It's Not Shakespeare (4 page)

Rafael looked at the little dog and said, “Oh
hell
no, little man. You can ride in the back seat or you can ride on my lap, but I’m gonna be co-daddy in this ship, you feel me?”

Marlowe panted up at Rafael, and Rafael scooped him up, fastened his seatbelt, and plopped the little dog on his lap. Then he rolled the window down just enough for Marlowe to be able to sniff the wind but not enough for him to fit through the gap, and James fell in love, just a little.

“Thank you,” James said quietly. “He’s sort of used to being, uhm, co-daddy. It’s nice of you to share.”

“No worries,” Rafael shot back. He scratched Marlowe under the chin, and the dog licked his nose. “And yeah, I work at Jiffy Lube. We’re all gearheads there.”

A giant bland tapioca blob-monster of white expectations exploded in James’s head. “Jiffy Lube?”

Rafael didn’t take offense—not at all. “Yeah, I know. Like I told Sophie—brown hoodrat, right? But she’s got a moms that works in a high school—gots all these idea about it not mattering—not black people or brown people or rich people or white people. She looked at you, saw pretty gay guy, thought of me. Sorry ’bout that.”

“No worries,” James said, mentally beating that big white tapioca blob-monster down with copies of Pablo Neruda and Jimmy Santiago Baca. “I’m, uhm, flattered. You’re sort of out of my league. And way the hell too young for me.”

They were at a stoplight, and Rafael’s black-eyed gaze was slow, suggestive, and cocky as hell. “The hell I am, Jimmy-Jack,” he said with a leer. “One night with me, you’ll be five years younger, guarandamnedteed!”

James let out a chuff of air. “Five years younger, I’d still be five years too old for you,” he said gently, blushing, and Rafael rolled his eyes.

“Bullshit! I’m damned near thirty, old man—that age bullshit don’t fly with me! You want to turn me down, you gotta come up with something better than that!”

James concentrated on the road. “I, uhm, didn’t know you were offering.”

“You say that word a lot, you know?”

“Which word?”

“Uhm.”

Oh God. “Not usually,” James mumbled. “You’ve got to understand, I, uhm, don’t have a real social group out here. And you’re, uhm….” Well shit. Let’s just be real. “You’re sort of a frickin’ god, Rafael, okay? You make me nervous as all hell, and you’re really too young for me, and I’m not going to be articulate, okay? You can tell Sophie thanks but no thanks. Next time, make sure she gets someone who doesn’t creak when he walks.”

There was a silence, and James stopped at the next light and looked to his right. Rafael was looking at him with that slow smile taking over his face.

It made James’s stomach cold and his chest and face hot and his balls do a little dance somewhere between the two extremes.

“I’d like to hear you creak, old man,” he said softly. “I’d really like to hear you moan.”

James whimpered and would have banged his forehead against the steering wheel, but the light turned green.

“You’re just evil. Evil sex on legs. I should pull over and let you out at the nearest strip mall or I’ll be spoiled for all other underwear models forever.”

Rafael’s chuckle made his balls stop dancing. There was no room to dance when his cock took up the entire dance floor in his pants. “You got a long line of underwear models in your bed, Jimmy-Jack, or are you sayin’ I’ll ruin your stroke mags for life?”

James scowled. “Do I
look
like I’ve got a long line of underwear models in my bed? I’ve got a long line of underwear models on my
computer.
They love me. They’re always hard, always there, and they don’t take off and leave me for married sugar daddies who finally leapt out of the closet and left their wives. I don’t need real, but I do need faithful. I’m okay, really. I’m fine.”

“Oh, daddy, you may be fine, but you’re miles away from okay.”

James made a face. “And
please
don’t call me ‘daddy’.”

“I could call you ‘
papi
’
—
how’s that?”

“It means ‘daddy’ in Spanish, doesn’t it.” He didn’t even have to ask the question. He knew from the way Rafael chuckled that it was just one more way to yank his chain.

“Of course it does. You’re too easy.”

James exited off the freeway and scowled at the mass of cars in front of the auto mall. “I thought the point of all this was that I refuse to be easy. Even if you’re…”—his mouth went dry—“you’re beautiful.”

“You hear that, Marlowe?” Rafael asked the dog. “He thinks I’m pretty. I think maybe Sophie picked better than I thought.”

James gave a frustrated groan as he turned the Volvo into the dog park by main strength. The power steering sucked rocks, but he considered it an extra workout for his day.

“Good sound, pretty white man,” Rafael said, his voice throaty and seductive again. “Now make it when I got you naked, and it’ll be perfect.”

James parked the car and rested his head against his steering wheel, knowing he was sweating underneath his summer-weight jacket, and that his hair was nearly sopped through.

“Rafael?” he asked, his voice muffled by his arms.

“Yeah,
papi?”

“You know you’re beautiful, right?”

“I’m pretty. It’s not a free pass to people’s beds, you know.”

“Yeah, but… it’s been a while for me. I’ve got certain rules, okay? You’re pretty, but I need you to respect those rules, okay?”

Rafael’s hand was suddenly rubbing on his back, and James was too miserable with a confused mixture of mortification and desire to even find the touch arousing.

“How long’s it been?”

“Since what?”

“Since you got off with someone live?”

James had a hazy memory of someone going down on him in the back bedroom of a staff party. He’d been on his fifth or sixth glass of wine then, because he’d been new, and it had been easier to drink than to socialize, so he couldn’t even remember the man’s face, much less his name.

“Two years?” he asked himself. “Closer to three.”

“How long since it was with someone you could remember?” Rafael asked laughing, and James had a better answer to that.

“Three years, five months, seven days.”

Rafael stopped laughing. “Mr. I’m-gonna-ditch-you-for-a-sugar-daddy?”

“That was the guy.” Marlowe hopped off of Rafael’s lap and came to lick James’s face. James let him—welcomed it, in fact, because unlike underwear models and Rafael, James knew that Marlowe would always love him.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Professor Jimmy. How ’bout you and me, we go throw the ball for your dog here, and let him take his dump, ’cause he’s just being patient, and we’ll talk like two guys that just met and pretend we’re not picturing each other naked. How’s that.”

“Sounds peachy,” James muttered, mostly because he didn’t have a better plan. “Then what?”

“Then we stop some place they got a patio, so Marlowe can sit outside with us on this fucking beautiful spring day, and we eat like civilized people, and then you take me to my mom’s place, so I can get my car from frickin’ Sophie the matchmaker….”

“And that’s the end?” Because that sounded perfect, as long as there wasn’t a second date or anything, and James didn’t have to think about his specially laid-out rules to keep his specially made-out life from getting specially fucked up should James get inconveniently laid.

“Hell noes!” Rafael laughed. That comforting hand on his back moved up to his shoulder, and he whispered the next part right in the sensitive hollow of James’s ear. “Then I’m gonna kiss you goodnight, and if we like the way that goes, I’m gonna pick Sophie up some more, and let her borrow my car.”

James strangled on his tongue. “But….”

“But any man who needs to get laid as badly as you do needs to forget all his rules, Professor Jimmy. Rules are for chumps. You’ve got a dog who needs his daddy all nice and relaxed, not tied up in a big knot of shouldn’t-do-this, you feel me?”

His hand was still on James’s shoulder, and his breath was puffing in James’s ear. “I feel you,” James whispered, because it was true physically, even if James couldn’t agree philosophically.

“Good, then let’s get out of this car before your dog loses his patience, ’kay?”

Rafael got out with Marlowe’s lead in his hand and escorted the little dog to the dog park entrance without looking back. James stopped long enough to get a couple of the plastic bags he kept in the back of the car, under the seat, and shove them in his pocket, and then grab Marlowe’s special doggie balls from behind the bags, before he followed them out to the park.

R
AFAEL
threw the ball with an easy, laughing grace that made James’s mouth dry and his heartbeat thready. If he wasn’t conscientious about his cholesterol and blood pressure, he would have thought he was having an arrhythmia. As it was, he just stood there with his hands in his pockets and allowed Rafael to lead him through some polite conversation.

“So how long you been out here, Professor Jimmy?”

“About ten minutes, just like you.”

Rafael sent him an eloquent look, and James felt foolish.

“Uhm, three years, three months, and a week or so.”

Rafael bent and took the ball from Marlowe, who wiggled his unapologetically slutty dog ass all over the place, hoping for more scritches behind the tail. Rafael obliged, and James couldn’t even resent the little dog. He wouldn’t mind getting his itches scratched by those long brown fingers either.

He shook his head and reminded himself that Rafael may have had a plan, but he, James, had a brain, and wiser heads should prevail. (And didn’t that sound old? Wiser heads should prevail? God—he’d been much braver about getting laid when he was young.)

“So, do you like working on cars?” he asked, honestly interested. To his dismay, Rafael blushed.

“I know, it’s not big-brain stuff,” he half apologized, and James shook his head.

“No, I think it’s awesome. I took an auto shop class once, right? And we had to write an essay about how the car worked, and I got an A, but I almost cut my fingers off trying to work on the engine of an old Chevy station wagon, and it occurred to me that sometimes, writing an essay was just bullshit, that real life was a lot harder, you know?”

He stopped rambling because Rafael was looking at him sideways, while Marlowe did the pee-pee dance for another ball throw. Rafael shook himself and threw the ball and then went back to looking at James with those big brown eyes.

“What’d I say?”

“Well, for one thing, you didn’t say ‘uhm’. I just can’t figure out if you’re bullshitting me, patronizing me, or trying to get in my pants.”

James flushed and then scowled. “Option D: None of the above. I was being completely fucking sincere, but never mind now. I’ll just shut up now and watch you steal my dog.”

“Your dog is off sniffing some other doggie asses,” Rafael said and then moved to where James was standing. Some of the other dog-park visitors were sitting on little stools with books while their dogs ranged around. James had a stool of his own, because some days, that was his thing, but he’d left it in the car today.

“Yeah, well, he does that.” James folded his arms and looked out to where Marlowe was socializing, wishing the dog could give him lessons.

“I like working on cars,” Rafael said after a silence. “I was really proud when I could make money, get out of the house, give to my little sister’s college fund, you know?”

James nodded. “Providing for yourself, your family—that’s important.” The old wound cut to the quick. He’d been providing for
his
family, and then he’d been shown how foolish he’d been to think he could have one.

“I’ve been thinking about taking some courses, though….” Rafael swallowed and looked away. “Sounds stupid, I know, but my boss, he says if I know more about business, I can open my own franchise. I’m thinking, I’ve got some community college credits under my belt, right? I get some general ed, get my two-year degree, and I can do a correspondence course in business. It would be nice owning my own business, you know? I’d be a good boss.”

James looked at him and nodded. He was personable; he had that easy authority. “You’d be a great boss,” he said with conviction. His own boss, the department head at the community college, wrote really obscure postmodernist novels and was fond of explaining that it was sheer jealousy on the part of the university president that lost him a secured position at UC-Davis to anyone who would listen. James had the uncomfortable feeling that it had been Lee Cresswell who had gone down on him at the staff party two years ago, but the man paraded his lovely wife and perfect family around on a regular basis, so James might have been mistaken about that.

But all thoughts of Lee Cresswell and his Rogaine-enhanced hairline went flying out the window when Rafael turned to James with that blinding, easy smile.

“You think? That’s nice of you to say, Professor Jimmy.”

“I mean it. I meant what I said about respecting what you do, too. I may be a sexually repressed white man, but I’m not a complete prick.”

Rafael nodded and rested his forearm on James’s shoulder. They were about the same height, and it was an easy, companionable thing to do, but that didn’t stop James’s heart from hitting the roaring acceleration of an organ powered by a triple-cocaine espresso.

“You’re a good guy, Jimmy—I hear you. And for the record, I’m not stealing your dog.”

As if hearing his magnificent self mentioned, Marlowe turned around and gave a big pink-tongued smile in their direction. “No?”

“Naw, I’m borrowing him. I like animals, but my shitty apartment don’t take them.”

James turned his head and smiled—just smiled. “You can borrow Marlowe anytime.”

Rafael’s eyes grew wide, and wider, and some of that cockiness and swagger seemed to melt. James’s smile melted, and for a moment, the dog park, the dog, everything else just seemed to melt away, fade, become moot and absent. It was just the warm pressure of Rafael’s arm on his shoulder and that brown, sun-warmed face only inches away.

“Why you call him Marlowe, Jimmy? Is it because he looks like Humphrey Bogart?”