by Plakcy, Neil
Every Minute
Thursday I shifted to helping Adrian with his punch lists, a series of minor problems that had to be addressed before we could give any of the contractors their progress payments for finishing that building. We also had to have them taken care of before we could get our certificate of occupancy and release the building to tenants.
“First thing I want you to do is make sure the sprinkler lines are straight,” Adrian said, pointing up. “You sight down the line and make sure they’re all in line. Then you go around and make sure each one has an escutcheon—that little round plate that covers the hole in the ceiling.”
By the end of the day I had a crick in my neck from staring up, but I had verified that all the lines were straight and every head had an escutcheon. I drove back to the Beach, stretching my shoulders, trying to work out the sore muscles.
My roommates were in the living room when I walked in. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and settled down with them. Eventually I mentioned that I was going over to Naples for the weekend with one of the guys from work. “I thought everybody you worked with was straight?” Larry demanded.
“It’s not a sex thing,” I said. “He has to go to some continuing ed workshop, and he just wants somebody to come along to have dinner with and stuff.”
“Yeah, right,” Gavin said, but neither of them pressed me. They both had enough going on in their own lives, I guessed.
I told my parents that I was going to Naples—but with a couple of my frat brothers—and that I’d have to miss Sunday dinner. Papi told me to have fun, and I remembered what Beatriz had said—that I got off easier because I was the boy. I couldn’t imagine her taking off with friends for a weekend—even if she were my age and a college graduate. The leash wouldn’t be loosened until she was married and living with her husband—and even then, Mami and Papi could always reel her in, the way they did sometimes with Del.
After that, I had to decide what to take with me. Bathing suit, shorts, T-shirts—but would Walter and I go out to dinner Saturday night? I’d have to wear something nice, because I was sure he’d be dressed well for his seminar. I packed plenty of condoms and lube too. My dick was hard just thinking about Walter, but I resisted the urge to pound one out—I wanted to save everything I had for him.
Friday I checked that every electrical outlet had a faceplate. “I spent four years in college for this,” I grumbled late in the morning as I crouched down to inspect a wall.
“Yes, but you will only do this for a day, because you have that degree,” Adrian said from behind me. “The electricians over there will be doing this work until they can no longer bend down.”
“I guess you’re right.” I made a mark on my checklist and moved on. Every now and then I’d get distracted, thinking about my upcoming weekend with Walter, and have to force myself to concentrate. This was why he didn’t want a relationship with me, I thought. Because the job would suffer, and he’d fail as a result. Well, I couldn’t let that happen.
As soon as the contractors cleared out around three thirty, Walter came to my office. “Let’s close this place down. I already sent Estefani and the supers home.”
“So it’s just you and me?” I asked, standing up.
He held up his hand. “No, a couple of the guys are still out on-site. I want you to follow me over to my place. We can leave your car there, in my garage.”
As I followed him under the Palmetto Expressway and through a maze of suburban streets, I let myself daydream about our naughty weekend. We were going to have sex for the first time—and hopefully many times after that.
Walter paused and then turned right at a stop sign. I followed him.
I was in love with Walter Loredo. I hadn’t let myself feel that before, because I’d believed he was straight and unavailable. But now that both those complications were out of the way, I could give in to the rush of emotion. I felt like jumping out of the car and dancing in the street. Walter Loredo! My handsome, sexy boss. What I felt for him was more than just lust or hero worship. He was old enough to have the maturity I admired, but nowhere near my papi’s age.
He signaled and turned in to a townhouse complex. I followed as he pulled up in front of one, and the garage door opened. I drove inside carefully, grabbed my backpack, and walked to his car. “That’s all you have?” he asked as I tossed the pack in and slipped onto the plush leather seat.
“I travel light,” I said. I wanted to lean over and kiss him, but he had already hit the garage door remote and put the car in gear.
Within a few minutes we were on Tamiami Trail, heading west. My parents had taken us to Tampa a couple of times when we were kids, always out the Trail, which was the only good road through the Everglades then. The sun was setting ahead of us, and Walter and I had to put down our visors as we sped along.
I looked out at the sky, light blue, shading to navy behind the rafts of puffy cumulus clouds above. They were white and airy, though, not the dark kind heavy with rain, so I thought we’d have a beautiful weekend.
I suddenly felt awkward. What would we talk about for the two-hour drive? Work? We did that all the time. I hardly knew anything personal about him. “Where were you born?” I asked.
He turned to look at me. “Coral Gables Hospital,” he said. “Why?”
“I don’t know anything about you as a person,” I said. “I figured I’d start with where you were born.”
He laughed. “My parents came here from Cuba in 1980, during Mariel,” he said. “With my two older sisters. I was the first to be born an American citizen.”
“Probably spoiled, right?”
“You got it. I was the little prince. My whole family doted on me. Catholic school all the way, up through the Jesuits. Then UM.”
“Hold on,” I said. “You’re going way too fast. What were you like as a kid? Did you play sports?”
He shrugged. “Softball, soccer,” he said. “Like everybody. I had a bike I rode everywhere. We lived at the west end of Calle Ocho, almost to the Gables but not quite. I could almost feel my parents longing to make that move.”
“Did they?”
“Actually, they went to Broward instead,” he said. “Both my sisters live in Pembroke Pines, and they wanted to be near their grandkids.”
While I tried to think of what to ask next, Walter took the initiative. “Tell me about you now.”
“Same story, different characters,” I said. “My sisters are younger than I am. But they’re always complaining that I get away with more than they can.”
We laughed and talked for a while, and I started to feel like I was getting to know the real Walter Loredo, the one behind the handsome, genial boss. After a while the conversation petered out into a companionable silence.
I looked out the window. The Everglades stretched away from us on both sides, a beautiful emptiness of flat sawgrass punctuated by the occasional cluster of trees on a hammock a foot above the water level. The water beside us was so clear it reflected the sky.
“Can I put on some music?” I asked.
“Certainly. CDs in the case beside you.”
I flipped through Walter’s musical choices. Rock and roll, some Spanish artists I didn’t recognize. When I came to Ricky Martin’s first CD, I slid that into the tray. The lively edge to the music reminded me that I was on my way to spend a wicked weekend with a handsome, sexy man. How cool was that?
The flat landscape sped by as the sun sank ahead of us. We passed a truck loaded down with drywall, and another with concrete pipes. I felt a connection to those supplies, even if they weren’t meant for our site. It was like I had a window into the world.
It was already dark by the time we left the Everglades behind for the urban sprawl of Naples. We stopped for dinner at a faux British pub, with London street signs and an imitation phone booth in the lobby, but the male servers wore kilts, which made up for a lot of sins in my book. We sat in a booth under the Charing Cross Road sign and ordered fish and chips and bottles of B
ritish hard cider.
“I like the employee uniforms here,” Walter said after the server had taken our order and walked away, his kilt swishing around his hairy thighs. “You think we could institute this on the site?”
“Depends on what you had them wear underneath,” I said. “Some of the guys might find it cooler and less confining than pants.”
Walter laughed. “Imagine Camilo in a kilt?”
I held up my fingers in the sign of a cross. “Don’t go there. I’m sure that what’s underneath is nothing to write back to Cuba about.”
I told him about the hose incident, and he said he wished he’d been there to see it. We tried to identify who we thought the best-looking guy on the site was, but I voted for him and he voted for me, so we had a stalemate.
When we got back in the car, Walter flicked the overhead light on and reviewed a piece of paper from his briefcase. “The hotel should be to our left,” he said.
“Have you ever been there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Pepe made all the arrangements. He said it’s supposed to be nice, though.” Just before the sign announcing downtown Naples, Walter turned off the main road into a residential neighborhood of low-slung condo buildings, and then into the curving driveway of the hotel.
It was classy, like everything about Walter, not some sleazy motel where you’d take an illicit lover. Coffered ceilings lit with large copper fixtures, a marble floor, and Oriental carpets, Audubon-style bird prints in frames along the walls. While Walter checked in, I wandered around the lobby, past a sign announcing his mortgage broker session the next day. It was scheduled from nine to five, which was a bummer, and I suddenly worried that he might recognize someone he knew. I’d have to make sure to stay out of the area.
He led me upstairs and down the hall to our room. He slipped the key card in the slot and opened the door and ushered me ahead of him. As soon as the door was closed, I dropped my backpack on the floor and turned to him.
He had the same idea I did, and we were kissing each other before I knew anything else. He wrapped his arms around me, his hands moving around my lower back, and he was so eager it was as if he wanted to gobble me up.
I finally had to push him away so I could catch my breath. “You’re a very passionate kisser.”
“I’ve been waiting to do that properly for a long time,” he said. “Ever since our first interview—you dressed up so nice in your suit, and all I wanted to do was strip those clothes off you and fuck you senseless.”
“I wish you had,” I said. “Right there in the interview room at FU.”
“On that flimsy table,” he continued. “Pushing away all the résumés and cover letters.”
“Did you interview anybody else?” I asked, nestling my head against his shoulder.
“Nobody else who mattered,” he said. “As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the one I wanted.”
We kissed again. His lips were soft and moist, and I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent, that unique mix of sweat and lemon. We left the lights off, and Walter caressed my jaw and neck, nuzzling against my cheek. There was just enough light in the room from the street lamps outside that we could make each other out.
My lips were swollen by the time he stopped to pull off my polo shirt, then toss it to the bed. I kissed the top of his head as he moved down to lick my nipples. I arched my back in pleasure and moaned lightly.
I toed off my deck shoes and unbuckled my belt. My pants slipped over my hips and pooled at the floor around me, and I stepped out of them. I was wearing a pair of bikini briefs, and my dick was hard and pressed against the fabric.
I tugged Walter’s polo over his head, ruffling his hair as I did. We kissed again, and I worked my hands beneath his belt, his slacks, and his boxer briefs to feel warm flesh. He kicked off his shoes and undid his pants, and they flopped open around his groin. I tugged them down over his broad thighs. Then I leaned down and picked up both sets of pants, laying them over a chair as Walter chuckled.
“What are you laughing at?” I asked. “I take care of my clothes.”
“All I want to take care of right now is you,” he said, pulling me back against him, my smooth skin against his hairy chest.
We kissed some more, pressing our bodies against each other. Walter’s dick was as stiff as mine, and I could feel his heat against my shaft. I slid my hands up along the sides of his chest and nestled my head against his shoulder. He kissed the top of my head.
As Walter bent over to get out of his socks, I pulled down my bikini briefs, and my dick popped out. “Ay, qué lindo,” Walter said, reaching over to cup my dick in his hand. I thought I’d erupt right there just from his touch.
He looked at me and smiled, then quickly shucked his boxer briefs, stumbling in his eagerness. I grabbed his arm, and when he had his balance, he embraced me, pulling me close to him again, and began humming a low melody, swaying his body with mine, our dicks rubbing against each other.
“Good thing I was able to change the reservation from the two double beds Pepe reserved when we thought he was coming with me,” he said as he moved me gradually toward the king-size bed.
Just before we got there, I dropped to my knees before him. I placed my hand under his dick and palmed it, feeling the heavy balls covered with wiry hair, the heat pulsing from his shaft. I leaned over and licked him once, all the way up his length, and he moaned with pleasure.
I pulled out every trick I knew, determined to give Walter Loredo the best sex of his life. I tongued his piss slit, tickled him beneath his balls, swallowed him to the root, hoovered him. He mumbled my name between groans of pleasure, rubbing his hands over my head.
I sensed his orgasm building, and he tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let him. I opened my throat as he ejaculated, and swallowed as much as I could, wiping the last bits of froth from my mouth. “Ay, Dios mío,” he said, and he sank to the bed.
I hopped up and sat next to him. “Was it good for you?” I asked mischievously.
“You forget, I’m not as young as you are, Manny,” he said, gasping for breath. “You took that orgasm from me like a thief in the night.” He scooted over, lifted his legs onto the bed, and leaned back against the pillow. “At least I can die a happy man now that I’ve experienced that.”
“You’re only thirty-two,” I said, lying back beside him. I reached for his hand and our fingers entwined. I was still hard as a rock, my dick leaking precum, but it didn’t matter. I got all the pleasure I needed just from seeing Walter so happy.
“I’m supposed to be the boss,” he said after a minute or so. “Show you the ropes, how everything’s done. I don’t think I can match that performance, though.”
“You’re going to try, aren’t you?” I asked, looking over at him.
“Most certainly,” he said. “But you’ll have to come to me.”
“With pleasure.” I scrambled up to squat over Walter’s chest, my dick at his mouth, and he used his right hand to move me to his lips. He looked up at me as he took me in, and just being able to gaze into his eyes was almost enough to take me over the edge.
Walter was not the best cocksucker I had ever experienced—he was probably one of the worst. He kept gagging, and he only had one move—sucking like a vacuum cleaner. It didn’t matter; I was so turned on by being with him, after lusting after him for so long. Every time I remembered that this was Walter Loredo in bed with me, my body shivered with delight.
My dick swelled even further, and I felt light-headed with the rush of blood. Tiny lightning strikes reverberated through me, and though I tried to hold back, I couldn’t help myself. I succumbed to the little death, and the cum shot out of my dick. Walter pulled back, and I sprayed his face.
He looked so goofily happy there, grinning despite the cum dripping down his cheek, that I had to laugh. “What?” he said indignantly.
“I’m just so happy to be with you,” I said.
My thighs began to burn, so I slipped back beside him, nest
ling my head against his chest. He wiped his face with his hand, then leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “I’m happy to be with you too,” he said.
After a few minutes he went into the bathroom to clean up, and I began to unpack. I put my stuff away on one side of the closet and one side of the bureau. When he came out of the bathroom, I went in, both of us a bit uncomfortable in our nakedness. The bathroom was almost as big as my bedroom back in Miami, with a separate tub and tiled shower, a broad counter with twin sinks, and a tiny closet with its own door for the toilet.
By the time I finished, he was already under the covers waiting for me. He leaned back on his elbows and smiled lazily. “Don’t hurry on my account,” he said. “I could watch this view for a long time.”
I walked past the closet on my way to the bed, and it was so cool to see Walter’s hanging next to mine in the closet. I knew this bit of domesticity was just a brief interlude, and we’d be back to boss and employee soon enough, but I was determined to enjoy every minute we had.
Tiny Pockets of Beauty
We slept in a tangle of bedsheets and limbs, and woke together at first light. “You’re hard again,” he said, reaching down to stroke my dick.
“Morning wood,” I mumbled.
He leaned down and took my dick in his mouth, sucking me furiously. My dick began to ache from the friction and my need to pee, but I didn’t stop him. My orgasm built, and I moaned, and Walter backed off and finished me with his hand, squirting cum all over my belly and groin.
“Big mess,” he said, smiling. He went into the bathroom, and I got to watch his butt swagger as he walked. He returned a moment later with a wet washcloth and cleaned me up. The room was full of yellow sunlight.
I sat up and yawned. “What time is it?”
“Seven thirty,” he said. “Listen, I need to go to the continental breakfast for networking, and then I’ve got to go to this course. They take attendance, even if you go out to the bathroom, so I’ll be booked until five. But I promise I’ll make it up to you later.”
