A Place for Cliff (2 page)

He followed the simple directions and just as the gentleman said, the door was open. Cliff bent across the doorway peeking in and there he was—sitting behind a cozy wooden desk, reclined back in his chair. Feet propped on the desk and hands clasped over his lap, sitting there patiently as if the man had known all along he would come in.

“Well that didn’t take long at all.” The man glanced at him, nothing more, but waited for Cliff to complete the journey.

Cliff stopped at the doorway just taking it all in. The room was too small for all the things he had tried to cram into it—a modest attempt to have all the comforts he wanted at his finger tips in a VA budget-sized room. A large bookcase behind him was stuffed to the gills with books, magazines, old newspapers and other sundries some neatly stacked, some not. Catty-corner, another bookcase mirrored the likes of the first with the addition of medical reference sets. The rest of the room was consumed with two comfy chairs and a small narrow lounger, the kind you expect to find in a psychologist’s office. They were positioned so close you could sit in one and prop your feet up on another. A fresh newspaper was laid out on the small table to one side of a chair. He stepped in and looked over the headlines, but it wasn’t English. It wasn’t even an English alphabet.

“What language is this?” Cliff used the question like you would comment on the weather to break the ice.

“Serbian.”

“One of the guys I work with is from Serbia, but I don’t think he speaks it.” Cliff continued to look around the room, looking for something else to comment on.

The man stayed quiet just watching and waiting patiently.

“Should I close the door?”

“If it makes you comfortable.” The answer mild, but didn’t hint of whether he should or not.

Cliff didn’t move, but glanced down at the rather worn brown tweed sofa lounger, pushed back against the wall. It took up the whole space from the door to the corner, “Should I be sitting on this?” He turned then to look at the man sitting behind his desk in the same relaxed position he was in when he first came in, but Cliff watched for any change in the man’s expression.

“Only if you’d like to lie down.”

Cliff twisted rather suddenly to look him full front on, “Why am I here?”

“I’m not sure yet.” There was a slight gesture of his hands like a shrug there.

“What?”

“I said I’m not sure yet.” This time he shook his head, but only once.

“Why would you say that?”

“Because you haven’t told me what you need from me yet. When you tell me then I will know.”

Cliff stilled. He had half a mind to tell him to piss off and just march right out of there, but nothing in the man’s tone indicated any form of mockery or suggested some game. Rather every time he spoke it sounded like an invitation to stay and talk awhile. Even if he wasn’t striking the conversation up himself.

“How did you know I was coming?”

“Patronus said you might need my help.”

Patronus.
Pyotr Laszkovi called Diesel by title—not just any title, but one that clearly defined his status among the B&D community. Well at least that told him something—he just wasn’t sure what. “Did he say what kind of help I’m to get?”

“No one knows that but you.”

Cliff let out a heavy sigh and dropped into the chair closest to him and dropped his face in his hands. This was too frustrating. He didn’t know why Diesel would send him here. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave—because he did need help. He just didn’t know what kind or what part this man was suppose to play. “I don’t know what I need.”

“Yet you are here. So perhaps there is something I can do for you. We just need to figure that part out.”

Cliff peeked up through his fingers, “How?”

The man shrugged ever so gently, “We can talk. Sometimes it helps to just talk. Next thing you know it all comes out and then you’ll know.”

It sounded like the best damn plan he’d ever heard, though he had no idea why because he hated talking. “So what am I suppose to call you?”

That smile crept back to his face. “My name works. Pyotr it’s almost like Peter.”

“Peter—only with an accent.”

He chuckled then. “Yes, only with an accent—and not spelled the same.”

Cliff sat back in the chair letting his head fall back and he turned to look at Peter,
only not spelled the same.
“So what do we talk about?”

“Anything you like.” Pyotr dropped his feet to the floor, pushed up and walked around to the other chair across from him and sat down. Letting his arms rest easy like on the armrests. “As long as it is about
you
.” He added.

Cliff glanced at his hands in his lap; they still looked chaffed from wearing the dusted nitrile gloves all day. He didn’t even know where to start really. “My sister—”

“Like I said—” Pyotr interrupted gently, “as long as it’s about
you
.” It was only a reminder— or perhaps, strange as it seemed, permission. Permission to think about his own feelings or just his own thoughts and not about what he had to go through to take care of Kimmi.

“I don’t get a lot of time for myself—” he started off. How weird was that? Getting to talk about just himself and he couldn’t help, but want to continue. “But when I do, I like to go to this club down town—”

Pyotr shifted in the chair and propped his elbow up on the arm, his fingers strumming across his chin. Back and forth they moved, like a violin bow drawn slowly across the instrument’s strings as he listened to the young man talk. First just surface stories, the shell we all tell others and ourselves of who or what we want others to see—
all lies
. Most harmless, but we never tell ourselves the truth really. One thing told, led to another and Pyotr remained quiet as the young man continued. While his words seemed inconsequential, the young man’s body started to say something completely different. He was barely holding himself together. Thread bare at nearly every seam. It wasn’t going to be long before the lad came apart and there was no preventing it. No stitching him back together until after he spilled. Then it would take some time to sift through the young lad’s innards, take what was good and what was necessary and toss the rest. Thread up a new length of good sturdy cord and put him back together.
That’s why the young man was here in front of him, he evaluated, to catch him when he went crashing, insides and all to the floor.

Obviously something took place that the Patronus saw as a sign and with Cliff being active in the BDSM community it was always best to refer him to someone inside the realm. Because somewhere among all the talk,
sex
was going to come up, perhaps even an identity switch. Any Average Joe doctor would likely pull out some Freudian non sense and send him up river from where he naturally needed to be. There was also the fact that Diesel used his title when he called. That opened the notion that perhaps Cliff here was in need of some
scene
therapy as well.

Still listening both with his ears and his eyes, Pyotr did a little more observational work. Taking in the young man—tall and slender, he could see some muscle tone in his arms, though he couldn’t say about the rest of his body through the loose t-shirt and relaxed-fit jeans. Grey blue eyes like the color of rain clouds moving in. Dirty blonde, choppy hair trimmed short around the neck and ears, the top front of it longer and at the moment flipped up. Either it was meant to be that way, as some youthful hairstyle or the young man spent a lot of nervous moments raking though it and had a tendency to pull it straight up. Whatever the cause it gave him a frumpy bratty/cute look and Pyotr was instantly taking a growing liking to him.

Around the lad’s neck hung a simple brown heishi necklace with intermittent white shell disks. Nothing special at first glance—the kind you normally found in a beach tourist shop. Only hanging from this one’s center was a charm in the shape of an orange awareness ribbon. The only other jewelry visible was another orange awareness band sharing space with his watch on one wrist.  Someone in his life was fighting leukemia.

~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~

VISIT #2

Pyotr had given Cliff directions to his home in the district of Astoria for their session this time. Foremost he wanted Cliff out of his office and away from the clinic so as to remove any notion that what they were doing was strictly a doctor/patient arrangement. Rather, they had been brought together to share an experience. There was also a personal matter yet to be confessed; he had found the young man to be irresistible from their first encounter. Pyotr was running late getting there himself and he called ahead to suggest Cliff wait in the park a block over.

Pyotr found himself looking forward to their visit and when he arrived, he didn’t bother to pull his car into the gated courtyard of his home. Thankful no one was occupying his curb space, so he parked along the sidewalk, briskly walking the single block to reach Astoria Park.

He found Cliff sitting on a bench under one of the large maples. His arrival went unnoticed so he held back a moment just to watch the young man, to gain some perspective. He leaned up against a tree and just watched. But soon realized there was little to watch, at least of a physical nature, and that in itself lead to a deeper insight on the young man.

A dog barked down the street and Cliff turned glancing around and spotted Pyotr just a few feet away. His brow furrowed a bit. “How long have you been standing there?”

Pyotr pushed up from the tree and walked over. “Not long.” He stopped at the bench and looked down at Cliff, enjoying how the sun light breaking through the leaves flickered over his face and in his hair. He was further amused that, well aware of how imposing it could be standing over someone at his height, the young man didn’t flinch a muscle. “It was interesting to watch you though.” Pyotr finally offered.

Cliff’s brow lines deepened even more with a twisted crinkle in them. “How’s that?”

“Watching you, I noticed you don’t fidget or shift about impatiently. That’s unusual for most young people.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks to soften his stance.

The lines on Cliff’s face faded and the expression grew muted. “I’ve spent a lot of time in waiting rooms. Doctor visits, CT scans, surgeries—they all take time.” Cliff remembered to make it about him, which wasn’t really true. It was always about Kimmi.

“Do you feel up for a walk?” Pyotr motioned towards the trail path.

Cliff shrugged silently and without any further prompting got up and started walking. His pace quick like he had some place to go, he soon realized that Pyotr, for all his long legs was taking a much slower stride and he dropped back waiting for the older man to catch up and adjusted his pace to stay at his side.

They walked in silence for a long while, Pyotr simply waiting for the young man to start up just as he had before. Humorous, he should have expected it, that just like his own ability to wait patiently Cliff apparently was equally capable of doing so
quietly
. “So you have a sister.” It was more an observation than a question, but also a means to get Cliff talking. He only nodded his confirmation.

“And she is the one with leukemia?” Again Cliff nodded. “Must be hard, parents always focused on her. You must feel left out sometimes.”

This time he didn’t nod, “No. They pretty much left us both a long time ago.” He muttered.

Pyotr came to an abrupt stop catching the young man under his gaze. Twenty-six years of practice, Pyotr had heard them all, every sad story a person could tell and he’d always been able to hide a strong reaction to any of them. But this one floored him. He’d raised every one of his siblings by himself, but there was a damn good reason why he had. But how did a parent walk out on a sick child. He swallowed his admonishment and began to stride again. “How long ago?”

“Five years. I had just turned 19. I came home after pre op for a marrow transplant for Kimmi and they were gone. Their things, some of the house furnishings and their bank accounts—all closed. Not even a fuckin’ letter.” Cliff growled the last part, “Kimmi didn’t have any time left hospital red-tape policies so someone at the hospital helped out with the court stuff making me Kimmi’s guardian so they could proceed with her surgery and the marrow supply treatments.”

They walked further while Cliff went on about the last five years and what it was like to find himself trying to take care of his baby sister who suffered from a serious and costly illness. Pyotr kept quiet, giving only the occasional reminder that this was about him and he should talk about his perspective not his sister’s as they walked along the paved trail.

As they reached the far end of the park to the running track, they climbed up the bleachers and sat to watch the college athletes at practice.

Cliff noticed the way Pyotr’s eyes followed a few of the trim men as they sprinted down the track, then shifted to the center field where a small group was warming up. He suddenly felt the urge to gain the man’s attention back, wanting the man to be looking at him rather than the others. “Do you—” he paused not certain if the question was allowed, but then he wanted to know or rather his body wanted to know. “Are you gay?”

Pyotr turned and looked at him. A content gleam in his eyes, not at all offended by the suggestion. “I am.”

Cliff chewed at the inside of his lip a moment. He’d seen another man leave Pyotr’s home just as he was walking up the sidewalk earlier. Hell the home was big enough to house a whole bunch of lovers. “Won’t your lover be upset you’re out here? With me that is?”

Pyotr never once looked away, now that the topic had been struck. “I’d have to have one first and then there would need to be an understanding this is what I do for a living. Though I don’t bring clients to my home as I have in your case.” While the focus had shifted from Cliff to himself, Pyotr allowed it. Sometimes that was a good way to get the deeper parts out and he was certain the lad had run out of surface details.

Cliff looked the man over several times his eyes roving over the details of his body and those domineering blue eyes shimmering in the sunlight. It didn’t make sense. Pyotr was astounding to look at. He must have taken a thousand mental pictures of the man home with him last week and stared at them all whenever he had time to close his eyes and think of him. “Why don’t you?” Cliff fidgeted for the first time. The question was too personal, but already spoken so he might as well press on. “I mean you’re good looking. Why wouldn’t you have someone? And the man I saw?”