Pick Up the Pieces

by Tinnean

  “Yes!” Paul jumped on me and wrapped his arms and legs around me in a massive hug.

  Tim caught me before I could fall. He grinned and hugged the two of us.

  I put Paul down, pushed the hair out of my eyes, and then laughed as I realized the hair was no longer there. Tim’s stylist—I would have called him a barber—had clipped and trimmed and shaped, and I almost didn’t recognize myself when he’d finished. I didn’t really look older, but somehow I didn’t look like a kid either.

  “When do you want me to go to work?”

  “You feel up to going out tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked me over, then nodded and gave me a handful of condoms—colored, flavored, sizes that would fit any dick.

  “I don’t expect you to use ’em all tonight, Sweets,” he teased, and then he became serious. “Now, one last word of advice. Always remember—”

  “And never forget….” the others chimed in, singsong, and Tim sent them a mock glare.

  “—johns don’t fall in love with hustlers.”

  Paul laughed. “That’s what he tells us all the time.”

  “Because they don’t. Pretty Woman was a load of bullshit.” He scowled at Cris. “I should have kicked your ass when you took the boys to see it.”

  “What did I miss?” I asked. I hadn’t been to the movies since before Poppa had thrown me out.

  “Rich guy picks up a streetwalker, goes Pygmalion all over her ass, and winds up giving her a shitload of money and falls in love with her to boot.”

  “But Tim… Richard Gere!” Cris was laughing so hard I thought he was going to pee his pants.

  Tim’s scowl deepened. “One—you’re not Julia Roberts. And two—our johns aren’t Richard Gere. It would be more like that movie from the thirties, where the guy finds out his girl had to walk the streets to survive, and he wants to know why she didn’t die instead.”

  “Was that the movie with Humphrey Bogart?” Cris asked innocently.

  Tim gave him an affronted glare. “How the fuck should I know? You’re the one who watches those old black-and-white movies. Now, all of you, pay attention. Johns aren’t gonna take you away from the life. The last thing any of us needs is to get his hopes up and then his heart broken. So just pay attention to what I’m telling you.”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Paul looked the picture of innocence.

  Tim growled and cuffed Paul’s head, but his growl was really a laugh and his cuff was more a caress. “Just don’t you go falling in love with any of them.”

  I DIDN’T need to burn his words into my memory. I’d been in love once, and this was where it had gotten me. Oh, hustling brought me decent money, and sometimes the john I was with even made sure I felt good. And it also got me Paul, who I loved like a brother, and the other boys, who I liked well enough. In another lifetime I would have been madly in love with Tim, who was sexy as hell, as well as a good man, but….

  I’d never give my heart to anyone ever again.

  Chapter 4

  TIME PASSED. Days, weeks, months, and then all of a sudden it was September, 1991, and I’d been with them a year. We no longer lived in the tiny apartment Tim had first taken me to, although Paul and I still shared a bed. It wasn’t that the apartment wasn’t large; it was just there were a lot of boys.

  AS HE’D promised, Tim got us off the streets and into posh hotel rooms. Our clients paid well, not only in cash but also in stock tips. We were on the road to becoming, as the saying went, “comfortable.”

  A pimp tried to muscle in on our high-scale clients, and Tim—short but tough—beat the crap out of him while Cris made sure no one else got involved. Some of the pimp’s boys went with another stable that worked a different part of town, but some of them stayed with us.

  After a while, they left, mostly because they couldn’t or wouldn’t follow Tim’s rules.

  New boys, thrown out by their families, joined us, and they stayed or they left for pretty much the same reasons, although a few, when they left, chose to open their own branches of the business in New York, Miami, or Los Angeles.

  The nightmares of blood and knives, where I’d wake with my heart pounding and sweat pouring off me, gradually faded. I no longer looked like the scrawny kid who’d arrived in DC in 1990, flat broke. I ate regularly, and without the nervous tension that I’d be beaten if I didn’t bring home enough money, I began to fill out. Tim also took me to a gym and saw to it that I learned how to work out, and my muscles became sleek and toned.

  I got my GED—which didn’t take long, since Tim helped out—and then began working on an associate’s degree in accounting. I had a head for numbers, and Tim wanted me working the business end of things.

  On Tim’s twenty-third birthday, he announced he’d been at it long enough. He was going to retire and open a little club in Atlanta.

  “I’m goin’ with you, dude.” Cris looked as if he expected a quarrel.

  Instead, Tim smiled at him and touched the spot over Cris’s heart with his fingertips. “I’m glad.”

  “You’ll come back and visit us?” I asked.

  “You won’t be able to keep us away. And it works both ways, y’know. I’ll expect y’all to come on down and see us too.”

  We took the night off and threw a surprise party for them, including friends and colleagues. Tim actually got misty, and when he tried to make a speech, he choked up.

  And then it was time for coffee and cake. I had ordered a sheet cake from a local Italian bakery. Half the cake had a filling of chocolate pudding and half cannoli cream, and it was covered with whipped cream. Tom and Mike, who were talented when it came to crafts, had gotten some plastic model kits and put together a representation of a small bar, which was positioned on one corner of the cake. In elegant calligraphy was written, Good luck, Tim and Cris. Anything more would have been regarded as mushy.

  I was in the kitchen, slicing the cake and putting each piece on a paper plate, when Tim joined me. He had a glass of wine in one hand, and he slid his other arm around my shoulders.

  “Thank you for this, Sweets.”

  “Hey, we all chipped in.”

  “I know it was your idea.”

  “It was the least I could do. If you hadn’t taken me in that first day, I’d be dead now.” I cleared my throat. “I’m gonna miss you, boss.”

  “Me too.” He looked around at the mob crowding our apartment, then nodded toward the Kid and Tangerine, our two newest boys. “The Kid should be okay, but keep an eye on Tangerine. He wants to be in the big leagues, and he’s just not ready. One last bit of advice, Sweets.” He was turning the running of the business over to me, even though Paul, Tom, and Mike had been with him longer. “Paying rent is like pissing money down the drain. You need to find a reasonable property and buy it.”

  “One of my regulars is in real estate.” We met each week during his lunch hour in a little motel just across the Potomac. “He might be willing to help.”

  “Good.” He hugged me against him.

  “Hey!” Cris walked into the kitchen. “Should I be jealous?”

  “Asshole.” Tim let me go, went to him, and hugged him.

  I could tell just by looking that the hug was different. “Have some cake.”

  We partied until the wee hours of the morning. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, no one paired off to slip into any of the bedrooms.

  Tim and Cris’s things had already been shipped ahead. The next day they followed them.

  And it was back to work as usual.

  IT WAS noon on a Wednesday. “That was great,” I sighed in repletion. It was almost the truth.

  He turned me over and kissed the corner of my mouth. “I’m still looking for a property for you and the boys, but… I wish you’d let me set you up someplace, Sweetcheeks.” My real estate agent angled up and looked down into my eyes. “I have my eye on a sweet little apartment….”

  “I’m sorry, John. I’m just not the settling down kind.” I wasn’t stup
id enough to think he’d fallen in love with me, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  I sometimes thought about it, though, about having just one man in my bed. I even went so far as to try to picture what he’d look like, but I never could, and I took that as a sign: it wasn’t going to happen for me. One day I’d get out of the business, maybe do some accounting to explain my assets to the IRS, but when I did, I would be alone.

  I’d stay with the boys until then.

  “You deserve a better life than this. I can give it to you.”

  Maybe, but even if I did move in with him, I knew it wouldn’t last. John—that really was his name—hadn’t come out to his family. They were local, and if he did something like that, it would get back to them.

  “I appreciate it, babe, but I can’t let you do it.”

  He sighed. “But I can still see you every Wednesday?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone but you.”

  “And I’ll keep an eye out for a property that has promise.”

  “Thanks, babe.”

  A COUPLE of weeks later John called to tell me he’d found something, and Paul came with me to check it out.

  It was deep and wide, three floors, a basement that scared the spit out of me—I was sure it was haunted—and a gabled attic. The backyard, when we got around to taking a look at it, was overrun to the point I was sure critters lived there.

  “Bay windows, Sweets!” Paul gazed up at the second floor. “I love bay windows. And look. There are little Juliet balconies outside each window on the third floor, and turrets at both ends.”

  The outside was run-down, and I looked at it dubiously. “I don’t know, John. I know you wouldn’t steer me wrong, but it looks… old.”

  “Not old, not really. Well… it’s antebellum, but trust me, it’s solid. It was built by a well-to-do politician—”

  “Are there any other kind?” I exchanged smiles with Paul. Some of our best customers were politicians.

  John, who hadn’t heard me, continued “—about twenty or thirty years before the Civil War.”

  When they went in for large families. “It’s too big.” There were six of us at this point.

  “You could rent out one or two of the floors, maybe even the attic. A little renovation and you’ll have additional income from the rentals.”

  Paul looked interested. “We’d be landlords?”

  “But who’ll want to rent here?” The neighborhood was as run-down as the house. No one was on the street, and even if they had been, I couldn’t see them caring enough to protest because a stable of rent boys might be moving in.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. I really shouldn’t be telling you this.” John glanced around as if he expected to find a mic shoved into his face, even though we were alone on the street. “I heard through the grapevine that this area is in transition! It’s been slated for gentrification.”

  Paul was looking dreamy-eyed, and I decided I’d worry about the gentrification thing when and if it happened.

  “How will our clients feel about coming to a neighborhood like this?”

  “Sweetcheeks, I’d come here to see you, and you know how easily I can be intimidated. Your other clients will too.”

  “And we can always go to the ones who won’t.”

  Yeah, we could do that.

  “Let’s go inside and take a look.”

  THE FIRST floor seemed more or less intact. “This was converted to a rooming house around the Second World War—there was a housing shortage in DC then.”

  “Hmm.” A rooming house? “Can we get the owner to do the renovations?”

  “The owner skipped out. The house is in foreclosure.”

  “How much will it cost us to renovate it?”

  “Not as much as you might think, Sweetcheeks. Oh, you’ll need to put in kitchens, more bathrooms on the second and third floors and in the attic, probably another bathroom on this floor as well…. Come this way.” He led us through a large dining room to a good-sized kitchen. “But once that’s done….”

  “Sweets, I really like it. I have a good feeling about it.” Paul was always having a good feeling about something or other. He was the optimist of our group.

  “Let me show you the other floors before you make any decisions.”

  I thought the second floor was horrible, the numerous rooms cramped, with only one bathroom at the end of the hall.

  The third floor was better, but not by much. Like the second floor, there were many small bedrooms, and one bathroom to serve them.

  “This used to be for the children. Their bedrooms, the nursery, schoolroom and playroom….”

  For some reason, Paul fell in love with it. Probably those turrets.

  “We could keep this floor for ourselves, Sweets.”

  “There are too many bedrooms. We don’t have that many boys….” And I didn’t want that many.

  “You could knock down some walls—”

  “Y’see, Sweets? We could knock down walls!”

  “—enlarge the bedrooms you want to keep—”

  “There’s no kitchen.”

  “—and put in any size kitchen you’d like.”

  “There’s only one bathroom on the whole floor,” I huffed.

  “You know there’s enough room to add more.”

  “Let’s take a look at the top floor.”

  “And that’s another thing, John. How come this politician, if he was so well-to-do, didn’t have a fourth floor for a ballroom?”

  “This wasn’t choice real estate back in the 1830s or even the 1840s. I have a feeling it might have been for his”—John’s expression was sly, and he made finger quotes—“second family. What need would they have for a ballroom?”

  “It’s awfully big for a mistress.”

  “He was probably what you might call prolific.”

  “Why, that dirty dog!” I was becoming intrigued in spite of myself. I wondered if we could find out anything about the original owner.

  We climbed to the top of the stairs, where a single door opened into a vestibule of doors, six in all.

  “You’ll have plenty of storage under the gables.”

  “We don’t have any need for storage.”

  Paul frowned at me, but I ignored him.

  “The attic was originally the servants’ quarters.” John threw open a door to the left. “The roof’s angles might make things a little awkward.”

  “A little awkward?” The room was a square, about ten by ten, large enough maybe for a double bed but very little else. “Whoever rents this had better be short, or else he’ll keep banging his head on the ceiling.”

  “But in the center of the room the ceiling is fine. I have a friend who’s an architect. He’ll love designing something wide open that can connect all these rooms into one usable space.”

  “How much will he cost us?”

  “We’ll work something out. I’d suggest offering this furnished.”

  “That’s going to cost us too.”

  “You’ve got to speculate to accumulate,” John said righteously.

  I frowned at him.

  “This would make a decent studio apartment, Sweets.” Paul was pacing off the distance from a window to a corner.

  “Right under the roof? It’d be hot as hell in the summer.”

  “Ever heard of air-conditioning?”

  “There’s no elevator. We’d never find anyone who’d be willing to climb those stairs.”

  “Now you’re being pissy.” Paul poked my shoulder.

  He was right; I was being pissy. I was suddenly scared out of my wits. I could see the cost of this mounting higher and higher, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration how we’d heat this mausoleum. This was a big financial responsibility.

  “How can we do this, John? How will we get a mortgage? Who’ll give us a mortgage?”

  He grinned and stroked the shoulder Paul had poked. “You let me take care of that, Sweetcheeks.”

/>   TRUE TO his word, John got us the mortgage—he set up a dummy corporation to front for us—and the place was ours. Well, ours and the bank’s.

  But while we were paying the mortgage, we were also paying rent on the apartment we couldn’t vacate as of yet, because it was going to take a while for the third floor to be ready for us to move in.

  I spent the next four months chewing my nails as project after project went over budget “just a little.”

  “We could ask Tim for a loan,” one of the boys suggested.

  “I will personally castrate anyone who calls Tim about this.” He was having some problems of his own in Atlanta—none of the locations he’d looked at suited him—and was talking about moving to Savannah. I glared at Paul, since he was the one most likely to contact Tim. “This is our responsibility. We’ll deal with it on our own.”

  “What about our retirement fund?” Paul suggested. Socked away in a safe-deposit box were high-risk stock certificates. “We could tap that….”

  “We’d take too big a hit. The loss would be too great.”

  “But we’d catch up….”

  “No. People always say that and never do. Do you want to be hustling when you’re sixty-five?”

  He subsided. The depressing picture of us as geriatric rent boys was more than enough to squash that notion.

  We worked longer hours, sometimes taking on clients we’d have preferred not to. More than once one of us came home with welts. I kept a list of those johns, dreaming of one day paying them back yet knowing how unlikely that would be.

  The Kid came in early one morning sporting a black eye and a livid palm print on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Sweets. I didn’t duck fast enough.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Take the rest of the week off.” By then the bruises would have faded, and concealer would cover up what was left of them.

  Most johns didn’t like the reality of a rent boy’s life rubbed in their faces—they wouldn’t want him. And the ones who wouldn’t be turned off by how he looked would only add to his bruises.