Dilly and Boz

by John Inman

  Boz sat up straighter, like a kid who has been called upon to recite. “I know he’s cute,” Boz stammered around a blush.

  Again, Puffer clutched his chest. Then he put on his businesslike face again. He bent down and picked up a Red Hot off the floor and popped it into his mouth. Fuck the five-second rule.

  He frowned, glancing at the joint protruding between his index and middle finger. “It’s a shame, really. Getting high was more fun when it was illegal.”

  “Sorry,” Boz murmured.

  Puffer thought it was nice of the boy to think he had to say something. Congenial, in a way. Polite. Puffer was more convinced than ever that Boz would be the perfect match for his favorite—and only—clerk.

  So he got right down to business. “If I was trying to get a boy to like me, I’d buy him something.”

  It was Boz’s turn to lean in close, clearly interested. “What would you buy him, sir?”

  Puffer drew a lungful of smoke into his lungs. Where it went, nobody knew. Even Puffer. It sure never came back out.

  He curled his upper lip while a tendril of smoke dribbled straight up into the air from the doobie in his hand. “Don’t call me sir, you trumped-up little shit. It makes me feel old.”

  “But you are old.”

  Puffer glowered through the tiny column of smoke. H didn’t stop glowering until Boz pulled his head down between his shoulder blades like a turtle and mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Puffer got back on track. “I’d buy him some flowers, maybe. That’s what I’d do. Most people like flowers, you know. Unless they’re allergic or something, or just plain dicks.”

  It was Boz’s turn to frown. “Flowers? Don’t you think that’s a little sissified?”

  Puffer considered that. “Yes. I see what you mean. We need something butch but romantic.”

  “Candy?”

  “Nah. Too banal.”

  “Nice word choice,” Boz said. “Let’s see. How about one of those fruit bouquets made out of melons and stuff?”

  “If you wanted to announce that you’re a dweeb, it would be perfect.”

  “So I don’t want to announce that?”

  Puffer glowered again, this time while eyeing Boz up and down. “No. Maybe it would be better if you sprang that on him later.”

  Boz tapped his chin with a fingertip. Pondering. Pondering. “How about I give him a sexy card with a condom inside?”

  “Inventive, but a little desperate.”

  They sat in silence while a siren screamed past on the street outside. For the first time, Puffer noticed that Darlene Love had fallen silent. The record must have ended minutes back.

  He reached down and diddled the hair on the back of Leon’s head. Leon snorted and rolled over, but didn’t wake. A light bulb flashed to life above his head. Not Leon’s. Puffer’s.

  “Buy him something for his cat!” Puffer exclaimed.

  A light bulb flashed over Boz’s head as well. Puffer was almost sure it did.

  “Yeah! Like a bag of litter!”

  Puffer’s eyes narrowed into two disappointed slits. “No, dumbass. Like a sweet little cat toy. A catnip mouse, maybe. Or one of those feathery things you flap around on the end of a fishing pole and drive cats crazy with.” He glanced down at the dog at his feet. “And tell him it’s from Leon.”

  “Why?”

  Puffer narrowed his eyes again. “Because it’s cute. It’s something a pet owner would find charming.”

  Boz blushed. “Oh. Of course.”

  Puffer cast a wary eye over the boy from head to toe. “Exactly how dweeby are you? Haven’t you ever romanced anyone before?”

  “Not really. I usually….”

  “Don’t you want Dilly to like you?”

  “Well, sure, that’s why I….”

  “Then do what I tell you. Buy Grace a fucking mouse.”

  “Who’s Grace?”

  “Dilly’s cat!”

  “… oh….”

  Puffer patted Boz’s knee, smiling broadly. “Wanna share some lunch with me?”

  “Uh, sure. What have you got?”

  “Columbian Gold and a bigass bag of Cheetos.”

  “I’ve never been high before.”

  An immense wave of sadness crashed over Puffer like a tsunami. “You poor thing,” he cooed like a pigeon. “What sort of life have you led?”

  Not giving Boz a chance to tell him, since it didn’t look like he knew what he was going to say anyway, Puffer went to work rolling another two joints. One for him and one for Dilly’s paramour. He made them fatter than the last, and the last one was pretty fat already. When that chore was finished, he restarted the album because the silence was driving him nuts.

  “So tell me about yourself,” Puffer said, lighting both joints on one match, then handing one over.

  He waited patiently while Boz, after taking his first puff, went into a coughing jag that Puffer thought might dislodge a lung before it was over. When it at long last didn’t, and Boz looked like he wouldn’t be puking himself to death anytime soon, Puffer tore open an industrial-sized bag of Cheetos with a flourish.

  With the smoke roiling around them and Cheetos dust sprinkling down like orange mist across their knees, Boz Jenkins and Puffer Moran sat huddled together in the back of the Retro Record Shoppe getting to know each other.

  Darlene Love wailed soulfully in the background as the two joints and the humongous bag of Cheetos slowly, but inexorably, disappeared.

  Chapter Eleven

  SQUEEZING HIS left eye shut, Angel Ruiz dabbed the antiseptic over the cut on his eyelid and gave a hiss because the ointment burned like fire. It was a familiar sensation. Anyone romantically linked with Bobby Mayfield was bound to come away with a contusion now and then. If Angel knew anything about the perils of romance, he knew that much.

  Fists clenched, Angel stepped away from the mirror and waited for the stinging to subside. He studied his reflection with horror. He looked like hell. Eyes red from crying. A beard burn on his face from Bobby’s rough kisses. A darkening row of bruises shading his throat where Bobby’s fingers had dug the deepest. The stupid cut on his eyelid that still burned like fire.

  Bobby had stopped by to see Angel the night before. Angel’s roommates, all four of them illegals like Angel, had made themselves scarce the minute Bobby stepped through the door. They didn’t like Mayfield, and they pulled no punches making sure Angel knew it. According to them, life in America was fraught with turmoil enough, what with ICE agents lurking in the bushes and that crazy fucker in the White House screaming for their deportation every minute of every day. Why Angel wanted to ratchet up the angst of surviving in their new country by launching into an affair with an abusive prick like Bobby Mayfield, they couldn’t understand at all.

  But Angel was in love. He had been smitten with the tall, muscle-bound gringo since he first laid eyes on him.

  On their first date, Bobby had fucked Angel twelve ways from Sunday, and Angel knew he had found his man. The fact that there was no father figure in his life might have had something to do with the ease with which Bobby claimed Angel’s heart. The fact that Angel really enjoyed being well fucked might have had something to do with it as well.

  But on this particular morning, standing in the communal bathroom of the ramshackle rented house with the cracks in the mirror and the chips on the ceiling, applying meds to the cut on his poor injured eyelid, even Angel had to admit he was beginning to harbor second thoughts. He dreaded confronting his roomies with another injury. They would throw a fit. But he remembered how appalled Bobby had looked the minute his fist made contact. And how sweetly apologetic he had been afterward as he lifted Angel into his arms and crooned soft words to make him stop crying. And after all, the entire incident was Angel’s fault. He had egged Bobby on again about the two of them getting a place together. About them becoming proper lovers.

  They were still making love, in fact, when the fight began.

  “I love you,” Angel had said as
Bobby stroked his cheek and rocked him naked in his arms, his long cock buried deep in Angel’s welcoming ass.

  Infuriated by the words, Bobby had immediately pulled himself away, emptying Angel’s canal so quickly that the pain was horrific. He twisted Angel onto his back and circled his throat with one of those big, beautiful hands that could sometimes be so gentle and sometimes so cruel. Angel lay helpless, afraid to move, while Bobby leaned in close and spat hateful words into his face.

  “Don’t ever tell me you love me! Don’t ever think we’re lovers!”

  Angel shrank away, and it was at that moment, when Angel least expected it, that Bobby struck. The blow from Bobby’s fist all but knocked him senseless. He was too stunned to even cry out. The pain was so intense it stripped his breath away.

  Instantly, Bobby dropped his head to Angel’s chest and humbly apologized for what he had done, the pain he had caused. Even with his own tears still flowing, and in the midst of Bobby’s show of repentance and gentle words, Angel thrilled at the warm touch of Bobby’s cock, still pumped full of blood, lying seductively against his thigh.

  As Angel wept, holding a hand over his injured eye in case Bobby decided to swing again, Bobby did the last thing Angel expected. He gently rolled him onto his belly and slid his iron cock into his channel once again. He was so hard now, and his cock was so rigid and hungry, it was all Angel could do to accept it fully. But he did. And moments later, he was moving in rhythm with Bobby’s lunges once again, savoring the piercing, lying to himself that Bobby loved him whether Bobby would ever admit it or not.

  As Angel’s excitement crescendoed and his juices began to spew, Bobby froze at his deepest point of entry, that endless cock of his throbbing deep inside Angel’s core, begging now for its own release. But waiting. Waiting. Not until Angel was drained, when Angel’s last drop of semen had spilled onto the sheets beneath him, did Bobby begin to move again. Piercing. Withdrawing. Gently at first, then more harshly. Angel cried out and Bobby entered him more brutally than he had ever done before, his fat cock alive and uncaring for anything but its own satisfaction.

  When Bobby’s seed exploded from him, coating Angel’s deepest recesses, Bobby clutched Angel in a tight embrace, wrapped him ferociously in his muscled arms. Bobby continued to drive himself deep into Angel’s core, continued to pierce, continued to bury himself in Angel’s ass as deeply and as brutally as he could.

  It was only when Bobby collapsed on top of him, spent and trembling, that Angel dared to breathe, that Angel dared to reach around and caress Bobby’s cheek. For he knew that it was only in those first moments after Bobby climaxed that Bobby would accept a gentle touch or word.

  “Baby,” Angel murmured, while Bobby’s cock slowly wilted inside him. “Baby.”

  And when Bobby slipped away completely, leaving Angel aching to be filled again, it was Angel who rolled into Bobby’s arms and pressed his face to Bobby’s hot sweaty breast.

  Bobby allowed him only a minute there, cradled in Bobby’s bulging arms. And then, just as Angel was about to whisper soft words again, Bobby pushed him away and rolled to his feet off the side of the bed.

  Bending down, he grabbed Angel’s T-shirt off the floor and used it to wipe himself clean. Flinging the soiled shirt in Angel’s face, Bobby began to dress, leaving Angel naked and alone on the tousled bed in a nest of white sheets like a wounded bird, his brown, lean body aching from sex. His face hurting from Bobby’s sucker punch, one eye already swelling shut.

  “Your skin looks muddy in this light,” Bobby said, staring down at him, his voice as cold as his eyes, his tall body casting a menacing shadow over Angel’s bed. “You guys from Guatemala all look muddy.”

  Without another word, Bobby angled his long frame through the door and stomped off down the hall. Heavy footsteps echoed among the shadows in the old house. A second later, Angel heard the front door slam and his roommates begin to scurry around, like mice when the cat has gone.

  Only when one of his friends peeked around the doorframe to see if he was safe, did Angel clutch at his injured eye and begin to sob in shame.

  Chapter Twelve

  DILLY’S WORK week eventually plodded past the halfway point. Strangely enough, it had actually been a pretty good week, since Dilly had yet to do anything monumentally stupid. Like falling over his own feet or leaving his fast-food dinner at the bus stop or hopping the wrong bus and ending up in Tijuana before he noticed or even stepping in dog doo while he walked Grace in the park, which was no uncommon occurrence in and of itself.

  The only truly tarnished spot on the week was the fact that Dilly had not seen Boz since the day Boz stopped by the record shop and introduced himself. Dilly had allowed himself to imagine a few scenarios whereby Boz might actually come around again. Make a return visit, as it were. Maybe even ask Dilly out on a date. But apparently Dilly had—as usual—read the signals wrong, and Boz had no intention of asking Dilly out. Or even striking up a friendship for that matter.

  It was all a big blow to Dilly’s ego, but Dilly was no stranger to ego blows, so he let the disappointment slide off his shoulders as best he could. While he managed to appear cool and dispassionate about the matter on the outside, there was really no way to escape the fact that on the inside, way down deep, he was hurt. Even he had to admit it.

  The reason he was so disappointed was because he had thought sure there was a reason for Puffer’s secretive attitude during all the hours Dilly worked with him at the shop this week. Like Puffer knew something Dilly didn’t know, and Puffer wasn’t about to tell him, but oh, wouldn’t Dilly be surprised when he found out. That sort of secret.

  Every morning Puffer had homed in on Dilly like a Tomahawk missile when Dilly arrived for work. Puffer was always as jumpy as a woodpecker anyway, but this week he had been worse. Asking if anything was new. Asking if anything exciting had happened during the night. Asking—oddly enough—if his cat had any new toys. Asking if maybe Dilly had any revelations he wanted to impart concerning his private life.

  Always, of course, Dilly had to report there was nothing new. And when he did, not only did Dilly himself feel saddened by the fact, but he thought it was almost comical how Puffer withered with the lack of good news as well. He had no idea why Puffer would ask if Grace had any new cat toys, but after a lifetime of imbibing cannabis, Puffer often made little or no sense, so it was not like his being strange now was in any way weird or unusual. It was just Puffer being Puffer.

  And Dilly being lonely was just Dilly being Dilly. Nothing unusual about that either.

  On this Wednesday evening, Dilly had priced new frames for his glasses on the way home from work, and he was disheartened to learn they would cost considerably more than he dared to spend. He thought he might have enough extra cash to purchase the frames if he saved for another month. Hopefully his broken glasses would stay taped together well enough for him to wait that long. He was also considering trying to find a second job, but his shyness held him back.

  None of this was new to Dilly. He had spent all of his adult life under the crush of needing money. It was a simple fact of life for people like Dilly who have no special skills and who have trouble even at the best of times finding a comfortable path through the maze of humanity everyone has to weave through during the course of their lives. Dilly often thought it would be nice to see a therapist about his social anxiety and his problems interacting with other people, but if he couldn’t afford new glasses, how the heck could he afford a therapist? It was a waste of time for poor people to cling to pipe dreams like that, so Dilly tried not to.

  Still, the more Dilly thought about his life, the more depressed he became.

  Sensing Dilly’s melancholy, Grace refused to leave his lap. They ate dinner together on the couch. Canned soup for Dilly, and he splurged with a can of honest-to-God people tuna for Grace. Actually Dilly had intended to fix himself a tuna sandwich, but Grace eyed the tuna so longingly when he opened it, he decided to give it to her. After dinner, th
ey watched The Andy Griffith Show being broadcast in Spanish on Mexican TV. The shows were filmed long before Dilly was born, and he had seen reruns of this particular episode so many times in English over the years, he could pretty well follow along even though he barely knew enough Spanish to read a menu at Taco Bell. He had to admit that Barney Fife screaming in Spanish was pretty funny, but even that didn’t make it a television event. Plus the constant commercials for salsa and taco shells were downright annoying.

  After a while the amateur dubbing by bad Mexican actors started to grate on Dilly’s nerves. He clicked off the TV and gathered up one of his thrift-store paperbacks, settling in to finish the mystery he had started a couple of days ago. He was getting to the good part, with dead bodies turning up in every corner of an old secluded house where two dumbass friends had chosen to congregate after accepting invitations for a weekend get-together from a total stranger to a place they’d never been before with a bunch of people they didn’t know from Adam. Boy, talk about stupid. Still the book was pretty good.

  Dilly found one passage of mayhem and murder so downright cool that he chose to read it out loud to Grace, who sat there on his belly staring at him with eyes stretched wide like she understood everything he was saying. She looked so funny, Dilly started giggling, and since he was suddenly having such a good time, he decided she should too, so he flipped her on her back and gave her belly a good tickle.

  Both cat and human jumped like they’d been poked with pins when someone rapped on the front door not ten feet away from Dilly’s head. Dilly dropped the book off the edge of the couch and the cat flew into the kitchen, where she always went to hide under the sink when startled.

  Dilly looked down at himself. He was wearing nothing but his ratty lounging pants again. No shirt, no socks, no underwear. He was excessively aware of his free-range dick wobbling around under the fabric as he stepped toward the door. He was also aware of Grace peeking around the kitchen door, watching her master’s every move.