A Time for Secrets (23 page)

“The truth hurts, I know. Let’s have some wine.” Harker bounded off the sofa and into the kitchen. A moment later he was back with a big jug of red wine hooked into one finger and three glasses in his other hand.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“I had my mother get it.”

“She approves of you drinking?”

“Is good for blood,” he said, imitating her.

I took one of the glasses and drank it down in one big gulp. Getting shot at
wa
s more stressful than I like
d
to admit. Without comment, Harker poured me another glass. I did my best to sip that
one
, though it too was gone before Harker and Christian finished theirs.

“I think what you do is amazing,” Christian said to me. “If it wasn’t for you no one would know what happened to these men.”

I almost joked, “You make it sound like politicians are killing gays left and right,” but I stopped before it came out of my mouth. From the things Ronald said about the fifties, it didn’t seem that far from the truth.

Instead, I just glanced at Harker. He had a goofy look on his face that I guessed was pride. “It’s too bad you got run off the job. You would have been a great police detective.”

Then I told him my father had shown up and offered me a job. I half expected him to say I should have considered the offer, that maybe I should call and see if it was still available, but he didn’t say a word.

So, I began wondering myself
.
Should I have thought about it more? Could I have done more good going back to work for the CPD? No, I told myself, at the end of the day I wasn’t the diplomatic type. I wouldn’t have been able to work for a man I knew was a murderer and hold my head up.

We ordered a pizza and made our way through the rest of the jug. I wanted to talk about what Christian would write, but Harker kept asking him personal questions.

“When did you know you were gay?”

“It seems like forever,” Christian said, though I felt he was too young to understand a word like forever. “I was probably four or five. I mean, people say things to you when you’re a kid about when you grow up and get married or have a girlfriend, and I always thought, ‘Nope, not gonna happen.’”

“I was in my twenties,” Harker said. “I knew I didn’t feel what I was supposed to for a woman. It was hard to admit what I did feel.” And when he did, he went to a psychiatrist to try and have it changed.

“What about you, Nick?” Christian asked.

“I tried dating women. My dick was never cooperative.”

“I think it’s a gift,” Christian said. “Be
ing
gay.”

“Really?” I asked. “How so?”

“You don’t have to follow society’s rules. I mean, you can’t, can you? It makes you think about everything. If society is wrong about us, then what else are they wrong about? It means you have to question everything.”

I knew plenty of queers who didn’t question anything at all, but it was an interesting theory. Without thinking, I said, “My ex would like you.”

Harker’s ears perked up, and I immediately regretted mentioning Daniel. I almost never did.

“Who’s your ex?” Christian asked.

“He’s a librarian. Works for this new gay and lesbian library where they’re collecting stuff. He’s political. Maybe I should set the two of you up on a blind date.”

I didn’t mean it, of course, and I hoped he wouldn’t jump on the idea. He didn’t.

“I’m really more interested in the two of you,” he said, casually. “I mean, you guys are so great. It’s hard not to want to be in the middle of that.”

It was an uncomfortable idea. I’d never done anything like that with Harker. I picked up the pizza box and our crumpled napkins and brought them into the kitchen. It was around nine. I wondered if it was too early to excuse myself to go to bed. I was thinking about grabbing a pillow and a sheet for Christian to use on the couch when Harker came up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist. I felt him press his face into my back between my shoulder blades.

“I want to do this, Nick. I want to see you fuck him.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s sexy, and you’re sexy. Because I like him, and I love you. Because I know you do things with other guys and at least once I’d like to be part of that.”

I wanted to say no, I really did, but I couldn’t shoot down Harker’s reasons, and I didn’t have a good reason not to. I turned around and let Harker lead me into the living room. Christian stood nervously in the center of the room. “You know, maybe I should leave…”

Harker walked right to him and kissed him gently. He reached a hand back and pulled me close to them. Harker pulled away, and it was my turn to kiss Christian. The boy gave me a shy smile that made me wonder how much of his cockiness was an act. His lips were slick and silky. He tasted sweet and garlic-y from the pizza. Before he was ready, I stopped kissing him and leaned over to Harker. I kissed my lover, deeply, passionately. I was making some kind of point, but I forgot it when I felt Christian’s hand wandering around my crotch. Through my jeans, he wrapped a hand around my stiffening dick.

Harker and I came up for air, and Harker pulled Christian’s alligator shirt over his head. This one was powder blue. His chest was narrow and tight, his skin pale. A thin trail of black hair struggled to make it from the middle of his chest down to his belly button. I ran a hand over his nipples and he shivered, then giggled. I slipped my hand down the back of his shorts. He pulled me into a kiss and clung to me.

Harker opened his shorts and they slipped to the floor. Christian wasn’t wearing underwear, which he probably thought very rebellious. In fact, it was merely convenient. I ran a hand down his torso and joined one of Harker’s playing with Christian’s dick. It was a nicely shaped, squat little dick just big enough to peek out from a man’s fist. At that moment, it was a little overwhelmed by two men’s hands swarming all over it. Christian didn’t seem to mind much though, as at that moment he was gasping and beginning to keen.

Christian kicked off his shorts and shoes, and we led him to our bedroom. I walked behind him, cupping one cheek of his very round ass. When we got through the door, Christian fell to his knees and hurriedly began to undo my jeans with one hand, while pulling the drawstring on Harker’s sweats with the other.

Moments later, he had a dick in each hand; he’d blow one of us while jerking the other. Up top, I had my tongue in Harker’s mouth, exploring the familiar territory with relish. He was turned on, shivering a little as Christian went down on him. I liked that he was enjoying himself.

Then Christian attempted to put both our dicks into his mouth at once. He was an ambitious kid, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to find it bled into this area of his life as well. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much on spatial relationships. My dick was long and above average in size; Harker’s short and on the thick side. Even if he managed to get them both in, which was giving him trouble, he’d have struggled with the differing lengths. Finally, he gave up, though I think he might have strained his jaw first, and went back to sucking us one at a time.

A couple minutes later, I was getting bored, so I lifted Christian off the floor and shoved him onto the bed. I asked Harker, “Do you wanna fuck him?” It seemed the right question to ask given the situation.

He shook his head though. “I want to see you fuck him.”

Christian didn’t seem to mind our divvying him up this way, as his legs were already lifted in the air waiting for whoever was going to top him. I grabbed the Vaseline from the dresser and got onto the bed with Christian. I tossed him around a little until I got a pillow stuck under his butt and had him in a position I liked.

As I lubed him up, Christian said in a breathy whisper, “I knew you liked me, I knew it.”

I gave him a weak smile. The thing was, I didn’t like him, or, at least, not much, but he was young and didn’t really understand you didn’t need to like someone to fuck them. Harker liked him, and that was enough for me.

Wanting to make sure he didn’t say too much more, I shoved my dick into him without worrying if he was ready. He tensed and gasped, but a few strokes later he began to relax. While I fucked Christian, I wondered what it would have been like to fuck Harker at that age, in his early twenties. What had he looked like? What had he been like in bed? Would he have been as awkward and grasping as this kid beneath me? Or would had he always been an in-charge kind of bottom, the way he still was?

Harker’s head was close to mine; occasionally he’d kiss me, but mostly he was focused on jerking Christian off while I fucked him. Even though he was breathing hard, Christian put his hands behind his head and lay there like it was a day on the beach. He must have had the most incredible sensations happening, being jerked off and fucked at once, but he took it in stride, like it was his due.

“There’s the spot,” he said. “Keep it there. Yeah, keep hitting it.”

I didn’t much like him telling me what to do, and I almost stopped hitting the spot entirely; instead I hit it a lot harder. He came with a look of surprise on his face. He hadn’t been expecting the creamy spurts that landed on his chest and shoulder.

And then Harker was right behind him, jerking a puddle of cum onto Christian’s belly. I grabbed Harker and kissed him. I was still fucking Christian hard and fast. I came, squeezing Harker tight and gasping his name.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When I woke up, my stomach hurt so much I had the impression it wanted to claw its way out of my body so it could curl up in the corner and whimper. I, however, had other plans for the day
.
I sat up, took a few pants of oxygen so I didn’t vomit, and went in search of coffee.

Harker sat in the kitchen sipping a cup of coffee. The black kitty cat clock on the wall said it was nearly ten-thirty. The sound of typing drifted down the hall from the living room. As promised, Christian had begun to write his story. Obviously, he’d have to input it into the computer at the
Daily Herald
, but I guessed that typing it up first would give him a chance to refine it.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked, wondering what she’d think when she showed up and found a naked Christian typing away in the living room.

“I called her and told her it was too dangerous, that she should stay home,” he said.

Not a bad lie. Actually, not a lie at all. I had been shot at after all. As I poured myself a cup of coffee, I said, “I suppose it’s all my fault.”

“She mentioned that, yes.”

“I’m pure evil.”

“She mentioned that, too. Worse than Hitler, but not as bad as FDR,” he explained. To a sane person that might sound backward, but to a woman like Mrs. Harker, no one
wa
s more evil than the man who created the public programs that now supported her.

“Are you okay about last night?” I asked.

“Of course I am. It was my idea.”

I thought he might ask how I felt about it, but he didn’t. I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about what had happened, but I wouldn’t have minded kicking it around with Harker to see if I could figure it out. He didn’t seem much interested, though.

I took my cup of coffee into the bathroom so I could take a shower. Eventually, I was going to have to face Christian. We had a job to do. Unfortunately, I now knew more about him than I’d like to. In my mind he was a self-centered little brat—cute and sexy and fun to fuck
,
but still a brat. Unfortunately, at the moment he was a brat I needed.

After my shower, I wrapped a towel around my middle and picked up my nearly empty coffee cup. My stomach had settled down, and if I put a piece of toast in there it would be all right. A couple of aspirin would top things off, and in about an hour my hangover would be a distant memory.

I padded out to the living room. Christian continued to tap away at the Smith-Corona.

“Your turn in the shower,” I said. “We should probably go soon if we want to catch this guy while he’s at all sane.”

Christian hit a few last letters and stood up. His cock looked to be half-hard. I decided it was a bad idea to look at it. He wasn’t so demure; he looked me up and down in my towel and said, “Good morning, sexy.” He poked me in the belly button, and I had to resist the temptation to slap his hand away.

“Let’s get ready,” I said.

Forty minutes later I pulled my car up in front of Our Lady of Benevolence. I climbed out and took a good look at the funky spare. Driving on it made an annoying woo-woo-woo kind of sound, and I felt like the tire might spin off at any moment. Fortunately, you never really get to drive too fast in Chicago, even on the expressway. Even if the tire did fly off, we’d likely be okay.

In the nursing home’s lobby, there was a different old lady but the same giant Virgin Mary. This old lady asked if we were members of Lewis’ family. I told her we were from the Gay and Lesbian Midwest Historical Society, which
wa
s about as close as I c
ould
come to remembering the actual name of Daniel’s library unless the sign
wa
s staring me in the face. She was about to call an orderly to take us to Lewis’ room, but I said, “We’ve been before. We know the way.”

She set down the phone and smiled at us.

When we walked into Lewis’ room, he was watching
The Price Is Right
intently, though I doubted Lewis could correctly guess the price of anything. I wanted to turn it off, but the clicker lay on the bed next to his hand.

I introduced myself again, and this time he recognized me as a stranger. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” I told him. “We’re here to ask some questions about something bad that happened a long time ago. This is my friend Christian.”

“Hello. I work for the
Daily Herald
. I’m writing a story—”

“Sit down, young man,” Lewis pointed to a chair near the bed. Christian did as he was told. “Pull the chair closer.”

Christian had brought a tape recorder about the size of a library book. He pulled the microphone from his pocket and plugged it in. He set the recorder on the bed and asked, “You don’t mind if I record this, do you?”