Barefoot In The City Of Broken Dreams Part 14

The following week, I was alone in the apartment working on my revisions to A Cup of Joe. I was desperately trying to find more obstacles for Joe and Milo's relationship, but everything I'd thought of so far felt trite or overdone.

There was knock on the door. It was the second knock we'd had since moving into that apartment.

I knew even before I answered it that it was Daniel again.

"What," I said, not really a question. After the last time he'd been here, he really thought I was going to let him inside again?

He held up his backpack as if that explained everything, then pushed his way past me. I could have stopped him, but it would have meant blocking him with my body, and he was a s.e.xy teenage porcupine: the last thing I wanted to do was touch him.

"Really?" I said.

He ignored me. "Where's your bro?"

"Kevin? He's got an interview. But he should be back any minute."

Daniel flopped down onto the couch again, his legs spread so far apart I thought he was going to rip the crotch of his pants. Those stupid pockets were pulled up again.

"So is he, like, the guy?"

Was Daniel really asking what I thought he was asking?

"Uh, we're both guys," I said.

"Yeah, but you know what I mean."

"I'm not talking about this with you. You're seventeen years old."

"Eighteen."

"What?"

"I turn eighteen. This Sunday."

"Um, that's not really the point. What you're asking is none of your business." And on a related note, why the h.e.l.l was he a.s.suming Kevin was the top in our relationship? (He was wrong, by the way. Well, it sort of depended on what week you asked: it kind of went in waves. But he was mostly wrong. Still, I wasn't about to tell Daniel any of this.) "Daniel, what the h.e.l.l do you want?"

He pulled a textbook from his backpack - Modern World Studies, it said - and tossed it onto the couch next to him.

"Yeah," I said. "So?"

"So you said you'd help with my homework. I gotta do the questions at the end of chapter six." He reached for one of the remotes on the table and turned on our television.

I'm not an idiot: I knew he was setting me up. I'd do what he asked, try to help him with his homework, and he'd somehow make fun of me, make me look like a fool. He was six years younger than I was, but he reminded me of the bullies back in my high school. Everyone says that you just need to stand up to bullies and they'll back down, but it's not true. They always win in the end, because winning is more important to them than your looking like an idiot for a few minutes is to you. Being a bully is all they've got, almost by definition. On the other hand, Daniel was smaller than my high school bullies - so small I could probably pick him up like a sack of potatoes and toss him out of the apartment. Still, that would mean actually touching him, and I already explained how I didn't want to do that.

With a sigh, I picked up the textbook and took a seat across from him. I paged through it. The print was bigger than I expected, and I wondered just how much they dumbed things down at Hollywood High these days.

I looked up at Daniel, who had somehow already found a Saw movie rip-off in the middle of a particularly gory dismemberment scene. (A pit-trap with chainsaws rather than spikes? Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? On the other hand, maybe a chainsaw pit-trap was exactly what A Cup of Joe needed. That was an obstacle that would definitely keep Joe and Milo apart!) "Daniel," I said, "if you really want my help, you have to turn the TV off."

"Guess what?" he said, not turning the TV off.

"What?"

"This guy says I can be a model."

"What? What guy?"

"This guy I met."

"Daniel..." I said.

"What?"

"Those guys aren't legit." On the other hand, what the h.e.l.l did I know? Daniel was a good-looking guy. Maybe he really had been stopped by some kind of modeling agent.

On TV, the victim screamed. Daniel watched the limbs fly off in silence.

"Come on," I said. "Turn the TV off."

Incredibly, he turned the TV off, and then came and stood next to my chair, so close I could feel the heat of his body. His crotch, of course, was right at my head level.

Is this the plan? I thought. Flaunt himself at me again?

"Let's work at the table," I said, standing.

I started for the kitchen, but Daniel went in the other direction - toward Kevin's and my bedroom. I wasn't exactly sure what embarra.s.sing things he might find in there. Our underwear on the bed? Lube on the nightstand? I just knew I didn't want him in there.

"Daniel!" I said, but he completely ignored me and disappeared inside.

I hurried across the apartment.

"Daniel!"

As I reached the doorway, he stepped back into the frame, facing me.

We collided. The last thing I'd expected was for him to listen to me again and do what I'd said, so I stepped right into him like I was walking into a hug. This wasn't just any hug either. It was a full-on, torso-to-torso embrace, almost like he was wrapped around me.

It wasn't erotic exactly.

Okay, I'm lying - it was exactly erotic. Beneath his grimy, rumpled clothing, I could feel him, smaller than me, but just as lean and hard as he'd looked in the pool. And yes, I also felt his crotch, pressing against my thigh. The most surprising thing may have been how he smelled. It was like I'd knocked the pheromones right out of him. Kevin smelled like a man, and Daniel did too, but somehow even fresher. This sounds pervier than I intend, but it was like he'd been plucked off the tree at the exact moment of ripeness.

That, of course, was also the moment when Kevin arrived home.

"I leave for two hours," he said, standing by the door, "and this is what I come home to?"

"Kevin!" I said, trying to untangle myself from Daniel's body - easier said than done. Finally, I pulled away. Somehow my clothes looked rumpled now, like Daniel's always did. I immediately tucked and straightened, even though that probably made me look more guilty.

"Daniel went into our bedroom!" I said to Kevin. "He didn't listen when I told him to stop!"

Kevin just smirked.

Daniel was absolutely busting up - "Pendejo!" he said - and I realized I'd been played again. Now he even had Kevin laughing at me.

"Daniel wanted help on some homework," I said. "But he was just leaving." My face was the death ray in some sci-fi epic.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going," he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up his textbook and backpack, then slithering for the door. He'd come, he'd seen, he'd conquered, and now he was leaving.

Kevin stepped to one side to let him go. But when Daniel reached the doorway, he turned back to me and grabbed his crotch through his cotton pants. "That was hot," he said. "But next time, I'm gonna let you do me." Then he was gone.

The second the door was closed, I said, "Nothing happened! I was trying to get him out of our-"

Kevin burst out laughing, but it felt different now that Daniel was gone. Now it felt more like he was laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

I smiled.

"You really trust me that much?" I said, touched.

"Trust you?" Kevin said. "With Daniel? Oh, h.e.l.l, no! But I opened the door a few seconds before you think I did. I saw the whole thing."

Later that night, Kevin and I were lying in bed, cuddling. My head was on his chest, and I could smell his athlete's foot cream, which he'd just put on.

"Daniel is such a twit," I said.

"You think he's s.e.xy," Kevin said.

I jerked my head up and glared at him. "I do not!"

"Sure, you do. It's all good. Even if he's only seventeen years old, you pervert."

I didn't say anything for a second. Kevin noticed.

"What?" he said.

"He turns eighteen," I said quietly. "On Sunday."

Kevin laughed.

"Stop that!" I said. "He's a twit."

"Sure, he is. But you still think he's s.e.xy, and now he's basically legal, so just admit it."

"Why don't you admit it? You're the one who keeps bringing it up."

"I'm not the one who was pressed up against him in our bedroom today."

I reached down and slipped my hand up through the leg of his running shorts. Kevin wasn't wearing underwear and he was completely hard, straining against the nylon.

I looked back at him accusingly.

"I deny everything," he said.

"Uh huh," I said, gently stroking him. "Maybe you should have a talk with your d.i.c.k."

"Maybe you should have a talk with my d.i.c.k."

I smiled and leaned in to kiss him. He kissed me back, more forcefully than I expected, hungrily.

He's still thinking about Daniel, I thought. But that was okay. I confess I was thinking about Daniel too - the smell of him, the feel of him against my body.

I worked my way down Kevin's torso, sliding his shorts down so I could have that aforementioned conversation with his d.i.c.k. At the same time, the rest of Kevin's clothes were coming off, and mine were too, even though my mouth barely left his d.i.c.k.

In a minute, we were both naked, and I climbed on top of him, kissing again, thrusting together. We were touching each other, kissing and licking, but we were thinking about Daniel, even as we both knew the other was thinking about him too.

I couldn't help but wonder: did all gay couples do this? I bet a lot of them did. Unlike straight couples, gay couples can find the exact same person hot. It was totally erotic, knowing that Kevin was turned on by the same thing I was, that we were sharing the same object of desire. In a weird way, both of us thinking about Daniel even made for a strange moment of connection.

The truth is, s.e.x makes no sense whatsoever. But I guess that's a big part of what's so great about it.

Afterward, Kevin fell asleep, but once again I didn't. I just lay in the dark, listening to the traffic and the sounds of the city.

Whatever you do, don't- That's what the ghost said to me before, the last time I'd stayed awake after Kevin and I had s.e.x. Except it wasn't really a ghost. It had probably been the neighbor's radio, a trick of the acoustics.

Still, unlike before, I now knew that someone really had killed himself in our apartment, that screenwriter named Cole Gordon. Or did I know that? All I really knew is that there'd once been a screenwriter who'd lived in our building, and he'd died in some kind of accident. I didn't know it was suicide or even that it was our apartment.

I slipped out of bed, pulled on my underwear and a t-shirt, and walked out to the front room. I didn't turn on the lights, or the TV, or even pick up my iPad. I listened, but I didn't hear anything. What was I expecting to hear? The voice of the ghost again? That was stupid.

I looked around the darkened room. If Cole Gordon really had lived here, and he really had committed suicide, I wondered how he'd done it. I'd thought before that maybe he put his head in the oven and turned on the gas, but somehow that didn't feel right.

I looked up at the ceiling, but there wasn't anything to hang a rope on. The only fixture was over the table in the kitchen, and the ceiling wasn't tall enough in there to hang yourself. Could he have put a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself? Did they even have plastic bags in the 1950s? I didn't know. Maybe he took an overdose of sleeping pills - that method of suicide seemed like an old standby.

This line of thinking was morbid. Whatever happened, I had no way of knowing.

The real question was why had he done it?

Gordon, 34, was an unproduced screenwriter.

That's all the article said. Was I jumping to conclusions to a.s.sume that he'd killed himself because he was an unproduced screenwriter? That's what the legend said - what Gina had told us that day we first met her - but I wasn't sure if I should put any stock in that at all. Weren't legends like that game you play at birthday parties, where you go around the room whispering in each other's ears, and by the end of the game, the person says something completely different from what the first person whispered?

Still, I thought, let's a.s.sume that really was the ghost of Cole Gordon I heard: a big a.s.sumption, but whatever. Presumably, it was hard for ghosts to speak to the living. If it wasn't, they'd talk to us a lot more often, and more importantly, someone would have proved that they talk to us. Maybe this particular ghost had gotten through to me anyway, at least for a few seconds. What was so important that he had to try and reach me? And what was the rest of the sentence?

It had sounded like a warning.

Cole Gordon was a screenwriter, and I was a screenwriter, so it seemed reasonable to a.s.sume it had something to do with that. Did it have to do with my movie deal with Mr. Brander? Was I making a mistake somehow?

"Tell me," I said to the darkness. "What's the thing that's so important I not do?"

The second I said the words out loud, I felt stupid again. It was definitely time to go back to bed. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but even I knew it was time to turn in when you were standing in a darkened room, listening for answers that will never come.