Larry Boots, Exterminator

by John Inman

  Pushing everything else from my mind—Davis, the stakeout, all of it—I eased my knees down onto the bed between Kenny’s feet. Wrapping the bandanna over my eyes, I tied it in a snug granny knot at the back of my head. When I was good and blinded, without a peep of light showing through, I reached down gently and laid my fingertips atop Kenny’s ankles.

  Naked, I hovered motionless for long seconds, absorbing every nuance of how he felt beneath my fingertips. The velvet flesh and hard bone. The rasp of hair. The delicate heat. And somewhere beneath the surface of his skin, the faint throb of a heartbeat moving blood through his body. Swallowing hard, even in the darkness behind the makeshift mask, I squeezed my eyes tighter still, absorbing Kenny’s life force through my fingertips like some sort of weirdass osmosis.

  I slipped my fingers lightly through the hair on his shins, glorying in the brittle softness of it. Moving slowly, still trying not to wake him, I slipped my hands around his ankles and opened his legs a little wider. I felt the weight of my cock standing stiff, pulling at me, bobbing when I moved. I was hard as a rock. I released my grip on Kenny’s ankles and slid the palms of my hands upward, over the bump of his knees, onto the softness of his thighs, pressing down just enough to delineate the valley between his quads. His breath hitched, but he didn’t move, so I assumed he was still asleep.

  Hunkering down over my knees, I carefully placed my lips to the heat of his thigh. The tickle of his leg hair was like cotton on my nose. By the clean scent of his skin, I knew he had showered before he went to bed. I should have showered as well, but it was too late to worry about it now. I had bathed at his apartment earlier, not many hours ago, so I shouldn’t be too ripe for human consumption. I traveled upward with my lips toward the broadening of his thighs. My inch-long hair suddenly brushed his ball sack. I wasn’t ready to go for a home run yet, so I slipped to the side, laying a trail of kisses along the sharp bone of his hip. A minute shudder stirred through him. The pillow above me made a rustling sound when he turned his head, but since his breathing didn’t change, I felt sure he was still asleep.

  I crawled up the bed on my knees. Easing my mouth inward to Kenny’s center, I dragged my lips to his belly button, where I laid a kiss to the tiny crater. At the same moment, I felt his tangle of pubic hair brushing my chin. As the softness of his belly lay hot on my face, I placed my hands at the sides of his waist, holding him in place. My cock brushed his knee, and for me, lost in the darkness behind the bandanna, exploring by touch and taste alone, it was such an erotic feeling that my breath caught, and I almost groaned. Kenny’s hard cock rose up to meet me at my chest. Its silken head was fully engorged with blood. The shaft, standing upright, bumped against my collarbone. It was so warm, I could feel the heat of it on my skin. Like a long ember. Burning. I traced the gentle rise of his chest with my lips. I was trembling now. When I sucked a nipple into my mouth and Kenny gave out a tiny utterance of surprise, moisture accumulated at the aperture of my dick. A drop of precome made its presence known. I reached down, wiped it away with a fingertip, and carried it to my mouth, letting the taste of it burn across my tongue.

  Kenny writhed lightly beneath me. With his nipple returned to my mouth, I let my hands roam farther north, and when they came to the sides of his neck, I edged them inward and rested my palms carefully over his eyes.

  Beneath my touch, I felt his eyelashes flutter. He arched his head back and pressed a kiss to each palm in turn.

  His two hands rose up and captured my face between them. He touched the bandanna, and his dancing fingers followed it all the way around my head until he understood what I was doing.

  When he spoke, his breath came in shallow pants. “You’ve blinded yourself,” he said.

  My voice wasn’t in much better shape than his. I was so turned-on, I could barely formulate words at all.

  “I wanted to feel you the way you feel me,” I said, releasing his nipple from my mouth. “I wanted to see you the way you see me.” I crawled farther up the bed, and, pulled onward by simple feel and pure desire, I laid my mouth over his. His lips parted to accept my kiss.

  Gently pressing his shoulders back until he was once again lying flat, I scooted down in the bed, and without benefit of sight, without losing my way even once, I burrowed my face into his nest of pubic hair. I nibbled around, having the time of my life for a while, making us both giggle. Then I got serious. I trailed a line of kisses along the shaft of his stiff cock before taking the head of it into my mouth. Easing my lips down over him, I claimed him all the way to the root. He shuddered and bucked beneath me. And before either of us knew what was happening, he spilled his seed across my tongue.

  Lost in the erotic darkness behind the mask, I felt the muscles of my own body tighten around me, closing me in, arching my spine. With Kenny’s fingers buried deep in my hair, and his cock buried deep in my throat, still seeping, still throbbing, I gave out a whimper of want, and before I could move, my juices spilled over Kenny’s leg. As the come continued to flow, I ground my cock against his shin, feeling the sticky heat of my semen splatter between us, bonding us together.

  Kenny’s trembling fingers tugged at the bandanna over my eyes and pulled it away. His fingertips found my eyes and lightly hovered there, doing their little dance, feeling them as they opened.

  “Now you know what it’s like,” he said shakily. “Making love with all your senses but one.”

  I tried to capture my thoughts, but my body was getting in the way. My juices seeping from my still-aching cock. My muscles spasming from the tension of ejaculation. My hunger for the man beneath me hadn’t even begun to be alleviated. If anything, I wanted him more. I wanted him now. Right now. All over again.

  His penis softened between my lips, and I gazed up across the planes of his stomach and chest, his pale skin blue in the moonlight. His eyes were open. They were staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Or maybe they were staring inward at his thoughts. Or possibly trying to understand mine.

  I let him slip from my mouth, but I didn’t move. I lay with my lips still pressed to the bristly moisture there at the base of his cock. The burning warmth. I breathed in the scent of Kenny’s come and my own saliva, mixed, and his hips rose slightly, as if he knew what I was doing.

  “I think I understand you a little better now,” I said. “And I think I love you a little more too, although I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Do you really love me?” he asked. His chin was tucked down onto his chest now. With working eyes, he would have been watching me where I lay peering up at him, my chin on his stomach. Still, there was a softness in Kenny’s eyes I had never seen before. The moonlight had captured it. The moonlight and the moment.

  Seeking the comforting eroticism of blindness again, I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my face into his belly, into that lovely, fragrant darkness, redolent with Kenny’s heat and scent. “You know I love you,” I whispered. “Please say you love me back. I want to hear you say it.”

  And in a soft voice I knew I would never forget, he offered words that wafted through the air and landed lightly on my heart, like butterflies.

  “I love you back, Larry Boots. I do. I love you back.”

  I lay there in the gathering silence. Smiling. Kenny’s declaration of love echoed around inside my head like the mellow note of an oboe, soothing and sweet and somehow eternal.

  The night settled in around us as we lay, spent, cradling each other in the shadows. I noticed again the night birds singing in the trees outside. A cricket out on the veranda, or in the beams underneath, sawed out his scratchy song. One of the dogs, Chuck, maybe, gave a soft yip from somewhere inside a dream. As sleep began to claim me, Kenny spoke again, his fingers moving lightly at the back of my neck.

  “Did you do what you set out to do? Tonight? Did you do what those people paid you to do?”

  I nestled closer, a strange sadness overtaking me. These words of his were not as mellow as the others. They did not comfort me at all. “No,”
I said into the darkness. “He wasn’t there.”

  Minutes later, before sleep finally did move in, Kenny mumbled a single word.

  “Good.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I SLEPT my melancholy away, and in the morning the world looked brighter. Waking up with Kenny in my arms made it so.

  I wasn’t proud of myself, but I stooped to eavesdropping when he phoned work to call in sick. He sounded convincing, although he might have gone overboard when he told them he probably wouldn’t need surgery. Gay people are so dramatic. Even when they’re lying.

  Later we showered together, with the dogs standing outside the steamed-up glass door, looking confused, probably wondering why in God’s name Kenny and I were spending so much time on our knees in there. I fixed breakfast with Kenny shadowing me every step of the way, trying to learn where everything was in the kitchen. Later we did a test run—me shouting out “salt,” “frying pan,” “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”—and he remembered the location of every item, even when I sometimes couldn’t. We leashed François and Chuck and strolled the quiet neighborhood. As we walked, Kenny’s hand rested lightly on my arm. He had left his cane at home again, relying on me instead, which I thought was incredibly brave and incredibly trusting. I enjoyed Kenny knowing he could rely on me.

  While Chuck did his business on some poor woman’s newly sodded lawn, Kenny and I, along with François, stood around, tapping our collective eight feet, waiting for him to finish. Chuck was taking his sweet time about it because he knew he could. Chuck could be a dick sometimes, holding the trembly poop pose for minutes on end because he knew it embarrassed me.

  “It’s been six weeks, you know,” Kenny said, trying to sound nonchalant but not quite pulling it off.

  I knew what he was referring too, but like Chuck, I could be purposely obtuse at times. “Six weeks since what? Since Chuck started taking a dump?”

  Kenny gave a teensy smile, humoring me. “No. I’m referring to the fact that it’s been six weeks since you climbed down out of that stupid tree and struck up a conversation with me.”

  “I’m glad I did,” I said. “Especially after what just happened in the shower this morning.”

  Kenny looked surprised. “Oh, was that you?”

  I glowered.

  “You’re glowering, aren’t you,” he said.

  I glowered some more, and he laughed.

  Chuck started frenziedly digging up a square foot of the lawn he had just pooped on, so I hurried in to stop him and to obediently scoop up his crap and deposit it in a plastic bag. After tapping the divots of sod back into the ground as best I could with my toe, I grabbed the leashes and Kenny and scuttled guiltily off down the street. I hated walking the dogs.

  “What happens now with the job?” Kenny asked. “It didn’t pan out last night, so what’s our next move?”

  I turned amused eyes in his direction, knowing I was safe since he couldn’t see them. “What do you mean our next move, kemo sabe?”

  “I mean, what happens now? Will you try again tonight?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I must say, you’ve done a complete turnaround since last night. Aren’t you still worried about me getting my fool head shot off or ending up in a striped suit being cornholed by every swinging dick on D block for the rest of my life?”

  “No,” Kenny said, looking ecstatically aloof as we strolled along, like he was more interested in enjoying the breeze than listening to me prattle on. “I’ve decided you must know what you’re doing, or you’d have been either killed or incarcerated long ago. Now that I’m involved too, I’ve decided I’m in it for the adrenaline rush. We’re partners now. That makes me a hitman too.”

  “I told you before. Don’t call me that. And don’t call yourself one either.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, fighting a grin.

  He waited patiently for me to answer his question. So I finally did.

  “If you must know,” I droned, “yes. I’ll try again tonight. Once again, I’m going to arrange a way to keep you safe. And while we’re on the subject, stop thinking you’re involved. You’re not involved.”

  “Take me with you,” he said. “I can be your lookout.”

  I tried really hard not to roll my eyes. “A blind lookout. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  He didn’t look too pleased at my tone of voice. “I’ll have you know that I can hear more things than most people see.”

  I pulled both dogs and Kenny to a stop. While we weren’t moving, I took the opportunity to check out the street in both directions to make sure we weren’t being followed. It looked clean.

  “I know all about your hypersensitive hearing, Kenny. I even think you have a little ESP thing going on at times, but I’m not going to have you traipsing around with me while I do my work. For one thing, if it does go south, I don’t want to see you spending the rest of your life in jail.”

  “No,” he agreed. “That would definitely suck.”

  “Yes, and not in a good way. So tonight,” I declared with forced goodwill, “since Davis knows where I live, you’ll be staying with my mother.”

  Silence descended so quickly around us that I heard the chatter of baby birds somewhere thirty feet overhead in some fucking tree or other. Kenny’s fingers tightened around my arm like a vise. Then he released me completely and stepped back, almost tripping over a leash.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about tonight,” he said, batting puppy dog eyes because he knew I always fell for it. “Don’t bring your mother into this. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

  “Don’t give me that. You just don’t want to be stuck with her in her tiny little house.”

  “That too. She smokes marijuana, you know. She told me.”

  “I know.”

  “She drinks too. I didn’t tell you, but when we went to brunch she drank six mimosas, two bottles of Heineken, and a sloe gin fizz.”

  “She must be cutting back,” I said.

  He gave up then. “Fine,” he said. “I won’t go with you. But please let me stay at the house with the dogs like I did last night. We really don’t need to kidnap your mother too. Hell, I’d probably spend the whole night trying to keep her from driving off to some bar or other to pick up sailors.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You really do know my mother.”

  “And I love her to death,” he explained, looking suddenly tired. “I just can’t keep up with her is all.”

  “Who can?” I asked rhetorically. “Okay. You win. I’ll lock you inside the house with the dogs again. You won’t have to put up with my mom.”

  “As lovely as she is,” he interjected.

  I bit back a smile. “Yes. As lovely as she is.”

  Kenny and I laid low during the course of the day. Fending off telemarketing calls. Making love on a quilt in front of the fireplace downstairs. It was too hot for a fire, but we lit one anyway. More romantic that way. By the time we were in the throes of simultaneous orgasms—which was nice for a change—we were sweating like polar bears at a luau.

  I killed the fire as soon as our hearts stopped galloping, and we lay on the quilt, speaking low, enjoying the company of the dogs, who had moved in to lie alongside us. The feel of Kenny’s skin was still hypnotic to me. While we lazily let thoughts spill from our brains, out our mouths, and into each other’s ears, I sat cross-legged at Kenny’s side as he lay flat on his back in front of me. My hands never once left his body. I traveled every square inch of his luscious frame, from his toes to the top of his head. Sometimes, when I touched a sensitive spot, his breath would hitch, and he would close his eyes. I loved watching him do that.

  When the knock-off grandfather clock in the foyer chimed six, I popped a frozen pizza into the oven. We sat down to dinner in the dining room, which I almost never used. I usually ate in the kitchen or the circular breakfast room. Alone. But not tonight. We sat naked, him at one end of my dining room table, which seats eight, and me at the other. We
had barely started when I realized the distance was too great. This wasn’t classy; it was stupid. Plus it was pizza. Who gives a shit where you sit when you eat pizza? I slid my plate and glass and cutlery all the way down the table and parked myself at his side. From there I was able to enjoy dinner with Kenny’s bare knee touching mine. Much better.

  “You like being close,” he said softly a minute later. There was a smear of tomato sauce on his upper lip. I reached over with a fingertip and wiped it away.

  “I like being close to you,” I said.

  Using his free hand to locate the plate in front of him, he carefully laid down the slice of pizza he was holding in the other. He sipped from his drink and then laid his hands in his lap, staring down at his plate.

  “I haven’t felt like this about anybody since I—” He waved a hand vaguely toward his face. “—since I got like this. It’s an odd feeling, falling in love with somebody you’ve never seen.”

  I tried not to smile. “Are you still afraid I’m ugly?”

  He didn’t smile back. “No. I know you’re not. I just wish I had a clearer picture in my head of how you look. Doing it without sight is like loving a ghost.”

  I laid my hand in his lap and weaved my fingers through his. “I’m not a ghost,” I said. “I’m real.”

  “I know,” he said. His voice was so hushed I could barely hear it.

  I scooted my chair closer and dragged his hand into my lap, laying it atop my sleeping cock. “Please don’t think I feel something’s missing with you being the way you are. I don’t. You have no idea how beautiful you are to me.”

  His expression softened, as if those were words he had somehow needed to hear. “Am I?”

  “You know you are. I’ll never do anything to hurt you, Kenny. And I’ll never let you come to any harm. I’ll be your eyes if you’ll be my heart.”

  He turned to face me. There was a sadness in the tilt of his head, but his eyes were dry. The dying sun outside the dining room window cast a shimmer of light across his pale lashes. I stared at his lips, aching to kiss them. I could hear him when he swallowed. His fingers tightened in mine.