Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  The bartender called Liam over, and Aidan stepped out into the intense sunshine ahead of him, his eyes wincing at the brightness. It was earlier than when he’d visited the bar the day before, and there was a lot of activity on the street, young kids playing noisily, two women in head scarves and floral print dresses arguing, a motorcycle gunning just ahead.

  Coming toward him, Aidan saw a man, obviously American, about his height, age and build. Looking at his face, Aidan felt a shock of recognition. It was almost like looking in a mirror, distorted a bit by age and coloring.

  The man wore a dark suit, a white shirt and navy blue tie, and sweat dripped down his forehead. Tunis was hot, hotter than any place Aidan had ever been. He was sweating himself, and he was wearing a lightweight cotton T-shirt and shorts.

  The man’s eyes darted left and right, as if he was scanning the street for danger, and Aidan wondered if that’s the way he looked, roaming around the streets of Tunis with only half an idea of what was going on. The traffic of the street eddied and swirled around the American, but there was an invisible barrier around him that no one wanted to cross.

  The motorcycle Aidan had heard gunning came up close behind the American, and with horror Aidan watched as the cyclist raised a hand holding a gun. Three short bursts of noise blasted across the street, and the American fell to the street as the motorcycle sped away.

  3 – Out of the Dating Pool

  Liam stepped out of the beaded curtain from the Bar Mamounia to the street. “What’s going on?” he asked Aidan.

  “That man...” Aidan pointed to the body on the street.

  All around the man, women were screaming and running, men were cursing in Arabic and shaking their fists. But no one moved to cross that invisible barrier around him.

  “Come on,” Liam said, grabbing Aidan’s arm. “We’re not running, but we’re walking fast.”

  “What?” Aidan said. “That man was just shot. We have to try and help him.”

  “Not our business.”

  Looking back at the man lying motionless in the street, Aidan felt helpless, carried away by the moment and the gorgeous guy tugging his arm. Liam was a few inches taller than Aidan, with longer legs, so Aidan had to hustle to keep up. They hurried through a maze of narrow alleys as police sirens rose and fell in the distance. They came out by the open plaza of the Jardin Habib Thameur, where mothers pushed babies in strollers along the broad avenues and young couples sprawled in the shade of the tall palms. Liam said, “Which way to your place?”

  The guy was single-minded, Aidan had to give him that. Some poor man had just been gunned down in the street, and Liam still wanted to get sexy. There was a real urgency in his voice, too. Fortunately, the building where Aidan had found an apartment was just a few blocks farther away.

  Aidan led the way to the six-story building, It was about fifty years old, and wouldn’t have been out of place on a Paris side street. It hadn’t been painted in years, so the bright sun had faded the color to a dirty off-white. The walls were thick and the blue-framed windows small, and the hallways smelled of cumin.

  As Aidan unlocked the front door Liam said, “Not bad. Though I expected you to be staying in a hotel.”

  The tiny, metal-grilled elevator had been out of service since Aidan had moved in, so they climbed the two flights to his apartment. Aidan’s pulse was racing, all thoughts of the dead man in the street gone. He imagined how quickly he and Liam would strip their clothes off, how good it would feel to be in the big man’s arms, how much he wanted to kiss those full, dry lips. The hell with Blake, he thought. He was about to embark on a new romance, and it felt amazing.

  The skinny brown dog was lying in front of Aidan’s door, as she had been every time he’d come home since he moved in. He wondered if she had lived with whoever had the apartment before him, or if she’d adopted him as a soft touch.

  “Your dog?” Liam asked, as Aidan bent down to scratch behind her ears, and she rolled over.

  “I guess. I feed her, and she sleeps with me, but she’s on her own during the day.”

  “Dogs are good,” Liam said. “She bark?”

  “Don’t know,” Aidan said, opening the door.

  Liam’s cell phone rang as they walked inside, and he stepped over to the French doors that led out to a narrow balcony to take the call. While he did so, Aidan pulled bottles of cold water from the half-size refrigerator. He poured some water into a bowl for the dog, and she lapped it up eagerly.

  His dick strained against his shorts and he felt trapped by his T-shirt. He was ready to strip naked and offer himself up to Liam as soon as the big man got off the phone.

  As Aidan returned to the living room, Liam snapped his phone shut and looked at him. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

  Aidan’s romantic fantasies evaporated in an instant. They had been too foolish to come true anyway, he thought.

  What kind of mental case was this guy? First the take-charge attitude, now this about-face to anger. And Aidan had done the stupidest thing imaginable. He’d brought this stranger back to his apartment. This was what being out of the dating pool did; it dulled your senses, let you get caught up in a moment too easily. You wasted your time on fantasy when you should have been alert.

  And wasn’t that the problem with Blake, too? Aidan hadn’t been paying attention to possible problems with Blake, just as he’d ignored all those warning signs with Liam—running away from the dying man, the desperate urgency to get to Aidan’s apartment.

  Aidan remembered a personal safety training course he’d taken at one of the colleges where he’d taught. If a student became angry or violent, you had to talk to him calmly, try to defuse the tension.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I never told you my name. Aidan Greene. I’m from Philadelphia, and I just got to Tunis three days ago. I start teaching ESL at the École International on Monday.”

  “Fuck me,” Liam said, but from the tone of his voice Aidan could tell it was an expletive rather than an invitation. “No chance you’re also a courier from New York planning to head out into the desert? Go by the alias Charles Carlucci?”

  “I think you should go,” Aidan said, trying to keep the tremors out of his voice. He walked over to the door and put his hand on the knob. “I won’t say anything or do anything. I promise. Just don’t hurt me.”

  Liam looked disgusted. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m a bodyguard, and I thought you were my client.” He stood framed in the bright glare from the French doors, the same stance he’d used in the shower.

  Only this time, it was light cascading off his perfect body instead of water, though Aidan could see that square chest under the loose vest. He even thought he could make out the shadow of a semi-erect dick beneath the loose cotton of Liam’s shorts. His own hardened as he remembered seeing Liam naked, even as it was clear their connection was about to end.

  So much for falling in love—or even lust. He’d just run halfway around the world to escape the pain of a breakup; how had he even considered starting up with someone else so quickly? It was stupid, despite how wonderful he had felt for those few minutes in the bar, and on the desperate rush back to the apartment.

  Aidan stepped toward Liam. The light in the living room was beautiful, dazzling and slightly yellow. Behind Liam, through the French doors, Aidan could see the sunlight glinting off the dome of the Zitouna mosque. In the distance he heard a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

  “You always meet your clients in bars?”

  “This one was twitchy. He wanted to meet me on my turf. Didn’t trust anybody.” He grimaced. “Turns out he was right. That must have been him who got shot in front of the bar.”

  Aidan was confused. “Then you’re not gay?”

  Liam snorted. “What the hell does that have to do with the situation?” He looked at Aidan, and then burst into laughter. “You thought I...” He laughed again.

  Aidan thought he would fall through the floor with embarrassment. W
hat a fool he’d been to consider that this god of a man was gay—and interested in him. Not only had Blake betrayed him—now he knew for a fact that he couldn’t even trust his own body, his own instincts. Look at how he’d narrowly escaped danger the day before, running from those boys.

  He needed to lock himself up in his apartment, play with the dog and teach his students, and shut down everything else. “Thank you very much for that charming opinion of my sexual attractiveness,” he said. “And now, like I said before, I think you should leave.”

  Before Aidan realized Liam was moving, the big bodyguard was right next to him, his arms wrapped around Aidan, his lips on Aidan’s lips.

  Aidan hadn’t kissed anyone but Blake in years, and it had been a long time since Blake had really kissed him. Liam’s lips were chapped, and his beard was rough, but there was such passion in the kiss that Aidan’s head spun. With his big hands, Liam pulled Aidan close, their bodies meshed together, and Aidan felt the smooth leather of Liam’s vest, the heat rising from his bare chest.

  Aidan understood the meaning of the word swoon. He felt light on his feet, his heart racing, all sensation gathered at those points where his body met Liam’s. Inhaling Liam’s lavender scent, mixed with sweat and musk. Those lips! Pressed against his own, at first confused, now yielding, his mouth opening a little against the assault. Liam’s arms wrapped around him, pulling their bodies close.

  How was it possible he’d never felt something like this before? He’d been no virgin when he met Blake—and he’d thought what he felt with Blake was so much deeper than it had been with any man before.

  That had been love, he thought. Despite all Blake’s flaws, Aidan had loved him—and that made any contact between them, however brief, feel deeper and richer. And yet, with this stranger, he felt more than ever before—the sense that he could fall into this handsome man’s arms and stay there forever.

  Liam broke the kiss first. “That should answer any questions you might have,” he said, backing away. “And now, I’ve got to figure out who killed my client. See you around.”

  4 – The Hotel Africa

  After Liam left, Aidan walked around the small apartment in a daze. He believed in monogamy, so he had remained faithful to Blake even as the intervals between their sexual encounters grew longer and longer. Until the moment he saw Liam showering behind the Bar Mamounia, he thought his own libido had all but disappeared.

  He opened the French doors and stepped onto the narrow balcony. Below him, Liam exited the building, then stopped and opened his cell phone. At the fruit vendor’s stall across the street, women in faded floral print dresses, with kerchiefs around their heads, shook melons and argued with the owner. Old men in white robes with the round red chechias on their heads sat in the shadows of doorways. Birds screeched in the trees and somewhere Aidan heard a donkey braying. In the open lot across the road, young boys in T-shirts and brightly-colored athletic shorts congregated to kick around a soccer ball.

  Below him, Liam spoke for a moment, then looked up. He spoke again, then closed the phone. “I need to come back up,” he called.

  “I don’t know how to work the door from up here,” Aidan said.

  “Then come down.”

  Aidan hesitated. Liam had behaved so strangely, at the bar and then again just a few minutes before. Did he want to get involved with this guy, no matter how his body reacted to Liam’s touch?

  “Please,” Liam called up.

  Aidan had always been a sucker for manners. And then there was that kiss. He went downstairs and opened the door.

  “I need a favor,” Liam said. “You have any nicer clothes?”

  Aidan was wearing a Tiffany window T-shirt he’d bought at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, cargo shorts and sandals. “Nothing I have will fit you,” he said, as he led the bodyguard back upstairs. “You’re bigger than I am.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. “But it’s not for me, it’s for you. I need you to be Charles Carlucci.”

  Here we go again, Aidan thought. Was this guy ever going to speak a language he could understand?

  “The man I was supposed to protect,” Liam said as they reached the apartment door. The dog, whom Aidan had yet to name, was sitting in the doorway waiting for his return. “He was supposed to be carrying something. My contact says that it wasn’t on his body—which means it may be in his hotel room.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I need you to go up to the desk at the Hotel Africa, tell the clerk you were mugged and your ID and room key were stolen. He’ll make you a new key card.”

  Aidan had passed the Hotel Africa as he walked. It was big and modern; its flat façade would have fit in any big city. It wasn’t the kind of place Aidan would ever stay—too impersonal, too corporate—too Blake. “Can’t you just pick the lock?”

  “Not as easy as it looks,” Liam said. “And those electronic locks keep a record of every entry. There may be an alarm that goes off if someone gets in without a card. I don’t have time to waste finding out if that’s the case.”

  “Why would the desk clerk believe me?” Aidan asked. Then he remembered that shock of recognition when he had seen Carlucci on the street. They did look enough alike to pass for each other among strangers.

  “Trust me, it happens all the time in Tunis. Plus, they have Carlucci’s passport in the safe.”

  Aidan wondered if he owed Carlucci something, because they had looked alike, and because Aidan had witnessed his death. He felt a strange connection to the dead man—as if looking at him was like looking at himself in a funhouse mirror. Perhaps this was a service he could perform to honor Carlucci’s memory, or appease his spirit.

  He had one lightweight suit with him, navy, and a single white dress shirt, and he stepped into the bedroom to get ready, while Liam spoke on the phone again in the living room. A few minutes later, Aidan was fully dressed.

  “You’ll do,” Liam said appraisingly. “Come on, we’ve got to move.”

  “What about you?” Aidan asked. “Do people parade through the Hotel Africa dressed like you are?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said. “Remember, I’m not the businessman from New York. I’m a bodyguard. I’m supposed to stand out.”

  As they walked downstairs, Aidan asked, “Why?”

  “I want anybody who’s considering harming my client to know that I’m there,” Liam said. “Your ordinary street criminal, the pickpocket, the guy with a rusty knife, he’ll back right away.”

  “You think you could have protected this Carlucci guy?”

  Liam shrugged. “If he’d agreed to meet me at the hotel, he wouldn’t have been out on the street like that, vulnerable. Somebody must have either known he was coming to meet me, or been following him. I might have been able to ditch the tail, or protect him from the gunshots.” He frowned. “But I couldn’t.”

  Outside, he hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of the hotel. “He’s in room 1801,” Liam said. “As you pointed out, I’m pretty visible. If I’m with you, the clerk is going to wonder how come I didn’t protect you from the mugger. So I’m going to head to the elevator. I’ll meet you on the 18th floor.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Aidan grumbled, but when the cab pulled up in front of the hotel and the bellman opened the door, he stepped out and walked directly toward the desk, hoping to channel Charles Carlucci, even though he’d only gotten a brief glimpse of him outside the bar.

  But Aidan had lived with Blake Chennault for eleven years, and on occasion, when he’d had to argue on Blake’s behalf, he’d been able to be him—to assume the air of privilege that surrounded him, the idea that he was better than anyone else and that the world was there to accommodate him.

  Aidan had to wait while an overweight, sunburned British couple got restaurant suggestions, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Liam glide across the lobby to the elevator bank. A shiver ran through him as he remembered that amazing kiss in his apartment, the feel
of Liam’s body against his. Would there be any more? Having felt such ecstasy once, could he go back to his boring old life?

  The young, blond clerk behind the counter was German; his name badge read “Heinrich.” Treating him the way he knew Blake would, Aidan explained that he’d been mugged and his key card stolen, and that he’d need a new one, please. “Carlucci. 1801.” He said it with a tone of exasperation, that somehow, by living here in this lousy country, Heinrich was responsible for his problems, and he expected the clerk to make things right as soon as possible.

  “May I see some identification, please?” Heinrich asked.

  “Weren’t you listening?” Aidan asked. “The bastard got everything.”

  He frowned. Then, as if remembering, he said, “But you’ve got my passport in your safe. I warn you, though, it’s a terrible picture. Those shots always are.”

  “Just one moment, please,” Heinrich said, and he disappeared into the back office. As Aidan stood there, he had the feeling he was being watched. He scanned the lobby, keeping his lip curled in the attitude of disdain Blake demonstrated in even the most luxurious of settings.

  A tracery of Arabic curlicues ran just below the high ceiling, and each of the doorways into other parts of the hotel was surmounted by a pointed arch. The floor was marble, the overstuffed sofas upholstered in dark brown leather. Bright red flowers like oversized poppies, with yellow centers and fringed petals, clustered in vases on the tables.

  In one corner, an African man in a bright yellow and orange dashiki sat hunched over a laptop. Two Japanese men in business suits stood near the front door. The superior complained, in guttural tones, and the lesser man bowed frequently and said, “Hai!”

  A Tunisian in a beige djellaba spoke on a cell phone near him, but Aidan couldn’t understand a word he said. The other clerk, an Indian woman in a bright blue sari, continued to check in new customers. No one seemed to be staring at him, but Aidan couldn’t escape the feeling of being watched.