Scary Noises and Pie-in-the-Sky

 

JEREMY kept trying to knit better. Ariadne still helped him. He tried another hat for Aiden; even though it was technically summer, Colorado still had brisk falls, crisp springs, and cold-as-fucking-hell winters. They were a stone’s throw from the Rocky Mountains and Highway 34, where there was snow all year round, and a hat was certainly practical enough. Ariadne hinted that maybe he might want to try a scarf for his third project, since those couldn’t really be too big or too small, and he reckoned she was right. He just might make her one when he was done.

He never intended to make an entire scarf in two days. That happened just after the sheep had to be put down, because somehow, the knitting made even that better.

Sheep were nice critters, and Jeremy loved to pet them between the slitted eyes until their heads began to loll, but they weren’t always big on personality. It was no matter. Craw had enough property that, if they seeded it with alfalfa, the sheep could be moved from corner to corner, and the alpacas too, cleaning fields and feeding themselves in sort of a perfect example of synergy right there. As long as Craw bought them the vitamin-rich saltlicks, they were happy critters.

Too happy, apparently, because the morning Jeremy woke up early to the sound of wild dogs showed him one of the worst bloodbaths he’d ever seen.

He was still wearing moccasins and his boxer shorts, and was running for the field with the broomstick in his hand after shouting for Craw, when he came across the three savaged sheep. The dogs—four of them—were still buried up to their muzzles in sheep gut, and Jeremy started shouting at them, swinging left and right with the broom, trying to get them away.

It wasn’t until the largest one, who looked like a cross between a Rottweiler and a bear, looked up and started growling at him that Jeremy realized he may have been just the tiniest bit reckless. He held the broom defensively, ready to do battle with the monster, when there was the sudden crack of a rifle, and the lead dog fell down dead. The others scattered after that, although Craw picked two of them off as they were running, and Jeremy was left alone with the three slaughtered sheep.

Well, two slaughtered sheep. One was left alive.

Jeremy ignored the others, lying in puddles of blood and innards, and rushed to the sheep who was on her side, bleating a little with every breath. The sheep didn’t have names, and Jeremy didn’t know this one from any other critter in the flock, but he did like the critters, and it pained him to see them hurt.

“Craw?” he called, but Craw was still galloping down the field, trying to get the other dog. You didn’t want to leave a wild dog out there—the one wild one would form a pack that others wanted to join. “Craw?”

“How’s she doing?” Aiden asked, coming up breathlessly, and Jeremy squinted at him.

“What are you doing here so early?” he asked, feeling stupid. “And on a Sunday.”

“Was going to cook you guys breakfast,” Aiden said, grimacing. “My mom’s idea. She said since you weren’t up to the family dinner, I should cook for you. Heard the shots and came running—how’s she doing?”

Jeremy looked at poor Ma Sheep mournfully. “I don’t know. Reckon the vet can fix her up?”

Aiden gasped when he saw the mess of her lying about the grass. “I don’t know how she’s still alive now!” he muttered. Then, “Craw! Craw! Get your ass over here! The dog’s gone! We can call the sheriff to come look for it, but the sheep needs you now!”

Jeremy felt like ice had just frozen over a big blank spot in his head. “Why does the sheep need him?” he asked. “If the vet can’t help her, what’s Craw going to do?”

Aiden’s sigh was ragged. “He’s going to put her down, Jeremy. We can’t just leave her like this.”

And Jeremy’s brain slid on that icy blank spot—and Jeremy just checked right out of his own head. He stood up abruptly, backing away from the sheep. “No, no, of course not. But I can’t be here for this. I can’t. I mean, I know it has to be done, but you’re gonna need goons to hose the brains off the floor, and we’re the goons, and I can’t be the guy who does that, I just can’t. I gotta go hide, safe and warm, and not see this. I can’t see this. I can’t. No no no no no no….”

He turned around and ran, aware that Aiden and Craw were having a hurried conversation and that Aiden was suddenly right at his side, sprinting like a champion to keep up.

“Where we going?” Aiden asked, out of breath, and Jeremy looked at the copse of trees up over the rise.

“Gotta hide,” he mumbled, and made for that copse of trees, wearing his boxer shorts, his moccasins, and not a damned thing more. They made it to the small cluster of shade, Aiden right at his elbow, and Jeremy wrapped one arm around a small oak tree and hung on, trying to keep his knees from buckling. “Oh God,” he whispered, not even sure who he was talking to. “Has he done it yet?”

As if in answer, there was a rifle report across their little slice of Granby, and Jeremy’s grip on the tree loosened. He slid away, leaving raw scrapes on his chest and arms, and fell to his knees in the spiky litter of oak leaves, trying hard not to retch. His vision was black and he was shivering too hard to catch his breath, and his stomach was twisting over itself in an effort to void something he hadn’t even eaten yet.

And Aiden was right down there with him, that arm wrapped around his shoulders, whispering into his hair, telling him that it would be all right.

Eventually, it was just the two of them breathing, and Jeremy relaxed into Aiden's arm a little.

When he spoke, it was in a small voice. “I reckon we can go back now,” he said, and Aiden grunted. The boy was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and he smelled like boys’ sweat and boys’ shower stuff, and Jeremy was, for a moment, entranced.

“Why’d you come after me?” he asked. It was embarrassing, having this boy see that part of himself spilling all over the earth.

“Craw said you were going to need someone. Craw’s smart that way.” Hero worship. The boy’s voice was thick with it—even thicker in the past few months since that trip to Boulder. Jeremy couldn’t blame him—weren’t many men as full-out strong and smart and doing that thing they loved the most while the world could kiss their collective or singular ass. He was a good model for Aiden. Hell, Jeremy watched him appreciatively sometimes too. He was a good-looking man—strong, assertive, with a strong jaw and fine eyes. It would make more sense for Jeremy to have a crush on Rance too—but that’s not where Jeremy’s heart was, and he knew it. Wasn’t he supposed to know better?

“I’m better now,” Jeremy said into the silence. “I’m sorry to trouble you like this.” He made an effort then to stand up, but Aiden’s arm stayed strong around his shoulders.

“Shh,” the boy whispered. “Just stay for a minute, okay?”

Jeremy nodded. He said, “In a minute. In a minute we’ll go back,” but he stayed there, accepting comfort and body contact for much more than a minute.

“Jeremy?” Aiden said softly into his hair.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes you make me feel so young.”

“You are young, boy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I need to be older,” Aiden muttered. “I need to be old enough to deal with this shit. Someone’s gotta.” He shifted beside Jeremy and stood heavily to his feet, then reached his hand down. “C’mon, man. Craw’s got clean up. You and me are gonna go make breakfast.”

But breakfast wasn’t enough. Jeremy got dressed and joined Aiden in the kitchen, following his directions there just like he did in the mill. Craw came in and they sat down, and they ate in strained silence. Jeremy spent all of a minute to feel bad for Aiden—this was obviously supposed to be sort of a treat for them.

He’d been sitting in his seat, looking at congealed eggs and bacon for a while before Aiden stood and put a nice, brotherly hand on his shoulder. Jeremy shot up, knocking his chair over backward and then backed up, tripped over his feet, and fell on his ass. He glared at Aiden and shouted, “What’d you do that for?”

“’Cause I said your name three times, dumbass! Where the hell were you?”

Jeremy opened his mouth and then shut it again and then opened it and said, “Vegas,” sort of weakly, and he didn’t miss Aiden and Craw’s shared look, but he couldn’t do anything about it either. He stood up then and righted the chair and brushed by a patiently waiting Aiden to get his plate.

“That was right good chow, Aiden,” he said genially, and wondered that their ears didn’t bleed, because he sounded high and screechy, even to himself. “I’m sorry I’m feeling a bit poorly.” He scraped his plate into Craw’s compost bucket. “I’ll just take this out and maybe feed the rest of the critters today, all right?”

“I moved the sheep inside,” Craw said gruffly. “They’ll be restless.”

Jeremy nodded. “I’ll try not to bother ’em none. They had a rough morning.” He rinsed off his plate and put it in the dishwasher, and then gave a little nod of dismissal and walked out the door. He made it through his chores and realized that being in the big barn, even with the horses and alpacas out in the other pasture, just sort of soothed the savaged parts inside him. On a whim, he went and got the yarn and the needles for the scarf he’d been planning to start for Ariadne, sat down in a corner of the barn where he could see the sheep, and cast on.

It got hot in the barn—it was June, after all—and his hands stuck to the alpaca blend and the needles. Sweat trickled down his scalp from his hair and then seemed to pool and join a river down his spine, but… but that repeat, it just felt so good. It soothed him so nicely. Craw came out and asked him if he’d like some lunch, and that was his only indication that time had passed. He said no thank you, got up stiffly to use the john and to run some cool water on his neck and drink some. It was Sunday. Besides the critters, he was mostly at loose ends anyway, so he went back out to that corner again and kept knitting. The sun slanted and it grew cool in the barn, and it got hard to see. Craw came in with a plate of dinner, took the yarn from his unresisting hands, and pulled up a chair.

“Aiden’s worried about you,” he said gruffly, and Jeremy looked at the dinner—eggs and bacon, his favorite, and pretty much what he’d refused to eat that morning. It didn’t look all that appetizing now, but he took a piece of toast and made a good go at it. He figured if he shoved the food in his mouth, his con man’s sensibilities would take over, and he’d eat, and it worked for a bit.

“He shouldn’t be,” Jeremy answered with his mouth full of food. “He’s got all sorts of better things to worry him. He should be out looking for pretty girls, not worrying about a washed up con man.”

“He’s worried about his friend, jackass. What was going on in your head this morning?”

Jeremy couldn’t have eaten another bite if his life depended on it—and he actually knew what that was like for real. “Nothing of importance. You know me, Craw. A braintrust, I’m not.”

“Fuck. Fine, asshole. I’ve got a line on a big drum carder—it’ll cut your work in half, but you have to drive up to Pennsylvania in the flatbed to get it. You and Aiden. I figure we work double-time this week to shore up our stock, and you two take a week or so for the trip. You up for that?”

Jeremy gaped at him. “I thought that was pie-in-the-sky,” he whispered, genuinely flabbergasted. “I… I mean, who does that?”

Craw squinted. “Well, I had enough profits to put them back into my shop, Jeremy. It’s how I had the means to hire you.”

Jeremy shook his head. He didn’t have the words. How did he explain to someone that his whole life, he’d been waiting for the day when the rain fell, with plans to dance in the rain then? How do you explain the bone-deep knowledge that this thing you con for, lie for, cheat for, ain’t never gonna happen? That the biggest con of all is telling yourself that it will? How could he tell Craw that saying you were going to do something and then making it happen was, for Jeremy, as unlikely as Craw settling down with a nice girl and breeding like bunnies?

“Does that mean you don’t want to go?” Craw asked, still oblivious to Jeremy’s epiphany, and Jeremy shook his head again.

“No, no, I’ll go. You’re not gonna send that kid off to Philly by himself, right? Someone needs to make sure he stays outta trouble.”

Craw grunted. It was getting a little cooler, which was nice, but Jeremy had been stewing in sweat, and he was a little bit chilly now. “Quite honestly, Jeremy, after that thing you did today, I’m pretty sure it’s Aiden going with you to keep you outta trouble.”

Jeremy looked miserably down at Ariadne’s scarf, his face screwed tight with shame. “Can’t argue there. Well, good. Kid can keep an eye on me. That’s fair.”

Craw grunted. “Stand up, Jeremy, and grab your knitting. You’re coming inside tonight, and you’re sleeping on the couch. I’ve got a television. Haven’t used it in months. God knows, maybe something intelligent finally started. It would be an improvement.”

Jeremy was bemused. He was also, he understood, in no condition to make his own choice in the matter. Craw told him to, and so he would.

He stood up and grabbed his knitting and spent a quiet evening on Craw’s couch, comforted by Craw’s breathing and the steady clacking of his needles along with Jeremy’s. He stayed up long after Craw got up, bitched about the stupid television show (Jeremy hadn’t been paying attention), and went to bed. In the morning, Craw woke him up and told him to go shower and get dressed, and then said he’d block the simple garter stitch scarf Jeremy had finished in the wee hours of the morning.

Jeremy spent a minute staring at it—it was bright fuchsia with black highlights in the yarn, like Ariadne’s hair. He hoped she’d like it. For some reason, imagining her reaction when he gave it to her was the one thing that got him off the couch at all.

 

 

“IS that all you’re bringing?” Aiden asked, looking at the tiny duffel over Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy looked at it too. It had a spare change of clothes, three pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, his bible, and enough yarn for three hats, which was a plum luxury. It also had a small wad of cash in one of the zippered pockets, one in the bible, and he had one in his pocket.

“I lived for two months on less than this,” he said, thinking about escaping from that wrecked hotel room with the bible tucked close to his chest. Aiden raised his eyebrows and Jeremy shifted, suddenly embarrassed. “They weren’t comfortable months,” he confessed. “I figure if we’re staying in hotels on the way up, we’ll find a washer/dryer. It’ll be fine.”

Aiden shook his head and picked up his considerably bigger bag. “You got any books in there?” he asked critically, and Jeremy shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, although he had a lot of books stashed under his bed in the barn. They were all paperbacks, gleaned from library sales and garage sales and anytime a book was on sale sales. He was aware that if he ever had to bugger off, the books wouldn’t be coming with him, so he didn’t want to spend full price on them, but he didn’t want to risk leaving them behind, either.

Aiden shook his head. “Your room open?” he asked bluntly, and Jeremy shrugged. It didn’t have a lock. So far, the only person who had entered without his permission was Aiden, that one time. Aiden shoved his way in there, Jeremy on his heels, and to Jeremy’s surprise, he dropped to his stomach and started rummaging around under Jeremy’s cot. He came back with 1984, Yarn Harlot: Free Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, and Ravished by Amanda Quick.

“Not 1984,” Jeremy said quickly. “I started that one. It depressed the hell out of me. Get me another Amanda Quick—she’s fun.”

Aiden did a double take at that and said, “How about some Jennifer Crusie too?” he asked, and his voice was saccharinely ironic, but Jeremy didn’t care. He was gonna go with no books at all because he needed to travel light, but if Aiden insisted, he wanted something fun.

“Yeah, sure. I like her too. Why’s my reading so damned important anyway?”

Aiden narrowed his eyes. “Because you don’t talk when you read, dumbass, and I love you like a brother and would rather not kill you.”

Jeremy swallowed. Loved him like a brother? That was sweet. Not what he’d been sort of yearning for, without putting words or pictures to it, but an improvement over “God, I can’t fucking stand you,” which is where Jeremy was pretty sure Aiden started out in the matter.

“Yeah, get two books by her. I’ve seen enough violence in my life.”

Aiden came out from under the bed and looked at him quizzically. “I was being metaphorical, you know that, right?”

Jeremy flushed. “Yeah, I knew that. You’re a nice boy, Aiden. You wouldn’t even deck me if I got outta line.”

Aiden came out with four books and looked at Jeremy’s little duffle, which was stuffed full. “I’ll put ’em in my bag,” he offered, and Jeremy took him up on it.

He didn’t even think to ask why Aiden didn’t give him shit about having romances in his collection, even when Aiden’s books turned out to be all spy thrillers and stuff. It didn’t matter. Aiden loved him, even if it was like a brother.

 

 

THE trip turned out to be all right, for the most part. Aiden drove first, because he confessed to getting a mite carsick on the curvy parts if he didn’t, and he knew the road out of Granby well enough. Jeremy sat next to him and knit, which he could do well enough now to keep his eyes on the road. The knitting took just enough of Jeremy’s attention that he didn’t spend too much time talking, but not so much that he couldn’t answer at all.

They had just cleared the mountain range and were on their way to Boulder—in fact, they were passing the prison, the maximum security one, not Fort Lyon—and Aiden, right after a discussion of colorways and the color wheel that left Jeremy’s head whirling in a blinding mix of rainbows and words, knocked Jeremy’s happiness with the trip right out of the truck.

“So, Jeremy—what happened in Vegas?”

Jeremy looked desperately to the road and realized they were going about sixty-five miles an hour in the flat bed, and if he jumped out now he’d kill himself.

“Why you gotta ask me that now!” he mourned. He’d been so happy!

“Because we’re going too fast for you to jump out of the truck, and you’re not driving so you can’t wreck it.”

Jeremy glared at him. “You’re so matter of fact!” he accused. “This is my stuff. I don’t go into your room and steal your peanut butter—”

“I give you my peanut butter for free,” Aiden said practically, and Jeremy shook his head.

“All I know about you is—”

“That I want to design, that I have a nice family, that I’ve lived my whole life in Granby, and even though I’ve seen other parts of the world on school trips and such, I really want to live in my hometown. You know I think Craw walks on water, I’m a complete bastard when I’m training someone—”

“You weren’t that bad!”

“I was horrible to you, Jeremy. You were so out of your element, and I acted like a pissy little kid. Anyway, you know all that and you still want to hang out with me. But you got something just fucking awful in your head, and it’s hurting you. So, maybe, can you maybe ’fess up?”

Jeremy didn’t say anything. For fifty miles. After a while, he realized that Aiden had been waiting for his response, and he hadn’t had any words for it, and had just sat there, with his knitting in his hands. So he picked up his knitting and worked, very carefully, stitch after stitch, trying to put the bang and the blood he didn’t see and his father’s twitching body out of his head.

They got out at a rest stop to stretch and piss and get gas and to switch sides. Jeremy didn’t say much then, either. Aiden went into McDonald’s, and even though Jeremy usually really loved their chocolate chip cookies, he went to Carl’s Jr. instead. They met back at the truck, and Aiden held out a little bag in his hand. Three chocolate chip cookies, in the little paper wrapper.

“Thank you,” Jeremy said, moved.

“I’m sorry I blindsided you,” Aiden said softly. He turned and leaned against the quarter panel of the flatbed, and Jeremy followed suit. “Craw says he’s a bastard because he hurts people’s feelings whether he means to or not. He figures it’s just as well if everyone expects it, and then when he apologizes, they know he means it.”

“You’re nicer’n Craw,” Jeremy said with some contemplation. He pulled out a cookie and nibbled, then settled into the enjoyment. He loved these cookies—the softness, the chocolate chips, the brown-sugar sweetness. He closed his eyes with the last swallow, and offered Aiden the second one from the bag.

Aiden took it. “You wouldn’t know it by what I just did to you,” he said softly. “I just want to know what hurt you.”

“So we could share the hurt?” Jeremy pulled the last cookie out of the bag and broke it in half. “That’s not friendly.” He offered the other half to Aiden, and Aiden smiled a little and took it.

“Neither is letting someone suffer by themselves. Think about it, okay, Jeremy?”

They each took a bite out of his half of the cookie. “What good will it do?” Jeremy asked musingly. “I’m okay.”

Aiden swallowed. “Well, if I have your secret, and you’re still my friend, maybe you’ll feel secure enough to get yourself an apartment, maybe.”

Jeremy looked at the last bite of cookie while Aiden threw his last bite in his mouth. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked the cookie. He almost never ate all three. He almost always left that third one in the bag and folded the bag up and put it in his pocket.

“So I could come over and watch movies, for one!” Aiden said laughingly. “My brothers and sisters all watch Discovery channel, Ariadne and Rory get too gross and romantic, and Craw hates television with all of his black heart. You get a TV, and I’ll be able to come over and watch romantic comedies on DVR.”

Jeremy smiled a little and popped the cookie in his mouth without thinking. “Action movies too?”

“My favorite kind,” Aiden said, smiling. He turned and started walking away from the truck. “Come on!”

“Where are we going? Don’t we have to get on the road?”

“We’re getting a six-pack of cookies. Three more to share and three more so you can sleep tonight, okay?”

Jeremy trotted after him, feeling strangely happy for having been so miserable during that fifty-mile stretch. This road trip might be okay after all.

And in the end, it was. They drove all day for three days, and at night, Aiden went swimming (and, after talking Jeremy into spending some of his cash on a suit, so did Jeremy) and they worked out the kinks from the road. Then they spent the evenings watching television and knitting, or lying, each on his bed, reading books. It was funny that for all of Jeremy’s quiet yearning, those moments lying on adjacent hotel beds, reading, were some of the happiest of his life.

Philadelphia, though—that almost put a kibosh on Jeremy and Aiden’s friendship forever, and it was something Jeremy didn’t even realize he was doing until it was almost too late.

The problem was, the man selling the mill was retiring, and he hadn’t consulted his family. More specifically, he hadn’t consulted his daughter, and she didn’t want to break the mill up into parts.

“I was raised in there!” she complained to her father while Aiden and Jeremy stood by uncomfortably. They had needed to rent a good-size crane to pick the damned thing up off the ground and get it on the flatbed, and apparently, they’d needed two forklifts and a giant wheeled pallet to get it off the floor of the mill in the first place. So when they arrived at the mill looking gutted and sad on the lush farm outskirts of Philadelphia, the thing had been outside on the pavement, and the crane had been next to it, set up and ready to heft the giant piece of machinery onto the flatbed so it could be tied off about a thousand times with those sturdy, nylon-covered steel cables. The owner—a giant of a man, both tall and wide, with a fuzz of gray hair on his liver-spotted head—was riding one of those electric cart things, because, Jeremy reckoned, that much weight would be rough on a body. And his daughter—a narrow-waisted, narrow-nosed rake of a woman, stood arms akimbo, and tried to bully her father into keeping a thing from a place, by her father’s account, she had never visited.

“You were raised in our home, by the nannies!” her father returned. “And I’m sorry about that, but your mother passed away, may she rest in peace. Now I don’t know what got into you right now—”

“You didn’t even ask me!” she snapped, and he sighed.

“Katherine, you weren’t even around. You live in Manhattan, for sweet Christ’s sake. What do you think you’re going to do? Come here and run a company you don’t want to have nothing to do with? Now can’t you see these two boys are waiting on us?”

Both of them turned around and grimaced at Jeremy and Aiden, who were leaning back against the flatbed, watching the show. Aiden saw the scrutiny and glared, but Jeremy? He’d seen this scenario before. He knew what his role was—he’d played it many a time.

“Now don’t worry ’bout us none,” he said with his con man’s smile, the one that made the dimples pop. He flashed that dimple particularly at Miss Katherine, who, bless her, did what she was supposed to do too, and turned red. “We’re just going to scare us up a hotel room, while you two hammer this out. Don’t make no sense, getting ’tween family, and don’t we know it!”

He turned to Aiden, who was looking incredulously from the two mill owners back to Jeremy. “Hotel room? We were supposed to—”

Jeremy kept his smile and winked. “Now don’t you fret none, boy.” He turned to the mill owners again. “My young protégé here is worried, because we hadn’t planned on a hotel room in these parts. He lowered his head and looked at Miss Katherine from under long, dark lashes. “Now you wouldn’t happen to know of a nice motel, Miss Katherine? One not too tight on the pockets of two hired hands? If it’s some place you know about, well then, maybe we could do business later tonight, after you hash this out with your daddy here—”

“I’m in the Courtyard Marriott, right down the road,” she said quickly, her face so red she was flushed and dewy. “If you two get a room down there while we get this settled, I’ll pay for it, I promise.”

Jeremy allowed himself to look sheepish. “Why, Miss Katherine, that would sure settle us some. Our boss is a good man—but he’s a hard one, and tight with a dime. Just knowing you could put us up, that might go a long way to ease his anger if this trip should prove to be fruitless. I’ll tell you what. Me and the boy here will go check ourselves in, and you can come looking for us later on. I would surely love to chat with you about what this mill meant to you, Miss Katherine. That way you would know your cherished memories are in good hands.”

Her smile did indeed light up her face, and when her lips weren’t compressed they were plump in a wide mouth. Her whole face gained a softness when she looked at Jeremy, and Jeremy sighed. Yup. Could be, he was going to have to take one for the team. Well, wouldn’t be the first time. And this way, he’d be helping Craw, and therefore helping Aiden and Ariadne, and that would sit a whole lot better than just getting an extra wad of cash for himself.

“What the hell was all of that?” Aiden asked angrily as they got back in the truck. Even though Aiden had driven them there, Jeremy had taken the keys, to keep the illusion that he was the older, more experienced man, and Aiden was the boy in his charge.

“I was giving her a way to settle with her daddy,” Jeremy explained.

“By letting her know you were for sale?”

“Well, wouldn’t that piss her daddy off?” he asked, although he was pretty sure just getting that harpy of a woman off the man's back would make John S. Katan’s life a lot easier. “But this won’t make him mad. He’ll see it as me getting her around a little. She’ll get to spend an evening feeling special, and Craw’ll get his goddamned gi-fuckin-normous drum carder. It’s win-win, Aiden—don’t tell me you don’t see it!”

“Well, yeah! Except you’ve got to whore yourself out like… like….”

“Like a whoring con man on the grift?” Jeremy asked, stung. Well, mostly because it was true, but he was stung anyway.

“And what do you get out of this?” Aiden asked, but he sounded defensive now, and Jeremy could tell he felt bad.

“I get to help Craw,” Jeremy told him truthfully, and Aiden sighed. God. Wasn’t much either of ’em wouldn’t do to help Craw, now was there?

Sure enough, they got back to the hotel, walked out to get themselves something to eat, and had just finished their swim, when Miss Katherine walked into the pool area. She was still dressed in a nice linen summer dress, with shoes that cost what Jeremy made in a week, and she knelt by the pool with every confidence that the skirt would cover her knees and that Jeremy would sneak a peek just for fun.

He pretended to, but seriously, white cotton panties were not going to do it for him at this stage in his life.

“So,” she purred, “since you’re all settled here, you wouldn’t want to come over to my room so we could talk, would you?”

Jeremy smiled. “Why, ma’am, I’m hardly dressed.”

“Well, I won’t be uncomfortable if you won’t,” she murmured, and Jeremy amped up that smile.

“I’ll just go tell young Aiden where I’ll be.”

Aiden was doing laps in the deep end, and Jeremy splashed some water to get his attention. The boy straightened up, and Jeremy saw what he’d been seeing for the last four days—the strong, tanned, well-defined lines of a hairless chest, with little shell-pink nipples peeking out as Aiden stood up in the five-foot area. Jeremy himself was barely five foot eight, but Aiden had grown an inch in the past six months. He was closer to six foot now. He was so beautiful—Jeremy had always thought that, from the first time the boy had shaken his hand—but now, it hurt even more. After this, he’d be completely out of Jeremy’s reach.

Aiden looked at him and shook his head. “Please don’t do this,” he said softly, and Jeremy swallowed. It wasn’t like the boy had ever been in his reach in the first place.

“I’ll let you know how it goes,” he said softly, and winked. “Just think, boy. This could be the only thing I could give Craw that he couldn’t do with his own two hands.” He giggled. “Literally!”

And then he turned and hoisted himself out of the pool, very carefully not looking Aiden in the eyes.

He grabbed a complimentary towel on his way out and held the gate for Miss Katherine, then followed her to her room.

She was up on the second floor, with a king-size bed, and Jeremy looked around appreciatively. It was a nice hotel—better than the Motel Sixes they’d been staying at, and the king-size bed brought to mind all sorts of things that Jeremy had never done. Of course, he hadn’t had Miss Katherine in mind at the time, but, well….

It wasn’t like Aiden would do those things with him anyway. It was good to remind himself that Aiden was probably not gay. A girl would appear in his life. She had to, so Jeremy could stop dreaming and feeling old and perverted and hopeless.

“So, Jeremy,” Miss Katherine said into the sudden silence, “what is it you can say that you think will change my mind?” Her voice was shaking, and for the first time, Jeremy realized that she was nervous. In that moment, he felt bad for her, and in that moment, he realized that this wasn’t honest. That’s what Aiden had been trying to tell him. Oh hells. What to do now?

Well, he had more than one treasure in the grifter’s pot, didn’t he?

“Well, ma’am,” Jeremy said gently, “don’t get nervous now.” She looked up at him and he winked, and proceeded to make a show of still toweling off his lean little body. “I’m still sort of wet—I don’t even want to walk on the rug like this, so I’m not likely to do anything you’re not nice and comfy with, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, sounding surprised.

Katherine’s nerves seemed to crank down a notch, and Jeremy smiled at her, this time a smaller smile. “You miss your daddy, don’t you?” he asked, and was gratified by her startlement. “I mean, you moved away ’cause you thought you hated this place, but your daddy, he wasn’t a bad sort?”

She shook her head and moved over toward the bed—not with innuendo, he was pretty sure, but because it was an easy place to sit.

“He was good to us,” she said softly. “He was right, the nannies raised us, but he came home at night and tucked us in. He made sure he was off holidays, was there for every birthday. I… I mean, I call him once a week, but….”

“But since you moved away, it don’t feel the same, does it?”

She smiled a little and shook her head. “No.”

Jeremy nodded. “So, he’s getting rid of this piece of his life that you remember, and you feel like he’s getting farther and farther away, right?”

She had blonde hair, coarse and graying, pulled back into a braid, and she tucked a strand of it behind her ear. “It’s like you can read my diary,” she said softly.

Jeremy shook his head. “Naw, ma’am. Just my own. Now see, the thing is, you keep thinking that cutting ties with this place is going to make him float away. What you don’t see is that having it gone is going to make the two of you free!”

“Free?” Now that she wasn’t simpering or blushing or bitching, she was, indeed, a pretty woman.

“Yes’m. He’s going to be free to spend the time he didn’t used to have, and you’re going to be free to visit him without remembering the place you hated for taking him away.”

“But….” She stood up in aggravation. “But you’ve seen him! He’s practically housebound! He can’t come to Manhattan!”

Jeremy nodded. “Well, ma’am, I didn’t say you weren’t going to have to give some things up. But he gave things up for you, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “You’re very wise.”

Jeremy shook his head. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

They spent another hour there, him standing on the three-by-three tile foyer, her sitting on the bed, and when they were done, he had an agreement to go pick up the carder in the morning, and she’d pick up the hotel tab for making them spend the extra day. She got off the bed then and came close to him, close enough for him to smell her perfume, for her to put her hands on his shoulders. It didn’t do nothing for him, but it was nice to have the human contact.

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You’re really a dear man, do you know that?” she said softly, and he backed up against the door, opening it behind him.

“You have a nice evening, ma’am,” he said. He took a couple of steps down the walkway before he scrubbed at the lipstick mark she left on his cheek with the towel.

 

 

AIDEN let him in when he knocked, and seemed surprised to see him.

“Jesus, Jeremy—you were only gone an hour. You must be damned good in the sack!” Aiden threw himself on the bed in a sour huff, but Jeremy knew his moods by now, and Jeremy realized it was something that the boy would forgive.

Which was good, because he didn’t want to talk about that. He didn’t. He leaned back against the door, thinking that this here was a good kid, and he’d opened the door for Jeremy when Jeremy really didn’t deserve it.

“My daddy,” he said, without knowing he was going to say it, “was shot in the head in a deserted casino when a con went wrong.”

Aiden sat up in bed, horrified, his tanned face going shock-white even as Jeremy said the words.

“I saw just that part, and then I hid in the curtains, right as the body was hitting the ground. Carelli didn’t see me, he didn’t hear me. One of his boys knew I was there, but”—he wasn’t going to talk about that either, not now—“but for some reason, he didn’t say anything. And I sat there, like a fucking coward, for something like four hours, while they hosed my daddy’s brains off the floor and dragged him off the stage and buried him Christ knows where. I got away, grabbed my bible, and grew a fucking conscience. You know the rest, Aiden. It’s not pretty. So now you know me. A whoring, cowardly, thieving—”

“Shut up,” Aiden said, looking Jeremy in the face and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re my friend, dumbass. Stop talking shit about yourself. Just stop it. I don’t want to listen.”

Jeremy nodded and wished like hell he could go over there and comfort the boy, but he wanted him so badly, it was like to be crawling out of his skin.

“Well, fine. What do you want to do instead?”

Aiden stood up and walked over to him, wrapped one arm around his shoulder, and steered him toward the bed.

“Is she really paying for the room?” he asked, and Jeremy smiled a little. Aiden had showered, and he smelled clean, and like a young man and not a sweaty kid.

“Yessir.”

“Think she’d mind if we ordered room service?”

Probably not, Jeremy thought. She’d been pretty happy when he left.

“What’d you have in mind?”

Aiden grinned. “I’ve been looking at the menu while you were gone. Do you know they have a chocolate-chip-cookie vanilla-ice-cream sundae?”

Jeremy’s vision went sort of deliriously swimmy. It could have been the thought of heaven on a plate, but it was probably Aiden’s bare skin on his shoulder. It didn’t matter. Two minutes ago was on his list for the bottom twenty or so in his life, but he was filing this moment right here away in his top ten ever for awesome.

“Yeah?” Chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream. God yes.

“Yeah.”

“I say we get in on that action, you think?”

Aiden sighed and collapsed against him, a little bit boneless and very, very comfortable. Jeremy might have closed his eyes then, just at the sweetness of it, and when Aiden spoke again, his breath tickled Jeremy’s shoulder.

“I thought you’d never ask!”