Confirmation Glitch

I lay there on the bed in my windowless bedroom at the Shockoe Commons building on Richmond’s East Main Street, watching Ham dress for court at the nearby Lewis F. Powell courthouse. This was a storage room on paper, because bedrooms weren’t allowed to be windowless, but this was prime downtown space and the authorities—and the court system as well—looked the other way on building safety issues when it was made worth their while. Hamilton Lee had looking the other way made worth his while a lot.

I was posing for him, lying on my back, head propped up under one elbow, legs bent and spread, the fingers of the other hand playing on my bare belly, giving him the “come back to bed” look. I’d been on edge when he appeared at this one-bedroom—really studio—apartment he mostly paid for at 6:00 in the morning, wanting to dip his wick before going to work. We both had to be at work by 8:30—Hamilton Lee the Third was off to the U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals, where he was a justice, and me a bit later to the law offices of Gordon and Keys in the One James River Plaza building. I was a law clerk there, in my first year beyond taking my law degree in the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

I was Ham’s boy toy and, after a year, I’d wondered where this was going. What he’d told me this morning before he fucked me, in the missionary position, on the bed he’d paid for, had assured me. I wanted him to come back to bed and fuck me again—even if it meant we were both late for work this morning—especially if it meant we were late for work this morning. I wanted the sex and the commitment, the commitment I wanted him to make to me, to mean more than the jobs.

“Come back to bed, Ham,” I cooed, lowering my fingers to my hole and spreading it for him. He had spread it himself with his cock a half an hour earlier, and he’d barebacked me as some sort of seal of commitment, releasing his seed deep inside me. He’d said I should take the barebacking as a pledge that he’d funk no other man than me and that he trusted me to make the same sacrifice. He’d even called it a sacrifice.

“I can’t, Brian,” he said. “Not today. I have a full docket.” He was knotting his blue power tie and buttoning up the gray vest to his gray silk suit. He looked good, trim, glowing with health at forty-nine, the gray at his temples complimented by the color of the suit. Within the next hour the suit would be covered by his black robes. He’d look good in those too. He was a handsome man, and he was a vigorous lover, holding me close underneath him, penetrating me deep, taking his time mining my channel and releasing inside me.

“In Chicago on Thursday,” he said. “We’ll have time then. It will be better away from here. You’ll be there? I’ve booked reservations for you at the Sheraton Grand. I’ll be across the river at the Wyndham Grand. Just a short walk, though.”

“Yes, I’ll be there,” I answered. “But by Christmas, you say? By Christmas we won’t need to do any more of this sneaking around.”

“Yes, by Christmas.”

“Out in the open,” I said, not phrasing it as a question but seeking assurance.

“Yes. Out in the open.”

I could dream it could happen. He was on a lifetime tenure. There was no reason for him to care what people thought. I, of course, didn’t matter to people. They could think what they wanted to about me. But it would be quite an adjustment for me. I’d never done monogamy before. It would be difficult. But it would be worth it. It was quite a commitment on his part. I don’t think he’d been monogamous either—but I do know that he’d been hyper careful about anyone knowing he did men.

* * * *

It was a good thing that today was Saturday and only a half day at work, because I wasn’t much good at work, needing to tell someone of the momentous change coming in my life. By 1:00, I was on the road, going out Broad Street. I stayed on that when it turned into 250 West at the Short Pump shopping mall rather than taking I-64, as the older highway, once known as Three-Copt Road—and still known that in some segments of the route went through my destination. Thomas Jefferson’s father had blazed the road from Richmond to Charlottesville, marking the route by three chops of a hatchet in the trees along the trail. Gum Springs was a forty-five-minute drive west from Richmond. Once a bustling center of legal activity, it now was a sleepy little out-of-the-way crossroads, with an impressive court house building that had lost out on time and redeployed population centers.

Abe Johnson lived at the end of Whitetail Road, off a segment of Three Chopt Road, in a single-wide rusting trailer that belied the elderly black man’s actual worth. His worth to me went well beyond the financial, even though it had been his finances that had put me through William and Mary and then the UVa law school. When I entered the trailer, he was sitting at a card table going through his collection of old coins. It had been buying and selling of those that had made him a fortune that wasn’t apparent in his lifestyle and that had put me through college. The bug had transferred to me a bit as well. Abe had guided me in collecting coins he thought would appreciate well. I had several mounted in frames and sitting on bookcases and tables in my apartment.

Abe was old and grizzled, but he still, at nearly sixty, was a powerfully built man, fitting for a man who did manual labor for himself and a good many neighbors in Gum Springs. He was a tall man, nearly six and a half feet tall, muscular, and trim. He was ugly as sin, but he was body beautiful. Although his window air conditioner was on and chugging along loudly at an off rhythm, he was just wearing athletic shorts. His muscular ebony body glistened in the heat.

“You didn’t say you were coming today, Brian,” he said, looking up from his coins and giving me a smile.

“But you’re glad to see me anyway?” I responded.

“Always. You must have news. I knew you were antsy about this judge thing. You coming to tell me you’ve come to your senses on that or that he’s proposed.”

“He proposed. Said we’d be together and open about it before Christmas.” I didn’t say anything about a commitment having been made about monogamy, sealed by barebacking. That had come on with no notice. I could start my side of that bargain tomorrow or the next day.

“And that will be a piece of cake for him—being as he’s a high-up-there federal judge with a wife and children? Probably a dog and cat too.”

“He’s got life tenure, Abe. He’s at the end of whatever he needs to be conventional for.”

“You sure about that?” the black man asked, looking at me—looking inside me, it seemed.

“He says he can’t go on with the hypocrisy and that it’s me he wants,” I said, sounding more defensive than a wanted to.

“It’s not him I’m thinking of, son. It’s you. He can go hang for all I care. Living a lie and pulling a woman into it. I’ll bet he’s been doing young men all along. And giving her children while living the lie.”

“He says he’s not sure they’re even his children. He says his wife knows—that she’s known for some time—and is along for the ride. That she’s been happy being a justice’s wife.”

“And that makes it all all right?” Abe asked. “He’ll be different with you? He won’t live a life of lies with you?”

“He says it will all be in the open. Everyone will know. So, no need for lying anymore.”

“And you? You won’t be living a lie?”

“No, of course not,” I answered. But I couldn’t look him straight in the face.

“You’ve never been with just one man before, Brian,” he said. “If he makes this commitment in good faith he’ll expect you to make a full commitment too, won’t he?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Has he demanded this commitment already? Has he made you show the commitment?”

“Yes,” I answered, showing a sudden interest in the books on the shelf across the narrow room from where He had said it would mark a commitment, from both of us, when we fucked bareback early that morning. Abe was sitting. But then Abe wasn’t sitting anymore. He was standing, towering nearly to the ceiling of his narrow trailer, 240 pounds of hard muscle and sinew.

“Can you really make that commitment, Brian?” he asked. And then when I couldn’t answer him, couldn’t even look at him, he said, in a low, husky voice. “Come back to the bedroom with me now.” I hadn’t told him I’d already made the commitment, or that I knew I wouldn’t start on it today, that coming out here to see Abe had meant I wouldn’t be starting a commitment of monogamy to Ham today. Ham was no more dishonest about such things as I was.

Abe fucked me doggie style, bent over the double bed that took up most of the room in the trailer’s bedroom. He rocked the trailer on its cinderblocks with the power of his thrusts. His 240-pound, six-foot-six, body covered and enveloped my five-foot-seven, slim 150 pounds. He held me firmly captive, as he always had done in this position, with one of his beefy, thick-fingered hands cupping my chin and arching my shoulder blades back into his muscular chest and his other hand palming my belly, holding me in place, as he fucked me with the longest, thickest black cock I’d ever taken.

I whimpered and begged for the cocking, murmuring a “Yes, yes, yes. Fuck me like that” mantra as he breeded me, bareback, Abe grunting and straining to take me deep and me writhing and crying out that he was touching me in the core like no one else did. I collapsed under him, relaxing, and he penetrated me deeper, his bulb kissing my spongy walls deep up inside me, his shaft still spreading my channel its throbbing length. He released inside me and I gave a little cry, arcing my own cum as I stroked myself with my hand, as he opened his arms, letting me fall on my belly on the bed, shuddering and writhing as he continued to pump. He had usually worn protection. I think he barebacked me now to ram home his point—to erase the ritual I’d gone through with Ham earlier in the day. One thing was clear. Abe Johnson would fuck me when and where he wanted to.

I also couldn’t hide from him. He knew me better than anyone else did. But still I maintained the pretense. It didn’t count. This just didn’t count to negate what I was moving into with Hamilton Lee. He hadn’t publicly declared yet. After Chicago. After then, I would call it off with any man other than Ham—even with Abe.

* * * *

I didn’t hear from Ham for the next few days, but that didn’t surprise or worry me. I knew he’d be busy before he went to Chicago the next weekend, where he was to give an address at Northwestern University. He’d even said that there would be cases coming onto the docket after he got back from Chicago that would restrict his free time. But then he’d added that he couldn’t stay away from me, so there would be opportunities for us—and that, again, before Christmas we’d move in together. My apartment—well, the apartment he paid for for me—was, of course, too small, and he was sure he’d have to let his wife have his house. I asked if I should start apartment hunting in this area, but he said we should do that together. There should be opportunity by the Thanksgiving recess at the court, he said.

Every workday that I could and the weather permitted, I went for a run in Brown’s Island Park on Brown’s Island in the James River at the foot of Richmond’s Capitol Hill. Thus, on the Tuesday after my encounters with Ham and Abe on Saturday, I was out in the park at 6:00 pm after work, running, bare-chested because of the heat, with my T-shirt tucked into my athletic shorts at the back. I was hitting the asphalt pretty hard, as, having had it twice on Saturday, I was antsy with wanting it again, while knowing I was supposed to pull away from it now.

I was checking out the other guys who were out running, several of them familiar to me, one or two of them having fucked me before, because I was a pretty promiscuous guy. This was a sticking point with Ham and the monogamous thing. He’d need to fuck me a lot from me not to pine for more of it than he could provide.

There was a new guy out, running the park paths. He looked like he was older than me, I thought, but not much. He was gorgeous—a sultry, dark-haired, hirsute Italian type. He was running bare-chested, like most of us. He was divinely developed, but in a hard-bodied, sinewy way, so lean that his veins bulged out on his arms, chest, and legs because they had no fat to run through. He was a good six feet tall. In contrast to his tan and dark hair, his eyes were a milky blue. I had observed this, because he passed me four times or more before I realized that he was tracking me and flirting with me.

I flirted back. My need was great. I’d been thinking for a couple of days how I was going to have to maintain a monogamous commitment to Ham and the response had, as the days without sex wore on, been that my commitment to Ham needn’t start until the next time we were together. I was in heat. I wanted to writhe under men while I felt free to do so. The third time the man came at me in the opposite direction and smiled at me in slowing down and passing me, I was thinking of him as a sex partner. That was normal with me. I assessed all men I saw as possible sex partners. I even gave them numbers. At first look, this guy looked like a 9 point 5.

When I came upon him standing by a water fountain, I stopped. Looking at him looking at me as I approached had made me slow down and stop, I knew we would fuck. My commitment to Ham could start the next time we met. I was in heat now.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi yourself,” I answered. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in the park before. You look good.”

“I am good,” he answered. “Is there a Starbucks around here?”

“Not far. Over on 12th Street, near my apartment.”

“You live near here?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Alone?”

“Yes. I work at the lawyer’s office not far from here.”

“I’ll pay,” he said.

“For the coffee, I assume,” I said and smiled.

“For that too.” He smiled back.

After we’d finished nursing our coffee, he determined that I was twenty-three, a newly minted lawyer, who went to UVa, worked here in Richmond, was named Brian, and, yes, was gay, and I determined that he was here on business from Washington, had gone to George Washington University, was recently out of the military and back from Afghanistan, was twenty-eight, that I could call him Jason, and, yes, he too was gay—and an active top.

“You say you live near here,” he said, looking inside his empty coffee cup, bringing the conversation back to available private space.

“Yes, just a block over, on East Main.”

“And you said you lived alone?”

“Mostly.”

“Today, this evening? Tonight?”

“All alone.”

“I’d pay you two hundred bucks.”

“You don’t have to pay me anything. I’m promiscuous, but I’m not a prostitute.” At least in one-night stands, I thought. I certainly felt like a prostitute with Ham sometimes. And when Ham was mad at me he told me I was.

He smiled. “But you’re going to show me your apartment? It has a bedroom?”

“It’s got a storage room with a queen-sized bed in it. I make do.”

He was a highly competent and satisfying sex partner, spending time suck me and me sucking him on the sofa in my living room before draping me belly down on the arm of the sofa, my arms and head dangling toward the floor, while he mounted me from behind and above like a jockey, his feet buried in the sofa cushion on either side of my knees, slowly penetrated me with a quite acceptable cock and fucked me and fucked me and fucked me.

“Do you want me to stay the night?” he asked.

“The bedroom is this way,” I answered.

He fucked me in a missionary at the foot of the bed, wishboning my legs while he fucked me slow and deep. He pulled me up onto the bed, stretched his body behind mine, and embraced me. We woke up in the morning before dawn in that position. He was hard and, in fondling me, I became hard and panting, as well. He fucked me in a side split before we showered.

“You have to go to work today?” he asked.

“Yes, but not until 8:30, and it’s within a fifteen-minute walk,” I answered. It was barely 7:00 then. “There’s time for breakfast before you have to go.”

The other shoe dropped while we were eating breakfast, he sitting on a stool and me standing and leaning in to him.

“This is a nice apartment,” he said. “You pay for it all yourself?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I understand that the federal judge, Hamilton Lee, pays most of the freight here. You have a relationship with him?”

“Where is this coming from?” I asked, backing up around to the opposite side of the kitchen island from him.

“I’m a reporter with the Washington Post,” Jason said. “I told you I majored in journalism at GWU, but you seemed so anxious to get me on top of you in bed that you didn’t ask further. If you had, I would have had to reveal that to you yesterday. We’re doing an article on Lee and an upcoming confirmation and your name—and relationship with him—has come up.”

“I have nothing to say about that,” I said. “It’s getting late. Perhaps you should go.”

“Can I finish my omelet first?” he asked, flashing me the smile that I had found oh so disarming the night before.

“I don’t think so,” I said, moving toward the door. To his credit he just left.

I wondered whether I should telephone Ham and tell him about the reporter but then I might have to reveal that I’d slept with him. I decided it could wait until we met in Chicago. And once I’d decided not to go further with it, it occurred to me that revealing our relationship actually might be a good thing for me. That way that we were a couple was going to come out publicly one way or the other—and maybe much before Christmas.

After Jason left, I found that he’d left a business card on the kitchen island. He really was Jason—Jason Stone—which surprised me a bit. I had assumed he’d given me a fake name, although, devil may care, I’d given him my real name. And he really was a reporter for the Washington Post.

* * * *

I was fiddling around on the computer in my room at the Sheraton Grand Chicago, waiting for Ham to call from over at the Wyndham when the text came through telling me he hadn’t made it to Chicago. A couple of monster cases had dropped on the appeals court and he was still in Richmond. I was to have a good time and to use the credit card he’d given me. To say that I was royally pissed would be an understatement. We hadn’t fucked since before that Washington Post reporter laid one on me. I went down to the hotel bar and ordered up the most expensive Scotch they had on the top shelf.

“I’d like to buy that one for you.”

He had been sitting at the bar when I came in, but I don’t think it was as close as he was sitting now. Now there was just one seat between us. We were the only ones in the hotel bar other than the bartender, who was busy polishing glasses. That just as a rouse to make it look like he wasn’t paying attention, I think, because whenever I or the other guy might want something, there Joe the bartender was. I thought of him as Joe because that’s the name I thought about for all bartenders.

I looked at the guy offering the drink and I thought of danger and G-man—or maybe mafia. He was a big bruiser, but not like in fat. Maybe in his mid-thirties. Old enough to have technique and experience. He certainly looked like the “in command” type. He wore a black suit, and it wore it quite well. He was a solid citizen, square jawed, a rugged face. A handsome devil in a thuggish or policeman sort of way. The hands he cradled his beer bottle in were big—strong looking. I immediately thought of them running over my body, finding and working crevices and curves. I was royally pissed at Ham for standing me up—and doing it across country, for God’s sake. I wanted to punish him.

“Normally I’d say yes, but this is a revenge Scotch,” I answered. “I’ve just got to charge this on this card.” I took out the credit card Ham had given me and laid it on the bar top.

“Girl trouble?” he asked.

“No. Guy trouble,” I said. I might as well get it out there on top, I thought. If he wasn’t what I needed, it would be good to know now. Why would he have wanted to buy me a drink if he wasn’t interested in fucking me, though.

“Ah, I see,” he said, moving over to the stool next to me and putting a hand on the top of the short back on my stool. So, that answered that. “Maybe you’ll let me buy you the next one then.”

“If there’s a next one,” I said.

“You have someplace you need to be?”

“Not now. I thought I did, but not now.”

“Me neither, not for a while. So, maybe you’ll stay for me to pay for the next one.”

“Maybe, if you want.” I turned and looked directly into his eyes. He gave me a steely, “I’ll be in charge if you let me” look.

“I think I very much want,” he said. His right hand moved from the stool top to me. It started at the back of my neck, slowing glided down to my butt, and then came back up and hooked itself on the edge of the low back on the barstool again.

“Nice,” he said as if he could get all of my measurements off that one glide down my back. I shuddered at the feel of the power of the hand, having just done a quick fantasy of the hand feeling me up all over. He was going to fuck me and he knew it. “I’m in Chicago just a short time without anyone to share it with. And you?”

“Me too. Someone else was supposed to be here with me, but he can’t do it.”

“Then maybe his loss is my gain. I’m Craig. Craig Scott. But my friends call me Shooter.” His eyes went to the shot glass in front of him on the bar top, and I got the idea that the nickname came from how he took his drinks—straight and strong from a shot glass.

“I’m Brian. Brian Salter,” I answered. My real name again. I never seemed quick enough to resort to pretense with a guy when I was imagining his dick inside me. “I’m from Richmond. I was here to weekend with a guy and he didn’t show up.” I don’t know why I’d revealed that, but he took the lead from there.

“So, there’s nothing you’ve got to do for the next day or two.”

“No plans, no,” I said.

“How do you feel about coins?”

“Coins?” I asked, Abe back in Gum Springs coming immediately to mind. “Coins are good. I have a friend who collects them and he’s shared some of what he knows with me.”

“Well, that’s the one thing I’m here in Chicago for—there’s a coin collector’s convention going on at the Hyatt Regency, just across the river. That’s where I’m staying. I’m based in Washington, D.C., but I like to go around to coin shows. After that second drink, we could go over there for a bit and look around and then on to wherever. I’ll take you to dinner and clubbing, if you want. And more, if you want. How does that sound?”

“That sounds just like what the doctor ordered,” I said, amazed, in fact. A coin show. Who would have thought that I’d run into a coin collector here when I needed a guy? Just like Abe. A coin collector and an answer to a guy’s needs. That too was just like Abe.

Shooter smiled and his hand slid down to my buttocks again and he squeezed one of my cheeks. Oh, yeah, I was going to get fucked by a big bruiser.

He removed his hand, reached into an inner pocket in his tailored suit jacket, and came out with a coin in a clear vinyl sleeve. “I’ve come to trade a few coins too. This baby, for instance. You ever seen one of these?”

I took the packet from him and looked at the coin. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I said. This is an Indian Head Gold Eagle.”

“It sure is. So, you do know something about coins. It’s a 1933 Indian Head Eagle—the last year they were minted, and they’d been turned out in small quantities for the previous decade. You have any idea what this is worth?”

“None at all.”

“This baby could go for $500 or $600 at a coin show like this one. I brought this to trade. I’d be happy to trade it with you.”

“Trade it with me? For what?”

“For your ass. You lay down and open your legs for me and it’s yours. You let me fuck you and you’ve got yourself a 1933 Indian Head Gold Eagle.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“I knew you were looking to be laid as soon as you came into the bar. And I could tell that you are prime male tail. Let me fuck you into tomorrow, and I’ll take good care of you today. Deal?”

I smiled and reached for the coin, but he pulled it away and put it back in his inner pocket. “Not until after the first fuck,” he said.

“The first fuck?” I asked.

“Yeah. I said into tomorrow. If you can take it, I can give it.”

“I can take it.”

“You got a room here?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s make a stop before checking out the coin show.”

* * * *

“Work for it,” Shooter said when we went upstairs to my room and he placed the Indian Head coin on top of the nightstand next to the bed, and work for it I did. We kissed and groped standing up as we slowly disrobed. I was shocked to find that he had an armpit holster with a gun in it. He draped the holster over the side of a chair back within sight of the bed, so my gaze could keep going back to it as we fucked and it was there to emphasize the danger of the man and situation.

He was a massive, muscular “all man” guy. He wasn’t long, but he was thick, nearly dislocating my jaw as he sat on the end of the bed and I knelt before him and gave him a blow job. When he’d fired off on my chest, he pulled me onto the bed, held me captive stretched on top of his body, with my arms trapped over my head by one of his arms, while he slow jacked me with his other hand. My legs were pinned by his laced through them. He jacked me until I was close to coming, backed me off, jacked me and edged me some more, and when I was whimpering from the cruel teasing, my balls aching, he squeezed my balls and laughed as I jerked and came, jerked and came.

Then we fucked, and it was then that he wanted me to work for it. He lay on his back, running his hands over my body and gripping me, hard again, while I rode his cock in a cowboy, both facing him and grinding my buttocks into his crotch, taking him as deep as he could go and as thick as I could endure. And then I rode him in a crab position, stretched over his body, my head above his and my arms and legs bent, feet and knuckles buried in the mattress on either side of his body and raising and lowering myself on his cock.

Nearly all the time, my eyes were glued to the holster hanging from the chairback across the room, with me wondering who he was and what he did to be carrying a concealed gun.

We fucked once and he slapped me on the butt, hard, as I rolled off him. “Best little whore in Chicago,” he growled.

“I’m not a prostitute. I don’t do this professionally or for just anyone,” I said somewhat indignantly.

“Could have fooled me,” he said, slapping me on the butt again, laughing, and grabbing me, putting me under him this time, slapping my legs apart, fucking me in a missionary.

After I’d been well fucked, Shooter let me have the Indian Head coin, we showered and dressed, and he took me to the Hyatt for the coin show, then to dinner in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant off the beaten path, where he insisted on a booth where we couldn’t be seen by anyone except the delinquent waitress and where I then assumed he was going to do some fondling and groping, but he didn’t.

“How about a bit of clubbing before we fuck some more?” he asked.

“Whatever. It’s your call,” I said. I was feeling mellow. The thickness of him was taxing, but I found the mystery and hint of gangster or cop in him arousing, and, for the value of the Indian Head coin, he had the whole night left on the meter if he wanted to use it.

“I hear Boystown is the place to go in Chicago,” I said.

“I hear that too. Too far west of here to walk, but we can take a cab.”

“And the crowd pleaser to go to there, I hear, is Sidetrack.”

“I know the place. I bit too many people for me. Not intimate enough.”

So, he took me to a place called the Manhandler Saloon, which had a Western motif, a couple of smallish bar rooms, and a patio with a dance band. Shooter sat at a table, in his black suit, and watched me as I danced on the flagstones, sometimes with myself, sometimes with other guys, mostly near my own age, usually touchy feely, putting me in the mood.

Near 2:00 in the morning we cabbed back to the Chicago River area. Shooter gave the Sheraton as the destination and the cabbie let us off there, but then he changed his mind about where he wanted us to fuck. “Let’s go back to my hotel, the Hyatt. I’d like to check in on the coin show to see if anyone’s still dealing and whether there are deals to be had.”

“OK, you’re the boss,” I said.

“And you’d best remember that,” he said glowering at me, leaving me wondering if he was mugging or was letting his guard down and showing me something more sinister underneath. And, actually, I got aroused by a little bit of cruelty. When he’d slapped me on the butt, my shaft had gone to full staff. “Let’s walk. It’s just across the river on the North Columbus Drive bridge,” he said. “Maybe we could walk along the river over there.”

Something in the way he looked at me made me hesitate on that. “This probably wouldn’t be a good time at night for that,” I said, and, not giving him an opportunity to override me, I hopped in a cab that had just pulled up to the hotel entrance and dispensed a couple of drunks. He seemed keyed up and grouchy as we took the short ride over to the Hyatt, where he perked up a bit to find a couple of tables still open at the coin show and a few bargains, or so he said, to be had at that time of night.

Up in his room, he fucked the shit out of me, punishing me, it seems, for overriding him about the cab to the hotel. I could tell he didn’t like to be disobeyed. He was in shape and vigorous. He manhandled me like he didn’t that afternoon, slapping me around a bit, forcing me into taxing positions without taking my pleas into account, and pounding, pounding, pounding me with his thick shaft without mercy. There had been a change in Shooter. In the afternoon, the sex had been more playful and he’d been solicitous of my needs. Now he seemed angry, on the edge, and it was all about him—and all about him taking it from me.

He had me on all fours on the bed and was mounted on my ass, crouching over me on bent legs, with his feet planted in the mattress and his hands painfully grasping my waist and holding me place, and stroking my channel in long, powerful thrusts, as I moaned and cried out in his overpowering grasp that I looked on the top of the nightstand and started to hyperventilate. His holster was hanging from the chairback again, but something had been added now. There was a metal cylinder on the top of the nightstand. I was sure it was a silencer.

What in the fuck did Shooter need a gun with a silencer tonight? The realization flooded in that the nickname “Shooter” very likely didn’t have anything to do with liquor shot glasses. And just maybe the man came across as a thug because that was exactly what he was. Maybe he was walking around with a gun holster in his arm pit because he planned to use it. Maybe he’d gotten angry earlier because I wouldn’t take a solitary walk along the river with him. I had no fucking idea why he’d off me—I was giving him everything he demanded of me—but I didn’t have time or the energy to give it a lot of thought.

After he’d shot off and pushed me over on my side, he rolled off the bed, saying, “Stay right there for another round of it. I gotta piss,” and stumbled off to the bedroom.

I was up and out of the bed like a jack rabbit, collecting and pulling on clothes, and was out of the hotel room and starting down the stairs by the elevators within seconds. I didn’t have time to wait for an elevator. I grabbed a cab at the hotel entrance and was back at the Sheraton fast enough that I was sure I was several minutes ahead of Shooter if he was coming after me. I probably was imagining it all, but better safe than sorry.

The phone rang while I was throwing my stuff together in my suitcase. I didn’t answer it, and I was out of the room, catching the elevator before deciding to take the stairs down to the lobby, I stopped the elevator on the third floor and got out. I took the stairs from there, taking a peek out of the stairwell door across from the elevators when I got to the lobby floor.

Shooter was standing in front of the elevators, cellphone in hand. He looked royally pissed. I could see the slight bulge of the gun holster at his armpit under his suit jacket—and the line of the silencer cylinder in his jacket pocket. He’d had the presence of mind to come armed when he was trying to track me down.

I waited until he got in an elevator and the door closed before emerging from the stairwell. I walked across the lobby and out the hotel entrance doors. There was a cab pulled up at the entrance, but I didn’t take it. I hoofed my way down a long block of North Park Drive to where it spilled into East Illinois and flagged a cab there. It took me straight to Amtrak’s Union Station back across the river and south. The cabbie had the radio on to the news, and that’s where events started to make sense. The president had named his nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court. It was Hamilton Lee. So, Ham wasn’t really at the end of his career line, with a “who cares what people think?” lifetime tenure. He was wrangling for a greater job, one that would only happen after closer scrutiny of his private life.

I was fucked in more ways than one. Had this all been a setup toward me not being a loose end in Ham’s life?

I had to hide out at Chicago’s train station until the evening to take the overnight Capitol Limited to Washington, D.C., and then the Carolinian to Richmond. I didn’t dare use my plane ticket. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I just knew that my life was in turmoil—and maybe in danger. I was waiting at the Chicago train station long enough to calm down and to start doing some reasoning, all prompted because the morning papers came out. The photo of the president announcing the nomination of Ham to the Supreme Court at a White House rose garden press conference made it all real to me. Ham’s beaming wife and children were standing behind him in the photo. Ham obviously had known for weeks that this was in the works.

Why was I in Chicago when all of this was happening? For that matter, why wasn’t Ham in Chicago if he had a lecture to give at Northwestern University? The train station had Wi-Fi and Northwestern had good Internet pages. None of them referred to a planned lecture by a U.S. Court of Appeals justice, though. I found the telephone number for an events office and called, even though I knew the office was closed. Sometimes the voice mail system for such offices gave you a rundown on coming events. This one did. No such lecture was scheduled, let alone had been canceled.

Who knew I’d be at the Sheraton? Ham and no one else. It was just a little bit too convenient that Shooter was there, in the bar, to pick me up after Ham let me know he wasn’t coming. Ham couldn’t have trusted me and the commitment he thought I’d made if he thought I’d so easily be picked up. But I had to laugh at that. Shooter had easily picked me up. Ham would have been justified in his lack of trust. And if he didn’t trust what I’d do, he probably couldn’t trust what I’d say if reporters got to me. A reporter, in fact, had gotten to me. And he’d laid me too. I’d let any good-looking guy lay me.

Where was it Shooter said he was from? Washington, D.C. And even more too coincidental, Shooter had the “in” with me on an interest in coin collecting. Who knew I collected coins, and did so only casually so that it wasn’t something I talked to everyone about? Abe, of course. He’d introduced me to coin collecting. But Ham had been in the apartment and had seen the framed coins and commented on them. Only Abe and Ham knew about that aspect of my life.

I trusted Abe with my life.

I had to face it. With Ham’s Supreme Court nomination, I’d suddenly become an inconvenient secret. But he didn’t know that the press was already on to us. Would I be any safer if that came out in the press? Maybe.

But could I just give him up? Didn’t I owe him the opportunity to show how this was all just me being hysterical? He deserved an opportunity to explain his side of it, didn’t he?

Back in Richmond on Sunday evening, I checked into a hotel near the train station rather than going back to the apartment. I tried calling Ham on the phone, but the dedicated cellphone he used with me had been disconnected and his office wouldn’t put me through when I wouldn’t identify who I was. I went to work Monday morning, not knowing what I should do and whether I really was in danger. A bunch of us were sent over to the capitol building where the vice president was coming down from Washington to give out some awards to first responders to a hurricane that recently had gone through the mid-Atlantic.

There, in back of the vice president, as part of his bodyguard contingent, stood Shooter—Craig Scott. I don’t think he saw me before I was able to slip away. I returned to the apartment, which was only a couple of blocks away from the capitol building, and quickly packed a couple of bags—for a long stay. I’d go to Gum Springs and to Abe Johnson at least initially. I should have at least a couple of days there before whoever wanted to get rid of me discovered a connection between the old black man and me. I’d have to figure out what to do from there. Suddenly I wasn’t just some young law clerk nobody would care about.

On the way out of the apartment, I took the business card the Washington Post reporter had left off the kitchen counter. I had options.