Xylophone

by K. Z. Snow

  For a while Dare and Jonah sat in silent, separate cocoons, not noticing much of anything, as they let their reawakened memories slip from harsh light back into murky shadow. At least that was how Dare interpreted their stillness. He hadn’t allowed Over the Rainbow Resale to take on this much definition and detail since he’d stopped visiting the shop. Its partial resurrection had left him tremulous and queasy. Jonah’s reaction must’ve been similar.

  Focusing on the natural beauty around him, the unspoiled fresh fragrance of it, he drew slow breaths. Had Jonah suggested this location for just that reason?

  “I should hit the road,” Dare finally said. “I have to work tonight, and I could use a nap.” He was reluctant to leave, which surprised him. He still felt dazed, which didn’t surprise him.

  “You okay?” Jonah asked when they got to the parking lot.

  Dare could only manage half a smile. “I think so. I feel a little gut-shaken, like I just got off some ride at the state fair, but… yeah, I’m fine. How about you?”

  “Kind of the same. Thanks for coming, by the way. It was a relief, easing that door open.”

  “You’ve never even talked about it with GG?”

  “Not in depth. Not anywhere near that. She’s aware of the situation and refers to it once in a while, but we’ve never discussed it.” Jonah had again slipped on his sunglasses, so Dare couldn’t see his eyes, but he was sure they were narrowed and that arresting gaze was trained on his face. “Is this the first time you’ve talked about it?”

  “No, it isn’t the first time. Except it is. I never went into any detail before, with my family or Battaglia. I guess I wanted to keep the experience at a distance, keep it blurred.”

  Leaning against his car, Jonah lowered his head and nodded. “I know what you mean. I should’ve—” He abruptly stopped speaking, as if he were censoring himself.

  “Should’ve what?”

  “Done the same. By not mentioning it to my mother.” Before Dare could ask what he meant, Jonah stood up. “Well, I don’t want to keep you.” He pulled a key chain from his pants pocket and unlocked his car with the remote that hung from it. “Where do you work, anyway?”

  The name Sugar Bowl sounded both silly and vaguely smarmy, so Dare refused to speak it. “Just a club.”

  “Private?”

  Dare laughed. “Hardly. It’s right on the Chicago-to-Milwaukee corridor, so it attracts all kinds of people from all kinds of places.”

  “Big, huh?”

  “If you mean spacious, I suppose it is pretty big. There’s a theater for performances, and a bar area, and a separate dance floor with its own bar.”

  The awkwardness of the moment grew. Dare had essentially outed himself to Jonah, so he was reluctant to set up another meeting. He didn’t want his motives misinterpreted. Given how he’d shot off his mouth earlier, Jonah might start seeing him as a brazen cock-vulture. Sexually insecure men got awfully suspicious of queers awfully fast.

  “I had a nice time today,” Dare said. “I didn’t think I would.” There. Surely that couldn’t be misconstrued.

  Reassurance came when Jonah smiled. “I liked it too. Or maybe ‘liked’ isn’t the right word.”

  “It’s good enough.”

  Once again leaning against his car, arms at his sides, Jonah tapped his fingernails against the driver’s door. “But we barely just got started. There’s so much more.”

  “True.” They’d only tiptoed up to the thresholds of their stories.

  “Would you mind getting together again? I’d hate to stop here.”

  Huh. So Jonah didn’t feel threatened. “I wouldn’t mind at all.” I just have to stay focused on why we’re doing this.

  TONIGHT he crawled, undulating like an oil-slicked wave, onto the stage. Lights swept crazily over the audience, but a single white spot followed Pepper’s progress. A halter top with cutouts that framed his glistening pecs and nipples complemented the ultra-mini denim skirt he wore. Beneath the skirt was nothing more than a denim G-string. Strategically-placed fringe directed viewers’ eyes to the parts of Pepper they liked best.

  He made a quick fifty just by letting a middle-aged junior executive type lick and suck the cayenne-flavored oil off his right nipple. Another fifty by letting a thirtyish bear work on the left. The bear took the liberty of nipping at it—and incurred a ten-dollar fine for biting.

  The crowd loved it. Pepper loved it too. He was excited now, a bundle of sexual tension.

  Not only had this touch accomplished what Pepper hoped it would—plump him up, because a full basket led to a steamier performance, which in turn led to bigger and more frequent tips—he’d also made over a hundred bucks in thirty seconds.

  Not bad.

  He worked the sleaze angle tonight, a dirty-dancing Daisy Mae or Davy Ray, strutting her/his stuff.

  As he slithered up one of the stage’s three poles, his arousal freshened. Clinging near the top with his legs spread, he made a show of slowly lifting and lowering his body. The audience obviously knew he was rubbing his cock against the metal. And they were getting an eyeful of booty, to boot.

  Then the drama began. A burly masked man decked out in leather stormed onto the stage, his face contorted in anger. He was part of the act, of course—an employee named Kirk who was actually a soft-spoken, gentlemanly guy. The bouncers would never let an audience member get on stage. Glaring up at Pepper, Kirk appeared to order the “misbehaving” dancer off the pole.

  Timorously, Pepper made his way down. Kirk smacked his bare ass, and Pepper dropped to all fours. Kirk then ordered him to crawl into a raised cage. Once inside, and with Kirk gone from the stage, Pepper again got his raunch on, extravagantly feeling himself up, climbing and rubbing against the bars as music continued to throb a perfect erotic accompaniment. Responding to the pressure of his clever body, the cage door popped open. The rebellious dancer was free!

  He leaped and twirled across the stage and shimmied up another pole.

  What Pepper saw from his perch nearly made him lose his grip.

  The house lights weren’t moving as frenetically. They’d been keeping pace with the performer’s movements. Now, pulsing slowly in time to Pepper’s sliding motion on the pole and his hand’s sliding motion within the pouch of his G-string, they allowed him to see to the back of the audience. The theater section of the Sugar Bowl wasn’t cavernous. Management wanted to give customers that up-close-and-personal feel.

  Jonah Day stood against the rear wall, staring at the scantily clad bombshell who was frotting with a steel tube. He looked like he wanted to fade into the wall and was close to accomplishing it, except that his eyes shone like the twin moons of a distant planet.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  Within seconds, Jonah peeled himself from the shadows and inched his way around the audience perimeter. He appeared to head for the bar.

  Pepper spiraled down the pole before he fell down, then executed a few front-walkovers to leave the stage. He’d gotten himself too worked up, taken his act as far as it could go, taken it to the maximum allowable limit. Jonah had looked aghast.

  Jonah. Fuck! What had possessed him to come to a place like this?

  Dare took what employees called the back alley to the barroom. It was half the size of the theater and had a more intimate atmosphere, conducive to cruising. After grabbing a towel from the small kitchen that lay in his path, Dare swabbed his forehead and neck, chest and belly. His nipples still felt taut; his nuts ached. Yeah, he’d been into it. And the very man who’d indirectly, and inadvertently, tweaked him toward this edgy state of arousal had apparently been shocked by it.

  Dare pushed open the swinging door that led to the bar. Alban “Alby” Morris, the bartender closest to him, hiked up his pierced eyebrows and went about his work. Jonah was there, all right, and Dare breezily approached him.

  “Hi. What a surprise.”

  “Uh… hi.”

  “Scotch and soda, lots of ice,” Dare said to Alby.
As much as he didn’t want to, he again turned to Jonah. “How’d you find out where I work?”

  “Deductive reasoning. And not much of it.” Jonah emptied the glass around which his hands had been curled. The liquid was clear, the glass hung with a slice of lime. “It’s the only male strip joint on this stretch of 94.”

  “It isn’t a strip joint.”

  “If you say so.” Jonah refused to look at him.

  Dare started feeling a little testy. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t drink.”

  “Figures,” Dare said to himself. Alby delivered his watered-down scotch, and he gratefully took a long swallow. “Well, what do you think?”

  Distress knotted Jonah’s features. It seemed an effort for him to face Dare. “Why are you dressed like that? Why do you let strangers touch you so… intimately? You actually encourage it.”

  Cold descended. Dare stiffened, but definitely not in the way he’d stiffened on stage. “Because it’s part of my act. And my act pays the bills. Plus, I enjoy it.” He downed his drink. “If you’re so fucking appalled and offended, Jonah, why are you here?”

  “I… wanted to see you dance.” He slid off his stool, lifted his jacket off the backrest. “That’s all.”

  “Bullshit!” Dare stopped himself from spitting out the words that had clumped on the back of his tongue, words he knew he’d regret: You’re as queer as I am. You just don’t have the guts to admit it!

  Jonah shook his head as he donned his jacket. “No, it isn’t bullshit.”

  Damn it, why did he have to look so stricken?

  Dare’s throat tightened. “Don’t try to make me hang my head over what I do for a living. Don’t even go there.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “The fuck I don’t! My fucking brother is the same way!”

  Jonah headed toward the front entrance.

  “What did you expect to see, huh? Me in a tux doing a foxtrot with a Ginger Rogers lookalike?” A wall of burn built against the backs of Dare’s eyes. To counter the pressure, or at least try to ignore it, he raised his voice to Jonah’s retreating back. “Why won’t you answer me? Because you’re a….” And again he bit off the flow, swallowed his vitriol.

  “Hey.” A large hand came across the bar and clamped around Dare’s wrist.

  The hand belonged to Alby, he of the shaved head and mountainous muscles and tribal tattoos. Dare glared at him.

  “Relax,” Alby hissed, glaring back. “You make a scene in front of the clientele, you’re history.” The beefy hand loosened its grip. “You know damned well how Sparks feels about that kind of shit.”

  Truman Sparks owned the Sugar Bowl, and the reputation of his establishment, not to mention his establishment’s profits, meant far more to him than cutting his employees any slack.

  Nodding, Dare rubbed his temples.

  “What’s up with you?” Alby asked, leaning on the bar. “You’re not the high-strung type. You never lose it. You just zing the assholes with a saucy word or ten.”

  “He isn’t an asshole.”

  Alby eased back with big eyes and a prolonged “Ohhh” of revelation.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Looks like perky Pepper found a boyfriend but maybe has been keeping secrets from him.”

  Dare expelled a limp “Ha.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Hm. A Mormon cousin?”

  “Close.” Dare shoved his empty glass across the bar. Alby didn’t refill it. Sugar Bowl performers were limited to one alcoholic beverage between appearances. If customers offered to buy them drinks, they had to accept tokens.

  The other bartender, a slightly older but equally pumped-up guy named Marsh, called over, “Can’t you at least work while you flirt?”

  Alby got indignant. “You know I don’t flirt with the talent.”

  A customer three stools down leaned over the bar and smiled at Dare but addressed Alby. “Then why don’t you move on and let me try?”

  Alby ignored him, but Marsh refused to ignore Alby. “At least slide those sticks down here. I got drinks lined up.”

  “Stir ’em with your dick,” Alby muttered. He nudged a glass bristling with swizzle sticks in Marsh’s direction. “It’s the same size.” The two bartenders got along only as well as they needed to.

  Dare chuckled and shook his head. “On that note….” He got off the stool. “I need to spruce up.” One more performance and this shot-to-hell night would be over.

  “Hey, pretty baby!” someone down the bar called out. “Can I catch you a drink?”

  Dare turned. It would’ve been inexcusably rude, a breach of the Truman Sparks Code of Conduct, for him to ignore the offer. Didn’t matter that the last thing he wanted to deal with right now was a come-on. Sugar Bowl employees weren’t allowed a range of temperaments or preferences.

  “Maybe later,” Dare said, applying a seductive smile and a voice to match. He didn’t bother approaching the guy, who wasn’t at all bad-looking, to schmooze for a token. Flirting required time and patience Dare didn’t have.

  He sashayed through the swinging door marked Employees Only. The back alley was the only way to get to the dressing room without having his ass or his package grabbed every three steps.

  His mood turned sullen the minute he thought of Jonah—lurking abashed at the back of the house, coming forward only to ask questions laden with Carver-like implications. “Why are you dressed like that? Why do you let strangers touch you so intimately?”

  “Why are you such a cocktease, Daren? Haven’t you learned…?”

  Of course Jonah hadn’t asked the last two questions, would never say anything like that. But he must’ve been thinking it.

  Angelique Demone did a double take as soon as Dare strode into the dressing room. She’d just gotten off stage and was the only one there. The other queens were performing a group number, a takeoff on Nunsense.

  “You look out of sorts, sugar. What’s wrong? Someone stiff you with funny money?” Angelique leaned toward Dare’s dressing table and flicked out a hand. “Hey, don’t draw your lips together so tight. You’ll get pucker creases. Look like a mean old woman fixin’ to rap somebody upside the head.”

  As soon as Dare relaxed his mouth, his brow contracted. He couldn’t stop seeing the expression on Jonah’s face, hearing those loaded questions. Refusing to let them get to self-possessed Pepper Jack, he touched up his light foundation to eliminate any splotches or shine, then reapplied his eye makeup, lip gloss, and blush. He could barely stand looking at his image in the mirror.

  This reaction, Dare realized, didn’t have to do with how Jonah Day perceived him. It had to do with how he perceived himself.

  “Not gonna put on more of that body shimmer?” Angelique said more gingerly. Dare must’ve seemed fragile enough to crack. “It’s so flattering on you.”

  She’d read him right. Suddenly, Dare sucked in a breath, the prelude to a sob. He swallowed and stretched his eyes and slapped his cheeks, trying to yank himself back from the brink of tears. What the hell did he have to cry about?

  “Honey, you okay?”

  Oh fuck, a hug will come next.

  “Yeah.” Dare grabbed a tissue and blew his nose. “I’m all right.” If somebody hugged him, he didn’t know what the hell he’d do.

  Angelique wouldn’t stop watching him. She was a sweetheart with an upbeat attitude and a depth of sensitivity few people possessed. As the man Rodney Humphrey, s/he eliminated the ribald drag queen humor but remained just as kind.

  Dare liked both Angelique and Rodney.

  “What’s wrong, darlin’? Did you get some bad news? Did you lose someone close to you?”

  A jarring question. “Yes.”

  Angelique’s face fell in sympathy. “Aw, shit. Who?”

  “Myself. Thirteen years ago.”

  The group performance ended and the other girls, all poof and prattle, fluttered into the room
.

  Chapter Nine

  BY THE end of Dare’s shift, at least his hard-on had gone south and his balls had paled, so to speak, from blue to whatever the hell their natural color was. Moreover, he’d resigned himself to writing off Jonah Day. Any negativity about his job was a deal breaker. He didn’t need the label white trash slapped on him—not on top of all the others.

  Scrubbed free of makeup and dressed in his comfortably shabby street clothes, Dare pushed open one of the Sugar Bowl’s heavy front doors. The air outside was a brisk blessing. Steeled by righteous indignation, or at least trying to convince himself he was, Dare strode to the employee section at the left edge of the parking lot.

  “Dare!”

  He spun toward the voice. Shoes slapped softly on the asphalt. A few cars crawled toward the exit, lamplight glinting off their shells.

  “Wait!”

  Jonah emerged, breathless, from a swatch of near-darkness. He stopped a foot away from Dare. At his back, beyond the frontage road, the muted growl of freeway traffic had thinned.

  It was close to eleven.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonah said, looking directly into Dare’s eyes. “I didn’t think before I opened my damn mouth.” Nervously, he ran a hand through his ruffled hair. “What I said at the bar—it has more to do with me than with you.”

  “Really? How?” Beneath his frigid skepticism, Dare was impressed. Men had waited for him in the parking lot before, but never this long, and never to apologize.

  “I know it sounded like I was….” Jonah’s forehead crimped. His gaze darted away from Dare’s face. “Like I was put off, like I was passing judgment. But, see, the thing is—”

  “You don’t have to explain. A lot of people would react the same way.” Remaining aloof, Dare kept pushing, pushing, testing Jonah’s limits. He hadn’t liked himself when he’d done it before, and he didn’t much like himself for doing it now. But he felt driven to.

  “The thing is,” Jonah repeated sternly, raising his voice to demand attention, pushing back, “I admire your self-assurance. Envy it, actually. I’ll admit I was stunned at first, maybe for reasons I don’t….” He closed his eyes for a second, then switched tracks. “You put yourself out there, all the way. And you’re good at what you do. Very expressive and agile and….” He licked his lips. “I thought you were gorgeous on stage. More than gorgeous. Extremely hot. And so at ease. You know your body and you take pride in it. I’m sorry if I….” Groaning, flustered, Jonah looked at the starless sky. After inhaling and exhaling, he continued. “You’ve got your act together, Daren. And I don’t mean your stage act—which, by the way, had me mesmerized. I mean your acceptance of yourself.”