by B. G. Thomas
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she sat up straight, letting out a tiny gasp. “Oh…. Oh, no. Oh my….”
“Rose?”
“Dear Jesus… I remember.” She looked back at him, eyes huge. “I remember!”
“Remember what?”
“The stairs! I was carrying groceries.” She looked down at the bags at her feet. “These groceries! And I fell… I fell down the steps. That’s the last thing I remember before….” She looked confused again. “Falling.” Bewildered. “Then I was walking home. Over and over. Oh, my sweet savior…. Over and over….”
He took her hand again. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him. “It’s….” She paused. “Thank you.”
They sat in silence for a while, and then she said, “Now what?”
He shook his head. Shrugged. “I don’t know, Rose.”
She nodded.
“What happened to… what did you say your husband’s name was?”
She smiled. Her expression was sweet. Heavenly. “Paulo. Oh, my Paulo. He died. Years ago. In the war. And I just kept going on and on and on…. Going on until I couldn’t even go shopping down at the corner….” She pointed, but the only thing he saw there was a drug store. For a second she got that puzzled look again. Then she shook her head. “I keep shopping and coming home, and I’m so old and feeble that I can’t even make it upstairs without peeing on myself.” She turned red, an expression of total humiliation.
And I thought of yelling at her…. Thank you, Joel. For letting the light back in my soul. Why didn’t I tell you that I love you? Why?
“It’s okay,” Mike told her. Because that much at least was true.
“I miss him,” she said quietly. “I’ve waited so long. Too long maybe. Stuck here so long before I fell… and then after. I don’t want to be stuck anymore. I want to see him. I want to go to Paulo….”
“Oh, Rose.” What did he say? “Have you tried?”
She shrugged. “How? I wouldn’t know how.”
He opened his mouth, only to shut it again. How indeed? If he knew, would he be here? Why was he here?
But he didn’t want to go. I want to be with Joel. Tell him I love him. Apologize to Lori for being a shitty husband.
That gave him another thought, though. “You want to go, Rose? To Paulo?”
“Yes!” she said. “I told you….”
Of course she did. She wanted to go. He was the one who wanted to stay!
“Then go, Rose.”
“How?” she cried.
Swish, he thought. Realized something. When he moved, it was because he was thinking of someone. “Think about him,” he said aloud. “Stop thinking about being stuck here. Stop thinking about how you’ll never see him again. Think how you will. Think of him. Think of him, Rose. Think about how much you want to be with him.”
“Think of Paulo?”
He smiled. “Picture him in your head, Rose.” He squeezed her hand. “What did he look like?”
Her smile was beatific. “Oh. Oh, so handsome. Tall. Blue, blue eyes. He had this dark brown hair, and he would comb it down the middle. He used all this stuff in his hair that made it look wet. Before he joined the army of course. To fight the Nazis.”
Nazis. God. That long?
She sighed a long, happy sigh. “He was lovely. Not just handsome. Lovely. The first time I saw him…. He helped me. I had fallen at the curb. Tore my stocking. And then he was just right there! He was helping me up, and I looked into his eyes, and that was it. I was in love, and….” She looked at Mike. “People say you can’t know with one look. But I did. With one look.”
Mike smiled. He’d seen Joel across a crowded room and he had known. With one look. “I know.”
“You do?”
Mike nodded. “I do.”
And then her eyes flew wide. “Oh!” It was almost a shout. “Dear Jesus! Paulo!”
She was looking past Mike, and when he turned, there was nothing there. Then, just as he was looking back… he saw.
Light.
It seemed to be forming out of the air. Brighter and brighter and… there was a man… stepping out.
He was tall and wearing a uniform that didn’t hide a muscular yet lean body. He was smiling and holding out his hands. “Rose. My Rose,” he said.
Mike felt his arms crawl with gooseflesh.
“Oh, Paulo!”
Mike looked back, and the old woman was gone. Instead, he saw a woman of no more than nineteen. She was wearing a blue dress with long sleeves, the hem at her knees. Her waist seemed impossibly tiny and the dress was cinched tight to show off her figure. She wore a little hat that matched her outfit almost exactly.
There was a run in her stockings.
And then she was walking down the steps, reaching. Reaching and…. She stopped and looked back. “Thank you,” she said. She was beautiful.
Mike nodded, his heart speeding up.
“Do what you need to do,” she said then.
Mike shook his head. He didn’t understand. “Your business,” she said. “So you don’t have to be stuck anymore.”
He couldn’t talk. Couldn’t reply. He gave her a single nod instead.
Her smile grew, and then she turned… and walked into the light.
It closed. Almost like a door. She was gone.
And Mike was alone.
12
THE FIRST time he’d seen Joel was across a crowded room—and Joel had been looking at him. There were at least fifty people there, and quite suddenly Mike found he could hardly breathe. Of course he didn’t know Joel’s name at the time. All he knew was that the man looked young. He couldn’t have even been thirty. And he was gorgeous. He had thick, dark wavy hair that was somehow combed back from a sweet but decidedly masculine face. There was a shadow of a beard on his jaw, which seemed to help bring out the deep brown of his eyes.
Oh God, those eyes. Looking at him.
Their gazes locked, and suddenly Mike forgot how to speak.
He’d had been talking to a man who reminded him of Cannon from the old television series from the seventies. This man was bigger, though, and older-looking, and he had very bad breath and was very boring. He was saying something about how glad he was that Mike was here to teach them and—that’s when Mike saw Joel (and those eyes!) and his brain froze. The whole world froze.
Somehow he managed to tear his look away from the stunning young man and pretend to be interested in what Cannon was saying. It was only more than a decade’s experience of feigning interest that allowed him do it.
Luckily, Joel sat at the back of the room that day Mike was doing his training. If he’d sat up close, Mike wouldn’t have been able to teach anything. But sometimes their eyes would meet again, and it was like ripping his eyes out of his head when he had to turn away.
Then that evening, cocktails. It was part of the event. A cocktail party on the top floor of the building… and there was Joel. Joel was looking at him. Their gazes found each other, and he was nodding at Joel and then wondering what the hell he was doing. He excused himself to go to the restroom and then… there was Joel. Standing next to him.
There were three urinals. Mike had taken the left one. Joel took the middle. Against the unwritten law. Straight men didn’t do that. They were the type of urinals that started at the floor and then climbed up the wall like shallow, narrow bathtubs set on end and then placed into the wall. There were no partitions between them.
He tried not to look. Tried. Tried but failed. He glanced down out of the corner of his eyes, saw Joel’s penis, and almost let out a tiny gasp.
It wasn’t huge… but it wasn’t small. The circumcision scar was so perfect that at first Mike wasn’t sure if Joel had a foreskin or not. But then he realized how long he was looking, and when he thrust his gaze back at the wall in front of him—the urinal in front of him—he quite suddenly knew it was too late. Joel had to have noticed he was checking him out (staring!). He’d looked too long.
He shook, tucked himself away, and when he turned to leave the room, Joel was looking at him. Unabashedly looking at him.
“What?” Mike said with too much force, and then Joel was blushing, turning away. Mike found himself missing those eyes.
Mike fled the room and went back to the bar and ordered a shot of whisky—Crown Royal XR—and slugged it back fast. Then he ordered a second on the rocks, turned, and there was the gorgeous young man again.
He was about ten feet away, and he looked sad and confused and… desperate?
Then Cannon was talking to him again, and he could smell the man’s breath even over his own brand of alcohol. He walked past the man, an inch from pushing him out of the way, and went to the young man instead.
“What?” he said, voice cracking. He thought the young man might cry.
“I—I… I’m…. Sorry? I thought… I thought maybe….”
“Maybe what?” Again, too harshly.
Now Joel’s face was so red it was alarming. “Look… I’ll leave. Please don’t say anything to my boss….” He turned and started walking away, and the leaving was dreadful. Like a huge chasm had opened up between them, and Mike might slip right off the edge and fall in.
“Wait,” he said, and worried that once more he’d said it too loud. Would people be looking? He dared a quick look around him, but no one seemed to be paying him the least bit of attention.
The young man froze, turned, and gave him that questioning look again.
Oh, God, thought Mike. Oh God, oh God, oh God….
He felt dizzy and excited and scared, and he quite abruptly realized he was getting hard.
If you don’t stop right now….
That was the moment.
That was the second.
Joel was looking at him with those big, stunning brown eyes, and it was like they were the chasm he’d felt earlier—like he could fall into them.
Turn away, he thought. If you don’t turn away….
But he couldn’t. He could not. It was already too late.
So he nodded and walked past him and, heart pounding, left the bar and went to the elevator banks—not daring to see if he was being followed. He pressed the button, it lit up, and still he couldn’t look. He simply stared at the doors. There was a ding! and it wasn’t the elevator before him. When he turned to see which elevator it was, there was Joel, looking as scared and excited as he felt.
Oh God! Am I really doing this?
Mike nodded again and went to the open elevator and entered, and Joel was right behind him. Someone called out, “Can you hold that?” and luckily the doors closed before whoever it was could get there. He pressed the button for his floor.
Then he was alone with Joel, and when he looked at him, the young man moaned.
“Oh God…,” Joel said. It was like a sigh.
Mike began to shake and realized he still had his drink and—fuck!—he downed it and then stepped toward Joel. Joel took a step. Mike took a step, his heart slamming so hard, it almost hurt.
Joel took a step.
They were so close, they were almost touching. He could smell Joel. Mint and maybe rum and, underneath that, a musky man-smell. He echoed Joel’s sigh.
Joel took one more step, and Mike was a breath from panicking. Was Joel going to kiss him? Right here in the elevator?
There was that ding! again, and the doors opened. He gulped and moved his head in a way to indicate they should leave the elevator.
God! Was he going to do this? Last chance! If he didn’t stop this right now, then the thing he had fought from doing for his entire life… would be done. He needed to stop this. But then the thought came again.
It was already too late.
So he didn’t say anything. He walked to his room, heart trip-hammering, and he fumbled for his key—one of those weird credit card-like things—and passed it through the slot, and the tiny little bleep-bleep-bleep was so loud! Everyone would hear!
Mike pushed into the room and felt Joel following, and when he turned, the young man was right there.
He was shaking now, visibly, and when he realized that Joel could see how afraid he was—how stupid and inexperienced he must look!—his face heated in embarrassment and he almost bolted and….
Joel smiled a sweet little smile and took one of those steps. The last step. He reached out and laid a hand gently on Mike’s chest and sighed and that was it.
Mike took him in his arms—or did Joel take him in his arms? He would never know. After that it was all sensation and light and power and gasps and a roaring in his ears—and sweat. There was sweat. He kissed a man for the first time, and had he not been in the arms of a very strong young man, he might have fallen, legs nearly buckling.
The kiss was so different!
How? Why? Why would it be different?
But it was. God, it was so different. Maybe, partly, it was that slight stubble of beard—he’d never felt anything like that with a woman, now, had he?—and partly it was the strength of that mouth that took his.
But that wasn’t all of it….
They were breathing into each other’s mouths and taking off their clothes. Mike was wearing his suit, and it was taking fucking forever to get it all off. Joel was wearing a polo shirt that swooshed right off over his head, and his raised arms revealed two patches of hair as thick as that on his head. A man’s armpits, no mistaking that. And a strong, rounded chest with more hair, a triangle of it, so soft-looking (begging to be touched) going across from nipple to nipple (they were a lovely dark tan) and down to just below those pectorals. Then it was a smooth, flat, bare tummy, and then more hair swirled around his shallow navel and disappeared into his slacks.
Inviting.
For some crazy reason, Mike thought he would cry at the beauty—God, yes, beauty!—he beheld, and he looked up…
…and Joel was smiling at him and then kissing him.
Mike wasn’t sure how they made it to the bed, but their pants had fallen to the floor and then their underwear and then—God!—there was Joel’s penis again, except this time it was hard and standing so tall, throbbing in need. Somehow they were on the bed, crawling, shimmying, crab-walking back, and holding each other, their hard cocks crushed against each other one second and battling the next. Somehow he kept from having an orgasm. They were kissing, and Joel was doing magic things with his fingers and his hands and his lips and his tongue.
Oh! They were turned so they were head to feet (when had that happened?), and Joel was lying half on his belly. When he took Mike deep into his mouth, it was only Mike’s desire to see Joel’s cock that kept him from cumming instantly. He desperately pushed at Joel’s hip so he rolled slightly onto his side, and there it was—Joel’s erection. It throbbed, so alive, and without the slightest hesitation Mike took Joel’s cock into his mouth.
It was exhilarating. The feel and the heat and the taste of Joel’s cock. Salt and musk and sweet. Soft skin with an iron hardness beneath it, the head felt as smooth as glass against his tongue. Joel was leaking heavily, and Mike almost panicked again (That’s semen! That’s man! You’ve got a cock in your mouth!), and then he simply surrendered to it and moaned and relished that fluid.
They sucked and thrust, and suddenly Joel was warning him that if he didn’t stop!—but Mike only grabbed Joel’s impossibly narrow hips and pulled him deep, not even gagging, and Joel was pumping his seed into Mike’s mouth in great jets. That pushed Mike over the brink, and he was quite suddenly having the most powerful orgasm of his life. He didn’t even know he’d swallowed all Joel had given him until later.
They lay gasping after, using thighs as pillows, and when they could finally talk, they exchanged names, because goddamn, they hadn’t! Hadn’t really said a word. Had crazywild wondrous sex and they didn’t know each other’s names! And Mike had asked if Joel was related to the famous Kauffmans and Joel had told his joke and Mike has laughed and there was a great rush of words and stories and explanations. How Mike had wa
nted this since high school, had almost done it with a boy who looked at him all the time (like Joel had looked at him), and then the boy got beat up, bad, in the shower in the school locker room. They pissed on him after they were done, and then that boy tried to kill himself.
“Can you imagine?” Mike’s father had said, clearly disgusted. “The shame he’s brought on his family? And now he won’t, he can’t, amount to anything in life. People will always know he’s a cocksucker. They’ll know he got pissed on. They’ll know he tried to kill himself.”
Never amount to anything.
Mike had plans. Big plans. He was already, even then, formulating a plan for what he could do with software.
Then in college, he met Lori, and she let him know that they were getting married as soon as they graduated. Her family had money, and even though they weren’t Fortune 500, they had more than enough, and they wound up investing in their daughter by investing in Mike, and—whoosh!—the years flew, and his whole life got away from him.
And it wasn’t like he wasn’t happy. Not really.
Joel understood. He hadn’t been beaten up in high school, and he hadn’t been pissed on, but the boys knew about him and they called him homo and faggot and fairy. He waited until his freshman year of college to see if they were right—well, he knew they were right—and when he finally went to bed with a man (a senior who taught him all kinds of things), that was it. Joel knew he was gay and he’d never even tried to be with a girl. When his father found out, Joel was disowned.
“I’m not paying one more cent of your education, you fucking freak!” his father had said. “Thank God your mother is dead or this would kill her!”
Which only made Mike marvel as the months passed and he saw Joel was such a good, kind, happy man. Somehow he didn’t let his past rule his entire life.
Though, there was that terrible first morning when he woke up in an ocean of guilt. Guilt that he’d cheated on Lori and hadn’t even given her a thought before tumbling into bed with Joel.
“We can’t do this again,” he’d said, and Joel told him he understood. But as the day passed, Mike knew he couldn’t end it that way.. He had to be with Joel again. He did. Again and again as the week passed, and then, after that, every time he came back to Kansas City.
