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Richie winces. “You do realize most of Mount Everest is made up of trash, human feces, and corpses due to an overwhelming crisis of tourism and near-impossible upkeep, right?”
I pop another fry into my mouth. “No idea. So other than the homeless guy outside who tried to steal your shoes, and the general stench of alcohol and glitter on the streets, how do you like your first time in my part of town?”
Richie glances at the window fondly. “You still gave the homeless fellow money.”
“Of course. I know there’s a possibility it might go straight to a drug dealer, and maybe I’m turning a blind eye to some bigger problems by trying to solve the smaller ones … but some cash might also be all it takes to change a starved person down on their luck into a person who’s been fed one more day.” I give a brief, fleeting thought to the homeless I was feeding just this morning, both the grateful ones and the bitter. “I can’t imagine what it’s like. I can’t stand to have a single moment of being happy when it feels like so many out there suffer.”
“While I appreciate your sentimentality and … and your clear passion for wanting to help …” He shakes his head in disbelief. “… you must realize on some level how unusual you are. To care so much about everyone else before yourself.”
I don’t want to dismiss his flattery outright like an asshole, but I don’t do what I do to be flattered. “I could be doing more,” I point out sincerely. “Much … much more. You can’t just toss money into a guy’s weatherworn shoe and call yourself a hero. It is constant work, day in, day out. I don’t have any delusions. And I’m not always right. What if I’m causing more harm by feeding the beast of making men pay for my attention, whether on cam, or on a stage? Am I making the world worse?” I take a fevered sip of my float, then fight off brain freeze as I pinch my nose, forgetting for a moment what the hell it is. “Fuck, that is cold.”
When my eyes open, I find Richie with his elbows on the table, staring at me with a fascinated look on his face.
It makes me laugh for some reason. “What is it? I got ketchup on my face?”
“That’d be quite a feat, considering neither of us are using any for our fries or burgers. Nope.” Richie tilts his head, as if to get me at a different angle. “Just when I think I have you figured out, you go and show me a whole new facet of you. I wonder how many facets there are.”
I study him a moment. “Is this about the kiss?”
He smiles. “No. Well, not just the kiss. It’s you. Your endless struggle to … do the right thing. Your inner virtue. Your passion. This is a really damned fine burger, by the way,” he interrupts himself as he points to what remains of his: three and a half bites, by the look of it. “You can eat this whenever you want? This amazing place just sits here, right around the corner from your apartment? Anyway, I think it isn’t about the big picture. The world and all its suffering can’t be saved by any one person. It is the little things that each of us do … I believe … that can save the world, one small clink of coins in a homeless man’s shoe at a time.”
“I think you’re saving me with one small word at a time,” I mutter.
Richie looks so handsome when he’s trying not to blush, appearing strong and self-assured despite his clear, inner giddiness at my words.
The server comes by on skates at that precise moment, a teenager with a purple faux-hawk, and I give him my card. Richie protests, but I quickly stop him with a, “Sorry, Captain, but this one’s on me.” He settles back into his seat, conceding to my kindness with a smile and a nod.
My next treat is a peek behind the curtain of a familiar place that I suspect Richie won’t find very familiar at all … in person. It’s well past sundown when I take him up the front stone steps of Piazza Place, where we gently sidestep a frowning, bushy-haired teenager who is hard at work on a new chalk drawing on the first step. I take Richie up the five flights of stairs, then slide the key into my door and take him past the threshold—the likes of which no one’s seen save myself and my landlord Dante.
Before I get him all the way in, Richie kicks off his shoes and leaves them by the front door. I am about to tell him he doesn’t have to do that, but instead decide to follow suit and take my shoes off as well, setting them next to his, before leading him further into the apartment. The room I use for camming is off the kitchen, which Richie seems to find fascinating. “I recognize it, and yet …” He observes the nondescript feel of the room, which gives away little as to where I am. It could be a room in Florida. It could be the back office of a house in an Illinois suburb. From the angle of the cam toward the corner of the room, it could be a shack in the backyard of some small Texas town. Richie marvels at that very fact, then observes the window and the fire escape outside of it, which runs along the building and connects to the second bedroom of the apartment across the hall from mine where I believe Brett’s roommate Connor stays in, as my apartment is essentially a mirror of his. “You could put potted plants out here,” Richie notes. “They’d get good sunlight!”
