The Guy With the Suitcase (Once Upon a Guy #1) (4 page)

The good thing with Mario’s, besides being able to eat free without begging to make enough for a slice, was that they could actually sit inside, get warm, enjoy a slice or two, and have some coffee to warm them up before venturing back into the wilderness of NYC.

Marissa was there when he entered the place. She was hard to miss. A naturally big girl, with straight jet-black hair caught back in a ponytail, and black clothes —as per usual, a goth at the best of times. Her eyes always smudged with some eyeliner she had managed to pocket from a beauty store or something. Her skin, much darker than Rafe’s, and her face spotty, as with most teenagers.
 

She was a lesbian and her parents had abused her since she’d come out to them at age 16. She ran away a year later after they’d beaten her senseless, calling her all sorts of names. She still had a scar under the left eye that was staying there for good. Rafe couldn’t help but feel affection for the young girl and see her as his little sister, albeit being bigger than him, so he saw their daily meets as a ritual. As a family gathering.

“Hey,
chica
, wha’s up?” he took a seat across her. She was holding a cup of tea in between her hands, the steam rising up well above both of them.

“Hey,” she said in an unusually miserable tone. That worried Rafe. She was always vocal and sassy, just like he liked her. She would always greet him with “Hey, guuurl!” and then hi-five him. That didn’t happen either.

“What’s wrong,
chica
?” he asked her.

She breathed in and exhaled, changing the steam direction with her breath. “I bumped into my mother today,” she huffed.

“What? How? Where?” he jumped in surprise, just as Mario’s wife placed his hot cocoa on his side of the table.

“Union Square. She was out shopping with her girlfriends,” she replied.

He cursed. It was one thing bumping across your god-forsaken relatives in your neighborhood, but stumbling upon them in Manhattan was like finding the needle in the haystack. “What happened?”

“She took a good look at me, called me a slut, and cold-shouldered me. Even her girlfriends, the women I grew up around, wouldn’t acknowledge me. God, I hate her so much, Rafe,” she said and punched the top of the table, spilling a little of her tea and Rafe’s cocoa.

He reached across the table and gave her his hand. “Fuck her,
chica
, she’s no mother. Just fuck her and the lame excuse of a dad you have,” he offered her. She took it with appreciation, bringing a slight smile on her face.

“So...what are we having today?” he continued, leaving the miseries of reality to the back of their minds and enjoying a good meal before returning to it.

“I’m having a Hawaiian,” Marissa said. Rafe angled his head in surprise.

“Excellent choice,
señorita
. A Hawaiian for my
chica
and a pepperoni for me, please, Sonia,” he called to Mario’s wife, who was counting money at the register.

“One or two?” she asked without raising her eyes from the bills.

Rafe looked to Marissa who showed him two fingers, as usual. “Two,
por
favor
,” he told Sonia.

“Right away,
chico
,” Sonia responded, closing the register and getting to work.

Marissa sipped her tea and sett it back down, changing the subject. “What did you do today?”

“
Joder
! I went to get the Medicaid form. If I had all the things they ask for,” he gritted his teeth, “I wouldn’t be applying for it, that’s all I’m going to say,
chica
.”

Marissa grimaced. “It’s going to be okay, Rafe. We’ll find a way.”

He shook his head. “How,
chica
? I make, what? Fifty dollars a night, maybe? I’ve been saving for two months and I still can’t afford the damn medicine. I’m getting worse, you know. I don’t feel the energy I used to have. Even some of my clients have noticed. You know, the couple regulars that I fuck every week,” he said.

“Well...how much have you got so far?” she asked. Sonia placed two slices in front of each of them.

“Fifteen hundred. I’m nearly there, but I keep thinking I’m gonna die before I get to the nineteen hundred that I need,” he replied and dove in for his linner.

“That’s eight more fucks or something, right? Can’t you pick up anyone during the day?”

The stare that Rafe gave answered her question.

“I’m just asking. How the hell am I supposed to know how it works?”

“Trust me,
chica
, sometimes even
I
don’t know how it works,” he said, then resumed his eating.

When they both finished and enjoyed a second cup of hot drinks, they parted their ways and Marissa went to the shelter she had been accepted in for the week.

Rafe had tried them all, was sick of them. They’d kick him out on the third night without notice, or ask him to pay for a shower or a clean towel, or simply claim they were full and send him off.

Rafe decided to test Marissa’s suggestion and made his way to his pickup spot early, on the off chance that guys did drive by trying to pick someone up. As he suspected, as long as the sun was out, no traffic of his sort was available. And even deeper into the evening nothing was moving. Around eight, other boys began to assemble. There was about nine or ten spread across the street in groups of two or three, all chatting, waiting for business to pick up.

Rafe was not friendly with any of them. He found other rentboys and their stories boring as fuck, and he’d be damned before he let himself be subjected to another stupid confession of what brought them to the specific profession. And even if their stories weren’t all bullshit, he just couldn’t stand them. All he wanted was to be picked up and make money and that’s what he’d do tonight again.

By nine, a couple were picked up by some early birds, but there was a stillness again until 10, when more cars started driving by. There were a few sixty-year-olds, one younger guy, and one car with two young guys, who looked like college students looking to have some fun if the guys they picked were any indication.

One by one or in that instance, two-by-two, the street started to clear out, leaving Rafe dry. None of his regulars were here tonight. He would usually stay until 2 a.m., not something he didvery often. Almost always he was one of the first to be picked, but he’d been there since six and was starting to feel cold, albeit the relatively friendly temperature that evening.
 

“Fuck it,” he spat, resolving to spend his money on a hostel. He simply wouldn’t have it today. He was very tight with his money, but today had been particularly disappointing. He’d been afraid to visit the council for weeks to pick up a Medicaid form, but when he was on his way there, he dreamed it would be easy.
 

Well, that dream was crushed, and he was gonna treat himself to a bed without male companion beside him.

He walked uptown where he knew a cheap hostel, one that almost always had spare beds available last minute. He got himself the key in no time after he paid for the night and got the elevator to the second floor. He found the number easily.

When he entered the room, he jumped; a man was lying on the lower bunk, wearing only a pair of faded blue boxers, otherwise uncovered.

He was a steaming sight, specifically his crotch, bulky and surrounded by smooth white skin. The v-shape that led to the guy’s dick was so lickable, he momentarily fantasized doing just that.

“Oh, fuck you,” the guy exclaimed, waking Rafe from his daze.

The guy came into view from under the bed as he stood up and put something in a brown leather suitcase. That suitcase was familiar.
 

It was
it
. It was
him
. The guy from yesterday. The
gilipollas
that had beaten him up.

“What are you doing here? Having an encore of last night’s stupidity?” the guy said, holding the suitcase.

“No. Do you always hold the suitcase like it’s an extension of your arm?” Rafe replied with a tiny bit of bile.

The guy gave him the finger and tucked his suitcase under the bed. “Don’t even get into any ideas tonight,” he told Rafe.

Rafe grimaced. He was right. He had tried to steal his suitcase, he was justified for acting the way he had last night and the way he was talking to him now. “I won’t. Uhm…” he wanted to apologize but couldn’t find the guts to. He paused. He swallowed his pride, like his
mamá
had taught him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got over me,” he said dropping his head to his chest.

“Greed?” the guy suggested.

Rafe eyed him and shrugged. “I guess,” he said.

The guy rolled back onto the bottom bunk and stretched out his body. The sight was once again irresistible to Rafe, but he restrained himself as he made his way to the bed and threw his rucksack on the top bunk.

“Do you always lay around in hostels in your underwear?” he asked him, unable to hold himself any longer.

“My clothes are in the washing machine. I’m waiting for the cycle to finish,” he said less aggressively now.

Rafe backed up to look at the guy clearer. “Wait! You went around the corridors like that? You must be very confident in your skin”. Not that he had any reason not to be.

“I must be very homeless,” he grunted.

Rafe laughed. He nodded his head in retreat. “How did it happen for you?”

The guy picked up a book from beside him and turned his back to Rafe, murmuring, “It’s none of your business”.

“Fair, enough,” he replied. This guy was a fucking rock. No emotions, no feelings, just pure aggression. “I’m Rafe, by the way,” he offered him, hoping to break the ice that was covering the naked man in front of him.

The guy glowered at Rafe and put the book in front of him. “Pierce,” he growled behind it.
 

Finally, Rafe was able to put a name on that chunk of man-candy that had given him a good beating. Pierce. Perhaps it was a characteristic of his piercing blue eyes that his parents found he had to be named Pierce.

“Well, nice to meet you, Pierce. Nice to put a name on my bruises,” he said.

Pierce arched his head to glare at Rafe and, without missing a beat, said, “You went asking for it, dude. You were the asshole that stole my suitcase, Or tried to, anyway”.

Rafe held his hands up accepting defeat at Pierce’s words. “You could, however, have just given me a light push and taken your bag. You didn’t have to punch, kick,
and
spit on me”.

“Hey,” he turned again, “I did not spit on you. I spat next to you. It didn’t even get you,” he raised his voice.

“It could have, though,” Rafe responded.

“I’m pretty good with my aim,” he attempted to go back to his book, but Rafe wasn’t gonna let him. He was enjoying their conversation. He enjoyed seeing Pierce’s temper swelling up with his chest, trying to defend himself.

“What happened to you, anyway? Why were you naked in the middle of Central Park, washing a pullover?”

Pierce told him, once more, that it was none of his business.

“Okay, so I’ll just assume you’re a nudist,” Rafe said, climbing up to his bed.

“Am not,” he heard him reply with a muffled sound, a mattress separating them now.

Rafe laughed at the reply. “Your current…” he let the pause stir up the air before continuing, “attire is not helping your case. So allow me to assume you’re a nudist. Or an exhibitionist. Or a nude exhibitionist”.

He smirked when he heard Pierce take a deep breath and reply very quietly and dryly. “Fuck you”.

“I would, but you’re not my type,” Rafe replied. Pierce exhaled.

“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not my type either,” Pierce commented.

Rafe wished that reply gave a clear clue as to whether Pierce was gay or not, but he would have to drown in the mystery for now, he guessed.

Rafe opened his mouth to retort about being Pierce’s type, but he interrupted him before any vowels left his mouth.

“I wanna sleep, dude. Shut up!” he felt the bed moving and heard the book slammed shut.

“I thought you were waiting for your clothes to dry, nudist,” Rafe said, doing the same.

Pierce cursed, got up, put his shoes on, and headed for the door. He stopped before exiting, turned back and pulled his suitcase from under the bed, leaving the room with it and with a bang.

“
Qué bruto
!” Rafe whispered and closed his eyes, his tiredness giving in on the soft cushion and taking him to dreamworld.

When Pierce woke up, Rafe was still fast asleep. He hadn’t talked to him since last night, when he’d reminded him to go take his clothes, banging the door accidentally in the process. He was a funny guy, albeit being a thief, but he was in no mood of having a repeat of the conversation they’d had the previous night.

He collected all his items, as few as they were, and tiptoed out of the room. He visited the kitchen to help himself to some breakfast, not that much was provided. Just the bare essentials. Cereals and milk, pancake mix, coffee and tea, bread. He had a heap of cereal to start with while enjoying an instant coffee, then chucked a couple slices of bread into his suitcase before venturing into the city.