by J. M. Snyder
He hurries from the garage, across the yard, to the back door of the waystation. One of the chore girls stands on the stoop, a large metal tub in her hands as she pours warm, sudsy water onto the stunted grass. She holds the screen open with the heel of her foot and Trin folds himself easily inside. “Thanks,” he says, ducking under her arms and into the kitchen. When he passes under the tub, he can feel steam rising from the water cascading beside him.
Looking around to make sure Blain’s not in sight, Trin heads for the back stairs. Aissa sits on a stool by the sink chopping onions, and she glances up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Trini,” she says, her voice full of tears. “Wait.”
“I’ve got to shower,” he tells her. He’s not in the mood to put up with her right now.
But she slips off the stool and catches his arm. “Trin—”
Her skin is cool and damp on his, the strong scent of onions wafting up from her like a cloud. The smell waters his eyes and he pulls away. “Later,” he says. When she starts to protest, he holds out his arms so she can see the oil and sweat streaked across his chest. “Aissa, I’m a mess.”
She edges around him until she blocks the stairs. “Why didn’t you wash up at the pump? There’s one down here. I’ll prime it for you.”
He laughs. “I want a shower,” he says carefully, as if she’s a child who might not understand. She places her hands on her hips and gives him a defiant stare that makes his bones feel hollow and weary. “Come on. Do I have to use the other stairs? Because I will, you know.”
“Trin, listen,” she begins, then frowns at him as if she doesn’t know what else to say. That’s a first, Trin thinks. Aissa always has something to say on everything. If she doesn’t, she makes it up.
With a dramatic sigh, Trin turns and takes a step or two away from the staircase. “Fine,” he pouts. Aissa watches him, that frown worried into her face. “You’ll prime the pump? You’re not going to splash me, are you?”
She gives him a bright smile, relieved. Leading the way, she promises, “Not this time—hey!”
The moment she moves, Trin’s on the stairs, clambering to get up before she recovers enough to pull him back. “Trini!” she shrieks as she claws after him. Blunt nails scrape his elbow, his waist, catching a belt loop on his pants. “Dickweed, listen to me.”
He jerks forward, up the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other flat against the wall. “Get off,” he cries, kicking out behind him. “Jesus, what the hell’s gotten into you? I’ll call Blain.”
The threat doesn’t phase her. “You’re not listening,” she says through clenched teeth.
“You’re not talking,” he counters. He falls to his hands and knees, damn. All this for a shower? If he knew she’d go ballistic, he would’ve skirted the kitchen entirely and gone through the front. “Let me go.”
Despite her hands tugging at his pants and legs, Trin gets to the top step. Rolling onto his back, he kicks at her, his bare foot connecting with her collarbone. “You are an ass,” she declares, climbing up after him. “I’m your friend, Trini.”
He laughs, his breath short and hot in his throat. “Could’ve fooled me.”
He scrambles to his feet and she does the same, wiping her hands on the apron she wears. Here in the close darkness of the corridor, the pungent stench of onions is overpowering. The neon sign that flickers outside the window down the hall burns her eyes red like a bad photo. Her face pools with shadow. “Trin, stop.”
Brushing off the seat of his pants, he looks at her suspiciously. “What?” he asks. He uses the same deadpan voice she does. His eyes sting from her scent.
Her lips twist with uncertainty. “Don’t,” she says simply.
For a moment he stands there and waits, sure she’ll add to that. Something along the lines of don’t what might be nice. But she doesn’t, just meets his gaze and waits for him to take up the scuffle where she left off. He doesn’t want to ask what she means, that would concede too much, and he surely doesn’t want to brush off this conversation altogether—if he walks away now she’ll get pissed, and probably tackle him halfway down the hall. Finally he decides to ignore the whole situation, pretend she didn’t just try to drag him back downstairs, and start fresh. Rubbing at his elbow, sore where he must’ve knocked it on the steps, he asks, “Have you seen Gerrick?”
“You don’t want to go there,” she says. She must mean the shower, and when Trin takes a step in that direction, she grabs his elbow again. Unexpected fear leaps in his chest. “Are you listening to me? I said you don’t—”
He shrugs her off. “Is he here?” he asks, walking quickly now—the door to the bathroom is just ahead. He can already hear the gurgle of drains and the rush of water like rain in the distance. If Gerrick’s already in the shower and she’s been trying to keep him out, then why…
When he opens the door, hot moist air smacks him in the face. “Trini,” Aissa whispers, her hand falling away from his arm. Where she touched, his skin feels clammy and cold.
He hears the wet slap of water on tile, the sigh of a shower, and beneath them he hears another sound, guttural, hungry. The sound of a man finding release, in a voice he knows too well.
Through a drawn shower curtain he sees the vague shape of a man—Gerrick, the name flits through his head and is gone. Some part of Trin still grasps onto the legend he’s woven into fantasy, the gunner he wants to hold him, want him, need him the way he wants to be loved. Guys jack off in the shower, he thinks, watching the water bead on the curtain that separates them. I do it all the time.
Then why do his fingers tremble as he takes the edge of the curtain? Why does his heart pound like a drum in his chest? Cool air from the hall swirls around his legs and he can hear Aissa in the doorway, hissing his name. “You don’t—”
He yanks hard on the curtain, the hooks that hold it in place popping off the rod with a tiny plinking noise, like coins dropped in a fountain. Make a wish, he thinks wildly, and suddenly wishes Aissa had been strong enough to hold him back.
* * * *
He pushes past her as he races down the hall. The image burns in his mind—he closes his eyes and still sees the gunner’s slack cheeks and open mouth, his eyelids half-shut in lust. A hand stroked Gerrick’s thigh, another curved around his flat ass, a man knelt before him with the gunner’s fingers plunged deep into his thick hair. The hard length suckled between red lips, Gerrick in him, fucking the bounder’s hot pink mouth as the shower poured down around them. The bounder, Trin recognized his eyes when he turned to see why it was all of a sudden cold behind him. Gerrick’s eyes widened slightly and the gunner sighed his name, Trin. No explanations, no hurried excuses—he didn’t even push the bounder away, just kept thrusting into the softness between his lips and uttered his name. Trin, for the first time when he was getting off he said it, and it wasn’t even on him.
Behind him Gerrick calls out but Trin’s beyond hearing. He runs down the hall, head tucked between shaking shoulders, chin pressed to his chest. He tells himself he won’t cry, even as the first hot tears cut through the sweat on his cheeks.
“You bastard!” Aissa shrieks at the gunner.
“Out of my way, bitch,” Gerrick replies. Trin feels as if he’s running in place, the air thick around him like water—never before did the corridor seem so long. Please, he prays. He closes his eyes and sees those hands that touched him so tenderly now holding the bounder’s head against his crotch. He can’t seem to outrun that image. Please.
Aissa’s voice takes on a desperate squeal. “Blain!” Panicky, the voice of fear. “Trin, wait—Blaiiin!”
Finally he reaches the stairs. He doesn’t chance a look back, he doesn’t want to see Gerrick and that bounder, naked, hair dripping wet and erections still hard beneath towels wrapped around their waists. He doesn’t want to hear any reasons why. They knew, Blain and Aissa, they knew all along…and they tried to tell me, that’s what hurt the most. They tried to tell him and he wouldn’t listen. I thought I knew
him, he thinks, stumbling down the steps. I thought he could be different with me. What the fuck do I know? What the hell—
His feet tangle together and he’s thrown down the last few steps. Strong hands catch him beneath his armpits, the impact pulling muscles in his shoulders and back. His brother’s voice tears through the spiral of thoughts in his head like a chainsaw. “Hey, slow down.”
Trin shrugs out of Blain’s grip. He keeps his head low so his brother won’t see his face, streaked and grimy from struggling to keep it all inside. But gentle fingers cradle his chin, turn his face up, and Blain’s eyes harden with instant concern. “What’s wrong?” he asks sharply.
Twisting away, Trin tries to step around his brother but Blain stops him. “Hold up—”
“No.” Heavy footfalls on the stairs tell him the gunner is close—he doesn’t want to see that man again, he can’t. His mind replays the scene, pulling back the curtain, Gerrick’s hooded eyes, Trin’s name moaned as someone else sucks him down. He moves the other way, and Blain’s other arm blocks his retreat. “Blain, let me go.”
In a quiet voice, his brother wants to know, “What’d he do to you?”
The words break the dam he was building so carefully around his emotions. He blinks and the world blurs, tears blinding him—he shoves his brother aside, too torn up to realize he’s twice Trin’s size. But this time Blain steps out of his way. Trin blunders to the screen door and pushes through it, lets it slap shut behind him as the cool evening air hits him in the face. He rubs his eyes and weaves through the junkyard, bumping one hip into a stack of tires, knocking his hand on the fender of a burnt-out husk that was at one time a classy convertible.
Without thinking, he returns to the garage.
* * * *
He locks the door behind him, then pushes a half-empty drum of oil in front of it to bar the path. Blain has a key, and the last thing Trin wants is someone else with him. As he moves the drum, he has to stop twice because he’s crying so hard. No use pretending now. Both times his lungs hitch and he can’t seem to breathe through tears that clog his throat. Each breath is painful, each tear like hot wax burning his face. Every single part of him hurts in ways he never imagined possible.
And his damned mind won’t stop the playback, like a disc stuck on repeat. The images shuffle over and over, sometimes out of sequence and sometimes all at once. Opening the curtain. Gerrick’s eyes. The perfect O of his mouth. The red lips encircling his dick. Trin almost thinks he could count every drop of water beaded in the gunner’s eyelashes, every freckle dotting the bounder’s bare back.
The thought sears through him and he screams out, a mingled cry of helpless rage and frustrated pain. In his anger he tips over the barrel and oil splashes like blood across the steps. “Trin?” he hears through the heavy door—Blain’s voice, concern as bright as the sun shining through his words. Trin watches the door knob turn back and forth but it’s locked. “Trini, open up.”
“Go away,” he mutters. He doesn’t like his voice. It sounds dead.
He can almost hear his brother breathing—Blain must have his face pressed against the door jamb. When he speaks again, his voice is closer now, stronger. “Listen to me, Trin? Let me in. Please kid, you don’t need to be alone right now. I know you’re hurting—”
“You don’t know shit.” Trin punches the door, rattling it in the frame. “I don’t need you telling me how fucking wrong I was, okay? I know that, are you happy? I don’t need you to rub it in.”
Silence. Dimly he wonders if Blain would race around to the front of the garage to find entry. The bay doors are padlocked, though, he won’t get in. “Just go away,” he sobs in that dying voice that’s become his own. “Just leave me alone and go the hell away already, won’t you please?”
The last word cracks and splinters into a whine. Please, he prays. Please… “Alright,” Blain sighs, defeated. The door knob turns once, slowly, and then snaps back to its original position. When his brother calls out for Aissa, he sounds like he’s halfway across the junkyard and heading for the kitchen door.
Trin turns and almost slips in the oil he spilled, black sludge oozing down the steps to puddle on the floor of the garage. He splashes through the slimy liquid, bare feet leaving oily footprints behind. At his workbench, he sweeps everything to the floor, nails and struts, balled up papers and mech books, pencils, magazines, a broken CB he’d been working on whenever he felt like a challenge. Then he knocks down his stool, a handtruck, toolboxes, anything that falls with a noise loud enough to deaden the pain. Wrenches clatter to the floor, hoses unroll, cans full of paint and grease and gasoline overturn and splatter the concrete with a myriad of color, like a canvas ruined in a storm. Had he actually believed he might be something more than an outpost fuck to that man? Had he truly dreamed of being someone special? Those lips on his skin, those hands on his body—his stomach churns at the memories. He’d never wanted anything in this world but who he imagined the gunner to be, but those fantasies shattered when he pulled back that curtain. Fragments rattle inside him, their edges cutting his mind and heart. They pierce his lungs, choke his breath, stab him from within. How stupid could he have been? How fucking blind?
I had no clue, he thinks, but that’s no excuse. Like a broken puppet he staggers to where the run-gun trucks gleam wetly, newly polished, in the center of the garage. Not the first inkling of this…this betrayal. The gunner’s roving eye, sure, but what’s looking? Trin leans against the first truck, the one not Gerrick’s, the hood still open in a crocodile grin. His fingers blanch where they dig into the bumper. Gerrick’s hot stares the other night, his flirting with the chore girl—but he slept with me. Trin can’t get over that part of it, no matter how he turns it over in his head. He slept with me.
But at least Blain’s question is answered now. Trin balls his hands into fists and strikes out at the truck, pounding into the shiny finish. Gerrick spent his days with the bounder no doubt…and just how the hell could Trin have known? Why should he even suspect? “I should’ve been enough,” he growls, his voice animalistic, raw. He barely recognizes it as his own. Was this all his fault, then? Could he have possibly been more?
His soul cries in frustration, I gave him everything I had. Since he was old enough to look at another and want him, he’s loved the gunner. How many years has it been? Wasted now, on a lecherous old man. How many other boys are there scattered like dandelion spores on the wind, blown across the outposts and waiting for Gerrick to return? Believing in the magic of his hands, the deceit in his voice. Believing they’re the only ones. Believing he’s changed for them. The kid in Danac was lucky, Trin thinks bitterly. He’s not in the game anymore. He saw the way Gerrick plays and forfeited. “Damn him,” he mutters, meaning the gunner. In the low light of the garage, the truck in front of him promises escape. It’s tempting. Take one of those beauties and barrel through the palisade gate, maybe then he could outrace the hatred building in him.
Choking back fresh tears, Trin wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He breathes in deep, as if hoping to suck back in all the emotion he has allowed to leak out. The sharp tinge of gasoline and his own sour sweat wash over him, a bitter scent that drives a dull nail of pain above his left eye. One of the many fragrances of spurned obsession, cloying like a fever.
In an effort to calm down, he takes another deep breath. This one doesn’t leave him as woozy as the first, and he tries it again, sniffling as he breathes. The kid in Danac missed, he thinks. He should’ve shot Gerrick dead between the eyes. Then I wouldn’t have this…
Or last night, or the night before. Or this morning, that was amazing, just the two of them talking like seasoned lovers. Why can’t they get back to that?
He rubs a hand over the bumper, smudged with his prints but otherwise undamaged. His little fit left no lasting harm. Could they get back to it? Tonight maybe, Gerrick will come to him, Trin knows it, and maybe they could talk—
About what? A voice whips through his mind, Ai
ssa’s voice, strengthening him. About how he got off on seeing you there behind the bounder? About how your sudden appearance startled him into orgasm? How he came so hard, it was like a stick of dynamite went off in the bounder’s mouth, is that what you want to talk about here?
Part of him can’t believe he’d even think such a thing. This is over, isn’t that painfully clear? Whatever he thought he’d found in that man is gone, no matter how he tries to work it out. It’s done.
Absently he traces the curved bumper with one hand, his feet shuffling over the floor with a sound that reminds him of death. At his parents’ burial, he walked this same way, Blain’s hand on his shoulder to hold him up. He almost wishes his brother were here now. Blain’s worried, is all. He’s probably thinking about that kid in Danac and going over the layout of the garage in his mind, trying to remember if there’s anything lethal in here. Gasoline, paint thinner, wire cutters, rope, knives…take your pick, Trin thinks as he crosses the empty space between the two trucks. This place is a smorgasbord for a suicide. Despite the ache in his chest, the thought makes him grin, and in Gerrick’s chrome bumper he catches a glimpse of himself, the distorted reflection buckles and looms larger as he approaches. Don’t worry, Blain, I’m not killing myself. Him either. I still want him too badly.
Feelings don’t just disappear—Trin’s discovering that now. In the wake of his anger, he’s left with a hollow gap in his chest and a litany flowing like an undertow through his mind, a small stream of what he might can do to get the man back. But he’s not a pretty boy, he isn’t rich, he isn’t exotic or quick witted or even very bright some days, to hear Aissa tell it. If only everyone else would disappear, he muses. His reflection frowns at him as if disagreeing. When it’s just the two of us, things are amazing. Take everyone else out of the picture and who’s he going to want then but me?
He imagines sneaking upstairs, into Blain’s room this time—he knows where his brother’s guns are kept. He may have stopped running years ago but Blain cleans the pistols faithfully, once a week, same as Gerrick did this morning. Trin sees himself sneaking one of the guns, the handle awkward in his hand, and then what? Find the bounder, shoot him down, the chore girl next…you’ve never fired a gun in your life, says that derisive voice in his head that sounds too much like Aissa to be healthy. The recoil from the first shot alone would tear your arm off and then what? You’ll have to masturbate with your left hand instead of your right.
