At school the next day, Jake was in study hall reading the story he’d been assigned in his English class when Gary came in and sat next to him. The teacher’s aide who monitored the period permitted quiet talking among the students so they could work on school projects together. Gary took advantage of that. He wasn’t interested in a school project, however.
Gary was large. Not quite as large as Grady, but almost. He was on the football team and played defense along with Grady, but as a linebacker, not a lineman. He was also not heavy like Grady. Grady had a belly that stretched any shirt or jersey he wore. After Jake had given Gary the clean tee-shirt to replace the bloody one Gary was wearing, Gary had blushed; he’d then modestly turned sideways and peeled off his shirt and pulled on the clean one. Jake had seen Gary’s torso. It was ripped. No fat, just a taper from wide shoulders to thin waist with a rippling six-pack. Jake had walked away while Gary’s face was still covered with the shirt he was putting on. He’d walked to the nearest drinking fountain to take a lengthy drink, allowing his body time to fix itself.
As well as being large and ripped, Gary was good-looking in a very masculine way. Square jaw, wide-spaced dark-blue eyes, sandy-blond hair that was cut short on the sides and long enough on top so he could flip it back with a shake of his head when it fell across his face. Clear, tanned skin and a straight nose completed the picture. Jeremy wasn’t Jake’s type, but Gary certainly was.
Jake found this very annoying. He didn’t want to be attracted to boys. He also was now old enough to know he couldn’t fight it. He was what he was. But it was still frustrating. He’d considered his attractions for other boys when he’d been younger as simply a phase. He’d hoped the phase would disappear over time, but it hadn’t and showed no sign of doing so; he was becoming resigned to his attraction. He was still in the process of accepting it, however.
The only hope Jake had, and it was a mixed one, was that Gary wasn’t gay. However, the signs Jake had seen more than suggested that maybe Gary was gay. But facing Gary, asking him point blank it he was, revealing his own feelings, asking Gary if he had feelings for him? No! While he was feeling fairly sure that Gary was gay and that there was some likelihood that he was attracted to Jake, there was no certainty, and to complicate the issue even more, Jake would be leaving Reston at some point, more likely sooner than later. So, he knew it would be for the best to just ignore his attraction to Gary and the feelings and urges that attraction brought.
Gary scooted his desk closer to Jake. “Can I ask you something, Nick?” His voice was a light tenor. He looked like he’d be a bass. Appearances were often deceiving.
Jake smiled at him. Gary looked so tough, and yet the few times Jake had seen him, he’d been soft-spoken when he spoke at all and seemed surprisingly gentle. “Sure. What is it?”
“All that stuff you did after Grady ran into the locker. How’d you know to do that? I mean, you sort of took command, and you knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I was amazed. I wouldn’t have thought to do any of that.”
Jake nodded and relaxed a little. This was easy enough to explain. “I told you last night about all the training I’ve done in the gym. We sparred with each other. When teenagers are sparring, a lot of them get mad and forget they’re training. When they get mad, they can get violent, and sometimes someone gets hurt. Sometimes, someone gets knocked unconscious. That’s when it’s dangerous because they are unable to let you know where they’re injured or if you’re hurting them by moving them.
I learned all this from the trainers in the gym. I watched what they did when someone was unconscious and had fallen down in an awkward position. If the person was bleeding badly, they tried to get that stopped first. I just did what I’d seen. I knew we had to get Grady’s cut to stop spilling blood all over and the blood from running into his nose and mouth, and to do that we had to move him. Keeping the spine straight from the head to the waist is important in case of a neck injury, and so that’s what I was doing while you two were moving him. I thought we did a great job. No one said so afterward, but you don’t do that sort of thing for accolades. You do it to help someone. I didn’t like Grady. I didn’t like what he was doing with Jeremy. But if you’re human, you do what you can for an injured person, like him or hate him.
“But taking charge? Becoming a little bossy? I’m not like that, generally. Maybe I did it because I had to. I didn’t think about it at all.”
Gary seemed to take his time absorbing that. Then his face reddened slightly as he spoke. “Jeremy’s gay, you know. That doesn’t seem to bother you any.”
That was easy for Jake to respond to. “You, either. I saw you helping him in the mall. What I didn’t see was you stopping Grady from bullying him.”
Gary looked down and was silent for a moment. Finally, softly, he said, “I know. The thing is, you have to know Grady. He does a lot of threatening. He’s a belligerent asshole most of the time. But really physical stuff? Hurting people? He doesn’t do much of that, and when he does, it’s because he’s angry. He doesn’t control his temper well at all. He wasn’t really angry with Jeremy in the mall. He was more showing off than anything. With Grady, it’s best if you let him be, don’t step in when you don’t need to. If you say something to him, step in like I could have with Jeremy, then he feels challenged. Then he’ll get angry, and that’s dangerous.”
Gary finally seemed to have regained some of his confidence because he raised his eyes to Jake. “You saw what happened in the hall. You stepped in, and a minute later you had a fight on your hands. That would have been me in the mall if I’d tried to intervene. So I didn’t. I didn’t know if he was going to hurt Jeremy in the mall. I didn’t think he would. If I’d seen he was going to, I hope I would’ve stepped in, but I don’t know. I’ve never been in a fight. I’m pretty sure Grady would have been all over me, and I wouldn’t have known how to stop him. I kind of wish I had protected Jeremy better, and I’m ashamed I didn’t, but I’m not really a fighter.”
Gary looked down again, gathering himself, then looked up again. “That’s the other thing you did, besides taking care of Grady after he got hurt, that I found so awesome. You did step in to protect Jeremy, and you did put Grady down. That was all so amazing.”
“You’re going to make me blush,” Jake said. “I just did what I knew how to do. And don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s pretty hard to try to stop someone like Grady. Bigger and stronger than you, and he loves to fight? I could see it in his eyes. If, as you say, he hasn’t been in many fights, I’ll bet it’s because he knows he could get kicked out of school or off the football team, and he didn’t want that to happen. But wanting to? Yeah. He did. He’d have hurt Jeremy. I just did what I had to do.
“But don’t beat yourself up over not stopping him in the mall. That was a hard situation to be in, and you probably made the right choice.”
“Thanks.” Gary’s head was down again. It gave Jake the opportunity to eye him close up without Gary seeing him do it. Jake had to look away before he wanted to. Damn, but this boy got his juices flowing.
Finally, Gary looked up again. “I wanted to ask you something else. And it’s a little embarrassing.”
Jake laughed. “Go ahead.”
“Well, when I was at your house with the others and I went to the john, I walked past your room. I didn’t go in but looked. That’s the embarrassing part. I probably shouldn’t have done even that. Sorta like it was invading your privacy.”
He stopped, obviously expecting some response from Jake. All Jake said was, “And . . . ?”
“Well, I saw a guitar case. Really, I didn’t go in. But I saw that and, well, this is again embarrassing, but, do you play it? Are you any good?”
Jake laughed. “Are you always this nervous?”
Gary blushed again, then shook his head. “Not really. Well, sometimes. I’m much better when I know the person I’m talking to. I don’t know you and feel like I’m butting in, being presumptive, talking to you. You probably know there’s a presence about you that I’ve only seen before in grown men, usually very successful men wearing suits and ties. You can just tell by looking at them that they’re men of substance and means, or as we might say it, they’ve got their shit together, and you just feel you shouldn’t bother them with trivial stuff. You project that, too, and it makes me nervous, coming up to talk to you like this.”
Jake was shocked. He had no idea he came across to people like that. He knew he’d kept himself to himself and that he’d adopted a look, an attitude, that might have kept people away, but
Gary wasn’t saying that. He wasn’t saying Jake was standoffish or aloof. He seemed to be saying he exuded self-confidence, he didn’t accept fools gladly and if you wanted to talk to him, it should be about something that mattered—that Jake wasn’t interested in trivial things.
Jake looked at Gary in wonder. “I had no idea I came across like that. Maybe I do. For a long time, I did make an effort to keep people at arm’s length. But that was to protect myself. I don’t want to be like that here. I’d like to make friends. Actually, I’d like to be friends with you.” He smiled after saying that, making a bet with himself that Gary would blush.
Gary blushed. Jake smiled harder. “I’m not aware of any presence,” he said, “so if you see me having one, tell me about it. I’ll try to quash it. Maybe I should smile more.” He laughed, and Gary looked away and moved in his chair. Wow, Jake thought, maybe he is gay, and maybe he’s got it bad. What would that be like for me? And how do I find out? And do I want to know? He realized that last question was geared toward talking himself out of becoming involved with Gary or anyone else. Was that because he wouldn’t be here long enough for it to make any difference? Or was he still battling against his own nature?
He didn’t say anything else, then realized he’d been asked a question he hadn’t answered. Gary wasn’t meeting his eyes and didn’t seem ready to say anything himself, so Jake did. “I don’t know about playing well. I do play it. I was staying at a mission sometimes, and an old guy there showed me some things. I got the guitar from Kim, the boy who got me going to his dad’s gym and became a close friend, the only friend I had after leaving my home. The guitar was his originally, and he’d taken some lessons but decided he wasn’t interested in really spending the time to get good on it. He showed me some beginner things. The old guy told me it was a very fine instrument and showed me more, and I had lots of time alone to practice. I can read music, but I’m pretty fast at picking up songs pretty fast just from listening to them. You know, the chords, maybe some of the melody line. Why do you ask?”
Gary was looking at him again and seemed to have settled down a little. “Okay, it’s like this. I play guitar, too. There are three of us that play together. We call ourselves The Three Caballeros. Which is sort of funny because none of us are Mexican or Spanish.”
“Why the name then?” Jake asked.
“Well, see, we play old songs. My grandfather taught me how to play, and I love him like a father. He has more time for me than my own dad. But my granddad grew up in the 50’s and the music was much different then. He played in a band back then and has a ton of sheet music that his band played. It’s all pretty songs, not hard rock, metal, rap, that kind of stuff. Not the music lots of kids fool around with in their garage bands.”
“That doesn’t explain the name.”
“That’s because you didn’t have the patience to let me finish.” Gary laughed to take any offense out of his rejoinder, to make it a joke, and Jake liked him even more for that. He didn’t want to fall for someone who couldn’t stand up for himself.
“Back in the 50’s, I guess there was a cartoon about these singing birds, a Disney cartoon, and the birds were called the three caballeros. That was the name of the cartoon as well. Well, it was made in the 50’s and the music we play is 50’s music, so it all made sense, and my grandfather suggested it sort of an inside joke. Okay, it’s a little oblique, but we all liked it.”
Jake snorted. “That’s weird. Almost as weird as you saying ‘oblique’.”
Gary blushed again, which Jake decided was cute. “I have a bad habit of that. Using words other people don’t.”
“I do the same thing,” Jake said, his eyes lighting up. “Welcome to the club.”
“You do? Great! Anyway, would you like to join us? Be part of what we do? And do you sing? And are you any good at it? We need a singer for the songs we do, and none of us are any good. I try, but, well, no.”
“I did sing in the eighth-grade choir at school. But everyone had to, so that doesn’t mean anything.” Jake sounded dismissive.
Gary chuckled. “And it doesn’t answer the question at all. That’s what attorneys in court call an unresponsive answer. You said some words, but then left the question hanging. Are you any good at the guitar? And can you sing?”
“I think I do okay. It’s funny, and I might not be what you want, but I learned from an old guy just like you did, and he taught me the words and chords to some of the songs he liked. He encouraged me to sing when I was playing and coached me for the sound he wanted. He called it crooning. It’s nothing like the raspy voices and atonality you hear today.”
Gary beamed. “Wow! That’s perfect! That’s what we need! So will you do it? It’ll be fun. Look, we have a gig lined up, and we really need someone to sing and someone who plays guitar and, uh . . . well, it’d be great to have someone who looks like you do. That would be exactly what we need. So? Please?”
Jake had to think. He was always aware of where he was and why. He wanted to be a low-key presence in this town, not looked at or drawing anyone’s attention. Joining a band, if they performed for the public at all, would certainly put him in a brighter spotlight than he wanted for himself. And Gary had said they would be playing somewhere.
The thing was, it also sounded like something he’d like to do. He was trying to open himself up, become more like he’d been when he was younger, before everything turned sour for him. Doing something like joining a band, singing in it—well, that sounded like it would be a great way to get back into the real world, the ordinary world, and he knew he’d love playing with a group of kids his age. But was it safe for him to do that?
Realistically, he had to think it was. No one knew him here, no one could find him, his name was different, so even the WITSEC people didn’t know what it was or where the actual place was where he was living; he was certainly safe. He was still scanning the crowds when he was out among people. He was doing that enough so he’d begun recognizing strangers. He hadn’t seen Ricco.
He’d entertained the possibility that Ricco could have hired someone else to do his dirty work for him. But common sense said that was nuts. That would mean bringing someone else into the picture and expose Ricco to even more risk. More people knowing who he was and what he’d done. More leverage over him if anyone wanted to go that way. Plus, what if the guy Ricco hired botched the hit and was caught? He’d then finger Ricco; it would be his only lever to reduce his own sentence.
Jake had learned at the indictment that Ricco was suspected of being a professional hit man. If he was, why would he not want to do the job himself? Plus, Ricco knew what Jake looked like and the other guy wouldn’t. No, he thought if Ricco was after him, it was by far most likely he’d come in person. So Jake had decided not to worry about looking for someone else. He was still scanning who was around him when he was in public, but only to look for Ricco.
However, being in public still meant that if Ricco was looking for him, he’d be easier to find than if he was staying indoors and out of sight. But the chances of Ricco being here, then being at any concert they’d give, well, that seemed incredibly small. But it raised a question.
“Gary, where would you, uh, we, be performing?”
Gary looked embarrassed again. “You would ask that, wouldn’t you? I guess I gotta come clean. See, the other two guys in the trio are, well, gay. They’re boyfriends. One of them has a gay grandfather, the other a gay father. Those two, the older men, not my friends, know each other and go to this bar all the time. It’s a gay bar. Named The Bent Nail. I guess back then ‘bent’ was a slang term for gay. Anyway, those two guys have both heard us play and encouraged us to play some gigs. They think we’re good enough. None of us knew anything about arranging a playing date, but those two spoke to the owner of The Bent Nail; he’s invited us to play there.
“See, part of the reason for that is, the bar caters to an older crowd. Older gay guys, not young ones. Those old guys hate the music that’s on the radio these days. They like the music they grew up with, the kind we play. You’d be perfect for this. Not just because of your playing and singing, either. A lot of those guys like to look at young, good-looking guys.”
Jake adopted an obviously feigned scowl on his face. “So you want me in your band to make a lot of old men horny and perv on me?”
“Yeah!” Gary said enthusiastically, then broke into a laugh when Jake looked surprised. “Of course not,” he said to ease Jake’s concern, but then dropped his eyes. “Well, honestly, maybe a little, but just because it would work out that way. Serendipity, you know? I . . . I’d like you to play with us—and the gay part? I didn’t think you’d have a problem with that because of how you supported Jeremy. People seem to either hate gays or not, and I figured you to be in the ‘not’ camp. But I was going to tell you about all this. I just wanted you to start playing with us first and for you to get to know the other two guys and see how much fun it would be. First. You know. Before telling you all this.”
Gary had thought maybe Nick might be put off by hearing all this gay stuff, both his bandmates and the venue, but he thought maybe not, too. He was hoping Nick would be fine with it, and if he agreed, that might mean something Gary was curious about. Not expecting, but hoping about. Now, from the expression he saw on Nick’s face, the fact he wasn’t upset and despite pretending to be, it looked like he had no problem with the gay part at all. Gary was relieved, if still no closer to the answer he wanted.
What Jake was feeling was: the chances of Ricco looking for him in a gay bar were so minuscule it made the chances of him being found about as likely as being hit by lightning. And he wasn’t a bit worried about that.
He saw the hopeful expression on Gary’s face and said, “Okay, I’ll come and sit in on a session with you guys. Then I’ll decide. Okay?”
Gary smiled and nodded. Perfect, he thought. Absolutely perfect.
= = =
That night, while Jake was working chord progressions and picking melodies on his guitar, he couldn’t get Gary out of his head. He knew why. The guy turned him on like he hadn’t ever been before. He’d had crushes on guys, sure, but they’d passed after a short time. He’d been thinking about Gary ever since he’d first seen him at that mall, and spending time with him in study hall had just made the feelings stronger. He liked his looks, and now he had seen his personality. Gary spoke softly, but there was a lot behind his words. He stood up for himself and didn’t give up easily. He embarrassed easily but didn’t let that stop him.
Jake liked the idea of playing in the band, getting to know more guys his age, and even more than that, he liked the idea of spending more time with Gary.
= = =
Ricco looked at the woman sleeping next to him. It was a warm night, and she only had a thin sheet over her, and it had slipped down so one breast was uncovered. It almost made him hard, looking at it, lying there so invitingly. She was a damn sexy woman.
Pity he’d have to kill her, he thought. But not now. He needed to talk her into letting him stay. Tell her the sex was just about the best he’d ever had, and she was wonderful, and he wanted more time to get to know her better. Tell her he was a few days early for his appointment in town, that he always came early if he could, and he wanted to spend what time he had available with her. She was lonely and so would probably go for it. She could make up a story for the neighbors about him being a cousin who was visiting.
Staying here, he could tell her he was getting his car looked at in a shop and borrow hers. No exposure that way. He could watch the high school, watch the kids coming out after the last bell. He’d see Derrick, follow him to where he was staying, then go in during the night. Then all he’d need to do was off the lady and drive away. Buy a ticket back to NY from Spokane or Missoula. He had plenty of time to decide.
= = =