I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I flicked off the lamp. And now I lay there staring at him as the dim light of dusk cast a silvery glow against his bare skin. It was thirty minutes until eight. I was wide awake as he gently snored against my chest. My dick aimed high for the ceiling. His lay rigid against my thigh.
I knew that I would fall in love with him. In a week, a month, maybe even the next day. It was inevitable. But not for Benny. We joked about the whole gay thing, but the whole gay thing was the whole everything, at least for me. He had no problem jacking me off. We were dudes doing dude stuff. He kissed me chastely, like you kissed a pet. Brothers. I said we were brothers. It felt that way, too, but I felt something more, something he would never feel, could never feel. And still I lay there staring at him.
Fate had fucked with me as it always had. It gave me the perfect man, except what we had was anything but perfect.
Benny was sleeping in the crook of my arm. My free hand slowly rose and ran across his chest, through the small entanglement of hair, which felt like moss beneath my fingertips. I traced the nipple. It was hard, thick, like my dick, like his dick. I zigzagged my way down his ribs. You could see them, count them. I was skinny. Benny went beyond that. I wished I had more control, wished I could stop myself, but Benny was my drug, and I’d seen what withdrawal was like.
I rolled my free shoulder closer to him and squeezed the fleshy tip of his dick. I stroked the shaft. Benny yawned into my chest. “Did someone start without me?”
He reached for my dick. He gently stroked it. “Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“Yup.” The yawn repeated. It was contagious, as yawns usually are.
“If I asked to fuck you, you’d let me, right?”
He stopped stroking my dick and aimed his face my way. Thankfully, the grin was there to greet me. “Do you want to fuck me, Ted?”
I did. I didn’t. There was a further complication in doing that with him. “Just answer the question.”
His eyes locked with mine. Butterflies took wing inside my belly. I stroked his dick. He again stroked mine. “If you asked to fuck me, I’d let you. I’d let you because that’s what you want.”
“But would you enjoy it?”
He paused. He seemed to think it over. “It would be…pleasurable. But it would be different for me than for you, I guess. For you, there would be an emotion. For me, a release. You would think about it afterwards, probably ache for more, think of me in a different position next time, maybe. Me, I’d probably forget about it.” The grin quivered and faded. “You’re worried that this…” He aimed his chin down to our still stroking pricks. “That this is something we should stop doing.”
“The big head says yes, we should stop; the little head says something different.”
He chuckled. “The little head ain’t so little right now.” He gave it a squeeze. He sighed as his face came to rest on my chest again. “To me, this isn’t gay, Ted. I mean, sure, we’re doing gay stuff, I get it, but it doesn’t have that feeling to it. Men and women fall in and out of love all the time. I want to meet a nice girl and fall in love. I want you to meet a nice boy and fall in love. But for us, what are the odds we’ll stay in love with those people? What are the odds that anyone stays in love?”
He let go of my dick and sat up. He pushed in next to me and ran his hand through my hair. His lips met mine. It was a soft kiss, a gentle kiss. I didn’t thrust my tongue between his lips, much as I wanted to. That was his boundary. I sensed it. “This,” he said. “That kiss. That was different. You and I, Ted, we have, I don’t know, a bond. You know me because, in a way, you are me. And when you meet that boy and fall in love, and when I meet that girl and fall in love, every now and again you’ll reach under the table and hold my hand and I’ll hold your hand. We’re brothers because brothers never lose that bond. You and I can fuck as much as you want, Ted, but it won’t change anything; it won’t change that.”
My smile matched his. My boner matched his, too. “Schmaltz much?”
He laughed. “Fuck, dude; Hallmark ain’t got nothing on me.” He again grabbed my dick and started to stroke it. “Just none of that nearly fisting shit.”
In truth, I’d already imagined it. I ached to be inside him. If I could’ve crawled up his asshole, I would have, just to be nearer to him. Instead, I grabbed his dick and matched his stroke. He pushed his forehead into mine. He exhaled. I inhaled. We came together, moaned together, twitched together.
We weren’t brothers. I didn’t know what we were. All I knew is that I couldn’t stop being whatever it was we were.
The alarm went off as soon as we shot.
I prayed it wasn’t some sort of omen.
* * * *
We hopped out of bed and cleaned up. He again brushed his teeth. I crouched behind him and spread his firm, little, hairless cheeks apart. I stared at his pink, puckered hole and ran my fingers around it.
He giggled. “What the fuck are you doing, dude?” He spit. He rinsed.
“I haven’t seen that part of you, yet. Haven’t felt it.” He turned around. I stared up. “Lift your feet.” He lifted the right one. I ran my hand underneath the arch, across the top. He lifted the left one. I repeated the maneuver, then stood up. “Lift your arms up.” He did as I asked, grinning all the while. He had a thick carpet of underarm hair. He was sparse everywhere else, but not there. I took a sniff. He smelled like musk, like soap. I played with the hairs. He giggled like a little boy being tickled.
“Care to explain?” he asked.
I pulled him in. As always, he hugged me back. “Now I’ve seen you everywhere, touched you everywhere.”
“Ah.”
He got it, understood my need. In fact, he repeated the entire scene with me, even ran his fingers around my asshole, sniffed it, too, my pits as well. And when he was done, he stood and hugged me. “I hope to never sniff your asshole again, dude.”
And I hoped to lick his until he came. We were the same, but we were so incredibly different. “So, what’s the plan?”
He led me back to the bedroom and sat down, lifted the phone, dialed the front desk. “Hello, this is room four-o-eight, Mister Jackson.” We knew his name because it was written on his luggage tag. We also had his address, which was also written on that. Hell, we had his phone number, his shoe size, his underwear size. “I was at a convention in Omaha tonight. My briefcase got stolen. My wallet was in there, my credit card, my cell phone.”
I leaned my face in. The woman at the front desk was commiserating with him, asking what she could do to help. I flashed Benny a smile. I also pinched his nipple. I had no self-control with Benny. Thankfully, Benny didn’t seem to mind. I think he understood what I was going through. He had his drugs; I had him. Addiction was a beast. It worried me when it came to Benny. It worried me when it came to me.
“I need to call my credit card company and have my card deactivated, but I don’t have the phone number or the card number,” he continued with. “Can I please get a copy of it? You scanned my card when I checked in, right?”
My face was still near the phone. The woman said to come down and get it. She’d have it waiting for him.
“Thanks. I’ll be down in about ten minutes.”
He hung up. I patted his back. “Genius.”
He pinched my nipple. I moaned, eyelids fluttering. “Duh, dude, and get dressed.”
I looked at my clothes on the floor. I looked at his clothes on the floor. The thought of either of us putting them on filled me with dismay. Plus, what would the front desk person think. “Um,” I said.
He pointed to the suitcase, to the dresser, to the closet. “Dan Jackson’s clothes, Ted. His, not ours.”
I was apparently a bit slow on the draw. To be fair, I’d barely eaten and barely slept, so slow was about all I could in fact draw. He started to get up. “Get on all fours, please. On the bed,” I told him.
The grin rose northward. He nodded his head in reply and got on all fours, legs wide, balls dangling. Benny’s balls hung so low they were practically in another zip code. In any case, I moved in and spread his cheeks apart. I dove in, tongue first, licking and lapping at the ring.
Benny did his giggle routine. “Tickles. Feels surprisingly nice, but tickles.” He flipped back around. “Are we done now?”
I thought about it. “For now.” I helped him off the bed and pulled him in. “You’re my drug, Benny. But what if…what if someone offered you some real drugs? Would you take them?”
He sighed. “Lay down on the ground, Ted.” I did as he asked. He squatted over my face, his asshole an inch above. “Don’t lick it, Ted.” He turned. He kneeled. He put his dick near my mouth. “Don’t suck it, Ted.” His face came next, his lips. “Don’t kiss me, Ted. Don’t kiss me as much as you know you want to, as much as you need to.” I sat up. Neither of us were smiling now. He sat on the floor next to me. “I’ll try, Ted. If someone offers me drugs, I’ll try not to take them, but…”
I held his hand in mine. “If someone offers you drugs, Benny, come and find me. If I’m eating, if I’m sleeping, even if I’m fucking someone silly, come find me and hug me and hold me, and I’ll hold you back until the hunger goes away.” I kissed him. “I promise to make it all better, Benny. I promise, I promise, I promise.”
“Even now it hurts,” he said. “Every inch of me has a pain in it, a pang in it.”
I held him. I held him tight. “Then every day I’ll hold you, and every day it’ll get better.”
He chuckled. “God, we’re a mess.”
“Yeah. And maybe don’t turn that one in to Hallmark.”
* * * *
We quickly got dressed. Dan Jackson was bigger and wider than both of us, especially Benny. His underwear fit me, socks, too. The T-shirt was baggy, but tucked inside the briefs, you couldn’t notice it. His jeans were two sizes too big, but my belt worked fine enough. Luckily, cuffed jeans were in fashion, and so cuffed them I did. I looked in the mirror. Apart from the long hair, I looked normal. I looked twenty-three. I didn’t look homeless on the outside; the inside was another matter entirely.
Benny went commando. He swam in the briefs. The socks were about the only thing that fit. Dan had one other T-shirt. Benny swam in that, too. Dan had a pair of shorts. They came down to Benny’s knees. The T-shirt got tucked inside. Luckily, Benny still had his belt. That worked fine.
“It’ll do for now,” he said, pocketing his meager possessions inside the jeans. The gun got put in my backpack. I hated having it there. I was glad it was there just the same.
We grabbed our stuff and said goodbye to the room, a reverent thanks to Dan. He’d know he was robbed as soon as he returned. He’d never think to check his credit card. He still had that on him. We’d be safe, for a while.
I hugged Benny. Benny hugged me back. “So gay, dude. So fucking gay.”
I opened the door. “And amen to that.”
We dumped our ragged, reeking clothes in a trash bin. Goodbye to bad rubbish. Literally. We got in the elevator. We held hands as we stared at our clean and newly-dressed selves in the metal reflection.
“Better,” he said with a heavy exhale, as if he’d dropped a fifty-pound weight off his back.
“Much,” I agreed.
We exited the elevator and walked up to the counter. Benny had taken Dan’s card key jacket, one of those small envelopes with the room number written on it. His own room card key was sticking out of the top. He set it down on the counter briefly and said, “Hi, I’m Dan Jackson. I called you a few minutes ago.”
She gave a sad smile that said, oh you poor man. Little did she know. Benny pocketed the fake card as she in turn slid a copy of Dan’s credit card our way. Front and back!
“I hope they find your belongings, Mister Jackson.”
Benny nodded ruefully. “Thank you,” he said. “And one more thing. My friend here came all the way from Omaha, as my car keys were also in my stolen briefcase. It’s late. I don’t want him to have to drive all the way back home. Do you have a spare room for the night we can book for him?”
She smiled. I smiled. Benny smiled. I hadn’t smiled this much in years. “Charged to your credit card?” she asked, already typing on her keypad.
Benny nodded. “My credit card, his name.”
“Of course, sir.” It only took a minute. She passed a new room card key our way. “And, again, so sorry about your problem. If there’s anything else you need, just let the front desk know, as I’m getting off work in an hour.”
“Thank you,” said Benny, “you’ve already made things so much better.”
She smiled. I smiled. Benny smiled. Again, if she only knew. Then again, I’m sure she’d find out sooner or later. Preferably later.
We turned. Benny didn’t head us to the elevator. Instead, we found ourselves in a guest business center, with free computers and free Wi-Fi. “More of your plan?” I asked.
He nodded. “Almost there.”
I grabbed his hand. “I’m…you know…thanks.”
The grin was like magic. Poof, there it was. “That’s all I’ve been saying in my head since I met you, Ted.”
“Write that one down,” I told him. “Hallmark will pay double.”
“Not too sappy?”
I shrugged and sat down at a computer. Ted sat down at one next to me. “Hallmark loves sappy.” I flicked on the computer. I had little experience with them. I could sometimes access them in the public library, but then it was to only check my email, occasionally stroll down memory lane on Facebook, when I wanted to feel even more depressed than I already was. “What are we looking for here?”
“We have a credit card. We need to get to New York. We can’t buy anything that will need ID. So, no plane tickets, no bus tickets probably either. And nothing too expensive, nothing to cause the credit card company to freeze the card.”
I stared at the screen. I hadn’t a clue what that left us. And then it hit me. “Just before my dad…just before he…” My stomach clenched. My heart pounded. “My dad once bought a used car on Craigslist. Eight hundred dollars. It died six months later.” My dad didn’t last too far beyond that. I didn’t feel like crying in the Ramada business center, so I didn’t fill Benny in on the details.
“Genius!”
“Must be catching.”
He went to Craigslist. I went to the Pizza Hut website. We had a credit card. I hadn’t had pizza that wasn’t out of the garbage in well over a year. Pizza Hut delivered. He looked at what I was doing. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Did I already say genius?”
“You can say it again. And kiss my cheek again.”
He did both, then went back to work. I ordered the pizza and then watched him. It took all of ten minutes. “Used Prius.” He laughed. “Seems to be our car of choice.” He pointed at the screen. “Owner will take cash, PayPal, or Venmo. Six-hundred dollars. Eighty thousand miles. Dent in the rear bumper. Take it as is.”
“Paypal?” I asked. “Venmo?”
He squeezed my hand. Everything would be alright so long as he squeezed my hand. “All you need is a fake email and a real credit card.” He shook the sheet of paper my way. “We have both.” I stopped watching him. It was all above my head. I might as well have been living in the last century. It was sad. How would I ever catch up? I went outside instead, waiting for the pizza.
Thirty minutes later, we had both a pizza and a promised Prius.
“He’s dropping it off here in the morning. His wife will drive him home. I told him our car was stolen. He was only too glad to help out.” He stood up and took a deep whiff of the pizza box, moaning into the cardboard. “People in Nebraska are so nice. Who knew?”
“And the payment?”
We walked out of the business center. “Already sent. So long as Dan doesn’t catch on, we’re safe.”
“Mighty big if.”
We waited for the elevator, bellies rumbling. “There’s no need for Dan to check his credit card. It wasn’t stolen. At least as far as he knows. And a six-hundred-dollar charge won’t tip off his credit card company. We’ll be long gone before he figures things out.”
We stood in the elevator, hand in hand, staring at our smiling reflections. We’d lost a day, but now we had a car. And not one with a bullet hole in it. Fingers crossed.
“You’re an amazing actor, by the way,” I told him.
“Tell my agent,” he said. “Once I get one.”
* * * *
We ate the pizza. Actually, we devoured the pizza, plus the soda in the mini fridge and pretty much all the food within. I hadn’t noticed it in the other room, mainly because I didn’t know to look. Flop motels don’t have mini fridges, at least not stocked ones. Oh, and thank you, Dan, wherever you are.
It was late by the time we got into bed. There were two beds again. And, again, Benny was in mine, the purloined clothes folded neatly on the other one.
We were side by side, thigh to thigh, foot to foot, hand in hand. If I could’ve simultaneously pressed every inch of my body to every inch of his body, I would have.
“I wish I was gay, Ted,” he said. “I wish I could want you the same way you want me.” He turned his face my way. “But in every other way, I’m here for you.” He smiled. He squeezed my hand. “Is that enough?”
It was now my turn to put my head on his chest as I rolled to my side. “I had nothing before I met you, Benny. No family, no friends, no money.”
“Almost six whole dollars,” he corrected me.
I smacked his supremely flat belly. “You’re enough, Benny. This is enough.”
He stroked my back. He rested his chin on my head. “What’s waiting for us in New York, Ted?”
“Um…” I hadn’t told him. None of it. I’d only known him barely two days. The first day I didn’t trust him. The second was already filled with enough excitement as it was. Plus, he was shivering and puking a great deal of that time. “I’m going to a reading of a will.” Which was followed by the rest of the short yet oh so fascinating saga.
“Um…” he said. “So, what you’re saying is, you might, even as we lay here in this stolen hotel room, soon to be driving a stolen Prius while wearing stolen clothes, be a millionaire.”
I shrugged. “I might be inheriting the family pet, for all I know.”
“What kind of pet? I’d prefer a dog. Is that a deal-breaker?”
I again smacked his belly. “The d’Urbervilles are a rich family. All I know is that I’m a d’Urbervilles.”
“Sexy name.”
“Yeah, well.”
I held his dick in my hand. It had been soft. I watched it grow, inch by inch, filling with blood, thickening the flesh, the head. It was a beautiful dick. Not too big or too small. It was the bear’s porridge of dicks: just right. Benny didn’t seem to mind the attention.
“That thing you did with your tongue before,” he said.
“On your asshole.”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded shaky now. His dick throbbed in my grip. “I didn’t mind that so much. You know, as tongue-licks went.”
“No?” I moved my head off his chest.
He smiled as our eyes met. “Strictly as a novelty, of course.”
I moved a bit south. He pulled his knees to his chest, hole winking my way. “Of course.” I buried my face in it. I kissed it and licked it and lapped at it. He stroked his dick as I did all this, moaning as his heavy balls bounced against my forehead. I tongue-fucked him as he writhed beneath me.”
“Benny?” I said.
“Yeah, Ted?”
“You know how before I rubbed your feet and your pits?”
“Uh huh.” He’d picked up the pace on his steely prick.
“It was because, because there’s something comforting about my body touching yours. Like when we hold hands. And I want to touch all of it. Can you understand that? Does it make sense to you? Or is that me just being gay again.”
He stopped, however momentarily, stroking. “I want you to touch me everywhere, Ted. It’s comforting to me, too. No one touches me, at least not before paying me. Kids have security blankets. I have Ted. Ted has Benny.” He paused, squinting my way. “Why? Where do you want to touch me now?”
I wiggled a finger at him. “Just one. Promise. Just one.”
He grinned. He grinned and, for a moment, the entire room lit up. “You’ve touched me everywhere on the outside.”
“But not the inside.”
“So, nothing sexual, then. Just a friendly hello to my rectum, possibly my colon.”
I nodded. Eagerly. “See, you do understand.” And he failed to mention prostate.
He started to stroke again. “Just one,” he said. “Two at most. I’m not some big, burly trucker, you know.”
Chuck was neither big nor burly. I had no idea how nearly my entire hand fit up him, and I didn’t think to ask. In any case, I was soon kneeling in front of Benny’s altar, praying at his holy trinity: cock and balls and hole. I licked at that third one, then gently, tenderly, slowly, slowly, slowly, eased my index finger in. Just the tip, as they say.
Benny winced but didn’t stop me. And so, further I went, feeling the smooth, muscled interior of him. Fireworks exploded inside my head as I went deeper and deeper. I was now connected to Benny inside and out.
“You okay?” I asked him as I stared at my disappearing digit.
“Hurts and doesn’t hurt.”
Yeah, that about covered it, if memory served. It would also feel really nice in about a minute or so. And then, I was in to my finger’s hilt, then out, then in again. He sighed. He sucked in his breath. He stroked faster.
“Two?” I asked, head reeling.
He paused. “Is this hot for you because I’m straight.”
I peeked my head above his crotch. “It doesn’t hurt.” I stared down at my embedded finger. “Does it?”
He grinned my way. “Two. But just two. And you’re driving to New York. And if it’s a dog you’re inheriting, we’re naming it Ted Junior.”
“And if it’s a million dollars?”
“Three, Ted. But just three. And I get half. And the dog.”
I nodded. “Ted Junior?”
“It has a certain nice ring to it?”
I again went face to ass. Benny had a certain nice ring, too, and I was soon two-fingers-deep in it, pummeling his prostate. And since he so generously offered me three, I was just as soon three-fingers-deep inside him, three fingers pounding him as he in turn pounded his prick.
I felt his prostate harden to a brick. It took all of a second. I stared up. I knew what was about to happen next. I pushed and prodded at the hard nub deep inside him. I was sweating now, panting as he panted, jacking my prick as he jacked his, and, of course, coming with him when he came. I watched in rapt delight as the towering schlong in front of me exploded like a geyser and listened with delight as he howled up at the ceiling in apparent ecstasy. Come, in fact, spewed and spewed, shooting up before raining down, covering his belly, his balls, and a fair part of my forehead.
Slowly, I eased out of him. He exhaled sharply. I moved next to him, my head back to its starting position, his chin again resting on my head. “Ted?” he said.
“Yeah, Benny?”
“When you were inside me, the world looked okay.”
Benny seemed to like saying these sorts of things to me. I liked hearing them. I liked saying them as well. I’d been bottled up for so long, and Benny, it appeared, just as long, maybe even longer. And so, it felt good to say these things, to hear them. It felt safe, too. Like he could say anything to me and me to him.
“Yep. Ditto.” I craned my face to his. “If it’s a cat, we name it Benny the Second.”
He kissed my nose. “Or Dan.”
I smiled. “Dan sounds good.”
* * * *
We met the owner of the Prius, Mark, and his wife, Janette, early the next morning. The Prius was old and beaten up. The dent in the bumper was more like a crater. There were no bullet holes. The car was all ours. And partly Dan’s—the man, not the cat. We took the keys. We left ten minutes later.
I hadn’t breathed all morning. Now, I finally exhaled.
I was driving. Benny had the windows down, the seat all the way back, his bare feet out the window.
He held my hand as I drove. It wasn’t safe to drive that way. Neither of us cared. Benny sang to me, as the radio was broken. In fact, much of the Prius seemed broken, radio and air conditioning and heat and electric windows included. Six hundred dollars was a steal, but a steal for Mark and Janette. Then again, it was a stolen car, all things considered, so a steal seemed appropriate. Anyway, Benny sang better than anything on the radio, and so I wasn’t complaining.
A couple of hours later, we were deep in Iowa. “Benny?”
“Yeah, Ted?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
He turned my way. “I don’t think four will fit. I mean, it seems like an awful lot of fingers for such a small hole.”
My cock pulsed at the thought. “Not that.” Well, not just that. “I just realized, we have about sixteen hours to go and…” I looked at the tank meter. “A third of a tank of gas. Is there a way to use Dan’s credit card at a gas station?”
“Nope,” he replied. “We can’t use it except online.”
“Can you buy gas online?”
“Nope.”
I sighed. “So, what happens when we hit Illinois?”
“In theory, we run out of gas.”
I liked how he phrased that. “In theory.”
He nodded as he reached his free hand inside the front pocket of his shorts. Or Dan’s shorts. Except that Dan’s shorts were long on him, but still. Out came a gold ring with a lone diamond perched atop it. It was hanging from a gold chain. I hadn’t seen it before. Benny had only what was in his pockets. Maybe the ring was all he had left. Or maybe he stole it along our journey.
“Whose was it?” I asked.
He glanced my way. “My mom’s.”
“She gave it to you?”
He chuckled. It sounded less than a happy chuckle. “As she kicked me out.” He shoved it back in his pocket. “It was all she had to give me. I was saving it, for when I hit rock bottom.” He laughed. It didn’t sound any happier than the chuckle. “Funny thing is, I hit rock bottom so many times that I’m halfway to China by now.” He pulled his feet from the window and turned my way. “I never wanted to sell it, not to pull myself out of a bad situation. Definitely not for drugs, close as I was a bunch of times to do so. But now, now is a good time.” He squeezed my hand. “In fact, now is the best time.”
“I don’t want you to sell the ring for gas.”
He shook his head. “It’s not for gas; it’s for us. It’s for New York. I can’t think of a better reason to sell it.” He patted his pockets. “It’s all I have left, Ted. Once I get rid of it, that person from before is gone.”
I nodded. I got it. I was leaving the same kind of person behind, shedding my skin, so to speak. “Yeah, I can dig it.”
He laughed. His laughter filled the car, filled it as sure as the breeze that flowed over me and sent goosebumps up my arms. “You can dig it?” His feet went back up, head back. He pointed to a sign on the freeway. “Anyway, Des Moines isn’t too far away. Must be a pawn shop there, somewhere.” He flashed a peace sign my way with his free hand. “Can you dig it? Groovy, dude?”
My parents used the words, the phrases. Their parents were hippies in San Francisco, in The Haight, during the summer of love. I had nothing but memories of memories, all quickly fading from my head. I had new memories to make now, memories of my own, my own summer of love. That sliver of hope was growing as sure as the tenting in Dan’s stolen jeans.
* * * *
“Fifty bucks,” said the pawn shop broker.
We blinked at the guy. “For a gold and diamond ring?” said Benny.
The guy blinked back and set the ring on the glass table. It clinked upon impact. “Gold-plated and zirconium.” He swirled the chain around with his index finger. “This is real gold. Fifty bucks. Take it or—”
“We’ll take it,” Benny said.
I grabbed his hand below the counter and whispered in his ear, “But it was your mom’s.”
He turned my way, eyes locking, butterflies flittering. “My mom, who gave me a fake ring.” He grinned and whispered in my ear, “Good to get rid of that memory, too. Get rid of it all. All.” All didn’t include the gun, though. That still sat in my backpack. Was the omission on purpose or forgetfulness?
I turned back to the broker. “How about sixty?”
The broker shook his head and snickered, then plopped down sixty. “You guy’s brothers?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Brothers.”
I looked at Benny. Benny, of course, was grinning up a freakin’ storm. “Yup, brothers.”
We left the shop. “Well,” I said, “sixty will at least get us to Chicago.”
Which it did.
Problem was, Chicago is just where the Prius decided to up and die, belching its way off the side of the road in a hazy gray cloud of smoke. We were half a day away from New York. Might as well have been a month, a year.
We walked a few miles, found a public library, a computer. We ordered a pizza with the credit card.
“Declined,” I lamented.
“That was fast.” He put his hand on my thigh. It bounced in response. “So, what’ll it be, brother? Beg, steal, or borrow?”
“Who can we borrow from?”
“Yeah, it pretty much always comes down to those first two anyway.” He sighed. “Still, there might be somebody. Or bodies.”
“In Chicago?”
He shook his mane of hair. “Four hours east of here.”
I made a mental map in my head. I knew my geography. I stared at maps, daydreaming of all the places I could go. I’d now been to Phoenix, Denver, sort of Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago. I’d seen none of those places, just simply drove through. And yet, I still had memories—of Giselle, of Chuck, of me and Benny. It’s the journey, not the destination, that counted, I was quick to realize. In any case, four hours east must’ve been Detroit.
“Your parents.”
His shake turned nod. “Yup.”
“And would they help you? Are they still even there? Can you find them if they are?”
The shake and nod became a shrug. “Either way, we’d be four hours closer to New York.” He stood, he walked away from the monitor. “And I know where they are.”
I grabbed his hand. I’d been doing so when no one could see. Maybe he needed it when everyone could see. Or maybe he just needed it.
He chuckled as he squeezed my fingers between his. “So gay, dude.”
We walked outside. It was windy. It was Chicago. Some landmarks are free to visit. “What if we tried a new tactic?” I said.
“You mean, apart from begging and stealing and borrowing?” he said. “Like what? Working?” The chuckle returned. “Nobody will hire us, Ted. You need an address, a phone, clothes that fit, hair above the shoulder.”
“Nope.” Now it was my turn to grin.
“Nope?” We started our long walk into the city. It wasn’t just Benny who could come up with a plan. “You can work without those things? For money? I don’t even know my social security number, Ted. By all accounts, I don’t exist.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. I turned and hugged him. As always, he melted into my arms. “Don’t say that, Benny. If you don’t exist, I don’t either. And I want to exist now. I didn’t before, but now I do.”
He rested his chin on my shoulder. “It was just a figure of speech, Ted.”
I smacked his ass. “Yeah, well, drop it from the vocabulary, Benny.” I released him and started us back on our journey. “And as to that gay thing, I think we can also use that to our advantage.”
“Don’t you have to be gay then?”
I laughed. I squinted up into the blue sky, the wind tickling my chin. “Not necessarily.”
* * * *
It took hours to get to where we were going. We stopped at a Starbucks, a Taco Bell, a Wendy’s, taking what we could, filling our bellies with other peoples’ lunches, snatching spare nickels and dimes off tables.
“Well,” I said, “at least I finally have more than six dollars on me.” I pointed at the myriad of gay flags, gay banners, gay bars, and shops that now surrounded us. “Boystown.” I’d heard about it back in San Francisco. Boystown was The Castro of Chicago. “Time to grow the bank.”
“Lost me.”
I shook my head. “Never.” He grinned, of course. I positioned us beneath a giant rainbow flag. There were people walking around us, mostly men, mostly, one would assume, gay. Gay men had used Benny for bad things; maybe they could use him for good ones, too. I had faith in gay men. They’d handed me not just dollars, but tens, twenties, entire meals. They let me use their backyards to sleep in, their front porches, stoops, no questions asked. They knew I was gay without asking. Gaydar is a powerful thing indeed.
I sat on the sidewalk, a Taco Bell cup placed in front of me. I held Benny’s hand, proudly. “Sing, Benny.”
He stared down at me as if I were crazy. Perhaps I was. But I also had faith in him. He’d rescued me. In so many ways, he rescued me. Now would be just another way. A great way, in fact.
“Just sing, Benny. Sing and hold my hand. Sing those show tunes you sing. Sing them loudly.”
“Stereotype much?”
I nodded up at him. “In this case, that stereotype is going to get us to Detroit.”
He stood there, then seemed to decide on a song. And if you’re planning on getting tips from the gays, what better song than You’re Gonna Love Me? The song came out a bit quiet at first, but, as the men stopped to listen, grew strong, loud, pitch-perfect, beautiful. Oh so beautiful. And he was beautiful singing it, my hand in his, his in mine. It looked like we were playing to the crowd, but we were simply playing to each other.
Either way, the tips came: coins, dollar bills, fives even. And when the crescendo came, when he braced himself for the onslaught that was the highlight, what everyone waited for in that song, a song that even a homeless man like me knew, the crowd gathered, all waiting with baited breath.
There was a silence when he finished, then a loud applause. How could such a talented man be a homeless drug addict? Life wasn’t fair. And no, that wasn’t something I’d learned sitting there. I nodded to the people as they tipped, thanking them with sincerity. I squeezed Benny’s hand even tighter.
One guy leaned in and down. “You two are such a cute couple.”
Benny was singing, so that left me to reply. “Mostly me.” Benny kicked me when I said it.
We were a couple, though. Just not in the traditional sense. Benny thought so, too, because he squeezed my hand tight when it was said, letting me know that he agreed with the sentiment.
In the end, and several hours and too many show tunes to count later, we’d raked in just over a hundred and fifty dollars.
Now hoarse, Benny said, “Two Greyhound tickets to Detroit.”
“And dinner.”
Heck, that would cover quite a few meals, plus the cab ride to the station and another cab ride to wherever Benny’s parents lived.
“Or we could just keep this up all the way to New York,” I told him. “Skip the whole parents thing.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s time to face them.”
“With me?”
The grin grew bright. “I couldn’t do it without you.”
“Schmaltzing again.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Must be all those show tunes. They’re all written that way.”
* * * *
We were on the bus an hour later, eating a meal we didn’t have to scrounge for.
“One thing I don’t get,” he said, chewing on a stack of fries.
“Just the one?”
I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “What was that for?”
“You were amazing today.”
“True.” He turned my way and kissed my cheek.
“What was that for?”
He shrugged. “Just because.”
I chewed my burger. I took a sip of Coke. “What’s the one thing?”
He nodded. “You’re going to meet a relative you never met or heard of before. How can that be? If these people are so rich that they make the news, if you can look them up so easily online, if your last name is as rare as it seems, how come your parents never mentioned them?”
I was finished with my meal. I bagged up the trash and set it down on the floor. It was getting late. The sun was fading in the distance, casting Benny in a warm, orange glow. “They didn’t know, I guess.”
He also bagged up his trash, lifted the armrest between us, and held my hand, pressed his thigh to mine, his foot to mine. He needed drugs. I could see it on his face. It’d been a couple of days now. Withdrawals lasted for far longer than that. He didn’t want to say anything to me. He didn’t want me to worry. Only, I was worried. I lived on the streets. I’d seen hundreds of Bennys in that time. He was special, but not in the sense that he was above what his body was telling him, above the pain he was most probably in.
“How can you be related to filthy rich people and not know it? If your parents didn’t know these cousins, your grandparents must have, or great-grandparents. And if that was the case, your father must’ve known. That’s not something you keep a secret.”
I’d already had all these same questions. If we had rich cousins, why didn’t my dad go to them? Maybe, with the right funds, better doctors, my mom could’ve beaten the disease. Maybe my father could’ve beaten his, mental though it might’ve been.
“I’m hoping Matilda might know why,” I told him.
He snapped his fingers. “Two things I don’t get then.”
“Your list is growing.”
He nodded. “Why did the family lawyer contact you now, after Mortimer died? Why didn’t they contact you before that, even if it was just to say hi. You’re in the will. You might not have known about them, but they clearly knew about you.”
“Huh.” That was something I hadn’t considered. Chalk it up to being in shock at the time I got the news. And hungry. And homeless. And alone. Like really alone. For years and years. Until I met Benny. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“What if you don’t like what you find?”
A shrug rose on my shoulders. “Then I still have you.”
The grin appeared. “Now who’s schmaltzing?”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. It had been a long day. The journey continued. I had to meet Benny’s parents. We were still pretty far from New York, even though I’d already travelled such a great distance. “Maybe we can both go work for Hallmark when this is all over and done with.”
He squeezed my hand. “Maybe we can buy Hallmark when this is all over and done with.”
My eyes popped open. “Huh.”
“Yeah, that.”