“Barely! I’ve already opened the last box. But there’re only a few people left in line.”
Thank God! Fausto thought. His right hand felt numb from writing. At this rate, by the time this tour was over, he’d have carpal tunnel syndrome and would never be able to jerk off again!
The manager came up to the table. “I think it’s wonderful of you, Mr. Mardones-Gil, to stay here longer than you were scheduled to, to take care of all of these people. We didn’t anticipate such a big turn-out.”
“Oh, I’m in no hurry. I’ve got plenty of time on my hands, now that I’m not going to play ball anymore.” Fausto had meant the remark flippantly, as a joke, but as he spoke the words, they suddenly rang rather hollowly in his ears.
I’m just getting tired, he thought. Tired and depressed—I’ll be all right, once I get back to the hotel and take a nap.
He had turned his head to speak to the manager, and when the next person in line held an open book in front of him, Fausto glanced down at it automatically, and noticed that the hand holding the book was male and nicely manicured, and that the man’s shirt had French cuffs, fastened with cuff links shaped like lions’ heads, gold with brilliant green emerald eyes.
“Hi! And what’s your name?” Fausto asked, pen poised, still staring at the cuff link. It really was a beautiful piece of jewelry.
There was a snort of derisive laughter. “It’s ‘Jack’ now, from what I hear. God, how quickly they forget! And here I thought I was one of your more memorable tricks. Another illusion shot to hell, I guess.”
Fausto looked up at the man’s face, and froze in shock. “Gene!” he gasped.
“Well, at least you remember my real name.”
Fausto almost upset the table as he jumped up and embraced the other man. He hugged him with bruising force, then kissed him on the cheek.
“Christ! There goes my reputation in this town!” Gene joked.
Fausto backed away only far enough so he could get a good look at the man whose arms he was still gripping with both hands. It was Gene Boudreau, all right—but a Gene Boudreau miraculously transformed. He was still beautiful, with a mature man’s beauty, despite the streaks of gray in his hair and the creases at the corners of his eyes and lips. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit and tie, and radiated poise. That, at least, was characteristic of the Gene whom Fausto had known years before. Gene had always been self-confident, and Fausto had envied him for that. But now Gene looked like a god, slumming among mortals!
“I can’t believe it’s really you!” Fausto blurted out. “What are you doing here? In Seattle?”
“I live here.” Gene smiled and gently disengaged himself from Fausto’s grasp. “You’d better sit down again, before you faint,” he teased, “and take care of your adoring fans.” The last few people standing in the queue were in fact observing the two men’s interaction, obviously fascinated.
“Don’t leave,” Fausto pleaded, as he sat down and retrieved his pen. “Don’t you dare leave.”
“I can’t leave. I haven’t had my book signed yet. But I’m willing to go to the end of the line.”
Feeling dazed, Fausto somehow managed to take care of the last few fans. The smiling Gene had ostentatiously stepped to the end of the queue, gesturing to the others to precede him, and, as he waited, he opened his copy of the book and flipped through its pages at random. He pursed his lips, grimaced, then looked up and caught Fausto’s gaze. He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated pantomime of moral outrage, and Fausto had to choke back laughter.
At last Gene and Fausto were facing one another across the table again, with no one else waiting in line.
“‘I was obsessed by him,’” Gene read from the book he was holding. “‘I wanted to be possessed by him, body and soul. I couldn’t think of anything except him—’”
“Stop it,” Fausto protested, trying to sound indignant, but failing miserably.
“‘I began to neglect my school work, and, worse, I began to fantasize about Jack every time I masturbated—’”
“Stop it! Stop embarrassing me, you son of a bitch!” Fausto growled, before he collapsed into helpless giggles.
“This is pretty hot stuff. Shouldn’t it be filed under ‘fiction,’ instead of ‘nonfiction?’ I’m willing to accept the responsibility for corrupting you, but I’ll be damned if I can remember you ever neglecting your homework for my sake. If your grades slipped, don’t blame me, fucker. I may have to slap your ass with a libel suit—”
“Yeah? Well, you’re going to have to take a number and stand in line again!” Fausto retorted.
“Yeah, I can see that they haven’t started calling you ‘Fuck-and-Tell Mardones-Gil’ for nothing. Is there anybody you’ve slept with in the past two decades who isn’t mentioned in this book?”
“Oh, a few,” Fausto retorted. By now he had recovered enough of his equilibrium to be able to give Gene back as good as he was getting from the other man. “My editor thought we’d sell more copies if I only mentioned the really trashy tricks.”
The bookstore staff were observing this unexpected reunion, fascinated. Gene finally took pity on Fausto. “If you’re all done here, come on. I’m taking you the hell out of here.”
Fausto managed to extricate himself from the bookstore’s manager, who kept thanking him for making the signing such a success. Gene led, or rather dragged, him outside, and toward a BMW parked nearby. They got into the car.
Gene turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine, but didn’t put the car in gear. After fastening their seat belts, the two men just sat there and looked at each other.
“‘Fuck-and-Tell Mardones-Gil?’” Fausto asked. “Jesus, I wish I’d thought of that!”
“You expect people to believe you were interested in my soul?"
“I’ll have you know, I’ve been told there’s a guy right here, in this very city, who was reduced to tears when he read that part.”
“Yeah, sure—he was reduced to jerking off, is probably more like it.”
They both exploded into helpless laughter, and Gene was still snickering as he pulled away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” Fausto asked.
“My place. Unless you have an engagement elsewhere?”
“No, I’m done for the day, thank God. I was planning to go back to my hotel room and collapse.”
“Well, you can collapse just as thoroughly at my house, can’t you?”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” Fausto pointed out. “Don’t you have a job you have to get back to?”
“I own the company, as a matter of fact. I’m the boss. So I can come and go as I please.”
“You seem to have done well for yourself.”
“Very well,” Gene admitted, without any hint of boastfulness in his voice. “I’m no football star or sex symbol actor, but I do all right.”
Fausto looked at Gene’s hands on the steering wheel, admiring his cuff links again. For the first time, he noticed the ring on Gene's left hand.
“Oh, my God. Tell me that isn’t a wedding ring.”
“Guilty.”
“Am I going to meet your wife?”
“No. She died. Five years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You will meet my son. He still lives with me at home. It was rough on him, losing his Mom like that, but it brought us closer together.”
“You have a son?”
“Sure.” Gene still seemed subdued, after the mention of his wife, but now he began to smile again. “You seem so surprised, Fausto! What’s the big deal? Look—I wanted a family. I didn’t see why my being gay should prevent that. My wife understood. We talked about it before we got married. She never really had much of a sex drive. We were friends. I had my men on the side, and she—well, she certainly never had to worry about other women.”
“How old is your son?”
“Nineteen.”
Wow, that’s a coincidence! Fausto thought. Nineteen—the sam
e age as Marc with a C! Nineteen really is kind of young, the more I think about it. Which I sure wasn’t doing last night, because then I was thinking with my dick! Jesus, I’m nothing but a cradle robber!
He did some quick mental arithmetic.
“Wait a minute, Gene. You’re the same age as me. How can you have a nineteen-year-old son, unless you got married right after you graduated from college?”
“Technically, he’s my stepson—not that I ever really think of him that way. My wife was a few years older than me. I flatter myself that the second marriage worked out better for her than the first one did. Our son’s father—his biological father, to be precise—is still around. But, as a role model, let’s just say he makes me look good.” Gene laughed. “I always told myself I wouldn’t be the kind of parent who carries his kid’s photo around in his wallet and shows it to everybody, but I am. If I wasn’t driving, I’d pull my wallet out right now and show you. But you’ll meet my boy. He’s a big fan of yours, by the way. He’s crazy about that TV show of yours, even though I can’t make head nor tail of it. Another reason for you to develop a swelled head, in the unlikely event you need one.”
“I can’t wait to meet him. Does your son know? About your being gay, I mean?”
“Of course. You think I’m going to lie to him? Kids today don’t think twice about such things. Jesus, Fausto, for a guy who’s supposed to be so sophisticated, such a swinger, you still seem awfully goddamn naϊve!”
“Maybe I am.” Fausto brooded for a moment. “And my sophistication, like my swinging, may be highly exaggerated. God, Gene, this is so weird. You know all about me, but I don’t know anything about you, about your life.”
“Maybe I’ll write my own book some day.”
Fausto hadn’t been paying any attention to where they were going, but he was now vaguely aware that they had left the city’s downtown area behind them, and were in a suburb.
“Here we are.” Gene pulled the BMW into the driveway of a mock-Tudor house, set in the middle of a professionally landscaped lawn.
“You live here? This is a fucking palace!” Fausto exclaimed.
Gene grinned. “I do have a certain image in the community to maintain. And, if I may be immodest for a moment, you’re not the only one who’s worked hard and done rather well for himself, as a result. Crap, it’s raining. Contrary to popular relief, it doesn’t rain here in Seattle all the time, but it’s started to come down now. Let’s make a run for it.”
It had indeed begun to rain, so the two men hurried to the protection of the house’s front porch, and then Gene let them inside. Their footsteps echoed in the foyer, which had a tiled floor. They seemed to be the only people in the house. Fausto glanced through an archway, into the adjacent living room. It was attractively furnished, but it was obvious that the priority was comfort over style.
“Your son isn’t here?” Fausto asked.
“No. He has classes at a community college in the afternoon, and he has a part-time job some nights. You’ll meet him later. Come on into my study.” Gene led Fausto down a hallway, and into a wood-paneled room with bookshelves, a desk, and an enormous oriental carpet covering most of the floor. There was a fireplace, with a sofa and two armchairs in front of it. Here, too, the atmosphere was homelike and inviting.
“I’m starting to feel a chill.” Gene lit the logs in the fireplace with a long match. “This’ll warm the room up quick. Now, what’ll you have to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having.” Fausto seated himself in one of the armchairs, and watched Gene pour brandy into two snifters. The fire began to catch, and Fausto instinctively leaned forward, toward the heat.
Gene sat down opposite him, and they sipped their brandies in silence for a moment, smiling at each other over the rims of the glasses.
“I’ll give you the grand tour of the place after you’ve got that booze inside you,” Gene promised. “I bought this house after my wife died. The old place just had too many memories. I thought that starting over again, in a new house, would make it easier for my boy. He was quite enthusiastic about the move. He’s surprisingly resilient. Very mature for his age. He has to be. When you meet him, do me a favor, and don’t mention his biological father. Unless he brings up the topic himself, of course.”
“Sure. But why not?”
“His old man has a history of drug and gambling problems. That’s why my wife left him, years ago. And now he’s doing a stretch in the slammer. He embezzled money from the company he worked for, to pay off his gambling debts.”
“Jesus.”
“My boy’s been handling it as well as can be expected. Better than most kids would, probably. But even before this mess happened—back when his mother and I got married—he started using my last name, instead of his father’s. I guess that tells you something.”
“It sure does. I bet you’re a great father.”
“Oh, stop it. Talking so damn seriously doesn’t suit you. Or me, either. Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay. I do like this house. Do you and your son live here all by yourselves?”
“Yes, just the two of us. I do have a cleaning crew come in once a week, or after one of my parties. I do a lot of entertaining—business-related, and otherwise. It keeps this big old place from seeming quite so empty.”
“What about boyfriends?”
“Boyfriends? What about them? I don’t have a lover, if that’s what you mean,” Gene said. “Just fuck buddies. They come and they go. You ought to know how that is, from what I’ve read.”
Fausto took a long, appreciative sip of brandy.
“You’re awfully quiet, all of a sudden,” Gene observed.
“I was just thinking—”
“About what?”
Fausto had been wondering whether Gene thought of him as just another one of those who had come and gone. But it didn’t seem diplomatic to express his thought out loud, so he changed the subject.
“Do me a favor, Gene?”
“Sure. What?”
“When you kissed me, back there in the bookstore—it all happened so fast, it took me completely by surprise. It was over before I knew it. I want you to kiss me again. And take your time, this time.”
“All right.”
They stood up. Gene moved forward, into Fausto’s embrace, and the two men kissed, slowly and gently, their lips brushing together very lightly at first. Then, as Fausto closed his strong arms around Gene’s broad back and hugged him firmly against his chest, his lips parted and he let Gene’s wet, agile tongue push its way inside his mouth. They could taste the brandy in each other’s mouths as they kissed with increasing lust, pressing their crotches together in a restless grinding motion, running their fingers through each other’s hair while they explored each other’s mouths with their tongues.
The intervening years seemed to slip away. They could almost have been a couple of horny college students, again!
“This wasn’t on my itinerary,” Fausto whispered.
“We can always stop and decide to be ‘just friends,’” Gene pointed out.
“Is that what you want?”
“Hell, no! I want to tear off your clothes and take you, right here in front of the fire.”
“That’s what I want, too. Throw another log on, and let’s get naked.”
Gene laughed. “There’s a perfectly good bedroom, right upstairs, you know.”
“I kind of like the ‘take me in front of the fire’ idea, as long as we really do have the house all to ourselves.”
Fausto stepped back, away from Gene, and began to strip. Gene was already pushing the two armchairs away from the hearth. He built up the fire, stabbing it vigorously with the poker, and, when he was satisfied that the flames were blazing upward, he took two large pillows from the couch and threw them on the floor in front of the fireplace. Then, turning to face Fausto, he, too, began to undress.
“I’m not the way I was,” he warned. “I’m old and overweight and saggy.”
Fausto smiled. “Liar.”
“Okay, so I do have a gym membership and a personal trainer, and I work out with him three times a week,” Gene confessed.
They shed their clothes quickly, tossing them carelessly about the room, shoes and socks and shirts and ties in disarray on the carpet and over the backs of the chairs.
“You’ve still got your tattoo,” Fausto observed.
“They don’t exactly fade away.”
“I thought you’d have had it removed with a laser by now—you being so respectable and conservative and all in your old age,” Fausto teased.
“You’re one to talk. When did you get your ears pierced?”
“Oh, years ago. All of the guys on the team seemed to be doing it. It was a big macho hetero thing, believe it or not, and I wanted to fit in. I was still in the closet back then, remember.”
“Yeah, the closet. I remember it well. But I don’t miss it. And I have to hand it to you—when you did come out of the closet, you really came out. That took a certain amount of guts.”
Fausto laughed. “No, just a certain amount of horniness.”
Nude, Gene filled their glasses with more brandy, then sat down on the pillows, waiting for Fausto to join him. He looked up and frankly admired the other man’s naked body as Fausto walked toward him, the fire making his flesh glow a reddish-gold.
“You’ve still got a fantastic body,” Gene said.
“So do you." The personal trainer must know his business. Gene was still enticingly muscular, with barely a hint of middle-aged softness. His cock was already semi-erect.
“Thanks for not adding, ‘for your age,’ man,” Gene said, with a laugh.
“I was just teasing you, before. I’m not hung up on age. We’re both survivors, I’d say.”
“I’ll drink to that. Here’s to survival!”
Gene handed Fausto his glass. They drank, then set both glasses down on the floor and got down to business. Fausto took Gene in his arms and stretched out on his back on the pillows, pulling Gene’s body on top of him, kissing him fiercely, letting the heat from the fire wash over both of their bodies and make them both break out in a light sweat.
The Fortunes of Fausto (Siren Publishing Allure ManLove) Page 9
