Carson guy wasn’t joking around and there was no telling what someone this unstable was
capable of doing. Ricky could see the headlines in the local papers.
High School Boy Found
Dead in Underwear: Killed by N.Y. Pimp
.
Before Carson removed his arm from Ricky’s shoulders, he smiled and said, “Now this is
how it’s going to work, Ricky. I’m going to give you a break right now because I like you and I
think you’re a smart guy.” He looked Ricky up and down and grabbed Ricky’s ass with his other
hand. He squeezed it hard and said, “I like you so much I’d even think about hiring you to work
for me if you’re interested. With this hot ass, you’d make a fortune. The older guys would love
you. You’d be turning one trick after another.” He leaned forward and whispered. “That’s the
secret, Ricky. If you can knock them off like flies and keep the pace moving fast, you can make a
fortune in this business. Do you get me, Ricky Dickey?”
The kids down by the curb were gasping now. “I
get
you,” Ricky said. He had him
pegged well: a sociopath with no regard for humanity whatsoever. “Knock them off like flies.”
In a move that made Ricky’s jaw drop, Carson put his hand down the back of Ricky’s
boxer shorts and grabbed his bare ass. He rubbed hard and patted three times. Carson smiled and
said, “You take care of this situation, Ricky. I don’t want to have to come back and take care of it myself. If I do, you won’t like it. Do you understand me, Ricky? You have a sweet ass, Ricky.
Feels like a soft, smooth velvet pillow. I can’t keep my hands off it. I’m what you might call an
ass man. And I know you like the way this feels, don’t you, Ricky? It’s even smoother then my
girlfriend’s ass and she’s fucking smooth. I’d hate to have to damage a pretty little thing like you,
Ricky, especially this sweet little ass.”
Before Ricky had a chance to object, Carson kissed him on the cheek and slapped his ass
harder. A minute later, Carson was backing the SUV out of the driveway and waving goodbye.
As Carson and his men disappeared down the street, Ricky adjusted his boxer shorts and bit his
bottom lip. His ass rounds were still stinging from the slap and he could still smell Carson’s
putrid ass-breath. He turned and looked up at the window where Chad was watching him. Chad
smiled and nodded. Ricky smiled back and started walking to the house. Ricky wasn’t sure what
he was going to do now, but he knew one thing for sure: Chad was not going back to work for
Carson in this lifetime.
Chapter Eleven
Although Ricky didn’t have much of an appetite, he offered to defrost a few prepared
organic meals his mother had left in the freezer. She’d marked them all with dates, nutritional
information, and microwave instructions in recycled containers. His mother believed in well
balanced, organic meals, not fast food. But when Ricky opened the freezer and pulled out a
frozen container filled with brown rice, organically grown lima beans, and free-range chicken in
gluten-free, nut-free, organic mushroom sauce (none of them had nut allergies; she just wanted to
play it safe), Chad smiled, thanked him for the offer, and said he’d cook dinner. He said he’d
stopped at the grocery store when he’d gone to the train station to pick up Rocco and he had all
the ingredients he needed to make veal Marsala.
“
Veal
?” Ricky said. This was an odd turn of events in Ricky’s house. He’d heard of veal,
but he’d never actually had it. His mother wouldn’t allow veal in the house. It offended her in the
same way inorganic food, canned peas and carrots, and old-fashioned tap water offended her.
“Yeah, it’s my specialty,” Chad said. He smiled and rubbed his palms together, then went
into the kitchen and started pulling pots and pans out of the cabinets.
Ricky remembered the breakfast Chad had cooked for him that morning. He could still
taste the burnt toast and salty, soupy eggs. When Chad started to whistle a tuneless song, Ricky
sent Rocco a glance to see how he felt about Chad’s cooking.
But Rocco only shrugged and said, “We fucking have to eat something. I’d rather take
my fucking chances with his cooking than with fucking organic, nut-free shit.” Two hours later, they all sat down at the dining room table together. Chad had rummaged
through Ricky’s mother’s drawers and he’d set the table with her best damask placemats, her
Noritake china, and her grandmother’s antique silverware. Ricky gulped. His mother only used
these things for special events, and there hadn’t been an event special enough since Ricky had
been six years old and his father had been promoted. When Chad lit the white candles in the
antique silver holders, Ricky looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes. They were special
candles from New England, made from organic beeswax, and Ricky’s mother never lit them. It
took six months before she’d removed the plastic in which they’d been wrapped.
But Chad smiled so widely and moved about with such elation Ricky didn’t have the
heart to stop him. Ricky could replace the candles with fakes and his mother would never know
it. Unless you knew exactly where they came from they looked like ordinary white wax candles
from the dollar store. Besides, in a way they already had been used. Ricky had found those
candles to be perfect substitutes for dildos on long lonely nights when his parents went out to the
movies.
Ricky and Rocco placed their napkins on their laps and waited for Chad to sit down first.
They kept exchanging glances, each one waiting for the other to start eating first. There were
thick slices of veal on their plates, covered with a grayish green sauce that reminded Ricky of the
Hudson River. Next to the veal, Chad had placed thin spears of asparagus in neat little groups
that resembled wood piles. It didn’t even smell right. There was something sour about Chad’s
cooking. Oh, there was nothing sadder than watching someone who thinks he can dance.
“Dig in, guys,” Chad said, tearing a small dinner roll in half. “There’s plenty more in the
kitchen.” Ricky shrugged and reached for his knife and fork. He hadn’t eaten all day and was
hungrier now than he’d been earlier. He smiled at Chad and tried to cut into the veal. But the
knife wasn’t sharp enough and he had to press down harder to make a dent. It took several tries
for Ricky to figure out how much pressure to use without looking obvious—or knocking the veal
off the plate. When he finally cut a piece free and put it into his mouth and started chewing, his
eyes widened and his head jerked back.
Chad leaned forward and asked, “How is it? Is there enough salt?” He was cutting and
eating without a problem.
Ricky smiled. He was chewing so hard he couldn’t speak. His head went up and down
with an exaggerated nod and he swallowed. Then he lifted his hands and said, “It’s perfect. No
more salt.” It not only felt like shoe leather in his mouth, it tasted as though Chad had dumped
the entire box of salt into the gray-green sauce.
Rocco just sat there, cutting and chewing with a lugubrious expression. When Ricky
noticed Rocco was eating each bite of veal with a big piece of roll, Ricky did the same thing. Yes,
that was much better. The roll cut the salt and helped the tough veal go down easier. At least the
asparagus wasn’t that bad—they’d been boiled to mush and no seasoning at all—and there was
plenty of water to help wash it all down.
By the time they were finished, Ricky smiled at Chad. “Thanks for cooking dinner. It was
very good.” Though it hadn’t been easy, Ricky had cleaned his entire plate. He didn’t want to
insult him.
Rocco wiped his lips with the napkin and said, “Yeah, man. Fucking great veal. I just
wish I was hungrier. I had a fucking meatball sandwich for lunch and it was fucking huge, man.”
Then he kicked Ricky under the table and said, “Best veal I ever had.” Ricky frowned at Rocco. Half of the veal Chad had served him was still on his plate. It
was obvious that he’d cut and shoved things, spreading them apart to make it look as if he’d
eaten more than he had.
Chad just smiled and stood up to clear the table. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll wrap the
leftovers up and you can have some later tonight if you get hungry.”
Rocco kicked Ricky again and said, “I’d like that,” with an animated voice and a strange
grin.
When Chad was in the kitchen, Ricky kicked Rocco back and said, “That was just wrong.
He worked hard, seriously.”
Rocco folded his arms across his chest and said, “I never tasted anything so fucking bad
in my life. I’d rather eat fucking dog food. I should have chosen the gluten-free organic shit your
mother froze.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Dog food.”
“He tried,” Ricky said. “Give him credit.”
“Give who credit?” Chad asked. He’d just returned to clear the rest of the table.
Rocco looked up at the ceiling and trilled his fingers on the table.
Ricky said, “Leyland. We were talking about the bad blow job he gave Rocco today, and
I said it was probably the first blow job he’d ever given anyone: give him credit.” He didn’t want
Chad to know they were talking about his cooking. People who liked to cook didn’t take it well
when someone offered even the slightest constructive criticism.
Chad laughed and gathered up spoons and forks. “Poor guy,” he said. “What about poor me?” Rocco said. “He fucking chewed my dick.” He reached between
his legs and rubbed his groin.
Ricky looked down. There was a nice big bulge between Rocco’s legs that made him
smile.
“Next time you can offer him a few tips,” Chad said. He looked at Ricky and smiled. “I
guess I got lucky for the first time in my life. I didn’t have to give Ricky and tips at all. He’s a
natural.”
Rocco grabbed his crotch and said, “I’ll bet.”
But Chad sent him a scathing look and said, “Hands off, Rocco. He’s all mine.” Then he
smiled at Ricky and kissed him on the cheek.
When Chad looked at him that way, with his head tilted and his dark eyes gazing down,
Ricky had trouble speaking a full sentence. So he shrugged and said, “Thanks.” By that time
Rocco wasn’t even paying attention to them. He was examining a hangnail on his thumb, trying
to pull it off without breaking the skin.
After dinner, Ricky went up to his room to do his homework and Chad and Rocco went
outside for a swim. It was even warmer that night than it had been the night Ricky had put on a
jack-off show for his next-door neighbor. He knew Chad and Rocco were swimming in their
underwear and he wondered if his neighbor was watching the through the parted curtain of his
second-floor window.
An hour later, Chad knocked on Ricky’s door and pushed it open. He walked in, sat down
on the bed, and said, “You’ve got a pervert next door.” Ricky closed a textbook and smiled. “He’s okay. He just got divorced and he’s moving
out later this month. He doesn’t mean any harm. As long as he thinks no one is watching him, he
just stands there and whacks off in the window.”
“It’s creepy,” Chad said. He was only wearing a bath towel loosely fastened around his
waist.
“He likes to watch me sometimes,” Ricky said. “No big deal.”
“Oh, he does?” Chad said. “Well, if I catch him watching you when I’m around I’m
going to kick his pervert ass.”
Ricky sat back and smiled. He looked into Chad’s eyes. “Really?” He knew this sounded
coy and mushy. He never spoke this way. But he couldn’t help himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t want anyone thinking dirty things about you while I’m
around—unless I give them permission. I can understand why this guy next door wants to watch
you. It’s only natural. You’re hot. But it’s not right if he doesn’t have permission.”
“But you think dirty things about me.” At least Ricky was hoping he did.
“That’s different.”
“No one gave you permission. How is that different?” Ricky knew what he meant, but he
wanted to hear Chad say it aloud.
Chad spread his legs and the towel opened wide enough so Ricky could see his entire
right leg. He avoided answering Ricky’s question and changed the subject. “Your buddy Leyland
is downstairs with Rocco. They want to get high and go for ice cream. I just fed Sparky and
covered his aquarium for the night.”
“I’d like some ice cream.” Ricky wasn’t sure about getting high, but ice cream sounded
like a good idea. He could still taste the salty gray-green sauce and mushy asparagus from dinner. * * * *
There was a small resort town twenty minutes west of where Ricky lived, in the
