Serenading Stanley (8 page)

It took Stanley less than ten minutes to begin erecting a mental barricade again. He wasn’t exactly sure why he still felt a need to do so, but he thought it had something to do with survival. Roger was out of his league, and he knew it. Nothing could possibly lie down this road but a broken heart. And the broken heart would sure as hell be his, not Roger’s.

It was fairly obvious that for some bizarre reason of his own, Roger Jane had made it a goal of his to get to know Stanley. Stanley seriously doubted Roger was on a mission to bed him. Looking the way Roger did, he could seduce any human on the planet. Why in God’s name would he go after a shy, geeky, skinny guy with glasses and two cowlicks? What would be the point? Why settle for hamburger when you can just as easily partake of steak on a regular basis?

Stanley could only shake his head in exasperation as he tried to fathom Roger’s thinking on the matter. He was also vaguely appalled to realize his inferiority complex was so deeply rooted in his psyche, he didn’t for a moment think he was worthy of Roger’s attentions. Stanley wasn’t interesting. Stanley didn’t have any money. Hell, Stanley could barely function in social situations at all. Even if Roger was looking for nothing more than friendship, he could do a heck of a lot better than Stanley Sternbaum.

That was an eye-opener of a realization if there ever was one. Depressing too. But shit, Stanley had been depressed about himself since the day he was born. It’s not like he wasn’t used to it by now.

But rather than combat the realization that he was unworthy, Stanley bowed to the wisdom of the analysis and immediately sprang into action. He had only a few minutes while Roger was still occupied in the laundry room to do what he had to do.

Stanley grabbed two books on Aztec history from the bookshelf, dumped them in an empty grocery bag, and (once again on tiptoe) stealthed his way down the staircase like a ninja to the fifth floor. There he found Roger’s doorknob and hung the bag on it as quietly as he could, in case Roger had already returned. Then (still on tiptoe) Stanley sneakily skedaddled back up the stairs and locked his apartment door behind him, breathing a sigh of relief he hadn’t been caught in the process.

Stanley spent the next two hours relieved he had avoided yet another opportunity to fall in love with somebody he was already infatuated with. (Yes, he had the common sense to admit he was smitten. Hell, who wouldn’t be?) But dammit, Stanley had schooling to worry about, a career to prepare for, lessons to be learned, more résumés to mail out, a mother to put up with, a father to mourn, and besides all
that
, there was the biggest reason of all.
He was afraid
. (And yes, he had the common sense to admit that too.) Afraid of letting love take over his life. Afraid of being made a fool of. Afraid of opening himself up to someone like Roger Jane, who could kill with little more than a flash of those heavenly green eyes.

Stanley wondered if Roger knew the power he wielded. If he did, he would surely be a little more careful how he flung that power around. Roger Jane wielded his beauty like a kid with his daddy’s shotgun, pointing it everywhere, finger on the trigger, not knowing if it was loaded or not, but scaring people like Stanley shitless anyway. Once those green eyes came to rest on you, you might as well have a bull’s-eye painted over your heart. And Stanley’s heart had seen enough damage, what with his parents’ divorce and all. He really didn’t need to see any more. Much to Stanley’s bewilderment, that thought stopped him cold.

He sat at his kitchen table, schoolbooks splayed out in front of him, pen held aloft midstroke, frozen motionless by this all-new realization thundering through his head. My God, was that why he was so afraid of making himself susceptible to falling in love? Was it really because Roger Jane was out of his league, or was it due to the way his parents’ divorce had affected young Stanley Sternbaum at the susceptible age of fifteen?

As much as he would have liked to ponder that question for a while—since he didn’t have
enough
crap to fret over—a soft rapping on his front door slapped him back to reality in less than a heartbeat. He held his breath, hoping whoever it was would just give up and go away. He spent the next five seconds wishing he had a peephole in the door, but that didn’t work out for him either.

When the rapping came again, he knew he couldn’t just sit here and hide. He was, after all, a fucking adult. He had to answer the damn thing. That’s what adults do. They answer their goddamn doors. So he did.

Stanley wasn’t surprised to find Roger Jane smiling at him as he peeked around the edge of the door to see who’d come calling, but he was surprised by the first words out of Roger’s mouth.

“I’ve come for the books. That okay?”

Stanley blinked. “Have you been back to your apartment since you went to the basement?”

“Good old 5A. Yeah, why?”

“Didn’t you find the books hanging on your doorknob?”

Roger’s eyes narrowed. “Nooo. Should I have?”

Stanley didn’t like the look of dawning anger on Roger’s face. Not that it frightened him exactly, but boy, was it sexy. Roger Jane being sweet was a bombshell. Roger Jane being pissed was a twelve-alarm fire.

Apparently, the look on Stanley’s face was enough of an answer for Roger. He startled Stanley by reaching out and taking a fistful of Stanley’s shirttail and dragging him into the hall. He did it gently, and oddly, Stanley didn’t mind at all.

“Come with me,” Roger said. Then evidently thinking he might be being a bit pushy, he added, “If you would be so kind. We need to visit a friend.”

“We do?” Stanley asked, looking down at Roger’s hand still crumpling his shirttail.

“I’m sorry,” Roger said, pulling his hand away, then putting it right back but this time to smooth out the wrinkles his fist had put in the fabric.

Stanley sucked in a tiny breath of air when Roger’s hand brushed his belt buckle, jarring the fly of his trousers. He could imagine his dick popping an eye open to see what was going on. Then craning its neck out to get a better look. Then craning its neck out a little farther. Crap. Another hard-on.

“But yes,” Roger said, picking up where he’d left off, all the while staring at the ever-increasing bulge in the crotch of Stanley’s jeans with a bemused look on his handsome face, rather like someone who walks up to a slot machine in Vegas and finds the bin already filled with coins.

Stanley tugged his shirttail lower, but the truth was already out and Stanley damn well knew it. Roger knew it too. Stanley could tell by the gentle, fascinated smile Roger aimed in his direction.

“I forgot what I was talking about.” Roger grinned.

Stanley’s face felt hot. Roger’s twelve-alarm fire must have spread in his direction. Maybe there was an easterly wind. “You said we had to visit a friend.”

Roger ran a hand over his buzz cut, obviously trying to keep his eyes focused on Stanley’s face, and not on other more equatorial regions. “Oh. That’s right. We do.”

And with that, Roger took Stanley’s hand and pulled him toward the stairs. “Come with me.”

“Okay.” With his hand nestled in the heat of Roger’s fist, Stanley would have followed the man anywhere. At least until he could erect that goddamn barricade again. But at the moment, he didn’t have time for barricades. Roger was hauling him away from his front door at a pretty good clip.

Tugging Stanley along like a pull toy, Roger led him down the stairs to the third floor. There he turned right and continued to tug Stanley along all the way to the end of the hall. They stopped in front of a door marked 3A. With his left hand, Roger pounded on the door. With his right, he continued to cradle Stanley’s paw in his. He seemed to enjoy having it there. Needless to say, so did Stanley, although he was mightily confused about what was taking place.

Stanley noticed this door
did
have a peephole. Stanley wondered if Arthur would give
him
a peephole if Stanley promised to give him a sponge bath. Then he decided it wasn’t worth it.

Since there was no one jumping to answer the door, Roger knocked again. Louder this time.

Finally a voice called out from inches away. Stanley suspected the person inside 3A was peeking through the peephole while he spoke. “Sorry! Not decent! You’ll have to come back later!”

“Horseshit, Charlie! Open the door!” That was Roger. Stanley figured if Roger had said those words in front of
his
door, and with the same commanding tone of voice, Stanley would probably have gotten another hard-on.

“Prick,” Roger muttered to himself. He turned to Stanley and gave him a radiant smile. With the hand that wasn’t cradling Stanley’s, he hooked a thumb at the door. “Charlie lives here,” he said. “Sneak thief extraordinaire. Or maybe not so extraordinaire. And not really that sneaky, either. If anything comes up missing at the Belladonna Arms, this is the first place everybody looks.”

“Hey! I heard that!” the voice from the other side of the door bellowed, obviously wounded to the core.

“Good!” Roger called back. “You were meant to! Now open the door.”

Eventually the door creaked open, and a sharp freckled nose worked its way around the edge of the doorframe like a crowbar. After that a couple of freckled cheeks, a freckled forehead, and the reddest carrot-top hair Stanley had ever seen in his life appeared. The hair was cut in a too-long flattop that stuck straight up off the top of the head. Said freckled head was elongated, and with the flattop poking skyward above it, Charlie’s cranium looked to be about two feet long. It rather resembled a splotchy, fat pencil stub with a ragged red eraser on the end. He looked remarkably like Beaker the Muppet, Stanley thought, biting back a laugh. Poor guy. And oddly, Stanley suddenly had a slightly better opinion of what he perceived as his own physical shortcomings. But not by much.

The man peeking around the door was also by no stretch of the imagination one of those people one likes at first sight. This guy was a
dis
like at first sight if there ever was one. He looked sneaky. And worse than that, he looked unbathed.

“Yes?” Charlie the sneak thief extraordinaire asked in a normal, unsqueaky, un-Beaker-like voice, looking first at Roger, then at Stanley, as if maybe they were Jehovah’s Witnesses or something, out to ruin his day by trying to save his miserable soul. “May I help you gentlemen?”

“Cut the crap,” Roger said and pulled Stanley through the door right past Charlie and into the apartment proper.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Charlie cried. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Roger turned and looked the man up and down. “Thought you were undressed.”

“Well—”

To Stanley’s surprise, Roger then asked, “When did you last take your medication?”

While Charlie hemmed and hawed around that question, Stanley began to take in his surroundings. The apartment looked like a warehouse. There was furniture in it, but most of the furniture was buried under piles of stuff. Toasters, blenders, telephones, clothing, basketballs, and about a gazillion packing boxes piled up here and there.

Sneak thief extraordinaire indeed.

Then Roger looked around the place too. “You’ve been stealing from your truck again. UPS is going to fire you.”

“They already did,” Charlie said, having the good grace to look embarrassed at last. “They fired me yesterday.”

Roger heaved an I-told-you-so sigh of exasperation. “I knew this was going to happen. Now what are you going to do?”

“Well, I’ve got a few things I can sell….”

Roger surveyed the room. “So I see. Answer my question, Charlie. When did you last take your meds! The naltrexone. Where is it?”

Charlie lifted a freckled hand and pointed a long, skinny finger at the coffee table. Stanley looked, and sure enough, there sat a prescription bottle of pills.

“Didn’t know they had a pill for stealing,” Stanley mumbled, more to himself than to the room.

Roger didn’t seem to mind talking about Charlie in front of his face as if he wasn’t there. Stanley suspected
everybody
talked about Charlie in front of his face as if he wasn’t there. “Charlie isn’t just a thief, Stanley. He’s a kleptomaniac. And they
do
treat it with medication. The medicine is called naltrexone. But for it to have any efficacy, you actually have to fucking
swallow
it.
Daily.
Which Charlie obviously hasn’t been doing.”

“It gives me a headache,” Charlie whined.

Roger stuck his fists on his hips like an irate mother down to her last ounce of patience. “And being unemployed doesn’t?”

Stanley pointed to a grocery bag lying atop a brand new boom box. “Hey! There’s my books!”

“Grab them,” Roger said. “I’ll get some meds down Charlie’s throat if I have to strangle him to do it. It’s a lot like giving a cat a pill. You have to make sure he doesn’t spit it back out when you aren’t looking. Too bad they don’t make a pill for stupid.”

“It would probably react badly with the naltrexone,” Charlie said, and both Roger and Stanley laughed. At least he wasn’t denying he needed stupid pills. And under the circumstances, Stanley couldn’t see how he really could.

Charlie gave a startled look of surprise, rather pleased with himself to see he had actually cracked a funny that made the two men laugh, although for the life of him he didn’t know what it was.

His look of satisfaction turned to wariness when Roger snatched the pill bottle off the coffee table, popped the lid, and shook out a pill. He shoved the pill under Charlie’s nose with a stern expression on his face that Stanley found sexy as hell. Not surprising, really, since
everything
Roger Jane did was sexy as hell. In fact, he didn’t need to do
anything.
He could just stand there like a tree stump and be sexy as hell.

Charlie didn’t seem to be as susceptible to Roger’s sexiness as Stanley. He grumpily plucked the pill out of Roger’s hand and tossed it in his mouth. Then he opened his eyes wide and held his hands out palms up, as if to say “There! I took it! Happy?”

Stanley tried not to laugh. Any fool could see the man hadn’t swallowed.