Chapter 5 #2
On the last Saturday evening, at a bit of a loss after watching Chary board the overnight train to Maine right on schedule, and disinclined to follow him—he had done so last Saturday, spending twelve hours on a train and back again only to confirm Chary Wright attended Catholic mass at a tiny St. Michael’s in the middle of nowhere and then spent the rest of a very boring Sunday reading on the porch of his rural mansion in the middle of nowhere.
The worst thing about small towns was that asking questions of Church Ladies was out of the question.
Laurie determined to go back to basics. His old beats, maybe.
Bars, haunts, dark park alcoves, street corners.
Enough of rich men and their eccentricities.
With luck, he wouldn’t have to pull any more strings with Hiram Sumner, either.
“I don’t need your help finding a fairy saloon in Brooklyn, H,” Laurie snapped, in office on the Friday next. “You set me up once. Knowing your kinda place, I’d end up tied up and spit-roasted in a basement.”
“There’s a visual I didn’t need.” Hiram grabbed his hat and coat from their hook and smirked. “How about I come along to make sure ropes don’t happen? It’s been a while since we’ve gone hunting as a double-edge.”
It was something they’d done before. They worked well as a pair, Laurie’s masculine, normal-facing appearance contrasting Hiram’s knife-sharp pretty.
There was a reason—several reasons—he’d connected Hiram to precise and obvious Tjofabier Raberding: in company, Hiram presented quite feminine.
He was slim, smaller, with blue-grey eyes, smooth black hair, compact features lined up neat in a heart-shaped face.
Cream rouge on his cheeks, not just the unseasonable May heat: a signature.
Laurie had once held him in a certain starry-eyed regard, had erroneously extrapolated their professional relationship to something more in his head, thinking it meant something that Hiram knew what it was to be looked at and judged, typified in the same (but flipped) way Laurie was. Thinking they’d fit because of it.
They hadn’t. He’d gotten over it, though.
Laurie’s regard turned out to be, outside of a few incidental threesomes, completely unrequited.
Hiram had only ever wanted Laurie’s job—he tolerated his friendship—and not Laurie himself.
The dismissal still stung sometimes, especially when Hiram was in this sort of sleek, taunting mood.
Laurie was vaguely aware that it was meant to sting and keep stinging, and left vaguely wondering if he was supposed to enjoy it.
“You don’t exactly draw in the kinda source I’ll be looking for there.”
A raised eyebrow said Hiram drew in whatever kind of man he wanted, thank you. Laurie clarified hastily: “You’re too high-class, I mean.”
“Hm.” Hiram didn’t back down. “I will stay on the periphery while you hunt your rough.”
“For god’s sake, H, it’s Brooklyn. I don’t need minding. Or is this penance for throwing me at Raberding like an altar offering?”
“No one forced you to flirt with that shark, much less tell him what you like. Aren’t you Presbyterian?”
“I’m not anything anymore, Puritan. And I think you knew he’d smell blood.”
“Did I?” Settling his top hat (proving Laurie’s point), Hiram gave him an assessing, rouge-bright look. “Did you like him?”
Maybe Hiram had set him up with intentions. “He has my card,” Laurie said evasively.
Hiram said nothing. His irises were unnervingly pale, clouds over blue sky; sometimes, the pupils reflected light, like a cat’s.
“Is this you endorsing him?” Laurie asked. “At least change out of that suit, if you’re coming. Put on a cap.”
“I don’t know that I endorse anyone. As you keep telling me, L, you can mind your own self. Also: no.”
Laurie groaned. “If you screw with my snagging a union source, Sumner, I’m telling Sam.”
“Rat,” Hiram taunted mildly.
What this bar trade of a source had going for himself, in Laurie’s eyes—besides thighs to rival his own but firmer, and pectorals like a pulled-back bow—was that he was not an heir to a glassworks, only a gaffer for one.
(Brooklyn Glass. Union. Local #68.) That he wasn’t a millionaire.
He was, in fact, a part-time prostitute, which was fine.
Better than fine. Laurie liked to put his money where his mouth was.
Unfortunately, Laurie’s mouth wasn’t currently liking where it was put. The man’s lips were cold, and the tip of his nose, too.
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.”
Laurie relaxed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Pretty much.”
“It’s my only night off. D’you understand?”
Laurie nodded sheepishly. The man threw down his cig onto the threshold and stomped it.
“So, you can do me a kindness and tell me what you really wanted from this. Saw you eyein’ my union badge. And your name.” His brows rose. “’Cuz I can tell you’re not lyin’ about bein’ New York Scotch. And what if we’re related.”
Laurie laughed. “We’re not.” He paused. “You from Ulster county?”
“Naw. Farther upstate. Olean.” He pointed to himself. “Irving Sawyer.”
“Laurie.”
Irving’s eyes were keen. “Laurie…?”
Laurie shrugged. It was a popular name. He was one of a hundred reporters at the Appeal, out of perhaps thousands in New York City. Even so. Another small piece, irretrievable.
“At least I got that much. You like givin’ it instead, Laurie?”
Laurie stared. “No.”
Irving smiled wryly. “No hope for my redemption, then. Shame.”
“I…” Laurie coughed. “…wouldn’t say that, exactly.”
Irving held the door open. “You wanna coffee?”