute to decipher the signature, since the penmanship was pure shit. He finally read it as “Puffer and Estelle.”
Puffer, he knew, was the name of the little faggot’s boss. The long, gangly fucker at the record store. He had no idea who Estelle was.
Bobby tried to think. The meth running through his system didn’t make thinking an easy process. But drug-addled gray cells or not, it didn’t take him long to understand what was happening. Boz’s little boyfriend’s boss had loaned the two of them a cabin, maybe for the weekend. A cabin implied a certain amount of solitude. Like maybe the cabin was out in the middle of nowhere someplace. And how perfect was that?
Training his eyes once again on the envelope, he squinted through the spidery handwriting and finally decoded the return address where the old fucker lived. It wasn’t far away. And since there was no apartment number on the address, it must be a house, not an apartment. That was good. That would simplify things.
He supposed he could try to wangle the cabin’s location out of the old fart without actually getting violent about it. But if that didn’t work, Bobby Mayfield had other forms of persuasion at his disposal.
He stuffed the envelope into his shirt pocket, took a last look around the apartment, and stepped back outside through the broken front door.
To his surprise, it had started to rain. It looked like one of those rare California storms that might last a couple of days. He smiled. Rain was good too. A lot could be hidden behind a curtain of rain. A host of secrets could be buried in it. Buried and maybe never witnessed by spying eyes at all.
Bobby glanced at his wristwatch, noticing as he did that his hands were shaking again. Meth withdrawal. He needed another line. Another hit. Or maybe he needed some downtime instead. A few hours to let his drug-riddled nerve endings take a breather.
He pulled his collar over his head and jogged toward the car. By the time he reached it, his hair was soaked, and he was shivering. He scraped the rain off his face and climbed inside. Leaving the car parked where it was, he blasted the
heater to take the chill off. Feeling sick suddenly, he laid a hand to his forehead and felt the heat radiating off it. Great. The fucking flu was exactly what he didn’t need.
Reclining the seat, he closed his eyes. Sleep, he knew was beyond him at this point. But a few hours of stillness would give him a little rest. Maybe even head off whatever sort of illness was trying to burrow its way in.
He lay prone, rigid. His muscles tensed on his bones, vibrating, as if hanging on for dear life. But he found the stillness, the lack of movement, comforting. His brain, however, was still a fucking melee, thoughts jerking this way and that, reality blending with hope, doubt swallowing truth. Anger blinding everything.
Beyond his wildest dreams, he actually dozed. When he awoke, the car windows were steamed up, and the rain was coming down like a motherfucker. He was alert the minute he opened his eyes. There was a clarity in his mind he hadn’t felt for weeks. It lasted until he snorted the first line off the dashboard. Then the second. After that his mind was pretty much mush.
After one more line—his third since waking up—he started humming like a tuning fork. He was ready. He checked the address on the envelope and slipped the car into gear.
It was time to get back to work.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE SOUNDS of a watery dawn crept through the bedroom window. With Estelle snoring softly in the bed beside him, Puffer quietly crawled out from under the covers and dragged himself out of bed. After tucking his skinny bare legs into a pair of old-guy pajama pants and pulling a T-shirt over his head—faded and falling apart, not unlike himself—he shuffled off through the house—barefoot, scratching his ass—and headed to the kitchen to make coffee. Halfway there, he stopped in his tracks, surprised by the sound of thunder rumbling overhead. Looked like San Diego was in for a wet Sunday. Well, good. He wouldn’t have to water the yard.