Page 18 of By Any Means

At least Tjofabier Raberding had made his heart beat. Had noticed when he recoiled, even when he’d relished it. Tonight, when sticky fingers came around to bother with Laurie’s—rather uninterested—cock, Laurie had to intervene with a firm hand around a wrist.

“No.”

“’Kay. Sorry.” The man removed his hand, surprised but determined, as well as paid; he kept on. He’d already been accommodating with Laurie’s unusual request to receive, and also the prophylactic. Laurie wouldn’t confuse the man further.

After, the man lit up a cigarette, then lay on the mattress in his suspenders, breeches pulled back up, ankles crossed, sated. The pectorals were a serious boon. The man was perfectly handsome. What was wrong with Laurie?

“I don’t think you are a valet,” the man declared.

Uh-oh. Cracks were showing. Laurie stole the cig, put his lips to it. “No?”

“Naw.” That drawl was half of what had drawn Laurie to him; the other half was his blond hair. He’d picked up the man at Boone’s, a Park Slope pub known for its all-night hours serving the early-morning exodus from Brooklyn Glass. (Hiram had kept his word, his distance, and the suit. None of it had stopped him from picking up his own rough, a tall, dark behemoth with a Western hat and a long black mustache.)

Laurie’s man had had a Local #68 pin on his lapel and a handsome smile on his face, and they’d bonded over a bit over what it was to be New York Scotch-Irish in a city ruled by Tammany Hall. That, Laurie obviously hadn’t had to feign. But he tended to give his sources some piece of truth.

“What’re you calling me, then?” Laurie asked.

“Nothing. Only you’re too angry to do well in service, seems like to me.”

Laurie let go of the smoke gradually. “Hmm.” Funny. He had come close enough to valeting, ten years earlier, and with all his anger just the same as it was. Maybe even worse than it was now. “What’s a gaffer know of service?”

“Plenty. You think I didn’t notice?” The man took the cig back. “Though you’re good-lookin’ enough for it.”

Laurie grunted.

“Tidy-lookin’. Nice thick hair. And you did take a cock well.”

“Usually,” Laurie said, “I like it.”

“Uh-huh. So maybe. What do I know of servicing?”

“What about it?” Laurie sat up. “You’re calling me a fairy?”

“That an insult?” He gave Laurie a lazily critical look through smoke haze, watched as he got dressed. “See, angry? But then what are you, besides lyin’? What’d you want if not a fuck?”

Dammit. He shouldn’t have done this. It never ended well when the sources started asking the questions, flipping it around on him. But he was dressed now, so he opened the door to the fire escape. Gone was what he was. “’Bye.”

“Hey” —the man hinged upward—“what? Wait, don’ actually run off; it’s my only night off, an’ you paid⁠—”

Laurie closed the door against the man’s protest, then stood outside it for a moment, listening to the hanging chain lock wobble and scrape loosely on the other side. He waited for it to be picked up, slid over, and locked. Or angrily opened.

It wasn’t. The smell of the street beneath him wafted up, urine and wet creosote and brick moss. Lazy rain fell onto Laurie’s face as he turned it to the sky and blew out a breath.

I’m tired of this. Even with men of his own class, he was sick of it—wearied of playing a role. That was new. Roles were his job.

Maybe he should’ve gone with Chary Wright when he’d had the chance. He hadn’t been himself, not wholly, but at least he’d felt something. Compulsion and intrigue and desire. And Raberding would’ve let Laurie in as far as he wanted, probably, let him in to every secret and nuance. Now he needed this union man for a fresh lead. Any lead.

Laurie gritted his teeth. Swallowed his pride. Turned around to the door.

It swung open.

“You haven’t left,” came a shocked grumble.

Laurie shut his own surprised mouth. He put a hand back against the fire-escape rail, in case he had to duck and swing down. But unless the man was the coldest sucker-punching bastard Laurie’d ever witnessed, he had no violence forthcoming.

“No.”

“You’re a shit, ’s’what y’are.”