I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (30 page)

He got up and walked back home, deciding it was time to forget about Ricky Livaudais.

That was the smart thing to do, after all.

He went about the business of living his life for three days before Ricky invaded his world again. Barry’s routine was always the same: he got up every morning and went to the gym, worked out, came home, ate breakfast and went to work. He then came home every night and fed the cat, relaxed without the vodka and was, in general, feeling rather pleased with himself when he ran into Ricky Livaudais in the most unusual place.

It was a Friday, and his boss’ birthday. “Meet us for drinks tonight,” his boss insisted. “You never do anything with us anymore. It won’t kill you.”

He agreed, not really wanting to but figuring it would do no harm to go to the Brass Rail. He met his co-workers and their friends there at nine, and at nine thirty on the dot the door back behind the pool table opened and several young men wearing only underwear came out to peddle their wares and dance for dollars. He’d never really cared for the Brass Rail — he knew it was snobbish to feel the way he did about the bar, but he couldn’t help it. There was just something enormously sad to him about the place, the dancers, and the patrons who parted with dollar bills to grope the lithe young bodies of the dancers. In other bars the dancers didn’t get to him the way the ones in the Brass Rail did. There was something seedy and sad in their neediness. They didn’t turn him on — rather, they made him feel kind of sad.

But he was relaxing and having a good time when he froze with his vodka tonic halfway to his lips. in the twenty-first centuryll and he

Ricky Livaudais was climbing up onto the bar in red bikini briefs.

At first, Barry was certain he was seeing things. It couldn’t be — not Ricky Livaudais, surely not. But as he watched him start shaking his narrow hips from side to side on the other side of the bar, he saw the sunburst tattoo at the base of his neck and knew it was him. There was another tattoo — the word DESTINY written in blue ink and old English lettering, across his lower back just above the waistband of the red bikinis. And there was the tattoo on the inner forearm.

Yes, it was most definitely Ricky Livaudais.

Ricky slowly started moving across the top of the bar, making way for another, more muscular young man to climb up where he’d just been dancing. Beyonce began wailing through the speakers about divas being the female version of hustlers, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from Ricky as he coaxed and teased dollar bills from men around the bar.

He wasn’t the handsomest stripper, nor did he have the best body, nor did he have the biggest package neatly wrapped up inside thin cotton underwear.

But there was just something about Ricky.

He couldn’t look away, no matter how much he wanted to.

Barry wasn’t sure what he would do when Ricky made it to where he and his friends were standing.

“That’s hot,” he heard his boss say as Ricky stepped over several drinks on the bar until he was standing just above them, moving his hips from side to side.

He swallowed and looked up.

His eyes locked on Ricky’s, and Ricky looked confused.

Ricky knelt down. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he said above the music, which was now Lady Gaga bitching about getting a telephone call on the dance floor. Ricky’s knees were spread apart, only inches away from Barry’s arms on either side. Ricky’s head was tilted to one side, his eyebrows furrowed together.

You murdered my boyfriend,
Barry wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. Instead, he shrugged. “Maybe.” He managed to sound calm and nonchalant, just another gay man in a gay bar talking to a stripper in red underwear. “You do look kind of familiar to me.”

A smile spread across Ricky’s face, and Barry was sickened to realize how handsome he actually was. The green eyes lit up, and the stern, angry looking features relaxed into the face of a good looking young man, the kind of young man you’d want to wake up next to every morning. “You shop at Zara’s!” Ricky said excitedly, snapping his fingers, delighted with himself for remembering. “You live in my hood!” Ricky placed both hands on Barry’s shoulders. “I knew I recognized you!”

The hands on his shoulders burned him through the tight T-shirt Barry was wearing. They felt like acid devouring his flesh, insidiously eating their way into his nervous system. He swallowed, resisting the urge to throw Ricky’s hands off him, to toss the cheap vodka tonic in his face, to shove him hard enough to knock him backwards off the bar and maybe even crack his skull or snap his neck when he hit the floor. “I do live in the lower Garden District,” Barry replied slowly. “I guess maybe I’ve seen you around.” H he kissed me. On the nose. their your e was amazed at how calm and even his voice sounded, now that contact was being made. He thought he’d be more nervous, that his heart would pound so loudly others could hear it. He was proud of himself, more proud than he perhaps should have been. His hands weren’t even shaking. His only reaction was the sudden dryness of his mouth and throat. He took another sip of his vodka tonic.

Ricky leaned forward and pressed his lips against Barry’s ear. “How long you gonna be here?” His breath felt hot against Barry’s neck, as one hand slid down Barry’s torso. “Maybe you could give me a ride home?”

Barry swallowed. “How late you going to be working?”

Ricky looked around. “I can leave in an hour if I want.” He swallowed. “There’s too many guys working tonight for me to make much money, anyway.”

“Okay,” Barry replied, looking into the deep green eyes just inches away from his own.
They were,
he reflected,
really beautiful.

“I’ll be back.” Ricky smiled at him, and stood back up to his full height on the bar, and started dancing his way down to the next group of men.

His co-workers teased him about his ‘encounter,’ but their jaws dropped when Ricky came walking up a little over an hour later, a bag slung over his right shoulder, ready to leave. Barry made his goodbyes to his openly envious co-workers and headed out the front door with Ricky.

“I didn’t mean for you to leave your friends,” Ricky said finally, when they were inside Barry’s car and he was pulling away from the curb.

“I don’t mind,” Barry replied. “It was my boss’ birthday. I don’t really go out that much. I don’t much care for it.”

“You don’t?” Ricky looked out the window.

“Since I quit smoking the smoke bothers me,” Barry said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “And I don’t really like to drink all that much anymore, either. No, if it hadn’t been my boss’ birthday, I would have probably stayed home tonight.”

“And we wouldn’t have met.”

We’ve kind of already met — you just don’t remember me.

Ricky laughed. “I don’t know your name, I just realized I didn’t ask.”

“Barry.”

“I’m Ricky.”

They smiled at each other while stopped at the light at Canal Street.

“It’s so weird that we live in the same neighborhood,” Ricky went on when the light turned green. “And that we shop at the same places and all. I knew as soon as I saw you tonight that I knew you from somewhere — oh, turn here. I live on Camp Street, close to the corner at Melpomene.”

“So I should go down to Magazine?” Barry asked.

“Uh huh.”

Ricky didn’t speak again until after Barry turned onto Camp Street. “Pull up here in the twenty-first centuryll and he — oh, good, there’s a spot right in front.”

Barry maneuvered the car into the spot in front of the fuchsia house, and cut the engine. “Well, here you are.” He smiled brightly.

“Oh, come on in.” Ricky smiled back at him, opening the passenger side door. “I know you don’t smoke cigarettes, but I’ve got some awesome weed that’ll blow your mind.”

“Just for a little while.” Barry hesitated with his hand on the car door handle. Maybe he does remember me. What if this is some kind of trick? To get me inside? And he has friends waiting, so they can do to me what they did to Thomas?

He looked back into Ricky’s green eyes, and chided himself for being so paranoid. He opened the car door and got out, following Ricky through the gate and up the front steps. Ricky fumbled in the darkness for his keys, apologizing — “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked them to fix that damned light” — and finally getting the door open. He flicked on the lights and shut the door behind Barry.

Almost immediately, Barry felt sorry for Ricky.

f Rick The place was big, but it wasy’s hea

Kathryn Johnson lives in the Washington, DC area and also writes as Mary Hart Perry. Her award-winning fiction spans genres while appealing to readers of a variety of ages. Each story includes those elements of which she’s most fond –– a little history, a dash of mystery, a romantic connection and adventure. She teaches fiction writing at the renowned The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. And her private mentoring service for writers (
www.WriteByYou.com
) has steered dozens of new authors toward achieving their dream of publication. Kathryn’s most recent books are
The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”
; and
The Wild Princess he kissed me. On the nose.be changed much since
and
Seducing the Princess
, the first two Victorian thrillers in her Mary Hart Perry series based on the lives of Queen Victoria’s daughters.

London, England 1884

Maisie turned away before he saw her and propped her wooden tray on one hip. “Pasties ‘n’ tarts!” she sang out, though less lustily than most days. A nervy lump crowded the words in her throat. “Tuppence fer a tart. Sweet mincemeat, apple ‘n’ plum. Tide y’over while ye wait to tour the Bloody Tower.”
Maybe he wouldn’t even recognize her?
Might be all for the better
.

Not since the old queen’s jubilee had she and Pete Dunn crossed paths. Her whole world had changed since then. Now she had Geoffrey, lovely man, puttin’ a roof over her head and food on a table she could call her own. She’d got herself a good everyday dress, plus a spare, from the stalls on Petticoat Lane. Leather brogues without holes. And a warm tweedy coat too.

Used to be, Ma greased her with goose fat then sewed her into whatever rags were handy until spring. “Never you mind the itchin’, Maisie girl, it’ll keep out the cold.” No more of that foul smellin’ stuff for her! She could have a bath whenever she bothered to boil a basin of water — winter or not. She’d never go back to the squalor and meanness of Spitalfields. Not while there was breath in her body.

Maisie forced herself not to turn around. She felt Pete Dunn’s black-as-cinder eyes following her. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she kept moving through the tourists bunched up in the courtyard, waiting their turn to enter the grounds.

“Six pence for the full tour, ladies and gents!” one of the uniformed guides shouted. “Visit the queen’s armory. Stand where good Queen Mary lost her pretty head. See the Crown Jewels in all their glo-ree-ous splendor.”

Maisie walked faster, cutting between ladies with their parasols, men in their top hats, a copy of
Dickens’ Dictionary of London
tucked under one arm to guide them proper round the city’s sites.

Six pence.
Not long ago half of that had been a fortune to her. Enough to feed a family on a bag of crusts for two friggin’ days. Oh, how she’d envied those rich brats in their pre
@font-face {
font-family: "Liberation Serifedvotty clothes, brought in fancy carriages to ogle the rooms where royals once lived, and died. Never, as children, had she or any of her mates got a peek inside these high walls protecting the complex of stone keeps, chapels, towers and warehouses called
The Tower of London
. The riffraff had to be satisfied with the free sights on nearby Tower Hill. Deafened by the ruckus of vendors, fire and sword swallowers, and escapologists. Mixing with the likes of Pete and his gang of mud larks and pickpockets.

She smiled to herself. Today, Missus Maisie Harris, wife of the Chief Yeoman Warder, had the run of the grand old castle, didn’t she? Including a cozy little room in the row of guards’ cottages ringing the parade grounds. They might not be rich, her and old Geoff, but they never lacked for beer nor bread. And their place was clean as a cat’s whiskers, on account she scrubbed it twice a week, top to bottom.
Pure heaven
. All she had to do to earn her keep was sell her pasties and keep a hawk’s eye for them’s that slipped past the gateman, aiming to nick a toff’s purse or madam’s silk hanky.