Taking In Strays (16 page)

“You were taken in to a police station,” his father intoned as if reading a statement in a court of law, “and though you weren’t formally charged, I’ve been informed that it was for prostitution. An associate of mine also saw you
renting
yourself on a street corner. Gutting fish, and your sexual orientation, are only the tip of an iceberg that I don’t intend to run my political career into.”

“Your
associate
is a pimp,” Donny retorted. “He wanted to hire me.”

“He provides staffing services,” his father corrected.

“They
service
all right,” Donny shot back in disgust.

His father’s jaw worked a moment and then he said, in total control of his emotions, “You will choose one of these options that I offer or there will be consequences. The least I will do is to destroy the careers of the people who have been helping you the most.”

Donny picked up the portfolio that spelled out in legal terms how he would live his life. “There’s money involved, I assume?”

“I own property on West Philmore,” his father explained. “You will be allowed to live there, with a comfortable, monthly infusion into a bank account, as long as you remain discrete.”

“Discrete?”

“Any news story containing your name will automatically rescind your account.”

“What if I save a kitten from a four alarm fire?”

“
Negative
news story,” his father amended irritably.

“Negative by your criteria?” Donny persisted, knowing that he was coming to the heart of it.

“Of course.”

“Then having a man for a lover would definitely fall into that criteria?”

“What do you think?”

Donny met his father’s eyes and wished, more than anything else, to see a flicker of something besides contempt. He didn’t find it. “I’m gay. I can’t give up being gay. That makes this a waste of time.”

Donny couldn’t help touching the portfolio with the bank account. He turned his hand into a fist in the next moment and stepped back. He said, formally, “I refuse both offers. Good evening, father.”

Donny turned and headed for the door, feeling expensive carpet grind under his heel, and didn’t hear his father call him back. His father regretted nothing.

Burton was waiting. Peterson was strangely absent. The man had his suitcase. He looked determined to help Donny take it with him.

“I need someone to drive me back to my apartment,” Donny announced.

Burton’s eyes flicked over his shoulder, back towards the den of his father, and then he was in quick motion, one hand almost herding Donny, while he easily held the suitcase with his other hand.

“Why the hurry?” Donny wondered.

“I’ll get a car and drive you before Peterson gets an order to make you walk back, or worse.”

Donny didn’t want to know the definition of worse, so he hurried his steps and was soon in a car and being driven by Burton through the upper class streets that Donny had once known as home.

“Thanks again, Burton,” Donny said.

“You’re welcome sir.”

“Is this your personal car?”

“How did you know?” Burton seemed amused and tense and the same time. His cell beeped, but he ignored it.

“You have wrappers in the back seat. You like peanut candy bars.”

“Busted.”

Donny looked out at the darkness and the rain, and thought about dragging a suitcase while he walked in a questionable neighborhood. It was hard to say the words but he forced them out. “You can stop at the corner over there. I can catch a bus.”

The man looked at him from his rear view mirror. “You’re not my boss any more. I’ll drive where I want to go.”

“Peterson is going to fire you when you get back.” It wasn’t a question.

“Probably.” Burton’s hands slid along the leather bound steering wheel as he admitted. “I’ll miss the money, but someone taught me to grow a pair and do what I think is right. I haven’t felt right about working for your father in some time.”

“Oh.” Donny couldn’t fault him for that, but he could feel guilty. “This is my fault then?”

“It is, but I might have quit eventually all on my own.”

Donny leaned against the window. It was cold and he let his cheek rest there as if punishing himself. It brought Dan’s words back to him and he stopped, sitting up straighter. He needed to stop thinking of himself as someone who needed punishment. Burton had made his own decision. His father had made his own decision as well. Donny wasn’t responsible for those decisions. He had only been the catalyst.

Burton pulled up in front of Donny’s apartment building and popped the trunk. He looked around a little nervously.

“Don’t get out,” Donny told him. “I can handle it. Thanks for everything.”

Burton handed a card back over the seat and Donny took it curiously. “No offense, sir, but I don’t think gutting fish is much of a career. My Uncle needs help in his book store. I’m not much for books, so I’ve always told him that I would help him find someone else. Tell him, you’re that someone else.”

“Books?” Donny frowned. “I’m not much for books, either.”

“I have other prospects,” Burton explained, “I don’t think that you do.”

Donny felt embarrassed. “No, not yet.”

“Then, while you’re waiting for something better, you can shelve books and not stink like fish.” He wrinkled his nose at the memory of the smell. “It’ll certainly help your love life.”

That stung, but Donny kept the pain off of his face. “Thank you, for everything.”

“You have a lot of potential,” Burton told him seriously. “Everyone in the mansion says the same. I think you’re making good decisions now. I think you may just see your full potential.”

“I hope so,” Donny replied as he climbed out of the car, “because there is one man in my life who’s waiting for me to do just that.”

Burton smiled. “I hope it lasts when you do get together.”

Donny nodded, even while doubt wondered if he had told a lie. He wasn’t really certain that Peter was waiting for him. It was possible that the man had already moved on.

Donny took his suitcase out of the car and carried it with difficulty into the apartment building.

Ralph was there as if by magic, looking interested and relieved to see him. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m alive and I have my own things, again,” Donny replied as he made it to his door and pushed it open. “I’ll take that as
all right
, for the time being.”

“Sometimes, it’s the little things,” Ralph said uncertainly as he watched Donny throw the suitcase onto the bed and unzip it.

Donny eyed him and snorted, “Yeah, especially when a
little
is all you have.”

“That’s all most of us ever have,” Ralph said as he finally gave Donny his privacy and left, shutting the door behind him.

Donny sat beside the suitcase as he changed into one of his casual shirts. It smelled like him, it fit like an expensive shirt should, and it was soft on his skin. It was like coming home even though home was never going to be at the mansion with his father ever again.

Kicking off wet shoes, Donny sat cross-legged and read the card Burton had given him. It was worn and discolored, as if it had been in Burton’s wallet for awhile. Burton’s: A fine book store; antiques, collections, newly used, and fresh off the press. Donny was surprised that the store wasn’t in a more well to do area of town. It was rather lower middle class; an artists’ haven, if he recalled the neighborhood correctly.  Friends had convinced him to go there for the night life, once, telling him that artists were known for being sexually loose and open minded. Donny recalled a short, boring night without any action.

Donny looked at his hands, at the cuts and open blisters from gutting fish. Strangely enough it felt like failure to consider leaving that job, as if he was admitting that he wasn’t man enough to take the hard work. There was also an odd feeling attached to it that took Donny long moments to identify as guilt. Was he really going to feel guilt for leaving his work to men who had not even bothered speaking to him?

Donny laughed as he unpacked, putting his clothes in the small closet and putting his meager possessions around the room. He felt more at home, then, more settled, and more secure in his decision not to take either of his father’s offers.

Chapter Eight

“That was two years ago,” the old man sniffed as he stacked books on a cart and then began moving it over wooden floors between rows of bookcases.

The book store smelled like old books mixed with cat and spicy incense. The cat was a black and white male, stretched out on top of one of the bookcases and eyeing Donny over the side. The incense was perched on a wooden checkout desk, half charred sticks coming from Buddha’s golden belly. Swirling smoke carried pungent scent into the air.

The place looked in need of repair. Lights were out, making aisles between the fifteen rows of book laden shelves, dim. The old man had solved that by putting chairs out on the front sidewalk and offering a sample read and a cup of coffee. Paint was peeling on the walls and water stains on the ceiling were over well placed buckets.

“I asked for help two years ago,” the old man clarified as he began restocking the books. He wore a gray sweater, had a rather large nose, and scowling gray brows. His brown eyes were squinting at the books as if he didn’t see well. His gray hair was full despite his age and caught back in a pony tail.

“Have you filled the position?” Donny asked, trying to sound professional while he suffered an acute pang of disappointment.

“Filled the position?” the man echoed and then sighed. “Unless I hired the cat, you can see that I am very much alone, young man.”

“Then I can still apply?”

The old man looked at him as if Donny had lost a few marbles. “I either like you or I don’t. There isn’t an application process.” The man looked him up and down. “I’ll ask one question; why are you here? Young people don’t like to babysit old bookstores in old neighborhoods.”

Donny found it hard to answer. He struggled to narrow everything that had happened to him into a short few sentences that the old man might understand. In frustration, he finally blurted out, “It’s better than gutting fish at a seafood restaurant.”

The man blinked at him in surprise and then replied, “I agree. No paperwork until you’ve been here a week. I don’t have benefits, but you can read any book you like and drink all the coffee you care to. Start tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp.”

“Thank you!” Donny replied excitedly. “You won’t regret it, Mr…?”

“Burton, but you should already know that, idiot,” the man sniffed as he turned away to begin shelving books again. “My nephew gave you that card, after all, am I right?”

Smart mouthed Kirkpatrick would have had a dozen mouthy comebacks. Donny who didn’t want to gut fish any longer only said, “Yes, of course you would have the same last name.” And put on an apologetic smile.

“And people who are related don’t have different last names?” Mr. Burton retorted sarcastically. “That’s also not a very bright assumption.”

Donny gritted his teeth at the contrary argument, but simply replied, “You’re right again.”

“Of course I am.”

The old man glared at the bookshelf in front of him, carefully placed a book there, and then looked sideways at Donny with a lifted gray eyebrow.

“Donny?”

“Sir?”

“Very good,” Mr. Burton said with a more friendly tone. “That was a test of your people skills. You passed. See you tomorrow.”

Donny smiled hesitantly. “Thank you, sir.”

Donny’s smiled widened as he left the shop. Yes, the man was a bit rough and odd, and the place wasn’t really somewhere he could see working long term, but he felt as if he had taken a step up a ladder that had started somewhere ten feet under the muck of disappointment.

Someone passed him closely and then turned to walk backwards, eyeing Donny up and down. The man had a bright smile, blue eyes, tight-tight jeans, and a t-shirt that was ripped to show a dragon tattoo over one nipple. Trees, sunlight, and a worn down, but interesting and eclectic neighborhood, that definitely showed it’s artistic heritage, was the backdrop for this handsome, hot, lanky, tightly muscled package of joy. His
come on
was apparent.

Donny had spent long, lonely nights using Peter in his sexual fantasies. This was solid, real, and more than his libido could stand. Screw abstinence. A bit of fun was just a bit of fun. Meaningless. Emotionless. It was all about bodies, not minds, and certainly not personalities.

It might have been the tight space between two brown stone buildings that alerted Donny that he was reverting back to form. The man had him tucked into its shadows in moments, like a pro, hands working to unsnap both their jeans and get inside. It was going to be a suck off, fuck with someone’s face to the wall, or a jerk session. The man’s hand coming up with condoms and lube told Donny he had been looking for action. Donny was the hot potential, the nameless nobody this man was going to walk away from afterward, with a swagger and a grin, to be forgotten a few yards away.

Why shouldn’t he enjoy it? What was wrong with some hot fun? Even to himself, Donny sounded like a drunk trying to reason out one more drink to break a long dry spell.

The man had his hard cock in hand and he rubbed it together with his own impressive one. Thick, purple, and eager, it would fill Donny up, stretch him wide, and pound up into him just the way he liked it. The man was leaning forward to lick Donny’s neck, to smell his scent, to press against him eagerly as his free hand dipped between Donny’s ass cheeks and felt his hole.

The man said, leering, “You want it.”

“Hell, yes!” Donny gasped, unable to stop the admission. Maybe, if they went somewhere else, he reasoned, he could stop thinking about his past mistakes? He wanted to reach that point where his dick took over and thought for him. He wanted more than to feel like he was pawing a piece of meat. Or, the small thought interjected, maybe he was the one who didn’t want to feel like the meat?

“Your place?” Donny tried as he threw back his head and let the man nuzzle under his ear.