Worst Luck

Chapter 1 (Draft 2)

2010-09-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

The first thing, perhaps the only thing one needs to know about Danny Vandervere is that he is beautiful. Not even merely gorgeous, not just cute or pretty or handsome or sexy or attractive, though he is certainly all of those things — but amazingly and deeply beautiful.

It starts with his looks: his face is exquisite, a pretty oval just squared enough to be handsome as well, with high stately cheekbones and a strong sculpted jaw, framed by a dense cherubic halo of loose ebony curls; his eyes are large and almond-shaped with the suggestion of a faunish slant, his irises the soft warm gray of woodsmoke with wisps of lavender and sparks of gold, fringed in black lashes as thick and long as sable fur, and topped by dense and sharply arched black brows; his mouth is large and luscious, the rich red of ripe cherries, an architecturally scrolled upper lip and plump pillowy lower lip, the corners quirked with little dimples, covering toothpaste-commercial teeth revealed in a devastating smile; his nose, where even the best faces go a little wrong, is quintessential — perfectly straight, perfectly centered, exactly the right length and width for his face, with an aristocratic bridge, a slightly upturned tip, and delicate nostrils; his complexion is milk-white, as clear and poreless as a baby's, with spanked strawberry cheeks, still virtually beardless at the age of twenty-two.

This stunning face stands atop a tall body of classical proportions, long and slender but opulently muscled, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped; his pectorals, deltoids, and biceps are voluptuously rounded, as are his thighs and buttocks, his back is deep and smooth, his laterals acutely tapered; but his belly and loins are lean and tight, a tiny waist etched with the requisite six-pack abs and a wonderfully delineated pelvic girdle with traceries of colorless veins; his forearms and calves are slim and shapely, with delicate wrists and ankles, his hands and feet large and elegantly attenuated, with clear glossy nails and pampered cuticles; his only proportional imperfection is found in his genitals, which are much too big (though most would count this an asset rather than a flaw), and by no means ungainly and quite beautiful in their own right as far as shape and color; his skin is thick and velvety smooth, completely without mark or blemish, and graced by only the merest feathering of silky black hair at the armpits and pubis.

His body is also agile and endowed with an amazing sense-memory, able to repeat any action perfectly with minimal practice, trained to dance a waltz or throw a punch with equal ease, as well as to ride a horse, hit a tennis-ball, play a piano, parry a foil, run a marathon, type seventy words a minute, and toss a football. His every movement, from the most instinctive to the most rehearsed, is as graceful as ballet, a true poetry of motion.

Danny's beauty is not just skin-deep, either: he has a beautiful mind, a remarkably retentive memory and a genius IQ disciplined and developed with the best liberal-arts education money can buy, conversant in music, art, languages, literature, science, history, and all the social graces; and he has a beautiful spirit, sweet-natured, gentle, generous, honorable, and unfailingly kind. His voice is beautiful, a sonorous baritone with a supple feline growl under the surface, able to sing light opera and showtunes, to declaim Shakespeare and murmur the sweetest of nothings; and he even smells beautiful, his sweat has a soft woodsy scent and his skin smells of fresh bread baking.

And since Fortune heaps her blessings on Danny Vandervere with a ladle rather than a teaspoon, all that beauty was born into wealth and privilege, where it could be properly nourished and cultivated, rather than taking its chances in a Midwestern trailer park or an Eastern bloc backwater. Danny's family is very rich with very old money: the third-largest landowners in California, the Vanderveres received a grant of just over one million acres of tree-covered mountains in the northern Coastal range when the state entered the Union in 1850; they are also the largest paper producers in the state, and Vandervere Mills supplies the tissues, towels, and seat-covers to over eighty percent of the public restrooms in the western U.S.

The paper-mill profits are added annually to a family trust of venerable age and staggering size, which pays Danny and his numerous relatives very comfortable allowances; he also inherited several millions from his Great Aunt Mathilda shortly after graduating from Stanford, which allowed him to buy property in the form of two apartment buildings on a quiet side-street in San Francisco's Castro district, one of which houses his own spacious and expensively furnished flat.

Of course, in an ideal placement, Fortune would have given Danny into a family that was warm and loving; instead, she gave him a family that was not only cold and distant but which actively disliked the too-beautiful and too-gentle child in their midst, so different from the rest of the handsome, arrogant clan — but at least they could afford to hire servants to love him, so though he felt the lack of familial affection, he also knew he was indeed loved and never complained.

And this underlines the beauty of Danny's nature: he knows exactly how blessed he is, and is profoundly grateful for his blessings. He enjoys his own beauty the way one can usually only enjoy another's, and he enjoys his money and privileges as if he hadn't always had them; but he never once thought his beauty or wealth made him better than others, never felt entitled to anything because of them — they were just the blind facts of his existence, a parcel of extraordinary luck that had nothing to do with his worth as a human being.

*****

It was exactly that question, what does make a man worthwhile as a human being, that Danny pondered as he lay in bed that particular Thursday morning in May. He was drifting in the warm thoughtful euphoria between his first orgasm of the day and his first shower of the day, enjoying the late-morning sunlight filtering through his sheer caramel silk curtains, gleaming on the blond burl pearwood Empire furniture and dancing on the edges of the Venetian mirror over the small gas fireplace, reviewing his life and finding it quite satisfactory but still missing something.

He believes that everyone has worth just by existing, but that it's what one does with one's existence that makes one worthwhile; and he had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do with his existence. He had no career ambitions, no vocation to make the world a better place, no vision of his future, no clue how to proceed — he had the talents and resources to do anything he wanted, but he didn't want to do much of anything.

His only real desire, the only thing he wanted that he couldn't buy or charm his way into, was to fall in love — the kind of love one finds in date-night movies and popular music. His entire ethos of love could be summed up in the lyrics of a particular song: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

And though numerous men and a few women have professed to love Danny, he never really believes them: a world that allows unreciprocated love is too cruel to countenance; so he always assumes that since he does not love them, they must not really love him, they are simply infatuated by his beauty.

But he keeps searching, meeting new people and going to bed with them, having tricks and flings and brief affairs, "auditioning" the role of Lover; and instead of love, he gets an awful lot of sex. But he is a young man who truly loves sex, enjoys every moment of it no matter who his partner is; for though he vastly prefers men to women, and has a preference for hot men over homely men, he's not exclusive to those preferences: anyone who wants him can have him (within reason, of course — some people are actively repulsive, and Danny draws the line at repulsive).

This love of sex provided him with a good hobby, if not a vocation; and his ability to take on some of God's less favored creatures made it remunerative: since Danny's name gives him access to the wealthy social elite of the city, there are a lot of men with more money than looks in his social circle; and these men are usually materially grateful for the favor shown them by such a beauty, in the form of shopping trips, jewelry, season tickets, four-star-restaurant meals, and luxurious vacations — while Danny's allowance made him quite comfortable, and his inheritance gave him security, he never has nearly as much ready cash as he is capable of spending, for his tastes are extravagant and frequently beyond his own substantial means.

But this hobby did not make Danny feel that his life was worthwhile, and as he lay there in his warm bed late on a Thursday morning in May, alone for the first time in a week, he pondered what he could do that would make him feel worthwhile. A young man of his background usually goes into business or into philanthropy, but neither of these things interest Danny: even discussing business bores him to tears, so the idea of applying himself to the stock market or executive management chills his soul; and though he gives generously to a variety of charities, he discovered after volunteering in a free clinic one summer during college, extended contact with the needy makes him feel terrible, saddened by the ugliness of the world and impotent to offer enough help.

So, aside from falling in love, there was nothing that suggested itself to him. And as the semen on his belly started feeling clammy to his skin, he gave up pondering the question and went to take a shower.

*****

Some time later, after his shower and his morning moisturizing regimen, then his coffee and his breakfast of yogurt and cantaloupe, seated at his Chippendale marquetry secretaire and scanning the calendar and email on his sleek and unnecessarily powerful computer, Danny felt a frisson of discomfort when he saw how little there was: aside from his usual daily visit to the gym — Thursday featured Pilates and aerobics followed by Shiatsu and river-rock massages — he had nothing planned; and the few emails he received were from distant friends, there were no invitations or suggestions for anything to do in the afternoon and evening.

It was like one of those peculiar moments at a noisy dinner party when all of the various conversations die down at the same moment, and the unease of the ensuing silence is elongated by an almost instinctive fear of being the first to break it.

Danny felt just such a reluctance to break the silence; he knew all he had to do was say "yoo-hoo" to any of a hundred men in his address book, and the chosen would come running; but something held him back, some suspicion that maybe this sudden dearth of social obligation was A Sign, that maybe he needed to spend some time alone after all.

As he pushed away from his desk and padded into the kitchen to assemble his pre-workout smoothie and vitamins, he tried to think of something to do by himself in the afternoon and evening. His childhood accustomed him to solitary pursuits, as his brothers and cousins were several years older than him and loathed him besides, and there had been no other children with whom to play; so though he is a voraciously social animal, he is also perfectly content on his own.

I could go to the movies, he thought as he assembled various powders and elixirs in a blender with some ice cubes, raw milk, and fresh blackberries, then set the machine to 'frappe.' But I've already seen everything that's out now, he countered himself while shaking pills out of the eleven bottles of supplements that stood in a row beside the toaster and dropping them into a footed Steuben candy dish, and none of them were worth seeing again. When the liquid in the blender reached a murky but uniform shade of mauve, Danny poured it into a tall glass, perched himself on the black granite counter with the candy dish between his thighs, and tuned into a Spanish-language soap opera on the tiny television mounted under the brushed steel cabinets.

I could go to a new restaurant, he thought as he started washing down pills, three at a time, with hearty gulps of the cold bittersweet smoothie; something is bound to have opened in the last few days, he fondly remembered inadvertently fooling various budding restaurateurs into thinking he was a food critic when he dined alone in a new restaurant, as he often ordered three or four entrees and at least two desserts so that he could experience as much of the menu as possible. But that would require research, and I'm not in a research mood, he shrugged as he put his empty glass in the sink and poured the last of the coffee into his mug.

Danny admired his dim reflection in glances at the glass-fronted bookcases that lined his back hallway as he walked to his dressing-room, a former bedroom that he'd had lined with built-in wardrobes of flame mahogany with mirror-backed doors and fragrant cedar linings. He set his coffee cup down on the glass top of the Art Deco mahogany dressing table that stood in front of the red-silk-shaded window and took up a big silvery bottle of 75-SPF sunscreen. He studied himself critically in the large circular mirror as he anointed himself with sunscreen to protect his milky skin from the aging ravages of the sun, but found nothing to criticize, until he was completely coated except for his face (which took a different kind of sunscreen) and a small spot in the middle of his back (which he couldn't reach).

There's always shopping, Danny thought as he seated himself at the dressing table and started work on his face, carefully applying the expensive Swiss sunscreen with gentle fingers, it's been over a week since my last trip, all my favorite shops will have new merchandise, he mused as he brushed another type of sunscreen into his hair and onto his brows and lashes; but I'm already more than halfway through this month's allowance, I'd better not go on a spree.

Crossing over to the wardrobe that held his gym gear (there were five wardrobes, each one containing a different type of clothing arranged in increasing degrees of formality), Danny briefly pondered the multiplicity of choices available, but decided to just put on whatever was on top of each pile: a white cotton tricot jock that lifted his genitals out of the way and bundled them into an eye-popping package; skin-tight fleece shorts in mottled gray with a sunny yellow sport-back tank that let his nipples peek out when he turned; white ankle socks with his favorite dirty white cross-trainers; and a dust-colored hooded sweatjacket and a matching sun-visor that he settled into his hair to provide even more solar protection to his face.

No, I've done all those things, Danny said to himself as he went back down the hall to the foyer, stopped in the kitchen to drop off his coffee cup and get his water bottle out of the refrigerator, then grabbed his handheld computer and its headphones off his desk, settled a pair of amber-lensed aviator glasses over his eyes, and headed out the door, what I need is something new, something different, something I've never done before.

He checked his voicemails on the little handheld, a three-by-five hunk of high-end technology housed in a titanium case, containing a phone, an internet browser, an email server, a global positioning system, a music player, a contact database that even Danny's extensive social circle couldn't fill up, several games, and a camera that takes high-quality stills and videos; there were only two messages, both from complaining tenants from his second building, a ten-unit block of studios and one-bedrooms that was falling to pieces and used up all of its rental income in repairs; Danny was a little disappointed that there wasn't more, or anything of a social nature, but also a little bit relieved that his as-yet-unformulated solitary adventure wouldn't be interrupted.

I could just get in the car and drive somewhere, Danny thought as he cued up a playlist of up-tempo piano concerti and tucked the handheld into his pocket, envisioning himself on winding mountain roads with the top down on his hunter-green 1963 E-Type Jaguar roadster and bel canto opera blaring out of the Bang & Olufson speakers; I could find some out-of-the-way place, stop for the night, go exploring in the morning, he focused his attention on people-watching, or more specifically watching people watching him: he loved the reactions from passersby, the feel of darting eyes on his body, the heat of lust inspired by his beauty and his shamelessly displayed body; he particularly loved to make eye-contact with those who ogled him, dazzling them with a smile, and when they didn't meet his eyes he would touch himself in whatever spot they were staring at, as if to scratch an itch or adjust a garment, making them bug their eyes or trip over their own feet.

But then I'd have to reschedule my mani-pedi tomorrow, and I hate to give up my regular appointment, he nixed the road trip with a shrug and a glance at his cuticles, three of which were slightly less than perfect. Once he'd cleared the crowds on 16th Street and started the ascent up Twin Peaks toward his gym, he broke into a jog and counted out his increasing heart rate while humming breathily along with a particularly bouncy Mozart piece as he climbed the vertiginous route up to the Burnett Gardens Health Spa just below the Twin Peaks Resevoir.

Danny was glowing from exertion when he entered the vast glass atrium of the health club, his cheeks rosy and his skin dewed, his hair ruffled and his eyes bright; the uphill half-mile from Castro to the gym obviated the need to warm up on a cardio machine, which he found tedious... he'd been a cross-country runner in high school and college, and he hated to run on a treadmill, indoors with unchanging views on a boringly even surface.

The Burnett Gardens Health Spa, a glittering green-glass cube wedged into the steep hillside with dazzling views of the City, started life in the mid-80s, built on the site of an abandoned school by the legendary Parker Weintraub, a former physique model and brilliant entrepreneur, to capitalize on two up-and-coming trends: the suddenly popular body-building machines of the trendy gyms, and the luxurious services of the spas being frequented by the self-indulgent new Yuppie class. Over the years, though, as the Yuppies aged or moved on, word got around town about Weintraub's practice of hiring only the most beautiful men as trainers, masseurs, and gym staff; the health-club became dominated by wealthy matrons and well-to-do older gay men who felt it necessary to temper their figure-keeping exertions with extensive pampering, and who liked a generous helping of eye-candy with their workouts.

Weintraub had built on a lavish scale, backed by the immense resources of a wealthy older benefactor, in a chilly but elegant high-tech style: three stories tall, with rooms enclosed by sliding etched glass panels, arranged in a U-shape with steel-railed galleries looking out over the glassed-in courtyard with its immense black-granite swimming pool and lofty tropical trees; the first floor was given over to the pool and hot tubs, saunas, changing-rooms, and a juice-bar; the second floor was made up of studios for dance, aerobics, and weight-machines; and the third floor was devoted to the spa facilities, with serene little cubicles for massages, facials, manicures, pedicures, mud baths, paraffin baths, herb wraps, and all the latest holistic therapy treatments; cantilevered staircases of steel mesh and a pair of glass elevators connected the galleries to each other and to the parking-garage beneath, but interior staircases and elevators allowed the modest or unsightly to get from one floor to another without being seen by the general populace in the atrium.

Danny never used those interior stairs: he was eye-candy. Wearing scant and slutty clothes to his workouts, sauntering up the atrium stairs in a towel and still wet from the shower on his way to the third floor for a massage, and giving the bored housewives and old queens something tasty to look at in the weight-rooms and exercise classes, these were the services for which Parker Weintraub waived the staggering membership and usage fees for the troop of built and beautiful young men, like Danny, who had been recruited from other gyms to decorate the place and keep the moneyed patrons' imaginations busy.

Danny stopped off in the black-and-scarlet changing room to leave his things in his locker and refill his water-bottle out of the cooler, then dashed up the stairs to the second floor for his private Pilates lesson (though not completely private... the small exercise studio was as visible as a theatre box, and Danny's exertions often drew spectators). He was a few minutes early, so passed the time by starting his stretches, slowly folding himself in half and then returning upright, repeating the bend until he could lay the palms of his hands against the polished black floor. With his back to the glass wall, he peeked between his knees to see if anyone was watching, and was slightly disappointed that no one was. On his last bend, though, he saw his Pilates instructor's big bare feet padding into the studio.

"If you were a girl, I'd fuck you," João Bragança leered with his sexy Brazilian accent, slapping Danny on his upturned ass as he entered the little studio.

"You could close your eyes and pretend," Danny winked up at him.

"No, my friend, you are too beautiful for closed eyes, and your balls are too big for pretending away. Let's start our breathing, yes?"

As João moved around the studio, turning on the calming New Age music at the stereo, counting out the breathing rhythm, and guiding him through the slow and deceptively simple movements of the Pilates program, Danny's eyes drank in the trainer's powerfully sexual beauty... though João was dedicatedly heterosexual, there existed a certain attraction and a definite sexual tension between the two men that helped Danny keep himself on track with his training: he wouldn't miss a lesson for the world, it was far too pleasurable an experience. The auditory thrill of the smooth and exotically accented voice, and the cock-jolting electrical charge Danny felt every time João touched him to correct a posture or encourage a stretch, worked in concert with the trainer's gorgeous and deeply tanned physique, casually concealed in loose white linen beach pants, to keep Danny coming back twice a week, paying cash for private lessons, arriving punctually and drawing out the session as long as he could.

João appeared to be in his mid-thirties, his bronzed handsome face graced with sexy laugh-lines, his full-lipped mouth losing its youthful blush to a flexible and sardonic smile, his ink-black eyes eloquent of long experience; but it was the physique that drew Danny into Pilates to begin with... though the face seemed a well-preserved thirty-five, the body was distinctly twenty-one, watchworks-tight and dolphin-smooth, flowing elegantly up and down from the tiniest waist that ever graced a muscular man. The first time Danny saw João around the spa, he asked Parker Weintraub about him — and learned that he was in fact in his mid-forties and hurtling into middle age with that tiny waist and twenty-one-year-old physique. Danny signed up for Pilates that same day.

Danny had always been an athlete, but this was the first time he'd really enjoyed stationary exercise: he dutifully performed his weight-training to keep his body sculpted, and spent his prescribed time on cardio machines and in aerobics classes to keep the fat off; and though he loved the rush of endorphins and the quite satisfying physical results of these exertions, it was all too much like work for him to really enjoy doing it. But Pilates was more like meditation, and Danny loved the yogic stillness, the deliberate slowness of the isometric motions, the measured breathing and the soothing music; and the results were exactly what he wanted, tightening his waist as if he had laced up a whalebone corset under his skin. After a session with João, Danny felt tall and strong, armored and powerful.

He usually felt horny, too, after forty-five minutes of watching João's drawstring pants slide ever lower on his deeply etched hips, observing the tiny wisps of soft black hair on his dramatically attenuated feet, getting whiffs of his natural musk mixed with a warm woody fragrance he used, soothed by the nubby velvet of that erotic voice. If only he weren't so strenuously straight, Danny thought. But if I fucked him, we'd use up the tension that I enjoy, and I'd stop coming.

"What are you doing tonight?" Danny asked as they entered the cool-down portion of their program, suddenly curious about the life João lived outside of the gym. Danny didn't really know very many straight men, none at all socially, and the need for an adventure prompted him to explore a hitherto unknown facet of life.

"Now, stretch to the left... I am going to the hustler bar," he answered.

"Hustler bar?" Danny was incredulous... he had been absolutely certain João was straight, and that he didn't even date the rich women in the club, much less hustle the men, "I didn't think you swung that way."

"No, not like the boy hustlers, but like the Hustler magazine," João laughed, catching Danny's misconstruction, "I think I used the wrong word. The Hustler Club, it's a tittie-bar."

"Oh!" Danny was relieved, and then dismayed... as much as he might like to spend time with João, he wasn't prepared to go into a tittie-bar to do it: he was a fan of breasts, as a rule, but the idea of having them thrust at him from every direction was distasteful; his feelings for women were above all respectful edging toward worshipful, and objectifying them the way he could and did objectify men rubbed him the wrong way.

"My girlfriend Marisa is dancing tonight, and she wants me to see her work... now stand and stretch your arms up... so I go and watch. I like the tittie-bars, though. It's like being home in Rio. Now shake it out. What are you doing tonight, my friend?"

"I don't know yet," Danny replied after he'd shaken his arms and legs loose, "I'm kind of at a loss."

"Do gays have tittie-bars?" João asked as he took Danny's head in both hands and shook his neck loose, then grasped his shoulders and gently shook him all over; it was Danny's favorite part of the workout, so intimate yet so brisk, reminding him of his nanny towel-drying his hair after a bath when he was little.

"Not that I know of," Danny replied distractedly, "but you've given me an idea. I'll see you on Tuesday, okay?"

"Have a good weekend, my friend," João hugged him warmly and went whistling off to his next appointment.

The words "hustler" and "tittie" had set off an unexpected train of thought in Danny's mind. As he headed off to his aerobics class, choosing a place near a mirror so as to be most visible to the rest of the room, and as he forced himself mechanically through the sweaty, slightly annoying paces as prescribed by the button-cute and abominably perky muscle-twink who taught the class (he particularly loathed aerobics, but his penchant for rich food had to be paid for somehow), Danny's mind dwelt on that unexpected train.

Danny had been fascinated by the idea of hustlers since he'd read John Rechy's City of Night for a Queer Lit course in his freshman year; once bitten, he'd read every book and seen every film he could find that treated of the subject. Before he'd ever considered using his own sexuality for material gain, he had fantasized what it might be like to live on (or, even better, to rescue a wonderful and beautiful young man from) that particularly seedy fringe of society, that underlit nighttime stratum of urban life where roiling sexual ambiguities and epic doses of small-scale delusion organized into a strictly separated caste system of trade, johns, and queens.

And although he knew lots of escorts and porn-stars who might have at one time or another passed through the hustler's life, they were reluctant to talk about it, and Danny never encountered any real and current denizens of that world. By the time he arrived in San Francisco, the highly visible street-cruising that he'd read about and seen in films had been cleaned up by officious authorities, driven underground to such an extent that Danny began to wonder if that world had ever really existed.

On the other hand, there was one person he knew who was reputed to have contact with that world, an immense and florid old drag queen named Lady Titania Cunard but affectionately called "Aunt Tittie." She was the old-fashioned kind of drag queen, patently false and slightly ridiculous but imbued with genuine strength and dignity, fitted out in a towering red wig (like as not emblazoned with an enormous rhinestone tiara) over a featurelessly round but dramatically painted face, a perilously overweight six-foot frame draped in brilliantly beaded gowns and flowing chiffon robes, enormous feet puffy and painful in pointed stiletto shoes, great hammy hands blazing with huge glassy rings and bright acrylic fingernails, screaming cheerfully in a sexless but raucous voice like a parrot's.

Danny met her at an AIDS fundraiser in a big circuit-club, one of the few places where the Drag Courts and Society gays might ever intersect. They'd become fast friends when Danny demonstrated knowledge of the origin of her nickname (from a Nöel Coward short story so obscure that each was convinced nobody else had ever read it); and since Aunt Tittie held court daily in a bar she owned on Market Street called The Parrot Pub, not far from Danny's apartment, he began to use the convenient corner bar as a meeting-place for dates and so saw her at least once a week for cocktails.

Conversing over a perfectly-mixed dry martini and whatever fluorescent tropical concoction Tittie was drinking that day, she would regale Danny with gossipy tales of scores of people he didn't know, recounting episodes of the drag queens and shopkeepers and fetishists who populated her strange world; but Aunt Tittie's most-aired gossip was her own hobby of collecting hustlers. It seemed that every week there was a new one, some trashy boy breaking her heart and dipping into her purse.

Danny never quite believed that the stories Aunt Tittie told were strictly true, though. They all seemed so fanciful, it almost seemed that Tittie took ordinary people she knew slightly and embroidered them into fantastical characters for the sole purpose of entertaining herself and her friends. The drag queens couldn't possibly do so many outrageous things during a single week, the shopkeepers couldn't possibly be so wittily rude to paying customers and stay in business, and the kinks of leathermen and bears and tranny-chasers couldn't possibly be so extreme without landing them in the Emergency Room; and a queen of Aunt Tittie's advanced years couldn't possibly handle so many boys and still manage her extensive social calendar.

Still, these fabled creatures must be based on real-life models; and if anybody of Danny's acquaintance would know where to find a hustler bar in modern San Francisco, it would be Aunt Tittie. Danny debated, while showering in the first-floor changing-room (lingering unnecessarily over the soaping-up for the benefit of a small audience), whether to call Aunt Tittie at home and risk interrupting her during the sacrosanct ritual of making up for the evening, or if he should wait until five when she would be installed with her cocktail and stories at the end of her bar for Happy Hour.

He was anxious to find out about the possible existence and location of a hustler bar, but decided by the end of his shower that it would be unwise to interrupt her at her makeup table, having done so once and been taken aback by her uncharacteristic savagery. So instead of going for his phone, Danny rinsed out his sweaty clothes in the shower and hung them in the hot laundry room to dry, then tied a tiny damp towel loose and low on his hips and headed upstairs for his massages.

Preoccupied as he was with plans for the evening, he was nevertheless deliciously aware of his own power to draw admiration to himself as he loped easily up the stairs, glistening and tight and perfect, his big cock heavy and bloated from exertion and fantasy perfectly visible through the thin towel and bouncing from thigh to thigh as he walked along the open galleries; he didn't take time to stop and look at himself in the many reflective surfaces on his way to the third floor, at least not until he got to his massage room and had a moment to study himself unobserved in the full-wall mirror there.

Though Danny was by no means ashamed of his vanity, he didn't like to be seen preening in front of mirrors: he preferred for people to think that he was largely unaware of his great beauty, and that all this exercise and personal maintenance was done just for the fun of it: Danny was well aware that the world is quick to reward beauty, but even quicker to punish conceitedness.

He noted the almost immediate effect of the combined Pilates and aerobics sessions, focusing particularly on the attenuation of his dimpled buttocks and pelvic girdle flexing beautifully above the white highlight of the towel; dropping the towel and trying out a few artistic poses, he considered that he should scale back on his shoulder-work, as his deltoids were becoming somewhat striated — which, if let develop too far, would ruin the lush fluidity of his upper body.

The theme of his body-work was to create a light and voluptuous sculpture, with rich curves in the upper and lower body, and all the tension concentrated at the waist; the power should be in movement rather than in mass, and the most compelling movement should be pelvic and therefore sexual. Anything that made Danny look as if he were capable of or inclined toward any kind of manual labor or feats of pure brutish strength would destroy the gleaming elegant perfection of line that he sought.

Danny was not alone with his reflection for long; he exchanged a few distracted pleasantries with his masseur, Moe (short for Mtombo, an extremely tall and stately Tanzanian with huge hands, glossy skin the color of pumpernickel bread, and a meticulously shaved and monumentally handsome head), and lay face-down on the warm padded table to let Moe do his work; as he pushed and kneaded at Danny's muscles, Moe habitually sang pop tunes very quietly and at the tempo of a requiem, his Commonwealth-accented basso profundo soothing and reverent despite the nonsensical lyrics.

The sexual tension that Danny enjoyed with his Pilates instructor would not have worked with his masseur; he and Moe had engaged in a brief but intense affair when Danny first started coming to him for massages, getting to know each other's bodies quite intimately and burning out any physical curiosity or reticence they might have experienced. They remained friends afterward, as Danny usually did when his affairs ended, and Moe's practiced familiarity with Danny's every muscle and nerve-ending made his massages infinitely more effective and satisfying.

But while Danny usually turned his mind off during these sessions and let the pleasure and comfort of the massage take over his entire consciousness, closely following the progress of Moe's enormous strong hands as they addressed one muscle group and then another, today his fantasies about the proposed evening in a hustler bar filled his mind and distracted him from the massage.

And so as Moe worked his magic unheeded, Danny pondered what it was, exactly, that made hustlers so glamorous in his mind. He supposed that it was, for the most part, a natural envy of one socioeconomic class for another — though your average starving street hustler would probably be better justified in envying the comfort and security with which Danny had always lived, your average privileged youth nevertheless admires the possessionless and connection-free life of the runaway, who can move from one time and place to another without carrying or arranging for anything, without telling anyone or seeking anyone's permission.

But the real attraction for Danny was the immediacy of the hustler's life, or at least the hustlers' lives he'd read about: everything in these young men's lives was of-the-moment, everything happened to them unexpectedly, their concerns seldom reached beyond the next five minutes, the next twenty dollars, the next meal, the next shelter for the night. They had big dreams about suddenly "making it," winning security and comfort without any effort on their own part, but had no real ambition to be anything other than what they were, no concept of their own age or mortality. They took life as it came, adapting to new circumstances without even realizing that the circumstances had changed, carried through time on a smooth stream of unimaginative carelessness.

"On your back, now," Moe instructed, giving Danny an affectionate slap on the butt.

Underlying the glamorous immediacy, there was also a sort of "noble savage" assumption, held by many intelligent people, that unintelligent people are by nature happier than intelligent people. A young man who wanders through life without considering or even being aware of the subtler ramifications of that life must by necessity be happier than someone who was all too aware of them and couldn't help but think about them; a boy too stupid to realize that he would soon lose his looks, get old, and die, too dense to consider the thousands of possible outcomes and consequences of his every action, must exist in a state of bliss unimaginable to a boy who was plagued by such thoughts and who sometimes couldn't sleep at night for worrying over them.

This lack of intelligence, the admirable fearlessness that went hand-in-hand with common thoughtlessness, was the hallmark, in Danny's imagination, of the street hustler; and though he knew their lives to be sordid, dangerous, hardscrabble existences, he believed they were infinitely freer and happier than himself, more involved in the moment and less burdened by doubts. These literary representations of hustlers seemed so deliciously uncomplicated, and Danny loved them for it.

"Will we be having the 'happy ending' this afternoon?" Moe growled enticingly after finishing Danny's massage at the groin, wrapping his enormous hand around Danny's inevitable massage-induced erection.

"I think I'll save it up for later, Moe," he replied, sitting up and draping his arms around the masseur's waist, resting his head against the taller man's chest.

"Heavy date tonight?" Moe rubbed the excess massage-oil from Danny's skin with a warm, rough towel, again invoking that long-ago nanny and the brisk comfortable intimacy of being cared for.

"I certainly hope so," he smiled, tucking his hard cock under his thigh in hopes of discouraging it with discomfort.

"I'll go get your river-rocks, then, and save this up for later, too," Moe lewdly grasped his great cock, as monumental and handsome as the rest of him, through his white uniform pants.

Danny reached out and ran his hand over the long linen-wrapped bulge, more than tempted to revisit it but still determined to save his next orgasm for later, "I think I'll skip the river-rock massage today, sweetheart, I don't think I can sit still for it."

"It is awfully boring, isn't it? Just laying there with hot rocks on your back, and I don't even get to touch you! Some of my clients seem to need the down-time, but I'll be glad when the fad is over. You'd better stop pulling like that: if you're not going to come, I don't want to, either. How about a sea-salt and bilberry rubdown instead? It will make you feel tingly and nice."

"I already feel tingly and nice, thanks," Danny hopped off the table and wrapped his scant towel around his waist, trying to concentrate on something unpleasant (dead puppies, maggoty garbage) so that his cock would lay down and behave, "and hungry. I'm going to go have lunch instead. But you make sure to charge Parker for the sea-salt and bilberry scrub, anyway."

"That was my intention. When you schedule an appointment, I sign my time-card for the appointment, whether I'm putting rocks on your back or playing with myself alone," Moe winked at him and ruffled his hair, then went about tidying the room for his next massage, "I'll see you on Monday, yes?"

"Absolutely! Have a good weekend!"

Danny made his way back down to the ground floor, relaxed and lively and half-hard still, and decided on a short pore-opening sit in the steam-room before he got dressed. The spacious and extraordinarily clean chamber was a little too busy, though, with four old men fiddling with themselves under their towels while watching a pair of young exhibitionists put on a bit of a show in the corner, so Danny left again without breaking a sweat. After washing off the remaining massage oil in his third (and by no means last) shower of the day, he carefully reapplied his various moisturizers and sunscreens and slipped his just-dry clothes over his gleaming skin, then went back to the locker room to put on his socks and shoes in order to be seemly for his usual after-workout lunch.

Though the long counter and group of tables at the end of the pool was designated as the "Juice Bar," it was in fact a full-service restaurant offering a rotating menu of highly nutritious gourmet salads and entrées along with the usual protein shakes and fruit smoothies; the club's resident nutritionist had also concocted a series of "mocktails" to serve in place of aperitifs and wine, strange but interesting blends of herbal essences and fruit extracts with healthful properties, elaborately garnished and served in traditional cocktail glasses.

Seated at his favorite table overlooking the swimming-pool, his body humming with endorphins, picking at a huge slab of steamed mahi-mahi on a bed of spinach wilted with a warm citron vinaigrette and tossed with blood-orange wedges and asparagus pickles, sipping at a huge cobalt bottle of Italian mineral water and occasionally clearing his palate with a ruby-colored aperitif concocted of cava-cava with pomegranate and cranberry essences, and leafing through a local lifestyle magazine in search of pictures of himself or his friends at various Social events, Danny felt perfectly happy.

"This is living," he said to himself, gloating over how good he looked in an unusually clear picture taken of him drinking champagne with a Pulitzer-winning playwright at a fundraising event for one of the local theatre groups.

"Talking to yourself, Beauty?" Parker Weintraub asked, ruffling Danny's hair as men so frequently did, and seating himself at Danny's table, "You're too young to start slipping into dementia."

"I was just expressing my appreciation to the Powers-That-Be for how good I feel right now," Danny replied, leaning over to give Parker a peck on the cheek, resting his head slightly against Parker's face for a moment and leaning his hand on Parker's shoulder. Among Danny's many invaluable social skills was his ability to remember how hundreds of different people liked to be greeted — with a wave, a handshake, a hug, a touch, air-kisses, damp or dry pecks on the cheek or the lips, or full open-mouthed kisses — everyone had a favorite, and Danny always gave each of them what they wanted.

"Prayers of gratitude, is it? And to nameless gods? How New Age of you. A sure sign of mental slippage," the older man laughed, snapping his fingers at the passing waiter, who responded speedily by setting down a tall frosted glass of iced green tea before his employer, "Any good piccies of yourself on the Society pages, pet?"

"Just two this month, at the Players' Guild fundraiser and at that silly gallery opening. But that's just Westbay View, I haven't seen the other magazines yet," Danny slid the open magazine around the corner of the black-marble table so Parker could see it. As Parker studied the magazine, Danny studied him, wondering if he would look anything like that himself in thirty years' time.

Parker had not aged as gracefully as Danny thought he should; just past fifty, he still retained the excellent physique and razor-elegant bone-structure of his youth as a model and professional sweetheart (not unlike Danny himself), but he had unfortunately clung a little too long to that youth, and ended up looking just a trifle desperate: his skin was too deeply tanned and too tightly stretched, resembling a well-cured leather; his hair was suspiciously thick in the front, with someone else's locks woven in to his own thinning hair, which was dyed too dark and cut in a style far too foppishly tousled for an adult; his clothes were similarly too-youthful, trendy to the point of being a caricature of the trends, and leaning toward the slutty. Instead of presenting an image of the mature successful businessman he was, he looked like a party-boy who'd been left out-of-doors in the rain.

He was still great-looking, of course, nothing could obscure the beauty that had been the moneymaker of his youth, winning him a legion of wealthy admirers, one of whom left him the fortune with which he built his own little fitness empire; but there was something tragic and slightly unseemly about Parker's attempts at maintaining youth, and Danny worried that he might be similarly unable to adapt when the lights went on for Last Call and youth was inescapably over.

"I don't know what you see in these people," Parker shook his head as he perused the other photographs on the page, "They're so unattractive. I mean, you'll never hear me knocking rich old boyfriends, but who dresses these women? I know that chiffon number is from Sak's, but she wears it like it's from Sears. This one needs to be told that nipples do not belong under the solar plexus. And what's with the Gloria Vanderbilt rictus grins? They all look so hungry and frightened."

"It's a WASP thing," Danny replied with a laugh, "Even when you're having fun, you're supposed to look like you're suffering. It keeps the peasants from revolting."

"Here's an exception, though," Parker pushed the magazine back with his finger pointing to a picture on the next page, "he's just about the prettiest straight-boy I've ever seen, and she looks like a cross between Grace Kelly and Nicole Kidman. And those aristocratic titles are so cute. Do you know them?"

The couple Parker was pointing out were not unfamiliar to Danny, he had seen them at various Arts events, but he'd never spoken to either of them... they belonged to a different echelon altogether, moving in that most rarified circle of the super-rich with the Gettys and the Spreckleses, the Hollywood celebrities and the visiting royalty of foreign nations; it was in some ways a literal circle, a close-herded flock for which the bodyguards that came to keep an eye on their diamonds created a sort of Armani-clad wall between them and the merely Social like Danny.

"I don't know them to speak to, but I've seen them around. 'Baron de Seguemont and Marquesa Willard-Wilkes at the Players' Guild,'" Danny read the caption aloud, studying the ethereally beautiful youth with his stunningly beautiful female companion; he was in impeccable black-tie, and the contrast of the starched white and sharp black with his romantically long silvery-blond hair, softly petulant rose-petal mouth, and huge pale green eyes was fascinating; she was dressed in a dramatic gown of deep blue jersey and wore an enormous square yellow jewel on a diamond chain around her neck, with an immense mane of auburn curls cascading around a pale and exquisite pre-Raphaelite face that did indeed combine the dreamy perfection of Kelly and the fiery delicacy of Kidman, "They're way out of my league... Vanderveres are front Grand Tier, but these people are strictly Private Box."

"I'd like to get down the front of his box," Parker leered, leaning over the magazine, "those girly little straight-boys totally push my buttons."

"He is awfully pretty. And she does have admirable style as well as great beauty, a rare combination in that circle. Though I never understood how she could have a Spanish title and an English name."

"Maybe it's a nickname, like Baby or Princess or something," Parker shrugged, turning the page, "or maybe she's Spanish and married an Anglo, but got to keep her title anyway. Here they are again at the Opera; I wonder if they're engaged to be married? They'll make some damned pretty babies. But look at this old bag... she must be a hundred, and she's painted up like a blind hooker! And a hat in the evening! Precious!"

Parker and Danny continued to critique the various denizens of San Francisco's haute monde, and then moved on to critique the advertisements and photo layouts in the magazine, making up lewd fantasies about the male models and catty dialogue for the female models, laughing and enjoying themselves immensely as Danny finished his lunch.

After the magazine and the mahi-mahi were devoured, Danny excused himself and returned to the locker room to collect the rest of his things. After checking his handheld to see that no messages awaited him in his voice-mail, Danny calculated how much more time he would have to kill before he could beard Aunt Tittie in her den at The Parrot. If he walked slowly and window-shopped his way home, and changed out of his gym clothes before he walked the two blocks to the pub, he would arrive about midway through Aunt Tittie's first cocktail.

***

Danny dawdled down the hill as slowly as he could, pausing to look at every flower and tree in the residential areas, and every window and sign when he reached the commercial district. He flirted with good-looking passersby and stopped to chat with acquaintances encountered in various places. He even did a little light shopping, picking up a bunch of unusual russet-colored tulips for his dining table, a huge cucumber-scented candle for the bathroom, a fresh cup of tarry black coffee, a basket of particularly tantalizing organic strawberries, and a ridiculously overpriced little Victorian bronze copy of Canova's Perseus that he'd been resisting for some weeks.

By the time he reached his apartment, he had absorbed a sufficient amount of time that he could have continued on to The Parrot and been confident in finding Aunt Tittie there. He nevertheless popped inside to change, wriggling out of his gym-clothes in the front hall and pulling on a pair of velour warmup pants and a matching hoodie the color of toast; it was one of several nearly identical suits he kept in the closet beside the front door specifically for such purposes, to be pulled on over his usual at-home nakedness in an instant if he needed to run outside for any reason, to get milk or a newspaper or a latte or a croissant, but didn't want to go through a time-consuming dressing ritual.

The comfortable warmups, despite their casual purpose, were as carefully chosen, meticulously tailored, and deliberately provocative as the gym-clothes: the skin-tight velour hid nothing, and the low-rise pants hugged his pelvis lewdly and draped luxuriously around his legs; the zipper of the hoodie usually rested just below his sternum and the hem frequently rode up to reveal an inch or so of bare skin; with a pair of brown Gucci slides and a frowsy canvas bucket-hat pulled down over his curls as if to hide a case of bed-head (which never actually happened to his pampered hair), he looked erotically rumpled and easy.

When he reached The Parrot and entered the dim barroom, Danny paused in the door to pull off his hat and drop his handheld and wallet and keys into it, which had been all dangling from his left hand by their various wrist-straps (most of his pockets were purely for decoration), and let his eyes adjust to the sudden gloom.

The Parrot Pub was so named for Aunt Tittie's loud and nasal parrot-like voice and her penchant for brilliant, sometimes violent colors; but the name was carried to its furthest possible conclusion in the décor. The dark-paneled walls of the large, square bar-room were covered in beefcake photography punctuated with pictures of parrots rendered in every possible medium, from expensive Audubon lithographs to cheap tropical-destination postcards, elegant oil-paints to kitschy pebble-mosaics; brass parrots decorated the hat-trees and dim-bulbed chandeliers, as well as the bar-rail and door handles; parrots lurked in the palms of the tropical-print upholstery and peeped out of the bamboo pattern of the carpet; and two full-sized parrots stood on big brass stands at either end of the semicircular bar that emerged from the long inside wall, one live bird at the left end chattering endlessly in Spanish to no one in particular, and one robotic bird at the right end that rustled and whirred and uttered stereotypical parrot phrases whenever anyone passed it to get to the restrooms.

Even before his eyes adjusted, Danny could make out the mass of bright colors that was Aunt Tittie at the left-hand end of the bar. She wore an elaborate apricot beehive wig with glittered turquoise silk butterflies on it, a flowing caftan of shimmering fuchsia lamé embroidered with silver cord and opalescent sequins, and a very long string of huge peach-pink pearls wrapped several times around her thick neck and draped bib-like across her vast false bosom; her makeup leaned toward blues and greens, with a startling mauve lipstick, and her nails were a brilliant orange-gold... every color clashed madly, but somehow worked together, rendering her as stately and impressive as a sunset after a storm.

The bar was empty except for Aunt Tittie, who was poring over a pile of receipts and making little notes in a ledger, the afternoon bartender, Sydney, a tall dark-haired man of unguessable age and indistinct features, polishing glasses and watching television with the sound off, and the designated drunk, Paul, a seedy but expensively-dressed middle-aged man asleep at the bar with his head propped up on one hand. Vintage disco music issued quietly from the bubbling Wurlitzer jukebox, and the whole place was very peaceful; Aunt Tittie looked up from her receipts when Danny's shadow crossed the door, and she let loose with a loud screeching "Hello!" which the live parrot near her mimicked perfectly. Paul raised his head at the noise, but didn't wake up.

"Sydney," Aunt Tittie declaimed in a Stentorian bellow that was meant to pass for an imitation of Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, which the parrot promptly echoed, "I appear to be having a wet dream. If you wake me up, I'll kill you. And please bring my wet dream a dry martini."

"Good afternoon, Aunt Tittie," Danny slid into the seat next to hers and kissed her proffered hand lavishly, using a little bit of tongue on her big dry knuckles.

"Danny Vandervere, you dreadful, beautiful boy," Tittie shrilled, "what brings you out at such an early hour, and in such pornographic dishabille?"

"I have come to tap your wisdom about a certain issue," Danny replied as pompously as he could, taking a tentative sip at the martini that had been set before him. It was exactly perfect, his favorite English gin with only the merest whisper of vermouth, and two olives flanking an onion skewered on a little plastic sword. He beamed a grateful smile at Sydney, who had to turn away to mask the fluttering effect it had had on him.

"I sincerely hope that 'tapping my wisdom' is a euphemism for fucking me silly," Tittie winked broadly over the salted rim of her passion-fruit margarita, "though I suspect it only means you want to ask me a question."

"Alas, it is only answers I seek today. Besides, you'd never respect me again if I fucked you."

"What makes you think I respect you now?" Tittie arched an eyebrow at him and bit a piece of pineapple from the skewer of fruit garnishing her drink. "What is this wonderful question that only I can answer?"

"I wondered if there was still such a thing as a hustler bar."

"Well of course, darling! Where do you think I find my houseboys? Why do you ask?"

"I just had a whim to visit one, but I didn't know where one was."

"You aren't planning to turn pro are you?" Aunt Tittie turned back to her receipts and started putting them into their file, "Make sure to put me on your mailing list if you do."

"No, it's just a silly fantasy I have about hustlers, and I find myself at a loose end tonight."

"I can't imagine what you want with a hustler bar, sweetie," she took off her rhinestone-crusted reading glasses and looked Danny in the face, "That's not your scene, you know. No society beaux, no circuit beauties. Most of them can't even produce a proper cocktail."

"Can't a boy try a different scene once in a while?"

"I suppose so, but I still can't think why. But if you insist, I recommend The Brat... it's the least dire."

"Oh, but I want dire," Danny enthused, "I want something different from my usual rounds, you know?"

"There's different, darling, and there's different. In the other places, the stench alone would straighten your pretty hair. No, definitely The Brat... it's halfway up Polk Street, and three doors to the left, across the side-street from that hideous Deco hotel they tried to turn into a Painted Lady."

"The Brat, off Polk by the painted Deco hotel," Danny repeated and jotted the information into his handheld with a little stylus, "Thank you!"

"I guess you're welcome," Aunt Tittie sniffed, stirring her margarita with the fruit-skewer, "but I still can't think why you want to go there. You don't need money, do you?"

"No, thank you, love. It's just a thing I've had in my mind all day," Danny prefaced, then poured out the whole story of his fascination with hustlers and explained his theory about how hustlers were happier than ordinary people.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Danny Vandervere, and I credited you with better sense!" Aunt Tittie sat back and scowled at her young friend, "Stupid people aren't any happier than anyone else, and most hustlers are too stupid to be content with their stupidity. They're always after something, anything they can get, anything they don't have. And they have nothing. That's why they hustle."

"I suppose you're right," Danny suddenly doubted his theory, and considered abandoning the project for no other reason than to please Aunt Tittie, "but I'm obsessed with the idea, I've been thinking about it and very little else all afternoon. I have to see it for myself."

"Well, you'll find I am right, soon enough," Tittie shrugged and finished her drink, "I guess slumming is at least educational. Just be careful, silly child, and don't touch anything with your bare hands if you can help it."

"Thank you, Aunt Tittie!" Danny got up and hugged her from behind, being careful to keep away from her face so as not to smudge her makeup, "You're a wonderful auntie. I had better get home. I have no idea what to wear, it'll take hours. And thanks for the drink!"

Tittie watched Danny leave and felt a certain amount of misgiving mixed with a certain amount of smug satisfaction. The Brat would not be easy on the likes of Danny Vandervere, and though she harbored a great affection for the boy, she also harbored at the same time a sort of resentment against him: nobody that beautiful could be loved without some jealousy of his beauty and the apparent ease of his life creeping in.

"That boy's going to get in trouble," she said to Sydney when he came to refill her glass from the blender and move Danny's barely-touched martini down the bar for Paul the Drunk, "Somebody ought to keep an eye on him."

"Boys like that always end up on top, though, don't they?" Sydney smiled at his boss.

"On bottom, honey. Boys like that are always bottoms! Hah!" Aunt Tittie barked a bitter laugh that was almost a sneer.

"Bottoms! Hah!" echoed the parrot. Paul woke up and finished Danny's drink, then went back to sleep.

Chapter 1 - Draft 2 (old)

2010-07-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

Danny Vandervere is a very lucky young man, liberally endowed by the goddess Fortune with almost everything one could want by way of genetics and circumstance: plenty of money, a family name that opens doors, a fine and well-educated mind, an agile and energetic body, and a degree of physical beauty so extreme that only a handful of the world's young men could possibly match it.

The family name will be immediately familiar, especially to those who frequent public restrooms: Royal Vandervere Mills supplies the toilet tissues, seat covers, and paper towels for eighty percent of the restrooms in the western half of the United States; the name "Vandervere" and the Mills' logo of four acute triangles (meant to represent evergreen trees) is embossed on metal or plastic covers in rest-stops and restaurants from Burbank to Butte.

But in those rarefied circles of Society-with-a-capital-S, amongst that breed most frequently seen at symphony galas and museum openings, the name Vandervere is rich with cache: very old money, the family tracing back to Old Dutch New York, transplanted to California when it entered the Union in 1850; a huge land grant of one million acres covered with pine and fir trees in the Coastal Range lent added respectability despite the lowly nature of what those acres eventually produced. It is land, after all, rather than money, that makes a true aristocrat.

All of that respectability is, fortunately, nevertheless wed with lots and lots of money: old wealth constantly fed by paper-mill profits, sheltered and thriving in a family trust that reinvests the wealth, makes charitable donations, keeps the town of Vandervere, California running, and administers allowances to all of the Vanderveres. And while Danny's allowance is fairly small in comparison to the other Vanderveres', being only a young bachelor with no dependents, it is still a cozy sum, enabling him to live in a good deal of comfort if not actual luxury.

Danny also inherited some money, several million from his Great Aunt Mathilda Vandervere (who, though limited to a maiden lady's allowance and a small salary as head of the Vandervere Town Library, had managed to amass a weighty fortune independent of the Trust through a successful gambling habit and winnings reinvested into booming resort property. The family had assumed she'd lost all the money she'd gambled during her monthly visits to Reno). Danny transmuted most of the legacy into San Francisco real estate, in the form of three apartment buildings (one of which houses his own spacious flat); the leftovers went into a vintage Jaguar convertible, a lot of antique furniture, opera and ballet subscriptions, and some quite dazzling clothes.

So he is very well set-up as far as material needs: his allowance will increase as he gets older, his rental property will appreciate while filling his pockets with income; and if he ever needs a job, all he has to do is flash his name around and he can walk straight into a career with the Old Boy Network that still controls much of the corporate industry in this country, or into a lucrative position with any charity, museum, or performing arts institution still run by the pedigreed old ladies who have always run such things.

On the other hand, riches are as nothing compared to the blessing of a sound mind in a sound body. And since Fortune heaps her gifts on Danny Vandervere with a ladle rather than a teaspoon, he is of course endowed with an exceptional mind in an extraordinary body.

Danny Vandervere has never had a pimple, or a cavity, or athlete's foot. His body repels germs, and he's never had anything more serious than a flu, and then only once. He is allergic to no kind of dander or pollen, no type of food has the power to disturb the ease and regularity of his digestion, no amount of alcohol has ever succeeded in making him sick. He gains muscle easily, a few hours exercise always has visible results, but he couldn't put on a significant amount of fat if he lived on chocolate cake and bacon for a month.

His muscles respond to his will easily and immediately, any new movement is mastered on the second try if not the first, and remembered by those muscles forever after; he excels at every sport he tries, can dance ballroom and disco and a few basic steps of tap and ballet, and can bend himself into intricate yogic postures; he can't ride a bicycle, but only because he has never tried. His eyesight is remarkable, able to pick out tiny details a hundred yards off and discern the difference between nearly identical colors; his nose and palate are abnormally acute, fitting him for a career as a parfumier or vintner; his ears can hear a bunny fart in the forest, and have perfect pitch, enabling him to parrot back any musical note he hears.

This exquisite machine is operated by a mind of almost shocking acuity: Danny's IQ hovers in the middle genius range, he can give speeches and construct arguments and counterarguments extempore, he can do complicated math in his head, and he can remember every fact he's ever learned with immediate and perfect recall. If he sets his mind to it, he can do just about anything.

And, unlike many young men of his social stratum, he does set his mind to things: the remarkable brain has been well-trained, disciplined and socialized into a wonderful tool. Danny speaks French, Italian, and Spanish as well as his native English and can follow an opera in German or a simple conversation in Russian; he can even trot out several useful phrases in Japanese and Mandarin. He can read music, recite the Periodic Table, and effortlessly quote classic novels, cult movies, and highlights from most of Shakespeare's plays.

Best of all, he remembers people. He can meet someone at a crowdwed party and remember years later not only that person's name and where they met, but all of the topics of their conversation. He remembers birthdays, phone numbers, favorite ice cream flavors, and how people like to be greeted in public.

And it is all done quite effortlessly, every amazing feat of physical or mental prowess carried off so gracefully that one might not even realize it was amazing.

Chapter 11, Part 1

2007-11-12T14:40:00.000-08:00

Danny's final meeting with Rodney Casterman before they went to court took place in Danny's dressing room. Danny had intended to look his very best for his court date, and had laid out his finest handmade French suit, handmade English shirt, handmade Italian shoes, and a thousand-dollar platinum silk necktie that Valerien had just given him.

Casterman, on the other hand, wanted Danny to run down to Macy's and buy something blue and unbranded off the rack... he wanted Danny to not look like a pampered prince, but rather a "regular guy." Danny was horrified by the suggestion, and flatly refused to wear a blue suit with a red tie in any case; they therefore spent an hour combing through Danny's wardrobe seeking a compromise.

Eventually they decided on a Brooks Brothers tweed jacket and grey slacks with cordovan loafers that filled Danny with misgivings ("It's so casual, no one will take me seriously"), a button-down Oxford shirt and his Stanford school tie. With his hair combed back and no jewelry ("Don't you own anything simple? Buy yourself a Timex, for God's sake"), Danny looked incredibly young and rather painfully naïve, which is exactly the look Casterman wanted for his client.

This last piece of defense established, the great attorney wished Danny a good night's sleep and left him to entertain the Aunt Ems and Mademoiselle Marnie, as well as Officer Pete Kelley, all of whom had been flown down from Vandervere in Valerien's private jet.

The Aunt Ems were simply delighted to be out of Vandervere, and had made a holiday of the trip, even going so far as to wear festive corsages on the shoulders of their matching flowered silk dresses. They were identical twins, a pair of frail birdlike creatures, plump and quick with small heads and teased white cotton-candy hair. The only way to tell them apart was that Aunt Maude was left-handed, so her corsage was on her right shoulder; closer study also revealed that Aunt Myrtle was slightly plumper, being even more fond of sweets than her sister.

Mademoiselle Marnie seemed uncomfortable with the august old ladies, or just uncomfortable to be away from home; she worried a crystal rosary in her hand and kept making nervous gestures around her frizzed henna-red hair. She was dressed quite formally in a shapeless black wool gown and several strands of glass beads, with clunky black shoes making her legs look even skinnier than they already were; she was also very small and birdlike, but thin as a rake, with a slightly beaky nose and brilliant round black eyes.

Officer Kelley was even more uncomfortable in the presence of his "social betters" (eight years spent in the feudal atmosphere of Vandervere had taken its toll on him) but the Aunt Ems had taken a shine to the kind-faced officer and made a pet of him, asking his opinion on every topic under the sun, complimenting him endlessly on his unusual green-brown eyes and freckles, and treating him as a newfound beau. He greeted Danny with a hearty handshake and expressed his gratitude at being called and brought to San Francisco in such luxury.

Danny took the four of them to dinner at the Palm Court, as he always did with out-of-town visitors, and they enjoyed themselves over a long and lavish meal. Danny had quartered them all in suites at the Palace, so he was able to escort them from the restaurant to their rooms without the bother of cars.

Returning home late and alone for the first time in a long time, Danny poured himself a relaxing glass of wine and sat down in the wing-chair by the fireplace for a couple of hours, just enjoying the beauty of his living room and appreciating his life as it stood... he was terribly conscious that he could lose his freedom tomorrow, and wanted to be prepared for it: in a way, he was saying good-bye to his life, just in case.

He didn't expect to get any sleep with so much on his mind, and so he was quite shocked when the alarm-clock went off and he discovered he'd had a full eight hours of dreamless sleep. He actually felt quite cheerful as he made his coffee, groomed himself for the day, and wolfed down a fairly hearty breakfast, even going so far as to scramble some eggs and eat them on toast.

Valerien picked him up at nine, dressed in a rather conservative (for him) dark blue pinstripe suit; only on closer inspection did one notice that it was cut in the Edwardian fashion, with a double-breasted waistcoat and a deep violet necktie that was so wide it was almost an ascot. Danny smiled at the foppishness of the little bunch of violets in the buttonhole, the silvery suede gloves and shoes, and the silver-headed walking-stick.

"What are you wearing?" Valerien was aghast at Danny's carefully-chosen clothes, "And what happened to the Sulka tie I got you the other day? I thought you were going to wear it for me."

"I was," Danny grimaced with regret, "But Mr. Casterman put the kibosh on it and made me wear this mess instead. But it could have been worse... can you believe he actually wanted me to buy something off the rack? Blue with a red tie?"

"Quel horreur!" Valerien exclaimed without humor, genuinely disturbed by the idea of his friend dressing like a poor politician.

"Still, it's better than an orange jumpsuit," Danny remarked grimly, still worried about the possibility of having his bail revoked.

"Actually, I thought you looked quite nice in that jumpsuit," Valerien said, giving Danny's hand a reassuring pat, "Orange is definitely your color."

"Where are we going?" Danny wondered, looking out the window.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Valerien was distressed, "I hope you don't mind, but Marquesa's coming along with us this morning. He was called as a witness, too."

"I don't mind," Danny said truthfully, "I don't want to keep avoiding Marquesa... I'll never get over him if I never see him."

"That's a very sensible approach," Valerien patted his hand as they pulled into the courtyard of Marquesa's building.

The building was a very grand Art Deco tower on a very steep side of Nob Hill, flanked by three-storied garages, with a blue canvas marquee stretching out to a circular drive that wrapped itself around a dancing fountain. Marquesa was waiting at the door with the liveried doorman, dressed in a very simple black suit with a black Persian lamb coat slung over his shoulders like a cape, black boots and gloves, a pearl dog-collar and a Victorian diamond brooch, and a smart black cloche hat with a little spray of black feathers on one side.

"Darling, you look like a schoolboy," Marquesa said to Danny, planting a lipstick kiss on the side of his face as he entered the car.

"Lawyer's orders," Danny replied, pulling out his handkerchief to wipe off the paint, "He thinks this makes me look innocent."

"Well, he should know. Valerien, good morning... do you have any coffee in this hearse?"

The rest of the drive passed in silence while each sipped coffee and worried over his own part in the courtroom drama that was coming; Valerien and Marquesa had been called as witnesses to Danny's behavior upon leaving Marshall's apartment, as well as witnesses to Danny's character, and both were nervous about putting the most flattering light on their friend without appearing dishonestly fulsome.

Eventually the car pulled up at the Hall of Justice, where Danny was greeted by his Aunts, his former nanny, and his policeman friend. The Aunt Ems were dressed in identical Chanel suits of gray tweed with black velvet edging and triple-strand pearl necklaces, riotous lavender orchid corsages fluttering on their shoulders and old-fashioned flowered hats with veils perched on their fluffy white heads. Mademoiselle Marnie was in the same dress she'd worn the night before, but without the rattling beads, and had a much more cheerful aspect than when she'd arrived ("I did your cards, mon petit, and it's all going to turn out splendidly"). Officer Kelley wore his uniform and looked quite dashing.

The group filed together through the metal-detectors, where Valerien was relieved of his walking-stick and Marquesa had to surrender a small handgun ("Damn, I forgot to take that out of my purse...sorry.") and into the same drab and ugly courtroom where Danny's bail had been set.

The courtroom was packed with photographers, all of whom swarmed around Danny and his retinue as they entered the courtroom. The Aunt Ems were thrilled and did their best not to actually pose for the cameras. Danny went and sat beside Mr. Casterman (who was wearing a blue suit with a red tie) at the Defense table, and stole glances back at his friends and family for reassurance every now and then.

During one of those looks backward, Danny caught sight of someone who struck him as familiar, but he couldn't think why... he was a rather nondescript young man, with a thin mouth and small eyes, medium brown hair buzzed to military shortness, dressed in a tan suit and a brown tie. He was sitting next to Cissie Marshall, so Danny assumed that it was her son, and that the familiarity was based on his inevitable resemblance to Drayton Marshall, but there was something else about him that nagged Danny's memory... he'd seen that young man before, in another context, but where?

The arraignment began with Assistant District Attorney Reese Moon calling for testimony from the arresting officers. Detective Spevik was stiff and obviously uncomfortable, while Detective Varajian was smooth and competent; it was clear from the testimony which officer believed in Danny's guilt and which didn't; the Prosecution made much of Danny's initial mistaken confession, while Casterman focused on the initial interview and Danny's stated belief that he'd killed Marshall by accident, and the complete lack of mention of knives and stabbing in the confession.

Next on the stand was Medical Examiner Marriott Griggs, who rambled on at some length, and spent a great deal of time discoursing on unrelated information. He was obviously hostile to the prosecution and friendly to the defense, but the evidence (once boiled out of the discursive descriptions) was nevertheless damaging. ME Griggs was asked by the Prosecution to repeat several times that Danny's fingerprint and DNA were found on the murder weapon; Casterman asked him to repeat that there were no boot-prints found in the kitchen, as well as taking him through the issue of the bleached toilet and hallways several times from different angles of inquiry.

Danny had a hard time guessing what the judge might be making of all this contradictory information: Judge Everard Manning had a smooth and completely expressionless face that gave absolutely nothing away. He was one of the socially ambitious judges whom Marquesa and Valerien had influenced over Danny's bail hearing, but there was no way of knowing whether the man would be swayed by such considerations during something as serious and career-affecting as a brightly publicized arraignment.

The final piece of evidence that the Prosecution presented was the video of Danny's violent behavior with Marshall; the judge elected to view that video in chambers rather than in open court, and a short recess was called. Danny breathed a sigh of relief that his aunts wouldn't be forced to see the very indelicate goings-on of the tape; it was bad enough that the thing existed, but to have even the R-rated portions broadcast in public would be too humiliating to bear.

During the recess, Danny kept one eye on Marshall's son, trying to figure out where he'd seen the man before. Danny was sure they'd never actually been introduced, and was equally certain he'd never been pointed out before. Danny so prided himself on his social memory, though, that this gap in recognition drove him quite mad. When court was resumed after the judge returned (looking distinctly embarrassed) from viewing the tape, Danny found it difficult to concentrate on the proceedings, distracted by trying to remember where he'd seen Drayton Marshall IV (assuming that's who the young man was) before.

With the video off its hands, the Prosecution turned the floor over to Casterman, who called Aunt Myrtle, and then Aunt Maude to the stand to give identical and quite endearing portraits of Danny's childhood and youth, both swearing up and down that Danny didn't have a violent bone in his body. The Prosecution, who knew better from the video, wisely declined to cross-question the sweet little old ladies. However, ADA Moon did cross-question Mademoiselle Marnie, who gave almost the exact same testimony as the Aunt Ems, and he made much of her vagueness and eccentricity by asking indirect and slightly confusing questions.

Casterman next called Valerien to the stand to give an account of Danny's behavior when they met on the elevator... Valerien swore that he seemed quite as composed as one could be, covered in oil and confronted with two strangers in an elevator. He did not observe any blood on his person, other than from the cut on Danny's hand from the broken elevator button.

The Prosecution tried to discount Valerien's testimony with a rather clumsy ploy: in hopes of irritating Valerien into a state of hauteur that might make him look bad to the judge, he mangled his name, addressing him as "Mister Segwamount"

"Baron de Seguemont, if you don't mind," Valerien replied, correcting him with a gentle smile.

"The court doesn't recognize foreign titles," ADA Moon responded.

"Very well," Valerien shrugged and smiled again, blinking submissively, refusing to be drawn.

Moon and Valerien went back and forth in this vein for quite some time, the ADA continuously trying to rile Valerien's famous prideful temper, but Valerien was almost cloyingly polite as he went through his testimony again, repeating himself almost word-for-word, and speaking very slowly as if to someone who hadn't been listening the first time. The whole exercise made the ADA look rather foolish.

Valerien was dismissed and his place taken by Marquesa; after Casterman walked him through their meeting in the elevator, as well as describing their subsequent friendship and Danny's character as he saw it, ADA Moon tried again to discredit the witness by irritating him into a fury.

"Your legal name is Marc-Antony Wilkes?" Moon asked in a rather condescending tone, his eyes raking over Marquesa's dress and hat.

"That is my birth name; my legal name is Marque Willard-Wilkes," Marquesa said, a hint of the desired irritation in his voice. And though he was hostile toward Moon during the cross-examination, Marquesa answered all of his questions and underlined that Danny was a nonviolent and generally even-tempered person, and that he'd never even seen the defendant angry.

The last witness called was Officer Kelley of the Vandervere Police, who gave a glowing testimonial to Danny's kindness and gentleness; when cross-examined, he (with a disarming blush) also gave an account of Danny's one brush with the law when he was liable to a charge of indecent exposure and committing a lewd act in a public place; he explained that the charges were never brought because of Officer Kelley's friendship with the defendant, but stressed that such a friendship would have been terminated if Danny had ever been caught doing something violent or cruel, as his brother and cousins often had been.

ADA Moon tried to undermine this last statement with questions about why charges were never brought against the other Vanderveres who had committed violent or cruel acts, but Officer Kelley was so open about the state of things in Vandervere and the Vandervere family's control of the workings of the town, pretty much ensuring that he wouldn't remain much longer in his position there, that it was impossible to doubt him.

With this last witness finished, the judge recessed the court for lunch so that he could review and deliberate on the evidence presented.

When Danny stood and turned to join his friends for lunch, he was surprised by Drayton Marshall's son glaring at him in a manner that was instantly familiar.

"It's the purple-haired kid!" Danny whispered to Casterman.

"The who?" Casterman responded distractedly.

"The purple-haired kid! Right there, standing next to Cissie Marshall. He's the kid I saw at The Brat, the one who called himself Cort Johnson... of course! It's not Cort with a C, it was Quart with a Q! As in Quartus! The fourth! It's a common prep-school nickname. It all makes sense!"

"What are you babbling about?" Casterman turned to follow Danny's gaze toward Drayton Holyfield Marshall IV, who was now leading his mother from the courtroom.

"That man there is the purple-haired boy, Cort Johnson!" Danny repeated, his mind becoming dazzled by the implications, "Which means that he might have killed his father. And he appeared on Marshall's tapes, too, which means his own father handcuffed and fucked him without even recognizing him! That's disgusting."

"Now, wait a minute," Casterman grasped Danny's elbow, "Are you absolutely certain? This is a serious thing you're saying."

"I'm completely sure," Danny replied, excited, "I never forget things like this, I was only distracted because he looks so much like Marshall now, as obviously he would; but then when he looked directly at me, I recognized him immediately. That's Cort Johnson! The Purple-Haired Kid. Aunt Tittie's houseboy. I thought that Mexican alibi was weak. He was here the whole time!"

"Now, don't get ahead of yourself. Let me talk to RJ about this, and see what we can find out. Go have lunch with the Baron and Mr. Willard-Wilkes, but don't talk about this until I have a chance to get some preliminary investigation underway, do you understand?"

"I can't tell Valerien and Marquesa?" Danny asked, wondering what else he'd be able to talk about in his excitement.

"Yes, but don't let anyone hear you. If you accuse Marshall's son of his murder, even indirectly or casually, and we can't back it up, we could have a libel case on our hands."

It wasn't necessary to lower their voices, after all, as Valerien had arranged a picnic lunch in the back of his limousine, so Danny was able to discuss this new development with his friends uninterrupted.

"It's a brilliant plan," Danny enthused as he puzzled out how Marshall's son had done it, "All he'd have to do is go down to Mexico for a week or two, establish himself somewhere and bribe some people to say he'd never left, then sneak back across the border in disguise."

"Is it that easy?" Marquesa wondered, "I mean, you hear about illegal immigrants all the time, but I don't feature a Marshall allowing himself to be smuggled across the Rio Grande in a melon truck."

"It's super easy... all he'd have to do is come back on a tour bus on a busy weekend, nobody'd ever recognize him. Americans have free entry, they don't even require passports at the border crossings."

"But doesn't that make the whole alibi weak?" Valerien asked, "He couldn't really prove he'd gone in or come out at any particular time."

"He could if he flew. Airlines have so much security, and such detailed records, that they make perfect alibis. And if he got fined for something, like trying to bring in some tequila without paying duty on it, that would cement his presence in the airport security's minds... he probably made a spectacle of himself going in the first time and coming out for his father's funeral, but snuck quietly in and out as Cort Johnson without calling any attention to himself at all."

"It must have been awfully risky, living here in town for all those weeks without anybody recognizing him," Marquesa said.

"Not really," Danny replied, "Consider how stratified this city is... if he was hanging out on Polk Street and living with Aunt Tittie, nobody he knew, except his father, would ever see him. And his disguise was enough to make his father not recognize him."

"Are you really that sure? If his own father didn't recognize him, how can you?"

"Because I have that kind of memory, I learned a long time ago to memorize eyes and noses, they tend not to change, when hair and clothes do. If he hadn't stared at me so fixedly at The Brat, and then again in the courtroom, I never would have noticed him except as a purple-haired kid or as Marshall's son; but since he did call himself to my attention by staring at me, the same way both times, I took the time to memorize his features. And I'll bet Aunt Tittie will recognize him, too. I learned the eyes-and-nose trick from her in the first place, it's how you recognize a drag queen out of drag."

"I have a hard time believing that Marshall didn't recognize his own son. That's so unlikely," Marquesa put in after thinking quietly for a few moments.

"Why? If I put on purple hair and a pair of sunglasses, my father wouldn't recognize me, either... he never really looked at me, he just glanced my way and glanced away again. Marshall was probably the same way, and didn't look directly at the kid if he could help it. I doubt he looked directly at most of the hustlers he brought home, they were just fodder for his fantasy and didn't matter as individuals."

"I just can't imagine living life that way," Marquesa shrugged, "Not noticing things. I notice everything, all the time."

"So do I," Valerien said, "as does Danny. But in this, as in so many things, we are not average. I've known people to not recognize someone just because he put on a hat. I think most people don't see details, particularly really self-involved people; they just see a fuzzy overall picture of other people, focusing only on the salient points that they consider important, not the people themselves in their entirety."

"But why bother with such an elaborate scheme, anyway?" Marquesa asked after digesting that idea, "It would be so much simpler for Marshall Junior to just hire someone."

"Hiring someone always leaves you open to blackmail," Danny countered, "And if he really hated his father, as I'm sure he did, he'd want the pleasure of killing him himself."

"We'd better get back inside," Valerien warned, looking at his watch.

As the crowds reassembled in the courtroom, Danny tried to get another look at Drayton Marshall VI, but it seemed that the young man had left... Cissie Marshall was still there, but she was alone and looked rather put-out. Had the younger Marshall realized Danny had recognized him? Danny knew his own face concealed very little in the way of emotions, and that recognition had probably been quite readable; but someone who had the nerve to show up in the first place at the arraignment hearing for a crime he had himself committed, even though another stood as defendant, might have been expected to brave out such a recognition.

"Having reviewed all of the available information," Judge Manning began, once the court had been called to order, "I find that, although the defendant is an unlikely candidate, the physical evidence is far too compelling to dismiss the charges. Marcus Daniel Vandervere IV, you are hereby accused of murder in the second degree. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty, your honor," Danny replied as convincingly as he knew how.

"Very well," the judge went on, "A trial will be scheduled at the earliest opportunity, the principals will be informed of the dates by the end of business tomorrow. I understand the People have a motion regarding bail?"

"The People move that bail be revoked," ADA Moon said with a certain hopelessness in his voice, "We believe that the flight risk has increased significantly since the original bail hearing."

"Considering that the defendant has so far abided by the terms of his bail, I see no reason why it should not be continued. Motion denied. This court is adjourned. Thank you, everyone."

"Fuckety-fuck!" Danny swore under his breath.

"Well, it's no less than we expected, though less than we hoped for, and certainly better than it might have been. At it gives us a few more months to trace this Cort Johnson Drayton Marshall IV connection, and see if we can't hand the SFPD a better suspect."

"I suppose so," Danny sulked, "But I'm sick of having this hanging over my head."

"We all have our crosses to bear, dear boy. Buck up, and RJ will be in touch with you as soon as he finds something."

"I swear, I'm going to get that guy," Danny vowed to himself as he made his way out of the court behind his attorney, "if it's the last thing I ever do."

Chapter Ten, Complete

2007-10-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

The next few weeks passed in a blur as Danny experienced two completely new elements of life: working at a real job and participating in a real relationship.

Nothing about his work with Poppy was completely alien to him, he was an expert at schmoozing rich people and already knowledgeable about interior design; his college career had certainly prepared him for clerical work like note-taking, transcription, and writing instructional letters; but showing up at nine every morning, ready to answer phones or take notes or harrass contractors was a delightful novelty that did not stale with custom.

The work itself was immensely satisfying: Danny loved getting up with an alarm-clock and driving to work in the mornings wearing a jacket, answering the phone with a brisk and cheerful "Ermengratz Design Associates, this is Danny, how may I help you?" and visiting some of the most beautiful houses in the City with a view of making them more beautiful. He learned an enormous amount from Poppy about interior design, and felt that his suggestions were taken seriously and appreciated.

Danny became very close to Poppy in those weeks, as they were constantly together, visiting clients and having lunch, then working out together before spending the afternoon doing clerical work in the office. Poppy tacitly adopted Danny as a sort of nephew/protégé and constantly advised him on his life and his wardrobe.

Danny found this relationship even more satisfying than the job. Poppy was very wise, having not only lived in different eras but in different lifestyles and several different important cities: he'd come of age in the time of the Stonewall Riots and lived that exciting ensuing decade in the heart of Manhattan; after Toddy Ermengratz died in '81, he'd rocketed around Europe and South America, cravenly (by his own admission) avoiding the worst of the AIDS crisis; he'd lived in Hollywood and Miami and Seattle during the 90s, and moved to San Francisco on the eve of the Millennium. He'd quite literally been everywhere and seen everything, and was fond of reminiscing about all these different times and places.

More importantly, he'd observed and synthesized a great deal about people and the way their minds worked. He was a genius of human behavior, and Danny delighted in having people explained to him... especially himself. Poppy saw through every mannerism and quirk Danny exhibited, such as his tendency to hoard shoes and his insatiable need for attention, and would root out the cause and desire behind each one. It was very much like having a psychiatrist and an agony-aunt at one's beck and call.

Poppy's most aired advice had to do with Valerien. Poppy had met Valerien on the occasion of the latter's eighteenth birthday, when the Comtesse had Valerien's rooms at the Chateau redecorated for him by Poppy. Valerien was enchanted by Poppy's funny camp mannerisms, and Poppy was entranced by Valerien's fairy-tale beauty and innocence. They became good friends during the time of the redecoration, and so Poppy was the obvious choice of decorator when Valerien moved into the "bachelor apartment" that his family owned, where his father and grandfather had each lived before marrying and moving into the family's Pacific Heights mansion.

Poppy understood Valerien perhaps better than anyone, and was indulgent of his foibles to the point of foolishness. For example, Valerien's refusal to learn to drive a car or use a computer, as well as his unblinking prejudice against any form of music or art that came into existence after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, was considered the cutest little quirk rather than a potentially sociopathic eccentricity.

"He's my Little Proust Princeling," Poppy would explain, "Or my Little Prince Proustling? He simply refuses to participate in the modern world, and who can blame him?"

"What about disco and gay rights?" Danny would counter, bringing up two of Poppy's favorite topics.

"That sort of thing is important for people who have to live in this time, or who like living in this time, like you and me. For people like Valerien, who have always had the power to be gay whenever they want and the money to rearrange their reality to the exclusion of anything they don't want, it just doesn't matter. He's like a period movie come to life, isn't he? I love him to pieces."

While Danny wasn't sure that this head-in-the-sand approach to reality was wise, he loved Valerien, too. And though Danny had many affairs, he'd never been in what he and the other party considered a serious relationship. He spent all of his free time with Valerien, and all of their activities were the type considered "romantic."

Every morning, there was a new bouquet of Leonidas roses and alstroemeria lilies waiting on Danny's desk, and Danny always met Valerien wearing one of each in his buttonhole. Every afternoon, Valerien picked Danny up at the Ermengratz offices, then they had sex before preparing for an evening out. Every evening, they dined together in posh restaurants, went to parties and the theatre and the opera together; they even danced together at a charity ball and took moonlit walks along the beach or through one of the City's many parks (with two security goons in close attendance, of course). Every night they slept together in either Danny's or Valerien's apartment, taking turns as host, with Valerien's valet Henri running back and forth between the apartments with one or the other's clothes for the next day.

Unfortunately, Danny realized after only a few days that, though he loved Valerien dearly, he wasn't in love with him and would never fall in love with him. Having experienced the sensation of falling head-over-heels for Marquesa, he knew what it was supposed to feel like, and he knew that this wasn't It.

Nor did Danny believe that Valerien was in love with him. Their relationship felt a little like play-acting, the romantic activities seemed a trifle contrived, and their sex was more fun than fierce... instead of true lovers, they'd become more like fuck-buddies who happened to be monogamous.

There was a certain lack of intimacy in their conversations: though he'd gleaned little bits of biography from passing comments and Poppy's trove of information (such as the touchy subject of Valerien's parents, that his father had murdered his mother during a drug-induced hallucination), Valerien never talked about his own past the way Danny and Marquesa had over that weekend in the hotel.

He chatted freely about his current activities, little experiences at the offices of his family's bank or a new purchase at the auction galleries or something to do with his horses in the country... but never anything about his inner life, his emotions, or his dreams for the future. Nor was he particularly interested in hearing about Danny's; though he asked questions about Danny's activities and listened patiently when Danny spoke of anything important to him, he didn't encourage any kind of conversation that had to do with anything that was not of-the-moment...and so Danny, being a natural people-pleaser, tended not to speak of such things.

There was also the issue of money. Valerien was constantly buying Danny expensive gifts, jewelry and clothes and extravagant little trifles like a sable teddy bear or a case of rare wine; he even gave Danny a credit card, insisting that he use it frequently lest he hurt the giver's feelings. And though Danny most frequently used the credit-card to buy gifts for Valerien, these things put him right back into the Courtesan role he had tried to escape in favor of the role of Lover.

However, it was enough. Between the novelty of working and the novelty of Valerien, Danny was very nearly as happy as he'd been during that weekend with Marquesa... not quite bliss, but the very next best thing, and a good deal happier than he'd been before he met Valerien and Marquesa.

During this period, Danny and Marquesa very seldom met. As Danny and Valerien were always a couple at the social events that Valerien and Marquesa had been accustomed to attend together, Marquesa chose other men from their social set to escort him to those events, rather than act as a third wheel. Danny would have worried that he was coming between Valerien and Marquesa, except that Marquesa spent every weekend with Valerien at the Château de Seguemont near Sonoma, where Danny could not follow... the terms of his bail required him to remain at all times within the City and County of San Francisco.

Instead, Danny spent his weekends swimming and being pampered at the spa, going out dancing (to the newest music), chatting with old friends (many of whom had returned, apologetically, after the scandal of his arrest had dimmed in the public memory... though a number of them, including Aunt Tittie, remained distinctly chilly), and catching up on the sleep he missed by keeping such odd hours during the week.

In betweentimes, he shopped for Valerien. The young baron was indecently difficult to shop for, being already supplied with all the world could provide by way of luxuries. But Danny considered that a challenge, and was always on the prowl for little bibelots and curiosities to delight Valerien.

And it was at an auction-house, where Danny had gone to bid on a miniature on ivory purportedly of the Marquise de Pompadour (a favorite historical figure and ancestress of Valerien's), that he was reminded, once again by force and surprise, of his impending murder trial: right beside him in the auction-room was Rodney Casterman, Esquire, bidding on several pieces of seventeenth-century Judaica.

"I wanted to congratulate you," Mr. Casterman said to Danny after that auction had ended and conversation was again possible, "The suggestions for avenues of investigation were very helpful to my son. Several have borne very useful fruit. You may have a future as a detective, yourself."

"That's very gratifying," Danny replied, "I'd like to hear about some of this fruit someday."

"I must arrange a meeting with you and RJ, then. I think your perspective will be useful in piecing together the evidence thus far. Also, I need to meet with you in the next two or three weeks, your arraignment date has finally been set for July 11th, and I have to go over the procedure with you."

"I'll have to ask my boss for time off," Danny laughed delightedly, "I've never had to do that before. It's great fun, having a job!"

"I'm glad you enjoy it," Casterman responded dryly but indulgently, "Shall we say the twenty-third of June? I think that's the Monday. I'll have my secretary call you. And RJ will contact you directly about discussing the evidence. Perhaps next weekend?"

"That would be delightful."

The bidding started up again, and Mr. Casterman took his leave with the receipt for a beautifully jeweled silver spice-box while Danny waited around for his ivory miniature to be snatched away by an absentee bidder at an amount higher than his own credit cards and Valerien's combined could bear.

Danny later discovered, when Valerien gave him the Pompadour miniature, that he'd been beaten by the intended recipient.

***

Danny was surprised to meet Detective Varajian again, having no knowledge that he and RJ Casterman had been working together for the last few weeks: Varajian was able to supply all sorts of official information to which RJ didn't have free access while RJ was able to provide the footwork and surveillance that Varajian's department couldn't afford. The two had become romantically involved, as well, the older man finally giving way to the forceful flirtations of the younger, and Danny was very amused by the way they treated each-other... like a father and son nursing an embarrassing secret.

They had gathered at Danny's apartment on the Saturday following his chance meeting with Rodney Casterman, and the two detectives spent some time wandering about studying and appreciating its beauties while Danny put the finishing touches on a very elaborate afternoon tea complete with pastries and little sandwiches. This was brought out on an immense silver tray with silver pots and gold-rimmed china, and placed on the large cocktail table in the center of the room.

"Your question about the identity of the parrot-shirted man, and whether or not he and Aunt Tittie were the same person, has yielded interesting results," RJ said around a mouthful of scone, handing Danny a blue leather folder, "They are indeed the same man, and more importantly, Thomas Carmichael AKA Lady Titania Cunard lives in the same apartment building as Marshall and the Baron, two floors above the murder scene."

"Small world," Danny remarked, fascinated, as he flipped through the dossier on Aunt Tittie, which included recent pictures of him out of drag and leaving The Brat in the early afternoon, sometimes with a young man in tow though more frequently alone, which would probably make excellent blackmail material.

"More interesting, considering some of the physical evidence dug up by the Medical Examiner," Varajian put in, "The boy with the purple hair you saw with Mr. Carmichael was his houseboy, Cort Johnson, who'd been living with him for nearly a month. There were purple hairs found in the service hallway that commands a view to both of Marshall's apartment doors, and so he is a perfect candidate for questioning. Unfortunately, he disappeared two days after the murder."

"That seems inconsistent with a murderer's actions, doesn't it?" Danny wondered, looking up from the folder, "You'd think he would want to disappear immediately."

"If it were an unplanned murder, yes," RJ answered, "But there is evidence of premeditation that is extremely consistent with such a scenario. Cort appears on one of the tapes in Marshall's playrooms about three weeks before the murder, it would make sense that he'd sit tight over the weekend after he'd already invested so much time, particularly since you were the prime suspect."

"Well, that's great!" Danny enthused, "Opportunity, access, motive... a perfect alternate suspect."

Varajian coughed and put down his teacup, "Sadly, the purple-haired Cort does not exonerate you, or even shift suspicion from you. Though there's no real reason his hair should be found on a different floor from where he was living with Carmichael, there's also no very compelling reason why it shouldn't. He was just another hustler, which puts him in an entirely different category than you. Plus we can't prove he was even in the building that night, he didn't show up on any of the cameras until the following morning. Unless we can find him, you're still on the hook."

"But that's remediable," Danny shrugged, "I'm just glad to know what movement is going on. Now, you said the purple-haired kid was on the videos... was there anyone else of interest? Anyone else from The Brat?"

"Just about everyone from The Brat," RJ laughed, "Marshall was prolific and apparently paid well. Most of the kids didn't mind Marshall's antics, his drugs were good and he paid promptly. A few had been upset by being handcuffed and then fucked, but they get a lot worse out there."

"How grimly repetitive, handcuffs and barebacking," Danny sneered.

"Marshall was a creature of defined habits," RJ opened the blue leather folder containing the interviews of the hustlers from The Brat, "He would go on a jag of a particular sex act and repeat it for some three or four months with different boys each time. Then he'd tire of it and start on another one. He was due for a change in routine, which makes the professionals on the circuit very poor suspects... they knew they'd be getting another turn with him soon, and he paid twice the going rate."

"How very vexing," Danny fell back in his chair pettishly, "We need something concrete. Returning to the purple-haired kid, did you get any way of tracing him? DNA or fingerprints or what-have-you?"

"I can't get a warrant on such slim evidence," Varajian admitted sadly, "And Carmichael knew nothing about the boy besides his name, which could very well be fake."

"And I wasn't able to induce Mr. Carmichael to allow me to fingerprint the apartment voluntarily," RJ smiled ruefully.

"Well, I bet I can. She owes me, especially the way he's been cold-shouldering me lately," Danny was quite furious, knowing that Aunt Tittie, whom he'd always counted as a close friend, would withhold this kind of information from him on purpose, "Get your Medical Examiner to meet us at Tittie's apartment at his earliest convenience, and I'll slap the lashes off that old hag if I have to. I'll get Val to threaten her with eviction, or threaten to show these pictures of her leaving a hustler bar in broad daylight alone."

"You're vicious when riled," RJ marveled admiringly at the hot flush in Danny's cheeks, "Remind me not to cross you, ever."

"I'm sorry, I'm not usually so intense," Danny laughed with embarrassment, trying to recompose himself, "I just get so angry when people behave dishonorably."

"As well you should," Varajian said gravely, "I only wish more people had your will to see justice done. Most people in your position would be making up alibis and poking holes in the prosecution, not pursuing the truth. That more than anything else has convinced me of your innocence."

"High praise indeed," RJ rolled his big amber eyes comically at Danny but put his hand over Varajian's affectionately. Varajian blushed as darkly as a fifty-year-old man of Armenian descent can blush, and hastily pulled his hand away and excused himself to the restroom to compose himself.

"Isn't he the cutest thing in the world?" RJ asked confidentially after Varajian was out of earshot.

"You make a very sweet couple," Danny said in a conspiratorial tell-me-everything tone.

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as 'couple,'" RJ explained, "Aside from the fact that I have heretofore found monogamy quite impossible after a month or two, but also David's embarrassed to be seen out with me, just because I'm half his age. Plus, he doesn't like that I'm bisexual, or that I'm a PI instead of a 'real' cop, or that I tend to bite in the heat of passion."

"It looks like rather more than a fling from where I'm sitting," Danny observed, "I think he might very easily fall in love with you if you're not careful."

"It's a little late for 'careful,' I think," RJ sucked his front teeth thoughtfully, "But I'm a bit of a brat. I have to have what I want, and I wanted him the moment I laid eyes on him. Sexiest daddy ever."

"If I didn't know your father, and know that he's absolutely nothing like Detective Varajian, I'd suspect you of quite deliciously Freudian motives," Danny camped a little in the sing-song voice and purple diction he'd picked up from Poppy.

"Oooh, grrrrrl, you got a dirty mind!" RJ camped right back, which caused another blush of consternation from Varajian, who'd just reentered the room.

"I think we'd better be going and let Mr. Vandervere enjoy the rest of his Saturday in peace," Varajian intoned in a very unpleasantly stern voice, like a displeased father.

"I'm right behind you, Daddy," RJ replied teasingly, "Danny, I'll get back to you ASAP about hassling Aunt Tittie into letting us search his apartment for traces of the mysterious Mr. Cort Johnson. Thanks so much for the tea!"

"Do you have to act like that?" Varajian demanded of RJ when they'd reached the sidewalk.

"Oh, don't come all over closeted," RJ teased some more, "It's not like Danny's going to cause you a scandal. Besides, he'd figured it out for himself. It's pretty obvious I'm crazy about you. And Danny thinks you're falling in love with me. Are you?"

"If you'd stop embarrassing me, I might," Varajian growled, but was secretly pleased to hear that the younger man was 'crazy about' him, "And maybe if you stopped dressing like a jet-set playboy, and got a real job instead of working for your father, well..."

"But then you wouldn't like me at all. Unemployed and badly dressed, I never even would have met you. Unless I killed someone. Did you know Danny only lived two blocks away from your place?"

"Of course," Varajian was suddenly wary of that last question, which not only carried a slight tone of jealousy but came too closely on the tail of a suggestion of murder, "He told me his address when we questioned him."

"Before that, though," RJ persisted, "You've seen him around the neighborhood, haven't you? You must have noticed him."

"Of course I noticed him, I notice everything. I'm a detective."

"So am I, though you like to pretend I'm just Daddy's Little Sinecure. When you first arrested him, you recognized him as a near neighbor, didn't you?"

"Of course. Why are you so interested in whether or not I ever saw Vandervere before?"

"Because I can see you're attracted to him, and that makes my fingernails itch just a bit," RJ stopped walking and grabbed Varajian's elbow to make him turn around.

"You can't possibly be jealous, can you?" Varajian was amazed.

"I can so possibly be," RJ replied petulantly, "And I don't see why I shouldn't be."

"If for no other reason than because I haven't got the money to interest a boy like Danny Vandervere. He'd never give me the time of day. He in fact has passed my door a number of times without so much as looking at me."

"I don't believe you," RJ's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, "You're a hot man, and he's not blind, or even nearsighted."

"I'm hot, am I?," Varajian tickled him to make him lighten up, "You're the only one who seems to think so anymore."

"Can I help it if the rest of the world is stupid? And seeing as how we're so close to your apartment, I want you to show me exactly how much I shouldn't be jealous of Danny Vandervere."

"You are a spoiled brat," Varajian said evenly, though the light of sex was already glowing in his eyes.

"That's why you maybe-love me," RJ pecked him on the mouth and led the way up 16th Street to Varajian's door.

***

The Invasion of Aunt Tittie's Apartment, or "T.A. Day" as Danny called it, started with an informal meeting over afternoon coffee in Valerien's penthouse on the following Friday. Detective Varajian and Medical Examiner Griggs gawked openly at the eighteenth-century splendors of the vast salon, while RJ Casterman and Charlie Putnam merely appreciated them with the vaguely blasé air of people who'd grown up among similar splendors.

"Do you think Aunt Tittie will mind all of us showing up like this?" Danny wondered, a sense of misgiving infecting his desire to get the truth out of Tittie... it was one thing to threaten her, another thing entirely to come banging on her door backed by a delegation of five men.

"I don't care if Carmichael minds it or not," Valerien responded quietly but angrily over the edge of his cup, "I'm the majority owner of this building, I'll do what I like in it. I only wish I'd put 'obstructing justice' as a termination clause in his co-op agreement. Then we could evict him."

"Oh, don't do that," Danny pleaded for his friend, completely reversing his own stance of the Saturday before, "She probably didn't mean any harm, she's just protecting her privacy."

"Privacy, faugh!" Valerien responded, a little more heatedly, "This practice of bringing strange boys into the building and giving them keys and letting them run loose is dangerously idiotic and has to be stopped. I pay a lot of money for security, and I want this building secure, goddammit, not infested with purple-haired hustlers. Especially if they're going to go around killing the other tenants."

"I'm sure Mr. Carmichael's intentions were not dishonorable," RJ put in soothingly, "And I do agree that perhaps we might not all have to interview him at the same moment. Perhaps if you and Danny would go talk to him first, while we wait in the wings to take his statements and hunt for traces of Cort Johnson afterward, things might go a bit more smoothly."

"I suppose so," Valerien put down his cup and stood to leave, "But never underestimate the power of intimidation."

"Unfortunately, it's illegal," Detective Varajian said, "And I certainly wouldn't want to put you in a tenuous legal position by being present and having to take official notice of an illegal act."

"Besides," Griggs piped in, "an unwilling witness is an unhelpful witness. Mr. Carmichael is more likely to cooperate, and less likely to hold things back, if you soft-soap rather than hard-ball him."

"Hmph," Valerien snorted contemptuously; he'd be damned before he'd pander to the likes and dislikes of Thomas Carmichael.

"Are we sure he's home?" Danny wondered, finally shrinking from the confrontation that he'd been spoiling for all week.

"We've been watching him ever since we connected him to your visit at The Brat," RJ replied, "I know when he farts, if you'll pardon my language, much less leaves his apartment. He's home right now, most likely at the makeup table."

"Oh," Danny sighed reluctantly and followed the angry Valerien out of the apartment to the elevator; it was nearly four, Tittie was bound to be in the very middle of making up for the evening, and wouldn't relish the intrusion. But the thing had to be done, and with everyone else waiting, he certainly couldn't put it off to a more convenient time... besides, once he'd gotten Valerien involved, the whole thing had gone out of his control: Valerien was accustomed to treating the residents of his building as tenants rather than co-owners, and was more enraged by the hustler/houseboy part of the matter than Aunt Tittie's betrayal of Danny's friendship.

"Mr. Carmichael?" Valerien knocked loudly on Aunt Tittie's door, which was on the tenth floor and at the opposite end of the building from Marshall's, "It's Baron de Seguemont. I want to talk to you."

"I'm indisposed," came an irritated voice from far inside the apartment, "Bugger off."

"I will speak to you now, if you please," Valerien seemed to grow larger with his rage at being treated so dismissively, "Don't make me get the passkey."

"Well of all the motherfucking nerve..." Danny heard Tittie banging about in the apartment and swearing as he made his way to the door, "I own this goddamned apartment, how dare you threaten me with passkeys? What in the hell do you want?"

Aunt Tittie threw the door open and then stepped back, more than surprised to see Danny standing just behind Valerien. He was dressed in a very large silk kimono with cranes painted all over it, his sparse hair covered with a stocking cap, his face a blank mask of foundation with one eye dazzlingly lined and painted in peacock hues.

"Oh, hello, Danny," he had the grace to smile uncomfortably and lower his voice, "What's this all about?"

"I'm sorry to barge in on you at this hour, Aunt Tittie," Danny said apologetically while smoothly entering the apartment and giving him a peck on the cheek, "But we need your help."

"It's not a very effective way of winning friends and influencing people," Aunt Tittie observed dryly, trying to regain her cool, "Threatening people with illegal entry."

"I could swear I heard you calling for help," Valerien said in an offhand way, "And your behavior is not going to sit very well with the co-op board, of which I happen to be the president, as you well know."

"Val, please," Danny gave Valerien his most potent puppy-dog eyes, "Don't be antagonistic. Aunt Tittie will understand once I've explained it to her. See, the thing is, we need your help finding your ex-houseboy, Cort Johnson."

"Are you responsible for those PIs and SFPDs harassing me about Cort?" Aunt Tittie nearly bellowed, "I would have thought better of you, Danny Vandervere."

"Honestly, I didn't know about the detectives until recently, and you've not spoken to me once since that weekend when I was arrested," Danny turned the puppy-eyes on Tittie and evinced a welling of tears, "I would have come to you directly if I'd known that was you in The Brat with the purple-haired boy."

"I'm sorry, but that's not good enough," Tittie was regretting his behavior but didn't want to admit it just yet, "You could have come to me directly with your questions, even if I was cold-shouldering you, which I assure you I was not."

"I'm sorry, but who comes to whom with questions is beside the point," Valerien inserted himself into the conversation hotly, "The point is that you had an unauthorized tenant of unknown origin on the weekend that a murder was committed in this building; furthermore, you withheld that information even though it would help someone who considers you a friend, for reasons I cannot comprehend. That is the point."

"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know it would help? Cort isn't even connected to this. And what do you want me to do about it, anyway?" Tittie was defensive again, "I don't know where the little shit went, and if I did I'd happily turn him over to you. He stole money from me."

"But you can still help," Danny put himself between Tittie and Valerien and grabbed Tittie's hand pleadingly, "You can let the medical examiner and my detective friend look for traces of Cort, so that if he is found we can place him at the scene with forensic evidence."

"You want to turn my apartment upside-down for fingerprints? I think not."

"I'll pay for the cleaning, naturally," Valerien said scathingly.

"You wouldn't find anything if I did let you," Tittie huffed, "I have cleaned during the last few weeks, I'm not a pig. And besides, he didn't leave anything behind."

"Still, please let them look. I'm desperate," Danny almost cried, "Please?"

"Oh, all right," Tittie relented and walked back into his apartment, "You might as well get on with it. I'm going to go finish putting my face on."

Valerien went off to fetch the detectives while Danny followed Tittie through an apartment crowded with beautiful antique furniture and cluttered with a multitude of movie-themed porcelain collectibles ranging from Gone With The Wind plates to Wizard of Oz figurines.

"Why have you been so distant with me, lately?" Danny asked gently as Tittie settled down at a messy and brightly-lit dressing table in a very untidy bedroom, "I thought our friendship meant something to you."

Tittie looked at him steadily in the mirror for some moments before answering, "I didn't know what to think, whether you were a killer or not. So I decided it was best to just wait and see without getting involved. I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings."

"If it helps anything, I am innocent," Danny offered with a small forgiving smile.

"You think Cort killed the guy? Why?" Tittie was intent on painting his other eye.

"There were purple hairs found in the stairwell near Marshall's apartment, which had been bleached down immediately after the murder. The entire stairwell and all the hallways between that floor and this were bleached, which suggests Cort was watching Marshall's apartment, and didn't want anyone to be able to prove it."

"Well, maybe Cort is your killer... he cleaned this place spic-and-span before he took off with the contents of my wallet and a few of my favorite silver antiques, leaving not a wrack behind."

"You didn't ever take a picture of him?" Danny wondered.

"I did, when he was sleeping, but he found it and took it."

"What about underwear?"

Tittie gave Danny a long, somewhat angry but also begrudgingly admiring look, reached into a drawer at his right, and pulled out a pair of generic white briefs with a few telltale stains of wear, size Medium, "I was hoping you wouldn't ask for that, but since you did, I hope they help."

"You're the best, Aunt Tittie. When you're done getting dressed, can I take you for a drink? I have my car here."

"Some other time, perhaps. But why don't you get going so I can finish putting on my face, I don't want to be here when your myrmidons are tearing my apartment apart. And if they break the tiniest bit of lace off the meanest piece of my Royal Doulton, I'm going to bill your prissy little Baron for it."

"Oh, Valerien's not that bad, he's just a bit autocratic when he's angry. He'll make it up to you when he's calmed down," Danny stood and kissed Tittie on the top of his head, "Thank you so much for your help. I'll take you to dinner any time you're free, OK? And I'll send over a pair of my underwear in exchange for these."

"Mmm-hmmm..." Tittie was putting on lip-liner so couldn't make a more distinct answer.

***

"Nothing, absolutely nothing," Griggs nearly screamed in disgust the next morning when he reviewed the last report of the evidence taken from Aunt Tittie's apartment.

Nothing in the way of hair or bodily fluids was found in Aunt Tittie's apartment, but the smell of bleach still lingered in some of the crevices and corners. The DNA samples found in the underpants had looked so promising, but they didn't match anything in any of the identity databanks; and after dusting every single surface in a fairly large apartment crowded to bursting with surfaces, only four sets of fingerprints were recovered: one belonging to Tittie, two belonging to known hustlers whose movements on the night of the murder were easily established, and a fourth set found on a lightbulb in a closet belonging to someone completely unknown to law enforcement agencies. The mysterious Cort Johnson was, forensically speaking, a non-person.

Nevertheless, the evidence was sealed and stored in connection to the Drayton Marshall files, just in case Cort Johnson ever turned up... which didn't seem very likely. Medical Examiner Griggs reluctantly turned his attention to the several other cases on his desk and put the plight of Danny Vandervere out of his mind.

***

Danny took the news lying down, literally and figuratively. He was enmeshed in his latest pastime, posing for a portrait with Jacky Alvarado, when RJ Casterman and David Varajian came to tell him about the outcome of the forensic search of Aunt Tittie's apartment and the complete lack of identity for Cort Johnson.

"At least we know he was there," Danny shrugged from his position on the dais; he was lying face-down and nude on a velvet-draped mattress in the pose of Waterhouse's Narcissus, staring at the painter through the mirror that lay beneath his head, "And if he does commit a crime somewhere, it will show up in the database, won't it?"

"That's a pretty big 'if,'" Varajian sighed sadly, resting his eyes on Danny's perfect back and buttocks; he couldn't decide if he was more turned on by the nudity or by Danny's complete disregard for who saw him, but was more interested in keeping his arousal hidden from RJ, whose jealously now knew no bounds. Varajian could see, out of the corner of his eye, the younger man flexing his fingers angrily as if wishing to crush somebody's windpipe.

"But isn't it a truism that criminals can't help but get caught eventually? Don't they always get sloppy or return to the scene of the crime, or something?"

"Only in fiction," RJ said, trying, in his turn, to decide if he were more angry at Danny for continuing to pose nude in front of David, at David for continuing to stare at Danny like a hungry dog, or at himself for being jealous of either of them, "In real life things aren't usually so tidy."

"Still, it's better than nothing," Danny shrugged a little but was hissed at by the painter for moving.

"In the meantime," RJ continued, "My people have been canvassing the Tenderloin and all of the customers of The Brat about our mysterious young Cort. It seems he never tricked while he was there, he was just hanging out, pretending to be a hustler. The only person he was ever seen leaving with was Carmichael, I mean Aunt Tittie, and that one time with Marshall. He lived in a cheap hotel before he hooked up with Tittie, so the boys all assumed he was a runaway and hadn't completely used up all his money yet."

"And absolutely nobody has any idea where he went," Varajian put in, "He never said where he was from, or where he wanted to go. But hustlers are like that, they're very of-the-moment, no past, no future, so nobody thought it was odd."

"Gentlemen, do you mind?" Jacky Alvarado came out from behind his painting, his hazel eyes flashing with irritation, "You're breaking my concentration."

"I'm sorry, Jacky," Danny apologized without moving, "RJ, David, thank you for coming by and letting me know about the results."

With a few more words of good-bye, the two detectives left, and Danny lapsed back into the indescribable boredom of sitting for an oil portrait.

At first, spending time with the artist was a lot of fun. Jacky was a very handsome young man, with an admirable Latin-American angel's face, delicate bones, big eyes and a succulent mouth, all on top of a small wiry body simply bursting with energy most of the time. When they'd first met, Jacky rhapsodized over Danny's beauty, photographed him for three hours solid, and threw out a thousand ideas for portrait poses.

But then came the actual posing, first for sketches as the artist tried out different compositions and styles (Jacky had declared him a "pure pre-Raphaelite" and tried out Burne-Jones, Leighton, and Morris Hunt before deciding on Waterhouse); at those times, Jacky lapsed into an intensely still concentration, neither talking nor allowing Danny to talk. And though the recumbent pose that was finally decided upon allowed Danny to go to sleep whenever he got too bored, the minute he moved Jacky would yell at him irritably and spend a few minutes making sure he was back in place before returning to the silent painting.

When the two- or three-hour session was over, Jacky would come alive again, snapping pictures with his camera as Danny moved around the studio getting dressed (all of the pictures he shot belonged to Valerien, by the terms of his contract for the painting, and so Danny was able to relax in the knowledge that they would never get out to the general public). He was a wonderful chatterer, and could spin running jokes out of the most mundane pop-culture material; Danny just wished that this liveliness was part of the posing as well as the before and after.

Danny was also worried a little by the fact that these sessions were cutting into his early evenings with Valerien; he didn't miss the hour or so of Valerien's company, but had to wonder if Valerien missed him... or if this portrait were an excuse to have time away from Danny. He didn't dare ask Valerien to declare his intentions, for fear that their escapade would come to an end; and though he was not in love with Valerien, either, he loved their relationship and feared its cease... and so he let the worry fester inside of him, especially during the still hours of his posing.

More worrisome was the fact that his filial relationship with Poppy had turned carnal a few days after the painting was started. One afternoon when he and Poppy were working together in the studio, Poppy had let out a low growl and, as promised weeks before, pounced on Danny without so much as a by-your-leave. Despite all his previous protestations about his preferred type and his rule against fucking employees, he stripped Danny naked and fucked him silly on the couch, and then repeated the performance, with a number of variations, almost daily thereafter.

This new sexual relationship, though wildly enjoyable (Danny discovered that he really liked being held down, and Poppy kept him laughing all through the strenuous act with jokes and tickling, which lent another element of pleasure to sex that he'd never before experienced), worried him on two counts: first, how would Valerien react if he found out; and second, what had Valerien told Poppy about their relationship that made the older man feel free to pounce on Danny... would Poppy do something that might conceivably take away from Valerien something that Valerien valued, or did Poppy know that Valerien was no longer particularly interested in Danny and was just letting things ride until someone better came into view?

However, even with these worries and the boredom of posing, Danny's life was satisfying enough to keep him quite happy... all of his worries were new worries, and his boredom was a new boredom, and all of it kept him distracted from thinking about his uncertain immediate future. His remaining time spent with Valerien was still carefree and romantic, and his work with Poppy was developing into something that Danny considered he might actually make a career of. And he looked forward to the completion of the painting, a form of immortality that he'd always wanted (though he was aware that the immortality would depend largely on whether or not posterity would think as much of Jacky Alvarado as he and Valerien did).

As the date of his arraignment neared, however, Danny had new worries to consider in his still hours: Mr. Casterman painted a very bleak picture of the evidence that would come out at that proceeding; and also outlined the extremely slim but still real chance that Danny's bail could be revoked at that time if the judge were to come to believe Danny was dangerous or that he was more of a flight risk than the ten-million-dollar bond could guarantee.

Though he would ordinarily be inclined to keep the arraignment restricted to a simple plea of Not Guilty, Casterman was aware that the Prosecution was going to call character witnesses to underline their conviction that Danny was the killer; with such a ploy already on the board, Casterman had decided to take it a step further in hopes that a parade of character witnesses could lead to a dismissal before a plea had to even be entered.

The downside of this ploy, however, is that the Prosecution could turn some character witnesses to its own ends, and undermine Danny's respectability... especially since it was known that they already had wind of his past filled with mercenary romances.

"While this is certainly not my usual advice," Casterman advised Danny in the Victorian mahogany-paneled confines of his downtown office, "I want you to be perfectly candid about the gifts your various lovers have given you. The Prosecution will use those gifts to paint you as vicious and conniving, and I want the judge to get a load of you at your most disarmingly honest... you're a good enough actor to lie well, but you tell the truth so much better. And besides, you've done nothing illegal, only morally questionable."

"OK," Danny said vaguely, more intent on the notes he was taking of the meeting than of the tone of Casterman's remarks; his time with Poppy had habituated him to writing everything down and then thinking it over later.

"I also want to bring your great-aunts down from Vandervere, but not without your consent."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Danny looked up from his notebook, "I'm not sure I would want them to hear all those details about my sex-life, you know?"

"They'll read about them in the papers next day, anyway," Casterman reasoned, "And they and your former nanny would, I think, be the best witnesses to your character."

"Aren't my friends enough?"

"Your friends here in town have all known you less than two years," the attorney got up and walked aimlessly around his office, "and none of them really knows you all that well, you must admit. Besides which, many of them would look a little shady to a judge... no, I think that we should concentrate on people who've known you a good long time."

"But you should know that the Aunt Ems and Mademoiselle Marnie are all just a bit touched in the head. They don't do reality, if you know what I mean."

"Nevertheless, they've known you since you were a child, and would be in a position to know your character better than anyone else. If there were other people we could call with similar knowledge, I would certainly do so."

"Just don't ask my parents," Danny shrugged and returned to his notes, "I doubt they'd give a very glowing report of me."

"Unfortunately, the Prosecution might drag them, and some of your more disreputable friends, into the courtroom to give an account of you. What would your parents say about you?"

"That I'm lazy and sneaky, probably," Danny sighed, "That's what they always accused me of. They assumed I didn't get in trouble, when my brother always did, because I was better at subterfuge... it would never have occurred to them that I was simply well-behaved. My brother Tay was an absolute terror. He still is, as far as I can tell."

"That's another thing that will come up... it's being whispered that your family has the town of Vandervere in such a grip that you could have run around killing babies and eating puppies in the town square without official notice being taken."

"Well, that's true to an extent," Danny laughed at the image of a baby-and-puppy barbecue in the gingerbread bandstand of Vandervere Town Square, "Though nobody ever did more than speed a little or get rowdy in a bar. We are WASPs, after all; even our sins are boring."

"Nevertheless, it would be convenient to have a bad report of you from the Vandervere Police to balance that out. Were you ever caught doing anything?"

"Having sex with another boy in the park at night," Danny answered immediately, "The officer let us both off with a warning and never said a word about it to my parents. But I bet he'd be willing to talk about it if it would help me. He's something of a friend."

"How close of a friend?" Casterman asked sternly.

"Just a friend. I was nice to him when he was new on the job and gave him a tour of the town once; Vandervere can be a very hostile place, and I made him feel welcome. Nothing sexual. He's straight as a board."

"I have a feeling that even boards bend a little when exposed to you," Casterman joked.

"Can I help it if I'm lovable?" Danny joked back, though he wondered if he were bending his attorney in any way... he really didn't have the energy, between Poppy and Valerien every weekday, and the casual tricking he'd recently resumed over the weekends, to entertain another affair.

***

Soon after the painting was finished, Valerien organized a party to celebrate and unveil the masterwork. Though it would eventually be hung in Valerien's library, due to its greenish color scheme, it was displayed for the first time in the very center of the long salon, a pair of bright lamps on either side of it and a drape of golden damask over the top.

The painting itself was breathtaking, soft and yet dramatic, filled with dappled light that looked quite real: one felt as if there were slight warmth coming off the canvas. Danny was represented in a perfection that was almost impossible, but the artist swore that he had not idealized one square inch, it was all exactly what was there; and since it was an angle he'd never seen of himself, Danny was fascinated by this new facet of his own beauty.

The painting was not a copy of the original, but rather an homage: it showed Danny laying out on the sloped bank of a clear pond, his chin resting on his crossed arms, his legs splayed negligently, a wisp of silky vermillion material draped over his left shoulder and lower thighs and spread out under him like a blanket; his face was reflected clearly in the pond's mirror-like surface, and the whole attitude of the body and face was one of relaxed enjoyment rather than intent study.

In his usual manner, Jacky Alvarado had inserted a few sly additions into the painting that Waterhouse's original lacked: first, the subject was not staring at himself in the reflection of the pond, he was regarding the viewer intently, and the dark brown eyes had been painted in such a way that they seemed to follow the viewer quite eerily; the background vegetation was shaped in such a way as to suggest inorganic objects, vases and pictures and bits of furniture that actually existed in Danny's living room, and there were pieces of Danny's own jewelry secreted in the grass and the bottom of the clear pond. The artist himself was mum on what these little additions were supposed to mean, preferring to let the viewer draw his or her own conclusions.

To Danny it was a revelation... he had always thought of himself, in his darker moments, as vain and materialistic, and the pose of Narcissus certainly reinforced that opinion of himself. But this Narcissus, gazing out at the world through a mirror of vanity, or rather through a window of beauty, seemed much more interested in the people who looked at him than in himself or the things people gave him. It rang of truth, and it made Danny like himself a little better.

The reception, however, brought him crashing right back down. It was attended by the very highest cream of society, the outside hall was crammed with bodyguards, and people who were famous for never going anywhere were seen there that night; however, though everyone was perfectly charming to him, Danny overheard whispers about himself, and the whispers weren't very flattering. Nobody said anything outright against him, nobody would dare speak in opposition of Valerien's and Marquesa's sponsorship and support; but there was an undertone to their private conversations that demonstrated a widespread belief that Danny had "hooked" Valerien, that he probably had killed Marshall and would also probably get away with it because of his looks and his willingness to grant sexual favors in exchange for whatever he wanted.

Though the Alvarado portrait showed him as a sensitive and lonely soul, the portrait Society saw was the same old surface of the high-end hustler, more whore than courtesan, sharply on the lookout for what he could get, and not very nice at all. To drown the sting of this unflattering interpretation of the painting, Danny drank far more wine than was good for him and was quite drunk only halfway through the evening.

Another sting that sent him running for the bottle was seeing Marquesa there with Richard Allenwhite; though they had arrived separately and alone, they spent their time at the party together, side-by-side, an accepted couple. It was vividly clear, even from the furthest distance of the vast salon, that Marquesa was besotted with Richard, insanely happy just to be standing next to him in a public place; Danny felt the unfamiliar gnaw of jealousy in his heart.

Richard Allenwhite was so godlike that Danny couldn't blame anybody for being in love with him. He was extremely tall and broad with muscle, with golden skin and bright gold hair, bright gold eyelashes around brilliant blue eyes, so dazzlingly handsome that it almost hurt to look at him; he was in his mid-forties, his face lined with laughter and outdoor sport, but he was so vital in his personality that he seemed much younger. He fairly glowed with divine light, and Danny could imagine himself falling in love with the man.

But at the same time he hated him intensely: for no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he was deeply and painfully in love with Marquesa, and Richard stood implacably between them. Marquesa seemed almost diminished by his proximity to Richard: though they didn't touch or in any way act like a couple, Marquesa's whole attitude was one of devotion to the godlike creature beside him; the stunning black satin sheath dress and galaxy of diamonds he wore were presented as an offering rather than the frame and fitting pedestal for the intense personality that Danny loved. It hurt him to see Marquesa like that, and he foolishly tried to drown the hurt in champagne.

By the time everybody had gone home and Valerien and Danny were in bed together, Danny was so drunk that he couldn't perform. Frustrated and depressed, he broke into tears and spent half an hour just wailing inconsolably into Valerien's neck. And though Valerien tried his best to comfort Danny, he was unequal to the task... he'd never himself experienced an emotion so strong as to inspire such heart-wrenched weeping, and felt rather inadequate in the face of Danny's obvious pain.

"Nobody loves me," Danny finally said pathetically when his tears had slowed enough to allow speech.

"I love you," Valerien said, trying to soothe him.

"But you're not in love with me, are you?"

"No, I guess not. But I do love you."

"I love you, too; but I'm not in love with you, either," Danny sat up, suddenly feeling almost sober after his tantrum, and accepted the towel Valerien handed him.

"I never thought you were," Valerien said seriously after a period of thought, "Why are you bringing it up now? I thought things were going well."

"I thought so, too, until I saw Marquesa with Richard tonight. They're in love with each other and I'm in love with Marquesa, and it hurts like you wouldn't believe."

"I'm sorry," Valerien put his arm around Danny's neck and kissed him gently, "I didn't know."

"I didn't know either, until tonight," Danny said, though not entirely truthfully... he'd known all along that his love for Valerien was a pale shadow compared to his love for Marquesa, but he tried to talk himself into loving Valerien just because he was available while Marquesa wasn't. But he didn't like to admit he was using Valerien in such a manner, so hadn't allowed himself to think about it.

Valerien was silent for a long time before asking in a small, unsure voice, "Do you think about him when we're together?"

"Oh, God, no!" Danny was quick to reassure his friend, "I only think about you when I'm with you. And myself, of course. Why, who do you think about?"

"Nobody in particular," Valerien answered with a sly smile.

"Does this mean we're breaking up?" Danny wondered after another long silence.

"I don't see why we should. I'm happy. Are you happy?"

"Mostly. It's 'the next best thing to love,' isn't it?" Danny sang the lyric to one of his favorite torch songs.

"Then let's make a pact: we'll go as we are until we get bored with eachother or 'until the real thing comes along,'" Valerien sang back, surprising Danny with the knowledge of a pop song's lyrics, something he wouldn't ordinarily admit to knowing.

Danny had discovered that Valerien secretly liked a lot of things that he pretended not to for some strange reason... once Danny woke up in the night to find Valerien listening to music on Danny's handheld, demonstrating both an enjoyment for pop music and a knowledge of how to operate a small electronic device, two things he publicly disdained. Danny found this strangely endearing, though he was always puzzled by why Valerien would bother to be so vocally against something that he actually liked. And since they were being so candid with each-other, Danny decided to ask.

"Why do you pretend you don't like pop music?"

"Oh, I don't know," Valerien replied, "I'm just proud and stubborn. And I guess I just don't want everyone to know all about me. I like to have secrets."

"Really? I never would have thought anybody'd make a secret of anything so everyday as music."

"Well, I don't have any big secrets, I have to make due with little ones."

"Tell me another little secret," Danny nestled down beside Valerien like a small child asking to be told a story.

"My father isn't dead, or institutionalized," Valerien said quickly, "He lives at the château with a nurse. He's completely insane, but harmless."

"That's a pretty big secret," Danny said, admiringly, pleased that Valerien had entrusted him with something like that.

"But it's not really my secret, it's the family's; so I make mysteries of my likes and dislikes," Valerien shrugged and turned off the light, then settled down in the bed to go to sleep, "Do you have any secrets?"

"I've been sleeping with Poppy for a few weeks, now," Danny admitted warily.

"That's not a secret, I've known about that all along. In fact, Poppy very cutely asked my permission to, as he put it, 'take a poke' at you. I never considered sexual fidelity a part of our relationship. Tell me a real secret."

"Well, I guess I don't have any. I can keep other people's secrets, but I can't keep any of my own. If it happens to me, I have to tell someone. I've always had a problem with chronic disclosure."

"I think it's cute," Valerien said, smiling in the dark.

"I think your secrets are cute," Danny smiled back, his cock finally behaving as it was supposed to, his hands drifting around Valerien's waist, "I think your ass is cute, too."

"Incorrigible little satyr," Valerien laughed, turning the lights back on; he loved to watch Danny making love to him.

"Who're you calling little?" Danny teased, climbing on top of Valerien and pressing their cocks together. Suddenly Danny was happy again, all his doubts, fears, and worries forgotten as he frolicked in bed with his wonderful fuck-buddy friend.

***

9,688 Words ~ 16 Pages

John William Waterhouse's Narcissus.

Chapter 10, Part 2

2007-10-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Invasion of Aunt Tittie's Apartment, or "T.A. Day" as Danny called it, started with an informal meeting over afternoon coffee in Valerien's penthouse apartment on the following Friday. Detective Varajian and Medical Examiner Griggs gawked openly at the eighteenth-century splendors of the vast salon, while RJ Casterman and Charlie Putnam merely appreciated them with the vaguely blasé air of people who'd grown up among similar splendors.

"Do you think Aunt Tittie will mind all of us showing up like this?" Danny wondered, a sense of misgiving infecting his desire to get the truth out of Tittie... it was one thing to threaten her, another thing to come banging on her door backed by a delegation of five men.

"I don't care if Carmichael minds it or not," Valerien responded quietly but angrily over the edge of his cup, "I'm the majority owner of this building, I'll do what I like in it. I only wish I'd put 'obstructing justice' as a termination clause in his co-op agreement. Then we could evict him."

"Oh, don't do that," Danny pleaded for his friend, completely reversing his own stance of the Saturday before, "She probably didn't mean any harm, she's just protecting her privacy."

"Privacy, faugh!" Valerien responded, a little more heatedly, "This practice of bringing strange boys into the building and giving them keys and letting them run loose is dangerously idiotic and has to be stopped. I pay a lot of money for the security of this place, and I want it secure, goddamnit, not infested with purple-haired hustlers. Especially if they're going to go around killing the other tenants."

"I'm sure Mr. Carmichael's intentions were not dishonorable," RJ put in soothingly, "And I do agree that perhaps we might not all have to interview him at the same moment. Perhaps if you and Danny would go talk to him first, while we wait in the wings to take his statements and hunt for traces of Cort Johnson afterward, things might go a bit more smoothly."

"I suppose so," Valerien put down his cup and stood to leave, "But never underestimate the power of intimidation."

"Unfortunately, it's illegal," Detective Varajian said, "And I certainly wouldn't want to put you in a tenuous legal position by being present and having to take official notice of an illegal act."

"Besides," Griggs piped in, "an unwilling witness is an unhelpful witness. Mr. Carmichael is more likely to cooperate, and less likely to hold things back, if you soft-soap rather than hard-ball him."

"Hmph," Valerien snorted contemptuously; he'd be damned before he'd pander to the likes and dislikes of Thomas Carmichael.

"Are we sure he's home?" Danny wondered, finally shrinking from the confrontation that he'd been spoiling for all week.

"We've been watching him ever since we connected him to your visit at The Brat," RJ replied, "I know when he farts, if you'll pardon my language, much less leaves his apartment. He's home right now, most likely at the makeup table."

"Oh," Danny sighed reluctantly and followed the angry Valerien out of the apartment to the elevator; it was nearly four, Tittie was bound to be in the very middle of making up for the evening, and wouldn't relish the intrusion. But the thing had to be done, and with everyone else waiting, he certainly couldn't put it off to a more convenient time... besides, once he'd gotten Valerien involved and irritated about the whole thing, it had gone out of his control: Valerien was accustomed to treating the residents of his building as tenants rather than co-owners, and was more enraged by the hustler/houseboy part of the matter than Aunt Tittie's betrayal of Danny's friendship.

"Mr. Carmichael?" Valerien knocked loudly on Aunt Tittie's door, which was on the tenth floor and at the opposite end of the building from Marshall's, "It's Baron de Seguemont. I want to talk to you."

"I'm indisposed," came an irritated voice from far inside the apartment, "Bugger off."

"I will speak to you now, if you please," Valerien seemed to grow larger with his rage at being treated so dismissively, "Don't make me get the passkey."

"Well of all the motherfucking nerve..." Danny heard Tittie banging about in the apartment and swearing as he made his way to the door, "I own this goddamned apartment, how dare you threaten me with passkeys? What in the hell do you want?"

Aunt Tittie threw the door open and then stepped back, more than surprised to see Danny standing just behind Valerien. He was dressed in a very large silk kimono with cranes painted all over it, his sparse hair covered with a stocking cap, his face a blank mask of foundation with one eye dazzlingly lined and painted in peacock hues.

"Oh, hello, Danny," he had the grace to smile uncomfortably and lower his voice, "What's this all about?"

"I'm sorry to barge in on you at this hour, Aunt Tittie," Danny said apologetically while smoothly entering the apartment and giving him a peck on the cheek, "But we need your help."

"It's not a very effective way of winning friends and influencing people," Aunt Tittie observed dryly, trying to regain her cool, "Threatening people with illegal entry."

"I could swear I heard you calling for help," Valerien said in an offhand way, "And your behavior is not going to sit very well with the co-op board, of which I happen to be the president, as you well know."

"Val, please," Danny gave Valerien his most potent puppy-dog eyes, "Don't be antagonistic. Aunt Tittie will understand once I've explained it to her. See, the thing is, we need your help finding your ex-houseboy, Cort Johnson."

"Are you responsible for those PIs and SFPDs harrassing me about Cort?" Aunt Tittie nearly bellowed, "I would have thought better of you, Danny Vandervere."

"Honestly, I didn't know about the detectives until recently, and you've not spoken to me once since that weekend when I was arrested," Danny turned the puppy-eyes on Tittie and evinced a welling of tears, "I would have come to you directly if I'd known that was you in The Brat with the purple-haired boy."

"I'm sorry, but that's not good enough," Tittie was regretting his behavior but didn't want to admit it just yet, "You could have come to me directly with your questions, even if I was cold-shouldering you, which I assure you I was not."

"I'm sorry, but who comes to whom with questions is beside the point," Valerien inserted himself into the conversation hotly, "The point is that you had an unauthorized tenant of unknown origin on the weekend that a murder was committed in this building; furthermore, you withheld that information even though it would help someone who considers you a friend, for reasons I cannot comprehend. That is the point."

"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know it would help? Cort isn't even connected to this. And what do you want me to do about it, anyway?" Tittie was defensive again, "I don't know where the little shit went, and if I did I'd happily turn him over to you. He stole money from me."

"But you can still help," Danny put himself between Tittie and Valerien and grabbed Tittie's hand pleadingly, "You can let the medical examiner and my detective friend look for traces of Cort, so that if he is found we can place him at the scene with forensic evidence."

"You want to turn my apartment upside-down for fingerprints? I think not."

"I'll pay for the cleaning, naturally," Valerien said scathingly.

"You wouldn't find anything if I did let you," Tittie huffed, "I have cleaned during the last few weeks, I'm not a pig. And besides, he didn't leave anything behind."

"Still, please let them look. I'm desperate," Danny almost cried, "Please?"

"Oh, all right," Tittie relented and walked back into his apartment, "You might as well get on with it. I'm going to go finish putting my face on."

Valerien went off to fetch the detectives while Danny followed Tittie through an apartment crowded with beautiful antique furniture and cluttered with a multitude of movie-themed porcelain collectibles ranging from Gone With The Wind plates to Wizard of Oz figurines.

"Why have you been so distant with me, lately?" Danny asked gently as Tittie settled down at a messy and brightly-lit dressing table in a very untidy bedroom, "I thought our friendship meant something to you."

Tittie looked at him steadily in the mirror for some moments before answering, "I didn't know what to think, whether you were a killer or not. So I decided it was best to just wait and see without getting involved. I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings."

"If it helps anything, I am innocent," Danny offered with a small forgiving smile.

"You think Cort killed the guy? Why?" Tittie was intent on painting his other eye.

"There were purple hairs found in the stairwell near Marshall's apartment, which had been bleached down immediately after the murder. The entire stairwell and all the hallways between that floor and this were bleached, which suggests Cort was watching Marshall's apartment, and didn't want anyone to be able to prove it."

"Well, maybe Cort is your killer... he cleaned this place spic-and-span before he took off with the contents of my wallet and a few of my favorite silver antiques, leaving not a wrack behind."

"You didn't ever take a picture of him?" Danny wondered.

"I did, when he was sleeping, but he found it and took it."

"What about underwear?"

Tittie gave Danny a long, somewhat angry but also begrudgingly admiring look, reached into a drawer at his right, and pulled out a pair of generic white briefs with a few telltale stains of wear, size Medium, "I was hoping you wouldn't ask for that, but since you did, I hope they help."

"You're the best, Aunt Tittie. When you're done getting dressed, can I take you for a drink? I have my car here."

"Some other time, perhaps. But why don't you get going so I can finish putting on my face, I don't want to be here when your myrmidons are tearing my apartment apart. And if they break the tiniest bit of lace off the meanest piece of my Royal Doulton, I'm going to bill your prissy little Baron for it."

"Oh, Valerien's not that bad, he's just a bit autocratic when he's angry. He'll make it up to you when he's calmed down," Danny stood and kissed Tittie on the top of his head, "Thank you so much for your help. I'll take you to dinner any time you're free, OK? And I'll send over a pair of my underwear in exchange for these."

"Mmm-hmmm..." Tittie was putting on lip-liner so couldn't make a more distinct answer.

***

"Nothing, absolutely nothing," Griggs nearly screamed in disgust the next morning when he reviewed the last report of the evidence taken from Aunt Tittie's apartment.

Nothing in the way of hair or bodily fluids was found in Aunt Tittie's apartment, but the smell of bleach still lingered in some of the crevices and corners. The DNA samples found in the underpants had looked so promising, but they didn't match anything in any of the identity databanks; and after dusting every single surface in a fairly large apartment crowded to bursting with surfaces, only four sets of fingerprints were recovered: one belonging to Tittie, two belonging to known hustlers whose movements on the night of the murder were easily established, and a fourth set found on a lightbulb in a closet belonging to someone completely unknown to law enforcement agencies. The mysterious Cort Johnson was, forensically speaking, a non-person.

Nevertheless, the evidence was sealed and stored in connection to the Drayton Marshall files, just in case Cort Johnson ever turned up... which didn't seem very likely. Medical Examiner Griggs reluctantly turned his attention to the several other cases on his desk and put the plight of Danny Vandervere out of his mind.

***

Danny took the news lying down, literally and figuratively. He was enmeshed in his latest pastime, posing for a portrait with Jacky Alvarado, when RJ Casterman and David Varajian came to tell him about the outcome of the forensic search of Aunt Tittie's apartment and the complete lack of identity for Cort Johnson.

"At least we know he was there," Danny shrugged from his position on the dais; he was lying face-down and nude on a velvet-draped mattress in the pose of Waterhouse's Narcissus, staring at the painter through the mirror that lay beneath his head, "And if he does commit a crime somewhere, it will show up in the database, won't it?"

"That's a pretty big 'if,'" Varajian sighed sadly, resting his eyes on Danny's perfect back and buttocks; he couldn't decide if he was more turned on by the nudity or by Danny's complete disregard for who saw him, but was more interested in keeping his arousal hidden from RJ, whose jealously now knew no bounds. Varajian could see, out of the corner of his eye, the younger man flexing his fingers angrily as if wishing to crush somebody's windpipe.

"But isn't it a truism that criminals can't help but get caught eventually? Don't they always get sloppy or return to the scene of the crime, or something?"

"Only in fiction," RJ said, trying, in his turn, to decide if he were more angry at Danny for continuing to pose nude in front of David, at David for continuing to stare at Danny like a hungry dog, or at himself for being jealous of either of them, "In real life things aren't usually so tidy."

"Still, it's better than nothing," Danny shrugged a little but was hissed at by the painter for moving.

"In the meantime," RJ continued, "My people have been canvassing the tenderloin and all of the customers of The Brat about our mysterious young Cort. It seems he never tricked while he was there, he was just hanging out, pretending to be a hustler. The only person he was ever seen leaving with was Carmichael, I mean Aunt Tittie, and that one time with Marshall. He lived in a cheap hotel before he hooked up with Tittie, so the boys all assumed he was a runaway and hadn't completely used up all his money yet."

"And absolutely nobody has any idea where he went," Varajian put in, "He never said where he was from, or where he wanted to go. But hustlers are like that, they're very of-the-moment, no past, no future, so nobody thought it was odd."

"Gentlemen, do you mind?" Jacky Alvarado came out from behind his painting, his hazel eyes flashing with irritation, "You're breaking my concentration."

"I'm sorry, Jacky," Danny apologized without moving, "RJ, David, thank you for coming by and letting me know about the results."

With a few more words of good-bye, the two detectives left, and Danny lapsed back into the indescribable boredom of sitting for an oil portrait.

At first, spending time with the artist was a lot of fun. Jacky was a very handsome young man, with an admirable Latin-American angel's face, delicate bones, big eyes and a succulent mouth, all on top of a small wiry body simply bursting with energy most of the time. When they'd first met, Jacky rhapsodized over Danny's beauty, photographed him for three hours solid, and threw out a thousand ideas for portrait poses.

But then came the actual posing, first for sketches as the artist tried out different compositions and styles (Jacky had declared him a "pure pre-Raphaelite" and tried out Burne-Jones, Leighton, and Morris Hunt before deciding on Waterhouse); at those times, Jacky lapsed into an intensely still concentration, neither talking nor allowing Danny to talk. And though the recumbent pose that was finally decided upon allowed Danny to go to sleep whenever he got too bored, the minute he moved Jacky would yell at him irritably and spend a few minutes making sure he was back in place before returning to the silent painting.

When the two- or three-hour session was over, Jacky would come alive again, snapping pictures with his camera as Danny moved around the studio getting dressed (all of the pictures he shot belonged to Valerien, by the terms of his contract for the painting, and so Danny was able to relax in the knowledge that they would never get out to the general public). He was a wonderful chatterer, and could spin running jokes out of the most mundane pop-culture material; Danny just wished that this liveliness was part of the posing as well as the before and after.

Danny was also worried a little by the fact that these sessions were cutting into his early evenings with Valerien; he didn't miss the hour or so of Valerien's company, but had to wonder if Valerien missed him... or if this portrait were an excuse to have time away from Danny. He didn't dare ask Valerien to declare his intentions, for fear that their escapade would come to an end; and though he was not in love with Valerien, either, he loved their relationship and feared its cease... and so he let the worry fester inside of him, especially during the still hours of his posing.

More worrisome was the fact that his filial relationship with Poppy had turned carnal a few days after the painting was started. One afternoon when he and Poppy were working together in the studio, Poppy had let out a low growl and, as promised weeks before, pounced on Danny without so much as a by-your-leave. He stripped Danny naked and fucked him silly on the couch, and that performance was repeated almost daily thereafter.

This new sexual relationship, though wildly enjoyable (a good deal more enjoyable than his sexual relationship with Valerien), worried him on two counts: first, how would Valerien react if he found out; and second, what had Valerien told Poppy about their relationship that made the older man feel free to pounce on Danny... would Poppy do something that might conceivably take away from Valerien something that Valerien valued, or did Poppy know that Valerien was no longer particularly interested in Danny and was just letting things ride until something better came along?

And even with these worries and the boredome of posing, Danny's life was satisfying enough to keep him really quite happy. His remaining time spent with Valerien was still carefree and romantic, and his work with Poppy was developing into something that Danny considered he might actually make a career of. And he looked forward to the completion of the painting, a form of immortality that he'd always wanted (though he was aware that the immortality would depend largely on whether or not posterity would think as much of Jacky Alvarado as he and Valerien did).

As the date of his arraignment neared, however, Danny had new worries to consider in his still hours: Mr. Casterman painted a very bleak picture of the evidence that would come out at that proceeding; and also outlined the extremely slim but still real chance that Danny's bail could be revoked at that time if the judge were to come to believe Danny was dangerous or that he was more of a flight risk than the ten-million-dollar bond could guarantee.

Though he would ordinarily be inclined to keep the arraignment restricted to a simple plea of Not Guilty, Casterman had decided that a parade of character witnesses could lead to a dismissal before a plea had to even be entered. The downside of this ploy, however, is that the Prosecution could turn some character witnesses to its own ends, and undermine Danny's respectability... especially since it was known that they already had wind of his past filled with mercenary romances.

"While this is certainly not my usual advice," Casterman advised Danny in the Victorian mahogany-paneled confines of his downtown office, "I want you to be perfectly candid about the gifts your various lovers have given you. The Prosecution will use those gifts to paint you as vicious and conniving, and I want the judge to get a load of you at your most disarmingly honest... you're a good enough actor to lie well, but you tell the truth so much better. And besides, you've done nothing illegal, only morally questionable."

"OK," Danny said vaguely, more intent on the notes he was taking of the meeting than of the tone of Casterman's remarks; his time with Poppy had habituated him to writing everything down and then thinking it over later.

"I also want to bring your great-aunts down from Vandervere, but not without your consent."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Danny looked up from his notebook, "I'm not sure I would want them to hear all those details about my sex-life, you know?"

"They'll read about them in the papers next day, anyway," Casterman reasoned, "And they and your former nanny would, I think, be the best witnesses to your character."

"Aren't my friends enough?"

"Your friends here in town have all known you less than two years," the attorney got up and walked aimlessly around his office, "and none of them really knows you all that well, you must admit. Besides which, many of them would look a little shady to a judge... no, I think that we should concentrate on people who've known you a good long time."

"Just don't ask my parents, I doubt they'd give a very glowing report of me."

"Unfortunately, the Prosecution might drag them, and some of your more disreputable friends, into the courtroom to give an account of you. What would your parents say about you?"

"That I'm lazy and sneaky, probably," Danny shrugged and sighed, "That's what they always accused me of. They assumed I didn't get in trouble with Mademoiselle Marnie, when my brother always did, because I was better at subterfuge... it would never have occurred to them that I was simply well-behaved. My brother Tay was an absolute terror. He still is, as far as I can tell."

"That's another thing that will come up... it's being whispered that your family has the town of Vandervere in such a grip that you could have run around killing babies and eating puppies in the town square without official notice being taken."

"Well, that's true to an extent," Danny laughed at the image of a baby-and-puppy barbecue in the gingerbread bandstand of Vandervere Town Square, "Though nobody ever did more than speed a little or get rowdy in a bar. We are WASPs, after all; even our sins are boring."

"Nevertheless, it would be convenient to have a bad report of you from the Vandervere Police to balance that out. Were you ever caught doing anything?"

"Having sex with another boy in the park at night," Danny answered immediately, "The officer let us both off with a warning and never said a word about it to my parents. But I bet he'd be willing to talk about it if it would help me. He's something of a friend."

"How close of a friend?" Casterman asked sternly.

"Just a friend. I was friendly to him when he was new on the job and gave him a tour of the town once. Nothing sexual. He's straight as a board."

"I have a feeling that even boards bend a little when exposed to you," Casterman joked.

"Can I help it if I'm lovable?" Danny joked back, though he wondered if he were bending the great attorney in any way... he really didn't have the energy, between Poppy and Valerien every weekday, and the casual tricking he'd recently resumed over the weekends, to entertain another affair.

***

Soon after the painting was finished, Valerien organized a party to celebrate and unveil the masterwork. Though it would eventually be hung in Valerien's library, due to its greenish color scheme, it was displayed for the first time in the very center of the long salon, a pair of bright lamps on either side of it and a drape of golden damask over the top.

The painting itself was breathtaking, soft and yet dramatic, filled with dappled light that looked so real you felt as if there were slight warmth coming off the canvas. Danny was represented in a perfection that was almost impossible, but the artist swore that he had not idealized one square inch, it was all exactly what was there; and since it was an angle he'd never seen of himself, Danny was fascintated by this new facet of his own beauty.

In his usual manner, Jacky Alvarado had inserted a few additions into the painting that Waterhouse's original lacked: first, the subject was not staring at himself in the reflection of the pond, he was regarding the viewer intently, and the dark brown eyes had been painted in such a way that they seemed to follow the viewer quite eerily; the background vegetation was shaped in such a way as to suggest inorganic objects, vases and pictures and bits of furniture that actually existed in Danny's living room, and there were pieces of Danny's own jewelry secreted in the grass and the bottom of the clear pond. The artist himself was mum on what these little additions were supposed to mean, preferring to let the viewer draw his or her own conclusions.

To Danny it was a revelation... he had always thought of himself, in his darker moments, as vain and materialistic, and the pose of Narcissus certainly reinforced that opinion of himself. But this Narcissus, gazing out at the world through a mirror of vanity, or rather through a veil of beauty, was actually more interested in the people who looked at him than in himself or the things people gave him. It rang of truth, and made Danny like himself a little better.

The reception, however, brought him crashing right back down. It was attended by the very highest cream of society, the outside hall was crammed with bodyguards, and people who were famous for never going anywhere were seen there that night; however, though everyone was perfectly charming to him, Danny overheard whispers about himself, and the whispers weren't very flattering. Nobody said anything outright against him, nobody would dare speak in opposition of Valerien's and Marquesa's sponsorship and support; but there was an undertone to their private conversations that demonstrated a widespread belief that Danny had "hooked" Valerien, that he probably had killed Marshall and would also probably get away with it because of his looks and his willingness to grant sexual favors in exchange for whatever he wanted.

Though the Alvarado portrait showed him as a sensitive and lonely soul, the portrait Society saw was the same old surface of the high-end hustler, more whore than courtesan, sharply on the lookout for what he could get, and not very nice at all. And to drown the sting of this unflattering view of the portrait, Danny drank far more wine than was good for him and was quite drunk only halfway through the evening.

Another sting that sent him running for the bottle was seeing Marquesa there with Richard Allenwhite; though they had arrived separately and alone, they spent their time at the party together, side-by-side, an accepted couple. It was vividly clear, even from the furthest distance of the vast salon, that Marquesa was besotted with Richard, insanely happy just to be standing next to him in a public place; Danny felt the unfamiliar gnaw of jealousy in his heart.

Richard Allenwhite was so godlike that Danny couldn't blame anybody for being in love with him. He was extremely tall and broad with muscle, with golden skin and bright gold hair, bright gold eyelashes around brilliant blue eyes, so dazzlingly handsome that it almost hurt to look at him; he was in his mid-forties, his face lined with laughter and outdoor sport, but he was so vital in his personality that he seemed much younger. He fairly glowed with divine light, and Danny could imagine himself falling in love with the man.

But at the same time he hated him intensely: for no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he was deeply and painfully in love with Marquesa, and Richard stood implacably between them.

By the time everybody had gone home and Valerien and Danny were in bed together, Danny was so drunk that he couldn't perform. Frustrated and depressed, he broke into tears and spent half an hour just wailing inconsolably into Valerien's neck. And though Valerien tried his best to comfort Danny, he was unequal to the task... he'd never himself experienced an emotion so strong as to inspire such heart-wrenched weeping, and felt rather inadequate in the face of Danny's obvious pain.

"Nobody loves me," Danny finally said pathetically when his tears had slowed enough to allow speech.

"I love you," Valerien said, trying to soothe him.

"But you're not in love with me, are you?"

"No, I guess not. But I do love you."

"I love you, too; but I'm not in love with you, either," Danny sat up, suddenly feeling quite sober after his tantrum, and accepted the towel Valerien handed him.

"I never thought you were," Valerien said seriously after a period of thought, "Why are you bringing it up now? I thought things were going well."

"I thought so, too, until I saw Marquesa with Richard tonight. They're in love with each other and I'm in love with Marquesa, and it hurts like you wouldn't believe."

"I'm sorry," Valerien put his arm around Danny's neck and kissed him gently, "I didn't know."

"I didn't know either, until tonight," Danny said, though not entirely truthfully... he'd known all along that his love for Valerien was a pale shadow compared to his love for Marquesa, but he tried to talk himself into loving Valerien just because he was available while Marquesa wasn't. But he didn't like to admit he was using Valerien in such a manner, so hadn't allowed himself to think about it.

Valerien was silent for a long time before asking in a small, unsure voice, "Do you think about him when we're together?"

"Oh, God, no!" Danny was quick to reassure his friend, "I only think about you when I'm with you. And myself, of course. Why, who do you think about?"

"Nobody in particular," Valerien answered with a sly smile.

"Does this mean we're breaking up?" Danny wondered after another long silence.

"I don't see why we should. I'm happy. Are you happy?"

"Mostly. It's 'the next best thing to love,' isn't it?" Danny sang the lyric to one of his favorite torch songs.

"Then let's make a pact: we'll go as we are until we get bored with eachother or 'until the real thing comes along,'" Valerien sang back, surprising Danny with the knowledge of a pop song's lyrics, something he wouldn't ordinarily admit to knowing.

Danny had discovered that Valerien secretly liked a lot of things that he pretended not to for some strange reason... once Danny woke up in the night to find Valerien listening to music on Danny's handheld, demonstrating both an enjoyment for pop music and a knowledge of how to operate a small electronic device, two things he publically disdained. Danny found this strangely endearing, though he was always puzzled by why Valerien would bother to be so vocally against something that he actually liked. And since they were being so candid with each-other, Danny decided to ask.

"Why do you pretend you don't like pop music?"

"Oh, I don't know," Valerien replied, "I'm just proud and stubborn. And I guess I just don't want everyone to know all about me. I like to have secrets."

"Really? I never would have thought anybody'd make a secret of anything so everyday as music."

"Well, I don't have any big secrets, I have to make due with little ones."

"Tell me another little secret," Danny nestled down beside Valerien like a small child asking to be told a story.

"My father isn't dead, or institutionalized," Valerien said quickly, "He lives at the chateau with a nurse. He's completely insane, but harmless."

"That's a pretty big secret," Danny said, admiringly, pleased that Valerien had entrusted him with something like that.

"But it's not mine, so I make mysteries of my likes and dislikes," Valerien shrugged and turned off the light, then settled down in the bed to go to sleep, "Do you have any secrets?"

"I've been sleeping with Poppy for a few weeks, now," Danny admitted warily.

"That's not a secret, I knew all about it. I never considered sexual fidelity a part of our relationship. Tell me a real secret."

"Well, I guess I don't have any. I can keep other people's secrets, but I can't keep any of my own. If it occurs to me to say something, I usually say it. I've always had a problem with chronic disclosure."

"I think it's cute," Valerien said, smiling in the dark.

"I think your secrets are cute," Danny smiled back, his cock finally behaving as it was supposed to, his hands drifting around Valerien's waist, "I think your ass is cute, too."

"Incorrigible little satyr," Valerien laughed, turning the lights back on; he loved to watch Danny making love to him.

"Who're you calling little?" Danny teased, climbing on top of Valerien and pressing their cocks together. Suddenly Danny was happy again, all his doubts, fears, and worries forgotten as he frolicked in bed with his wonderful fuck-buddy friend.

Chapter 10, Part 1

2007-10-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

The next few weeks passed in a blur as Danny experienced two completely new elements of life: working at a real job and participating in a real relationship.

Nothing about his work with Poppy was completely alien to him, he was an expert at schmoozing rich people and knowledgeable about interior design, and his college career had certainly prepared him for clerical work like note-taking, transcription, and writing instructional letters; but showing up at nine every morning, ready to answer phones or take notes or harrass contractors was a delightful novelty that did not stale with custom.

The work itself was immensely satisfying: Danny loved getting up with an alarm-clock and driving to work in the mornings wearing a jacket, answering the phone with a brisk and cheerful "Ermengratz Design Associates, this is Danny, how may I help you?" and visiting some of the most beautiful houses in the City with a view of making them more beautiful. He learned an enormous amount from Poppy about interior design, and felt that his suggestions were taken seriously and appreciated.

Danny became very close to Poppy in those weeks, as they were constantly together, visiting clients and having lunch, then working out together before spending the afternoon doing clerical work in the office. Poppy tacitly adopted Danny as a sort of nephew/protegé and constantly advised him on his life and his wardrobe.

Danny found this relationship even more satisfying than the job. Poppy was very wise, having not only lived in different eras but in different lifestyles and serveral different important cities: he'd come of age in the time of the Stonewall Riots and lived that exciting ensuing decade in the heart of Manhattan; after Toddy Ermengratz died in '83, he'd rocketed around Europe and South America, cravenly (by his own admission) avoiding the worst of the AIDS crisis; he'd lived in Hollywood and Miami and Seattle during the 90s, and moved to San Francisco on the eve of the Millennium. He'd quite literally been everywhere and seen everything, and was fond of remeniscing about all these different times and places.

More importantly, he'd observed and synthesized a great deal about people and the way their minds worked. He was a genius of human behavior, and Danny delighted in having people explained to him... especially himself. Poppy saw through every mannerism and behavior Danny exhibited, and would root out the cause and desire behind each one. It was very much like having a psychiatrist and an agony-aunt at one's beck and call.

Poppy's most aired advice had to do with Valerien. Poppy had met Valerien on the occasion of the latter's eighteenth birthday, when the Comtesse had Valerien's rooms at the Chateau redecorated for him by Poppy. Valerien was enchanted by Poppy's funny camp mannerisms, and Poppy was entranced by Valerien's fairy-tale beauty and innocence. They became good friends during the time of the redecoration, and so Poppy was the obvious choice of decorator when Valerien moved into the "bachelor apartment" that his family owned, where his father and grandfather had each lived before marrying and moving into the family's Pacific Heights mansion.

Poppy understood Valerien perhaps better than anyone, and was indulgent of his foibles to the point of foolishness. For example, Valerien's refusal to learn to drive a car or use a computer, as well as his unblinking prejudice against any form of music or art that came into existence after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, was considered the cutest little quirk rather than a potentially serious sociopathy.

"He's my Little Proust Princeling," Poppy would explain, "Or my Little Prince Proustling? He simply refuses to participate in the modern world, and who can blame him?"

"What about disco and gay rights?" Danny would counter, bringing up two of Poppy's favorite topics.

"That sort of thing is important for people who have to live in this time, or who like living in this time, like you and me. For people like Valerien, who have the power to be gay whenever they want and the money to rearrange their reality to the exclusion of anything they don't want, it just doesn't matter. He's like a period movie come to life, isn't he? I love him to pieces."

While Danny wasn't sure that this head-in-the-sand approach to reality was wise, he loved Valerien, too. And though Danny had many affairs, he'd never been in what he and the other party considered a serious relationship. He spent all of his free time with Valerien, and all of their activities were the type considered "romantic."

Every morning, there was a new bouquet of Leonidas roses and alstroemeria lilies waiting on Danny's desk, and Danny always met Valerien wearing one of each in his buttonhole. Every afternoon Valerien's Rolls picked Danny up at the Ermengratz offices, then they had sex before preparing for an evening out. Every evening, they dined together in posh restaurants, went to parties and the theatre and the opera together; they even danced together at a charity ball and took moonlit walks along the beach or through one of the City's many parks (with two security goons in close attendance, of course). Every night they slept together in either Danny's or Valerien's apartment, taking turns as host, with Valerien's valet Henri running back and forth between the apartments with one or the other's clothes for the next day.

Unfortunately, Danny realized after only a few days that, though he loved Valerien dearly, he wasn't in love with him and would never fall in love with him. Having experienced the sensation of falling head-over-heels for Marquesa, he knew what it was supposed to feel like, and he knew that this wasn't It.

Nor did Danny believe that Valerien was in love with him. Their relationship felt a little like play-acting, the romantic activities seemed a trifle contrived, and their sex was more fun than fierce... instead of true lovers, they'd become more like fuck-buddies who happened to be monogamous.

There was a certain lack of intimacy in their conversations: though he'd gleaned little bits of biography from passing comments and Poppy's trove of information (such as the touchy subject of his parents, that his father had murdered his mother during a drug-induced hallucination and was institutionalized as criminally insane), Valerien never talked about his own past the way Danny and Marquesa had over that weekend in the hotel.

He was forthcoming about his current activities, little experiences at the offices of his family's bank or a new purchase at the auction galleries or something to do with his horses in the country... but never anything about his inner life, his emotions, or his dreams for the future. Nor was he particularly interested in hearing about Danny's, and didn't encourage any kind of conversation that had to do with anything that was not of-the-moment.

There was also the issue of money. Valerien was constantly buying Danny expensive gifts, jewelry and clothes and extravagant little trifles like a sable teddy bear or a case of rare wine; he even gave Danny a credit card, insisting that he use it frequently lest he hurt the giver's feelings. And though Danny most frequently used the credit-card to buy gifts for Valerien, these things put him right back into the Courtesan role he had tried to escape in favor of the role of Lover.

However, it was enough. Between the novelty of working and the novelty of Valerien, Danny was very nearly as happy as he'd been during that weekend with Marquesa... not quite bliss, but the very next best thing.

During this period, Danny and Marquesa very seldom met. As Danny and Valerien were always together at the social events that Valerien and Marquesa had been accustomed to attend together, Marquesa chose other men from their social set to escort him to those events rather than act as a third wheel. Danny would have worried that he was coming between Valerien and Marquesa, except that Marquesa spent every weekend with Valerien at the Chateau de Seguemont near Sonoma, where Danny could not follow because the terms of his bail required him to remain at all times within the City and County of San Francisco.

Instead, Danny spent his weekends swimming and being pampered at the spa, going out dancing (to the newest music), chatting with old friends (many of whom had returned, apologetically, after the scandal of his arrest had dimmed in the public memory... though a number of them, including Aunt Tittie, were distinctly chilly), and catching up on the sleep he missed by keeping such odd hours during the week.

In betweentimes, he shopped for Valerien. The young baron was indecently difficult to shop for, being already supplied with all the world could provide by way of luxuries. But Danny considered that a challenge, and was always on the prowl for little bibelots and curiosities to delight Valerien.

And it was at an auction-house, where Danny had gone to bid on a miniature on ivory purportedly of the Marquise de Pompadour (a favorite figure and ancestress of Valerien's), that he was reminded, once again by force and surprise, of his impending murder trial: right beside him in the auction-room was Rodney Casterman, Esquire, bidding on several pieces of seventeenth-century silver Judaica.

"I wanted to congratulate you," Mr. Casterman said to Danny after that auction had ended and conversation was again possible, "The suggestions for avenues of investigation were very helpful to my son. Several have borne very useful fruit. You may have a future as a detective, yourself."

"That's very gratifying," Danny replied, "I'd like to hear about some of this fruit someday."

"I must arrange a meeting with you and RJ, then. I think your perspective will be useful in piecing together the evidence thus far. Also, I need to meet with you in the next two or three weeks, your arraignment date has finally been set for July 11th, and I have to go over the procedure with you."

"I'll have to ask my boss for time off," Danny laughed delightedly, "I've never had to do that before. It's great fun, having a job!"

"I'm glad you enjoy it," Casterman responded dryly but indulgently, "Shall we say the twenty-third of June? I think that's the Monday. I'll have my secretary call you. And RJ will contact you directly about discussing the evidence. Perhaps next weekend?"

"That would be delightful."

The bidding started up again, and Mr. Casterman took his leave with the receipt for a beautifully chased Kiddush cup while Danny waited around for his ivory miniature to be snatched away by another bidder at an amount higher than his own credit cards and Valerien's combined could bear.

Danny later discovered, when Valerien gave him the Pompadour miniature, that he'd been beaten by the intended recipient.

***

Chapter Nine (Complete)

2007-09-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Danny woke up when the phone rang, disoriented by the unaccustomed location and the unmeasured passage of time. He groggily reached over for the instrument and mumbled into it.

"Monsieur Vandervere?," came a crisp French-accented voice, "Mademoiselle Willard-Wilkes's manservant is here. May I send him up?"

"Mmmph," Danny didn't want to see the man, but knew that Marquesa would want his clothes and jewelry back, "Okay."

"Very good, m'sieu."

Sitting up in the bed, Danny wondered if he should just stay where he was and pretend to be asleep, or if he should hide in the bathroom; but by the time Danvers knocked, he realized he'd have to let the man into the suite. So he put on his bathrobe, knotted the cord firmly, and opened the door.

"Good afternoon, sir," Danvers bowed slightly, though not as crisply as he had before, and his expression was softer, not so disapproving, "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"I was just going to take a shower," Danny walked out of the room with what he hoped was an air of unconcern, locking the bathroom door behind him. He turned on the water but didn't get in; instead, he sat on the little bathroom stool in the corner and listened to the manservant moving around in the bedroom, wishing he would leave so Danny could go back to bed.

After half an hour, there was a quiet knock on the bathroom door that startled Danny out of the trance of blank waiting he'd fallen into. The room had filled up with steam, and he couldn't see anything.

"Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" Danvers's voice came softly through the door.

"I can't hear you, I'm in the shower," Danny lied.

"Very good, sir," the servant said loudly, then dropped his voice to a low rumble that could barely be heard, "Though I can't help but notice your voice came from the opposite side of the room from the shower, and that water makes a different sound falling on a body than on an empty floor."

Danny blushed crimson, humiliated to be caught out in the lie, but didn't answer.

"I've put your clothes away, sir," Danvers resumed in his louder professional voice, "and laid out something suitable in case you choose to go to the lounge for tea, as well as your dinner clothes. Mr. Willard-Wilkes sent some cash for tips and incidentals, it's in an envelope on the table in the foyer. Good afternoon, sir."

"Thank you," Danny called out, getting hastily into the shower so that he wouldn't have to admit that he hadn't been there in the first place; he wanted to say something more articulate in gratitude for Danvers' thoughtfulness, but the words didn't come. When he did finally get out of the shower, he put on a good deal of body-lotion and combed his hair with undue thoroughness before returning to the bedroom, killing time to make sure the man was gone.

Danvers had laid out a very nice outfit on the bed, a snappy blue-and-white striped shirt with a dull red silk sweater and tan linen pants, with socks and underwear lying on top and a pair of cordovan loafers neatly placed on the floor. The dinner-suit was laid out with equal precision on the other side of the bed, with a navy blue satin tie and waistcoat.

Danny put on the afternoon clothes, for no reason other than that they were there, since he didn't intend to leave the suite any time soon. The dinner-suit he put back in the closet, not wanting to look at it... it had happy memories attached to it, and Danny didn't want to think happy thoughts.

The envelope of money gave him a sting of pain: it contained a stack of twenties and another stack of fifties, full inch-thick US Mint hundred-count packets with the denomination bands unbroken, more money than he could possibly hand out in tips if he stayed at the Queen Charlotte all summer. This was clearly the "walking-around money" or "cab-fare" or "pick out a present from me" that stood as a euphemism for the amateur prostitute's fee.

Seven thousand dollars was a pretty good fee for a weekend, and Danny had to smile at the generosity; but this unnecessarily large sum underlined for Danny the fact that this had been just a weekend fling for Marquesa. They could still be friends, as close as Danny usually was with his moneyed tricks; but considering the two packets of cash for "incidentals" along with the hotel bills and the new wardrobe from Saks, not to mention half of the million-dollar bail bond, there was simply too much expenditure involved for Danny to ever feel on equal footing with Marquesa. He was irrevocably cast in his usual role of Courtesan instead of his desired role of Lover.

Dropping the cash negligently into a drawer, Danny lay down on the couch and watched television for a few hours, changing channels with an impatient sneer when anything even remotely romantic came on, slipping occasionally into a deep sleep and waking with a start when something loud happened on the TV.

When he eventually got hungry, he ordered up a selection of canape-sized comfort foods, baby quiches and tiny shepherd's pies and sinfully cheesy crab-puffs, along with a couple of bottles of oaky white wine, so that he wouldn't have to think about food for a while, he could just nibble and sip whenever the mood took him.

The waiter set up some of the food on the coffee table between the couch and the television, and put one of the bottles of wine in an ice-bucket to chill, then took the rest into the little wet-bar/kitchen Danny hadn't realized was there, hidden beside the little foyer behind a folding wall-panel. As soon as the waiter left, with a nice crisp fifty tucked into his pocket, Danny resumed his vigil on the couch, flipping channels pointlessly, occasionally turning over to stare at the ceiling or the upholstery, dozing off every now and then as he'd been doing all day.

He felt (he decided after a long time casting about for the right word) bleak. Bleak and empty, like a Nevada salt-flat in winter... he was no longer especially sad, the hurt of the morning had dulled to a dreary numbness, and he simply didn't want anything... didn't want to eat, didn't want to read, didn't want to talk, didn't want to move, didn't want to feel pleasure, didn't want to think.

But he did think: he thought about how stupid he'd been to believe that Marquesa was falling in love with him as he'd fallen in love with Marquesa; he thought about the matter-of-fact way Marquesa had recommended going after Valerien instead, and the cavalier attitude about the "tips and incidentals"; he thought even more about how that coldness had excited him in the first place; he thought about all the time he'd wanted to fall in love without having the tiniest idea how much it could hurt; he thought about what a fool he was.

Sometime in the very early hours of the next morning, however, Danny finally got bored with his inertia. His was a nature that was ill-suited for wallowing in unhappiness... he could be unhappy, but he was incapable of lying around with it for very long. He had to get up and do something to take his mind off it. He got up and peeled out of the stale wrinkled clothes he'd been wearing for over twelve hours, then opened the window and leaned out for some fresh air, feeling his skin come alive in the chilly damp.

Leafing through the little book of the hotel's amenities, he was pleased to discover the place had a small gymnasium and swimming pool in the basement that would open at 6 a.m. Checking the little clock on the desk, Danny was irritated to find that it was only 4... but then decided that a couple of fifties could probably get a helpful desk-clerk to open them up for him. Calling downstairs, he discovered that the night manager would be delighted to accomodate Monsieur Vandervere regardless of the hour (news of his increased tipping power must have already been circulated among the staff).

Rummaging through the dresser that had been arranged with a neatness that was almost pathological, Danny selected a scandalously brief white swimsuit, a pair of tight underwear-thin grey fleece shorts, and a thin zip-up black hoodie that was two sizes too small and clung to his torso like paint. The sneakers Andrew had sent weren't the kind Danny liked, but they were sufficient, and the little white socks had cute Japanese anime penguins embroidered on them.

Running down the stairs to the basement, Danny felt a rush of physical well-being: his heart might be broken, but his body was still a beautiful perfect machine capable of all sorts of pleasures. The night-manager was clearly taken aback, both by Danny's slutty attire and by the four bills Danny pressed into his hand (he was determined to blow through at least one of the stacks of money, and had perversely settled on the higher denomination), and led a brief tour of the small but luxurious facilities, pointing out the Art Deco mosaic murals imported from a bath-house in Paris, turning on all the lights, the televisions, and the stereo before taking his leave.

Danny stripped off his hoodie, grabbed the biggest bottle of water he could find in the cooler, and got up onto an elliptical machine, bopping his head to the beat of the generic Top-40 dance music that came pouring out of the hidden speakers, and lost himself in the rhythm of his own heartbeat and breathing. It was infinitely more worry-suppressing than watching television, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of this simple expedient sooner.

After forty minutes of cardiovascular exercise, he did a circuit of the weight machines, not pushing himself very hard since he was alone in the gym and didn't have a spotter; and once every muscle in his body had been worked over and was glowing with warmth, he pulled off his gym-shorts and dove into the long narrow pool.

The water was deliciously cool and shocked his sweaty skin refreshingly. He swam laps, freestyle to one end and backstroke to the other, pushing himself until he was so tired that he had to get out of the pool for fear of drowning. He flopped face-first onto a towel-draped chaise-longue, completely exhausted and wonderfully free of nagging thoughts, and went right back to sleep.

"Hey, are you OK?" Danny felt a hand shaking his shoulder.

"Just sleeping," he replied quietly, peeking at the stranger through one eye; it was a rather pretty boy, Danny guessed him to be eighteen or nineteen, with straight black hair and starry blue eyes, spanked pink cheeks and a soft red mouth. His face was square and his cheekbones perfect, but there was an endearing sense of the unfinished to his features that was very appealing.

"Oh," the boy looked embarrassed, his smooth cheeks deepening to carmine, "You were kind of whimpering, I though you were sick."

"Whimpering?" Danny raised himself up on both elbows to take a better look at the boy, running his eyes over the narrow, tight-muscled boyish frame in a pair of very baggy red boardshorts, his luminescent pink skin and charmingly awkward movements, "How mortifying."

"I'll leave you alone, then," the boy sounded disappointed and started to get up.

"Don't go away," Danny heard a note of begging in his voice and strove to master it with a more confident and seductive tone, "What's your name?"

"Jared," the boy happily sat cross-legged on the floor and put out his hand.

"I'm Danny. Pleased to meet you," he rolled over onto his side, artlessly displaying his half-hard cock taking up far too much room in the front of the tiny white bikini, but smiling happily as the boy's eyes bugged out and his mouth dropped open, "Where are you from, Jared?"

Jared tore his gaze from Danny's crotch with some effort, gulped loudly, and stammered out, "Cincinnati."

"Are you here with your family?" Danny reached down and pushed his erection back down under the waistband as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, smirking to himself as Jared's erection sprang up and tented his red shorts.

"He's supposed to be my uncle," Jared murmured, his eyes riveted back onto Danny's cock.

"Supposed to be?"

"Oh! I mean," Jared looked alarmed, his eyes big and the blush deepening again on his cheek, "I mean I am here with my uncle."

"Oh, don't worry, baby, I have plenty of 'uncles' myself. Does your uncle mind you playing around?"

Jared gulped again and stared mutely for a few moments before shaking his head no. Danny pulled him to his feet and led him by the hand through the empty locker-room and into the billowing steam of the wet sauna. Once the door was closed securely, he was on the boy with a passion, raping his mouth and wrapping both hands around the boy's long cock. Jared put his hands on Danny's body, first on his arms, then his waist, then his shoulders, as if he weren't sure where they should be; eventually he settled on the hips and seemed particularly fascinated with the line of the pelvic girdle.

Since the bathing facilities in the Hotel Queen Charlotte weren't the type to keep great bowls full of prophylactics on every table and counter, Danny kept their activities limited to oral and frottage... more the latter than the former, as Jared couldn't keep his teeth out of the way; the boy was passionate but had no skill whatever. Streaming with sweat, they slid around together on the sauna bench like eels; the boy shot off twice before Danny came, making an adorable squealing sound each time that made Danny laugh. Spent and sticky, they lolled in silence for a little while, Jared trying to catch his breath and Danny nearly falling asleep again.

"I really wish you'd fuck me," Jared finally broke the silence in a timid voice.

"I'd love to, baby, but I don't have any condoms here," Danny replied, his face buried in the boy's neck, "and nothing personal, but I'd really rather not take you back to my room."

"Do have a fake uncle in your room, too?" Jared wondered, his mind finally cleared enough of sex to return to their previous conversation.

"Not at the moment," Danny laughed, pulling back on one elbow to look down at the boy, tracing the pretty features with his index finger, refusing to think about why he didn't want to take someone back to the room where he'd fallen in love with Marquesa, "But I just don't feel right about it. Let's go take a shower, we're all sticky."

Crowded warmly into a single stall, Danny and Jared washed each-other carefully and a little too thoroughly; soon they were inflamed to passion, and they thrashed and writhed their way to another climax.

"What's your uncle's name?" Danny asked conversationally, shaking off the sleepiness that was threatening again.

"I probably shouldn't tell you," Jared sighed after a long silence, stepping out of the shower.

"Why not?" Danny laughed, "Is he that closeted?"

"No... I mean, he's not obvious or anything, but he doesn't hide that he's gay."

"Then you must be underage," Danny reasoned, toweling his hair, "How old are you?"

"Eighteen," Jared said without conviction, his eyes darting about with comic guilt.

"You don't lie very well, little one," Danny shook his head in mock exasperation, "But I guess it doesn't matter now, after the fact. You can't unbreak an egg and you can't unfuck a teenager."

"But you haven't fucked me...yet," Jared teased.

"Nor am I going to, Little Miss Lolita," Danny ruffled the boy's hair playfully, "But I will take you to breakfast. Why don't you go upstairs and get dressed, and I'll meet you in the lobby."

Danny felt very nearly happy again as he returned to his suite and selected a kicking-around outfit of artfully distressed jeans, vividly striped narrow-cut dress shirt, and suede sandals. The sorrow had been blown apart by the physical pleasures of exercise and sex, and the bleakness was submerged in the delight of a new person to experience.

He returned to the lobby before Jared, so Danny took a moment to visit the concierge and order immense and ridiculously expensive flower-arrangements sent to Marquesa and Valerien with thank-you notes, as well as more subdued tributes to Mr. Casterman and the Aunt Ems. With a hefty gratuity to Phillipe, the bundle of fifties was satisfactorily dented by this exercise.

Tucking the roll of bills into his pocket next to his loose cock, which made him feel wonderfully dirty, Danny went back out to the lobby to find Jared waiting for him; the boy looked acutely embarrassed, shifting from one foot to the other with his eyes on the floor.

"Where shall we eat, baby? The grill-room here, or shall we go exploring instead?" Danny hooked a finger into the boy's belt-loop.

"I can't go," Jared rolled his eyes in exasperation, "Crosby insisted on meeting you. He wants me to invite you to have breakfast with us."

"Crosby's a smart man," Danny threw his arm around the boy's shoulder and led him into the grill room, a high square chamber paneled in dark wood, with white-clothed round tables and tall windows facing the street, "If I was him, I wouldn't let you out of my sight for a minute. But before I meet him, did you tell him what we did this morning?"

"No, of course not!" the boy blushed again.

"He'll probably know. I mean, look at me... who could say 'No' to all this?" Danny struck a glamorous pose, making Jared laugh, "And I doubt he'll mind. You should never be dishonest in your relationships, Jared. It always leads to trouble. Let's go meet Uncle Crosby."

Crosby Hungerford looked like somebody's uncle... comically avuncular, with a perfectly round little head on top of a perfectly round little body, rendered jaunty by a pointed Vandyke beard on his small-featured face and a bright Tartan waistcoat peeking out of his soft tweed suit. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, and had the comfortable blasé air of a dilettante with very old family money.

When he rose to meet his protege's new friend, he was clearly taken by surprise... his jaw dropped and his little black eyes widened in alarm. Danny was of course accustomed to such reactions, it was the price of being so shockingly beautiful; and as he always did in such situations, he turned on his most polished social charms to try to put the man at his ease.

"Good morning, Mr. Hungerford," Danny put out his hand enthusiastically, "It's so good to meet you after hearing so much about you from Jared."

"Thank you," Crosby said somewhat shakily, then made an obvious effort to pull himself together, "Won't you sit down, Mr... Vandervere, was it?"

"Please, call me Danny," he took the chair Crosby indicated, "Thank you so much for inviting me to breakfast. One gets a little lonely staying in a hotel on one's own."

Conversation became less strained and rather general quite quickly; between Crosby's and Danny's combined breeding and manners, the interaction remained on a very smooth surface of small-talk and pleasantries. But all the while, Danny was watching Crosby, wondering what it was that was making him so uncomfortable underneath his Society veneer... for the little man was unmistakably anxious about something: his eyes darted back and forth between Danny and Jared, and his hands fiddled nervously with the tableware. Was he anxious that Danny was going to steal Jared away from him?

It didn't seem likely, though, that Crosby would have attained the age and suavité required to keep a young boyfriend without understanding that kept boys don't leave their keepers for other boys, they don't give up security and luxury for mere hot sex. It simply isn't done. Was Jared so unpredictable that Crosby would fear losing him to a beautiful stranger in a hotel?

On the other hand, Danny understood that he wasn't the usual pretty-boy one meets on the circuit... he was expensively dressed and expensively educated, he was staying in an expensive hotel alone... to all appearances, he could be someone who could provide both the hot sex and the security that a boy like Jared would want.

And so to alleviate his fears, Danny focused most of his attention, with a subtle undertone of flirtation, on Crosby; he included Jared in the conversation and the flirtation, but he did everything he could to indicate that he wasn't interested in stealing Jared away. He actually started plotting how he could get a three-way going with Jared and Crosby together, which would certainly make the rest of the day pass rather pleasantly.

But it was not to be. When he had finished his very French breakfast of dense bread and soft cheese, and downed the last of the very strong coffee, he offered to take the pair sight-seeing... though they had probably been all over town during their vacation, it's always special to be shown around by a local who knows some of the hidden beauty-spots and interesting local history.

"No, thank you, Danny," Crosby said, wiping his mouth fastidiously and smiling uncomfortably, "We're leaving soon, and I need to get to the packing."

"Oh, come on," Jared protested, "We're not leaving until tomorrow afternoon. Besides, the valet will do the packing, won't he?"

"I need to supervise," Crosby offered lamely.

"Well, can I go?" Jared asked, a tone of impatience in his voice.

"I'd really rather you didn't," Crosby said in a very parental tone, a tone that begged a child to stop pursuing the question.

"Why not!?" Jared demanded.

"Well, really, Jared, you put me in a most awkward position," Crosby finally relaxed a little and shook his head, "I didn't want to hurt Danny's feelings. But I cannot let you go out alone with a suspected murderer."

Silence engulfed the little table after this bombshell. Danny was completely staggered... after all of the emotional upheaval of his weekend with Marquesa, he'd quite forgotten about that problem. Jared stared thunderstruck, and Crosby looked horribly embarrassed to have said something so inescapably rude.

"I am sorry, Mr. Vandervere," Crosby eventually turned to Danny, "You're a very charming young man, and I am loath to suspect you of such a foul crime; but I have a duty to protect Jared, and that has to come first."

"I completely understand," Danny breathed out, still reverberating from the shock.

"What are you talking about?" Jared almost screamed, "Danny's not a murderer! I've been with him all morning!"

"Jared, please," Crosby pleaded quietly, reaching across the corner of the table and taking the boy's hand, "I'm sure he's innocent, but the suspicion is there, and I can't take a chance with your safety."

"That's ridiculous, I'm not in any danger," Jared shook off Crosby's hand and crossed his arms sulkily over his chest, with a little pout of impatience that was so completely adorable that Danny wanted him even more. It made him sad that he wouldn't be able to experience more of the boy.

"No, Jared, Crosby's right," Danny slowly pushed back from the table and dropped his napkin on his plate, "He's responsible for you, and it would be remiss of him to let you go out with someone he has reason to suspect. I understand completely. And Mr. Hungerford, I hold you no ill will; in fact, I hope we can meet again once my innocence has been established. Thank you very much for breakfast."

With all the sangfroid he could muster, Danny got up from the table, gave Jared a little peck on the cheek, shook Crosby's proffered hand, and left the grill room; leaving the room, he could hear Jared's continued protestations and Crosby's quiet refusal to be budged. Passing the concierge's desk, he ordered a fruit-basket to be sent to Mr. Hungerford, along with his calling card, and asked that a valet be sent to pack up his clothes: he was going to check out immediately.

"Murder Suspect," Danny sneered at himself in the mirror upon returning to his suite, mourning the cozy adventure with Jared and Crosby that he'd been planning but which was snatched away from him by those two nasty words, "Danny Vandervere, suspected murderer. God damn it!"

Danny kicked hard at the wainscoting, forgetting that he was wearing sandals, and fell cursing to the floor when the pain of a stubbed toe shot up his leg. He was huddled up on the floor crying and swearing, more from temper than from hurt, when the valet came in and silently started packing Danny's clothes for him in the two Vuitton suitcases Danvers had left for him.

The valet was done in a matter of minutes; the clothes had been folded so neatly by Marquesa's manservant that is was only a matter of transferring them from closet and drawer to suitcase; Danny pulled himself together enough to tip the valet, and leave a few more bills on the dresser for housekeeping. He put all his loose objects, his handheld and the rest of the money, into a small shopping bag, and said farewell to the suite with a sad little sigh. Making his way back to the lobby, he asked for a cab to be called, then sulked into the dark and empty bar; it wasn't actually open, but Phillipe took pity on the obviously depressed young guest and slid behind the bar to pour Danny a generous brandy, then left him alone to wait for the car that would take him home.

But while Danny was depressed by his situation, the many unhappy upheavals of his recent past, the sadness was quickly being subsumed by a simmering rage... not toward Crosby Hungerford, whose behavior was completely reasonable, but rather toward whoever had killed Drayton Marshall.

He hadn't thought about Marshall for days, but now that the murder had been brought back to his attention, he was simply furious: killing the unsavory Marshall he could understand, and maybe even forgive; but pinning the murder so securely and deliberately on an innocent bystander bespoke a disregard for other people that should not go unpunished. Danny was enflamed with a desire to hunt down the killer, not just for his own sake, either for establishing his innocence or exacting his revenge, but for the sake of Justice itself.

Warmed by the resonance of this sentiment, as well as by the large brandy, Danny felt his anger resolve into a purpose. Fishing his handheld out of the little shopping bag, he started making notes to follow up on various questions concerning Marshall's life and death, such as the whereabouts of Marshall's son on the night of the murder, as well as some barely-remembered oddities about his meeting with Marshall in The Brat... the identity of the parrot-shirted man, the peculiar behavior of the purple-haired boy who stared at him so, Marshall's well-known predilection for hustlers, and the wide variety of drugs in his apartment.

This sense of purpose carried Danny all the way out of the hotel and into the waiting towncar without a backward glance at the Hotel Queen Charlotte. He continued making notes as he rode home, and was a little bit startled when the car came to a stop.

A lone reporter was lurking outside Danny's door, beside an enormous man who could could best be described as a "goon," an impressively ugly hulk in a dark suit and darker glasses standing at ease right in front of the gate.

Danny had to produce identification before the goon would let him pass; and all the while Danny was rummaging around for his wallet and producing his driver's license, the weedy little reporter threw importunate questions at him in a small whiney voice.

"Why did you kill Drayton Marshall?" was the one question out of many that actually caught Danny's attention. He turned to look at the little man, sweeping his eyes disdainfully over the rumpled dust-colored clothing, scrawny awkward phsyique, and a face that made Woody Allen look downright pretty by comparison.

"I didn't kill Drayton Marshall," Danny said slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child.

"Then why were you hiding? Where have you been all week?"

"I've been staying in a hotel, avoiding people like you. Good afternoon."

"Then who do you think did kill him?" the reporter called after Danny as he passed through the iron gate onto the outside stairs.

"I really don't know," Danny said, turning on the last step and facing the reporter with some interest, "But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm going to do whatever I can to find out who did kill him. Print that in whatever ghastly little rag you represent."

Smiling happily to himself, though realizing that Mr. Casterman would probably scold him fiercely for that overly dramatic statement, Danny hurried into his apartment and closed the door behind him. The air smelled stale, as if nobody had been through the place in a while. His cleaning-lady probably hadn't come since she knew he'd been away and there was nobody to clean up after, but he'd assumed she'd come in and air the place anyway.

Danny went through the apartment opening windows, shaking curtains, and shuffling objects around on tabletops to get rid of the stale feeling, then poured himself a glass of his most expensive red wine and settled down in front of his computer to do some research.

With his wine on the right and his handheld on the left, he started following up all the questions he'd jotted down since leaving his hotel room; unfortunately, he lacked the search-engine skills, not to mention the legal and illegally hacked access to confidential data, that Detective Spevik possessed, and so his research was frustrated more often than not by a complete dearth of information that would be of any use to him.

The information on Drayton Marshall III was little more than he'd already gleaned from the news broadcasts. Absolutely nothing about his rather baroque sexual tastes had ever appeared in print, not even a gossipy blind item in a giveaway paper. The latest available photograph of Marshall's son was ten years old, and showed only a peculiarly nondescript boy with his father's medium hair and his mother's squinty eyes. Mrs. Marshall, who was rather more frequently photographed, was a typical Society matron with a death's-head grin and turkey-neck, whom Danny knew by sight from the Social circuit. Nothing he was able to find out put him any farther ahead in his understanding of Drayton Marshall's life, nor who would likely want him dead.

Giving up on Marshall and pouring himself another glass of wine, Danny settled down to find out if he could discover anything about Aunt Tittie's male identity. But nowhere was any connection made. With the proper access, Danny might have been able to track down the title or the liquor license on the Parrot Pub, but such access is not readily available to the average citizen.

The third glass of wine accompanied Danny through a lengthy email to Rodney Casterman detailing all of the questions he'd thought of. He was fairly sure that the investigators working on his case would have already thought of most, if not all of those questions, as well as a good many more, but Danny felt that he needed to do something before he gave up on his thwarted investigation.

By the fourth glass of wine, Danny was feeling fairly sorry for himself, a mood frequently brought on by a surfeit of frustration and the drier reds, and so he decided to get good and drunk, decanting two more very expensive bottles into a sangria pitcher to breathe while he finished off the large decanter he'd already started.

Shedding his clothes on the way, he carried the wine and two glasses (in case he broke one) back to his bedroom, opened the mirrored closet doors to reveal the enormous television that took up the entire space, put on a variety of porn in the DVD-changer, and crawled under the covers to have a nice long binge of self-pity and -abuse.

*****

"So, what exactly are you proposing?" Detective Varajian asked the young private investigator who'd invited him and his partner to lunch at the noisy local cop-filled diner.

"A pooling of resources, of course," R.J. Casterman, Jr., shrugged in a graceful palms-up gesture that showed off his long elegant hands. He was a strangely beautiful man, with his father's aquiline profile, wild auburn hair, and dramatically elongated figure, but his mother's strong pointed chin, wide voluptuous smile, and slanted amber eyes...his resemblance to a young wolf was startling, especially since he elected to leave his eyebrows unplucked so they met in the middle and crept down toward his nose; his unusually long canine teeth completed the picture of sly lupine menace.

"We know what we have," Detective Spevik mumbled around a mouthful of hamburger, his small eyes darting distrustfully over the young man across the table, hating him passionately, particularly hating his stainless-steel Rolex watch and his tan goatskin Gucci shoes and his brown superfine Cavalli suit and his dark orange Donna Karan cashmere sweater; Spevik didn't know any of those names, but was uncomfortably aware that the combined cost of the outfit nearly equaled his own annual salary, "But what can you offer us?"

"Let's put it this way," R.J. leaned forward onto the table eagerly, "You have the might of the law behind you, and you have one of the best forensic scientists in the world working for you. But you have limitations, checks on your activities, which do not bind me. You have to justify your budget, while I have access to nearly unlimited funds; you have to turn in full reports that become public record, and to comply with a lot of rules about harassment and brutality, under the scrutiny of your superiors and the press, while I have the freedom to bend those rules in complete anonymity, so long as I stay within the letter of the law. You have other cases on your desks, and only yourselves to rely on; but all I have in the world to do is work on this one case, and I have five investigators to do my footwork and three librarians to do my research. I have a lot to offer you."

"But why do you need us if you have all the money and freedom we don't?" Spevik wondered.

"Because you have an authority that I do not possess, witnesses are likely to spill information to a cop that they would hide from a PI. You also have access to information that I do not possess. Now, you have to disclose everything you find to the Defense, that's the law; but you don't have to do it gladly, or in as timely a manner as my father might wish. You don't have to devote as much attention to this case as Mr. Vandervere might require. What I'm proposing is cooperation instead of contest."

"What happens if you find something that implicates Vandervere?" Varajian smiled at young Casterman, enjoying the charisma and enthusiasm that radiated from him like an inner light.

"Ah, a very wise question, sir," R.J. smiled warmly at the older detective, "I am naturally duty-bound to report all of my findings to my father, who will of course have Attorney-Client Privilege with Mr. Vandervere, so I can't just give you anything non-exculpatory; but as a mere adjunct to my father's case, that Privilege becomes a very gray area: my information belongs to the client and is therefore confidential, but I am not exactly under the Seal of Confession, as it were. Between us, as a gentlemen's agreement, if I do learn something that you might have found out, if you'd only known where to look or whom to ask, I can drop a few five-pound hints over a friendly burger without compromising anybody's position."

"But what guarantee do we have?" Spevik insisted, his suspicious nature picking persistently at the offer, "Everything we find will eventually get to you; like you said, it's the law. But how will we know you've been giving us what you find out? You could keep quiet until the trial and we'd never know."

"Well, gentlemen, I really don't believe that's going to happen," R.J. leaned back against the banquette with a smirk that was somehow friendly and vicious at once, "My father didn't get where he is by not knowing whether or not his clients are guilty, and he is absolutely confident that Vandervere is innocent. However, if I did find evidence of Vandervere's guilt... well, I have a vindictive nature. My Dad believes in this kid; if it turns out that he's managed to pull the wool over Dad's eyes, I'll want revenge. Family honor, you know: nobody makes a fool of a Casterman and gets away with it. Does that comprise a satisfactory guarantee?"

"Honor!" Spevik snorted, "I don't believe in honor."

"Do you believe in trust? I'm going to trust you; you can trust me in return."

"I believe in facts. Give us something we can use."

"Naturally," R.J. pulled a thick sheaf of bound paper out of a Fendi leather messenger-bag that no messenger in the world could possibly afford, "Would you be interested in a complete breakdown of who was and wasn't in the apartment building the night Marshall was murdered? My team has already reviewed all of the security tapes, that's about two hundred and fifty hours of video, and can account for the exact population of the building for nearly a week before, and forty-eight hours after, Marshall's death. Plus a few transcript interviews with anybody in the building who might have had a motive, however dim."

"And what would you like in exchange?" Varajian asked, dumbfounded by such a valuable gift... the video analysis alone saved him a requisition of resources that would be impossible to get approved by a cash-strapped police administration.

"All of your evidence to date, including the complete forensic report, and some face-time with Dr. Griggs. Extra tissue samples, if they exist, the tapes of your interviews with Vandervere, and complete records of all criminal activity in and around that building, and the bar where Vandervere met Marshall for, say, six weeks before the murder?"

"Are you fucking nuts?" Spevik almost shouted, shocked by the sudden feral gleam in the young investigator's eyes, "We can't give you confidential police records!"

"Look," Casterman dropped all pretense at friendliness, "my father can subpoena those records, just as the DA can subpoena this dossier I'm giving you. But that will take weeks, and I don't think you want to wait through all the delaying tactics my father is capable of employing when he chooses. I could very easily mail this document to Kazakhstan instead of the Hall of Justice, 'oops, silly me', and none of us would be any farther forward than we are right now. I'm offering you cooperation in exchange for cooperation. You have nothing to lose."

"Except our badges," Spevik retorted.

"Nonsense!" R.J. resumed his engagingly casual facade, "While I would never suggest anything as filthy as blackmail, I do happen to have a taped conversation between my predecessor in the firm and your chief from her days as a detective, doing exactly what I am proposing you do. She will, I'm sure, applaud rather than censure your efforts in furthering this case. And if she doesn't, you can always gently remind her of her not-so-distant past: I happen to have a copy of that tape right here in my pocket, if you're interested."

"We have work to do," Spevik was so disgusted by this conversation, hurt by the revelation of corruption in his captain's past and sickened by the idea of blackmailing a fellow cop, that he only barely restrained himself from punching the contemptible young man in the mouth. He stood abruptly and started toward the door, "Come on, Varajian."

"I'll catch up with you, Spev, the bill hasn't come yet," Varajian answered smoothly.

"Your partner is a trifle hot-headed," R.J. smiled at the retreating Spevik before returning his attention to Varajian.

"I think you offended his sense of honor; he does believe in honor, but only ours. Lawyers and PIs are automatically dishonorable in his eyes; and I have to say, you are a very slippery young man," Varajian said with a certain note of admiration, "but I like the way you think. I believe we can arrange to have the records you request sent over. But let's keep this as above-board as possible: have your office draft a subpoena, and I'll make sure the records are ready for transport on its arrival, and on their way to you before anybody thinks to stop me. Fair enough?"

"A dream come true," R.J. arched an eyebrow in a manner that looked, to Varajian, like flirtation, "I'm very glad you don't share your partner's rather monochromatic views of right and wrong. Would you like the tape?"

"I'd love it," Varajian replied with a sly smile of his own, "I've been wanting something to hold over Captain Morris's head for years."

"I like the way you think," the young man dropped his voice and bit his lower lip gently; nobody could doubt that he was flirting with Varajian.

"But just so you know," Varajian pulled himself back, almost bodily, from the young man's furtive advances, "If you cross me, I will make it my life's mission to have your license revoked and your father brought under Bar review. Neither of you will be able to cross town without getting pulled over for speeding or suspicion of DUI, and bright lights will be shone into every corner of your lives. I know quite well how to avenge myself on someone 'within the letter of the law,' trust me. And if I find out that you've recorded this conversation for leverage against me when I'm captain, I will wring your pretty head off your skinny neck with my bare hands."

"My, but you really know how to sweet-talk a boy, don't you?" R.J. licked his teeth hungrily.

"I know how to watch my own ass," Varajian smiled sweetly as he stood up and buttoned his jacket, "Thanks for lunch."

"Woof," R.J. whispered to himself, watching Detective Varajian's nicely compact ass as he strutted manfully out of the diner with that peculiarly self-assured gait that all policemen share, "I could seriously fall for that one."

*****

Danny swam up through layers of unconsciousness, worried by the sound of a woman screaming in terror; but when he poked his head out of the covers, he realized it was his own doorbell screaming for his attention at ten-second intervals, eight seconds on and two seconds off. Cursing freely, he stumbled painfully out of the bed, pulled the duvet around himself for warmth, and went shambling down the hall, losing his balance twice, to make the noise stop.

"What in the hell do you want?" he bellowed into the intercom.

"Why, to come in, silly! Isn't that what a doorbell usually indicates?" the voice was deep and gravelly but lilting with a fruity sing-song quality that one ordinarily associates with very old queens.

"Who are you?" Danny wondered, a little less angrily.

"Theo Ermengratz," the responding voice had dropped its fruitiness and sounded a little intimidating.

"Oh!" Danny exclaimed with surprise, which made his head throb, "I'm sorry, please come up."

Danny turned toward the hall closet to get some clothes on, but didn't have time before his visitor was pounding loudly on the door. He wrapped the down-filled duvet more closely around his naked body and clutched the edges together with one hand, reaching out to open the door with the other.

The man standing on the doormat looked a great deal like Marlon Brando circa Last Tango in Paris, but much smoother; he had a large square head with craggy Roman features, and receding iron-grey curls carefully arranged in the Caesar style, but his olive skin was sleek and supple, making it impossible to discern if he was forty or sixty or somewhere in between. His double-breasted buff shantung suit was extremely baggy and draped on him much like a toga, the wide legs of the pants nearly obscuring the beautifully crafted snakeskin shoes, and a flowing scarf of golden damask closed the floppy collar of the sky-blue silk shirt instead of a necktie. His overall mien made Danny think of one of the nellier Roman emperors.

"Well, are you just going to stand there gawking," Theo said in his queeny sing-song voice, one hand in his jacket pocket and the other floating airily at shoulder level, "or are you going to invite me in?"

"Oh, sorry," Danny apologized again, stepping clumsily backward to allow entrance to this strange apparition, "Please do come in. Would you like some coffee?"

"No thank you, dear, I've had mine," Theo Ermengratz swept past him like a ship in full sail, looking Danny up and down as he did so, before stopping to study the living-room with a practiced eye, "But this room is lovely! Who did it?"

"Stan Ogilvie," Danny answered vaguely, following in the wake of the famous decorator as he flitted through the room, trying to figure out if the man was fat or if it was an illusion caused by all that drapery: there was an awful lot of fabric covering an awful lot of body, but the way he moved was not the way a fat man moved, his gait was sturdy and even his airiest gestures carried a threat of power.

"Stan Ogilvie is a contractor, darling," Theo turned and pinned Danny with an interrogative eye and a return to the intimidating voice, "I meant who is your decorator?"

"Oh, I didn't have a decorator," Danny admitted with a touch of embarrassment, "But Stan did the paint and the fixtures and the upholstery."

"So you're telling me you did this yourself? The colors, the arrangement, the actual objects?" the decorator was busy sneering at the carved caryatids on the Victorian desk chair.

"Most of it. Some of the pieces were gifts."

"Please tell me this unspeakable chair was a gift. Yes? Oh, thank God. And now tell me that you aren't terribly attached to it and won't mind if I take it outside and set it on fire?"

"A very good friend gave that to me."

"Was he an oil-rich cowboy who liked to pretend to be an Old West cattle baron?"

"No, a computer programmer. He knew of my love for antiques, but he didn't know what kind. I think it's sweet."

"Hmph. Well, with the exception of your weakness for sentiment in the form of questionable Renaissance Revival desk-chairs, I see a very promising eye at work here," the hand was fluttering again, big and square but rendered effete with glossy nails and a pinkie-ring glittering with small diamonds, indicating the room around them.

Danny continued to follow Mr. Ermengratz as he stalked into the dining room, examining the antique silver on the sideboard as if it were for sale. After nodding with grudging approval at the rather whimsical chandelier of wrought iron and mismatched antique French crystals, the decorator began examining Danny the same way he'd examined the rooms.

"And you're really remarkably beautiful," Theo grasped Danny's chin in a soft-skinned but surprisingly strong hand, "Perfect Italian features and flawless English skin. You know, if your eyes were blue, you'd be hatefully dazzling, but those puppy-eyes have an air of innocence that one cannot but forgive."

"One does one's best," Danny answered, blushing slightly at the arousal he felt at being handled and described so objectively.

"Saucy," Theo slapped him playfully on the cheek and turned toward the kitchen, "Why don't you go take a shower and drink a lot of water, you smell like the bottom of a wine bottle. Expensive wine, but stale dregs all the same. I'll amuse myself in the meantime."

Danny showered as quickly as he could, without once thinking it odd that he was following rather peremptory orders from a perfect stranger. He gulped down half a gallon of water with a fistful of aspirin, brushed his teeth, and practically ran into his dressing room for some clothes. Much to his surprise, he encountered Theo Ermengratz there, riffling through his closets and tossing garments out onto the ottoman in the center of the room.

"You have excellent taste, child," the decorator sang out from the depths of Danny's suit closet, "Ah, here's what we need, the classic navy blazer. I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of choosing an outfit for you."

"I don't mind," Danny admitted, dropping his towel and stepping into the white boxer-briefs that had been laid out for him, then the crisply tailored tan chinos.

"I like you," Theo confided as he buttoned Danny's shell-pink Oxford shirt for him, "Custom-made but machine-washed and un-ironed, very preppy. No, don't tuck it in, you want that basket to make cameo appearances only. You're so wonderfully docile, but you've got a brain and good taste, a perfect combination in an assistant. If you weren't so disturbingly beautiful, I think I would have hired you without Baron de Seguemont's asking me."

"You mean, I really do have a job with you, Mr. Ermengratz?" Danny smiled, "I thought that was just a cover."

"Are you telling me that you're letting me push you around in your own home without knowing that I'm your boss? You're delightful! And call me Poppy, all my friends do," Poppy Ermengratz helped Danny into the blue blazer, "Cuffs out, don't button them, I love that look, The Sloppy Fop. But I'm an honest man, surprising as it may seem... if I can turn a lie into the truth, I will, and I wouldn't say I'd hired an assistant without doing so... if I could help it. Now, what kind of shoes? Ah, here we are, some nice airy huaraches, no socks... my dear, ostrich huaraches? You are an expensive article. I won't be paying you anything near enough to keep you in ostrich huaraches... but I will introduce you to enough horny old millionaires to make up for the shortfall. Do you swing both ways? That would be ideal, so many of my clients are women."

"What?!" Danny flushed angrily, surprised by the man's matter-of-fact crudeness.

"Ah, there's your boundary. I knew I'd find one eventually," Poppy ran his fingers proprietarily through Danny's wet hair, "Don't mind me, I'm just pushing buttons to see what happens. I know all about you, punkin': some of your elderly beaux are my clients, and old queens always kiss and tell."

"I'm not a whore," Danny said, sullenly defensive.

"Potayto-potahto, honey. Oh, my, but you are devastating when you pout! Don't for a moment think I disapprove. If it weren't for rich old men, and one rich old man in particular, I'd still be Theo Popadopoulos, most likely slicing souvlaki with my brothers in the Bronx. But if you're fucking a lot of trolls, it doesn't matter if you do it for loose change or for ostrich huaraches," Poppy dropped the sing-song, took Danny by the shoulders and looked him squarely and commandingly in the eyes, "Celebrate what you are, lovebucket, and don't quibble about the words."

"You were a...kept boy?" Danny asked, taking back possession of his person by turning to the mirror to comb his hair.

"I like the word 'whore' better," Poppy replied, moving off to rummage in the dressing-table drawers, "But yeah, I started hustling when I was eleven... I was an early bloomer. A little Greek godling with just a touch of the peasant for flavor, Ganymede with a big dick and a little feather mustache. Old Toddy Ermengratz of the Fifth Avenue, Newport, and Palm Beach Ermengratzes adopted me when I was seventeen. And left me a rather considerable fortune. He was a hideous little thing, like something a cat's been chewing on, but he was a sweet dear old man."

"The same story as Parker Weintraub," Danny thought aloud, "Adopted by a wealthy older man."

"You know Parker? Of course you do, nobody of your beauty lives long in this town without meeting Parker Weintraub and being invited to decorate his little spa. Nowadays you become domestic partners, I suppose, and before that it was 'palimony,' but in my day adoption was the usual arrangement. It's a recognized paradigm of homo history, the old man with money and the young man with beauty. And if they're good at what they do, the young men with beauty turn into old men with money. Like me, like Parker... it has a lovely symmetry, don't you think?"

"But I already have money of my own," Danny defended himself; he liked to think of himself as a gold-digger, but he didn't like for other people to think of him as such.

"Not nearly enough," Theo shrugged, taking a seat at the vanity table and sniffing at the bottles of cologne, "Your trust fund couldn't possibly have paid for all the clothes in this room... WASP trusts are to make you independent, not wealthy. But it does keep you in a state of want, rather than need. I suspect that's why you haven't settled down into a nice kept-boy position. You don't need to be taken care of, you just like it."

"I'd rather be in love," Danny said, more to himself than to Poppy.

"Love is very nice, but if I had to choose between love and money, I'm pretty sure I'd take the money. But maybe that's just because I've never been in love and don't know what I'd be giving up. Are you quite ready?"

"I need to take my vitamins, and I can't function much longer without coffee," Danny admitted.

"Well, then, let us retire to the kitchen, where I can nose through your cupboards and insult you some more."

While Danny put on a half-pot, assembled his bowlful of capsules and tablets, and mixed his fruit-and-supplement smoothie, Poppy rummaged around without restraint, critiquing the china, admiring the appliances, and keeping up a running commentary on the history and nobility of amateur prostitution.

“My dear, is all that really necessary?" Poppy demanded, swirling a finger through the bowl of pills, "Or are you just a hypochondriac?"

"I guess I like to feel like I'm keeping myself in good condition," Danny answered, "And this is easier and more pleasant than eating healthy all day."

"Good point, I might just try that philosophy sometime," Poppy replied thoughtfully, "But I always feel such an old man when I have to take pills. Now, are you quite up and running? I need to take you by the office first, and I'm putting you immediately to work with one of my clients. I want you to sneer politely at her current furnishings in a purebred WASP manner that will fill her with shame, and dazzle her with your beauty at the same time, so she doesn't notice the numbers at the bottoms of the invoices I need her to sign. She's got more money than God, but she hasn't got anything better to do with her time and energy than quibble about pennies."

Danny followed obediently as Poppy led him downstairs, past the morning-shift security goon (who accorded Poppy a respectful, even fearful nod) to the flamboyantly blue vintage T-Bird convertible that was parked arrogantly across Danny's driveway. Poppy drove at a terrifying breakneck pace, chattering all the time (now on the topic of rich women who can't tell the difference between bargain-hunting and chiseling) and fiddling with the stereo while casually flipping the bird at anyone who dared chastise him with blaring horn or screaming voice.

Eventually the car pulled up at a blank wall of corrugated iron that rolled back to reveal a hidden driveway between two derelict-looking warehouses.

"That's my rental warehouse," Poppy said, indicating the warehouse on the right while unlocking a heavily barred door to the warehous on the left, "One of the services I provide is temporary fabulousness for the transient rich. I see it as a grand way to put my acquisitive nature to work, I've been buying furniture and decorations since God-knows-when, and with this service I can use it without selling it. But here is where the real work happens."

Poppy led Danny into what looked like a combination furniture showroom and airplane hangar: it was a vast open space with spots of light pouring down from a high black ceiling onto precious little tableaux of gorgeous antique furniture.

"And this is my 'testing kitchen,' where I try out different combinations and effects. I have a sadly deficient imagination when it comes to balance and scale, so I like to arrange things before I deliver them to a client. And over here," Poppy led the way through a sliding hangar door to a bright and airy loft space, with raw cinderblock walls and a glass greenhouse ceiling; on the right was a kitchen underneath an exercise loft, on the right was a glass-brick-walled bathroom and dressing room with a bedroom above it, and in the center was a living room/office; the furniture, in strange contrast to everything else about this man that Danny had seen so far, was stark and modern and masculine, chrome and glass and black leather furniture, dazzling electronics, stainless steel and black granite fixtures, "This is where I live."

"Wow," was all Danny could think of to say. Though he preferred the fussier antiquity of the 'testing kitchen' styles, he was quite impressed by the sense of balance and light, but even more impressed by the intimacy and comfort elicited in this too-airy space with such hard materials. For all its industrial modernity, it was strangely inviting.

"Through that door is the shopfront and offices, but we're not going in there today," Poppy settled himself at a glass-and-chrome desk and shuffled some papers on the black leather blotter, "I can't let the fussy old queens get a look at you and then leave them alone for the rest of the day. No work would get done. Do you have a driver's license and Social Security card? How about a passport? I'll copy these for your personnel file, and you fill out that W4 form and sign that contract and confidentiality agreement, and you'll be an honest-to-God wage-earning employee."

"That's very exciting," Danny replied without much enthusiasm, puzzling out the language of the W4 form.

"Would you like some more coffee?" Poppy fluttered off into the kitchen area and started banging around among the appliances.

"Yes, please," Danny sat down on the cube sofa to read carefully through the very simple contract that outlined his schedule, salary, and responsibilities, all of which sounded fairly straightforward and simple.

"I only have espresso," Poppy brought two demitasses and sat down next to Danny on the sofa, "I've never had the patience for brewing coffee, it has to be practically on tap."

"I love espresso," Danny replied, taking the cup and sipping gratefully.

"Of course you do, darling," Poppy cooed, massaging Danny's knee in a bedroom-comedy manner, "I'm sure you like everything anybody gives you."

"Well, I don't like cheap gin," Danny replied, casting about in his mind for something he really didn't like... Poppy had read him well, there was very little in the world he didn't like, which made him both adaptable and popular.

"Does anybody? Cheap booze is for people who need it, not those who like it."

"Is this where I'll be working?" Danny asked, indicating the vast space with its lofts and glass, "Or in the front?"

"Ah, of course, back to business," Poppy squeezed his leg again, a little farther up this time, "I think you'll work wherever I am. I'll bring in a desk here for you, and one in my office out front. Do you have a laptop? Well, I'll get you one, a handheld isn't quite enough, though that is a handy little gadget you have there. May I see it?"

Danny handed over his handheld computer and Poppy admired it lavishly, then went on to chatter aimlessly for a few minutes about how hopeless he was with technology.

"It's very easy to use. The computer programmer who gave me that desk chair programmed most of the applications in there. I found it very easy to learn."

"Yes, well, you're young," another grope on the leg, close enough to the crotch to brush Danny's fly, "your mind is still flexible."

"Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?" Danny asked coyly, looking down at Poppy's hand practically in his lap.

"Oh, heavens no, child," Poppy gave Danny's thigh a fatherly pat, closer to the knee, "I would never try to seduce you. For you, I would just pounce, like a hungry tiger. But don't worry your pretty little head, you're totally not my type. I prefer little roughnecks, young and stupid with callused hands. Besides, I never fuck my employees. But if I ever fire you... whoa, Nellie! Hang on to your hat!"

Danny laughed with delight, and the tension passed; he was starting to get used to the strangeness of Poppy's conversation, his alternations between intensity and silliness. And knowing that their relationship would not be sexual allowed Danny to relax and enjoy the flirtatiousness without plotting the next appropriate response, as he normally did with someone in whom he was interested.

After finishing their paperwork and coffee, Poppy led Danny back through the warehouse and into the Thunderbird, and they were soon rocketing off toward Presidio Heights, where Poppy's newest client lived. The car came to a screeching halt in front of a large five-story house on a corner, built in the 20s but with huge and uncomfortable-looking picture windows on the top stories that had obviously been added sometime later.

"I particularly want to convince this broad to replace those sheer horrors with proper paned installations," Poppy advised as he went up the steep front stairs like a springbok, "So sneer like hell at the windows."

"I won't go anywhere near those windows," Danny panted, "They'll give me vertigo."

"Even better...and if you can turn a delicate shade of green, I'll give you a raise. Oh, and don't forget her heirlooms... they're unspeakably tack-o-rama, suggest putting them in the pool-house of her weekend place."

Mrs. Derrick Stempler ("please, call me Marjorie") was so typical of her class, age, and location--complete with rictus grin, flat yellowy-brown hair, and scrawny neck, David Yurman jewelry and Anne Klein loungewear--that Danny was sure he'd never remember having met her; he found a small kidney-shaped mole on her neck to memorize so that he would recognize her if he met her again socially, and hoped that she wouldn't have it removed.

It wasn't remotely difficult to sneer at the furnishings already in place as Danny followed Poppy and wrote down his ideas ("I see chintz here, with pickled pine... Here there must be a hooded porter chair... you'll want cherry for the dining-room table but ebony for the chairs"), as the furniture was extremely ugly, Edwardian pretending to be Georgian and only succeeding in being frumpy.

Neither was it difficult to turn white (though he couldn't manage green) and stagger shakily away from the windows: the view was spectacular, but the drop was terrifying; the entertaining spaces were on the top floor of a very tall house perched atop a very steep hill, and there was a hundred-foot drop under the living-room windows.

And Mrs. (Marjorie) Stempler was absolutely fascinated by Danny, watching him instead of Poppy as they wandered through the really beautifully proportioned house, hung on his every word (few though they were), and very nearly apologized for the furniture and windows when she saw his polite but unmistakeable reactions to them.

All of which worked exactly as Poppy had wished: not only had Marjorie agreed to replace the huge plate glass sheets with costly custom-made eighteen-paned windows, she also agreed to little French balconies to mitigate the sheer drop; she agreed wholeheartedly to ship her grandmother's treasured furniture off to the retreat in Bohemian Grove, and didn't even look at the contracts and invoices she was signing.

"You were brilliant," Poppy crowed when they returned to the car, planting a big sloppy kiss on Danny's mouth, "She was putty, absolute putty! A hundred thousand dollars of construction before we even got to the furniture, on your delicate complexion alone!"

"Well," Danny temporized, "Your suggestion that other guests would feel the same way is what convinced her. Lots of people get vertigo from windows like those."

"Funny thing is, she probably bought the house thinking to impress people with those vertiginous views, and paid a premium for them, too. This calls for a celebratory lunch. Where do you like having celebratory lunches?"

"The Palm Court," Danny answered without thinking, "at the Palace Hotel."

"You're going to break me, you are," Poppy laughed, "But then you also just made me an extra thousand or two in commissions and fees for those balconies and windows, so I guess it evens out."

Once they'd arrived at the historic hotel, Poppy turned on his fruity demeanor full-blast, flirting outrageously with the male staff and camping loudly at the females; nevertheless, he commanded and was accorded a good table, in a corner with privacy and a good view of the room, and the service was deferential to the point of servility: it was clear that Poppy was known and respected in this place.

"I bring so many of my old-lady clients here," Poppy said when Danny remarked on this, "It's such a wonderfully old-lady room. I'm surprised you like it, young buck that you are; but then again I'm not really surprised... I've come to see in such a short time that you're a hopeless romantic. And speaking of Romance, tell me all about you and Marquesa Chillard-Chills."

"There's not much to say," Danny instantly threw his guard up at the mocking name applied to his beloved.

"Is it as big as I've heard?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Danny said frostily.

"Oh, come, don't be coy with me," Poppy slapped Danny's hand playfully, "I'm just being crude, as is my wont. My point is, do you love him?"

"Yes," Danny answered truthfully before he could stop himself, then thought better of it, "I mean, I thought I did. I don't suppose I really did. Just infatuated."

"As big as that, eh? As you may have guessed, I'm not in Marquesa's fan club. She's such an ice-queen, she never lets her hair down... she never lets herself have feelings, as far as I've seen. I find that very off-putting."

"I find it very attractive," Danny defended, "An air of mystery, a sense of reserve and elegance."

"Valerien, on the other hand, is a perfect pet. I've done both their apartments, but I feel like a mother toward little Val, and his happiness is important to me. That's why I'm asking you about how you feel about Marquesa... I want to know what chance Val has with you before I let him fall in love with you."

"Could you stop him?" Danny wondered, smiling at the very maternal tone Poppy had adopted the moment he'd turned the subject to Valerien.

"No, but I could stop you, I think. Threats of bodily harm if nothing else. I'd go for the face, too, if you hurt him... that's how I feel about Valerien."

"And do you know how Valerien feels about me?"

"He's fascinated by you, and he is attached to you. That's enough to be getting on with, don't you think? What are your feelings?" Poppy toyed with a butter-fork in a stagily threatening manner.

"I'd say it was mutual... fascinated attachment," Danny replied after giving the question a few moments' honest thought, "I think I could love him, but I don't know for sure. I would certainly never hurt him, regardless of your threats."

"Threats? Moi?" Poppy camped, putting down the butter-knife and picking up a menu, "I wouldn't hurt a fly. Except maybe yours. The very idea! Now tell, how big is Marquesa, really? Is it the true foot-long?"

"As near as makes no difference, I expect," Danny replied, laughing and blushing a little, "But I didn't have a ruler with me."

"And you can still walk after a whole weekend of that? You're made of stern stuff. So, shall we be utterly sinful and have the fondue appetizer? Then we can work out at my place before I start getting you settled in the office."

"Sounds perfectly divine."

The luncheon passed happily, Poppy ate voraciously without ever interrupting his conversation, which revolved mostly around Valerien's many charms and endearing qualities, which included loyalty, kindness, generosity, and an innocence that only the rarest of infants would be able to equal. He kept Danny laughing the entire time, and insisted on ordering dessert, "We've already sinned unforgiveably, we might as well make a day of it... to sin only partially is like cheating on your lover with an ugly person... no point to it whatsoever."

After lunch, they drove back to Poppy's apartment between the office and warehouses, where they changed into workout gear and performed a quite grueling regimen on the equipment above Poppy's kitchen. Undressed, Poppy was incredibly impressive: though thick around the middle and barrel-chested, which lent to the illusion of obesity when he was dressed, he was solidly packed with huge muscles that stopped just short of body-builder bulk. The fact that he was hung like a bull seemed expected with such a physique.

And though Poppy flirted and even groped a little, it was the kind of flirtatious groping that straight athletes indulge in the lockerrooms after a game: his attitude toward Danny was distinctly nonsexual, which Danny found very refreshing and fun.

Dressed and fresh, Danny was led into the office, where he was introduced to Poppy's staff, a quintet of very thin middle-aged men with high fluting voices, prissy clothing, and hair that had been altered in some way or another, either dyed or completely replaced by fairly obvious toupees. They all goggled at Danny comically, giggled when he spoke to them, and behaved like a gaggle of undersexed geese introduced to a young new gander.

Poppy had ordered a beautiful and delicate Queen Anne writing desk installed in his own office behind the larger front office, which was decorated in the florid cluttered English Country House style that he professionally espoused, with a heavily carved walnut desk and battered biscuit-tufted leather chairs and sofa, its walls lined with books and its ceiling painted with a fifteenth-century map of the "known" world; Danny's desk in the Spartan loft apartment, however, was a gorgeous piece of Louis XV marquetry, liberally encrusted with ormolu and cameo mounts, which glittered in the midst of all that black leather and chrome like a drag queen at the Eagle.

The young men who brought these things from the warehouse had also been dispatched to the nearest electronics store to procure a laptop computer, a top-of-the-line jewel that Danny loved to just hold, it was so pretty. Danny was instructed by one of "The Boys" (all, Danny later found out, ex-lovers of Poppy's) how to use the various programs; he was instructed by some of "The Girls" (all of whom had worked for Poppy since he opened his interior design business twenty-five years before and were deadly loyal to him) on how to access the building and what verbal formulae to use when answering the phone.

The whole thing was very bewildering to Danny, who'd never held a job in his life and found the whole thing very adventuresome. He took lots of notes in the leatherbound notebook Poppy had bought him, made a point of remembering everybody's names, and wore himself to a nub ingratiating himself to everyone.

When five o'clock rolled around, the Girls started packing up, gossiping about their plans for the evening ahead, and watering plants. Poppy had a huge album of fabric swatches open in front of him on his desk, grumbling about trying to make plaid and French Provincial come together peacefully. Danny felt at rather a loose end suddenly, not knowing when he was expected to leave, whether or not Poppy expected him to make his way home alone or planned to drive him back.

"Oh, Valerien wanted to give you a ride home," Poppy said when Danny asked him what time he was expected to clock out, "though in general I'd expect you to stay until six, assuming you start at nine and take an hour for lunch. But we can work that out as we go, some days I'll need you longer, some days I'll let you go early. But Val told me he'd be here at five, and it's five, so I suspect he's out on the curb waiting for you. See you in the morning."

Leaving the office by the front door, his notebook and laptop tucked under his arm, Danny saw Valerien's chocolate-and-gold Rolls Royce parked right in front. As soon as the office door closed behind him, the chauffeur stepped out and opened the car door, revealing Valerien lounging back against the camel upholstery in a mauve silk three-piece suit and a white straw hat.

"So, working-boy, how did your first day go?" Valerien asked after planting a warm kiss on Danny's mouth.

"It was kind of confusing, but satisfying," Danny admitted, "Thank you for arranging this job for me."

"Poppy should thank me, I think you'll be a brilliant assistant for him. Where would you like to have dinner? Though I should warn you I just flew in from Brazil this afternoon, so I'd rather not deal with anything elaborate."

"Why don't we stay in, then?" Danny asked, the first sultry note of seduction surfacing in his voice... he had decided at lunchtime that a relationship with Valerien was the best route to pursue, and he intended to pursue Valerien hotly.

"That's good. I've been away for several days; my chef gets rusty if I don't eat at home at least three nights a week. Do you need anything from your place first?"

"Would an overnight bag be presumptuous?" Danny purred, his hand on Valerien's thigh.

"No, not presumptuous at all," Valerien's violet eyes glowed in the dim cab of the limousine as he moved closer to Danny, "Though I'd rather send Henri for some things rather than wait while you pack."

"That suits me right down to the ground," Danny pushed Valerien down onto the seat and kissed him passionately, while Valerien reached out and pressed the button that caused the enameled coat-of-arms to rise up and screen them from the chauffeur.

*****

20 Pages ~ 12,578 Words

Chapter 9, Part 3

2007-09-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

Danny swam up through layers of unconsciousness, worried by the sound of a woman screaming in terror; but when he poked his head out of the covers, he realized it was his own doorbell screaming for his attention at ten-second intervals, eight seconds on and two seconds off. Cursing freely, he stumbled painfully out of the bed, pulled the duvet around himself for warmth, and went shambling down the hall, losing his balance twice, to make the noise stop.

"What in the hell do you want?" he bellowed into the intercom.

"Why, to come in, silly! Isn't that what a doorbell usually indicates?" the voice was deep and gravelly but lilting with a fruity sing-song quality that one ordinarily associates with very old queens.

"Who are you?" Danny wondered, a little less angrily.

"Theo Ermengratz," the responding voice had dropped its fruitiness and sounded a little intimidating.

"Oh!" Danny exclaimed with surprise, which made his head throb, "I'm sorry, please come up."

Danny turned toward the hall closet to get some clothes on, but didn't have time before his visitor was pounding loudly on the door. He wrapped the down-filled duvet more closely around his naked body and clutched the edges together with one hand, reaching out to open the door with the other.

The man standing on the doormat looked a great deal like Marlon Brando circa Last Tango in Paris, but much smoother; he had a large square head with craggy Roman features, and receding iron-grey curls carefully arranged in the Caesar style, but his olive skin was sleek and supple, making it impossible to discern if he was forty or sixty or somewhere in between. His double-breasted buff shantung suit was extremely baggy and draped on him much like a toga, the wide legs of the pants nearly obscuring the beautifully crafted snakeskin shoes, and a flowing scarf of golden damask closed the floppy collar of the sky-blue silk shirt instead of a necktie. His overall mien made Danny think of one of the nellier Roman emperors.

"Well, are you just going to stand there gawking," Theo said in his queeny sing-song voice, one hand in his jacket pocket and the other floating airily at shoulder level, "or are you going to invite me in?"

"Oh, sorry," Danny apologized again, stepping clumsily backward to allow entrance to this strange apparition, "Please do come in. Would you like some coffee?"

"No thank you, dear, I've had mine," Theo Ermengratz swept past him like a ship in full sail, looking Danny up and down as he did so, before stopping to study the living-room with a practiced eye, "But this room is lovely! Who did it?"

"Stan Ogilvie," Danny answered vaguely, following in the wake of the famous decorator as he flitted through the room, trying to figure out if the man was fat or if it was an illusion caused by all that drapery: there was an awful lot of fabric covering an awful lot of body, but the way he moved was not the way a fat man moved, his gait was sturdy and even his airiest gestures carried a threat of power.

"Stan Ogilvie is a contractor, darling," Theo turned and pinned Danny with an interrogative eye and a return to the intimidating voice, "I meant who is your decorator?"

"Oh, I didn't have a decorator," Danny admitted with a touch of embarrassment, "But Stan did the paint and the fixtures and the upholstery."

"So you're telling me you did this yourself? The colors, the arrangement, the actual objects?" the decorator was busy sneering at the carved caryatids on the Victorian desk chair.

"Most of it. Some of the pieces were gifts."

"Please tell me this unspeakable chair was a gift. Yes? Oh, thank God. And now tell me that you aren't terribly attached to it and won't mind if I take it outside and set it on fire?"

"A very good friend gave that to me."

"Was he an oil-rich cowboy who liked to pretend to be an Old West cattle baron?"

"No, a computer programmer. He knew of my love for antiques, but he didn't know what kind. I think it's sweet."

"Hmph. Well, with the exception of your weakness for sentiment in the form of questionable Renaissance Revival desk-chairs, I see a very promising eye at work here," the hand was fluttering again, big and square but rendered effete with glossy nails and a pinkie-ring glittering with small diamonds, indicating the room around them.

Danny continued to follow Mr. Ermengratz as he stalked into the dining room, examining the antique silver on the sideboard as if it were for sale. After nodding with grudging approval at the rather whimsical chandelier of wrought iron and mismatched antique French crystals, the decorator began examining Danny the same way he'd examined the rooms.

"And you're really remarkably beautiful," Theo grasped Danny's chin in a soft-skinned but surprisingly strong hand, "Perfect Italian features and flawless English skin. You know, if your eyes were blue, you'd be hatefully dazzling, but those puppy-eyes have an air of innocence that one cannot but forgive."

"One does one's best," Danny answered, blushing slightly at the arousal he felt at being handled and described so objectively.

"Saucy," Theo slapped him playfully on the cheek and turned toward the kitchen, "Why don't you go take a shower and drink a lot of water, you smell like the bottom of a wine bottle. Expensive wine, but stale dregs all the same. I'll amuse myself in the meantime."

Danny showered as quickly as he could, without once thinking it odd that he was following rather peremptory orders from a perfect stranger. He gulped down half a gallon of water with a fistful of aspirin, brushed his teeth, and practically ran into his dressing room for some clothes. Much to his surprise, he encountered Theo Ermengratz there, riffling through his closets and tossing garments out onto the ottoman in the center of the room.

"You have excellent taste, child," the decorator sang out from the depths of Danny's suit closet, "Ah, here's what we need, the classic navy blazer. I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of choosing an outfit for you."

"I don't mind," Danny admitted, dropping his towel and stepping into the white boxer-briefs that had been laid out for him, then the crisply tailored tan chinos.

"I like you," Theo confided as he buttoned Danny's shell-pink Oxford shirt for him, "Custom-made but machine-washed and un-ironed, very preppy. No, don't tuck it in, you want that basket to make cameo appearances only. You're so wonderfully docile, but you've got a brain and good taste, a perfect combination in an assistant. If you weren't so disturbingly beautiful, I think I would have hired you without Baron de Seguemont's asking me."

"You mean, I really do have a job with you, Mr. Ermengratz?" Danny smiled, "I thought that was just a cover."

"Are you telling me that you're letting me push you around in your own home without knowing that I'm your boss? You're delightful! And call me Poppy, all my friends do," Poppy Ermengratz helped Danny into the blue blazer, "Cuffs out, don't button them, I love that look, The Sloppy Fop. But I'm an honest man, surprising as it may seem... if I can turn a lie into the truth, I will, and I wouldn't say I'd hired an assistant without doing so... if I could help it. Now, what kind of shoes? Ah, here we are, some nice airy huaraches, no socks... my dear, ostrich huaraches? You are an expensive article. I won't be paying you anything near enough to keep you in ostrich huaraches... but I will introduce you to enough horny old millionaires to make up for the shortfall. Do you swing both ways? That would be ideal, so many of my clients are women."

"What?!" Danny flushed angrily, surprised by the man's matter-of-fact crudeness.

"Ah, there's your boundary. I knew I'd find one eventually," Poppy ran his fingers proprietarily through Danny's wet hair, "Don't mind me, I'm just pushing buttons to see what happens. I know all about you, punkin': some of your elderly beaux are my clients, and old queens always kiss and tell."

"I'm not a whore," Danny said, sullenly defensive.

"Potayto-potahto, honey. Oh, my, but you are devastating when you pout! Don't for a moment think I disapprove. If it weren't for rich old men, and one rich old man in particular, I'd still be Theo Popadopoulos, most likely slicing souvlaki with my brothers in the Bronx. But if you're fucking a lot of trolls, it doesn't matter if you do it for loose change or for ostrich huaraches," Poppy dropped the sing-song, took Danny by the shoulders and looked him squarely and commandingly in the eyes, "Celebrate what you are, my love, and don't quibble about the words."

"You were a...kept boy?" Danny asked, taking back possession of his person by turning to the mirror to comb his hair.

"I like the word 'whore' better," Poppy replied, moving off to rummage in the dressing-table drawers, "But yeah, I started hustling when I was eleven... I was an early bloomer. A little Greek godling with just a touch of the peasant for flavor, Ganymede with a big dick and a little feather mustache. Old Toddy Ermengratz of the Fifth Avenue, Newport, and Palm Beach Ermengratzes adopted me when I was seventeen. And left me a rather considerable fortune. He was a hideous little thing, like something a cat's been chewing on, but he was a sweet dear old man."

"The same story as Parker Weintraub," Danny thought aloud, "Adopted by a wealthy older man."

"You know Parker? Of course you do, nobody of your beauty lives long in this town without meeting Parker Weintraub and being invited to decorate his little spa. Nowadays you become domestic partners, I suppose, and before that it was 'palimony,' but in my day adoption was the usual arrangement. It's a recognized paradigm of homo history, the old man with money and the young man with beauty. And if they're good at what they do, the young men with beauty turn into old men with money. Like me, like Parker... it has a lovely symmetry, don't you think?"

"But I already have money of my own," Danny defended himself; he liked to think of himself as a gold-digger, but he didn't like for other people to think of him as such.

"Not nearly enough," Theo shrugged, taking a seat at the vanity table and sniffing at the bottles of cologne, "Your trust fund couldn't possibly have paid for all the clothes in this room... WASP trusts are to make you independent, not wealthy. But it does keep you in a state of want, rather than need. I suspect that's why you haven't settled down into a nice kept-boy position. You don't need to be taken care of, you just like it."

"I'd rather be in love," Danny said, more to himself than to Poppy.

"Love is very nice, but if I had to choose between love and money, I'm pretty sure I'd take the money. But maybe that's just because I've never been in love and don't know what I'd be giving up. Are you quite ready?"

"I need to take my vitamins, and I can't function much longer without coffee," Danny admitted.

"Well, then, let us retire to the kitchen, where I can nose through your cupboards and insult you some more."

While Danny put on a half-pot, assembled his bowlful of capsules and tablets, and mixed his fruit-and-supplement smoothie, Poppy rummaged around without restraint, critiquing the china, admiring the appliances, and keeping up a running commentary on the history and nobility of amateur prostitution.

“My dear, is all that really necessary?" Poppy demanded, swirling a finger through the bowl of pills, "Or are you just a hypochondriac?"

"I guess I like to feel like I'm keeping myself in good condition," Danny answered, "And this is easier and more pleasant than eating healthy all day."

"Good point, I might just try that philosophy sometime," Poppy replied thoughtfully, "But I always feel such an old man when I have to take pills. Now, are you quite up and running? I need to take you by the office first, and I'm putting you immediately to work with one of my clients. I want you to sneer politely at her current furnishings in a purebred WASP manner that will fill her with shame, and dazzle her with your beauty at the same time, so she doesn't notice the numbers at the bottoms of the invoices I need her to sign. She's got more money than God, but she hasn't got anything better to do with her time and energy than quibble about pennies."

Danny followed obediently as Poppy led him downstairs, past the morning-shift security goon to the flamboyantly blue vintage T-Bird convertible that was parked arrogantly across Danny's driveway. Poppy drove at a terrifying breakneck pace, chattering all the time (now on the topic of rich women who can't tell the difference between bargain-hunting and chiseling) and fiddling with the stereo while casually flipping the bird at anyone who dared chastise him with blaring horn or screaming voice.

Eventually the car pulled up at a blank wall of corrugated iron that rolled back to reveal a hidden driveway between two derelict-looking warehouses.

"That's my rental warehouse," Poppy said, indicating the warehouse on the right while unlocking a heavily barred door to the warehous on the left, "One of the services I provide is temporary fabulousness for the transient rich. I see it as a grand way to put my acquisitive nature to work, I've been buying furniture and decorations since God-knows-when, and with this service I can use it without selling it. Here we are."

Poppy led Danny into what looked like a combination furniture showroom and airplane hangar: it was a vast open space with spots of light pouring down from a high black ceiling onto precious little tableaux of gorgeous antique furniture.

"And this is my 'testing kitchen,' where I try out different combinations and effects. I have a sadly deficient imagination when it comes to balance and scale, so I like to arrange things before I deliver them to a client. And over here," Poppy led the way through a sliding hangar door to a bright and airy loft space, with raw cinderblock walls and a glass greenhouse ceiling; on the right was a kitchen underneath an exercise loft, on the right was a glass-brick-walled bathroom and dressing room with a bedroom above it, and in the center was a living room/office; the furniture, in strange contrast to everything else about this man that Danny had seen so far, was stark and modern and masculine, chrome and glass and black leather furniture, dazzling electronics, stainless steel and black granite fixtures, "This is where I live."

"Wow," was all Danny could think of to say. Though he preferred the fussier antiquity of the 'testing kitchen' styles, he was quite impressed by the sense of balance and light, but even more impressed by the intimacy and comfort elicited in this too-airy space with such hard materials. For all its industrial modernity, it was strangely inviting.

"Through there is the shopfront and offices, but we're not going in there today," Poppy settled himself at a glass-and-chrome desk and shuffled some papers on the black leather blotter, "I can't let the fussy old queens get a look at you and then leave them alone for the rest of the day. No work would get done. Do you have a driver's license and Social Security card? How about a passport? I'll copy these for your personnel file, and you fill out that W4 form and sign that contract and confidentiality agreement, and you'll be an honest-to-God wage-earning employee."

"That's very exciting," Danny replied without much enthusiasm, puzzling out the language of the W4 form.

"Would you like some more coffee?" Poppy fluttered off into the kitchen area and started banging around among the appliances.

"Yes, please," Danny sat down on the cube sofa to read carefully through the very simple contract that outlined his schedule, salary, and responsibilities, all of which sounded fairly straightforward and simple.

"I only have espresso," Poppy brought two demitasses and sat down next to Danny on the sofa, "I've never had the patience for brewing coffee, it has to be practically on tap."

"I love espresso," Danny replied, taking the cup and sipping gratefully.

"Of course you do, darling," Poppy cooed, massaging Danny's knee in a bedroom-comedy manner, "I'm sure you like everything anybody gives you."

"Well, I don't like cheap gin," Danny replied, casting about in his mind for something he really didn't like... Poppy had read him well, there was very little in the world he didn't like, which made him both adaptable and popular.

"Does anybody? Cheap booze is for people who need it, not those who like it."

"Is this where I'll be working?" Danny asked, indicating the vast space with its lofts and glass, "Or in the front?"

"Ah, of course, back to business," Poppy squeezed his leg again, a little farther up this time, "I think you'll work wherever I am. I'll bring in a desk here for you, and one in my office out front. Do you have a laptop? Well, I'll get you one, a handheld isn't quite enough, though that is a handy little gadget you have there. May I see it?"

Danny handed over his handheld computer and Poppy admired it lavishly, then went on to chatter aimlessly for a few minutes about how hopeless he was with technology.

"It's very easy to use. The computer programmer who gave me that desk chair programmed most of the applications in there. I found it very easy to learn."

"Yes, well, you're young," another grope on the leg, close enough to the crotch to brush Danny's fly, "your mind is still flexible."

"Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?" Danny asked coyly, looking down at Poppy's hand practically in his lap.

"Oh, heavens no, child," Poppy gave Danny's thigh a fatherly pat, closer to the knee, "I would never try to seduce you. For you, I would just pounce, like a hungry tiger. But don't worry your pretty little head, I never fuck my employees. But if I ever fire you... whoa, Nellie! Hang on to your hat!"

Danny laughed with delight, and the tension passed; he was starting to get used to the strangeness of Poppy's conversation, his alternations between intensity and silliness. And knowing that their relationship would not be sexual allowed Danny to relax and enjoy the flirtatiousness without plotting the next appropriate response, as he normally did with someone in whom he was interested.

After finishing their paperwork and coffee, Poppy led Danny back through the warehouse and into the Thunderbird, and they were soon rocketing off toward Presidio Heights, where Poppy's newest client lived. The car came to a screeching halt in front of a very tall house on a corner, built in the 20s but with huge and uncomfortable-looking picture windows on the top stories that had obviously been added sometime later.

"I particularly want to convince this broad to replace those sheer horrors with proper paned installations," Poppy advised as he went up the steep front stairs like a springbok, "So sneer like hell at the windows."

"I won't go anywhere near those windows," Danny panted, "They'll give me vertigo."

"Even better...and if you can turn a delicate shade of green, I'll give you a raise. Oh, and don't forget her heirlooms... they're unspeakably tack-o-rama, suggest putting them in the pool-house of her weekend place."

Mrs. Derrick Stempler ("please, call me Marjorie") was so typical of her class, age, and social set--complete with rictus grin, flat yellowy-brown hair, and scrawny neck, David Yurman jewelry and Anne Klein loungewear--that Danny was sure he'd never remember having met her; he found a small kidney-shaped mole on her neck to memorize so that he would recognize her if he met her again socially, and hoped that she wouldn't have it removed.

It wasn't remotely difficult to sneer at the furnishings already in place as Danny followed Poppy and took notes of his ideas ("I see chintz here, with pickled pine... Here there must be a hooded library chair... you'll want cherry for the dining-room table but ebony for the chairs"), as the furniture was extremely ugly, Edwardian pretending to be Georgian and only succeeding in being frumpy.

Neither was it difficult to turn white (though he couldn't manage green) and stagger shakily away from the windows: the view was spectacular, but the drop was terrifying; the entertaining spaces were on the top floor of a very tall house perched atop a very steep hill, and there was a hundred-foot drop under the living-room windows.

And Mrs. (Marjorie) Stempler was absolutely fascinated by Danny, watching him instead of Poppy as they wandered through the really beautifully proportioned house, hung on his every word (few though they were), and very nearly apologized for the furniture and windows when she saw his polite but unmistakeable reactions to them.

All of which worked exactly as Poppy had wished: not only had Marjorie agreed to replace the huge plate glass sheets with costly custom-made eighteen-paned windows, she also agreed to little French balconies to mitigate the sheer drop; she agreed wholeheartedly to ship her grandmother's treasured furniture off to the retreat in Bohemian Grove, and didn't even look at the contracts and invoices she was signing.

"You were brilliant," Poppy crowed when they returned to the car, planting a big sloppy kiss on Danny's mouth, "She was putty, absolute putty! A hundred thousand dollars of construction before we even got to the furniture, on your delicate complexion alone!"

"Well," Danny temporized, "Your suggestion that other guests would feel the same way is what convinced her. Lots of people get vertigo from windows like those."

"Funny thing is, she probably bought the house thinking to impress people with those vertiginous views, and paid a premium for them, too. This calls for a celebratory lunch. Where do you like having celebratory lunches?"

"The Palm Court," Danny answered without thinking, "at the Palace Hotel."

"You're going to break me, you are," Poppy laughed, "But then you also just made me an extra thousand or two in commissions and fees for those balconies and windows, so I guess it evens out."

Once they'd arrived at the historic hotel, Poppy turned on his fruity demeanor full-blast, flirting outrageously with the male staff and camping loudly at the females; nevertheless, he commanded and was accorded a good table, in a corner with privacy and a good view of the room, and the service was deferential to the point of servility: it was clear that Poppy was known and respected in this place.

"I bring so many of my old-lady clients here," Poppy said when Danny remarked on this, "It's such a wonderfully old-lady room. I'm surprised you like it, young buck that you are; but then again I'm not really surprised... I've come to see in such a short time that you're a hopeless romantic. And speaking of Romance, tell me all about you and Marquesa Chillard-Chills."

"There's not much to say," Danny instantly threw up his guard at the mocking name applied to his beloved.

"Is it as big as I've heard?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Danny said frostily.

"Oh, come, don't be coy with me," Popply slapped Danny's hand playfully, "I'm just being crude, as is my wont. My point is, do you love him?"

"Yes," Danny answered truthfully before he could stop himself, then thought better of it, "I mean, I thought I was. I don't suppose I really am. Just infatuated."

"As big as that, eh? As you may have guessed, I'm not in Marquesa's fan club. She's such an ice-queen, she never lets her hair down... she never lets herself have feelings, as far as I've seen. I find that very off-putting."

"I find it very attractive," Danny defended, "An air of mystery, a sense of reserve and elegance."

"Valerien, on the other hand, is a perfect pet. I've done both their apartments, but I feel like a mother toward little Val, and his happiness is important to me. That's why I'm asking you about how you feel about Marquesa... I want to know what chance Val has with you before I let him fall in love with you."

"Could you stop him?" Danny wondered, smiling at the very maternal tone Poppy had adopted the moment he'd turned the subject to Valerien.

"No, but I could stop you, I think. Threats of bodily harm if nothing else. I'd go for the face, too, if you hurt him... that's how I feel about Valerien."

"And do you know how Valerien feels about me?"

"He's fascinated by you, and he is attached to you. That's enough to be getting on with, don't you think? What are your feelings?" Poppy toyed with a butter-fork in a stagily threatening manner.

"I'd say it was mutual... fascinated attachment," Danny replied after giving the question a few moments' honest thought, "I think I could love him, but I don't know for sure. I would certainly never hurt him, regardless of your threats."

"Threats? Moi?" Poppy camped, putting down the butter-knife and picking up a menu, "I wouldn't hurt a fly. The very idea! Now tell, how big is Marquesa, really? Is it the true foot-long?"

"As near as makes no difference, I expect," Danny replied, laughing and blushing a little, "But I didn't have a ruler with me."

"And you can still walk after a whole weekend of that? You're made of stern stuff. So, shall we be utterly sinful and have the fondue appetizer? Then we can work out at my place before I start getting you settled in the office."

"Sounds perfectly divine."

The luncheon passed happily, Poppy ate voraciously without ever interrupting his conversation, which revolved mostly around Valerien's many charms and endearing qualities, which included loyalty, kindness, generosity, and an innocence that only the rarest of infants would be able to equal. He kept Danny laughing the entire time, and insisted on ordering dessert, "We've already sinned unforgiveably, we might as well make a day of it... to sin only partially is like stealing something nobody wants... no point to it whatsoever."

After lunch, they drove back to Poppy's apartment between the office and warehouses, where they changed into workout gear and performed a quite grueling regimen on the equipment above Poppy's kitchen, then showered and dressed again. And though Poppy flirted and even groped a little, it was the kind of flirtatious groping that straight athletes indulge in the lockerrooms after a game: his attitude toward Danny was distinctly nonsexual, which Danny found very refreshing and fun.

Dressed and fresh, Danny was led into the office, where he was introduced to Poppy's staff, a quintet of very thin middle-aged men with high fluting voices, prissy clothing, and hair that had been altered in some way or another, either dyed or completely replaced by fairly obvious toupees. They all goggled at Danny comically, giggled when he spoke to them, and behaved like a coop of undersexed hens introduced to a new rooster.

Poppy had ordered a beautiful and delicate Queen Anne writing desk installed in his own office behind the larger front office, which was decorated in the florid cluttered English Country House style that he professionally espoused, with a heavily carved walnut desk and battered biscuit-tufted leather chairs and sofa, its walls lined with books and its ceiling painted with a fifteenth-century map of the "known" world; Danny's desk in the Spartan loft apartment, however, was a gorgous piece of Louis XV marquetry, liberally encrusted with ormolu and cameo mounts, which glittered in the midst of all that black leather and chrome like a drag queen at the Eagle.

The young men who brought these things from the warehouse had also been dispatched to the nearest electronics store to procure a laptop computer, a top-of-the-line jewel that Danny loved to just hold, it was so pretty. Danny was instructed by one of "The Boys" (all, Danny later found out, ex-lovers of Poppy's) how to use the various programs; he was instructed by some of "The Girls" (all of whom had worked for Poppy since he opened his interior design business twenty-five years before and were deadly loyal to him) on how to access the building and what verbal formulae to use when answering the phone.

The whole thing was very bewildering to Danny, who'd never held a job in his life and found the whole thing very adventuresome. He took lots of notes in the leatherbound notebook Poppy had bought him, made a point of remembering everybody's names, and wore himself to a nub ingratiating himself to everyone.

When five o'clock rolled around, the Girls started packing up, gossiping about their plans for the evening ahead, and watering plants. Poppy had a huge album of fabric swatches open in front of him on his desk, grumbling about trying to make plaid and French Provincial come together peacefully. Danny felt at rather a loose end suddenly, not knowing when he was expected to leave, whether or not Poppy expected him to make his way home alone or planned to drive him back.

"Oh, Valerien wanted to give you a ride home," Poppy said when Danny asked him what time he was expected to clock out, "though in general I'd expect you to stay until six, assuming you start at nine and take an hour for lunch. But we can work that out as we go, some days I'll need you longer, some days I'll let you go early. But Val told me he'd be here at five, and it's five, so I suspect he's out on the curb waiting for you. See you in the morning."

Leaving the office by the front door, his notebook and laptop tucked under his arm, Danny saw Valerien's chocolate-and-gold Rolls Royce parked right in front. As soon as the office door closed behind him, the chauffeur stepped out and opened the car door, revealing Valerien lounging back against the camel upholstery in a mauve silk three-piece suit and a white straw hat.

"So, working-boy, how did your first day go?" Valerien asked after planting a warm kiss on Danny's mouth.

"It was kind of confusing, but satisfying," Danny admitted, "Thank you for arranging this job for me."

"Poppy should thank me, I think you'll be a brilliant assistant for him. Where would you like to have dinner? We'd both have to change if we go out."

"Why don't we stay in, then?" Danny asked, the first sultry note of seduction surfacing in his voice... he had decided at lunchtime that a relationship with Valerien was the best route to pursue, and he intended to pursue Valerien hotly.

"That's good. I've been away for several days, my chef gets rusty if I don't eat in at least three nights a week. Do you need anything from home first?"

"Would an overnight bag be presumptuous?" Danny purred, his hand on Valerien's thigh.

"No, not presumptuous at all," Valerien's violet eyes glowed in the dim cab of the limousine, "Though I'd rather send Henri for some things rather than wait while you pack."

"That suits me right down to the ground," Danny pushed Valerien down onto the seat and kissed him passionately, while Valerien reached out and pressed the button that caused the enameled divider to rise up and seal them off from the chauffeur.

Chapter 9, Part 1

2007-09-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Danny woke up when the phone rang, disoriented by the unaccustomed location and the unmeasured passage of time. He groggily reached over for the instrument and mumbled into it.

"Monsieur Vandervere?," came a crisp French-accented voice, "Mademoiselle Willard-Wilkes's manservant is here. May I send him up?"

"Mmmph," Danny didn't want to see the man, but knew that Marquesa would want his clothes and jewelry back, "Okay."

"Very good, m'sieu."

Sitting up in the bed, Danny wondered if he should just stay where he was and pretend to be asleep, or if he should hide in the bathroom; but by the time Danvers knocked, he realized he'd have to let the man into the suite. So he put on his bathrobe, knotted the cord firmly, and opened the door.

"Good afternoon, sir," Danvers bowed slightly, though not as crisply as he had before, and his expression was softer, not so disapproving, "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"I was just going to take a shower," Danny walked out of the room with what he hoped was an air of unconcern, locking the bathroom door behind him. He turned on the water but didn't get in; instead, he sat on the little bathroom stool in the corner and listened to the manservant moving around in the bedroom, wishing he would leave so Danny could go back to bed.

After half an hour, there was a quiet knock on the bathroom door that startled Danny out of the trance of blank waiting he'd fallen into. The room had filled up with steam, and he couldn't see anything.

"Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" Danvers's voice came softly through the door.

"I can't hear you, I'm in the shower," Danny lied.

"Very good, sir," the servant said loudly, then dropped his voice to a low rumble that could barely be heard, "Though I can't help but notice your voice came from the opposite side of the room from the shower, and that water makes a different sound falling on a body than on an empty floor."

Danny blushed crimson, humiliated to be caught out in the lie, but didn't answer.

"I've put your clothes away, sir," Danvers resumed in his louder professional voice, "and laid out something suitable in case you choose to go to the lounge for tea, as well as your dinner clothes. Mr. Willard-Wilkes sent some cash for tips and incidentals, it's in an envelope on the table in the foyer. Good afternoon, sir."

"Thank you," Danny called out, getting hastily into the shower so that he wouldn't have to admit that he hadn't been there in the first place; he wanted to say something more articulate in gratitude for Danvers' thoughtfulness, but the words didn't come. When he did finally get out of the shower, he put on a good deal of body-lotion and combed his hair with undue thoroughness before returning to the bedroom, killing time to make sure the man was gone.

Danvers had laid out a very nice outfit on the bed, a snappy blue-and-white striped shirt with a dull red silk sweater and tan linen pants, with socks and underwear lying on top and a pair of cordovan loafers neatly placed on the floor. The dinner-suit was laid out with equal precision on the other side of the bed, with a navy blue satin tie and waistcoat.

Danny put on the afternoon clothes, for no reason other than that they were there, since he didn't intend to leave the suite any time soon. The dinner-suit he put back in the closet, not wanting to look at it... it had happy memories attached to it, and Danny didn't want to think happy thoughts.

The envelope of money gave him a sting of pain: it contained a stack of twenties and another stack of fifties, full inch-thick US Mint hundred-count packets with the denomination bands unbroken, more money than he could possibly hand out in tips if he stayed at the Queen Charlotte all summer. This was clearly the "walking-around money" or "cab-fare" or "pick out a present from me" that stood as a euphemism for the amateur prostitute's fee.

Seven thousand dollars was a pretty good fee for a weekend, and Danny had to smile at the generosity; but this unnecessarily large sum underlined for Danny the fact that this had been just a weekend fling for Marquesa. They could still be friends, as close as Danny usually was with his moneyed tricks; but considering the two packets of cash for "incidentals" along with the hotel bills and the new wardrobe from Saks, not to mention half of the million-dollar bail bond, there was simply too much expenditure involved for Danny to ever feel on equal footing with Marquesa. He was irrevocably cast in his usual role of Courtesan instead of his desired role of Lover.

Dropping the cash negligently into a drawer, Danny lay down on the couch and watched television for a few hours, changing channels with an impatient sneer when anything even remotely romantic came on, slipping occasionally into a deep sleep and waking with a start when something loud happened on the TV.

When he eventually got hungry, he ordered up a selection of canape-sized comfort foods, baby quiches and tiny shepherd's pies and sinfully cheesy crab-puffs, along with a couple of bottles of oaky white wine, so that he wouldn't have to think about food for a while, he could just nibble and sip whenever the mood took him.

The waiter set up some of the food on the coffee table between the couch and the television, and put one of the bottles of wine in an ice-bucket to chill, then took the rest into the little wet-bar/kitchen Danny hadn't realized was there, hidden beside the little foyer behind a folding wall-panel. As soon as the waiter left, with a nice crisp fifty tucked into his pocket, Danny resumed his vigil on the couch, flipping channels pointlessly, occasionally turning over to stare at the ceiling or the upholstery, dozing off every now and then as he'd been doing all day.

He felt (he decided after a long time casting about for the right word) bleak. Bleak and empty, like a Nevada salt-flat in winter... he was no longer especially sad, the hurt of the morning had dulled to a dreary numbness, and he simply didn't want anything... didn't want to eat, didn't want to read, didn't want to talk, didn't want to move, didn't want to feel pleasure, didn't want to think.

But he did think: he thought about how stupid he'd been to believe that Marquesa was falling in love with him as he'd fallen in love with Marquesa; he thought about the matter-of-fact way Marquesa had recommended going after Valerien instead, and the cavalier attitude about the "tips and incidentals"; he thought even more about how that coldness had excited him in the first place; he thought about all the time he'd wanted to fall in love without having the tiniest idea how much it could hurt; he thought about what a fool he was.

Sometime in the very early hours of the next morning, however, Danny finally got bored with his inertia. His was a nature that was ill-suited for wallowing in unhappiness... he could be unhappy, but he was incapable of lying around with it for very long. He had to get up and do something to take his mind off it. He got up and peeled out of the stale wrinkled clothes he'd been wearing for over twelve hours, then opened the window and leaned out for some fresh air, feeling his skin come alive in the chilly damp.

Leafing through the little book of the hotel's amenities, he was pleased to discover the place had a small gymnasium and swimming pool in the basement that would open at 6 a.m. Checking the little clock on the desk, Danny was irritated to find that it was only 4... but then decided that a couple of fifties could probably get a helpful desk-clerk to open them up for him. Calling downstairs, he discovered that the night manager would be delighted to accomodate Monsieur Vandervere regardless of the hour (news of his increased tipping power must have already been circulated among the staff).

Rummaging through the dresser that had been arranged with a neatness that was almost pathological, Danny selected a scandalously brief white swimsuit, a pair of tight underwear-thin grey fleece shorts, and a thin zip-up black hoodie that was two sizes too small and clung to his torso like paint. The sneakers Andrew had sent weren't the kind Danny liked, but they were sufficient, and the little white socks had cute Japanese anime penguins embroidered on them.

Running down the stairs to the basement, Danny felt a rush of physical well-being: his heart might be broken, but his body was still a beautiful perfect machine capable of all sorts of pleasures. The night-manager was clearly taken aback, both by Danny's slutty attire and by the four bills Danny pressed into his hand (he was determined to blow through at least one of the stacks of money, and had perversely settled on the higher denomination), and led a brief tour of the small but luxurious facilities, pointing out the Art Deco mosaic murals imported from a bath-house in Paris, turning on all the lights, the televisions, and the stereo before taking his leave.

Danny stripped off his hoodie, grabbed the biggest bottle of water he could find in the cooler, and got up onto an elliptical machine, bopping his head to the beat of the generic Top-40 dance music that came pouring out of the hidden speakers, and lost himself in the rhythm of his own heartbeat and breathing. It was infinitely more worry-suppressing than watching television, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of this simple expedient sooner.

After forty minutes of cardiovascular exercise, he did a circuit of the weight machines, not pushing himself very hard since he was alone in the gym and didn't have a spotter; and once every muscle in his body had been worked over and was glowing with warmth, he pulled off his gym-shorts and dove into the long narrow pool.

The water was deliciously cool and shocked his sweaty skin refreshingly. He swam laps, freestyle to one end and backstroke to the other, pushing himself until he was so tired that he had to get out of the pool for fear of drowning. He flopped face-first onto a towel-draped chaise-longue, completely exhausted and wonderfully free of nagging thoughts, and went right back to sleep.

"Hey, are you OK?" Danny felt a hand shaking his shoulder.

"Just sleeping," he replied quietly, peeking at the stranger through one eye; it was a rather pretty boy, Danny guessed him to be eighteen or nineteen, with straight black hair and starry blue eyes, spanked pink cheeks and a soft red mouth. His face was square and his cheekbones perfect, but there was an endearing sense of the unfinished to his features that was very appealing.

"Oh," the boy looked embarrassed, his smooth cheeks deepening to carmine, "You were kind of whimpering, I though you were sick."

"Whimpering?" Danny raised himself up on both elbows to take a better look at the boy, running his eyes over the narrow, tight-muscled boyish frame in a pair of very baggy red boardshorts, his luminescent pink skin and charmingly awkward movements, "How mortifying."

"I'll leave you alone, then," the boy sounded disappointed and started to get up.

"Don't go away," Danny heard a note of begging in his voice and strove to master it with a more confident and seductive tone, "What's your name?"

"Jared," the boy happily sat cross-legged on the floor and put out his hand.

"I'm Danny. Pleased to meet you," he rolled over onto his side, artlessly displaying his half-hard cock taking up far too much room in the front of the tiny white bikini, but smiling happily as the boy's eyes bugged out and his mouth dropped open, "Where are you from, Jared?"

Jared tore his gaze from Danny's crotch with some effort, gulped loudly, and stammered out, "Cincinnati."

"Are you here with your family?" Danny reached down and pushed his erection back down under the waistband as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, smirking to himself as Jared's erection sprang up and tented his red shorts.

"He's supposed to be my uncle," Jared murmured, his eyes riveted back onto Danny's cock.

"Supposed to be?"

"Oh! I mean," Jared looked alarmed, his eyes big and the blush deepening again on his cheek, "I mean I am here with my uncle."

"Oh, don't worry, baby, I have plenty of 'uncles' myself. Does your uncle mind you playing around?"

Jared gulped again and stared mutely for a few moments before shaking his head no. Danny pulled him to his feet and led him by the hand through the empty locker-room and into the billowing steam of the wet sauna. Once the door was closed securely, he was on the boy with a passion, raping his mouth and wrapping both hands around the boy's long cock. Jared put his hands on Danny's body, first on his arms, then his waist, then his shoulders, as if he weren't sure where they should be; eventually he settled on the hips and seemed particularly fascinated with the line of the pelvic girdle.

Since the bathing facilities in the Hotel Queen Charlotte weren't the type to keep great bowls full of prophylactics on every table and counter, Danny kept their activities limited to oral and frottage... more the latter than the former, as Jared couldn't keep his teeth out of the way; the boy was passionate but had no skill whatever. Streaming with sweat, they slid around together on the sauna bench like eels; the boy shot off twice before Danny came, making an adorable squealing sound each time that made Danny laugh. Spent and sticky, they lolled in silence for a little while, Jared trying to catch his breath and Danny nearly falling asleep again.

"I really wish you'd fuck me," Jared finally broke the silence in a timid voice.

"I'd love to, baby, but I don't have any condoms here," Danny replied, his face buried in the boy's neck, "and nothing personal, but I'd really rather not take you back to my room."

"Do have a fake uncle in your room, too?" Jared wondered, his mind finally cleared enough of sex to return to their previous conversation.

"Not at the moment," Danny laughed, pulling back on one elbow to look down at the boy, tracing the pretty features with his index finger, refusing to think about why he didn't want to take someone back to the room where he'd fallen in love with Marquesa, "But I just don't feel right about it. Let's go take a shower, we're all sticky."

Crowded warmly into a single stall, Danny and Jared washed each-other carefully and a little too thoroughly; soon they were inflamed to passion, and they thrashed and writhed their way to another climax.

"What's your uncle's name?" Danny asked conversationally, shaking off the sleepiness that was threatening again.

"I probably shouldn't tell you," Jared sighed after a long silence, stepping out of the shower.

"Why not?" Danny laughed, "Is he that closeted?"

"No... I mean, he's not obvious or anything, but he doesn't hide that he's gay."

"Then you must be underage," Danny reasoned, toweling his hair, "How old are you?"

"Eighteen," Jared said without conviction, his eyes darting about with comic guilt.

"You don't lie very well, little one," Danny shook his head in mock exasperation, "But I guess it doesn't matter now, after the fact. You can't unbreak an egg and you can't unfuck a teenager."

"But you haven't fucked me...yet," Jared teased.

"Nor am I going to, Little Miss Lolita," Danny ruffled the boy's hair playfully, "But I will take you to breakfast. Why don't you go upstairs and get dressed, and I'll meet you in the lobby."

Danny felt very nearly happy again as he returned to his suite and selected a kicking-around outfit of artfully distressed jeans, vividly striped narrow-cut dress shirt, and suede sandals. The sorrow had been blown apart by the physical pleasures of exercise and sex, and the bleakness was submerged in the delight of a new person to experience.

He returned to the lobby before Jared, so Danny took a moment to visit the concierge and order immense and ridiculously expensive flower-arrangements sent to Marquesa and Valerien with thank-you notes, as well as more subdued tributes to Mr. Casterman and the Aunt Ems. With a hefty gratuity to Phillipe, the bundle of fifties was satisfactorily dented by this exercise.

Tucking the roll of bills into his pocket next to his loose cock, which made him feel wonderfully dirty, Danny went back out to the lobby to find Jared waiting for him; the boy looked acutely embarrassed, shifting from one foot to the other with his eyes on the floor.

"Where shall we eat, baby? The grill-room here, or shall we go exploring instead?" Danny hooked a finger into the boy's belt-loop.

"I can't go," Jared rolled his eyes in exasperation, "Crosby insisted on meeting you. He wants me to invite you to have breakfast with us."

"Crosby's a smart man," Danny threw his arm around the boy's shoulder and led him into the grill room, a high square chamber paneled in dark wood, with white-clothed round tables and tall windows facing the street, "If I was him, I wouldn't let you out of my sight for a minute. But before I meet him, did you tell him what we did this morning?"

"No, of course not!" the boy blushed again.

"He'll probably know. I mean, look at me... who could say 'No' to all this?" Danny struck a glamorous pose, making Jared laugh, "And I doubt he'll mind. You should never be dishonest in your relationships, Jared. It always leads to trouble. Let's go meet Uncle Crosby."

Crosby Bremerhaven looked like somebody's uncle... comically avuncular, with a perfectly round little head on top of a perfectly round little body, rendered jaunty by a pointed Vandyke beard on his small-featured face and a bright Tartan waistcoat peeking out of his soft tweed suit. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, and had the comfortable blasé air of a dilettante with very old family money.

When he rose to meet his protege's new friend, he was clearly taken by surprise... his jaw dropped and his little black eyes widened in alarm. Danny was of course accustomed to such reactions, it was the price of being so shockingly beautiful; and as he always did in such situations, he turned on his most polished social charms to try to put the man at his ease.

"Good morning, Mr. Bremerhaven," Danny put out his hand enthusiastically, "It's so good to meet you after hearing so much about you from Jared."

"Thank you," Crosby said somewhat shakily, then made an obvious effort to pull himself together, "Won't you sit down, Mr... Vandervere, was it?"

"Please, call me Danny," he took the chair Crosby indicated, "Thank you so much for inviting me to breakfast. One gets a little lonely staying in a hotel on one's own."

Conversation became less strained and rather general quite quickly; between Crosby's and Danny's combined breeding and manners, the interaction remained on a very smooth surface of small-talk and pleasantries. But all the while, Danny was watching Crosby, wondering what it was that was making him so uncomfortable underneath his Society veneer... for the little man was unmistakably anxious about something: his eyes darted back and forth between Danny and Jared, and his hands fiddled nervously with the tableware. Was he anxious that Danny was going to steal Jared away from him?

It didn't seem likely, though, that Crosby would have attained the age and suavité required to keep a young boyfriend without understanding that kept boys don't leave their keepers for other boys, they don't give up security and luxury for mere hot sex. It simply isn't done. Was Jared so unpredictable that Crosby would fear losing him to a beautiful stranger in a hotel?

On the other hand, Danny understood that he wasn't the usual pretty-boy one meets on the circuit... he was expensively dressed and expensively educated, he was staying in an expensive hotel alone... to all appearances, he could be someone who could provide both the hot sex and the security that a boy like Jared would want.

And so to alleviate his fears, Danny focused most of his attention, with a subtle undertone of flirtation, on Crosby; he included Jared in the conversation and the flirtation, but he did everything he could to indicate that he wasn't interested in stealing Jared away. He actually started plotting how he could get a three-way going with Jared and Crosby together, which would certainly make the rest of the day pass rather pleasantly.

But it was not to be. When he had finished his very French breakfast of dense bread and soft cheese, and downed the last of the very strong coffee, he offered to take the pair sight-seeing... though they had probably been all over town during their vacation, it's always special to be shown around by a local who knows some of the hidden beauty-spots and interesting local history.

"No, thank you, Danny," Crosby said, wiping his mouth fastidiously and smiling uncomfortably, "We're leaving soon, and I need to get to the packing."

"Oh, come on," Jared protested, "We're not leaving until tomorrow afternoon. Besides, the valet will do the packing, won't he?"

"I need to supervise," Crosby offered lamely.

"Well, can I go?" Jared asked, a tone of impatience in his voice.

"I'd really rather you didn't," Crosby said in a very parental tone, a tone that begged a child to stop pursuing the question.

"Why not!?" Jared demanded.

"Well, really, Jared, you put me in a most awkward position," Crosby finally relaxed a little and shook his head, "I didn't want to hurt Danny's feelings. But I cannot let you go out alone with a suspected murderer."

Silence engulfed the little table after this bombshell. Danny was completely staggered... after all of the emotional upheaval of his weekend with Marquesa, he'd quite forgotten about that problem. Jared stared thunderstruck, and Crosby looked horribly embarrassed to have said something so inescapably rude.

"I am sorry, Mr. Vandervere," Crosby eventually turned to Danny, "You're a very charming young man, and I am loath to suspect you of such a foul crime; but I have a duty to protect Jared, and that has to come first."

"I completely understand," Danny breathed out, still reverberating from the shock.

"What are you talking about?" Jared almost screamed, "Danny's not a murderer! I've been with him all morning!"

"Jared, please," Crosby pleaded quietly, reaching across the corner of the table and taking the boy's hand, "I'm sure he's innocent, but the suspicion is there, and I can't take a chance with your safety."

"That's ridiculous, I'm not in any danger," Jared shook off Crosby's hand and crossed his arms sulkily over his chest, with a little pout of impatience that was so completely adorable that Danny wanted him even more. It made him sad that he wouldn't be able to experience more of the boy.

"No, Jared, Crosby's right," Danny slowly pushed back from the table and dropped his napkin on his plate, "He's responsible for you, and it would be remiss of him to let you go out with someone he has reason to suspect. I understand completely. And Mr. Bremerhaven, I hold you no ill will; in fact, I hope we can meet again once my innocence has been established. Thank you very much for breakfast."

With all the sangfroid he could muster, Danny got up from the table, gave Jared a little peck on the cheek, shook Crosby's proffered hand, and left the grill room; leaving the room, he could hear Jared's continued protestations and Crosby's quiet refusal to be budged. Passing the concierge's desk, he ordered a fruit-basket to be sent to Mr. Bremerhaven, along with his calling card, and asked that a valet be sent to pack up his clothes: he was going to check out immediately.

"Murder Suspect," Danny sneered at himself in the mirror upon returning to his suite, mourning the cozy adventure with Jared and Crosby that he'd been planning but which was snatched away from him by those two nasty words, "Danny Vandervere, suspected murderer. God damn it!"

Danny kicked hard at the wainscoting, forgetting that he was wearing sandals, and fell cursing to the floor when the pain of a stubbed toe shot up his leg. He was huddled up on the floor crying and swearing, more from temper than from hurt, when the valet came in and silently started packing Danny's clothes for him in the two Vuitton suitcases Danvers had left for him.

The valet was done in a matter of minutes; the clothes had been folded so neatly by Marquesa's manservant that is was only a matter of transferring them from closet and drawer to suitcase; Danny pulled himself together enough to tip the valet, and leave a few more bills on the dresser for housekeeping. He put all his loose objects, his handheld and the rest of the money, into a little shopping bag, and said farewell to the suite with a sad little sigh. Making his way back to the lobby, he asked for a cab to be called, then sulked into the dark and empty bar; it wasn't actually open, but Phillipe took pity on the obviously depressed young guest and slid behind the bar to pour Danny a generous brandy, then left him alone to wait for the car that would take him home.

But while Danny was depressed by his situation, the many unhappy upheavals of his recent past, the sadness was quickly being subsumed by a simmering rage... not toward Crosby Bremerhaven, whose behavior was completely reasonable, but rather toward whoever had killed Drayton Marshall.

He hadn't thought about Marshall for days, but now that the murder had been brought back to his attention, he was simply furious: killing the unsavory Marshall he could forgive, or at least understand; but pinning the murder so securely and deliberately on an innocent bystander bespoke a disregard for other people that should not go unpunished. Danny was enflamed with a desire to hunt down the killer, not just for his own sake, either for establishing his innocence or exacting his revenge, but for the sake of Justice itself.

Warmed by the resonance of this sentiment, as well as by the large brandy, Danny felt his anger resolve into a purpose. Fishing his handheld out of the little shopping bag, he started making notes to follow up on various questions concerning Marshall's life and death, such as the whereabouts of Marshall's son on the night of the murder, as well as some barely-remembered oddities about his meeting with Marshall in The Brat... the identity of the parrot-shirted man, the peculiar behavior of the purple-haired boy who stared at him so, Marshall's well-known predilection for hustlers, and the wide variety of drugs in his apartment.

This sense of purpose carried Danny all the way out of the hotel and into the waiting towncar without a backward glance at the Hotel Queen Charlotte. He continued making notes as he rode home, and was a little bit startled when the car came to a stop.

A lone reporter was lurking outside Danny's door, beside an enormous man who could could best be described as a "goon," an impressively ugly hulk in a dark suit and darker glasses standing at ease right in front of the door.

Danny had to produce identification before the goon would let him pass; and all the while Danny was rummaging around for his wallet and producing his driver's license, the weedy little reporter threw importunate questions at him in a small whiney voice.

"Why did you kill Drayton Marshall?" was the one question out of many that actually caught Danny's attention. He turned to look at the little man, sweeping his eyes disdainfully over his rumpled dust-colored clothing, scrawny awkward phsyique, and a face that made Woody Allen look downright pretty by comparison.

"I didn't kill Drayton Marshall," Danny said slowly, as if speaking to a slow child.

"Then why were you hiding? Where have you been all week?"

"I've been staying in a hotel, avoiding people like you. Good afternoon."

"Then who do you think did kill him?" the reporter called after Danny as he passed through the iron gate onto the outside stairs.

"I really don't know," Danny said, turning on the last step and facing the reporter with some interest, "But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm going to do whatever I can to find out who did kill him. Print that in whatever ghastly little rag you represent."

Smiling happily to himself, though realizing that Mr. Casterman would probably scold him fiercely for that overly dramatic statement, Danny hurried into his apartment and closed the door behind him. The air smelled stale, as if nobody had been through the place in a while. His cleaning-lady probably hadn't come since she knew he'd been away and there was nobody to clean up after, but he'd assumed she'd come in and air the place anyway.

Danny went through the apartment opening windows, shaking curtains, and shuffling objects around on tabletops to get rid of the stale feeling, then poured himself a glass of his most expensive red wine and settled down in front of his computer to do some research.

With his wine on the right and his handheld on the left, he started following up all the questions he'd jotted down since leaving his hotel room; unfortunately, he lacked the search-engine skills, not to mention the legal and illegally hacked access to confidential data, that Detective Spevik possessed, and so his research was frustrated more often than not by a complete dearth of information that would be of any use to him.

The information on Drayton Marshall III was little more than he'd already gleaned from the news broadcasts. Absolutely nothing about his rather baroque sexual tastes had ever appeared in print, not even a gossipy blind item in a giveaway paper. The latest available photograph of Marshall's son was ten years old, and showed only a peculiarly nondescript boy with his father's medium hair and his mother's squinty eyes. Mrs. Marshall, who was rather more frequently photographed, was a typical Society matron with a rictus grin and a scrawny neck, whom Danny knew fairly well from the Social circuit. Nothing he was able to find out put him any farther ahead in his understanding of Drayton Marshall's life, nor who would likely want him dead.

Giving up on Marshall and pouring himself another glass of wine, Danny settled down to find out if he could discover anything about Aunt Tittie's male identity. But nowhere was any connection made. With the proper access, Danny might have been able to track down the title or the liquor license on the Parrot Pub, but such access is not readily available to the average citizen.

The third glass of wine accompanied Danny through a lengthy email to Rodney Casterman detailing all of the questions he'd thought of. He was fairly sure that the investigators working on his case would have already thought of most, if not all of those questions, as well as a good many more, but Danny felt that he needed to do something before he gave up on his thwarted investigation.

By the fourth glass of wine, Danny was feeling fairly sorry for himself, a mood frequently brought on by a surfeit of frustration and the drier reds, and so he decided to get good and drunk, decanting two more very expensive bottles into a sangria pitcher to breathe while he finished off the large decanter he'd already started.

Shedding his clothes on the way, he carried the wine and two glasses (in case he broke one) back to his bedroom, opened the mirrored closet doors to reveal the enormous television that took up the entire space, put on a variety of porn in the DVD-changer, and crawled under the covers to have a nice long binge of self-pity and -abuse.

Chapter 9, Part 1 (v.1)

2007-05-02T15:07:00.000-07:00

[NOTE: This is the first draft of this section, which I decided to change about halfway through...the introduction of Jared caused me some problems, and I think you can see why when (if) you get to that section...RM]

Danny woke up when the phone rang, amazed that he'd slept for so long, that the shadows were all in a different position that when he'd lay down. He groggily reached over for the instrument and mumbled into it.

"Monsieur Vandervere? Mademoiselle Willard-Wilkes's manservant is here. May I send him up?"

"Mmmph," Danny didn't want to see the man, but knew that Marquesa would want his clothes and jewelry back, "Okay."

"Very good, m'sieu."

Sitting up in the bed, Danny wondered if he should just stay where he was and pretend to be asleep, or if he should hide in the bathroom; but by the time Danvers knocked, he realized he'd have to let the man into the suite. So he put on his dressing-gown, knotted the cord firmly, and opened the door.

"Good afternoon, sir," Danvers bowed slightly, though not as crisply as he had before, and his expression was softer, not so disapproving, "I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"I was just going to take a shower," Danny walked out of the room with what he hoped was an air of unconcern, locking the bathroom door behind him. He turned on the water but didn't get in; instead, he sat on the little bathroom stool and listened to the manservant moving around in the bedroom, wishing he would leave so Danny could go back to bed.

After half an hour, there was a quiet knock on the bathroom door that startled Danny out of the trance of blank waiting he'd fallen into. The room had filled up with steam, and he couldn't see anything.

"Is there anything I can do for you, sir?" Danvers's voice came softly through the door.

"I can't hear you, I'm in the shower," Danny lied.

"Very good, sir," the servant said loudly, then dropped his voice to a low rumble that could barely be heard, "Though I can't help but notice your voice came from the opposite side of the room from the shower, and that water makes a different sound falling on a body than on an empty floor."

Danny blushed crimson, humiliated to be caught out in the lie, but didn't answer.

"I've put your clothes away, sir," Danvers resumed in his louder professional voice, "and laid out something suitable in case you choose to go to the lounge for tea, as well as your dinner clothes. Mr. Willard-Wilkes sent some cash for tips and incidentals, it's in an envelope on the table in the foyer. Good afternoon, sir."

"Thank you," Danny called out, getting hastily into the shower so that he wouldn't have to admit that he hadn't been there in the first place; he wanted to say something more articulate in gratitude for Danvers' thoughtfulness, but the words didn't come. When he did finally get out of the shower, he put on a good deal of body-lotion and combed his hair with undue thoroughness before returning to the bedroom, killing time to make sure the man was gone.

Danvers had laid out a very nice outfit on the bed, a snappy blue-and-white striped shirt with a dull red silk sweater and tan linen pants, with socks and underwear lying on top and a pair of cordovan loafers neatly placed on the floor. The dinner-suit was laid out with equal precision on the other side of the bed, with a navy blue satin tie and waistcoat.

Danny put on the afternoon clothes, for no reason other than that they were there, since he didn't intend to leave the suite any time soon. The dinner-suit he put back in the closet, not wanting to look at it... it had happy memories attached to it, and Danny didn't want to think happy thoughts.

The envelope of money gave him a sting of pain: it contained a stack of twenties and another stack of fifties, full inch-thick US Mint hundred-count packets with the denomination bands unbroken, more money than he could possibly hand out in tips if he stayed at the Queen Charlotte all summer. This was clearly the "walking-around money" or "cab-fare" or "pick out a present from me" that stood as a euphemism for the amateur prostitute's fee.

Seven thousand dollars was a pretty good fee for a weekend, even for a professional, and Danny had to smile at the generosity; but this unnecessarily large sum underlined for Danny the fact that this had been just a weekend fling for Marquesa. They could still be friends, as close as Danny usually was with his moneyed tricks; but considering the two packets of cash for "incidentals" along with the hotel bills and the new wardrobe from Saks, not to mention half of the million-dollar bail bond, there was simply too much expenditure involved for Danny to ever feel on equal footing with Marquesa. He was irrevocably cast in his usual role of Courtesan instead of his desired role of Lover.

Dropping the cash negligently into a drawer, Danny lay down on the couch and watched television for a few hours, changing channels when anything even remotely romantic came on, slipping occasionally into a deep sleep and waking with a start when something loud happened on the TV.

When he eventually got hungry, he ordered up a huge and random selection of hors-d'ouerves, along with a couple of bottles of wine, so that he wouldn't have to think about food for a while, he could just nibble whenever the mood took him.

The waiter set up some of the food on the coffee table between the couch and the television, and put one of the bottles of wine in an ice-bucket to chill, then took the rest into the little wet-bar/kitchen Danny didn't know was there, hidden beside the little foyer behind a folding wall-panel. As soon as the waiter left, with a nice crisp fifty tucked into his pocket, Danny resumed his vigil on the couch, flipping channels pointlessly, occasionally turning over to stare at the ceiling or the upholstery, dozing off every now and then as he'd been doing all day.

He felt (he decided after a long time looking for the right word) bleak. Bleak and empty, like a Nevada salt-flat in winter... he was no longer especially sad, the hurt of the morning had dulled to a dreary numbness, and he simply didn't want anything... didn't want to eat, didn't want to read, didn't want to talk, didn't want to move, didn't want to feel pleasure, didn't want to think.

But he did think: he thought about how stupid he'd been to believe that Marquesa was falling in love with him as he'd fallen in love with Marquesa; he thought about the matter-of-fact way Marquesa had recommended going after Valerien instead, and the cavalier attitude about the "tips and incidentals"; he thought even more about how that coldness had excited him in the first place; he thought about all the time he'd wanted to fall in love without having the tiniest idea how much it could hurt; he thought about what a fool he was.

Sometime in the very early hours of the next morning, however, Danny finally got bored with his inertia. His was a nature that was ill-suited for wallowing in unhappiness... he could be unhappy, but he was incapable of lying around with it for very long. He had to get up and do something to take his mind off it. He got up and peeled out of the stale wrinkled clothes he'd been wearing for over twelve hours, then opened the window and leaned out for some fresh air, feeling his skin come alive in the chilly damp.

Leafing through the little book of the hotel's amenities, and was pleased to discover the place had a small gymnasium and swimming pool in the basement that would open at 6 a.m. Checking the little clock on the desk, Danny was irritated to find that it was only 4... but then decided that a couple of fifties could probably get a helpful desk-clerk to open them up for him. Calling downstairs, he discovered that the night manager would be delighted to accomodate Monsieur Vandervere regardless of the hour (news of his increased tipping power must have already been circulated among the staff).

Rummaging through the dresser that had been arranged with a neatness that was almost pathological, Danny selected a scandalously brief white swimsuit, a pair of rather slutty red mesh gym-shorts, and a thin zip-up black hoodie that was two sizes too small and clung to his torso like paint. The sneakers Andrew had sent weren't the kind Danny liked, but they were sufficient, and the little white socks had cute Japanese anime penguins embroidered on them.

Running down the stairs to the basement, Danny felt a rush of physical well-being: his heart might be broken, but his body was still a beautiful perfect machine capable of all sorts of pleasures. The night-manager was clearly taken aback, both by Danny's pornographic attire and by the three bills Danny pressed into his hand (he was determined to blow through at least one of the stacks of money, and had perversely settled on the higher denomination), and led a brief tour of the small but luxurious facilities, pointing out the Art Deco mosaic murals imported from a bath-house in Paris, turning on all the lights, the televisions, and the stereo before taking his leave.

Danny stripped off his hoodie, grabbed the biggest bottle of water he could find in the cooler, and got up onto an elliptical machine, bopping his head to the beat of the generic Top-40 dance music that came pouring out of the hidden speakers, and lost himself in the rhythm of his own heartbeat and breathing. It was infinitely more worry-suppressing than watching television, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of this simple expedient sooner.

After forty minutes of cardiovascular exercise, he did a circuit of the weight machines, not pushing himself very hard since he was alone in the gym and didn't have a spotter; and once every muscle in his body had been worked at least once, he pulled off his gym-shorts and dove into the long narrow pool.

The water was deliciously cool and shocked his sweaty skin refreshingly. He swam laps, freestyle to one end and backstroke to the other, pushing himself until he was so tired that he had to get out of the pool for fear of drowning. He flopped face-first onto a towel-draped chaise-longue, completely exhausted and wonderfully free of nagging thoughts, and went right back to sleep.

"Hey, are you OK?" Danny felt a hand shaking his shoulder.

"Just sleeping," he replied quietly, peeking at the stranger through one eye; it was a rather pretty boy, Danny guessed him to be eighteen or nineteen, with straight black hair and pixieish blue eyes, spanked pink cheeks and a soft red mouth.

"Oh," the boy looked embarrassed, his smooth cheeks deepening to carmine, "You were kind of whimpering, I though you were sick."

"Whimpering?" Danny raised himself up on both elbows to take a better look at the boy, taking in his narrow frame in a pair of very baggy red boardshorts, his luminescent skin and charmingly awkward movements, "How mortifying."

"I'll leave you alone, then," the boy sounded disappointed and started to get up.

"Don't go away," Danny heard a note of begging in his voice and strove to master it with a more confident and seductive tone, "What's your name?"

"Jared," the boy happily sat cross-legged on the floor and put out his hand.

"I'm Danny. Pleased to meet you," he rolled over onto his side, displaying his half-hard cock taking up far too much room in the front of the tiny white bikini, and smiled as the boy's eyes bugged out and his mouth dropped open, "Would you care to join me in the steam-room, Jared?"

Jared tore his gaze from Danny's crotch with some effort, gulped loudly, and nodded assent. Danny pulled him to his feet and led him by the hand through the empty locker-room and into the billowing steam of the wet sauna. Once the door was closed securely, he was on the boy with a passion, raping his mouth and plunging his hands into the boy's shorts. Jared put his hands on Danny's body, first on his arms, then his waist, then his shoulders, as if he weren't sure where they should be.

Since he didn't have any condoms, Danny kept their activities limited to oral and frottage...more the latter than the former, as Jared couldn't keep his teeth out of the way. Streaming with sweat, they slid around together on the sauna bench like eels; the boy shot off twice before Danny came, making an adorable squealing sound each time that made Danny laugh. Spent and sticky, they lolled in silence for a little while, Jared trying to catch his breath and Danny nearly falling asleep again.

"I really wish you'd fuck me," Jared finally broke the silence in a timid voice.

"I don't have any condoms here; we'd have to go up to my room," Danny replied, his face buried in the boy's neck.

"We don't need those," the boy reasoned, "I've never been with anyone before."

"Well, I have," Danny pulled back and looked the boy square in the eyes, "You shouldn't go around offering yourself for unsafe sex. You'll end up sick."

"Well, can we go up to your room, then?" the boy tried a different tack.

"In a minute. We'd better clean up, first. This is a classy hotel, you know," Danny sat up and ruffled the boy's hair, "So, you're a virgin?"

"I don't know, am I still?" Jared looked confused.

"I guess it depends on the definition," Danny thought about it for a minute, "But I wouldn't count you as one. I'm just surprised you've never been with anyone, as cute as you are."

"There aren't any other gay boys at my school," Jared told him sadly.

"Oh, I bet there are, you just haven't...wait a minute. School? How old are you?"

"Eighteen?" the boy said without much conviction, his eyes darting around in a comically guilty manner.

"You don't lie very well," Danny laughed, "How old are you really?"

"I'll be sixteen next month," he admitted after a long silence.

"Jesus Christ!" Danny yelled, practically leaping away from the boy, "As if I'm not in enough trouble already. You're fifteen?!"

"I'm sorry," Jared hung his head.

"Well, I guess it's not your fault," Danny conceded, looking the boy over, seeing where he'd made his mistake about the age, thinking the boy was just skinny and smooth rather than barely pubescent; he had more body-hair than Danny, a sparse black fur covering his legs and arms, but Danny frequently forgot that his own hairlessness was the exception rather than the rule; the features Danny had thought charmingly smooth were actually still unformed; and the boy's cock was a lot bigger than one would expect on anyone so young, bigger even than one might expect on most full-grown adults, "You're rather well developed for fifteen."

"Really?" the boy looked down at himself with a pleased smile, "It's not as big as yours."

"Yes, well... the Washington Monument's not as big as the Empire State Building, but it's still plenty big."

"Are you mad at me?" Jared asked.

"No, I guess not. When I was your age, I was fucking my math teacher and our gardener, so I don't have room to talk. But statutory rape isn't something I particularly want to go to jail over. I mean, fifteen's not even legal in Europe."

"I won't tell anyone," Jared promised.

"Be that as it may," Danny got up and moved towards the door, then turned back and smiled at the boy, "I think we'd better hit the showers and dispose of the evidence, don't you?"

"Can we still go to your room?" Jared tried to be seductive, sidling up to Danny and running a hand over his cock, "I mean, we already broke the law, doing it again can't hurt."

"I already broke the law, Baby-doll," Danny pushed the boy gently away, "You were just an innocent victim, as far as the police are concerned."

"Maybe if you don't take me to your room, I will tell," Jared ducked under the restraining hand and wrapped his arms around Danny's waist.

"You rotten little blackmailer!" Danny laughed, this time with genuine amusement, running his hands through the boy's hair and kissing him on the forehead, "I wish I'd thought of that when my math teacher quit his job to get away from me. Come on, let's get cleaned up, and we'll go have breakfast, OK?"

"Oh, all right," the boy pouted as he followed Danny into the shower room.

I just can't seem to stay out of trouble this week, Danny thought to himself as he stood under the hot water soaping himself thoroughly, I need to get this kid dressed and out of here before I forget he's fifteen and fuck him into next week.

"Hey, little boy," Danny called out after rinsing off.

"I'm not little!" Jared called back.

"No you're not. But I take it you're staying with your parents?"

"Just my Mom."

"On vacation, or what?"

"Vacation. Why?"

"I bet you've seen nothing but tourist traps all the time you've been here. Chinatown, Pier 39, Union Square, like that?"

"Yeah," the boy sounded disgusted, "plus visiting my Aunt Justine in Atherton."

"Poor baby! Why don't I take you to the Castro, see what a gay ghetto looks like?"

"Really? That would be great!"

"But I have to go back to my room to get dressed, I can't go anywhere in my gym clothes," Danny stepped out of the shower and toweled off vigorously.

"I came down here with a t-shirt and my board-shorts. I can go anywhere in that. Including your room," Jared added slyly.

"Well, I can't be seen with someone so shabbily dressed," Danny looked down his noise at the boy, "So go back to your room and get dressed, and tell your mother you met a local staying here at the hotel who's going to show you around town. But for God's sake don't tell her that I'm twenty-two!"

"You're twenty-two?" Jared mock-sneered at him, "I didn't know you were so old!"

"Smartass," Danny threw his wet towel at the boy and stepped into his swimsuit, "Get on out of here, and I'll meet you in the lobby in about half an hour, OK?"

Taking Jared out to the Castro would serve a dual purpose: not only would he get the boy out of the hotel and into a public place where he could no longer chip away at Danny's resolve, but he would also be able to scout his neighborhood on the sly to see if he could go home yet. So, as he rummaged through the opulent clothes in his suite, he tried for a disguise, tried to make himself look as much like a suburban teenage boy as possible so that he would blend with Jared and therefore be less noticeable.

His excessively fashionable wardrobe did not really allow for this...everything was much too grown-up, cut to accentuate his fully-developed body, and terribly expensive-looking. After picking through the cashmeres and silks in frustration, Danny's eyes fell on the rumpled clothes he'd discarded earlier in the morning, the blue-and-white striped dress-shirt and tan linen pants, which the maid had put into a plastic laundry bag to be taken away later by the hotel valet. They were a mess, bearing the evidence that they'd been slept in, and were perfect for a teenager.

Danny put on the pants without a belt so that they hung a little too low, put the shirt on negligently over a white undershirt, half-buttoned and untucked to obscure his torso, and stepped back into his gym-shoes with no socks. He looked perfect, dressed exactly the way his brother used to dress; but he smelled a little stale, so he spritzed a cloud of cologne into the air and walked through it. His hair was as messy as it could get, uncombed since some time the day before, but he carefully washed and moisturized his face to look as young as possible.

I need a hat Danny decided after checking himself out in the full-length mirror, and some sunglasses. After a few moments of wondering what to do, he remembered Marquesa's orders about using services, phoned the concierge, and asked for a baseball hat, a beat up Abercrombie & Fitch if possible, and a pair of black Ray-Ban Wayfarers, to be picked up at the front desk.

Arriving in the lobby a few minutes later, Danny found Jared dancing from foot to foot, acutely embarrassed, dressed in a pair of baggy gray cargo shorts and deck shoes with a huge faded red hoodie over a black t-shirt advertising a band Danny had never heard of.

"My mother won't let me come unless she meets you, first," Jared complained, rolling his eyes in exasperation.

"I wouldn't let you out of my sight, if I was your mother," Danny laughed at Jared's discomfort and was glad that he'd dressed as a teenager; he didn't imagine the mother of such a boy would be pleased to see her son go off with a full-grown man, "But wait a minute, what's her name?"

"Janet."

"Her last name, dummy. I'm not going to call your mother Janet."

"Hayes, Mrs. Brian Hayes. You're not going to suck up to her and be all goody-goody, are you?" Jared curled his lip in disgust.

"Honey, I'm gonna kiss her ass so hard she won't be able to sit down comfortably for a week," Danny punched him playfully on the shoulder, making an effort to take on the character of a teenage boy, "And where do Mrs. Brian Hayes and her beautiful son Jared live?"

"Cincinnati," the boy blushed at the compliment, "Why?"

"Because I want your mother to think that we talked about more than the size of your cock when we met at the pool this morning."

Following the furiously blushing Jared into the small grill-room at the left of the lobby, facing the street, he was confronted with a tall brunette version of his own mother, a clench-jawed debutante in a rigid oversized coiffure and a cashmere twinset that was the wrong shade of green for her taut salon-tanned skin.

"Good morning, Mrs. Hayes, I'm Danny Willard," Danny lied extempore, suddenly realizing that his own name might be recognized and connected to the scandal, "I'm pleased to meet you."

"Good morning, Danny," Mrs. Hayes allowed him to shake her soft, bony hand, which she presented to display a ring that was clearly a family heirloom, dull rose-cut diamonds in gold filligree around a rather apologetic opal, "Would you care to join us for breakfast?"

"No thank you, ma'am," Danny smiled engagingly and launched into a portion of truth, "If you don't mind, I was going to take Jared to this cafe in my neighborhood, maybe introduce him to some of my friends."

"I'm sure that sounds very nice," the lady smiled primly, almost condescendingly, "My son tells me you live locally. Do you live here in the hotel?"

"Oh, no, ma'am. We live on Russian Hill," Danny chose a neighborhood that he was sure an outlander would recognize as posh, "Mom and I are just staying here while the decorators are painting the house."

"Painters are always such an inconvenience," Mrs. Hayes sympathized with a little tilt to her head that made Danny want to slap her.

"I don't mind them, but Mom's allergic to paint fumes. We won't be able to go back home for at least a week," Danny was enjoying the lies he was spinning to lull this snobbish creature into letting him take her baby boy out on the town, "But she told my school we were going to Palm Springs to stay with my grandparents, so I get to play hookey."

"And where do you go to school, dear?" the woman was clearly fishing for information that she could look up in the Social Register. He wished he could see her face when she discovered that the only Willards in there were Marquesa's great aunts.

"I go to Winterhalter Academy," he'd already borrowed Marquesa's name, he figured he might as well borrow his alma mater as well.

"I hope I can meet your mother before we leave tomorrow," Mrs. Hayes put out another feeler.

"I'm sure she'd want to, ma'am, I'll ask her at dinner. She's at work today," Danny made up the excuse wanting to avoid having to produce a whole fake mother, but had to suppress a laugh when he saw the snobbish light go out in Mrs. Hayes's eyes; but if he wanted to get Jared out of this hotel, he'd have to keep laying on the WASP honey, "She's on the board of the Legion of Honor, and their meetings sometimes last all day."

"Committees can be so tiresome," Mrs. Hayes agreed, warming back up... she'd been to the Palace of the Legion of Honor just the day before and could finally relate Danny's story to a concrete credential, "I'll let you boys run along. Don't stay out too late."

"We'll be back before dinner, Mrs. Hayes, I promise," Danny rose and shook her hand again. Jared dismissed her with a bare nod and led the way out of the grill room.

"God, she's such a bitch," Jared moaned as they walked out onto Geary Street.

"Well, she's nicer than my mother," Danny shrugged, pulling on the pre-frayed baseball cap Phillipe had produced for him, "Though mine has nicer jewelry."

"That ring was her great-grandmother's," Jared agreed, delighted to dish his mother, "Mom acts like it's the Hope Diamond or something."

"And breakfasting with no pearls," Danny laughed, laying a hand on his own neck as if searching for a missing necklace, "the horror! Don't even get me started on that helmet-hair."

They made their way down to Market Street, joking about mothers in general and WASP mothers in particular; Danny couldn't help but notice that Jared's mother genuinely loved him despite all her stuffy airs. The very idea of loving mothers always made Danny just a little bit sad; but he shook it off and led Jared through the crowds to a bank where he could change one of his fifties into quarters and small bills.

It was a perfect day for showing someone San Francisco: invigoratingly sunny and clear, warm but with a refreshing cool wet breeze. There was a holiday atmosphere out on the streets, the businessmen had a spring to their steps, the shoppers had a swing to their bags, even the bums and crazies seemed to be happy. And Danny had never felt more at home in his adopted city as he did showing it to Jared, who drank it all in with enthusiasm.

Boarding an F Market streetcar to the Castro, Danny delighted in showing his young friend the landmarks along the way, telling him stories of events in history or his own life that had happened in various places, and describing the Gay Pride Parades he'd seen marching up that very avenue.

Chapter 9, Part 2

2007-05-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Author's Note:

I'm going out of order here, because I've had this scene batting around in the back of my mind for a few weeks now, ever since I started work on Chapter 8. I first thought about making this scene the beginning of Chapter 9, but decided that the tone was all wrong, and introducing a new character after all the ups and downs that precede it would be unwise... the whole scene is too jarring to come immediately after the rather sad end of Chapter 8.

On the other hand, I didn't want to leave this bit hanging around until I finished the first part of Chapter 9, which I am working on now. So here, for your entertainment, is "Chapter 9 Part 2"... a preview, if you will.

R~M

***

"So, what exactly are you proposing?" Detective Varajian asked the young private investigator who'd invited him and his partner to lunch at the noisy local cop-filled diner.

"A pooling of resources, of course," R.J. Casterman, Jr., shrugged in a graceful palms-up gesture that showed off his long elegant hands. He was a strangely beautiful man, with his father's aquiline profile, wild auburn hair, and dramatically elongated figure, but his mother's strong pointed chin, wide voluptuous smile, and slanted amber eyes...his resemblance to a young wolf was startling, especially since he elected to leave his eyebrows unplucked so they met in the middle and crept down toward his nose; his unusually long canine teeth completed the picture of sly lupine menace.

"We know what we have," Detective Spevik mumbled around a mouthful of hamburger, his small eyes darting distrustfully over the young man across the table, hating him passionately, particularly hating his stainless-steel Rolex watch and his tan goatskin Gucci shoes and his brown superfine Cavalli suit and his dark orange Donna Karan cashmere sweater; Spevik didn't know any of those names, but was uncomfortably aware that the combined cost of the outfit nearly equaled his own annual salary, "But what can you offer us?"

"Let's put it this way," R.J. leaned forward onto the table eagerly, "You have the might of the law behind you, and you have one of the best forensic scientists in the world working for you. But you have limitations, checks on your activities, which do not bind me. You have to justify your budget, while I have access to nearly unlimited funds; you have to turn in full reports that become public record, and to comply with a lot of rules about harassment and brutality, under the scrutiny of your superiors and the press, while I have the freedom to bend those rules in complete anonymity, so long as I stay within the letter of the law. You have other cases on your desks, and only yourselves to rely on; but all I have in the world to do is work on this one case, and I have five investigators to do my footwork and three librarians to do my research. I have a lot to offer you."

"But why do you need us if you have all the money and freedom we don't?" Spevik wondered.

"Because you have an authority that I do not possess, witnesses are likely to spill information to a cop that they would hide from a PI. You also have access to information that I do not possess. Now, you have to disclose everything you find to the Defense, that's the law; but you don't have to do it gladly, or in as timely a manner as my father might wish. You don't have to devote as much attention to this case as Mr. Vandervere might require. What I'm proposing is cooperation instead of contest."

"What happens if you find something that implicates Vandervere?" Varajian smiled at young Casterman, enjoying the charisma and enthusiasm that radiated from him like an inner light.

"Ah, a very wise question, sir," R.J. smiled warmly at the older detective, "I am naturally duty-bound to report all of my findings to my father, who will of course have Attorney-Client Privilege with Mr. Vandervere, so I can't just give you anything non-exculpatory; but as a mere adjunct to my father's case, that Privilege becomes a very gray area: my information belongs to the client and is therefore confidential, but I am not exactly under the Seal of Confession, as it were. Between us, as a gentlemen's agreement, if I do learn something that you might have found out, if you'd only known where to look or whom to ask, I can drop a few five-pound hints over a friendly burger without compromising anybody's position."

"But what guarantee do we have?" Spevik insisted, his suspicious nature picking persistently at the offer, "Everything we find will eventually get to you; like you said, it's the law. But how will we know you've been giving us what you find out? You could keep quiet until the trial and we'd never know."

"Well, gentlemen, I really don't believe that's going to happen," R.J. leaned back against the banquette with a smirk that was somehow friendly and vicious at once, "My father didn't get where he is by not knowing whether or not his clients are guilty, and he is absolutely confident that Vandervere is innocent. However, if I did find evidence of Vandervere's guilt... well, I have a vindictive nature. My Dad believes in this kid; if it turns out that he's managed to pull the wool over Dad's eyes, I'll want revenge. Family honor, you know: nobody makes a fool of a Casterman and gets away with it. Does that comprise a satisfactory guarantee?"

"Honor!" Spevik snorted, "I don't believe in honor."

"Do you believe in trust? I'm going to trust you; you can trust me in return."

"I believe in facts. Give us something we can use."

"Naturally," R.J. pulled a thick sheaf of bound paper out of a Fendi leather messenger-bag that no messenger in the world could possibly afford, "Would you be interested in a complete breakdown of who was and wasn't in the apartment building the night Marshall was murdered? My team has already reviewed all of the security tapes, that's about two hundred and fifty hours of video, and can account for the exact population of the building for nearly a week before, and forty-eight hours after, Marshall's death. Plus a few transcript interviews with anybody in the building who might have had a motive, however dim."

"And what would you like in exchange?" Varajian asked, dumbfounded by such a valuable gift... the video analysis alone saved him a requisition of resources that would be impossible to get approved by a cash-strapped police administration.

"All of your evidence to date, including the complete forensic report, and some face-time with Dr. Griggs. Extra tissue samples, if they exist, the tapes of your interviews with Vandervere, and complete records of all criminal activity in and around that building, and the bar where Vandervere met Marshall for, say, six weeks before the murder?"

"Are you fucking nuts?" Spevik almost shouted, shocked by the sudden feral gleam in the young investigator's eyes, "We can't give you confidential police records!"

"Look," Casterman dropped all pretense at friendliness, "my father can subpoena those records, just as the DA can subpoena this dossier I'm giving you. But that will take weeks, and I don't think you want to wait through all the delaying tactics my father is capable of employing when he chooses. I could very easily mail this document to Kazakhstan instead of the Hall of Justice, 'oops, silly me', and none of us would be any farther forward than we are right now. I'm offering you cooperation in exchange for cooperation. You have nothing to lose."

"Except our badges," Spevik retorted.

"Nonsense!" R.J. resumed his engagingly casual facade, "While I would never suggest anything as filthy as blackmail, I do happen to have a taped conversation between my predecessor in the firm and your chief from her days as a detective, doing exactly what I am proposing you do. She will, I'm sure, applaud rather than censure your efforts in furthering this case. And if she doesn't, you can always gently remind her of her not-so-distant past: I happen to have a copy of that tape right here in my pocket, if you're interested."

"We have work to do," Spevik was so disgusted by this conversation, hurt by the revelation of corruption in his captain's past and sickened by the idea of blackmailing a fellow cop, that he only barely restrained himself from punching the contemptible young man in the mouth. He stood abruptly and started toward the door, "Come on, Varajian."

"I'll catch up with you, Spev, the bill hasn't come yet," Varajian answered smoothly.

"Your partner is a trifle hot-headed," R.J. smiled at the retreating Spevik before returning his attention to Varajian.

"I think you offended his sense of honor; he does believe in honor, but only ours. Lawyers and PIs are automatically dishonorable in his eyes; and I have to say, you are a very slippery young man," Varajian said with a certain note of admiration, "but I like the way you think. I believe we can arrange to have the records you request sent over. But let's keep this as above-board as possible: have your office draft a subpoena, and I'll make sure the records are ready for transport on its arrival, and on their way to you before anybody thinks to stop me. Fair enough?"

"A dream come true," R.J. arched an eyebrow in a manner that looked, to Varajian, like flirtation, "I'm very glad you don't share your partner's rather monochromatic views of right and wrong. Would you like the tape?"

"I'd love it," Varajian replied with a sly smile of his own, "I've been wanting something to hold over Captain Morris's head for years."

"I like the way you think," the young man dropped his voice and bit his lower lip gently; nobody could doubt that he was flirting with Varajian.

"But just so you know," Varajian pulled himself back, almost bodily, from the young man's furtive advances, "If you cross me, I will make it my life's mission to have your license revoked and your father brought under Bar review. Neither of you will be able to cross town without getting pulled over for speeding or suspicion of DUI, and bright lights will be shone into every corner of your lives. I know quite well how to avenge myself on someone 'within the letter of the law,' trust me. And if I find out that you've recorded this conversation for leverage against me when I'm captain, I will wring your pretty head off your skinny neck with my bare hands."

"My, but you really know how to sweet-talk a boy, don't you?" R.J. licked his teeth hungrily.

"I know how to watch my own ass," Varajian smiled sweetly as he stood up and buttoned his jacket, "Thanks for lunch."

"Woof," R.J. whispered to himself, watching Detective Varajian's nicely compact ass as he strutted manfully out of the diner with that peculiarly self-assured gait that all policemen share, "I could seriously fall for that one."

***

Chapter Eight (Complete)

2006-12-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Danny woke up on Monday morning happier than he'd ever been in his life. He was sated with sex and with sleep, wallowing in creature-comforts, and luxuriating in the ecstasy of being in love.

Being in love was everything he'd always hoped, fervent and joyous and just a little bit scary; and he discovered that making love to his beloved was so much more supremely satisfying than just having sex — it was a difference of intensity, the difference between surfing a twelve-foot breaker and splashing about in a swimming-pool; the latter was a lot of fun, but the former was ravishing.

Raising himself up on one elbow, Danny looked down into his beloved's face and experienced another all-consuming rush of emotion; he wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh idiotically or burst into tears, to start singing or screaming or hyperventilating. Instead, he kissed Marquesa lightly on the arm and got out of bed gently, careful not to wake him.

Slipping into the feather-light aubergine silk dressing-gown that Saks had sent up for him, Danny moved silently into the sitting room, pulling the door to behind him... Marquesa had been awake much later than Danny had, still on his own internal clock while Danny had gone completely off-schedule from the many upheavals he'd experienced over the weekend, sleeping profoundly but in short snatches and waking up at odd hours.

He called room-service and ordered some coffee, as well as croissants and jam for himself and a platter of fruit and breakfast cheeses for Marquesa (who he now knew was on a low-starch diet and wouldn't eat bread at all), then sat down at the desk and turned on his recharged PDA so that he could check his email and phone messages.

Danny was deeply disappointed that so few people had tried to contact him over the weekend. Perhaps they knew he wasn't home, since the reporters camped outside his house would have reported as much; but that was a fairly weak excuse, since he always gave out his wireless number and email address as well as his landline. It seemed that people were simply distancing themselves from him until the dust settled and they knew what to believe; it was this lack of immediate loyalty that hurt Danny the most. When a person has more than two hundred contacts in his address book, more than half of whom he counts as personal friends, a paltry collection of messages that could be tallied on one's fingers was sorely disappointing.

The Aunt Ems had called, however, shouting pathetically into the device with worried well-wishes, and the family lawyer made a perfunctory-sounding offer of legal advice if needed; the rest of the Vandervere clan and retainers apparently couldn't be bothered... no less than he expected, though it gave him a small pang of pain to be reminded of how little his family regarded him.

Danny wrote a note to the Aunt Ems on hotel stationery rather than attempt a return phone call... they were both a little hard of hearing and had a certain mistrust of machines, so telephone communications with them were always unsatisfactory; notes on nice stationery, though, were cherished by the old ladies, tied with satin ribbons and stashed in tiny escritoire drawers with a sprig of lavender from the garden. Then he called the family lawyer and left a message that his defense was well in hand but the consideration was appreciated. He also sent off a few emails from his PDA, laboriously doodling the letters on the little screen, in response to the few calls and emails he'd received over the weekend.

He handed his letter over to the waiter who brought breakfast, along with his last four oily dollars. As soon as the waiter was gone and the suite returned to silence, Danny turned his attention back to Marquesa, taking his coffee and sliding the bedroom door open, moving an armchair around so that he could sit and gaze at the beloved while he sipped.

The sleeping Marquesa was yet another side of the man that Danny was coming to understand: the pure physical beauty without the dazzling personality driving it was something wonderful to look at, the chiseled body lying loose, the powerful hands palm-up with the long manicured fingers curled negligently, the glittering aggressive eyes closed and tender, the glorious auburn hair spilling untidily over the pillow, the precise mouth slack and snoring quietly. It is a cliché to compare sleepers to innocent angels; but Marquesa looked exactly like an angel fallen to earth, a little disheveled and no longer innocent, yet ready to resume his wings and return to his place on an Italian altarpiece at any moment.

This Sleeping Angel Marquesa was one of numerous different facets that Danny had discovered in his beloved over the last two days; these personalities were so different from each-other, or at least so unexpected in relation to each-other, that Danny had been forced to revise his Marquesa/Marc-Antony paradigm and start coming up with new names for each. And what amazed him the most was that each of these were somehow contained within the others, that the Sleeping Angel Marquesa laying there had all of those other Marquesas lurking inside of him, ready to delight or unsettle but never bore.

What made the whole thing so unnerving was that there were facets within facets: for example, the Glamour-Queen Marquesa, already well-known to Danny, had a sub-persona that he'd dubbed Glamour-Artist Marquesa, the exceedingly focused and rather peremptory craftsman who created that glamour. Danny had encountered this personality on Saturday afternoon, when Marquesa's manservant, Danvers, arrived to assist in the creation of Glamour-Queen Marquesa for the evening.

Danvers was rather a surprise in himself: Danny had envisioned the usual bland functionary, a featureless Jeeves type specially designed to melt into the background; but Danvers was shockingly attractive, tall and burly and ruggedly handsome; and though he was as stoic and correct as anyone could wish in a well-trained English servant, predictably dressed in a flat black nothing suit, there was an impossible-to-ignore smoldering in his steel-blue eyes and a dangerous little smirk barely suppressed on his muscular mouth; the drab black suit was boxy and loose but could not disguise the truly impressive physique beneath, more expected in a marble-quarry than a transvestite's boudoir.

He arrived promptly at six, carrying a large leather makeup case and a slightly smaller jewel-case in his white-gloved hands, leading two bellboys with three large garment-bags and two smaller suitcases — enough luggage for most people to take on a long cruise rather than a short weekend. He greeted Danny with a militaresque little bow and a slightly disdainful flash of his piercing eyes, narrowing on the bath-towel loosely knotted low on Danny's hips, then started setting up shop at the large dressing-table in the bedroom. Marquesa instructed Danny to go out into the sitting-room, order some afternoon tea, then stay there.

Danny had obeyed, though he was curious to watch Marquesa getting dressed, making himself comfortable at the desk in order to check messages and call his tenants about the noise in front of the apartment building, then moving over to the couch to watch television. He dozed for a few minutes, waking with a start when the bellboys returned with a large tea-trolley crowded with silver and crystal and pastel cakes, as well as several shopping bags and a suit-bag from Saks.

Andrew at Saks had completely outdone himself, inspired no doubt by the legendary depth of Marquesa's pockets, sending up more clothes than Danny could wear in a week packed with social engagements, much less holed up anonymously in a hotel. All of the pieces were the highest quality and most expensive items available, several of which Danny had been eyeing for some weeks and which Andrew had remembered he wanted. The dinner-suit in particular was absolutely gorgeous, silk and cashmere sharply tailored to hug his hips and accentuate his shoulders, accompanied by several different types of shirts and five sets of ties and waistcoats (Danny had never cared for cummerbunds, which he imagined made him look fat).

Some little time after the bellboys left, no doubt dismayed by the paltry tip Danny managed from the little bit of cash he had in his County Jail property envelope, Danvers reappeared from the bedroom. Danny, no stranger to public nudity, felt uncomfortably naked under the penetrating gaze of the man, and held the hanging dinner-suit in front of himself defensively.

"Do you require any assistance dressing, sir?" it was so nearly a sneer, with a wry arch to his left eyebrow and a small quiver of his right nostril, that Danny felt like a little boy tracking mud on the carpet.

"No, thank you," Danny got out with some effort, trying very hard not to hang his head and shuffle his feet.

"Very good, sir," Danvers made up a tray with a cup of coffee and a glass of sherry for Marquesa, then returned to the bedroom, leaving Danny to sigh with relief.

After lingering over his tea and nibbling dainty pink cakes while gazing out the window at the people walking on the roof-garden across the way, Danny decided he'd better start getting dressed; he laid out his suit, choosing a tie and waistcoat of heavy chocolate satin embroidered with sky-blue chrysanthemums, a stiff white shirt without pleats or ruffles, a set of heavy topaz links and studs set in dark gold, and black eel-skin opera-pumps with embroidered black socks.

He wondered if he could settle for getting dressed in the sitting-room, but decided his face felt a little stale despite his recent bath, and that his hair was a trifle frizzed and needed wetting; gathering up all the garments he planned to wear and the rather large ostrich-skin dop kit (Andrew knew him well enough to not pack shaving things, though he included a few essential cosmetics that aren't normally found in gentlemen's toiletries), Danny went to the bedroom door and knocked gently.

"What," came Marquesa's voice, an impatiently brusque demand rather than a question.

"I need the bathroom, I want to wash up a little before I get dressed," Danny pushed the door open a crack to peek in. Marquesa was seated at the dressing table, wearing a voluminous off-the-shoulder black taffeta smock that pooled in baroque folds all over the floor around him, dabbing some invisible something on his left eyelid with a long-handled sable brush; Danvers stood behind him, carefully removing long silver curlers from Marquesa's hair and letting the tamed locks dangle and bounce.

"Uh-huh," Marquesa more-or-less grunted, not taking his eyes off the task in the mirror; Danvers spared him a scathing how-dare-you-importune-the-divinity kind of glance as he dropped a handful of silver pins into the open makeup case.

Surprised and a little hurt by this unexpected coldness, Danny retreated into the bathroom and reinforced his dented ego with a thorough inventory of his own beauty, turning this way and that in the mirror; he reminded himself that he was something extremely special, and repeated it until his reflection smiled agreement. Thus reassured, he focused instead on the business of making himself even more beautiful.

He spritzed his dampened hair with a heavy mink-oil conditioner and worked the fluff of curls down into a wavy helmet with a fine-tooth comb, then dabbed royal jelly around his eyes and slapped a thick mask of avocado and clay onto his face. He brushed and flossed his teeth to glittering perfection, slathered his body with sandalwood-infused shea butter, went over his fingernails and toenails with a chamois buffer, washed the mask off with an astringent toner, and brushed the oil out of his hair with a fine boar brush until it gleamed like polished walnut and curled softly down the nape of his neck. A dusting of darkly golden powder around his eyes to make them smolder, a slick of clear gloss on his mouth to make it wet, just the barest whisper of golden mascara to soften the nearly solid line of his lashes, and he pronounced his face complete.

Not willing to put his head back into the lion's mouth quite so soon, Danny took his time getting dressed, waiting until his skin was entirely dry first, then applying pats of talc and dabs of white-linden cologne to various corners of his body as he waited; sliding slowly into the underwear and shirt, he tied his tie seven different times, trying various effects, deciding finally on a softly mussed arrangement that looked a little like a flower. Unfortunately, even the slowest dresser gets into a waistcoat, dinner suit, and shoes with very little time consumed, and there are only so many ways one can only fold a handkerchief; to kill a little more time, Danny sat down on the little stool and went over his fingernails again, filing the edges and pushing back the cuticles before buffing them to a glassy sheen.

"Good God, darling, aren't you dressed yet?" Marquesa called cheerfully from the bedroom.

"Just finishing up," Danny called back, hastily putting away the manicure set and getting to his feet.

Danny stopped short in the door, stunned by the impact of Marquesa's goddess-like magnificence. He was regally robed in a Grecian gown of cornflower-blue chiffon, his waist bound tight by a corset of crisscrossed satin ribbons that gathered into an elaborate bow before trailing off into the voluminous folds of the skirt. His hair was piled high in the Edwardian manner, a fancifully curled and braided chignon studded with diamond stars set on springs to tremble and glint with his every movement; an enormous cabochon sapphire hung from a dainty diamond lavaliere around his throat, with long sapphire pendant earrings winking at his ears and a diamond starburst brooch glittering on his shoulder, his wrists heavily shackled in several wide diamond bracelets.

"Ah, gaping silence, my favorite reaction to a new dress," Marquesa laughed lightly, swinging the fabric of his skirts as if he were about to start waltzing.

"Would it be pointless to say you look fabulous?" Danny finally stuttered out.

"Compliments are never pointless," Marquesa tilted his head forward as Danvers dropped an evening cape over his shoulders, a stiff white satin casing of rather ecclesiastic shape with a standing collar of white coq feathers. He waited for Danvers to hand him his handbag, a crystal-paved Judith Lieber in the shape of an apple, "And you look quite delicious, yourself, so sleekly elegant; and I love you in that waistcoat. Are you ready to go? Thank you, Danvers; that will be all."

With that, Marquesa swept out of the suite, Danny following in his wake like the tail of a comet, down the hall and into an elevator whose operator seemed to be waiting for them; they hadn't even paused in the foyer of the restaurant before the maître-d' appeared to escort them to a perfectly-situated table beside one of the tall French windows with enviable views of both the city and their fellow diners. Danny marveled at the deference that was shown his companion in this hotel, concierges and maîtres-d' falling all over themselves, bellboys and elevator-men rushing to his service without needing to be summoned. Such subtle demonstrations of Marquesa's power were a heady aphrodisiac to Danny.

L'Aurente at dinner was a very different place from L'Aurente at lunch... though the pastoral theme was inescapable, it seemed as if the garden's day had progressed to early evening: the chandeliers were dimmed to give off no more light than a flurry of fireflies, and dark purple spots concealed behind the cornice turned the painted ceiling a twilight violet and rendered the yellow silk wall-panels a deep viney green; the tables and chairs were draped and slip-covered with deep wine damask, and the centerpieces were dark old silver epergnes filled with purplish roses, near-black orchids, miniature eggplants, glossy green laurel, and a half-dozen white candles flickering romantically on each side.

With his gown achieved and appreciated on all sides (there had been an audible gasp when he'd entered the dining-room), Marquesa settled down to be charming and talkative, showing Danny his Society-Hostess persona, a blithe creature of light conversation and almost musical small-talk. Though his beauty remained intoxicating, framed in dark flowers and glimmering candlelight, his gaze was friendly and his expressions flirtatious, his topics limited to clothes, food, and the arts, his questions easily answered and his statements entertaining but unrevealing, putting Danny completely at his ease as they worked their way slowly through a seven-course banquet.

Marquesa had ordered without even looking at the menu, though he appealed to Danny for agreement and wine advice at each course, eschewing sauces and breading of any kind; the food that came was delicious, savory and substantial, whimsically garnished but otherwise quite plain: oysters on the half-shell embedded in ice, clear onion soup with slivered vegetables and a quail's egg floating at the bottom, a duck-liver mousse shingled with truffles and chanterelles, sole braised in goat's-milk and fines herbes, a butter-lettuce salad dressed with fresh mint and lemon, a pork-roast in a nest of steamed rainbow chard studded with tiny onions that didn't seem to have any seasonings on it at all but nevertheless tasted divine, and a selection of light fruits and white cheeses with honeyed walnuts for dessert.

"Well, I'm stuffed," Marquesa admitted, setting down his coffee-cup with an air of finality and leaning back in his chair, "I'm glad the waist of this dress is reinforced, else I'd be sporting a maternity profile."

"I'm sleepy," Danny yawned behind his napkin, "too much protein and too many different wines."

"Shall we go dance, then?" Marquesa stood, placing a hand on his tiny waist as if soothing the ache of a full stomach, and picked up his handbag.

"Dance? Where?"

"There's a ballroom down on the first floor, didn't you know?" Marquesa allowed the maître-d' to drape him in his white cape, then led the way back across the restaurant to the elevators.

The ballroom was a magical place, with mirrors and crystal and pastel allegorical paintings set into gilded rococo plasterwork; a twenty-piece orchestra in a shell-like stage took up one end of the room while a mirror-image shell at the opposite end housed a glittering cocktail bar. The floor was an intricately-patterned parquet, bare in the middle and surrounded by linen-draped tables and little gilded chairs; tall French windows opened onto a rose-garden filled with dancing fountains and voluptuous statues, glowing with fairy-lights and paper lanterns.

The ballroom was sparsely populated, with only a few uninspiring couples staying at the hotel and a smattering of Social locals scattered around the dance-floor; nobody was dancing, though the band was playing a sprightly jazz standard.

"Could you ask the band to play some ballroom for me, Bertrand?" Marquesa discreetly slipped a folded packet of bills into the head-waiter's hand as they were seated at a little table in the first ring around the dance-floor.

"Bien-sûr, Mademoiselle Willard-Wilkes," the man bowed deeply and scurried off to the band-shell to give orders.

"You do know how to dance, don't you, darling? Ballroom, I mean?" Marquesa asked.

"Of course," Danny laughed, "It's still part of the WASP regimen, at least in our remote corner of the world. I'm not very imaginative with the tango, but I can manage most of the standards."

"Well, then, when they play a tango, I'll lead. Shall we?" he reached out his hand and hauled Danny to his feet, leading him into the very center of the floor as the band launched into a lusty rendition of Strauss' "Emperor Waltz."

This isn't just love, Danny exulted as they whirled around the dance-floor in the giddy rhythm of the opulent Viennese tune, this is romance! It was the kind of love one sees in old movies, full of glamour and excitement and beauty, perfectly chaste but with the promise of fantastic pleasures to come. He felt almost sick from a surfeit of happiness.

After the waltz, they danced a fox-trot, a beguine, a samba, a fairly tame jitterbug, and a perfectly spectacular tango (with Marquesa leading, as promised); breathless and laughing after their performance, they collapsed into their chairs and summoned a waiter while the band, equally exhausted, took a well-deserved break.

"Would you like liqueurs or champagne?" Marquesa asked, fanning himself with the little menu card from the table, "Or perhaps coffee?"

"Why choose?" Danny asked after some thought, "How about a coffee liqueur with a champagne chaser?".

"Trying to get me drunk, are you? I should warn you, I can outdrink any sailor. Two Sabrosos, Louis," Marquesa turned to the waiter, "and a bottle of... what? Veuve Clicquot, I suppose."

"No Domaine de Sequemont?" Danny asked, remembering Valerien's family winery.

"Oh, God no," Marquesa rolled his eyes and lounged into his chair, one elbow perched on the back with the other arm extended to the table, a pose that Danny was beginning to recognize, "I have to drink that swill whenever I'm with Val, I'll be damned if I'll drink it when I'm not."

"I'd hardly call it swill," Danny smiled, gently defending their mutual friend, "it's well-known as the finest California champagne."

"Yes, well, California champagne... I'm only kidding, of course. But I really do have to drink an awful lot of it, Valerien simply won't let anyone have anything else. On another topic," he stood abruptly and snapped up his handbag, "I'm dying for a cigarette; would you join me for a stroll in the garden while we wait for Louis to find a bottle of Sabroso?"

The garden was freezing, but they were so overheated from their dancing that the slap of chill against their skins was quite refreshing. They walked slowly and silently around the perimeter while Marquesa smoked a pungently fragrant black cigarette, interlacing their fingers and bumping shoulders occasionally, smiling into each-other's eyes and simply wallowing in the romance.

Returning to their table, they proceeded to get very silly and giggly over two bottles of Veuve Clicquot and five Sabrosos each, taking to the dance-floor whenever the band played something they both liked, singing to each-other when they knew the words, and generally overplaying the part of a courting couple with a good deal of zest.

The romance took an abrupt turn when they got back to the suite, whereupon Marquesa suddenly discarded the Society Hostess persona — along with the blue dress, the jewels, and the convoluted coiffure — revealing another facet of his personality: gone was the light conversation and subtle allure, to be replaced by a focused and fearsome intensity, a deliberate and merciless creature who ripped Danny's clothes off of him without ceremony, dragged him bodily onto the bed, and had his way with him. After the first three hours of being subdued, manipulated, and generally worked over in a most satisfying manner, Danny decided to call this personality "Power-Top Marquesa."

When Danny and Marquesa were together the first time, Valerien's presence had lightened and diffused Marquesa's intensity, making him fun and frolicsome; the second time his intensity had been limited by the narrowness of the bathtub. But alone and with a whole room in which to operate, the intensity was ferocious, coolly calculating but fiercely heated.

Marquesa was in complete control, not only of his own body but of Danny's as well, intent on eliciting specific responses from both of their bodies and on orchestrating their pleasures with mathematical precision. He didn't talk, or croon, or cuddle: he fucked, simply and completely, with all of his attention and resource; if he wanted Danny to move, he moved him, and if he wanted Danny to give something, he took it without asking. He was gentle but implacable, slow of movement but relentless in purpose.

And though it was a little frightening at times, having no control over what was happening, Danny absolutely loved being dominated in this way by this man. It was a domination that didn't have to rely on cheap tricks of bondage (though silk scarves and asphyxiation did come into play during the third and fourth rounds) to create a pretense of domination: it was the domination of a forceful will over a more pliable will, the domination of a strong body over a body of nearly equal strength... and though Danny submitted gladly, he couldn't quite escape the feeling that, if he hadn't, Marquesa would have done exactly as he pleased anyway.

In between these strenuous episodes, however, they shared the fragrant black cigarettes (which Marquesa imported from England, made-to-order from pipe-tobacco), snacked on lavish trays of food ordered down from l'Aurente, bathed together in deep hot bubble-baths, and dozed together loosely intertwined on the rumpled bed. In these quiet in-between periods, Marquesa relaxed his formidable facade, giving over to yet another personality: the Sensitive Boy.

Sated and dreamy, he talked about his childhood, of growing up alone in a cluttered, crumbling pink mansion that had been frozen in time since the 'Twenties, his only companions his eccentric elderly great-aunts and a couple of equally elderly servants. Aunts Eulalie and Eugenia had educated him, only allowing him outdoors to play alone in the back garden between lessons, and he never set foot through the front door of the house except on Sundays, when he and the Aunts bundled into an old Packard limousine in order to attend services at Grace Cathedral. The Aunts never went out, otherwise, and never imagined that the little orphan boy in their care would want to.

It wasn't until he was eleven years old that he was let out for a social education: a dashing German prince and his beautiful ten-year-old daughter moved into the little white marble palace across the street, causing a great deal of flutter in Social circles; the little Princess was considered a fit companion for the Last of the Willards (the Aunts actually called him that), so he was allowed to play with her and share her dancing and riding lessons, learning to swim and shoot at her country-club, and being introduced to her other carefully-chosen friends.

Then at fifteen, he was finally sent to school; the Aunts sold off a trio of townhouses from the two little blocks of Richmond District property that remained of their once-vast fortune, and used the proceeds to send him to the most exclusive private school in the city; there he was expected to receive the finishing touches of a gentleman's education with such pursuits as literature, history, politics, and fencing. It was there he met Valerien, who became his first lover and then his closest friend, the nearest thing to brotherhood that either of them had ever experienced.

Marquesa told Danny all these things with an air of having never told anyone before, his narrative full of pauses as he searched for the right word or untangled a skein of suppressed memories; Danny dozed off during the stories quite frequently, his dreams building themselves around the sound of Marquesa's voice, illustrating the words as if in a film: Danny could see the lonely little boy, a delicate sprite with flaming hair and glittering eyes, buried alive in a spooky old mansion with a pair of dusty Miss Havishams; he saw the little German princess, whom his imagination turned into Shirley Temple in Heidi, and the first taste of society and freedom at the country-club; he saw the teenaged Marquesa and the teenaged Valerien banding together in a mock-Gothic school filled with pedigreed boys, pedantic professors, and pederastic chaplains.

He didn't think it was possible to love Marquesa more than he already did, but this revelation of the lonesome little boy who was the precursor to the awesome multifaceted divinity, this rare show of vulnerability, touched Danny's heart deeply.

Even more touching, Marquesa didn't dominate the conversation, he instead stopped his own stories to ask about Danny's life at the same ages; he listened closely while Danny shared everything about his own childhood, the lonely feeling of being different from the rest of his family, dark where they were fair, pretty where they were handsome, and sweet-natured where they were arrogant; he talked of the offhand brutality with which his brothers and cousins excluded him from their pastimes and ridiculed him for his peculiar ephebic beauty, the distant coldness of his disapproving parents, and the distrust of the townies for the entire Vandervere clan.

Danny also talked of his delight at being taken over by the Aunt Ems, the wonderful novelty of being loved and paid attention and taught deportment and grace; he spoke too of his unending quest to be loved by everyone he met, his efforts to charm the townies into liking him despite his name, his desperate need to enchant teachers and neighbors and tradesmen, even the family servants.

Most of Sunday passed in talking and eating and fucking and bathing, and Danny was still almost nauseated by the overwhelming bliss of being in love with such a remarkable creature, and more importantly of being loved by such a remarkable creature... for though they did not speak of love, Danny felt absolutely certain that this was, at long last, Love with a capital L...the thing he'd been dreaming of all his life.

Late on Sunday evening, Danny woke from a rather deep sleep, startled to find himself alone on one side of the bed... it was the first time in almost twenty-four hours that Marquesa hadn't been touching him somewhere.

He turned over the find his beloved, squinting against the light of the bedside lamp, and was a little bit shocked by the new persona Marquesa had adopted in the meantime: the Serious Businessman. He was wearing a white hotel bathrobe, his hair pulled back tight, sitting comfortably against the head of the bed with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose, a yellow wooden pencil clutched in his teeth, and a blue-enameled pen in his hand. A large leather folio lay open on his lap, and a variety of important-looking papers were fanned out around him.

"You're wearing glasses," Danny blurted out a little stupidly.

"Farsighted," Marquesa admitted, looking at Danny fondly over the top of the tortoise-shell frames, "I need them to read. I'm surprised you didn't notice before, you're usually so observant."

"I noticed that you never read menus," Danny sat up and crossed his legs under him to peer over at Marquesa's papers, "but I didn't attribute it to eyesight, I thought you just didn't care. What are you doing?"

"Comparing estimates. The summer repair season is coming up, and most of my buildings need maintenance of one kind or another. These estimates are for roofing, and no two roofers ever write their estimates the same, so I have to go over them very carefully to get a complete picture of the relative costs."

"What kind of buildings?" Danny wanted to keep the conversation going, slightly chilled by Marquesa's withdrawal from him.

"Apartment buildings, mostly, and a few blocks of townhouses, a handful of large commercial properties, stuff like that. Rental property is just details, details, details. Every block is a series of houses, every house is a series of rooms, every room is a series of fixtures... and then you put people in all of them, and the details multiply exponentially. It never ends," he stated dispassionately, punching numbers into a calculator while making notes on several different papers.

"Why don't you have someone else do it?"

"Because then I wouldn't know where my money was going, nor where it was coming from," he said without looking up or stopping his note-making, "and I'd be bored silly. I leave my money assets to my accountants, but I like to keep my finger on the pulse of my real estate. It's really quite fascinating; it's in my blood, you know, the Willards have always been involved in land development. We built this hotel, even. I don't own it, it's one of the things we lost in the Crash, but there's a Roman 'W' carved into the cornerstone nonetheless."

"Well, now I know who to ask for advice on my own little properties," Danny lounged down onto the bed in what he hoped was a sufficiently provocative pose to tear Marquesa's attention away from his estimates.

"My advice would be to sell them to me at a very cheap price," Marquesa smirked, taking off the glasses and folding them into the folio with all the papers, "You must never ask advice from a competitor, darling. Now, let's see if we can find some better occupation for your mouth than idle chatter."

After a brisk thirty minutes of being fucked into the mattress with Marquesa's tongue shoved down his throat, Danny curled up against his beloved and went back to sleep; once he'd caught his breath, Marquesa drew his folio back into his lap and continued his business one-handed, his other hand stroking Danny's hair.

***

Danny was so enrapt with his memories that he didn't notice that Marquesa was awake and staring back at him.

"Why do you stare at me so?" Marquesa wondered, not moving from his sleeping position.

"You're so beautiful and fascinating," Danny answered truthfully, a little surprised by the sloppy emotionalism audible in the statement.

"I guess that's a good reason," Marquesa sat up and smiled, patting the empty spot on the bed where Danny had recently been asleep, "But I'd rather you stared at me from here."

"Can't you see me better from a distance, Four-Eyes?" Danny teased.

"Of course, but as long as my cock is, I don't think you can reach it from all the way over there."

"You can reach it yourself, can't you?"

"So I can," Marquesa admitted, kicking aside the bedclothes and pulling gently at his immense cock, bloated but not hard, his eyes riveted to Danny, "Can you reach yours? Show me."

Danny and Marquesa sat and watched eachother masturbate for a few minutes, but neither of them got completely hard nor seemed particularly interested in the exercise.

"Well, I didn't think it was possible," Marquesa let go of his cock and let it drape heavily across his thigh, "But I think we're both completely fucked out. Another round might kill us both."

"But what a way to go," Danny replied, a little bit disappointed in his body for giving up like that, and crossed the room to lay down on top of Marquesa in hopes of reigniting the flame.

"Honestly, child, you're insatiable! Why don't you go take another shower?" Marquesa got out of bed and put on the white bathrobe, "You're the mos' showerin-est man I ever done met."

"Why don't you join me?" Danny sat up and wrapped his arms around Marquesa's waist, nuzzling his face into the folds of the robe.

"I need to make some phone calls," Marquesa replied, his voice returning to the dispassionate Businessman tone as he pulled Danny's arms away and stepped back, "Leave me alone for a few minutes, OK?"

"Okay," Danny grumbled, thrusting out his lower lip and making puppy-dog eyes.

"I'll join you in a minute," Marquesa relented, grabbing a fistful of Danny's hair and shaking his head around.

"Hooray!" Danny cried, bouncing out of bed and into the bathroom.

As he stood beside the tub adjusting the faucets, Danny could faintly hear Marquesa dragging the phone onto the bed and tapping the buttons with his long nails; and though he couldn't hear the words, there was a strangely soft tone in his voice that he'd not heard before, a tone that arrested Danny's attention and drew him back toward the door; he didn't intend to eavesdrop, but he was curious, trying to guess who Marquesa could be talking to in that sinuous voice.

"I don't care what people are going to think," Marquesa was saying... was he sulking or smiling? Danny couldn't tell, "What difference does it make? I'm helping him because I want to, and the rest is nobody else's business... yes, but I don't care... I know... Yes, I know... I told you, I like him, I like him a lot... of course not! You know I'd never... you know I love you, Richard. I like Danny a lot... yes, maybe I do love him a little... a little! That doesn't change how I feel about you."

Danny didn't really attend to the rest; he heard a promise to tell this Richard person "all about it" over lunch the next day, and he heard Marquesa sign off with a softly passionate "I love you, Richard" before hanging up and starting another phone-call; but it only barely registered against the clanging, shattering, obliviating disappointment Danny experienced as his dream of love fell to a million jagged pieces. He didn't know how long he stood there, turned to a pillar of salt, tears streaming silently down his face; but he was still standing there when Marquesa came in and found him in the doorway.

"Darling, what's wrong?" Marquesa asked in alarm, reaching out to touch the tears on Danny's face.

Danny wanted to sit down on the floor and wail, but he knew that Marquesa would try to comfort him, and he didn't think he could stand that.

"You have a lover," he finally croaked out, looking down at the floor instead of at Marquesa.

"Well, of course I have! I thought you knew," Marquesa took a step backward as the slow realization of Danny's confusion became clear to him, "Everybody knows about Richard and me. I'm sure I mentioned him to you."

"I guess you did," Danny turned away, remembering the three or four mentions of 'a lover,' which he'd tricked himself into believing was a generality rather than a specific person, "I guess I didn't want to hear it, so I didn't hear it."

"Oh, my poor darling," Marquesa finally understood that Danny had been dreaming of an exclusive relationship between them, that he'd thought this was the beginning of romantic love rather than of carnal friendship, "If I had any idea you didn't know, I would have said something before."

"Richard who?" Danny asked, stalling for time as he tried to regain his footing.

"Richard Allenwhite. You've probably met him around town."

"No. He's married, though, isn't he? With kids?"

"Yes," Marquesa sounded defensive, "I take it you disapprove?"

"No, I guess not," Danny shrugged. And thinking about it, he didn't have room to disapprove, he'd screwed his share of married fathers before and not thought much of it... aside from a vague pity for the wives and children who potentially had a nasty surprise in their future, "Does his wife know about it?"

"Honey, everybody knows about it," except you he stopped himself from saying.

"She doesn't mind?" Danny glanced into the mirror at Marquesa standing behind him, trying to put himself into this other family's situation instead of feeling his own pain.

"I suppose Cornelia pretends to mind when people tell her the gossip, she certainly never lets on that she knows all about me and always has. We're actually friends, after a fashion... but we don't speak in public."

"How very cosmopolitan," Danny caught himself sneering and shook himself out of it, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm just disappointed. I hoped for more. I wanted more."

"Well, if it's a relationship you want," Marquesa resumed his businesslike tone, but wrapped his arms around Danny from behind, "You should go out with Valerien. He's unattached, and very romantically-inclined. And I know he likes you a lot. I like you a lot, too."

"So I heard," Danny quipped bitterly, then immediately hated himself for it, "I'm sorry...again. Too many emotions the last few days, I'm falling apart a little bit."

"Maybe I should go, give you some space to pull yourself together," Marquesa picked up a brush and a handful of hairpins, deftly taming his jumbled hair into a smoothly braided coil at the back of his neck.

"That's a good idea," he said reluctantly after watching silently as Marquesa fixed his hair, "I need some time to process."

"You and I are going to be very good friends, aren't we?" Marquesa sounded slightly unsure of himself for a moment, catching Danny's eyes in the mirror.

"Of course," Danny threw his arms around Marquesa's waist and kissed his cheek. I can still be friends with him, it isn't all over, he told himself, and I can fall in love with Valerien instead, "I think I'll take my shower now."

"Good, darling; I'm going to go get dressed."

Danny stood under the water until it went tepid, crying quietly as he let the disappointment rip through him; he was hurt in exactly the same proportion as he'd been happy earlier, perhaps even a little moreso, and the feeling of heartbreak was as new to him as the feeling of love had been. He tried, as he had with the love, to encompass it with reason, to analyze the feelings as they rampaged about; but he couldn't wrap his mind around the enormity of it all. He eventually gave up, and since his crying had stopped and the hot water was all gone, he got out of the shower and returned to the bedroom.

"You look so yummy wet," Marquesa observed while clipping a large square amethyst to his earlobe. He was dressed in a rather equestrian suit of dark violet peau de soie trimmed in glossy black satin, his slender calves sheathed in tall black boots, and a soft black scarf around his throat fastened with an Art Deco amethyst brooch. An abbreviated black top-hat and veil lay on the bed alongside a pair of black gloves and a black handbag.

"And you look yummy in that suit," Danny smiled; no matter how hurt he was, he was still an admiring slave to the exquisite beauty that Marquesa created, "All you need is a riding crop, and you could be on horseback, chivvying a fox."

"The skirt's to narrow for riding," Marquesa laughed, glad that the gloominess in the bathroom had passed and they were back on happy terms, "And I've never hunted fox. Deer, rabbit, and pheasant, sometimes duck though I don't like hiding in a covert. Do you hunt?"

"I've been deer-hunting," Danny admitted, sitting on the bed and watching Marquesa put on the hat and gloves, "but I'm too squeamish about it. The sight of blood freaks me out, and I hate the sound of guns."

"Oh, deer-hunting with a gun is for pussies. You can't shoot a gun from horseback, anyway. I use arrows for game."

"Do you wear a Greek tunic and a crescent moon in your hair?" Danny giggled at the picture in his mind of Marquesa in the voluminous Classical evening gown of Saturday night, on horseback with a silver bow and arrow.

"I usually wear a simple blue habit," Marquesa replied distractedly, his attention devoted to arranging the net veil around his face, "velvet for cool weather and poplin in the summer."

"Sensible," was all Danny could think of to say.

"The deer don't see me coming, they're color blind, you know; but other hunters see the blue and don't shoot," he picked up the handbag, checking to make sure it contained everything he'd need, "You'll be OK by yourself won't you? You know you can stay as long as you like, you can call downstairs for anything at all you might need."

"I'll be fine," Danny got up and followed Marquesa into the sitting room.

"Don't be afraid to ask for whatever you want, I'll have no independent-minded reticence from you," Marquesa put his arms out and Danny melted into him automatically, "Danvers will be coming by later this afternoon to pick up my luggage. I'll instruct him to bring some suitcases for your use, as well. Do you want anything from your apartment?"

"No, thank you," Danny said into Marquesa's shoulder... Marquesa was now taller than him in the stiletto-heeled boots. Marquesa kissed him, intimately but without passion, and left. Danny stayed there leaning in the doorframe for a quite a while, until he realized he was standing naked in the hallway for a five-star hotel, and decided to go back to sleep.
____________________________

14 Pages ~ 7,178 Words