The Starving Years (11 page)

VoR: Fuck. Do it.

“Ho, man,” Randy laughed. “This is a whole page about choad-sucking. Serious? You gay guys dig this shit? Way too close to the back door for my comfort. But I guess that’s the whole point.”

Schwing
.
 

Nelson considered whether he should rearrange himself, or if it would just call attention to the fact that he’d be more than happy to participate in a page or two of “choad-sucking,” as Randy so eloquently put it. Not with Randy, of course. With….

Javier snatched the page out of Randy’s hand and wadded it into a ball.
 

“What?” Randy said. “It’s not like I’ve never seen porn before. Although, I usually go for pictures, myself….”

“Shut. Up.”

Seriously, didn’t everyone have their stash? What was the big deal? Besides, it wasn’t Javier’s stash, it was Tim’s. Javier seemed to be pretty worked up about it, almost as if he was taking it personally. What if…?

Nelson glanced down at the paper in his hand as unobtrusively as possible.

J: You like that hot, hard cock pressing into your tight ass?

VoR: So good. Do it.

Not porn. A chat transcript. And, holy smokes, this “J” dude might actually be….

Nelson enjoyed a giddy rush. Then he slowly, carefully, with just a single hand, folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into his pocket.

Javier swept by and grabbed up all the pages from the floor. “Where’s your garbage?”

Tim looked baffled. “Under the sink. But the recycling….”

Javier tore the transcript into small pieces. He even unwadded the page Randy’d been reading and tore that up, too. And he stuffed it all into the garbage.

“Hey.” Randy spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Dude, who cares?”

“Not another word.”

“It’s really no big deal.”
 

“Shut it.”

Randy sighed, and shrugged, and settled back into the recliner.

Chapter 11

Tim stood, holding the mug two-handed, and waited patiently for Nelson to take it like he was bearing an offering. If Nelson had looked good in his medicated sleep while Tim dressed him, he looked super-good now—because it wasn’t exactly his features or his body that made Tim stupid with want. It was the way he held himself, and the shrewd light in his eyes. He was busy watching Javier and Randy bicker over some printout, and Tim? Tim was busy watching him.

Nelson tucked his hair behind his ear and hiked up his borrowed sweatpants—Tim might never wash them again—which just slipped back down over the crest of his tattooed hipbone. Tim wet his lips. Javier stuffed something into the garbage, then announced that he needed some air, and stomped out onto the fire escape. Nelson noticed Tim standing there with the water, took it, and said, “Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”
 

Nelson raised the cup to his lips, turned and walked around Tim, and drank. God. Tim felt like such a spaz.

Nelson approached Randy. “You got a hell of a shiner.”

“Damn straight.”

“Well, you’ll have a good story to tell.”

“That’s not all. Asshole nearly knocked my tooth out. Look, it wiggles.”

Nelson crouched beside the recliner. “Hold on, lemme see that.”

“Why—you’re a dentist now?” Randy asked, his tone indicating he thought it was just as likely that Nelson was CEO of Canaan Products, Inc.
 

Nelson was unfazed. He adjusted the reading lamp behind the recliner, leaned over Randy and peeled back his lip. “That’s just barely hanging in there, but I think it’s still got its blood supply. You need to stop messing around with it.”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“You should stabilize it ’til you can get to the dentist.”

“How?”

Nelson turned to Tim and asked, as if he wouldn’t expect a “yes” in a million years, “You wouldn’t happen to have any emergency dental cement, would you?”

Tim ran through a mental catalog of his first aid kits. “No.” Obviously, he’d need to add some the next time he gathered supplies.

“Super-bond Glue?”

“No.” Tim felt ridiculously unprepared.

Nelson thought for a moment. “Okay, where’re my clothes?”

Tim pointed at the neatly folded clothes on the kitchen island, slacks stained, dress shirt torn and bloody. While Nelson shook out the pants and went through the pockets, Tim realized he’d blown the opportunity to look at Nelson’s drivers’ license. Though he already knew Nelson’s birthdate. Had even pictured himself taking Nelson out for coffee. Picking out a card. Maybe a gift. He hadn’t quite figured out what would be inside the box…but something that would make Nelson Oliver see what a great person Tim was.

Nelson rifled through the pockets. He ignored his wallet and grabbed, instead, a pack of gum. He chewed a piece while both Randy and Tim stared. Then he pulled the gum wad from his mouth and said to Randy, “Consider yourself lucky you’ve got someone willing to chew your gum for you.”

“Dude, you’re not gonna…sick.”

“You want to save your tooth, or not? ’Cos I guarantee you’ll rip it right out of your head if you try to chew it yourself.”

“Does this seriously have a chance of working?”

“It might. All they’d do at the dentist is wire your teeth together so the loose one stops moving until it tightens up in its socket. This’ll hold until morning—as long as you don’t keep poking it with your tongue.”

Randy gave an “Oh, all right,” eye roll.
 

 
“Lay back.”

Randy pushed the recliner to full-sprawl, and winced as Nelson slung a leg over his lap to get in good and close. The sweatpants rode down in back, dragging at Nelson’s boxers. More tattoos. Butt cheek. Crack. Tim’s pulse roared in his ears and he wondered if he might actually faint—and whether he could claim dental phobia with any plausibility if he did.

“Don’t worry.” Nelson braced his elbow on Randy’s shoulder. “I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

“Ha ha.”

Tim closed his eyes for a moment when Nelson shoved his fingers into Randy’s mouth. It was too much. Sensory overload. But then he realized he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t watch.

A lock of Nelson’s hair had fallen forward. The tip was sun-blond, fading to sandy almost-brown by the roots. It tickled the corner of his mouth. “Don’t chew it,” he told Randy. “Don’t poke it. Don’t get it spitty if you can help it. Just let it keep your tooth as immobile as possible.”

Randy said, “Okay,” which sounded more like, “Ho hey,” with Nelson’s fingers in his mouth, pressing the gum into place.

If only, Tim thought, someone had knocked out one of
his
teeth.

“Bite down,” Nelson said. “But when you open back up, hold the gum in place and make sure it stays stuck to your upper teeth. How’s that feel?”

“Okay.”

“Now forget it’s there.” Nelson dismounted.
 

Randy sighed in resignation. “Minty fresh.”

Nelson tucked his hair behind his ear and hiked up the sweatpants. Which rode back down again the moment he let go.

“How did you know to do that?” Randy asked him.

Nelson smiled, mostly to himself. “You really want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

Tim envied their light, bantery tone. He was sure if he’d had the balls to join the conversation he’d talk too loudly. Or stammer. Or say something profoundly stupid.

“I had a cadaver head in grad school. Advanced physiology.”

“What the hell were you studying to be? Frankenstein?”

Nelson laughed. “Ten points to you for knowing that Frankenstein was the name of the doctor and not the creature—and using it correctly in a sentence.”

They went on like that, Nelson telling Randy about the head—male, Caucasian, gray-haired, strangely asymmetrical and a bit jaundiced; he’d needed to share it with three lab partners since he was majoring in biology rather than medicine—and Randy piping in with questions that made Nelson open up and reveal such fascinating things about himself.

And Tim stood there and said nothing.

Randy made talking with Nelson look so easy. He wasn’t nervous. Of course not. He was straight. And he didn’t think having Nelson Oliver straddling him and thrusting fingers into his mouth ventured into fantasy territory.

Tim wished he’d had the foresight, and the backbone, to sneak a photo with his cell phone. Nelson turned to Tim, then, and Tim had a moment of panic where he wondered if he’d somehow managed to confess his urge aloud. But all Nelson said was, “Where’s Javier?”

“Fire escape.” There. He’d managed not to stammer.

Nelson shuffled to the window with the cuffs of the sweatpants covering most of each foot, and called out, “What was that video you were playing? Was that shot outside the job fair?”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Come back in and play it again—I want to get a better look. Or are you claustrophobic or something?”

The window opened. “I’m fine.” Javier’s chest brushed Nelson’s as he slipped back into the room, and Tim felt another pang of envy. Was it Tim’s imagination, or had everyone but him managed to touch Nelson?

Javier sat at the computer and Nelson held the back of the office chair and leaned over his shoulder. No, definitely not Tim’s imagination.

Javier moused and hit a few keys, and the video began to play. “Full screen?” he asked.

“No, leave it. The resolution’s crisper when it’s not zoomed in.” Sirens. Shouts. Screams. “Hold on, did you see that sign?”

Javier paused the video. It lagged. Slow on the side of the server where it was hosted, Tim thought. Not his connection.

“Go back,” Nelson said.

“Yes, I know.” Javier repositioned the playhead and the video buffered quickly, and restarted.

“There. Pause it th—you missed it.”

“I know what you’re trying to see. Give me a second.” Javier backed up the video again and tried to catch the frame where a white tagboard protest sign flashed by, but all he got was a pixelated blur.

“Right-click on the video and download it,” Tim said. “We’ll have better control if it’s not streaming.”

“Cool,” Nelson said. Tim basked in the approval. Nelson reached around Javier, one hand on each side, and said, “I’ll just check my email quick while it downloads.”

Tim gaped. How had he not yet managed to find himself in the path of Nelson’s nonchalant groping? Javier slipped out of Nelson’s arms, stood up, and said, “Take the chair.”

“You sure? I’ll just be a second.” Nelson flashed a crooked smile over his shoulder at Javier, then turned to the computer, bent over the back of the chair as if to prove the point that he really didn’t need to sit down, and began typing. “There’s never anything in here but bad jokes from my manager and off-brand dick pills.” He pulled up an email account and scanned a few messages. His shoulders tensed. He closed the browser, and his easygoing manner fell completely away. “I gotta go.”

“What?” Tim said. “You can’t go now.”

“Dude,” Randy said. “It’s totally not safe out there. Some fucker with a shotgun tried to carjack us just a few blocks from here.”

“That was a semiautomatic,” Tim snapped, “not a shotgun. And it wasn’t a carjacking. He didn’t take the truck, did he?”
 

“He took my hundred dollars.”

Nelson went to the window and peeled back the newspaper, though there wasn’t anything he could see that would have helped him get his bearings. “We’re on Mott just off Grand,” Tim told him.

“Right. I just need to get to my apartment on Baxter.”

Nelson lived in the heart of Chinatown, while Tim’s apartment was right on the fringe? They were practically neighbors. Tim felt lightheaded.

“Don’t go alone,” Randy said. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, no, someone should stay with Marianne,” Tim said. “I’ll go.”
 

“It’s still dangerous out there,” Javier said. “I should go, too.”

Nelson pulled the fold out of the sweatpants waistband and let them fall around his ankles so he could step out of them. Tim did his best to keep his eyes in his head while Nelson bent to step into his dress slacks. He seemed totally unconcerned, both about changing in front of everyone else, and about who, if anyone, would venture outside with him.

“I’ll drive,” Tim said.

“It would take you longer to park than it would take me to walk,” Nelson said. “Plus it’ll draw less attention.” He peeked out the window again, though he couldn’t see much of the street from where he was. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Randy said. “Let Bones over there walk you home.”

Tim could practically feel the unflattering shadows thrown by his frame beneath the overhead light as a tangible thing on his skin. Thankfully, though, there was a distraction that saved him from also feeling Nelson’s eyes on him at that very moment.

“You’re leaving?” Everyone turned to find Marianne standing in the bedroom doorway in one of Tim’s T-shirts, which hung halfway to her scraped knees. “Now? In the middle of the night? Are you nuts?”

“Something’s going on at home. I need to get over there—see if I can help.”

“Fine,” Marianne said. “Give me five minutes to get dressed. You go? We all go.” She went back into the bedroom to pull her things together without waiting to see that Nelson had acquiesced. Nelson shifted his weight from foot to foot as if five minutes was too long to wait.

Randy stood and pulled on his sport coat. “You know she’s right,” he said—and then the computer made a loud beep that cut off whatever else he might have wanted to add.

“The video’s done downloading,” Tim said.

Nelson dropped down into the chair, navigated to the download folder, and double clicked the file name.

It filled the screen this time. People surging, jostling, pressing up against each other while the camera struggled to remain stationary, but couldn’t manage to keep from being jerked around. A businessman in a one-sleeved suit coat smashed a cab window with a hunk of asphalt, then someone threw a punch at him, and the camera jerked away and settled on a different part of the crowd. No less chaotic. A cop beat down a slight, longhaired protestor with his riot shield.