Benny didn’t come back to his room that night, nor mine. I sat in bed waiting, staring up at the ceiling, hoping he’d at least pop in. Since we’d been at the manor, he’d fallen asleep next to me, cradling me in his arms. I’d grown accustomed to it. Now, I couldn’t doze off to save my life.
I, of course, knew where he was. He was with her. My cousin. Seemed incestual to me. Seemed horrible to me. Of all the people she could have, why him? Was she doing it out of spite? Was she trying to chase me away? Did she know about our relationship? What was he doing with her?
I tried to wipe that last thought from my addled head. I tried to wipe them all away. I failed miserably, in that I was miserable. And, yes, I knew I was doing to Manny what he was doing with Matilda. We were both guilty even while neither of us was. Benny and I weren’t dating, after all. We weren’t a couple. He was straight. Maybe with a slight bent, but straight just the same. He wanted a wife, a family. He wanted me, but not in the way I wanted him. Life wasn’t fair. And, yes, I also knew I was complaining from a massive antique bed, in a massive mansion that sat nestled along the coast.
Fair, I suppose, was subjective.
I reached up to the wall. I rang for my butler.
Yep, subjective.
“You rang, sir?” He was standing at my door in his jammies, wiping the sleep from his eyes as a grin splayed across his face. “Does the master require a bedtime story, a spot of tea, perhaps a hairy hole to pound?”
I snapped my fingers. “Brilliant idea.”
He closed the door behind him. I watched him shuck off his clothes. The light from the moon cast him in a silver glow. “Which one, sir?”
“Well,” I said as I sat up, a thick pillow behind me, my own thickness down below, “given that you don’t seem to have any tea on you…”
He was standing by the side of the bed. He bent forward, his lips on mine, tongues swirling, spit swapped. This was far better than counting sheep. I could’ve counted hairs, but that would’ve taken us well into the next century. He pulled a centimeter away. It felt like a mile. “This still doesn’t count as that date.”
My heart panged. There was that date thing again. Sex was one thing; a date could lead to something, something that could further tear me away from Benny. I knew how crazy that sounded, given it was making me crazy thinking it, but when you’re crazy, logic doesn’t exactly have a good toe-hold on you.
I nodded, smiled, tweaked a hair-haloed nipple. He purred in reply, then sidled in next to me, then on top of me, all that soft down tickling millions of nerve endings. I was amazed at how different being with Manny was than with Benny. The act was the same, the positions the same, but everything else so vastly different.
My hand slid over his back, across a trail of hair that stretched from shoulder to shoulder, then disappeared before sprouting just above his crack in a dense mound of fuzz. I felt like Columbus with Manny, exploring strange new lands, travelling across yet-undiscovered terrains. He kissed me as I explored, as my hands hiked across his peaks and down his valleys, ultimately landing at his equatorial region, as my fingers were wont to do.
He giggled when I tickled his hair-rimmed hole, the cave that held vast, untold riches. This is why explorers left home, seeking their fortunes, conquering new lands. He moved his mouth to my ear and gave a tender bite on my lobe. I moaned as my eyelids fluttered. “You do seem to like it down there,” he whispered.
I ached to plunder it, in fact. To say that I liked it was like saying I liked breathing. Need was a far better word. My hand was the compass, his chute yanking the needle ever southward. My hand didn’t know of guilt. My fingers had no preference when it came to Benny, when it came to Manny, when it came to exploration. Any port in a storm, my hand figured, my hand fingered.
His mouth again found my ear. “Should I make this easier on you, sir?”
Sir. The word made my cock expand. I’d gone from being ignored on the streets to being addressed as sir. I had blinked. My world went one-eighty. I was terrified to blink again. “Easier is good,” I replied, the words fairly catching in my throat.
He nodded, his head rubbing against mine. He flipped. His world also went one-eighty. I blinked. There was his ass, his hole, balls hanging between his thighs, the head of his cock jutting just below. There they were: hole, balls, cock. I rubbed his muscle-dense thighs. I grabbed his cheeks, squeezed, pulled them apart, set them free, repeated the steps. Hole, no hole. Hole, no hole. I preferred the latter. Again, the word need seemed apt.
I craned in. I spit down. Saliva dribbled from hole to balls, glistening in the meager moonlight. In my finger slid. I could feel his walls tightening around my digit. I loved this feeling, when my body and his were nearly one, when he united with me, when I united with him. Columbus landed. Columbus invaded. Columbus conquered. My finger was the Santa Maria docking at Manny’s port.
Control is a tangible feeling. My world had spun out of that, out of control. Meaning, my recent predilection for poking and prodding made more than a modicum of sense. Meaning, it was no wonder that the Santa Maria was quickly joined by the Nina and The Pinta.
Three was a good fit. Four seemed to always be tight, but three was perfect. Three was dick-sized. I liked my fingers better than my dick in there. My fingers I could watch as they sunk and emerged. My fingers I could twist and turn, could go from one to three to four and back again, all in that terrifying blink. One elicited a different sort of moan than two, than three, than four. Whole symphonies could be created out of the variations my baton-like fingers made. I liked fucking with my prick. In fact, I loved fucking with my prick. But fingering was more in line with the divine.
I reached down with my other hand and jacked his prick. He arched himself up above me to allow better access, his mouth now on my pole, two holes sucking me in.
I flicked on the light.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“I want to watch you shoot.” I grinned. I was close. I could feel my balls rise. “And you’re even more beautiful in the light.”
“My ass, you mean.”
I shrugged. I came. Jizz spewed up in thick wads, splashing his face. “You say tomato.”
I pounded his prostate, which was so hard it could give steel a run for its money. He came. I watched intently. The come had been inside him, now it was coating my belly, my chest. Biology was an amazing thing. He had an amazing ass, an amazing dick. I sat there amazed and gasping. “Only when I order a hamburger,” he panted into my still dripping dick.
“No lettuce? No ketchup?”
He rolled off me. He sucked the remaining jizz off the tip of my dick. My come was now inside him as my fingers still were. Biology was amazing and hot. “Just tomatoes.”
I reluctantly extracted my three fingers. The symphony had ended. Columbus returned to his ship. “Good to know,” I said. “In case that date of ours is at a McDonalds.”
He slapped my thigh. “Cheap date.”
My shrug repeated. “Old habits die hard.”
I didn’t explain that. I was on Benny’s same page here. I didn’t want them to know, not any of them, Manny especially. The past was better off staying there. But would it stay there? Could it stay there?
* * * *
Manny spent the night. That is to say, what was left of it.
I didn’t sleep. I thought of Benny. I thought of Manny. I thought of that photo in the hallway. Who was that boy, and why did he look so familiar?
Eventually, sunlight made its way in, spilling across the room before landing on my sleeping butler. I watched it illuminate the hair, the muscles, the chiseled face, as it dappled across the terrain I’d so recently mapped. He was so beautiful. The tether was still there, despite both my hands being free.
When the sunlight hit his eyes, he blinked them open. Blue on top of blue. Biology. The amazement returned in full, as did the throbbing in my dick.
“Morning,” I said.
He yawned. “Already?”
“It happens. Usually at this time.”
He stared down. His dick was hard, sunlit. The door swung open. Benny walked in.
The air sucked out of the room. Time stopped. A second went by, two. Benny’s eyes locked in on the stiff cock. Our eyes locked in on Benny. I knew why Benny was there, in my room and not his; Manny didn’t. Either way, someone didn’t belong. Someone or ones.
“I, um…” Manny shot up. Manny tripped, fell, as he went for his clothes. His hairy ass parted and revealed the equally hairy hole. Benny and I both stared at it. This is what it felt like to be a deer, except Manny had but one gleaming headlight.
He got dressed. He got dressed fast. Given that he only had pajamas, fast was easy to pull off. He was gone a moment later, his face and chest a molten red.
“Have a good day,” Benny shouted after him. He then looked at me. “Hairy.”
I nodded. “It’s rather nice.”
He reached under his shirt. “Almost smooth.”
I shrugged. “Also, rather nice.”
“Variety, spice, blah, blah, blah.”
My shrug turned nod. Manny, however, was anything but blah. “The prodigal son returns.”
“Prodigal?”
A sigh broke free. “Never mind.”
He closed the door. The silence returned, deafening in its completeness. He got undressed. He got in bed. He held my hand. My heart pounded. “Should we talk about this?” he asked.
I shook my head. It was too early to talk about it. Maybe sometime tomorrow. Or next year. I was voting on never. “Ostriches bury their heads in the sand.”
“Never seems to do them any harm.” He turned his face my way. He kissed me. He didn’t kiss me like Manny kissed me. I could feel the difference now. I enjoyed both kisses, but for entirely different reasons. “I still love you.” He caressed my cheek with his hand.
I smiled. “Do you feel the need to say that because you slept with someone or because I did?”
“Neither,” he replied. “Simply because I do.” His hand squeezed. My chest squeezed. “Nothing will change.”
My smile quivered. “Everything will.”
He kissed me again. “I know. I know.”
* * * *
I ate breakfast alone outside, seeing as Benny ate breakfast inside, with Matilda, and Manny couldn’t eat with the family, namely me. It was an uncomfortable situation all the way around. Odd, seeing as I was sitting in a remarkably comfortable outdoor recliner at the time.
I stared out at the ocean in the distance. I breathed in. I breathed out. Maximillian suddenly appeared at my side. Was the lawyer also a magician?
I jumped.
“Sorry, sir,” he said.
“Ted,” I replied. “You’re older than me. Sounds strange.”
Didn’t sound strange when Manny said it, but that was during much different circumstances. Much, much. I wondered if Maximillian had a hairy asshole, too? “Are you here to join me for breakfast?”
He shook his head. “I saw you sitting alone out here. Everything okay?”
He seemed concerned. Was he a nice guy or a nice employee? Perhaps both? I changed the subject, mainly because I didn’t much care for it. “Any more word on my grandfather?”
He pulled up an identical recliner. He sat down. He was in slacks, a button-down, brown loafers. The slacks rose up an inch, revealing a hairy calf. Was the leg above hairy? I grinned. I bet he did have a hairy asshole. Wishful thinking, but still. “No, Ted. No word.” He sat further back in the recliner. “Really makes no sense. It shouldn’t be this difficult, but it’s like your grandfather simply popped into existence. There’s certainly records of him, real estate holdings, tax records, death records, but nothing on how he’s related to….” He waved his hands right to left. “All this.”
I again thought of the photo in the hallway. A chill ran up my spine. “But you’re still looking?”
He smiled. He nodded. “We have time, Ted. Something will turn up.”
He stood, bid a goodbye. I watched him leave, biding my time. When he was gone, I jumped up, then ran to the servants’ quarters. The photo was there, the boy blurrily smiling my way. I touched the glass. The chill returned. He did indeed look like me. It was as if I had somehow gone back in time. I grabbed for the frame, taking it off the wall before sliding it up my shirt, not wanting anyone to see me with it.
I hurried back to my room. Benny was nowhere in sight. I wondered if that was a good thing or a bad one. Was he still eating breakfast? Was he still with my cousin? A pit formed in my stomach. I tried to think of Manny instead, but Benny remained at the periphery. He seemed to have taken up residence inside my head and was unwilling to give up his share of space in there.
My backpack was in the closet, the meager remnants of my past still inside. I took out the three small framed photos, all that I had left of my family. The one of my grandparents I set aside, Sally and Monroe, still young, seemingly happy as they stood on a beach somewhere. I placed the hallway photo next to them. My eyes went back and forth, back and forth.
I somewhat resembled the boy in the hallway photo. I somewhat resembled my grandfather. The boy and my grandfather resembled each other, though they were a good ten years apart in age. The chill returned, the pit growing to orchard-sized proportions.
“Grandpa?” I said to the two photos. “Is that you?”
And, if so, why did I find the photo where I did, where the servants lived? Was grandpa a servant or was he posing with servants? Maybe the adults in the photo were his butler, his nanny. Or maybe it wasn’t my grandfather at all, simply wishful thinking on my part, me trying so hard to find my past and simply seeing what I wanted to see. The boy looked like me. The boy looked like my grandfather. The boy was blurry, the photo old. He looked like a million people. He could’ve been anybody. But how could I find out for sure?
Benny walked in as I pondered all this, his timing, as of late, less than ideal. “What’s all that?” he asked.
I scooped up the photos and quickly dumped them inside my backpack. I didn’t want Benny seeing them, couldn’t take the risk. This might’ve been evidence, and a damning one at that, and so it needed to stay out of Matilda’s hands. Which is to say, we had a few weeks left in the manor; why rock an already shaky boat? Plus, a few weeks left me a few weeks to investigate on my own, maybe turn up something, or turn up nothing at all, to possibly disprove that the boy in the photo was anyone related to me, thereby putting us back at square one.
“Just reminiscing,” I said, hoping he hadn’t counted four photos instead of three.
He smiled and hopped on the bed. “Must be hard,” he said. “Being so close to finding out the truth.”
I nodded ruefully. “Or finding nothing.”
He ruffled my hair. “Well, not nothing.”
That was true; I’d found him. He was better than all of it, the mansion, the family, the money. But what if we lost everything, leaving us with, again, nothing. The thought was almost too much to bear.
“How was breakfast?” I asked.
He grinned. My dick twitched. “We missed you.”
I knew better than to object. “Do you have plans today?”
His grin flew south. “I, uh, we…”
I raised my hand. “It’s okay. I have things to do today, too. I’ll see you at dinner?”
He blinked. He’d come to tell me he had a date with Matilda; I’d somewhat turned the tables. I knew he was just as afraid of losing me as I was of losing him. We loved each other differently; the loss would be exactly the same. “Oh, uh, okay. Good.” He stood back up. “Have fun then.” He moved to the door. “See you at dinner.” He ran back. He gave me a kiss. The grin returned.
I took his hand in mine. I was on the bed. He was standing up. We stared at our intertwined fingers. Sometimes you don’t need words.
I nodded, and he was gone.
As for me, I really did have plans. After all, if there was one picture of a boy in a hallway, perhaps there were more.
* * * *
I searched the mansion for Meg, the estate manager. Maybe, out of all of them, she would know the history of the estate, of the help, the unknown people who served the internationally known. Still, it was a long shot. It was also a long search for her. If I had had a cellphone, I might’ve used Google Maps.
I found her thirty minutes later, her office behind the pool house. It was a small space, elegantly appointed. Her hair was down, jacket off. She managed a smile when I walked in, tied up her hair, slipped on her jacket. It seemed like wasted breath, the ridiculous formalities of the equally ridiculously wealthy.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said as I closed the door behind me.
She walked from behind her desk, nodded my way. “No bother, Mister d’Urbervilles.”
I grinned. I almost giggled. Mister. Oh how the fallen have become mighty. “Ted, please.” The photo was in my hand. I held it her way. “I was wondering,” I said as the frame moved from me to her, “if perhaps you could help me find out who the boy in this photo is.”
She looked at it, then looked at me. She paused, her head at a slight tilt. Another grin managed its way across her otherwise stern-looking face. She would’ve made a great dominatrix, instilling fear in her prostrated partners. “It’s an old photo, Ted.”
“Of someone who somewhat looks like me.”
She handed the photo back as she nodded. “Yes, I can see that.” She sat against her desk. “Your genetic ties have yet to be found, I hear.” Her arms folded over her chest. “You think you’ve discovered the answer?”
I shrugged. “It’s an old photo, blurry. It could simply be wishful thinking on my part. Still, if we knew who the boy was, or even the adults behind him, maybe we’d have our answer.” I tapped at the frame’s glass. “You’re the estate manager; don’t you have access to the records of who worked here?”
“That photo is of estate employees, if their dress is any indication. We’re searching for your grandfather, perhaps his father. Your request, therefore, seems like a wild goose chase.”
“Sometimes the needle is found in between all that hay.”
Her hands fell to her sides. “The records exist, of course.” She again walked behind her desk. A key was found, handed my way. “In the basement, filing cabinets along the back wall.”
“Cabinets, plural?”
The grin made its brief yet triumphant reappearance. I wondered if, in her off-time, she used a whip or a paddle. Probably both, I figured. “The family is old, Ted. There have been hundreds of people in their employ over the generations, especially when the family was larger.” The grin up and vanished. We were all hanging on by a thread, me, the family, her, by extension.
I pocketed the key and thanked her. She wished me luck. I tended to think I’d need more than that.
* * * *
I asked Manny for help after I’d finished my lunch, alone. I asked him while I was balls deep in his ass, him on all fours. His hole jacked my cock as sweat trickled down his back and over his sides. I liked fucking him. I liked using my fingers better. I tended to doubt that was normal. Then again, why start now?
His moaning, auxiliary groaning, momentarily stopped. There was a pause, a hiccup in time after I’d asked, as if I’d either switched something off or something on. His pause gave me pause. It was a simple request, after all: help me search through the employment records.
He took hold of his dick. He jacked off. He came. I’d barely blinked. I’d clearly hit a nerve, not to mention a prostate. He rolled over, my turgid tool suddenly released. It stood there, as if to say, what the fuck?
“I can’t go down there,” he panted.
Can’t or won’t? I wondered. “Some unwritten rule? Some written rule? Fear of basements? Of filing cabinets?” I gripped my prick. I jacked. I came. It was expedient far more than romantic. He didn’t reply. Instead, he gazed at my dick as it de-swelled and dripped jizzy remnants. “The money,” I said. “What was left to you in the will, what’s left to you and your family in all the wills, that’s why you can’t help.”
He looked both saddened and alarmed—plus a fair bit of adorable and come-dripping, but that wasn’t going to be of much use to me. “I…I, um…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Whatever it was, he was sworn to uphold it, and paid out the wazoo for it. If he were to help uncover something, he’d lose everything, I was betting. If I didn’t uncover something, I’d lose everything. Could I ask Benny for help? What if what I uncovered lost him Matilda? Would I lose him as a result?
“Do you like me, Manny?” I asked him.
His smile returned. “The split second I met you. If you could split a second, then I liked you then, too.”
I ran my fingers through his hairy, sweaty, cummy chest. “I liked you in that split split-second, too, Manny. And you don’t have to help me.”
He exhaled. “I wish I could help, if that matters.” The smile on his face widened. “And you still owe me that date.”
I nodded noncommittally. So did my dick. Comittally. As my dick was looking forward to said date. Me, yeah, the jury was still out on that one.
* * * *
I found the basement. A 747 could’ve parked there, with room for several hundred luggage carts. My echo had an echo. Still, the cabinets were easy enough to find. All ten of them. I groaned at the site. Sometimes the needle is found in between all that hay? Did I really say that? No, the needle is never found, not ever.
Still, I had to try, even though all I had was a blurry photo and a name: Monroe d’Urbervilles, my grandfather. I also knew what years to look for, approximately, give or take a decade, seeing as I knew my birthdate, my father’s birthdate, and about how old my grandfather was when he had my father. And, judging by the ages of the cabinets, it seemed they went in chronological order, left to right, the left side old and rusty, the right newer, sturdier.
I started in the middle. I unlocked the cabinet. It opened with a grating shriek that made my shoulders bunch up. The papers inside were yellowed with age, but all neatly filed, separated by dates and then further separated by categories: employees, contractors, invoices, the minutia of running the estate.
The work was painstaking, as most everything was written in hand, and in script, and by pens with ink that didn’t always stand the test of time, by pencils with even worse legacies. Everything was ages and dates and long-forgotten names, plus money, money, money. Vast sums went in. Vast sums went out. Though the former far outweighed the latter.
And then I found it.
That is to say, I didn’t find it. Mainly because it was missing. Or seemed to be.
I’d been flipping through the files, month after month after month, going from the bottom of the filing cabinet to the top. Everything was in exact sequence. February always rolled to March, March to April. The order of everything was exact, too. Each month started with employee records and ended with payments received for services rendered. The Mojave was less dry.
But then gaps started to appear, noticeable only in their absence. Sequential page numbers went missing. One, two, three, but then nothing until six, seven, eight. Entire payroll sections went missing. Employees I’d previously found didn’t appear again until years later, the names of those on either side of them also missing.
I knew what I was seeing. That is, what I wasn’t seeing.
No, I didn’t run across anyone named Monroe, and I was laying bets that he was who had been removed from the files. Or at least someone who pointed to my history with this family, or who could prove or disprove my lineage.
But who had taken the files and why? Was there evidence in them that I was a d’Urbervilles? Was I, therefore, allowed to stay in the mansion only until my allotted time ran out? Was it Matilda who had taken them, the person with the most to gain, or Maximillian, the person who was doing the searching? Had he stumbled across the now-missing evidence, hiding it while the clock was ticking? Or was I wrong on all of it? The boy in the photo could be anyone. Monroe d’Urbervilles might not have been a member of this family. The missing files were ages old; anything could have happened to them.
My head hurt. My heart hurt. I missed Benny. I missed Manny. I’d say I was treading in dangerous waters, except it already felt like I’d been pulled under. I’d been homeless and was teetering on the side of a repeat performance. So, yeah, throw scared into my mix of emotions.
I needed help. I couldn’t turn to the staff, who were, clearly, all under some sort of sworn allegiance of some sort, and so I had to turn to Benny.
* * * *
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” he asked later that night as we stood in front of the same filing cabinets.
“Because you’re sleeping with the enemy.”
He frowned. “She’s not the enemy.”
I would’ve preferred he argued he wasn’t sleeping with her. “She has the most to lose if I gain the inheritance.”
He started to say something. His mouth opened. His mouth closed. He lifted an index finger. He lowered it. The frown deepened. He reached out and held my hand. I stared down at my fingers laced with his, and my heart hurt just a bit less. “I’ll help you however you want me to, Ted, but I still don’t think Matilda did this. She’s a good person.”
I started to say something. My mouth opened. My mouth closed. I lifted an index finger. I lowered it. Benny and I were suddenly out of sync. Was she a good person? Was I the enemy, not her? Did it matter so long as he helped? Did it matter so long as we found out the truth, whatever that might be?
“But you still can’t say anything to her,” I said. “Even if she didn’t take the files, she might say something to the person who did, and we need to find them without anyone knowing we’re looking for them.”
He nodded. “Unless they’re already destroyed.”
My stomach sank. I hadn’t thought of that. “That would make the most sense, right? Get rid of any evidence, then get rid of me.”
“Or wait until you’re gone, then return the files, so that no one ever suspects wrongdoing somewhere down the line.”
I exhaled. I inhaled. Both seemed to make sense, but I was betting on the destroying scenario. Still, I had to go searching. It was my only hope. And not just for the money, for the estate, but also for finding out the truth about what happened to my grandfather, what happened to his parents, and how I fit into a world that I had, for a great part of my life, sat along the sidelines of.
“Where should we look, though?” I asked. “This place is huge. We haven’t even seen half the rooms yet. Those files could be anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” he replied. “Someone on staff had to have stolen them, and, more than likely, are keeping a close eye on them. Fingers crossed.”
Mine were still crossed with his. There was more comfort that way. “But which one of them?”
He nodded. He squeezed my hand. My cock throbbed. My cock didn’t know it was in serious trouble. “I don’t think it’s Matilda. You, I’m guessing, don’t think it’s Manchester. Meg gave you the key to the filing cabinets, so let’s assume that it wasn’t her. So, who does that leave?” I started to reply when he lifted his free hand. “Maximillian,” he said. “He’s the one who was looking for your branch of the family tree, Ted. Maybe he found what he was looking for. Maybe he never wanted us to find it to begin with.”
“But why?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? He’s the family lawyer. They’ve all been sworn to protect the family, if that will we heard him read proves anything. I’m guessing Maximillian never wanted to find the truth about your grandfather, and when he did, he hid it.” He pointed to the opened cabinets. “It makes the most sense, Ted.”
Did it though? Matilda made the most sense to me. She had the most to lose. She probably knew about the files and hid them from the family lawyer. They were probably long gone, just like I would be, soon enough. Would she keep Benny after that, a final nail in my coffin? I pulled him in and held on tight. “Yeah, Benny. Yeah, it does make sense.”