I walked Freddy to his office and took a cab back to my apartment. I put the air conditioner on high and checked my messages. Just one. “Tony.
Cal me.”
One crisis at a time, I thought. When Tony visited the other night, I did a casual sweep of my porn. With my mother, Snoopy McSnoopy staying over, I had to real y hide it.
I also had to cal the only man who could save me.
I put on my headset and dialed. He answered on the first ring.
“Dad,” I began, “what the hel is going on?”
“Kevin, I have some rough news for you,” he said.
“Are you sitting down?”
“No.” I was, in fact, pul ing dirty magazines out of my dresser.
“Sit down.”
“Dad!”
“Al right, it’s your funeral. So. Your mother. I have to tel you: She’s nuts.”
“That’s your news?”
“She’s real y lost it this time, Kevin. She has it in her mind that I’m making the whoopee with Dottie Kubacki.”
“So I’ve heard.” As I listened to my dad, I piled four Honchos, an Advocate Men, and my Kristen Bjorn DVD col ection on the floor.
“I mean, Dottie Kubacki? How? Have you seen how large that woman is? Could a person even find her, excuse my French, vagina? Do I look like Jacques Cousteau to you?”
“Wel, why is she upset?” I was under the bed trying to reach an old issue of Freshmen.
“Why? Who knows where that woman gets her ideas from? Cal those people from that CSI show, they can solve a murder based on some toilet paper and a toenail. Maybe they can figure her out.”
“Al right, wel, you have to work this out with Mom.
She can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Dad!”
“Listen, you know how she gets. Give her a week, she’l find something else to be nutty about.”
“A week!” I found an old Playgirl in the back of my nightstand.
“Maybe two.”
It takes a lot of drama to be heard in my family.
“I’m going to wind up in the loony bin if she stays here one more night. Do you know what it is to lose a son?”
“Please,” my father asked. “Don’t rush me. I’m just beginning to enjoy losing my wife.”
Before I hung up, I got my dad to promise to cal my mom at work before the day was over. I fil ed a backpack with my lubes and condoms and stuck it as far back as it would go in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
The phone rang. Cal er ID told me it was Tony.
Did I want to pick up? Yes.
“Hey.”
“You didn’t return my cal,” Tony said.
“I just got in.”
“Where were you?”
“What are you, my keeper?”
“Just concerned.”
“Oh.” That sounded nice coming from him. “I’m fine. You should have tried my cel.” I told him about the reading of Al en’s wil.
“Huh,” Tony said, “they sound like the family from hel.”
“It was pretty grisly.”
“If you go to the funeral, you’l have to see them again,” Tony said.
I told him that there wasn’t even going to be a funeral.
“That’s pretty cold,” Tony said. “I guess they real y did hate him.”
“See?” I asked
“Denying him a funeral isn’t the same as kil ing him, Kevin.”
“I got the feeling they couldn’t wait to cremate him.
Guess he wasn’t dead enough, huh?”
“Yeah, wel, you can’t kil the past.”
“You sound like you’re talking from experience,” I said.
“You ought to know,” Tony answered.
Yeah, I did.
“There were about a mil ion reasons why I wasn’t happy to find my mother in my apartment last night,” I told him. “Want to guess the biggest one?”
“Hey, watch that mouth. I’m at work.”
“Come on over. You can watch my mouth.”
“Enough,” he said in the cop voice I suspected he used in the interrogation room. “Listen, about what you said before…”
“About last night?”
“About trying to solve Al en’s ‘murder.’ Just walk away, Kevin.”
“I’l think about it.”
“Don’t think, do. And stay away from the Harringtons. They sound nuts, and nuts can be dangerous.”
“Then I better stay away from my mother, too.”
“That goes without saying. So, I have a question for you: How much do you think Al en left you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of thousand?”
“Huh. An inheritance. Know what that makes you?”
“Grateful?”
“A suspect.” Tony, sounding glad for once to have the last word, hung up.
I lay down on my couch with a groan. Now I was a murder suspect. Great.
I was tired, stressed, and hungry. I started to think about the day’s events, but that hurt my brain. So, I opted for my own personal form of meditation: Replaying The Way We Were, scene by scene, in my head. Fade in: A young, unconventional y attractive Jewish girl hands out flyers at a protest ral y…
Two hours later, I was awakened by the sound of my front door rattling. Someone was trying to get in.
There was enough weirdness and violence in my life lately that I felt even more than my usual New York paranoia. I sat up quickly, becoming aware of both a stiff back and an attractive crust of dried drool on my cheek.
I ran to the door and looked through the peephole.
I could see the top of someone’s head, but he or she was standing too close for me to see who it was. I leaned in closer just as the door swung open and knocked me on my ass.
“Ow!”
“Damn key keeps getting stuck,” my mother greeted me. “You real y should have the super look at it. Never mind, I’l tel him. I want to talk to him about getting another rod instal ed in the closet, anyway. And maybe a nice shower head. One of those that rain on you, you know? What are you doing on the floor?”
I stood up to give her a hug. I didn’t want her living with me, but she was stil my mother. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” She took my face in her hands.
“Sweet boy. What’s that on your face.” She licked her thumb and reached out to swab my cheek.
“Drool,” I said, jumping back. “And keep that thumb to yourself.”
“You always did drool a lot,” she said, coming in and taking off her shoes. “And not just when you were a baby, either. I remember you were in the first grade, and your teacher asked me what we were giving you to drink at home because your chin was always wet and covered in…”
“Enough!” I shouted. “As charming as this trip down memory lane is, can we skip any more stories about my bodily functions?” I fol owed her as she walked into my kitchen.
“Oh, please, don’t even get me started on your poopies! I remember one day, oh, you must have been three years old, I had you dressed in the cutest white outfit and…”
I picked a knife off the counter and pointed it at my chest. “That’s it. I’m cutting my heart out right now.”
My mother opened up the refrigerator. “Don’t be such a drama queen.”
“‘Drama queen?’”
“I run a beauty shop, darling. I can talk gay. And there’s stil nothing to eat in this thing.”
“I go out a lot.”
“Tel you what,” my mother said. “How about we hop in my car, drive out to somewhere where there are real supermarkets, Queens or Brooklyn or something, and go shopping. Let’s pretend real people live in this apartment.”
“I don’t cook.”
“I’l cook.” She walked over to the stove. “Does this thing actual y work, or is it just for show?” She turned the dial and the pilot light caught. “Hal elujah!
We have fire! Now I know how the cavemen felt.”
The truth was, my mom’s cooking didn’t sound half bad. Neither did a ful y-stocked kitchen. I didn’t have a client tonight, or any other plans, either. I was thinking of staring at the phone al night hoping Tony might cal, but I could always do that tomorrow.
Besides, she’d be a captive audience on the car ride, and I could use the time to plead my father’s innocence.
Four hours later, I was fat and happy sitting at my computer. My mother was in the bedroom watching Matlock or something.
It had been a fun evening. Although I didn’t get anywhere on the Dottie Kubacki front, (“I know what I know and don’t ask me what I know, al right?”) we did tear up the supermarket and fil ed my cupboards with more food than I knew they could hold. The apartment stil smel ed of her signature liver with cabbage and onions, which sounds disgusting but is real y delicious. And there was stil about ten pounds left over for tomorrow.
The evening made me remember that when I wasn’t embarrassed or overwhelmed by my mother, she was pretty good company.
A stocked kitchen. Home cooking. A shower that rained on me. Maybe having her here for awhile wasn’t going to be so bad.
“Hey,” my mother’s voice came from the bedroom.
“Where’s that magazine I was reading last night?”
“What magazine?” I asked her.
“The one in your nightstand. With al the naked men.”
Oh. My. God.
She had to go.
I was typing the phrase “how to kil your mother” into Google when I got an instant message: “R u free?”
It was from Marc Wilgus, one of my favorite clients. I typed back “I’m available, but never ‘free.’”
“LOL,” Marc replied. “Seriously. I’m bored amp; horny. Wanna cum over?”
Marc was a great guy, and sex with him was always fun. I’d do him for free, although I wasn’t about to tel him that.
“C u in 20,” I answered. I didn’t want to interrupt my mother’s show, so I left her a note saying that I was meeting some friends.
Marc opened his door and immediately pul ed me inside, pinning me against the wal and kissing me hard and deep.
It was probably the movie Pretty Woman that popularized the myth that prostitutes don’t kiss. Think about it: Does it real y make sense that a hooker would suck Richard Gere’s dick but not make out with him?
In fact, it’s our clients who usual y avoid the lip lock. If a guy wants to kiss me, and if he’s clean and doesn’t have bad breath, I’m not adverse to some tonsil hockey.
Least of al with Marc. He was as good a kisser as he was everything else.
Al around us, computers buzzed and whirred.
Marc worked out of his apartment as a reverse-hacker. Security companies hired him to try and break into their client’s computer networks. If Marc found an opening-and he always did-the security company knew to develop appropriate countermeasures.
In other words, Marc made his living doing things most people would go to jail for. But then again, so did I.
In addition to being good at sex, Marc was handsome as hel. He was just a little tal er than me which made him kind of short. His body had obviously never seen the inside of a gym.
Sometimes he’d cal himself “fat” but he wasn’t. He wasn’t in great shape like a cover boy, but he was warm and strong and his skin was the smoothest I’ve ever felt. He must have been in his mid-thirties, but he could pass for younger. He had luxuriously black curly hair that I could spend hours running my hands through.
Had I met him under other circumstances, I might have been tempted to go out with him, except for one smal thing: I wasn’t entirely sure he ever went out.
Marc lived his life almost entirely on the Web. He ordered groceries and meals on the Internet. His movies, music, and pornography arrived over his FIOS line. He even hooked up with me through Mrs.
Cherry’s Web site.
“Mmmm,” I said, pul ing away from his embrace.
“It’s been kind of a long day. Do you want me to grab a shower?”
Marc licked me from my neck to my ear, whispering, “only if I can join you.”
I put my arms back around him, hooking my thumbs into the back of his jeans. I started pushing down. “Wanna get wet?”
Marc pressed his impressive bulge against me.
“I’m already getting wet.”
“Sweet talker.”
Marc took my T-shirt off and put his lips to my right nipple. He sucked hard and I gasped with pleasure.
“Fuck the shower,” Marc said, putting his hands under my ass. He lifted me off the ground and I wrapped my legs around his back. He carried me towards the bedroom. “Let’s fuck.”
An hour later, I needed the shower even more. Marc lay on top of me, the drying evidence of my orgasm threatening to permanently glue us together. Marc tossed his condom on the floor, where it landed with a wet plop.
“Damn, that was good. How much,” Marc asked playful y, “would it cost to have you move in?”
“More than you could afford.” I ran my hands down his back.
“Hey, careful what you say,” Marc smiled. “You’re talking to a man who can hack into the bank accounts of seven of the world’s ten richest men.”
“Only seven?”
“The other three haven’t hired me yet to try,” Marc answered. He rol ed off me, finding out too late how sticky dried cum can be. “Ouch!”
“Love hurts,” I said.
“You’re tel ing me,” Marc answered. “And I haven’t even paid yet.”
“Listen,” I said, thinking of the uncomfortable couch and my mother’s snoring awaiting me at home, “if you want I can stay the night.”
“I’d like that,” Marc said, “but I’m kind of in the middle of breaking into the satel ite systems of a smal Central American nation. I better get back to work.”
“No problem,” I said, disappointed.
I couldn’t help but think that Richard Gere never kicked Julia Roberts out.
Maybe I should have held back on the kissing.
After I got dressed, Marc slipped two hundred dol ar bil s into my hand. “I’l settle the rest up with Mrs.
Cherry online,” he told me.
“You’re great,” I said, giving him a hug.
“You too,” he said. “What’s your schedule like next week?” I told him the nights I was free, and he said he’d get back to me. It was a sil y dance we did, because we both knew he’d never schedule a date in advance. In Marc’s virtual reality, everything came to him when he wanted it, and he never knew what he’d want from one moment to the next. If he saw me online when he was horny, he’d get in touch and we’d get together. If I wasn’t available, another rentboy would enjoy his generosity.
Although he always told me I was his favorite.
Which I didn’t doubt, because he was my favorite client.
“Maybe next time,” he said, “you could do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know,” he said, shyly. “Spend the night. If you want to, I mean.”
Marc looked sweet and vulnerable, even younger than he usual y did.
Maybe Marc’s earlier rejection of my offer to stay had less to do with his work than with his fear of getting too close to someone. It wasn’t an accident, I thought, that he’s locked himself in this computer wonderland.
Maybe he wasn’t locking himself in as much as he was locking everyone else out.
Maybe he needed someone to knock down the door.
He was sweet, he was handsome, he was sexy, and he was rich. Maybe that someone should be me.
Maybe this kind of thinking gets a hustler in trouble.
“Give ‘em your mouth, your dick, and your ass,”
Mrs. Cherry once told me, “but do me a favor: keep your heart to yourself.”
“Maybe I can,” I told Marc.
But I knew I probably shouldn’t.
I sneaked into my apartment somewhere around one. My mother’s snoring combined with the lumpy couch to defeat any chance of sleep. I tossed and turned for awhile, but eventual y gave in to pharmaceutical assistance and popped an Ambien.
What do you get when you cross someone with hyperactivity with a sleeping pil? Someone who can’t wait to fal asleep. Get it?
So, after ten restless minutes, I popped another pil. That did the trick. Sleep hit me like a hammer.