by C. S. Poe
In the dark coils of the Ramble, Sam processed what Juliana had just said: Jake’s partner. Had Lampo come to Juliana for the same reason Sam and Rufus had? To find out what had happened to Jake?
Footsteps moved somewhere close to them, and then a low exchange of voices. Sam came back to himself with a start. He packed up the revelation, caught Rufus’s eye, and nodded the way they had come. “Is there a shorter way back? Or are we taking the scenic route again?”
Rufus pointed in a different direction, opened his mouth, but his stomach let out an audible growl before he spoke. He snapped his jaw shut and rubbed sheepishly at his belly.
“Really?” Sam asked.
“Sorry. If we follow this path, we’ll get to Central Park West quicker than going back over Bow Bridge.”
“Romantic Bow Bridge,” Sam said, not even sure why he fucking said it. Then, hurrying on, “And when I said, ‘Really,’ I meant, ‘Really, you’re hungry again?’”
“My metabolism is a wild animal.”
Making a gesture up the path, Sam tried not to smile; he thought he did a decent job. “Food, then. And then back to Jake’s so we can figure out what the fuck is going on. Let’s go, fearless leader.”
Rufus led them out of Central Park, and he’d been telling the truth: they had taken the long way to get to the Ramble, and, yes, it had been a much nicer view of the park. Not that this second route was bad, it just wasn’t….
Romantic? Sam heard in his head.
He told that little voice to fuck off. It’d been cute, the way Rufus had said, The scenic route, as though he could squelch the little blush that had come into his cheeks. Sam liked that little blush. He liked the way Rufus’s eyes got wide and outraged at half the things Sam said that seemed, to him anyway, perfectly common sense. He liked the way Rufus’s ears got pink when Sam said things that Rufus liked but was embarrassed about. He liked that Rufus wore his heart on his sleeve in a million ways, hurt and happiness and excitement and amusement all right there for Sam to see, even though Sam knew that the real Rufus, all the real Rufus things, were locked away. Maybe hadn’t been shared with anyone. Ever.
The branches of a massive oak creaked overhead as a gust of warm, humid air swirled past them, winnowing the grass clippings along the curb and fanning them across the asphalt. A shadowed pair stumbled into an intersection of paths ahead of them, pausing, leaning against each other, whispered consultations that erupted into giggles and then a long, sloppy kiss before the pair staggered off again. Sam’s heartbeat climbed into his ears, drowning out this noisy, impossible-to-escape city for a moment.
He knew he should be thinking about Jake, Marcus, Heckler, Juliana. About kids dragged here from around the world, trapped, used. He knew there was so much on the line—more than he had thought possible when he’d come to learn the truth about Jake.
But Rufus was three inches to his right, close enough that Sam could reach out, if he wanted to. How the hell was he supposed to think about anything else when the universe had just gotten so very fucking small?
I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.
The memory of Rufus’s words made Sam stumble, and when Rufus glanced over, Sam felt his face heat, and he was grateful for the thick shadows.
When they reached the edge of the park, Rufus led them onto Central Park West. Green-tinged darkness dropped away, replaced by the granular nightlight of the city: like the ugly version of a summer rainstorm, particles of light suspended in a haze of exhaust and heat-warped darkness instead of in raindrops. At Seventy-Seventh Street, they cut west; the Museum of Natural History had shadows petaled around it. At the end of the block, Rufus jogged across Columbus, ignoring the single, frantic blat of a taxi. The redhead barely seemed to notice; he was in that Rufus place, dealing with Rufus things, alone.
Alone wasn’t new for Sam; he’d always had a part of himself that he kept separate, isolated. The part that wanted more than a one-off. The part that thought about stupid things like the future. But Rufus took alone to a new level. Sam had been with him for almost twenty-four hours now, and he hadn’t seen any sign that Rufus had anyone in his life. Jake, maybe. But Jake was dead now. Who did Rufus call when he needed help moving that enormous stack of books in his apartment? Who did Rufus meet for lunch? Did people “do lunch” in a place like this? Or was that just a thing on TV? Who did Rufus hang out with, go to the movies with, shoot the shit with? In a city of almost nine million people, it seemed impossible that the answer was no one.
Sam followed him another block, watching Rufus more carefully now. But Rufus stopped at the next street, Amsterdam, and glanced back at Sam. The intersection was a mix of old and modern: red brick and stone stood alongside hulking modern designs of glass and steel. A girl jogged past them, not even glancing at them as she got in her 5K of sidewalk running or whatever the hell people did in a city for exercise.
“How about that?” Sam said, pointing to a Halal food truck twenty yards down the block.
Rufus turned in the direction Sam motioned to, then looked back with wide eyes and a growing smile. “Really? Yeah, that stuff’s the best.” He headed toward the cart against the curb with a new determination in his step. Rufus was already ordering by the time Sam reached him. He pointed at the picture menu to the side of the service window and then motioned with his hands for something the size of his head.
When it was Sam’s turn, he tried to decipher the four-color-process print on the side of the cart, but the images had been sun-bleached into ghosts of lettuce and french fries and who knew what else. After twenty seconds, he gave up. “Whatever he’s having.”
He paid, and a few minutes later, the man was handing them their food in disposable Styrofoam carry-out containers. Rufus snatched his before Sam could touch it, and Sam bit the corner of his mouth to keep from grinning.
“Should that guy count his fingers?” Sam muttered.
Rufus was holding the container to his face and smelling the food through the tiny flap that held it shut. “Don’t be an ass.”
About a hundred yards down Amsterdam, Sam spotted a twenty-four-hour convenience store. Passing his container of lamb and chicken to Rufus, Sam said, “Hold this. And don’t eat it.” He let some of a smile slip out on the last part, and then he jogged down to the store. He picked up what he wanted, paid, and jogged back. “Did you eat it?”
“I spit in it,” Rufus replied without missing a beat. “What’d you need at CVS?”
“Stuff. Jake’s is back that way, right?”
Rufus looked mildly interested, but the expression didn’t linger. “Yeah.” He took the lead again, and they returned to a tall, slender building between avenues—Jake’s Home Away From His Other Home. Rufus reluctantly passed the food to Sam in order to help himself to the doors of the building, and after a tap on the mailbox and nine flights of stairs, they were safely behind a set of shiny, modern deadbolts.
In the small kitchen, Sam pulled out drawers, asking over his shoulder, “Do you need a fork too, or do you just inhale it?”
“I’m not a vacuum cleaner.” Rufus tossed his jacket and beanie on the desk in the corner, sat down on the floor in front of the couch, crossed his legs, and popped open his dinner container.
Sam waited until he had found the forks, was standing over Rufus, leaning down to hand him a utensil, waited until Rufus was taking his first bite before asking, his voice purposefully low and rough, “Oh, really? So you don’t suck?”
Rufus choked. He tried to swat at Sam’s leg, but the other man moved back a step. “Stop that, perv.”
It was time to stop fighting the smiles; fighting them was taking up all of Sam’s energy. He stood at the counter, his body and Rufus’s and the bed in the loft making a triangle. He ate, still smiling when he saw the scowl on Rufus’s face. But after a few minutes, with the food congealing in a delicious mass of grease in his belly, Sam decided there were more important things they needed to talk about.
“So,” Sam said, “what the
fuck is going on?”
“Well,” Rufus said thoughtfully, in between big bites of lettuce and lamb. “Sounds like Heckler sold her soul to a sex trafficking ring.”
“That sounds right. And Juliana spotted it, told Jake, and Jake was stupid enough to get himself killed.” Sam frowned. “What about Lampo? Where does he fit into this?”
Rufus pointed at Sam with his fork. “I think Lampo’s lucky he hasn’t eaten a bullet. I mean, if he’d been at the pickup meeting, maybe he’d be dead too. But Jake always met with me alone because Dickhead’s a sugar-free Trident-chewing ass who’s always gone out of his way to annoy me.” Rufus scraped the container with the side of his fork and shoveled another bite into his mouth. “I assume Jake wasn’t generous with his intel, even with his own partner.”
“That’s an understatement,” Sam said, “if Lampo is poking around, trying to follow Jake’s bread crumbs. Like us, I’d like to point out.”
“So Jake must have known about Heckler,” Rufus concluded. “Right? And he… avoided putting facts into writing? Didn’t know who to ask for help? Either way, he didn’t make the right choice.”
“He waffled. Jake was a notorious waffler. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. I’m going to suck a few cocks. I’m going to get a girlfriend. I’m going to go career, full twenty in the Army. Never mind, I’m going to be a cop in New York City. Fucking exhausting.”
Rufus stared at Sam as he spoke, then shrugged. “Should have just stuck to sucking a few cocks.”
“You’re not kidding.” Sam drummed his fingers on the counter. “From what I can tell, you were supposed to be in that tub right next to Jake. Ok, we’ve got to make some decisions. You, for some reason, refuse to cover your ass and go somewhere safe. So what do we do next? We’ve got the address for the house in Queens; we can check that out, see if it’s as bad as Juliana made it sound. We can try to track Heckler for a few days, although how the fuck that’s going to happen when she has a car and we’re digging down to Satan’s anus to ride the subway, I have no idea.” Sam blew out a breath. “Or do your usual Rufus thing and tell me the smart option I didn’t think of.”
Rufus offered an awkward smile. “Do you know how to hotwire cars?”
“If it’s old enough,” Sam said. “Newer models are bullshit ever since they put computer chips in them.”
Rufus made a “what can you do?” motion with his hands. “If Natalie hasn’t had it towed or impounded or whatever, I know where Jake’s car is.”
“Yeah? Well, Jake talked really big about all the fast, expensive cars he was going to buy once he was out of the Army. Hell, even when he was in the Army, he blew paychecks on shit like that. You’re telling me now he’s got a junker piece of shit we’re going to boost?”
“He rents two apartments in New York City. He’s lucky he’s got enough left over for a junker.”
“We get the car and what? Go look for this house in Queens?”
Rufus lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Sure. Since you’re so sensitive about the subway.”
The rational part of Sam’s mind recognized the teasing for what it was, but the rest of him reacted with animal fear at being exposed. He was tired. He was exhausted—not necessarily physically, but from the city’s incessant assault on him. He was tired of trying to hold his shit together, and for some reason, the jab worked its way under the armor Sam had pieced together over the years.
“Who the fuck are you calling sensitive?”
Rufus’s light-colored brows rose. “The jolly giant across the room.”
“Sorry. I guess it’s strange I don’t like getting dragged underground through piss and shit and then being crammed into a car with a million other people. I guess that’s really fucking sensitive.” He pushed off from the counter, abandoning the half-eaten meal, and headed for the bathroom. On his way, he grabbed his ruck. “I’m calling it; that’s a night. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Rufus didn’t move from his spot on the floor. “You going to sleep in the bathroom?”
Sam answered by slamming the bathroom door. Childish. Stupid. But it felt really good. For the first minute, he braced his hands on the sink, trying to keep his body from betraying him. But the shakes got worse with adrenaline, with cortisol, with rage. So then, because he knew trying to stop the tremors was a big joke, he stripped, found his soap and shampoo, and showered.
Jake’s shower. Jake’s bathroom. Jake’s second apartment. Jake’s city. Hot water needled Sam’s back. Was this what Jake had meant, all those times he’d invited Sam to stop in Manhattan? Stay here, at my second apartment, where nobody will even know about you. Fuck, that was worse than having to sleep on the couch and smile and go to brunch with the girlfriend and pretend they were just Army buddies. It made him hate Jake, and he hated hating him, hated that, for a moment, with steam billowing up, he was glad Jake was dead.
Sam slammed the shower’s handle until the water stopped, and then he dried himself off, didn’t bother with dressing. With any luck, Rufus would already be in the loft; if not, the redheaded prick—Sam’s rational part pointed out that Rufus really hadn’t done anything wrong—would have to be satisfied with Sam wrapping a towel around his waist. He opened the door and stepped out.
A brief assessment of the studio did tell Sam that Rufus was now in the loft. His black T-shirt was hung over the back of the chair at the desk, wet and dripping from one corner. Rufus must have washed it in the kitchen sink to rewear tomorrow. Quiet movement overhead indicated he wasn’t asleep yet.
“Hey.” Rufus’s head hung upside down from the loft. “Come up here.”
At the sofa, Sam fluffed—ok, punched, vigorously—the cushions.
“There’s only enough room for one punk in this relationship,” Rufus commented wryly, “and I long ago claimed that title.”
Sam crossed the room and hit the lights, plunging the loft into the soft gray surf that rolled in from the street. He said fuck-all to modesty, dropped the towel, and stretched out on the sofa.
Rufus’s sigh broke the stillness. “All right, Hercules, I’m impressed. But come sleep in the bed so you don’t get a kink in your neck.”
Sam rolled onto his side, face buried in the cushions, smelling dusty upholstery, maybe the faint trace of Jake’s cologne. Imagination? Who the fuck knew anymore? Now that the first surge of anger was pulling back, Sam could think more clearly. He knew Rufus had been teasing him. Knew Rufus hadn’t meant anything by it. In fact, Sam had the sneaking suspicion that if he told Rufus everything, explained it, Rufus might actually understand.
I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.
Sam tried to squirm deeper into a sofa that was approximately two-thirds his size. Rufus was interested. Sam was interested too. Even the way Rufus riled him up got him interested, made him feel alive and engaged and in contact with another human being in a way Sam hadn’t felt in a long time. Right then, Sam was interested in a very pointy way that was leaving an impression on Jake’s poor sofa cushions. But Rufus didn’t want to just be a fuck, either. And that made things complicated, because keeping everything at just-a-fuck level was safe. It was easy. It was fun.
Better?
Well, Sam wasn’t sure about that. But if you kept things simmering at just a fuck, guys didn’t walk away in the mess hall, guys didn’t drop their eyes, guys didn’t veer off when they saw you coming. Guys didn’t lie to you. Didn’t spend a weekend on the river, sun and water and beer and nights under the stars, and say stupid, impossibly stupid lies to you. And you wouldn’t believe them.
On the walk back to Jake’s, Sam had thought about Rufus being lonely, and now he had to face facts, boner-in-pillow facts, that maybe he was just as fucking lonely. Maybe he was lonelier.
His voice was rough when he called up to the loft, “Come down here.”
There was a shuffle of footsteps, and then Rufus was hanging over the edge again. “Why should I? You’re being a grump.”
Rolling off the sofa, Sam
moved toward the bathroom. He fished through his ruck and found the bag from the CVS, his hands trembling and the plastic crinkling as he riffled it. He closed his hand around something and carried it toward the loft, set his foot on the bottom rung, stepped up until his face and Rufus’s were level—although Rufus was upside down, which pretty much summed up everything about the redhead.
Sam held up the pack of spearmint gum.
Rufus stared at the gum for what was maybe only a second, and then a smile broke out across his face. He took it with a sense of uncertainty, closing his fist around the pack.
Sam held out his hand, palm up, waiting.
Rufus made a sound under his breath that was definitely amusement. He carefully peeled the package open and offered Sam a stick.
Fingers trembling, Sam unwrapped the gum and tossed the stick aside. And then he did a silly, high-school thing. Something he’d wanted to do for a long time. He folded the silver wrapper into a flower.
“I’d like to kiss you,” he said, his voice so rough and low, he barely recognized it, and he held out the flower.
The haze of city lights painted Rufus’s face in shades of dirty orange-gray and lit up the wet of his green eyes. He accepted the foil flower and whispered a choked, “Ok.”
Sam kissed him, one hand behind Rufus’s head. It was the first upside-down kiss of Sam’s life, but it was pretty fucking awesome, to quote his high school self. Something hot and bright and wild woke in Sam’s chest, and he kept climbing, still kissing, scooping up Rufus and carrying him into the loft with his momentum. The space was tight, a queen bed squeezed under a low ceiling, but Sam wasn’t worried. He wasn’t planning on doing a lot of standing.
Together, they tumbled backward onto the bed. And credit where credit’s due, Rufus was an unbelievable kisser. The first few kisses were great. Then, as they found their rhythm, the right match of demanding and giving, taking and resisting, the kisses got even better. Too many guys had to be in charge one-hundred percent—if they wanted to kiss at all. This, with Rufus, this back and forth, this was so much better. Sam’s hand splayed low on Rufus’s belly, relishing the charged heat of his skin, drifting up, across his ribs. Sam wanted to do this in the sunlight, where he could count every freckle, kiss every one of them. Although, doing it in the gray haze of the city was fine in Sam’s book. Hell, he’d have been perfectly happy in pitch dark, just the two of them.
