Journey Thru Abilene

Durango Interlude

The next morning, after breakfast at a small way station where there was another change in drivers and the two elderly ladies got off—in the middle of nowhere, as far as Glade could tell—Tex followed Glade back to his seat. Tex sat down beside Glade and jacked him off again while murmuring in his ear about how nice he was—and how really sweet he’d been the night before.

“We’ll be in Durango this afternoon,” he said when he was finished with the hand job and Glade was lying back in the seat, mellow and satisfied.

“Will we?” Glade murmured.

“It’s pretty expensive in Denver, you know,” Tex said from out of the blue.

“Is it?” Glade asked.

“Sure you got enough to get started there?”

“There’s never enough, I’ve found.”

“Could you make good use of, say, two hundred more?” Tex asked.

“Who couldn’t?” Glade responded. He was just making small talk, not really following the conversation that closely. Tex gave great hand jobs.

But Tex wasn’t just making small talk. “You know you can stop off in Durango and get on the bus later on the same ticket?”

“Can you?” Glade said.

“Yes, you can. You know, I’ve been thinkin’. Dusty and me had promised to bring something back to the boys at the ranch from Abilene and we plumb forgot to do that.”

“Did you?”

“Yep. We got a pole in the middle of our bunk house. You could stop over for a day or two and give them guys a pole dance. I’m sure I could collect at least $200 for you if you entertained the boys. They’ve got more money than they had time to go into Durango and get their rocks off. What do ya say to that?”

“Just pole dancing? I wouldn’t have to give them sex?”

“Well, maybe $500 for the works. Not sure I could control the guys in the bunkhouse once you got them heated up.”

What Glade was thinking was that no matter how far down the road this bus had taken him, he was still in Abilene. But what he said was, “Sure, why not?” As Glade had already noted, Tex gave the best of hand jobs and there he was, hand on Glade’s belly, stroking the rosebud tattoo with his thumb while he was making his proposition.

The ranch was a good hundred miles out of Durango in the direction of nowhere, but the bunk house did, indeed, have a wooden pole holding up the center of it. There were six interested cowboys out there in nowhere in addition to Tex and Dusty. Glade danced for them to a scratchy record on an old-fashioned record player, wearing one of the sparkly gold G-strings he’d brought with him from Rapier. Glade wowed them and then they fucked him—all eight of them in succession over a three-hour period. A few had seconds. It was clear they didn’t get into Durango often enough to sufficiently get their rocks off.

Glade heard Tex telling the other cowboys how turned on he got when his rosebud tattoo was rubbed, and they all made sure to give it attention, and thus they all got enthusiastic fucks.

They may have gone another exhausting round, but the foreman broke up the party and extracted Glade and helped him hobble out of the bunkhouse and into his cabin—where the foreman bent Glade over a chair and satisfied his own need.

Glade made $750 off that afternoon of work, and Tex suggested that he stay on for a while—that the cowboys worked harder with a daily fuck and that there was plenty of money from where the $750 had come from.

But Glade really, really wanted to get out of Abilene, in more ways than just geographically.

Tex was good for his promise; he drove Glade back to the bus station in time to catch the next bus rambling through from Abilene to Denver. The bus he’d meant to take left before they got there and Glade had to take a later one, though, because Tex stopped behind a rock formation before dropping down into Durango and fucked Glade again in the backseat of the ranch’s station wagon. Tex gave him another fifty for that, though.

* * * *

The bus between Durango and Denver was more crowded than it had been on its initial leg into Durango. It was getting closer to big towns, and there was much more of a variety of people getting on and off as the bus rumbled along.

In Colorado Springs a middle-aged guy in a business suit got on. He caught Glade’s attention, because he looked like someone who should be driving a Mercedes rather than riding in a Greyhound bus. He was smartly dressed; was in good, and obviously pampered condition; and he was flashing a big diamond ring. It struck Glade that this looked like just the sort of guy he was looking for in Denver.

The man looked around the bus as he got on. It was half full, although most of the passengers were in the front half. His eyes caught Glades and stopped there. Thinking what Glade had been thinking about how the man was the type who filled his Denver bill, Glade gave him a more welcome smile than was absolutely necessary. The man’s eyes sparkled up and he returned Glade’s smile. Then he was moving toward Glade, who, despite the connection their eyes had made, was surprised when the man came all of the way back to where Glade was sitting and sat down in the aisle seat next to him. There were other vacant seats back here, but the man ignored them all and sat next to Glade.

He took his suit coat off and slung it into the overhead bin before he sat down. His warm arm was rubbing up against Glade’s, and his thigh was touching Glade’s. Glade felt like he was going to hyperventilate. He looked down and was somewhat distressed that if the man looked in his lap too, he’d see that the young man was tenting up. It wasn’t so much that the man was drop-dead gorgeous as that Glade’s mind was racing ahead at the prospect of having one man to keep him and to take care of him.

But he wasn’t looking at Glade’s lap, or so Glade thought. He came on with a briefcase and had taken some papers out of it and was sifting through those, looking for something.

The bus was out on the highway now.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” the man muttered.

“What?” Glade asked more out of politeness than curiosity.

“They gave me a receipt back there at the garage, and now I can’t find it. It had their telephone number on it. I’ll need that to find out when the car will be fixed.”

“The car?” Glade asked, surprised. The man was on a bus.

“Yeah. My Merc broke down back there in Colorado Springs. God, I haven’t had to ride a bus in years. But I needed to get back to Denver by this evening and the bus station was right there by the garage. It would have been more complicated to get a rental car. You come from far away?”

“From Abilene,” Glade answered.

“Working there, were you?”

“Yeah, a place called Rapier.” Glade had no idea why he told the man that. All he could think of was that he had been disconcerted by the man touching him. That and assuming he’d have no idea what Rapier was.

“Ah, I see,” the man said.

And, for a moment, it seemed like he did, indeed, see. He had turned to Glade and was giving him a hard look. To try to cover, Glade asked him about where he lived and what he did for a living.

“I’m a few miles out of Denver. Out toward the mountains. Run a specialty service of sorts out there. A few other businesses in town. You might be more interested in what I have going in Golden, though.”

Glade let that sit. He didn’t pursue the question further.

The man gave Glade a look as if expecting Glade to ask him about the business in Golden. But when Glade didn’t, the man settled back in his seat and started talking to Glade about his family.

“No boys, damn it, but the range of ages in girls,” he snorted as his monologue moved along. “And each of them comes with a set of different age-stage attitudes. Daughters are such a challenge. You have any girlfriends with tattoos?”

“No girlfriends,” Glade answered. He was trying to keep his answers short. Glade was sure that the man would be able to hear his arousal in his voice if he said too much.

“Well then, boyfriends perhaps?” He’d let it come out straight, as if there was nothing behind it. But Glade saw him eyeing his tented lap and began to figure out he was building up to something. Glade said nothing, but he knew the man could feel the intake of his breath and how tense he’d gotten.

“Tattoos aren’t so bad,” Glade said after a pause.

“Oh, you got any?” he asked.

“One.”

“Somewhere I can see it?”

“Just here, near my navel,” Glade said, raising the hem of his T-shirt to show the man the blue rosebud tattoo. The man touched it with his finger, and Glade fell apart and his gym shorts tented up even further—and noticeably. And the man was looking at the bulge now. No doubt.

He looked into Glade’s eyes for a moment and then said, his voice suddenly hard, commanding, “Go back to the restroom at the back of the bus, and enter, but don’t latch it.”

“What . . . ?”

“I’m betting you’re a rent-boy and will let me fuck you for this hundred-dollar bill I’m placing here in your seat pocket. If I’m wrong just stay here when I go to the john. I’ll move to another seat when I return. You can slip the money back in my laptop and I’ll pick it up on my way back up the aisle.”

“You knew I’d go for that?” Glade asked.

“I knew when I got on the bus and saw you that I wanted to fuck you—if I could. Nothing you have done or said since I sat down here is telling me I can’t fuck you for money.”

Dumbly, knowing already what would happen, Glade stood up and walked by the man’s legs as he swung them into the aisle and unsteadily—not only from the rolling gait of the moving bus—walked back to the compact bathroom at the back corner of the bus, and entered it.

Shortly afterward, the door opened, and the man was inside the small bathroom—and soon was inside Glade. He’d rolled a condom on before coming back and he merely unzipped himself again, reached down and pulled Glade’s gym shorts and briefs off his legs and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Glade then was naked. The man wasn’t, but he unbuttoned his shirt so that their chests would be Glade’s smooth skin against the man’s hairy chest. The bus john wasn’t big enough for two people—it wasn’t meant to be big enough for two people—and the two of them were plastered together. But that was sort of the idea anyway—the two of them melding into one, connected by the man’s dick in Glade’s ass.

Glade climbed the man’s hips with his legs, and the man held Glade there against the back paneling of the bus restroom, his legs straddling the toilet basin. He fucked Glade hard and deep by pulling the young man up and down on his cock with broad hands palming and spreading Glade’s butt cheeks, giving him deeper, wider access in Glade’s channel. He had obviously done this before, and he was good at it.

Glade turned his face toward the mirror over the basin and watched the other man’s thumb strumming the rosebud tattoo. It wasn’t long before Glade ejaculated up his belly.

Glade returned to his seat first, leaving the man to try to clean up the damage—semen stains and wrinkles—to his shirt. The young man looked around the bus as he moved up the aisle, but no one was showing any interest. No one had noticed.

Soon thereafter, the man plopped back down into the seat next to Glade, looked around to see who, if anyone was watching, reached into Glade’s gym shorts, pulled out his cock, and slowly stroked him.

“That was nice,” he said. “You know what you’re doing. You mentioned Rapier in Abilene. A professional, aren’t you?”

“A dancer. A professional dancer, yes,” Glade answered between sighs brought about by what the man was doing with his cock.

“And other things too?”

“Yes . . . OK . . . yes. I’ve done other things too.”

“A professional escort—a rent-boy too?”

Glade didn’t answer. He didn’t really have to.

“You’re good. You’re really good. I like that little thing you have going of turning on quickly when your tattoo is touched. Genuine is that, or an act?”

“It’s what happens,” Glade answered.

As if the man was rechecking, he reached over and pressed a finger from the hand not working Glade’s cock into the tattoo, and the young man shuddered and collapsed into himself and moaned for the man.

“Sweet. How well can you give head? I’ll give you a twenty for a blow job.” He was unzipping himself and pulling Glade’s head down to his cock, and Glade showed him that he was an expert in that too.

“Very nice,” he said when Glade was done and had pulled out a twenty, which the rent-boy pocketed without comment.

“That special service I said I operated in the hills above Denver. It’s a men’s club. A special men’s club. Would you be interested in working for me up there? At, let’s say, $1,000 a week and a place to stay, plus any tips you get, for starters?”

As far away from Abilene as I travel, Glade thought, I still never can leave Abilene, it seems.

But now he had a goal, even if it was, in some ways, a lot shorter-term goal than Glade had thought he would have.

Chapter Eight: Denver Interlude

“See that man over there? I want you to give him a good time.”

“He already looks like he’s having a good time with Lucky,” Glade answered the owner of the club outside Denver. The two were standing by the beaded-curtain-covered doorway linking the administrative wing of the Gentlemen’s Club with the entertainment floor. A Chippendales men-like revue was winding down on the stage down in front of the room. Glade had been one of the dancers who just had left the stage. He’d seen the club owner motioning to him and had gone over to talk to him.

“Lucky is just sitting with him to warm the guy up. He’s asked for you. He’s important to the club, so show him a good time.”

Glade already knew the man must be important to the club, or the club owner wouldn’t have told Glade to service him. The owner was increasingly keeping Glade to himself and he never had given Glade to just anyone. Glade recognized the man he was being sent to and knew exactly why he was important. He was a Denver city councilman and was head of the board of one of the most powerful banks in the city—one that the Gentlemen’s Club used, Glade knew.

“You don’t recognize the patron, do you?” the club owner asked, turning his searching gaze on Glade.

“No, of course not,” Glade answered. “I don’t recognize any of the patrons.”

“Good boy,” the man said, approvingly. “Now go over there and make him want you.”

As Glade approached the table, one of the premium ones in the room, Lucky saw him and disengaged himself from the patron. He gave Glade a wink in passing. He’d known he was just in a holding action until Glade got off the stage.

Glade slid in to the space Lucky had vacated and turned a smile toward the patron.

“Hi, I’m Glade. I understand you asked for me.”

“Yes, I did. Saw you dancing up there and needed to get to know you better. Liked watching that tattoo of yours while you danced. You can call me Phil.” The man was reaching a big mitt over toward Glade’s tattoo. Glad wasn’t wearing much other than biker shorts that didn’t hide much of anything, and a bow tie, wrist cuffs, and suspenders were the only parts of a shirt he was wearing. The blue rose tattoo to the lower left of his navel, the only body art Glade wore, in contrast to a lot of the other rent-boys, was clearly visible.

“Let’s not touch that yet,” Glade said, teasingly, as he intercepted the man’s hand and moved it straight to his crotch. “That’s a surprise for later. You have someplace more private than this, don’t you, Phil? You’re a real hunk, and I don’t think I can wait long for it. The dance made me all keyed up.”

If the man wanted to be called Phil that was OK with Glade, even though he knew the man really was a Ted. He wasn’t anything close to a hunk, either, although he was better put together than many of the patrons coming to the Gentlemen’s Club, who, on the whole, showed the age and wear and tear it took for them to be able to afford to come to the Gentlemen’s Club. The man wasn’t trim. He had a beer belly on him, although not one that was too gross, and his face showed the ravages of one too many surgical fixes. But he had a full mane of hair and there was muscle under that layer of fat. And there was nothing wrong with his equipment. He could get hard, as Glade was finding out with explorations of his own under the tabletop.

Phil did, indeed, have someplace more private for them to go to—through one of the tunnels to a sumptuously appointed bungalow that prominently featured a king-sized bed. Glade well knew that the bed came with restraints and various other forms of bondage, but Phil didn’t have a need for those. Phil just wanted to fuck—after blow jobs received and given, of course.

Phil was on his back on the bed, languidly looking up at the gorgeous body of Glade, naked, straddling his hips and slowly riding his cock. Glade had on his dreamy expression as he leaned over, placed the heels of his hands on Phil’s nipples, and started a circular rubbing action on them that matched the circular move he was making with his channel on Phil’s throbbing cock.

Glade could feel the man trembling under him, building up to losing control. The rent-boy helped him along with that; he took one of Phil’s hands in his and moved it to the rose tattoo. As Phil rubbed the tattoo, Glade came alive, gyrating on the cock and thrashing about, turning his face to the ceiling and yodeling his pleasure in the fuck.

Catching on to the spirit, Phil rose and turned at the same time, trapping Glade’s body, now on all fours, under him. Phil maintained his touch on the rose tattoo as he got Glade under him, doggy style, and began pumping in earnest, with Glade thrashing about under him and thrusting his hips back on the cock, as the city councilman thrust his cock forward.

* * * *

The club owner’s name—the man who had met and used Glade on the bus from Colorado Springs to Denver—was Stewart Wilson, and his club was everything that the man had promised. The club was in Golden, in the foothills of the Rockies on the western edge of Denver. Golden was publicly famous for having the first brewery of the Coors beer empire. There was a lot less fame for the Gentlemen’s Club, although it was just as well known as Coors in some circles. The club was definitely high end—and expensive. It was set in a bowl reached by, but masked from Route 6 by, a mountain before 6 ended in Interstate 70. The compound was like a fortress, with high security on the gates, through which a fleet of some of the most expensive and sporty brands of cars entered and exited. The parking garage was under the main club house so that cars couldn’t be ID’d even from overhead. A series of little bungalows were scattered around, just inside the compound walls. They were given privacy by heavy foliage but also some were reached by underground tunnels from the main building.

Wilson had provided the best of everything. And, Glade having made an instant highly favorable impression on him on the bus from Colorado Springs to Denver, Glade was saved for the best of the best.

There was no dancing and stripping for Glade on poles on the club’s bar tops while men gathered below him, extending ten-dollar bills, although he would do this in private and he did dance and strip as a featured performer in the more glitzy stage revues. Like the other young men, he strutted around the club floor in biker shorts, bow tie, and white shirt cuffs, with diamond stud cuff links—but no shirt. But he didn’t go on stage to strip by himself. He was included in strip revues and he was as surprised as Wilson was to find he had an excellent singing voice, but he was put on stage only long enough each day he worked to attract attention. And attract attention he did. He didn’t walk around long before some high roller paid to have him join his private party.

Shortly after Glade had been taken on at the club, he wondered if he should change his name again.

“No, don’t,” Wilson had answered. “Some will know you by the name and it’s a catchy one—very refined.”

Glade wondered what Wilson would say about that if he fully realized how scruffy some of the patrons of Rapier were or that Glade had gotten the name off a can of air freshener.

Glade normally wasn’t asked to take more than one man a day or night. He was expected to serve that one man to exhaustion, though, if demanded. These weren’t quickie services. The young men were engaged for as long in a twenty-four-hour stretch as the patron wanted to have them. Most of the entertaining of the men Glade was assigned to was in the private bungalows. There were rooms in the main building, but men who couldn’t afford the private bungalows—some having them on an annual rent—couldn’t afford the prices Wilson put on Glade’s ass.

Glade wasn’t that much hunkier and more refined than many of the other young men, of course. But what he was was a favorite of Stewart Wilson, who increasingly became reluctant to share Glade with others. The favoritism worked its way to obsession.

Glade didn’t live in the Gentlemen’s Club compound as many of the rent-boys did. Wilson established him in the penthouse of an apartment house in the nearby southern Denver suburb of Englewood, not too far from Wilson’s own ranch-life spread to the south of Englewood. The main feature of the apartment house was the dedicated elevator that went up to the penthouse from the two remote parking spaces in the underground garage—one for the Chrysler Crossfire Wilson had bought for Glade and one for whatever car Wilson was driving that day. And beyond that, Wilson created another, legitimate life for Glade.

The Gentlemen’s Club wasn’t Wilson’s only business holding. It obviously wasn’t even one that most of his social set knew he owned—at least the wives of the rich families his ran with. Among his other businesses was an accounting firm down in the center of Denver. Glade was given a title there as an accountant and a small office of his own that he used irregularly to play on the Internet—and, of course, business cards and all of the other cover story he needed to be living legitimately in Denver. The name on his mailbox, on the sign on his office door, and on the business cards was Noah Worthington.

Everything was going swimmingly, even though Glade was getting a little leery of this second life of his and the increasing possessiveness of Wilson, until the barbecue invitation came up. Wilson’s possessiveness wasn’t as forceful as David Patton’s had been, but it was possessiveness nonetheless.

The invitation had come after sex on the bed in Glade’s apartment, in which Glade had given Wilson a blow job and then had been fucked in a side split while on his right side and Wilson spooned behind him fucking up into him and stroking that rosebud tattoo.

“There’s something I want you to do next Saturday afternoon,” Wilson said.

“At the club? I’m working that afternoon. A new patron for me?”

“No, I’ve told them to take you off the roster next Saturday. I want you to come to my house.”

“Come to your house?”

“Yes, we have an office barbecue for the accounting office a couple of times a year and all of the new hires are invited. Your name—Noah Worthington—is on the list for Saturday’s barbecue.”

“Me on the list? To come to your house? You don’t want me to come to your house.”

“I know it’s awkward. But the office HR manager made up the list and my wife’s seen it now. You’ll stick out more if you don’t come than if you do. It’s just a barbecue.”

But it wasn’t just a barbecue. It was going into Stewart Wilson’s other world. His normal world, the one in which he was a husband and father. A father to three girls ranging down from just a bit younger than Glade—or Noah, for this day—to twelve.

Glade did what he could to act the part of new hire Noah Worthington, just an employee of one of Steward Wilson’s companies—and certainly not of the Gentlemen’s Club. He tried to stay in the background, but Glade had always been too much of a handsome hunk to play the wallflower. The two older daughters latched on to him and did a great job of letting him know just how all-American perfect their family was and how much they looked up to and were coddled and protected by a father who was such a good family man.

Even Mrs. Wilson seemed to be devoted, perfect wife. She certainly was a great hostess and made every effort to make Glade and the other new hires feel at home in the accounting firm “family.” She was especially nice to Glade, seeing that at least one of her daughters was smitten by him. She accompanied him to the door when he departed, expressing what seemed a quite genuine hope that he “would come around more often.” She didn’t leave it at that. She invited him to their July 4th barbecue.

“Certainly, if I’m in town. My folks indicate they might want me to come to their place over that weekend.”

“Well, we’d love to have you here, but if your family wants you, you, of course, must go there, Noah,” she said. “There’s nothing more important than one’s family.”

Left with that heavy thought under the circumstances, Glade went back to his apartment, packed a bag, trying to be careful not to take anything he hadn’t come to Denver with, and drove to the accounting office. He left the Crossfire there—he’d already left the keys to the apartment on the dining room table along with a note—one that Stewart would understand when he read it but that wasn’t really keyed to Stewart if anyone else read it. He took a taxi to the bus station; bought a ticket all the way to Billings, Montana; and sat on an uncomfortable seat in the waiting room, trying to clear his mind of all the guilt he felt until his bus pulled into the station.

Chapter Nine: Billings

The sun was just fighting to come up when Gordon climbed down from the bus at the beige-tiled Art Deco Greyhound bus station on 1st Avenue North in the heart of Billings, Montana. He had just awakened and even the scant sunshine that greeted him made him squint his eyes. Somewhere north of Casper, Wyoming, on Interstate 90, he had dropped the name Glade—forever, he hoped—in favor of what he hoped would be both familiar and representative of a man who had matured since Beaufort, South Carolina.

Not that Gordon thought he needed to be coming here crawling on his knees. There wasn’t anything he needed to apologize for—that he knew of. But apologies were in order and, he hoped, the possibility of a reawakening of a relationship. But, upon reflection, maybe he did have something to apologize for. He was a whore when Dean Horton had first approached him—Dean had approached him because he was a male whore. But it seemed in the short couple of weeks they’d been together, their relationship became something more than that. And then, when Gordon had left Beaufort and moved west, he’d become even more of a male whore than he’d been in Beaufort. Did he even deserve another chance with Dean?—even if Dean hadn’t moved on.

Of course Dean had left him in Beaufort, run out of town, and never tried to contact him after that.

He took his duffle bag—that’s all he needed to carry what he’d taken away from Denver—into the men’s room at the station and shaved and cleaned himself up as best he could. There was a café in the station, and he had breakfast there, spending more than an hour struggling with whether he even would leave the bus station now that he had finally reached someplace in his trip from Beaufort—someplace final. He always could say that this journey was finished and start backtracking—to Denver and Stewart, where he could live the life of luxury and try to just forget that Stewart had a nice family in an entirely different world, or back to Abilene, where his life and intentions had change dramatically, and fall back into the arms of David and into a spiral down into drugs and sex.

It was a hot and dusty walk over to Montana Avenue and then west down to Central Avenue and further west to the Marine Recruitment Office. He had put his duffle bag in a coin-operated locker at the bus station, thinking it would be more than presumptuous to show up with it at the recruitment office. Gordon stopped at another café at the corner of Montana and Central to cool off, drink a couple of more cups of coffee, and give himself one last chance to not risk disappointment.

“If you’ll wait here, I’ll see if the lieutenant is busy,” a young Marine in a spiffy uniform said when Gordon entered the strip-mall, store-front recruitment office. He’d stood up from his desk with a recruitment folder in his hand and a smile on his face when Gordon had entered the office. The smile turned to a bit of disappointment when Gordon had asked to see Lieutenant Horton.

“Are you already in recruitment discussions with the lieutenant?” the Marine had asked.

“No. I’m just an old friend of his. You can ask him if he’s willing to talk to Gordy from Beaufort.”

“Just a minute please.”

This might be best, Gordon thought. If Dean didn’t want to see him, he’d just send the young Marine out to tell him he was too busy and there’d be no face-to-face confrontation.

But it wasn’t just the young Marine who returned. First was Dean Horton, looking shocked. The young Marine brushed around him as he stood in the doorway in the corridor leading back from the reception area and slipped back behind his desk.

“Gordy,” Dean managed to mutter.

“It’s Gordon now,” came back the answer.

“I didn’t think I’d ever . . .”

“Is there someplace we can talk?” Gordon asked, nodding ever so slightly to the desk where the young Marine sat, trying studiously not to be considered to be listening to the conversation.

“Yes, of course. There’s a coffee shop down the street.”

“I’m swimming in coffee already,” Gordon asked. “Maybe just out on the street or in your office.”

“Out in front then. I don’t get out of the office enough,” Dean answered.

“Listen, Gordy,” Dean said as soon as they’d gotten outside. “I didn’t want to just leave you in Beaufort.”

“I know they beat you up and put you on a plane,” Gordon answered. “I didn’t know that until some time after you were gone.” He really wanted to point out that Dean hadn’t tried to reach him afterward. Dean knew where Gordy lived. The apartment over the garage had a mail slot. But he didn’t ask that. He didn’t want this to be that sort of meeting.

But Dean didn’t let that unspoken question hang over them. “I would have tried to get hold of you, but that boss of yours at the bar told me that if I tried, he’d know. And then it would be you they’d hurt. I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Oh. I never considered that would be the case.”

“Look, Gordy . . .”

“I know. You’ve moved on. You have someone else now. I just wanted to look you up.”

“You wanted to look me up because you were just passing through Billings, Montana?”

“Yes, something like that.”

“No one just passes through Billings, Montana, Gordy.” They both laughed, although Gordon’s laugh was a bit of a nervous one.

“No, I haven’t moved on, Gordy,” Dean said, putting on his serious face. “I won’t say I haven’t fucked other men since you, but none of them have been you.”

That made Gordon feel guilty as hell. It also, though, gave him a glimmer of hope. “About fucking other men, Dean . . .” He started.

But Dean laid a hand on his forearm and said, “I don’t need to hear any of that—certainly not if you’re coming all the way to Billings to find me means what I think it means. Does it?”

Gordon didn’t have to answer that question. The look he gave Dean told the Marine lieutenant all he needed to know.

“Don’t you have any luggage, Gordy?”

“Just a duffle bag. I left it at the Greyhound station.”

“Then give me a minute to tell the corporal I’m taking off for the day and we’ll go get your bag . . . and we’ll go on home; I live close to here. I have an idea what we can do for the rest of the day.”

- Fini -