Bad Things (9 page)

“
Isn’t it kind of…weird for you, working at the club?”

Still grinning. Gaze sharpening. “In what way?”

Why had he said anything? Fuck, he should get a microchip installed that would shut him up when he smoked.

“
Just…being in a room full of naked women.”

“
Why would that be weird for me?”

Fuck. Was he not gay? Suddenly Carson felt incredibly stupid. He’d just assumed he was. Because Brian had said it. Because the bouncers and the girls had talked about it a couple of times in front of him. But maybe Brian had told them, too. Maybe they’d all bought into some malicious lie. Or believed something Brian had assumed for no better reason than…what? Anxiously taking inventory, now, his face getting hotter by the second, Carson couldn’t actually think of one fucking thing that marked Xavier as gay. Except maybe the way Carson felt, sometimes, when Xavier looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” Carson laughed, giving up any attempt to get out of this one. It was way too late. He’d just have to eat the crow, as his mother had said at least once a week. “I don’t know how I got it in my head, but I thought you were…”

Xavier sat there, letting the seconds tick by, not saying anything, not even drinking. All he did, finally, was cock an eyebrow to spur Carson on toward the end of his sentence.

“I heard you were gay,” Carson finally managed to say.

Xavier laughed. He didn’t look angry. Or insulted. “Yeah? Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. I mean, people have just been saying it.”

Serious, now. “Who?”

“The bouncers. The girls. Brian.”

Pinning him under a probing look, Xavier asked, “Do I seem gay to you?”

Even stoned, it wasn’t just his face burning, now. His whole body was starting to sweat. Was he about to get kicked out? Punched in the face?

“
No.”

“
No?”

“
No. I mean, they just said it. It didn’t occur to me they were lying.”

“
But now you think they were lying?”

Fuck, why was he fucking with him like this? Grinning like it was the most fun he’d had in a week? And probing him with that gaze like he was doing a fucking EKG?

“I don’t fucking know. You tell me,” Carson huffed, exasperated.

Xavier’s taunting grin widened into that startlingly warm smile that seemed to appear much more rarely. “Good. Straight to the source.” He leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees. Dark eyes boring into him again. “No. They weren’t lying.” The teasing grin came back, but the probing stare didn’t relent at all. “Isn’t it weird for you?”

“What? You being gay?”

“
Working at the club.”

“
For me? Why would it be weird for me?”

Why would he ask that? Suddenly he had a sickening image of Brian whispering something to Xavier, with a wink and that ugly ass smile of his.

“It’s easy for me at the club,” Xavier said, “because I don’t want to fuck the people on display. But if I worked at a club full of beautiful young men walking around naked and laying on tables like odalisques, I’d go through every shift with a hard-on the size of Rhode Island. So. How do you get through it?”

He didn’t like the way Xavier’s gaze made him feel like he was a frog being dissected, its belly split down the middle, flaps of skin pinned to a board, organs exposed.

“It’s only weird at first.” Carson composed his words with all the strategic care his buzz would allow. “After a couple days, you train yourself not to react like you would in a sexual situation.”

“
So, when Autumn comes to the bar to load her tray up with martinis, and you’re two feet away from her bare tits, you don’t feel anything?”

“
No. Not really.”

“
And your dick doesn’t feel anything?”

“
No.” He probably should have lied, and said yes.

When Xavier went to bed and he was left alone on the couch converted into a bed by a sheet that smelled like laundry detergent, a blanket that smelled just faintly like Xavier, and a fat, unyielding pillow, Carson was torn between disappointment and relief. Xavier made him weirdly nervous. But part of him wished he could hold Xavier in front of him forever, like a living, moving, speaking photograph, one he could touch and smell. The hundreds of mental photographs he´d taken—recording contours and shadows, pigment of tattoos—were more torment than consolation now that he was alone.

But at least alone, he could imagine everything was different. He wasn’t there for Brian. He hadn’t lied and tricked Xavier. They were really friends.

And he wasn’t afraid of him.

Maybe when Xavier told him that they hadn’t been lying when they’d said he was gay, Carson had said, “I think I might be gay, too.” Just half-thinking it, a haze of unformed words, more like a telepathic transmission, made his face hot, and his guts twinged.

The first touch would be gentle. Incongruous with Xavier’s probing look. A surprising contrast to that playful, slightly mocking grin.

Just the idea of it, vague and distant, had Carson breathing fast, his heart beating hard.

A gentle touch. A steady, warm gaze. A kind, patient smile.

Everything done slowly, with a tenderness no one else had known from Xavier. Tentative, soft kisses, until want rose up and need swept away fear like a devastating wave. Caresses too light, too tuned to his responses to have come from hands that big, a body so huge and hard.

Carson went to the bathroom. A little nauseated by the mess he’d made, he washed off his hand, then cleaned off his stomach with a wet wad of toilet paper. Anxious, as if Xavier were telepathically reading his thoughts from the other room.

When he went back to the couch and lied down, the pictures were different. Xavier’s understanding gaze erasing Carson’s shame and regret at an entire life of cowardice and lies. Xavier’s smile filling the hollowness with warmth, displacing the cold anxiety that had been there ever since he was nine and found out he was broken in a way that would make his mom and dad not love him any more unless he pretended not to be.

More pictures. Pictures that made him blush and fidget under the soft, heavy blanket, because they were such childish fantasies. Feeding each other sushi across a small table in a dimly-lit restaurant. Xavier teaching him to spar. Saying his name in his low, throaty voice. Walking down Third Street Promenade holding hands the way he’d seen another couple doing a couple months earlier (he’d walked behind them for blocks, his chest aching, his stomach turning until he was afraid he was going to throw up).

Xavier. Shirtless. Sweaty. Letting him trace the outlines and details of every tattoo. His arm, muscles cut, veins bulging from his workout. His broad chest. Dark nipples. The firm ripples of his six-pack. Huge cock heavy and thick, easy to hold through his loose shorts. Swelling in his hand, suddenly hard and upright.

After another trip to the bathroom to clean up, Carson went back to the couch, but was too wound up in nauseating guilt and gut-twisting anxiety to fall asleep.

Even though they’d gone to bed after four a.m., Xavier was up by nine, working out in the basement. When Carson heard him get in the shower, he dragged himself off the couch and made breakfast. Omelet stuffed with spinach, tomato, mushroom and cheddar. Toast and sausage on the side. He juiced a dozen oranges for fresh OJ. He wasn’t sure if the gesture alleviated his guilt, or made him feel shittier. More two-faced.

“Well, well.” Xavier was in his jeans and T-shirt. Dressed for the tattoo shop, not the club. Contours of his torso taunting in near-visibility. “I never considered myself the marrying kind, but you’ve got me reconsidering.”

Was he trying to make him blush? Carson could never tell whether Xavier meant to fuck with him, or was just being playful.

Xavier grabbed a jar of salsa from the fridge, and two bottles of hot sauce from the cupboard, and sat down. “So. What are you up to today?”

“
I’ve got a couple appointments set up to see apartments.”

Xavier poured a third of a bottle of hot sauce onto his plate, sawed a chunk of omelet off with the side of his fork, and mopped up enough sauce that it dripped in red globs when he lifted it from the plate. “Don’t settle for a shitty place because you feel like you have to rush. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.”

Why did it seem almost pornographic, the way Xavier masticated his food? Jaws flexing, tendons in his neck coming into relief. The spicy sauce making beads of sweat come out above his lip.

“
Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Carson tried a squirt of the hot sauce on his omelet. Two drops just about burned a hole in his tongue.

“You want me to drop you somewhere on my way to the shop?”

Eyes watering, nostrils burning, he said, “That’s okay. I’ve got the bus schedule mapped out. And my first appointment’s not until one.”

Carson waited until Xavier had been gone almost half an hour and he was as sure as he was ever going to be that he wouldn’t reappear to grab a forgotten phone, or his change of clothes for his shift at the club. He could hardly make himself step away from the window where he’d been standing for the last five minutes, watching the street in case Xavier’s car pulled up to the curb. Was he really doing this?

No desk in Xavier’s bedroom. Just a dresser, a night stand, a chair, and a bed. Unmade. Comforter off to one side, sheet in a wad at the foot of the bed that provoked the fleeting image of Xavier asleep, on his belly, naked. Pillow still molded to the shape of Xavier’s head.

Max had sounded so reasonable when he’d talked him into this craziness. Yes, fine, Carson agreed, there were plenty of things consenting adults liked to do, that society constantly tried to control. Like booze in the twenties. Like pot since Nixon. Like whether it was legal or not for two men or two women to fuck each other or marry each other.

And Carson more or less agreed prostitution fell into that category. What business was it of politicians and cops, if some elderly widower or middle-aged divorcee wanted to enjoy a night with a pretty girl now and then? Or if some college kid wanted to lose it with someone experienced so he wouldn’t embarrass himself when he finally got the girl of his dreams into bed? Or, hell, if some guy too scared to come out of the closet wanted to fuck a guy, just once in his life, or once a month, without his wife and kids knowing about it? In principle, he agreed. But that nausea rolling around inside had him feeling like he was doing the wrong thing. Like he was on the wrong side.

Nothing in the closet but clothes and shoes. Fairly sure after two days at the apartment that there was nothing important tucked away there, he skipped the living room, and headed down to the basement. At the far end of the space, on the left, there were a few file boxes stacked up on the shelves. Pulling one out and heaving it onto the nearby work table, Carson stared at it a minute.

So far, he hadn’t really done anything. And, okay, fine, he needed the money. But not this bad. Not bad enough to fuck over someone who’d been a hundred percent decent to him. Really fucking kind to him, actually.

But when he imagined facing Brian, and worse, facing Max, he yanked the lid off the box. Xavier might beat the shit out of him, if he knew what he was doing. But Max would do something much worse if he got it into his head to blow a case of guilt or nerves out of proportion and imagine he’d been betrayed. Fuck, Carson tried to shake off the images seeping into his mind when he thought of what Max would do if he thought Carson had decided to take Xavier’s side over his.

Files. Utility bills. Dentist. Doctor. Insurance. Tax returns. Property deeds. So, he owned the house. And the tattoo shop. Nothing but income from the tattoo business on his last few tax returns. Nothing like a 1099 or a W2 from the FBI or police or any PI firm. He took a few pictures with his phone, like Max had told him to.

The other boxes were full of mementos. Photo albums. Two whole boxes full of loose photos that went back to long before Xavier was born. Another box of junior high, high school, and college yearbooks. A weird rush of guilt washed over Carson in the wake of his inexplicable surprise that Xavier had gone to college. What had he majored in? Fine arts? Art history? Sarcasm?

Looking around, he didn’t see anything else in the basement that looked important. He made sure the boxes on the shelf were arranged the way he’d found them, and went back upstairs. To the dining table. To Xavier’s computer.

The laptop was sitting in front of the chair, just where Xavier had been using it before he’d left for work. Email application open. Carson half wished Xavier had been more careful. Shut down. Password locked.

He opened a stealth browser window, pulled up Max’s email on his phone, and followed the instructions, logging in to the web site, and downloading and installing the spying software. When it was all set up, he closed the windows, and almost shut the laptop before he remembered Xavier had left it open. Fuck, what else had been open? His email? Or was it just the desktop? Did it matter? Who remembered the exact state they’d left their computer in?