Chapter Fourteen

Mickey was in the passenger seat when they reached the car, and Erik was sitting quietly behind the wheel. Roger put the suitcase into the trunk, then the three of them piled into the backseat.

“I’ve never been in the back seat of a car with two other guys before,” Kyle flirted. “I don’t know if there’s enough room.”

“Depends on what you want to do,” Mickey said. “Rog, how bad is it?”

“It’s bad.” He met Mickey’s eyes in the mirror. “Really bad. I don’t think any of the furniture is salvageable.”

His lover’s face flushed red, and he turned and glared out the window. Roger couldn’t tell if he was angry or upset, but based on what he’d been feeling, he was going to say both. He reached out and silently put a hand on Mickey’s shoulder, and the dancer reached up and grasped it.

When they reached Erik’s house, there was a black SUV waiting in the driveway, and the gate was standing open. Kyle looked at Rich with a satisfied smile. “He’s here.”

“Who’s here?” Roger asked.

“Howie.”

Erik pulled up beside the big vehicle and parked. The door to the SUV opened and disgorged the largest human that Roger had ever seen.

It wasn’t just his height that was impressive, although that certainly was worthy of note. He was also easily twice as broad as Roger himself, and it was plain to see that although he certainly had a bit of padding, the majority of this moving mountain was sinew and steel. He had never seen any man as muscular and intimidating as this. His black hair was in a mohawk, but with tight braids trailing down his back, the tips of each braid crowned with brass fittings that looked like the teeth on a cat o’ nine tails. His ears were pierced seven times each, as were his eyebrows and his lower lip, the latter three boasting hoops. The tattoo sleeves on his arms, the ink on his neck and the twin teardrops permanently drawn onto his face completed the image of someone he had no intention of calling anything but Sir.

Erik, Kyle and Rich climbed out and gave the behemoth a round of friendly man-hugs, clapping his back and trying to withstand it when he clapped back. Roger got out of the car, as did Mickey, and the dancer looked at him as if he was begging to be saved.

“Howie,” Kyle said, beaming, “these are Roger and Mickey. Roger is our new bass player, and Mickey is his boyfriend.”

He thrust a meaty paw at them and spoke in a voice that was as deep as it should have been. “Pleasure.”

“Hi, Howie. Nice to meet you,” Roger said politely, shaking the offered paw as nonchalantly as he could manage.

“A Brit, huh?”

“Yes. From London.”

“Huh. I woulda sworn you’d be from Bobmay or something.”

“Bombay,” he corrected, “although it’s properly called Mumbai.”

“Whatever.” He held out his hand to Mickey, who shook it. “You’re the dancer.”

“Yes, I am.”

“That explains why you’re so skinny.” He fell into what could only be called parade rest and looked at Kyle. “So, you called me in on this, and I’m gonna do you a solid, just like normal. But if shit starts goin’ down, you gotta let me handle things my way.”

“Of course,” Kyle said. “As always, what we don’t know won’t hurt us. We just want to make sure that the bad guys stay away from our boys here.”

He put his arm around Roger’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. Howie studied the interaction impassively, then grunted. Roger had no idea what that meant.

Erik gestured toward the house. “Come on in. I’m surprised you weren’t inside already.”

“Your sis wouldn’t let me in the house.”

“Still? I’ve talked to her about that.” He sighed. “I’ll talk to her again.”

“Don’t bother. I’m used to it this way.”

Erik popped the trunk, Howie grabbed the bag, and they all walked into the house together. Erik led them to the staircase that rose from the tiled floor of the foyer.

“The bedrooms are up here, in two wings. The master is on the west wing, which is to the left, and the guest rooms are in the east wing, to the right. Penny is in one of the guest rooms by the master, so you can pick any room in the east wing that you like.”

Roger looked around in amazement. “You live here?”

His bandmate gave him a strange look. “Yes. You know that.”

“It’s just that I never… it’s just so… huge.”

“Yeah,” Howie agreed. “He did good for himself.”

Behind the big bodyguard, Kyle asked, “Hey, can we stay here, too? Just for a while? It’ll be like a big Valhalla sleep-over.”

Erik snorted. “Sure. Why not? Just don’t break anything.”

Roger glanced at the blond, and he had a sneaking suspicion that he liked having house guests. He imagined that it could get incredibly lonely for Erik, living in a house as big as this all by himself.

“You need a new lover,” he announced, startling everyone, including himself. Mickey snickered.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard him,” Howie said. “He thinks you need your ass plowed. Been too long.”

Rich laughed, and Kyle told the group, “We can always count on Howie to be as delicate as possible with even the most sensitive of subjects.”

“Fuck off, drummer boy.”

When they reached the top of the stairs, a carpeted corridor ran to the left and right, leading to opposite ends of a long passage lined with doors. Each portal was painted white and accented with gold, and nothing Roger saw - carpet, walls, crown moldings, ceilings, wall sconces, artwork - would have been out of place in the palace of Versailles.

Mickey said softly, “This is… swanky.” He turned to their host. “And it’s completely not your style.”

Erik smiled ruefully. “No, it’s not, but…. I don’t know what to do with it, and I don’t want to hire a decorator because they do screwy things.”

“Not the ones I know,” the dancer asserted. “I’ll give you the name of a really talented interior designer who can get this place reflecting you in a jiffy.” He touched the nearest door. “Gilt? Really? It’s a little too fabulous for you, I think.”

“You’re saying I’m not fabulous?” He put on an expression of indignation, but it was clearly false and was ruined by his smirk.

“You’re fabulous, just not that way.”

Erik shook his head and gestured down the hallway. “Pick a room, guys.”

Roger went into the room nearest them. It was bright and airy, with a plush-looking four-poster bed and an elegant sitting area. There was a cherry armoire, the reddish wood a surprising complement to the otherwise burnished color scheme of the room. He wondered how much an armoire like that would cost, now that he had an entire apartment to refurnish.

“This is nice,” Mickey said behind him. “Thanks for letting us stay here.”

“You’re welcome. My room is in the master, which is on the other side of the stairway, all the way at the end of the hall. Penny’s room is the last one on the left.”

Erik stepped aside so Howie could maneuver his bulk into the room and put the luggage down on the floor. He rubbed his massive hands together, smoothing the black hair on his fingers.

“Okay. Drummer boy said you’ve got a stalker, and I need to know what he looks like. Anybody got a picture of him?”

“Actually, I don’t,” Roger admitted. “I wasn’t even seeing him long enough to get a picture. It’s ridiculous that he’s taking things to this extreme after one roll in the hay and a mistake about dinner.”

Their host left the room, and returned with an old smart phone in a battered silver case. He handed it to Howie, who held it up so they could see the photograph on the cracked screen.

“Is this the guy?” he asked.

Roger looked, and to his shock, he saw Dave Campbell in his uniform.

“Yes, that’s him.” He turned to Erik. “How in the world….?”

“I told you Alex cheated on me,” he said simply. “He cheated on me with him.”

Mickey crossed his arms. “I wonder which entry on his list your ex helped him cross off.”

“Married man? Stock broker? Pathological liar? Any of those would have worked.”

Howie examined the picture, then returned the phone to Erik with a nod. “Okay. I got him. Next time I see him, he’s pulp.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Kyle grinned.

Rich took his partner’s hand. “Let’s go pick out a room, if we’re going to be staying, too.”

They left the group, and Roger told Howie, “I don’t want you to hurt anybody. I just want him to leave us alone.”

“Oh, he’ll leave you alone,” the huge man promised. “When I’m done with him, he’ll be leaving everybody alone.”

He put his hands over his face. “Oh, God. This is a disaster.”

Mickey came to him and embraced him. “It’s going to be okay, babe. And after what that asshole did to our apartment, he deserves to get messed up.” He looked over his shoulder at the hirsute giant. “I hope you break every bone in his body.”

He shook his head. “Usually just the long ones. Crushing all those hand and foot bones takes too much time.”

Roger grimaced. “I can’t believe you’re saying that…” He took another look at Howie’s tattoos, which looked like something he would have gotten in prison, and thought better of making any further comment.

Mickey was not as cowed. “You sound like someone who’s already laid the hurt on people in the past.”

“That’s because I have.”

“Did you do time, Howie?”

He answered Mickey’s question without the least irritation or guilt. “Yeah. Seven years in San Quentin for second degree murder.”

“But you were innocent of the crime, right?”

“Hell, no. I was guilty as sin. And let me tell you, after the first one’s done, the second one is easy.”

Roger pressed a hand to his stomach, which felt like it was tying itself into knots. “I don’t think I needed to know that.”

Howie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that I’ve got this covered, and whatever I have to do to get this fucker to leave you alone, I’ll do it.”

“I…”

“Smile and nod,” Erik coached. Roger smiled and nodded.

“Imma go get somethin’ in the kitchen,” the burly man announced. “I figure you must have food around here, right?”

“Of course. Help yourself to whatever.”

He brushed past their host, saying, “I was gonna whether you said that or not, but thanks for the formality.”

They listened to him stomping his way down the stairs, and once he reached the bottom, Erik said quietly, “Yes, he’s a scary-looking dude, and he’s done some bad things, but he honestly has turned his life around a bit and is the best in the business at what he does.”

“Murder?” Mickey guessed.

He snorted a laugh. “Being a body guard. He’ll keep this guy off of you until he can convince him to go away for good. Don’t worry, though – his killing days are long over. He just likes to exaggerate and pose to impress new people.”

Roger went and sat on the edge of the bed, which was just as soft as it looked. “I don’t need to be impressed, and I’m not sure he’s exaggerating, if that ink is any indication.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the singer advised.

Kyle and Rich came back into the room. “We’re taking the room next door, same side of the hall,” the guitarist announced.

His partner grinned. “We’re screamers. Fair warning.”

Roger laughed lightly and leaned back on the bed, propping himself up on his elbows. He felt suddenly exhausted, all of the tension from the day’s events passing over him like a steamroller.

“If we were in a gay porno, things would be getting really interesting right now,” Kyle said almost hopefully.

“Mind out of the gutter, boy,” Rich mock-growled.

“Lucky for us, this isn’t a porn film,” Erik said. “Get settled in and take as much time as you want to relax. We’re all done for the day, so just make yourselves at home.”

“I don’t know about you, but I want to explore this joint. There’s whole levels of this place I’ve never set foot in before,” Kyle told them.

“Don’t snoop,” the blond singer warned, and they all knew he had just wasted his breath.

“I’m going to open every single drawer and cupboard I come across,” the drummer grinned.

“Why am I not surprised?” He rolled his eyes. “Whatever, guys…I’ll be going out….”

He started to leave, but he stopped when Roger blurted, “How did your ex meet Dave?”

Erik stopped and looked at him quietly. “Did you ever hear about the time I was arrested?”

He thought back over the music news he’d heard over the past few years. “Yeah… it was a fistfight at a club called Mainstays over on 18th Street. I heard that you and the lead guitarist from Mistake got into it over a blonde.”

The singer laughed. “It was the lead singer, and it wasn’t over a blonde. It was over some blow.” He glanced at Kyle and Rich, who certainly knew the story, since they’d been his bandmates at the time. “Campbell was the officer who arrested me. They were going to get me for possession, but for some reason, Campbell lost the paperwork or the evidence or something like that. Whatever he did, the D.A. decided they couldn’t press those charges and make them stick, and they’d rather let a celebrity go than face the embarrassment of charging a celebrity with a crime they couldn’t prove.”

“No hard evidence?” Roger asked. “But what about the cocaine?”

“Vanished during the fight,” Erik shrugged. “I think one of our groupies took it. Maybe Campbell did. I just know that I was already flying high, and it worked out for the best – one more line probably would have killed me.”

“Well,” Mickey mumbled, “thank God for small favors.”

Roger tried to put it together. “So you think that Dave lost the incriminating evidence on purpose to protect you?”

“Not to protect me. He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what happens to me, and frankly, it’s mutual. He did it for Alex, to prevent him from being embarrassed or associated with a criminal. It was so my ex could save face.”

Mickey ran a hand over his hair and gripped the back of his own neck. “I don’t know… I don’t think that sounds like him, doing something for someone else if he’s not getting something out of it.”

“I never said he didn’t get anything out of it,” Erik pointed out. “He was fucking my husband at the time, after all, and for all we know, Alex set him up with a sweet investment portfolio.”

Kyle laughed. “Investments? Seriously?”

“It was just a thought,” the blond shrugged.

“A stupid one.”

He glared at the drummer. “Well, something was being exchanged besides bodily fluids. I’m sure of that.”

“It’s obvious that whatever your ex did for a living, he did it well,” Roger sighed. “It might come down to something like stocks. As they say in all the murder mystery films, follow the money.”

Rich smiled. “I thought it was cherchez la femme.”

“Search for the woman?” Mickey sniffed. “I don’t think any of us are interested in that.”

Erik headed back toward the door. “Speak for yourself.”

Kyle explained, “He’s an equal opportunity Viking.” He took Rich’s hand. “Come on… let’s go explore and give these two a little space.”

They left the room, thoughtfully closing the door as they left. Mickey waited a moment, then went and sat beside Roger on the edge of the bed.

“Erik said that pretty much everything was destroyed. Is that true?”

He nodded sadly, but didn’t speak.

Mickey lay back and put his hands over his face. “We didn’t need this. We didn’t need this at all.”

“I know.” He tried to smile. “But look at the bright side. If we don’t have any belongings, it won’t be hard to pick up stakes and move to Russia.”

He rolled onto his side and put his hand on Roger’s thigh. “You’d really do that for me?”

“Yes. I would.” He bent and kissed the dancer’s soft lips. “I just found you. I’m not about to let you go.”

Mickey rested his cheek on his other hand and looked up at Roger, the picture of sweet innocence. “I really think you mean that.”

“I do mean that.”

“Good, because I don’t want to lose you, either.”

Roger lay back and pulled Mickey into his arms, holding him in a cuddle that comforted both of them. “Then we’re agreed.”

“So it seems.”

They lay in silence for a moment, taking wordless strength from each other’s touch. Roger stroked Mickey’s back, feeling the firm muscles there, bunched tighter now with anxiety. He nudged him.

“Roll onto your stomach. I’ll rub your back.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Mickey pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it onto the bed beside them, then lay down on his stomach on the pillowy bed. Roger opened the suitcase and searched through the rescued toiletries, coming up with an unopened and luckily plastic bottle of almond scented massage oil.

He went to the bed and straddled Mickey, using his lover’s firm buttocks as a sort of tuffet. He started to rub the oil into the tense muscles beneath Mickey’s peach-pale skin.

“Mmm,” Mickey sighed. “Guitarist hands.”

He smiled. “Mmm, dancer back.” Mickey chuckled, and Roger kept massaging the knots he found running down his lover’s spine. “You are made of nerves, aren’t you?”

“Most of the time,” he admitted.

“What are you nervous about? Something in particular?”

He realized it was stupid when he said it, and Mickey’s acid tone reinforced that knowledge. “Oh, I don’t know. You have a stalker who destroyed everything we own. We got blown off by the cops, who also tried to beat you to death, if you’ll recall. I got the best news of my career and it could have turned into the worst news of my personal life, but the jury’s still out on that, so I’m waiting for that shoe to drop. And I’m being considered for three different roles with our traveling repertoire, but on all of them, I’m up against Juri Havlek, and he’s blowing the artistic director’s brother, so… I’m probably not going to get cast. Again. Unless I blow the artistic director, and I won’t do that, not while I’m involved with you.”

Roger’s hands fell still as he listened. Disgusted, he angrily said, “He has a lot of nerve conditioning your casting on something like that, especially when you’re the better dancer.”

Mickey’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I know. But until I get some positive reviews for solo performances, the Board won’t think I’m worth it, because Juri has a folder full of reviews from when he was with the Prague Symphony Ballet.”

Roger sniffed. “Well, that was Prague. This is New York. Surely a little company like that can’t carry that much caché.”

“The reviewer was from Ballet Month magazine and is only the foremost authority on dance critique in the western world,” he snarled. “And I’ll bet anything Juri was blowing him for those reviews, because the only other person he gave any good words for was Mariana Tchensky, and that’s just because she’s a legend. But that old cow hasn’t been able to execute a proper Grand Adage in years, and her grands jetés and the thirty-two fouettés in Cursed Princess? Forget it.”

He had to smile at his lover’s aggrieved complaining. “I’ll just pretend I know what those are.”

“Well, let me up and I’ll show you, because I’m a better ballerina than she is anymore, and I’m not even female.” He sniffed, then hesitated. He spoke again, sounding almost embarrassed. “Wow, that was catty.”

“It’s okay. You’re stressed, and I haven’t given you a dish of cream yet today.” He bent and kissed the back of Mickey’s head, the golden curls tickling his nose.

“I should bite you.”

“Careful. I might like it.”

“Not if I do it right.”

“If you do it right, I’ll definitely like it.”

Mickey laughed, and one of the knots Roger was working on finally released. He groaned beneath his ministrations and said, “You missed your calling. You should have been a massage therapist.”

He smiled. “That’s masseur to you, thank you very much, and I didn’t think you’d want to share me that way.”

“Good point.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk. “I don’t actually want to share you at all.”

He rubbed his back for a while longer until his hands started to cramp, but he managed to get most of the knots worked out. He was certain that the muscles were tender now, but Mickey didn’t complain. Dancers were tougher than they looked.

He shifted to lie at Mickey’s side, staring at the ceiling. He almost started talking about their problems, but that was the last thing he needed to hear after his tension had finally been eased. For once in his life, he was able to stop himself from saying something inappropriate and ill-timed.

Mickey turned so he was lying with his back pressed to Roger’s side, comfortable and intimate without being sexual. He had found that the best thing about being in a relationship with someone was that it was possible to just touch them and not have any ulterior motives, or have any expected follow-through. He liked sex as much as the next guy, but sometimes he just needed the comfort of lying in a pile with someone who loved him.

He had prevented himself from saying something dumb once, so of course he couldn’t manage it a second time. “I wonder if Dave is going to be at Alex’s Halloween party.”

Mickey stiffened subtly, but it was enough for Roger to notice and realized that he had managed to just stress him out again.

“Maybe,” his lover allowed. “I don’t know if they’re still involved. It doesn’t seem like they would be, does it? I mean, he’s obsessing over you. He wouldn’t do that if he was still butt buddies with this other guy.”

“Butt buddies?” he echoed. “Well, that’s elegant.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.” He rolled so that his front was against Mickey’s back, and he looped an arm around his waist. He kissed his lover’s shoulder. “Are we still going?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking…”

He trailed off, and when he didn’t pick up the thread, Roger prompted, “About what?”

“About going and seeing if we could find anything about why Dave was protecting him, and what Dave got in return.” He gestured helplessly, his hand flopping like a wounded dove. “I mean, people talk at parties, and there are bound to be people there who know some dirt. I don’t think he’d have post-it notes in his office saying ‘pay Dave bribe money,’ but there might be some kind of smoking gun we can find if we snoop around.”

“And you don’t think people will notice if we’re going around poking into his things and his business?”

“What else do you do when you’re invited to someone’s house for the first time?” He took Roger’s hand. “You heard Kyle… he’s rifling through all of Erik’s drawers right now.”

He snickered. “At least he was honest about it. I get your point, though.”

Mickey went still for a moment, then abruptly sat up. “I have an idea.”