CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ric was a born loser.

Everyone said so.

Old lady. Old man. Guidance counselors at school. Ball-busting skirts that teased but wouldn’t put out.

Everyone said so—except Ric.

He knew that he was goin’ places. This crummy job was just a stop-over, a chance to bag some small change until the big money started rolling in.

He had lots going. Maybe a drug deal over in the eastside. Maybe not. Ric could afford to wait, to choose just the right thing.

Until then, Old Man Tasco was an easy touch and the job was a snap.

He was stacking boxes along the back wall when the bell rang up front. Someone had walked in. Big shit surprise.

He didn’t straighten up, not yet. He was wearing one of those sleeveless T-shirts designed to show off the upper arm—and he had plenty to show off. Whoever was behind him would see the muscles in his back and legs as he knelt to pick up a couple of boxes. Where the shirt rode high and his worn jeans low, a sliver of skin showed.

Sometimes chicks came in—he liked to give them a real show. Just last week one of them, maybe twenty, twenty-five, slipped around the counter and patted him on the ass and whispered “Nice” in his ear before he turned around. He copped a five-buck tip for carrying her stereo out to her car and could probably have gotten more if he’d been in the mood to ask her for a number. She wasn’t his type, though. Hang-dog ugly bitch.

Anyway, Ric figured that it never hurt to put on the show. He reached up, stretching, knowing how that would make the muscles shift beneath his shirt and jeans. His movement was fluid, graceful as a panther. Strong.

“Hey,” someone called as Ric lifted the last box and set it on the top of a stack. “Can I get some help here?”

“Shit,” Ric murmured to himself. A guy.

He turned around suddenly, acting as if he had been startled by the sound. He didn’t smile. He took in what he could see of the man in a single glance and decided that there were other games he could play with this one.

“Yeah, man,” he said, injecting a street-wise tone into his voice as he studied the guy more closely.

Older, maybe twenty-five. Pale, skinny. Shabby. Nerdy.

There was something else, something indefinable that Ric felt more than saw.

“Is Mr., uh, just a minute,” the guy stuttered. He pulled an envelope from his shirt pocket and glanced at it, holding the paper up to catch the light that filtered through the dusty showcase window along the front of the store. “Is Mr. Tasco in?”

“Gone to lunch,” Ric said. Let’s play this one tough. He moved to the counter along the wall and sauntered behind it to stand next to a stack of reference books and a small cash register. “What can I do for ya?” It came out more as a challenge than a question.

“I’m here...about a repair job. I’m Nick Wheeler.”

Ric nodded noncommittally, hooking his thumbs in the loops of his jeans and leaning back against the wall.

The guy continued. “I have a letter for him from Mr. Gunnison.”

“Who?”

“Payne Gunnison. On Greensward Lane.”

Pansy address Ric thought, sneering inwardly but keeping his face carefully immobile while the guy talked on.

“I live next door to him,” Wheeler said. “He called yesterday about some repairs. Payne Gunnison,” he added unnecessarily.

The name sounded familiar. Ric flipped open a thin book and ran his finger along a page, his mouth moving slightly as he read the entries. His finger was long but calloused, rough and dark. He looked up and smiled. It was a startling and not entirely pleasant smile—he had been told so often enough. The guy on the other side of the counter seemed to withdraw, almost flinch back like he’d been hit.

“Oh, yeah,” Ric said, carefully pulling the guy back into the conversation. Don’t let him get away yet, play him along, there more fun to be had. “Payne Gunnison. He lives where old lady...I mean, where Miss Greer lived.”

By the time he finished the sentence, Ric was almost polite, had stepped nearer the counter. He was close enough now to see the rough texture of the guy’s shirt, close enough for the splintered wood along the counter to nudge into his waist when Ric leaned forward and smiled again. This time the smile invited rather than repelled.

Ric could see the flutter of a shiver in the guy’s cheeks. No one else would have seen it, but Ric did.

The smile broadened.

“That’s the one,” the Wheeler guy said. “Anyway, I have a note about what needs to be done and a key for Mr. Tasco.”

Ric glanced toward the open street door and then back to Wheeler. There was a thin line of sweat along the guy’s upper lip. The guy’s eyes flickered to the door and back, half a beat behind Ric’s.

“Here, I’ll take care of it,” Ric offered, reaching out for the thin envelope Wheeler still held suspended above the scarred counter. “I’ll need you to sign a work order and receipt, though. Let me fill one out.”

He pulled a pad from beneath a counter and started to write.

“Name.”

“Nick, uh, better make that Payne Gunnison.”

“Address.”

“Don’t you have...?” Wheeler began.

“It’s in the files. I could look it up, it’d take time.” He waited.

The guy mumbled out the address. Ric finished the form by filling in the date.

“What’s wrong with the stuff?” he asked, looked straight at Wheeler. Even after the guy started to speak, Ric kept staring straight into the guy’s eyes. It always unnerved them; Ric could tell. There were enough queers like this one hanging around. They cruised him as much as the chicks did. He shifted his weight behind the counter, thrusting his hips forward a fraction of an inch.

“Uh, the sound breaks up,” Wheeler said. “The picture, too, sometimes. I think. That is, that’s what Mr. Gunnison says.”

Not much help there, Ric figured, for a minute concentrating on his job. The whatchamacallit rubs against the doohickey and makes this funny sound. Made as much sense as what this Wheeler guy had said. Most of the guys who came into Tasco’s didn’t know crap about sound.

The shits.

Wheeler seemed to think for a moment, then added, “And the machine shocked me once.”

Ric looked up and smiled again. He had overheard a counselor who said it was a feral smile—he had never taken the time to find out what that meant. Sounded like something tough, though.

“Not too badly, though,” Wheeler hurriedly added, as if afraid that he was putting too heavy a demand on Ric. “Just a small jolt.”

“What make is it?”

“I don’t remember,” Wheeler answered.

“I’ve got to have that for the work order. Mind if I check the note?”

Ric was opening the envelope even as he spoke, glancing again toward the door as he slid his finger along the sealed flap. He tugged the paper out. The key fell with a clatter to the counter top. He pretended not to notice.

“Here it is,” he said, leaning over the pad and laboriously filling in a space with a serles of numbers and initials. He was left-handed and had only a passing acquaintance with school—they had parted some years before, school and he, on a mutually antagonistic level. His handwriting was large and uneven, more that of a ten-year-old than an adult. It didn’t fit too well with the rest of him—his long, roughly styled hair, the way he filled his T-shirt and jeans. Maybe sometime some chick would invite him to come over to her place for some lessons in penmanship—it might be a good scam. Good enough for him to get lucky. Or her.

“That’s all,” Ric said, straightening up. “Just sign here.” He pointed to an X and a line across the bottom of the form. Wheeler wrote his full name, adding underneath “for Payne Gunnison,” then slid the pad back. Ric studied the name for a second.

“Thanks...Mr. Wheeler.” He looked straight into the guy’s eyes when he spoke.

“Nick,” the guy said finally. “I live next door to Payne.”

There was a pause. The silence in the shop was heavy, thick.

“Yeah,” Ric said, really getting into the game. This shit was ripe for stringing along.

Maybe tomorrow when he went over to fix the DVD player, he’d fix something else, too. He’d done that often enough, bashed the freakin’ queers that tried to feel him up in alleys and johns.

Ric ripped off the top sheet and handed Nick a copy. He flashed the smile again.

“Sure thing, Mr. Wheeler.” He hit the name hard, throwing everything he could into his voice.

The guy almost winced.

Ric slipped the original into a manila folder and stacked it with several others alongside the well-worn cash register.

“The key?” Wheeler said suddenly, shoving the bit of metal across the counter with a fingertip. Right on cue, Ric thought, couldn’t have done it better if I had told him when and give him a stopwatch.

“Oh. Yeah,” he said as he picked it up, easily, as if he had completely forgotten that minor detail. His fingers brushed against Wheeler’s, curled around the key, and dropped it into the folder. “Thanks.”

The front door clattered open. Ric jerked his eyes up and called out over Wheeler’s shoulder.

“Hi, Mr. Tasco.” He smiled. It was a different smile. Safer.

As he spoke, he slid the ripped envelope out of sight across the counter and dropped it into the wastebasket.

Wheeler turned just as an old man crossed the room, grunted at the two of them, and disappeared through a door hidden behind a stack of packing boxes.

Ric grinned. “He loves pizza but can’t eat it without getting gas. He’s probably back there chugging down on some white guck right now. Thanks for bringing Mr. Gunnison’s stuff by.”

He was every inch the conscientious clerk now. Hs could hear old man Tasco rummaging through desk drawers, probably looking for his medicine and burping and farting. He stared into Wheeler’s eyes again, noting the almost imperceptible flinch as he did so.

“Come again soon.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” Wheeler said hurriedly as he left the store.

Ric watched the door swing shut, listened to the clatter as it hit against the worn jamb, even followed Wheeler’s silhouette until he slipped into his car and edged it into the lane of traffic and disappeared.

Then he laughed.

It was a high sharp laugh, not at all pleasant.

Tasco yelled from the back room. “Enrique, quiet out there.”

Ric swallowed the rest of the laughter, almost choking. He glanced down at the name and address. Then he reached over and touched the side of the folder, touched it right where the key to The Greer’s place lay next to the purchase order. Yeah, there could be some fun times ahead. Gotcha, fag.