by John Inman
A tiny tingle of fear touched Boz deep inside. “You know what I mean, Dilly. Tell me I’m not pushing too hard.”
Dilly’s eyes softened. His finger stroked a path over the palm of Boz’s hand. “No, Boz. You’re not pushing too hard.”
There was a sincerity in Dilly’s eyes that stopped Boz cold. Even Puffer and Estelle had fallen silent. Boz suddenly realized they were eavesdropping. Not that he cared much anymore.
“I just enjoy spending time with you,” he softly said, as his and Dilly’s wineglasses touched for the second time.
Estelle sniffed and went fishing in her godawful gold lamé handbag for a hanky. Puffer gazed at Dilly fondly, and then his eyes skidded to Boz, then to the Gorgon. He lifted one of his huge hands and plucked the hanky from Estelle’s grasp. Gently, he pressed it to her nose, and said, “Blow, you old softy.”
So she blew.
With a wicked leer, Puffer lowered his voice and whispered, “Later I’ll let you blow something else.”
Estelle leered back, and Boz tried not to cringe.
He suddenly realized Dilly’s eyes had not left his face.
“You’re my best friend,” Dilly said.
“And you’re mine,” Boz answered without thinking.
Estelle gave her nose another blow, and this time she gave it her all. The hanky flapped in the gale shooting from her nostrils, and a noise erupted that sounded remarkably like a bugling elk. Heads four tables away turned to gawk.
Under the table, Boz tightened his fingers around Dilly’s hand. He hung on until the waiter came to take their orders. When the waiter left, Boz claimed Dilly’s hand again. Beside him, Dilly smiled and blushed up a storm when Puffer’s eyes misted up. Then he blew his nose in the same damp hanky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
DILLY’S APARTMENT was dark but for a few shadows dancing across the walls. The dancing shadows came from the TV in the corner, where an old black-and-white version of The Mummy was playing. The volume was turned down low, and there was just enough light for Dilly to gaze up across the plains of Boz’s bare belly to the smile that was aimed at him from the other end of the Murphy bed. After a veritable sonata of squeaks and creaks that had lasted a good thirty minutes, the bed was silent now, as were Dilly and Boz. They were both shiny with sweat and trying to catch their breath, since only about thirty seconds had passed since their simultaneous orgasms almost blew them through the roof.
“Wow,” Boz gasped, his hands holding Dilly’s hips in place, Dilly’s softening cock still pressed against his cheek.
Dilly was gasping too. His nose was buried in Boz’s balls, and he was seriously considering staying there for the rest of the night. “Sixty-nine is the best position ever,” he wheezed, his pulse pounding away inside his head. “I think I’m having a stroke.”
“Hypochondriac,” Boz snerked.
In answer, Dilly squirmed across the bed until they were both facing the same direction. He burrowed into Boz’s arms, wiggling around until he was comfortable.
“There are two fuzzy lumps at the foot of the bed,” Dilly huffed into Boz’s ear.
Boz took a peek over Dilly’s shoulder. “Leon and Grace. I wondered where they went.”
“Are they asleep?” Dilly asked.
“Yeah. Cuddled in each other’s arms. I mean, legs.”
Dilly let the silence roll back in while he listened to Boz’s heart thumping beneath him. It seemed to be slowing down now. As was his own. It began to look like they would survive this last round of sex after all.
Dilly scooted down in the bed enough to lay his ear to Boz’s breastbone. From there, the thudding of Boz’s heart was even louder. He slid a hand along the satin warmth of Boz’s hip and stroked the blond hair on his thigh. Boz’s sleeping dick was squished against Dilly’s stomach, and Dilly suddenly ached to take it into his mouth again.
As if reading his mind, Boz clutched him closer and whispered, “Don’t move. I like you right where you are. And besides, Boz Jr. needs a nap. You’ve sucked him into a coma.”
Dilly sighed, then burst into a grin when he noticed his face heating. “Oh, all right.”
He peered over Boz’s forearm to the TV, where Boris Karloff in mummy drag was about to scare the bejesus out of some unsuspecting archeologist from central casting.
“Do you think Puffer and Estelle are doing the nasty about now?” Boz asked.
Dilly shivered and buried his face in Boz’s chest. “Oh sweet Jesus. I’d rather not think about it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Dilly looked up and saw Boz grinning down at him. He slid his fingers through Dilly’s mop of hair before taking a fistful of it and dragging Dilly none too gently up the bed so he could give him a kiss.
When the kiss ended, Dilly slipped to Boz’s side, and they lay sharing a pillow, staring at each other. Boz rested his open palm across Dilly’s breastbone while squirming a little closer.
“I want to feel your heartbeat under my hand and your breath on my face at the same time,” he explained softly.
Dilly nodded because he understood completely. He wanted to feel Boz’s breath and heartbeat too, although he didn’t have the energy to say it. “Go for it,” he simply answered.
“Your boss is nice,” Dilly said, his voice hushed. Across the room the archeologist screamed, about to die a horrible death.
“He told me he thought you were nice too,” Boz smiled. “I told him he was wrong and you were really a twit.”
Dilly made a noise that sounded like snert. Then he said, “At least you were honest.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Suddenly a scuffle erupted down at the foot of the bed. Grace growled, Leon growled back, and before either Boz or Dilly could step in to referee, Leon and Grace were trying to tear each other’s throats out. They tumbled off the bed in a spitting, snarling ball of fury.
Dilly and Boz leaned over the side of the bed to see what was going on. Down on the floor, Grace had a mouthful of the teddy bear’s leg while Leon had a mouthful of the bear’s ear. They were each trying to yank the bear away from the other, and it didn’t look like the bear’s stitches would hold out much longer.
“Leon must have remembered that bear was once his,” Boz observed. “And now he wants it back.”
“He can’t have it back. You gave it to Grace. Tell him to stop.”
“I’m not sticking my hand in that mass of claws and fangs. You tell him to stop.”
The caterwauling reached a crescendo. By sheer brute force, Grace dragged the bear and the protesting Yorkie all the way across the room. A moment later, still snapping and hissing and snarling and cussing each other up one side and down the other, all three of them, dog, cat, and bear, disappeared through the kitchen door.
Dilly and Boz twisted around on the bed and stared at each other. The shifting shadows from the TV screen played over Boz, causing Dilly’s eyes to travel the expanse of his naked skin from the knob of his chin all the way down to the tip of his big toe. Boz’s gaze softened as he watched Dilly’s eyes, suddenly rapt with desire all over again.
“Haven’t you had enough of me yet?” Boz asked, his hands stroking his own stomach now, his voice weak, his mouth slack with a rising desire of his own.
“Nope,” Dilly whispered, licking his lips. The night seemed to hum around him as he eased Boz’s hands aside to study him lying there fully exposed in the shadows. His fingertips slid through the pubic hair surrounding Boz’s sleeping dick. At the first touch, Dilly could see the shaft of flesh begin to lengthen. There was still a drop of moisture at the tip from before, and bending down, oh so slowly, Dilly dipped his head and licked it away.
Boz craned his neck back when Dilly’s lips touched him. He reached down to cup Dilly’s shoulders and pull him closer. Dilly settled over him, his face caressing Boz’s stomach, Boz’s stiffening cock pressing beneath his chin.
It took only the slightest shift of his head for Dilly to edge downward and take B
oz’s waiting cock into his mouth. He engulfed it fully from stem to stern, and Boz gave a tiny cry, as if the sensation were too enjoyable to accept without making a little racket about it.
The TV shadows strobed around them, and off in the kitchen the animals had grown quiet. They were either dead or asleep, Dilly didn’t know which. And at the moment he didn’t much care, because his attention was centered solely on Boz, who decided at that instant to shift around on the bed until they were both back in the sixty-nine position, exactly as they had been during the last orgasmic meltdown only minutes before.
While the mummy wreaked black-and-white havoc on the TV, Boz and Dilly lost themselves in each other all over again. For Dilly, the night was a perfect circle, ending exactly where it began. He could only wonder what it meant for Boz.
Later, drained in each other’s arms yet again, they lay voiceless side by side and watched the morning light seep through the blinds. When the bright colors of a morning news show popped up on the television screen, Boz rose, and padded naked across the room to turn the TV off.
Dilly watched Boz every second he was away, surprised by how lonely the bed suddenly felt without him. When Boz crawled back in beside him and cocooned them under the covers, Dilly snuggled close.
In Boz’s arms, Dilly mumbled, “Closer, please,” and as soon as Boz obeyed, Dilly drifted into a happy dreamless asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“SO YOU do this once a month?” Boz grunted, not quite enthusiastically, wondering exactly what he had gotten himself into.
While Boz stared down at his newly awarded Street Saviors T-shirt, poking stick, and trash bag, Dilly held his own stick up and they clacked them together in what might be construed as a toast.
“It’s a good thing to do,” Dilly explained. He stabbed an empty cigarette package off the ground and dumped it in his bag. They were cleaning up the hiking trail along the edge of the canyon on Pershing Drive.
Boz studied the wooden broom handle with the bigass nail protruding from the end, which he was supposed to use to pick up trash. He didn’t know it, but he was looking fairly doubtful. “Let’s hope I don’t stab myself in the foot with this fucker.”
Dilly appeared more serious than amused. “Yes. Let’s. God knows what sort of germs are on the end of that stick.”
“How far do we have to go?” Boz asked, raising his hand to shield against the glare of the blazing California sun. He felt like Daniel Boone in one of his nellier moments, if old Dan’l ever had any of those. For the twentieth time, he tugged at his Saviors T-shirt, which didn’t seem to be hanging right, and tried to get comfortable. He gave his poking stick a twirl like a majorette, lost control, and sent it sailing ten feet down a hillside into a stand of prickly bushes. Blushing, he waded in with a lot of eeks! and ouches! and retrieved it. While he was down there, using his fingertips only, he plucked a dirty rag from a bush and stuffed it in his bag.
“We’re going as far as that light pole on the crest of the hill,” Dilly explained after Boz returned. Boz could tell Dilly was trying not to laugh at him, with dubious success. “It’s about a mile that way,” Dilly pointed. “These trails go off in every direction, so while the other Saviors are cleaning up different stretches of trails, we’ve been allotted this one. And by the way, you shouldn’t pick anything up with your bare hands. Put your gloves on and use the stick. God knows how many diseases are lying in wait on some of this stuff.”
Boz pulled on his gloves, also supplied by the Street Saviors. He gave the gloves a doubtful once-over, since they were used, and carefully wiped them on his pants. He spotted a piece of paper, stabbed it to death, and shook it into his bag, trying to get a rhythm going. “I jog these trails sometimes,” he said, making conversation.
“See? Now you can give something back to nature for all the fun you’ve had here.”
Boz gave a derisive cough. “Hate to burst your bubble, but jogging isn’t fun. It’s undiluted torture. Don’t ever let anybody tell you different.”
“So why do you do it?”
Boz batted innocent eyes. “I do it so you’ll think my butt is cute.”
Dilly laughed. “But your butt is cute.”
“See? It’s working.”
The trail was rocky and narrow here, surrounded by banks of chaparral and sage. There was no shade, and thanks to the most recent Santa Ana heat storm moving in off the desert, the sun was raining fire down on their heads like a flame thrower. Only the little six-inch alligator lizards seemed to thrive in the heat. They were everywhere, dropping in place to do their clockwork push-ups in an attempt to cool off, darting here and there through the underbrush, scuttling through the bracken, dodging the ever-present crows that dove down from above, hoping to add a bit of lizard meat to the menu.
At that moment, a lizard skittered across the path at Dilly and Boz’s feet, causing them both to step back in surprise. Bees hummed along the trail, sucking the nectar out of the California poppies that bloomed among the boulders. They ducked every time one buzzed by. Dilly and Boz strolled along side by side, Dilly stabbing litter on the left side, Boz stabbing litter on the right. In spite of the heat and the bugs and the frigging lizards and the fucking bees, Boz found himself smiling. He almost stopped in his tracks when he realized out of the blue how happy he was.
Apparently, Dilly noticed his hesitation, and maybe his smile as well. He smiled back, studying Boz closely. “You’re looking thoughtful. Anything you’d like to share?”
Boz gave Dilly a good-natured nudge with his shoulder. “Just thinking about this morning.”
Dilly’s smile lingered, but it appeared a little less assured. “What about this morning?”
Boz shook his head and didn’t answer. He stabbed a fast-food cup out of the weeds and scraped it into his bag. The inside of the cup was coated with about six thousand ants and the remains of a strawberry shake, which reminded Boz how thirsty he was.
“Tell me,” Dilly coaxed. “What about this morning?”
Boz stopped and cast a fond gaze in Dilly’s direction. “It was the way you were snuggling me when I woke up.”
“Why? How was I snuggling you?”
Boz wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. He stepped closer to Dilly and dragged him into his arms.
Before Boz could explain, another Savior called out from an adjoining trail up the hill, “Hey, you lovebirds!” Dilly and Boz ignored the teasing. They were too wrapped up in each other to care what anyone else was thinking.
“Tell me,” Dilly said again, his warm brown eyes lasering in on Boz’s blues.
Boz enjoyed Dilly’s eyes on him. In fact, sometimes when they weren’t on him, he found himself wishing they were.
Boz bit back a laugh. “You were snoring with your nose buried in my armpit.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, it’s my armpit.”
“I love your armpit,” Dilly said. “I’m just sorry I was asleep, or I would have enjoyed it more.”
Boz studied him. He reached out and grasped Dilly’s gloved hand. He toed his way forward on the dusty trail until they were nose to nose.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever used that word around me, Dilly.”
A blush rose to Dilly’s cheek, and he suddenly looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know what word you’re talking about. Armpit? Nose? Buried?” He glanced around like he wished he had a shovel.
Boz cocked his head to the side and offered a disbelieving smile. “We’ve been together almost every day for weeks and weeks. We have sex every time we turn around. Then we turn right around and have it again. Blindfolded, I could pick out from a line-up the taste of every one of your bodily secretions.”
Dilly rolled his eyes. “Yuk.”
Undeterred, Boz forged ahead. “So don’t tell me you don’t know what word I’m talking about.”
Dilly tried to squirm away. “We’d better get back to work.”
But Boz held on tight. He said the same
words again. More softly this time. “I think you know, Dilly. I think you know what word I’m talking about.”
Dilly’s eyes were flashing sparks of desperation now. Boz could see him wanting to escape, so he finally took pity and let him go. With a secretive smile, he said, “I guess you’d better get that pop can over there by that rock. It’s on your side of the trail.”
“Right,” Dilly said, suddenly all business. “I’m on it.” He brandished his stick, nailing the pop can with one quick stab.
Boz watched him, grinning. His grin widened when Dilly looked shyly back, his ears and cheeks a brilliant red.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Dilly quietly said.
“I’m sorry,” Boz answered. “I won’t do it again.” But he never stopped smiling.
Two minutes later, they were back at work—Boz elated, Dilly quiet.
Yet somehow Boz knew things between them had changed. And they had changed for the better. As an afterthought, he tried to lighten the mood. “Just so you know, my armpit is yours anytime you want it.”
Dilly pushed him away, laughing. “Thanks, dickhead. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE SANTA Ana worsened, and everyone in San Diego bitched about it. A scrim of brown sludge hung low in the eastern sky. The air was hot and dry and reeked of woodsmoke from the many brush fires burning in the back country, as they did every year. Ash, like snow, speckled car windows and ruined wax jobs. Nostrils ached. Eyes itched. People were grumpy and grungy, the days long and hot, and dogs and citizens alike panted in the heat plotting revenge for their misery.
Bobby Mayfield was no exception. He hated Santa Anas. He sniffed up a dribble of Santa Ana snot and what vestiges of white powder still adhered to his nasal passages after his last snort of meth. He angled his car into a parking space behind the tennis courts in Morley Field, a recreation area up from a maze of hiking trails and bike paths that crisscrossed the hillsides below. In the distance, he could hear kids screaming and laughing as they splashed in the municipal pool, staying cool and having fun at the same time, the little fuckers.
