The Next

by Rafe Haze

  This was the first indication that his self-confidence was dropping.

  “Trust me, it’s working,” I replied with a wink.

  He glanced at me curiously. It occurred to me that gratuitous sexual innuendo between men and about men might be foreign in the law enforcement culture. It also occurred to me that, to whatever extent he and I had flirted and made contact, we’d never addressed the impulses with a single overt sentence. I had, in a subtle way, committed the first audible crossing of the line.

  After several seconds of consideration, he smiled.

  Dimples.

  My mouth dried, and my pole jolted in my underwear.

  “What time is it?” he asked, sweeping some specks into a corner.

  “Two thirty-five.”

  “The kids’ll be coming home. We’re too late. ”

  This was the second indication of dropping self-confidence.

  “We have another hour at least,” I assured him. “We just have to get him to bite today. We’ll reel him in tomorrow.”

  He looked like a god, only sexier. What was Marzoli afraid of?

  I plugged in the speaker on my computer and selected a song I’d written for Usher that never made it onto an album. Rebecca had her client Max Angel sing a demo of “Slow Slide Down From Me.” The smooth groove oozed through the apartment. A sonar sliding of sweaty bodies together in front of the firelight. An aural blowjob with a sly wink. But instead of smiling, Marzoli’s dark eyes were emotional and childlike. His lips were tight and serious. I motioned for him to move his hips. He did not. He remained absolutely still, looking injured.

  This was his fucking idea. What was wrong?

  I looked at the clock. If he was going through with this plan, the first contact had to happen now.

  “Move,” I ordered.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Max asked. “Really think you’re prepared?”

  He listened to the music and soon began to sway. He slowly undulated to the rhythm. He raised his arms with loose bent elbows and sensually rolled his torso. He opened his eyes. His masculine control and bravura had given way to boyish obedience and a pained acquiescence. He looked at me helplessly.

  I was confused.

  What the fuck did I know about dancing? Or seduction for that matter? Nothing. Why was he looking at me for guidance?

  Then I realized.

  If he’d had a past like Nathan’s, he’d have been abandoned in Chelsea when he was young and had to find some immediate means of income. Nathan turned to DJing and peddling E, most likely because all Nathan had to offer the world when he was just a twerp was a fast twitching mouth and an ability to spin.

  Marzoli, on the other hand, had a body.

  It made sense that he’d danced for a buck stuck in his socks or supporter. He’d worked his ass before finding a direction to apply and utilize his Herculean brain. He was a piece of meat that any john could tenderize until the day he enrolled in the police academy and gave that world a big fat fucking finger. Now, as Max’s lusty voice crooned, Marzoli was reverting back to his teenage hell. He couldn’t move to the music and let himself be treated like a hustler without sublimating all subsequent higher development. This was his schism. This was a fresh revelation I could not ignore. It made no difference how much I idolized him, I knew from the desperately lost look in his eyes he’d thrust me into the authority role. He was a kid who needed my permission to…to misbehave.

  I turned up the volume.

  “You’re about to hit the top, babe, and it’s a slow slide down from me.”

  “There you go. Give me more,” I ordered.

  He gave more. He could move, and he could move well. It was coming back to him gyration by gyration, roll by roll. So goddamn sexy, but I was getting stimulated by an entirely different factor. His obedience to me was no game. As pathetic as I’d been feeling for a year, at this particular moment, I felt a surge of empowerment pump through my body. It was a supremely titillating and twisted rush, as if the puppet and the puppeteer had spontaneously reversed.

  “Cause we’ll touch, gonna be a slow slide down from me…”

  I glanced at the screen. Layworth was again on his bed, back against the headboard, Macbook on his lap. All he had to do was turn his head, and what a fucking show he’d get.

  “Open the window,” I ordered.

  Marzoli opened the window.

  The music spread out into the courtyard.

  “And we’ll kiss, gonna be a slow slide down from me…”

  Marzoli’s ass mesmerized like a cobra dancing up from a basket, slowly towards me, slowly away, slowly circling. His core compressed and stretched as it countered his smooth pelvic rotation and his fluid torso rolling. His thick arms rose above his shoulders, and his deep wide armpits were shadowed in the light. He was graceful, masculine, intimate, and fuck he was hawt.

  His nipples began to firm in the cold air, as Nathan’s had not. Nathan, had, in fact, been shivering from the fear of the death that would eventually arrive at his doorstep. A chill ran down my spine. As erotic as this scenario was, danger was present. Death was near.

  I glanced down at the screen.

  The target turned his head.

  My heart started beating faster than the rhythm of the music.

  He saw Marzoli and held his gaze.

  “And your eyes won’t compromise…”

  Layworth put his laptop to his side.

  I heard Marzoli ask, “Did we get him?”

  “Bull’s-eye,” I responded. “Don’t stop.”

  “You’ll grow restless with the rest…”

  Layworth swung his legs off the bed and sat facing the window.

  As I glanced back up from my computer screen, I suddenly realized Marzoli was facing me as he was dancing. He was putting on a show for me. His eyes were focused on mine, intensely, lustily. His mouth was partly open. He re-wet it with his tongue. With his right hand, he caressed his skin from his Adam’s apple down through the sharp valley between his pecs, over the ripples of his abdomen, around his belly button, over the buttons of his jeans, and stopped at the mound underneath. His fingers gripped and squeezed.

  My breath stopped.

  Was this performance really for me, or had he made me a john in his mind?

  My penis punctured my pants. Apparently it didn’t care.

  “Cause from now on, it’s all downhill from all you see…”

  I sunk my hand beneath my zipper and felt the pleasure of the pressure. Marzoli matched it. I could see the outline of his dick enlarging with mine. That feedback loop we’d begun while getting clean apparently would continue while getting dirty. I bit my lower lip as I tugged at my testicles. He put his hand behind his head, wiped sweat off his neck, and then oiled the hair of his steel hard abdomen. He released his breath slowly, licking his wet red lips.

  “Gonna be a slow slide down from me.”

  The combination of Max’s breathy, licentious demo and Marzoli’s pole-less pole dance was lethal. The target stood up from his bed and approached his window.

  “It’s time,” I told Marzoli. “Make contact.”

  Marzoli raised his eyes and focused across the courtyard.

  Layworth stared right back at him.

  Marzoli continued to move, undulating his hips around in a circle while gripping the front of his pants. Layworth slowly dropped his hand toward his fly and let his hand rest on top, going no further.

  “He’s playing a game with you,” I said. “He wants you to go first.”

  Marzoli lowered his head so his lips could not be seen and said out of the side of his mouth, “I can’t.”

  “Unbutton your pants.”

  “I can’t do this,” Marzoli repeated, louder.

  Why the hell not? What was so goddamn difficult?

  “Unbutton your fucking pants,” I commanded.

  Marzoli unbuttoned the top button and paused.

  Layworth unbuttone
d his top button and paused.

  Marzoli was breathing hard, and he glanced at me for guidance.

  “Get the fuck over whatever it is and do it,” I said lowly.

  Marzoli unbuttoned the next button. Layworth grinned and zipped his fly down just an inch. His dick was hardening, pushing its way through, but he would go no further. He approached the window and leaned against the glass with his arms above him, just as he had when Ruben put on a show.

  Layworth’s confidence made me gag. He leaned casually against the window, presenting himself as if he were stepping down from a throne to accept a kiss on his wrist, if he approved. Did Layworth think he was some father, son, and holy Hostess cupcake whose creamy center Marzoli was dying to slurp up? What was most repugnant was that Layworth was the type of unctuous asshole who would and could never understand that Marzoli was more of a man than he’d ever be.

  “This is a mistake,” Marzoli said in his upper register, sounding half his age. “Turn off the music.”

  I clicked it off.

  The Sicilian Puerto Rican’s brow was glistening from sweat, even though the open window was chilling the room. He was obviously going through a crisis, torn between a torturous past he’d loathed and a present that forced him to relive it.

  Sounded damn familiar…

  He was frozen. I could see his dick had completely deflated.

  I had to get him to click into the moment, otherwise we’d lose Layworth. Whatever happened in Marzoli’s past to paralyze him needed to pass and pass immediately. He needed to be slapped back into the urgency of the objective, and recognize that this was just the means to an end.

  I could not physically slap him with Layworth watching.

  I had to think this through fast.

  He was so good at flirting when he needed something. He did it from the first second he knocked on my door. Now he needed something from the King across the courtyard. So what was different about this situation? Was the sexuality so overt that it was triggering the horror and degradation of his hustler days? Or was merely getting naked the trigger?

  What do I do?

  I scooted directly underneath the windowsill with my laptop and iPhone, right in line between Marzoli and Layworth. I called Marzoli’s cell. He reached into his back pocket and answered.

  “Keep your eye on the Layworth,” I began forcefully, “and keep your hand on your crotch as you listen. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he answered.

  “How do you feel about me?”

  “How do I…?”

  “Do you like me?” I asked, keeping the vocabulary as juvenile as possible.

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “A lot.”

  “Unbutton the next button.”

  He unbuttoned the next button. The white band of his underwear surfaced.

  “I want to be with you,” I went on. “I want every inch of you. You’re the first man I’ve ever said that to. The only one. Smile.”

  Marzoli raised the corners of his mouth.

  Layworth winked.

  I continued. “But I’m afraid…”

  “Why?”

  “You might think I’m…you know…”

  “What?”

  “Ugly.”

  “You’re not. You’re so…”

  “So what?”

  He looked directly at me, reached into his underwear and grabbed his penis. “You’re so damn good-looking to me.”

  “I am?”

  “From the first moment I saw you, I wanted to…”

  My chubby stiffened.

  Judging by the bulge, his dick once again began extending to full mast.

  Marzoli lowered his eyes to me with lust.

  This was working.

  Marzoli just needed intimacy. Connection. A person and a person, not just a john and a job.

  I unbuttoned my fly and wrapped my fingers around my cock.

  “You wanted to what?”

  “This.”

  He stared into my eyes as he licked his finger and smothered the saliva on his head beneath his underwear. He groaned.

  God, why won’t he show it to me!

  I put my entire fist around my cock and squeezed.

  “Jesus,” I moaned. “Look up.”

  Marzoli redirected his gaze to Layworth.

  Layworth unzipped the rest of his pants and let them drop to the floor. Once again he was wearing no underwear. Just as before, he put his hands back onto the window above his head and let his dick bob up and down.

  “What else do you want to do?” I asked Marzoli.

  “This.”

  He reached his hand under his underwear, stretching the band out as he burrowed below his testicles. He tugged down on his sac, still revealing none of his meat.

  “And what else?”

  Marzoli paused.

  Layworth’s enormous rod was growing rock solid and veiny. He put both hands around it like he was straddling a broom. He began to stroke.

  “Huh? What else?”

  Marzoli stuttered. “I don’t…I…I…”

  As fucking curious as I was for him to finish that sentence, I realized his mood was once again shifting to a withdrawn, self-pitying, frustrated place. That couldn’t happen. Not at this moment with Layworth practically in the bag. I had to sacrifice satisfying my curiosity.

  “What?” I attacked lightly. “You don’t mix with civilians? Or you’re just too fucking badass for me?”

  He slowly grinned and winked. “Your words, not mine.”

  That helpless look was once again replaced by that goddamn cock-of-the-walk attitude that made my schlong grow yet another half inch.

  Marzoli was snapping out of it; I could see it in his eyes.

  I started jacking off inside my underwear. This wouldn’t do. I freed myself. Marzoli glanced down quickly at my member, gasped, and quickly directed his eyes to Layworth. His breath labored.

  “Well,” he said “there goes my theory about the correlation of depression and diminutive dicks.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of largish and thickish. Keep your eyes forward.”

  Layworth’s stroking was increasingly frenetic. Mine was increasing too.

  Marzoli, take your fucking tool out of the tool shed already!

  “You going let us see it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  The hell!

  “Layworth’s going to come soon,” he said, once again completely in control of his fucking faculties. “We need him to stay horned up for the next time. He’s got to be out of control.”

  I understood. The chances of Layworth hailing Marzoli over would increase tomorrow if he were cut off today.

  “But he’ll take care of himself with or without you,” I said.

  “Not today.” Marzoli responded, “Look…”

  The front door opened as the two kids bounded energetically into the kitchen. Mr. Perfect quickly pulled up his pants, shoved his dick in, and zipped up. He was tenting conspicuously, so he hopped onto the bed and covered his crotch with his laptop. Mrs. Layworth followed the kids through the front door.

  As the kids bounded up to their room, she entered the bedroom. The husband and wife acknowledged each other, and he resumed concentrating on his laptop. She, however, stood still, sensing something. She walked slowly to the window and nonchalantly removed her brown pumps, but scanned the courtyard slowly as she did so. Did she really know her husband was at it again? Did she really feel that all was too quiet on the Western front?

  Marzoli closed the curtain quickly.

  He removed his hands from inside his pants, buttoned his pants, and rethreaded his belt through the loops.

  Curtain down, show’s over? What the fuck!

  My hard-on was still twitching in the wings.

  “Ummm…” I muttered to him, “We don’t have any kids coming home.”

  “Mrs. Van Buren’s mother.”

  “What?” I was hardly in any state of mind for his goddamn non sequitur
games.

  Why was he so hesitant to go further with me?

  “Mrs. Van Buren is one of the precinct’s dispatchers. Her mother is the secretary to a man named Peter Horn, whose wife is the bookkeeper to a guy named Dreyfus, who is a card carrying member of the Tea Party Fundamentalist Coalition. She told me the circumstances that led to Layworth departing the law firm.”

  “Oh.”

  “I did not know Mr. Layworth was our suspect before I met you. I only formed a suspicion the day you let me into your apartment. Remember?”

  “I remember. Mr. and Mrs. Perfect were getting ready to go on a trip with the kids,” I replied, impatient with how innocuous this conversation was while my dick was still throbbing in my fingers.

  “That’s what you saw. What I saw was that he kept glancing up at Ruben’s window the whole time.”

  “I missed that.”

  “It was easy to miss. He was glancing discreetly. It’s natural to glance at a neighbor as he’s moving in. It’s not natural to glance covertly unless you’re hiding something. That’s what caught my eye.”

  “He was hiding his attraction for Ruben,” I said, my schlong unchubbing by the second.

  “Yep, for the new tenant. So that night I called Mrs. Van Buren’s mother. Do you understand?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “When I first knocked on your door, I had no agenda to use you to get to Layworth. I am still not using you for anything.”

  His point landed. On one hand, that did settle some lingering curiosities. On the other hand, his timing sucked balls. I had my penis exposed to another man voluntarily for the first time in my life, and the man was pulling shit out of the air to avoid touching it or being touched by it.

  I finally gave up and re-harnessed my dick.

  Shitastic.

  I’d come so far. The apartment was spit-clean, I felt butterflies for another human in the first time since the discovery of fire, and I had an opportunity to do some good by Ruben and Nathan. As forcefully as it was fighting to take over, I was not going to submit to another extended spell of self-loathing monologues. I needed to communicate. Not hold it in.

  I cut to the point. “Why don’t you want to kiss me?”

  He stopped everything.

  I’d never seen him bite his bottom lip like he did now. What did he need to clamp down on? What shame had he to hide from someone like me?