Tart and Soul Read online

“Come with me, now,” Cam ordered, the demand barely making it out from between his clenched teeth.

  “I can’t.” Joshua pulled his glasses from his coat pocket and put them on. A safety pin secured one arm and the right lens was cracked. A raindrop trickled down the lens like a tear. He looked away.

  Cam followed Joshua’s glance down the street; a bright red BMW skulked under a shot-out street lamp.

  “I gotta work.”

  “I’ll pay you,” Cam replied huskily. “I have money.”

  Joshua barked out a tragic note. “I know you do. And I know how you earn it, too.” Joshua’s gaze dropped to the wet sidewalk at his feet. “God! I wish I’d left with you that night.”

  “Me, too, Joshua. Come with me now,” he repeated.

  “I can’t, dude. Marco will see us together and beat living crap out of me. You gotta go. Right now.”

  A car door slammed; Cam watched Joshua’s pimp move menacingly towards them. Joshua continued to stare at the ground.

  “Good evenin’, Mista Fairchild.”

  Cam knew Marco fancied himself a classy bastard. He believed in treating others of his profession with respect, the gleaming stiletto notwithstanding. “Can we help you wit somethin’?”

  Cam’s brain jumped into overdrive, and he surprised himself with his answer. “Sorry my boy here’s been poaching your tricks, Marco. We’ll be leaving now.” Cam seized a handful of wet leather, hauling Joshua in close.

  Joshua’s head swung up at the words “my boy,” but fear--real or feigned--quickly replaced his stunned expression.

  “I think we have us a misunderstandin’, Cameron. The kid here works for me, and has for a couple a weeks now. He’s a piss-poor revenoo-generator, though. No fuckin’ stamina. No fucking stamina, get it?” He leered. “But we’re workin’ on it. Ain’t that right, Jeremy?” Marco laid a possessive hand on Joshua’s cheek, slapping it lightly, twice.

  Either Marco didn’t bother to remember his hookers’ names or Joshua had lied to him, so Cam avoided using any name at all. “The kid works for Tuesday’s Child and he fucked off a few weeks ago. Some disagreement over drugs. I doubt you want a user in your stable, Marco.”

  “Who gives a shit?” the pimp replied. “Easier to control if they’re strung out. Right, baby-boy?” Marco reached over and tried to fluff out Joshua’s bedraggled curls, preening him like a show-dog .

  “Grace has a fair amount of money invested in this one. We shelled out for his drug rehab already, and she wants to recoup her outlay.” Cam borrowed the back-story from one of Grace’s girls, hoping Marco didn’t know Grace hadn’t any boys working for her yet. Other than Cam himself.

  With one hand fastened on the rain-slick sleeve of Joshua’s leather jacket, Cam locked gazes with Marco, not revealing the small handgun tucked in the back of his jeans. He drew himself up, towering over the short Italian, body language telegraphing his lethal training. And here on the sodden streets of San Francisco, with Joshua’s life at stake, Cam hauled out his cruelest, most deadly weapon: “I’m telling my mother on you, Marco!”

  Even the damp and terrified Joshua cracked up at that. Marco bent double laughing, presenting an unguarded target. Cam moved in for the kill. “And she’s going to tell her friend the Mayor, and he’ll tell his friend the Chief of Police. And he’ll tell all the little detectives and patrolmen to make your life not just a living hell, but highly unprofitable, as well.”

  Still partially bent over from the belly laugh, hands on his thighs for support, Marco gaped at Cam, not laughing now.

  “Think about it, my friend,” Cam elaborated. “Hassles, repeated arrests, bail, lawyers, and…” Cam leaned in closer for the coup de grace, his very stance a threat, “…social workers.”

  Marco hissed as if stabbed, recovering rapidly from Cam’s low blow. Straightening, he countered, “Well, a user won’t last long. Two years, tops.” Marco looked at Joshua appraisingly. “And like I say, he ain’t got no stamina, so his earning potential ain’t so great.”

  Marco appeared pretty transparent. He still presented a danger, Cam reminded himself, even if the knife had disappeared.

  “I think,” Marco continued, scratching his stubble thoughtfully, “I’d sell this kid’s ass back to Grace if the price were right.”

  Inwardly, Cam groaned. His mother rarely purchased her talent--not outright, anyway. It wasn’t where she drew her moral line; it was just bad business. Once you’d fixed somebody’s drug habit, arrest record, teeth, nose, pregnancy, or STD, they soon forgot they owed you--especially in terms of dollars and cents.

  “How much?” Cam asked.

  “Let’s see. Fourteen hundred a week for two years… Less expenses… Let’s say a nice even hundred thousand.” The low figure surprised Cam. Maybe Marco believed his earlier crap about Joshua having run away from Tuesday’s Child. Alternatively, a hundred thousand dollars… Where the hell could he get that kind of cash?

  “Deal.” Cam couldn’t believe he’d just said that. His mother would kill him. Bravely, he pressed onward. “Let me take him back with me now before he gets sick and costs Grace more revenoo, er, revenue. You know I’m good for it.”

  “I know Grace is good for it. You show me a down payment of, say ten percent, along with Grace’s marker, and I’ll release little Joshua here.” Suddenly the big-dumb-oaf persona was absent, along with the gangster accent. He even got Joshua’s name right. Cam winced, realizing he’d been played. He needed to stop underestimating his opponents.

  “He goes with me now or no deal.” Cam faced his opponent down in the chill night air.

  “Hey.” Joshua spoke for the first time. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

  “No!” the haggling men chorused. Marco grinned at Cam and stuck out his hand. “You’re on, Cam. And, for your information, if you fail to come through with the cash, first I kill you, and then I haul pretty-boy’s ass back out on the street tricking for me, right?”

  Cam just nodded.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, Cam.” Marco smiled broadly, showing white, even teeth, despite the lack of subsidized dental care among his workers. “Give my regards to your lovely mother.”

  “Of course, I will,” Cam lied. “Mom’s always interested in the continued well-being of her colleagues.” He wondered if she’d disown him before having him killed when she found out about the deal he’d just made.

  * * *

  Cam ushered the dripping Joshua towards his car. Joshua appeared dazed, his gaze on the pavement, walking like an automaton, but Cam felt him trembling through the leather jacket where he grasped Joshua’s arm. The rescued man climbed into the passenger seat and sat there shivering and rocking slightly. Cam reminded him to fasten his seat belt, and then help him feed the metal tab into the slot, Joshua’s shaking hands unable to complete the simple task.

  “You’re okay now, Joshua. I’ve got you. You’re safe from that asshole.” He tried to catch Joshua’s eye.

  Joshua mumbled, so soft Cam almost missed the chilling words: “Out of the frying pan…”

  * * *

  “Mom? I’d like you to meet Joshua Silver. Joshua, my mother, Grace Fairchild.”

  Cam hadn’t planned on introducing Joshua until he’d had a chance to clean up and settle in. But like the naughty teenager he seemed to have regressed to, his mother caught him smuggling his “boyfriend” up the back stairs to his room.

  Grace and Joy were making up a tray of cold meats and fruit for the evening’s midnight snack.

  “Nice to meet you, Joshua.” Grace wiped her hands on her apron and extended it to Joshua. “Silver, was it? Why I knew a Silver once. Worked here back in the Eighties. She--”

  Cam cut in with polite excuses, shepherding Joshua towards the stairs again.

  Grace called Cam back. “Feed him.” She pressed a tray of fruit, bread, and a half a cold chicken into his hands. “Marco’d let his kids starve if he thought they could still perform.”

  “Mom, how did you…?
” Cam’s initial encounter with Joshua had somehow never come up. Grace didn’t miss a trick, though--in any sense of the word. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, nearly over-balancing the tray. She blushed and shooed him out of her kitchen. He left smiling, leading the shivering Joshua up the stairs.

  “Food, bath, or bed first? Sleep, I mean,” he asked when they reached the second floor landing. Before Joshua answered, his stomach grumbled loudly. “Food it is, then.” Cam said cheerfully. He spoke fluent rumble. He gestured with the tray, both hands occupied.

  Moving slowly, Joshua reached over and turned the knob, revealing another, narrower flight of stairs. At the top of these stairs, Joshua opened the door to a fair-size studio apartment. “Watch your head,” Cam warned, just as Joshua waked into one of the sloping dormer walls.

  “Gee, thanks, dude.” Joshua rubbed his head absently while taking stock of the room.

  Cam’s private quarters were decorated in masculine burgundy and hunter green, with a TV and computer set up in one corner, and a king-size bed in the middle where the ceiling peaked. In shocking contrast to the rest of the room, the bedspread featured a hideous array of orange, green, and turquoise geometric shapes. Canary yellow pillowcases rounded out the tasteless ensemble.

  Despite all the horrors and tragedies Joshua had suffered in the last few months, beginning with a spoiled girl’s temper tantrum and ending on the streets of San Francisco, this designer nightmare of color schemes gone horribly wrong caused him to erupt in gasps of laughter. He ended up with one arm wrapped around his stomach, while the other pointed weakly at the offending bedding.

  Cam had seen enough of this sort of borderline hysteria in the military to recognize catharsis when he saw it. Setting the tray down on top of his dresser, he placed a soothing hand on Joshua’s back and joined in, aware you took your comfort where you found it in this harsh life.

  “But they were on sale,” he protested weakly.

  This set off another paroxysm of laughter in Joshua, who wheezed, “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason, Cam!” Which just led to more laughter.

  Cam lightly cuffed Joshua’s head, knocking raindrops from the bedraggled curls. “Jeez. You some kind of decorator, Josh?”

  “Well, in point of fact,” Joshua replied loftily, having regained his composure somewhat, “I did earn an extra credit for taking an interior design course in senior year of my undergrad. No kidding. A study in modern customs, they called it. I just figured they had more students than anthropology courses that semester. But I love an easy credit, so I took it.” Joshua minced around the room in a very politically incorrect manner, waving a limp wrist at all he surveyed. “I can always fall back on my decorating skills if this whole rent-boy gig doesn’t pan out. It’s good to be gay.”

  Cam chuckled, and, retrieving a towel from the closet, threw it at Joshua, who began to dry his sodden hair. Cam took the tray of food and set it on the foot of the bed. Settling themselves on the floor, the two men began to eat. Since Grace hadn’t supplied them with utensils, they ate with their fingers. It made the meal casual, and strangely erotic as they fed themselves and each other, with much sucking of fingers and licking of lips--not restricted to their own.

  After they’d eaten, Cam sat back and asked gently, “So how did you end up on the streets, Josh? Last time I saw you, your career options didn’t include hooking.”

  Joshua had the good grace to blush. Bravely, he explained, “You remember that publisher friend of my mom’s who stood me up?” Cam nodded. “I only had his business address, right? So I waited it out and visited his office the next morning, and found that they’d fired his ass just a few days before I arrived. Something about releasing material without the author’s permission. So obviously, no job for him, no job for me.” Joshua wiped his greasy fingers on his ripped and damp jeans just as Cam handed him the wet towel. Joshua ignored Cam’s disapproval and continued his story. “I knew exactly one decent person in San Francisco, so I tried the bus depot again, hoping you might come back.” He glanced shyly up at Cam. “I waited two days, dude, 'til that son of a bitch who runs the lunch counter called security.”

  “But you had my business card. Why didn’t you just call me?” Cam interjected.

  “I kept the card in my backpack, and as soon as I fell asleep at the bus station--voila!--no backpack when I woke up. I even called directory assistance and asked for Tuesday’s Child, but the operator hung up on me. Then I found out what goes on here.”

  Cam nodded sympathetically, reaching out a hand to help Joshua as he shrugged out of his damp leather jacket.

  “Eventually I found out what you were and figured if a nice guy like you worked in a, er, service industry, then I could too. By then, panhandling and soup kitchens were just getting me by. I practically starved. So when I asked the street kids about this place, I wound up talking to Marco, and getting fed, and warm and manipulated… he’s not as dumb as he likes people to believe, and he’s a real Svengali. Really good at playing you. Funny, I saw it clearly when he worked his voodoo on the other kids, but when he talked to me, he seemed different, sincere, you know?”

  “Like me at the bus depot, Josh?”

  Joshua sighed. “Yeah. I saw through you right away, Cam. You may not believe this, but you weren’t the first guy ever to hit on me. I pegged you as some sicko preying on the down-and-out when they most needed a friend.” Joshua’s grin softened his words. “And boy, did I need a friend.”

  “I’m here for you, Josh. And always was. The recruitment thing? I can honestly say my mother made me do it.” Testing the waters a little, he reached out and traced his fingers over Joshua’s bare arm.

  Joshua pulled away. “Can I take a shower now, dude? I feel so filthy.” He gestured towards himself and grimaced.

  “Sure. That door. Watch your head. And help yourself to a new toothbrush. You’ll find one in the medicine chest.” Cam directed Joshua to another door along one wall and headed back to the closet for some additional clean towels.

  As he handed them to his guest, Joshua caught his wrist in a strong grip. “Thanks, Cam. I…” His voice cracked, and releasing Cam, he snatched the towels and disappeared into the small bathroom.

  Cam began to clean up the remnants of their impromptu supper. He tried not to listen to the sounds from the shower, but the gasping sobs were hard to ignore. More cathartic behavior--everyone feels better after a good cry, right?

  Giving Joshua a little more space, Cam descended the stairs again, depositing the leftovers in the empty kitchen. On the return trip to his attic quarters, his breath quickened a little, not with exertion, but with anticipation. Despite plenty of job-related sex and being surrounded by his mother and her colleagues, he felt isolated. He hadn’t made any friends since leaving the Marines. He’d lived with loneliness far too long.

  He shook off the introspection. Right now, a very pretty, very vulnerable young man was naked in his shower. He took the last few stairs two at a time.

  A little while later, Joshua emerged from the bathroom, a towel around his hair, one around his waist, and one over his shoulders. He paused by the door, holding the grungy jeans and T-shirt in one hand, and clutching the towel across his chest with the other. He stood like a forlorn child, his gaze roving from Cam to the ragged clothing he held.

  “Here, Joshua,” he soothed. “Let me.” Cam helpfully removed the clothes from Joshua’s death-grip, moving slowly so as not to spook his new friend.

  Joshua just clutched the towel tighter. He stared at Cam with glazed eyes.

  “Wear those, if you like.” Cam gestured toward the bed where he’d laid out some old sweats. The clothes would hang off Joshua, but they were warm and dry, and would allow the man a little dignity--something he’d been stripped of in great swaths lately. He dropped Joshua’s clothes into the hamper next to the cupboard.

  “You want me to find somewhere else to sleep tonight?” Cam asked. Without waiting for Joshua’s answer, he turned
the TV on and focused on it giving Joshua some privacy to dress. Cam peeked at the reflection on the screen, though, his spying rewarded with a pleasant view of a fit, if somewhat underfed, young man.

  Regaining some composure, Joshua answered, “I can’t kick you out of your bed, dude,” he began boldly, then followed up with a whispered, “And I don’t want to sleep alone.”

  Flipping off the TV, Cam went to Joshua and held him: nothing sexual, just human comfort. Joshua held himself aloof briefly, then collapsed into the warmth with a sigh.

  “You go ahead and get under those beautiful covers. I’ll just change into some sweats myself and join you. ‘Kay?”

  Cam stripped efficiently and pulled on a pair of soft fleece shorts, and took a brief turn in the bathroom before crawling in next to Joshua and pulling the distressed man into his arms. “So much has happened to you lately, Josh. You’re entitled to a little post-traumatic stress reaction of your own.”