by Julie Bozza
It seemed that the quality of the sandwiches Albert soon produced surprised Fletcher. He ate enthusiastically, drank the blended fresh fruit juices as if they were ambrosia, all the while babbling on about Harley, and how Fletcher had never met anyone who could make food taste as good as his brother did, until now at least, about how he missed that one thing. And he missed his father. But not Idaho.
Albert sat through the rambling reminiscence, face stony. He didn’t eat more than a bite or two, unable to stomach it. It occurred to him that the boy was offering a confidence in return for being here. That wasn’t nearly enough. But Albert found himself planning the magnificent pizza he would make, and the right salad to complement the tastes, a combination to impress. It was strange to cook for someone after all these years of eating alone. Strange but undeniably challenging.
CHAPTER FOUR
GEORGIA
SEPTEMBER 1982
John Garrett put on his best smile as he opened the front door, the winning smile that somehow reached his ice blue eyes. He was an attractive man and he knew it, used it. Trustworthy, that broad friendly mouth. Compelling, the spark of light in eyes that could be severe at work, frightening in play. Handsome, the perfectly even features. Irresistible, though he so loved resistance.
“Philip.” Garrett greeted his guest. “Welcome.” Then, with an effort not to let the smile fade, “Who’s this?”
“My girlfriend, Stacey. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Garrett looked from one to the other. All-American youngsters - the boy, who worked for a firm Garrett’s company was about to contract to do a construction job, and the girl, who appeared from her clothes and her flushed skin to have just come from the gym. Stacey wasn’t exactly pretty but her serious expression fit well with the long waves of dark hair and the firm small body. Philip wasn’t much bigger than the girl - both together wouldn’t add up to Garrett’s bulk - and the boy’s demeanor was altogether more frivolous, his blond hair unruly and his expression usually mischievous. Garrett had followed him one evening, watched him chugging beers with his friends, degenerating into raucous ribald tales. Not something Garrett could see Stacey taking part in. “Why should I mind?” Garrett asked rhetorically, though there were a hundred reasons. “Does she follow the football?”
“No, sir,” the girl said. “But I can learn.”
“I’m sure she can.” Garrett stood back to let them in. Stacey slipped by first, then, as Philip passed close by him, Garrett murmured, “What, scared I might jump you? Needed her to hold your hand?”
“No.” But the boy threw him an embarrassed stare before speeding up to follow the girl, who was heading for the kitchen - that was exactly what Philip had feared. That was, after all, exactly the impression Garrett had wanted to convey.
Garrett smiled, this time from the heart. He wasn’t losing it, no, not in the slightest. He pushed the door closed, and turned the lock. It made a satisfyingly melodramatic sound, the bolt of metal shooting home into the doorjamb. From down the corridor, Philip cast him another glance, obviously unnerved all over again. That was exactly the way Garrett liked them at this early stage.
Stacey was raiding the fridge in a flurry of organization, handing Philip the makings for sandwiches. “You guys want a beer?” she asked.
“We most certainly do,” Garrett replied. He walked over to take the bottle from her, twisted the cap off with his bare hand, and grabbed two glasses. “Come on, Phil, the game’s about to start.”
“But I’ll help -”
“No, you won’t help her, you’ll come and watch the game.” And, getting between the two of them, Garrett shepherded the boy out of the kitchen. It was laughably easy, really - the boy didn’t want to let Garrett within reach of him, so kept backing away every time the bigger man advanced.
They settled on the old sofa in the billiards room, Philip sitting a wary four feet away. Garrett dug the remote out from behind the cushions, turned on the television, poured the beer, then let the boy be. No point in scaring him too much just yet. They had all night to work around to that, if they could get rid of the girl. Though she would know who Philip had been with.
Stacey appeared with a tray full of sandwiches, an extra bottle of beer and a glass. She seemed about to sit between the two men - but Philip had a crisis of conscience, and decided he was marginally safer next to Garrett than she was. Perhaps he was playing the gentleman. Or perhaps it was an admission that he had turned on to this, that he was already halfway roused.
“Did you tell anyone?” Garrett asked.
“No. You said not to, with the contract and all.”
Garrett smiled. The kid had bought the story that an evening watching the football together might be seen as compromising the contract negotiations, though Philip himself had nothing to do with the financial wheelings and dealings. “Good. And Stacey?”
“I picked her up straight from her dance class.”
“He surprised me,” the girl said. “I wasn’t expecting him.”
“No one knows I brought her here, Mr Garrett. It’s all right.”
“All right,” Garrett agreed. They made it so damned easy for him. He settled back, content to wait for now.
Half time and the Atlanta Falcons were behind by ten points. Philip was incensed enough with the score and the beer to be making some noise. Stacey was curled up beside him, listening to the boy’s explanations of the finer points of football.
Garrett was smiling. It had been far too long since he’d indulged in this pleasure, far too long since he’d heard and smelled and touched a boy’s fear, seen and tasted his resistance, lived his pain and humiliation. An evening’s worth of anticipation, of creeping up on the tension until all at once the boy would know just how much terror there was in the world.
The girl, he’d deal with. She wouldn’t get in the way of this. If anything, she’d help make it happen.
He stood, and the kids both turned to look up at him, startled by the movement. Time for something stronger than beer. Garrett headed for the bar in the far corner, caught up the vodka and three shot glasses, brought them back over and poured generous nips. He toasted the kids silently, grinned, and swallowed down the liquid fire in one mouthful. Waited expectantly until they did the same. Poured them another round, then left the room.
Perfectly choreographed, though he’d never had to factor a girlfriend in before. As he returned a few minutes later, silent, the couple were kissing. Garrett stalked across the thick carpet, was sitting beside them on the sofa before they noticed him. “Don’t stop,” he murmured.
But they did, abashed and confused. The football was about to resume, and Philip was turning towards it.
“No,” Garrett said. He moved in close behind the boy, his body echoing Philip’s, though remaining a few careful inches away. And Garrett took the boy’s hand in his own, placed it flat on the girl’s hip, rubbed his palm and fingers across the back of the hand in encouragement.
After a brief hesitation, the boy copied his moves, caressing the girl’s waist and then her shoulder and arm. She was startled but seemed focused more on her need for the boy than her uncertainty of the man.
“Kiss her,” Garrett whispered.
Again a pause, the boy trying to work out what was going on and whether to protest. But he’d been a little high on the sexual undertones of Garrett’s invitation ever since he’d walked through the front door, and was too far in now. He leaned to meet the girl’s mouth, hand still following Garrett’s lead back down to her hip.
Garrett moved up against the boy, buried his face in the blond hair, inhaled the scent of him. Philip flinched away from the contact but Garrett soothed him with a murmured repeating of, “It’s all right, it’s all right.” He gathered the girl in tight, she put her arms around them both, and the boy began kissing her in earnest.
“The game …” Philip said once, as the crowd cheered a Falcons touchdown. The camera zoomed in on the players dancing around the end zone, embracing.
“I’ve an even better game,” Garrett murmured, “upstairs.”
“No.”
Laughing, Garrett stood, hauled the pair of them up from the sofa. “Come on.”
“Stace?” the boy asked.
“If you want to,” she whispered.
Philip looked uncertainly from one to the other, and all the time Garrett held them trapped in his arms, waltzing them towards the stairwell. Then they were on the first steps, and it was too late. Garrett let them go and closed the door at the foot of the stairs. It locked.
But, while their fear eased up a notch, their excitement was still running fire. So deliciously easy. “Go on,” Garrett said gruffly, not wanting to touch them again just yet. It had been a long two years, so the need in him was an imperative. And he’d had an idea, a glorious idea, about the girl …
“Mr Garrett?” she whispered, at the top of the stairs.
There wasn’t much up there. He supposed they’d been expecting to find his bedroom. Instead there was the attic space, an old single bed and some odds and ends. No windows. The boy had turned, was staring at him, beginning to draw a few conclusions. But Garrett walked up the stairs, calm and controlled, and the kid lost the one slim advantage of higher ground.
“Go on,” Garrett said.
They backed away, the girl hanging on to the boy’s arm, peering over his shoulder.
Garrett strode up to them, grabbed the boy around the waist, lifted him up tight, and kissed him - a savage driven kiss that left blood on the boy’s mouth.
He was struggling, the girl was hitting out ineffectually, but Garrett just laughed.
“Run for it, Stace,” the boy said once his mouth was free. “Run for it!” She stayed there, trying to pull the boy out of Garrett’s embrace. “Go!”
Keeping her gaze on Garrett as if expecting him to try to stop her, she edged away back to the stairs. Garrett ignored her, dragged the boy along with him.
“Let her go, Mr Garrett, just let her go, I swear I’ll do anything, I swear I’ll -” And the boy was crying. “I swear, Mr Garrett, I swear …”
Garrett dumped the boy on the bed, and cuffed one of his ankles to the bars at the foot.
There was an angry, frightened scream from the stairwell. “Phil, he’s locked it!”
“Let her go,” the kid was pleading. “You don’t want her.”
The boy was secure now. Garrett turned away to fetch the girl.
Philip was further beyond misery, further beyond despair than he’d ever imagined was possible. Apparently, in essence, he was nothing more than a mess of tattered pain and shame. So reduced by so little. His flesh no longer held in all the pain. At first the sensation had been sharp and focused and intense - but now it welled beyond the simply unendurable, to cascade out and up to fill the room, to suffocate him with its metallic taste.
Garrett had left him alone for a while, so Philip closed his eyes and went under. He was beyond caring for his own sake that Stace was seeing him like this, was even further beyond caring for her sake that she had to witness such a thing.
But of course John Garrett didn’t want him beyond caring. No, Garrett wanted them both to be fully and terribly aware of every little thing.
When Philip was jolted back to the nightmare, he was on his back, wrists cuffed to the bed posts at either side. Chains ran from leather straps around his ankles to his upper arms: short chains, so that his legs were spread, and bent almost to his chest. He didn’t struggle, not like he had at first. Three of his fingers were now little more than bone; his skin was raw and broken; he had been hit so often he figured most everything inside of him was smashed. There was something in his chest that felt like fire.
Garrett hadn’t hurt Stacey, barely even touched her. Her hands were cuffed to a rafter over her head, and she was just out of reach but close enough to see it all. She was weeping, head fallen forward so she didn’t have to look at Philip.
But for splatters of Philip’s blood, Garrett was naked. He was moving to kneel on the bed.
Philip knew what would happen next. It shouldn’t have mattered anymore. But it did. He said again, through torn lips, “Let her go. Got what you want.”
“Tell her to watch!”
“Let her go,” Philip repeated weakly.
Garrett grabbed up the baton he’d been using, brought it down across the back of the boy’s thighs. Hard. “Tell the bitch to watch!”
“Damn you,” Philip muttered, “damn you damn you …”
“Yeah,” Garrett breathed. “Don’t give up the fight yet.”
“… damn you damn you …”
“Make it good, boy, and I’ll let her go. If I wanted to fuck a corpse, you’d be dead already, wouldn’t you?”
“… damn you …”
“You listening to me?” Then Garrett was explaining in the most reasonable of tones, “You liven up a little, kid, make it good, and she watches - then she goes.”
“… don’t trust you …”
Garrett laughed. “There’s no one else to trust. No one else in the world except for me. And her.”
“Just do it, damn you to hell,” Philip said. It shouldn’t have mattered anymore. He tensed as Garrett knelt between his legs. The tension brought its own pain - his body hurt all the more, and he dimly realized Garrett enjoyed that he wasn’t yet beyond humiliation.
“Tell her.”
“Stace. Look at me, Stace. Come on, damn you. Stace -”
Garrett was running a hand across Philip’s belly, wiping up the blood, then rubbing it on his own penis. He laughed, then moved again.
Philip cried out as Garrett pushed into him. There shouldn’t have been anymore pain, anymore shame.
Stacey choked out, “Phil -” and he opened his eyes. She was staring at him, and he stared back. “I’m with you, Phil. We’ll get through this. We’ll get through it together.”
Her words shouldn’t have helped, but they did. The shame didn’t matter so much, when Stacey could look at him, when she could meet his gaze, when she could promise that they’d survive this and still be together. Maybe Philip could let this happen and stay sane.
Garrett cried out, full of rage. He pulled away, took two steps, was lifting something from behind a loose board. Philip looked around to see what he was doing just as there was a deafening blast. Garrett had a pistol in his hands.
Stacey slumped, weight suspended only by the handcuffs, body shaking in unnatural spasm. There was a little blood, though Philip couldn’t make out where she’d been hit. But then she was quiet, and then she was gone.
Philip sobbed his despair. “Damn you - Damn you - Damn you!”
Garrett dropped the pistol, went back to the boy, fucked the bloody flesh, pumping hard. It was good. The boy screamed, beyond petty curses.
Afterwards, Garrett chain-smoked almost a whole pack, standing in the shadows out of sight. He left the boy on the bed, let him lie there all twisted up while he died. The kid was merely whimpering by then, utterly pathetic. Garrett liked the depths he’d brought the boy to. It was very good.
At last the shakes caught the kid up, something internal rupturing, bleeding, convulsing him. It was over.
No - this time was over. This was over, though it could have been better. Next time - Garrett would wait out the month, find another boy, and he’d get it right, make it perfect. Next time.
CHAPTER FIVE
WASHINGTON DC
MARCH 1983
Albert stood in his backyard, considering the latest outbreak of a groundcover. The parent of this plant belonged to some neighbor of common tastes. Its misbegotten siblings had been weeded and cut back any number of times, yet it persisted, and he didn’t want to resort to chemicals to be rid of the thing. It wasn’t that the plant was unattractive - it had variegated leaves, of cream and apple-green, and a five-petaled flower of a blue somewhat lighter than delphiniums - but it did not belong here in Albert’s garden.
A single flower was staring back at him now, pert i
n its stubborn survival.
Sighing, Albert returned to the mowing. It took him a while, usually at least two hours, not because he owned a large block of land, but because he used a hand-driven mower. The noise and the stink of motorized mowers offended him, and this way he exercised and could enjoy the fresh smell of the cut grass.
“Hello!”
Albert turned, having recognized the voice. Fletcher Ash had come to Washington to speak at a conference being held during the following week, and had arrived early in order to see another of his women friends. It wasn’t as if the neighbors greeted Albert, anyway - they had long since gotten the message that he wasn’t interested. “Ash,” he said as he walked up to meet the man by the house. Then, bluntly, “What do you want?”
