“Oh…um…okay.” His smile dimmed to a point and disappeared. I checked my shoes for puppy fur, and Cai for my footprint.
“I guess it’s independent?” I sighed.
“She. And yes. She sleeps a lot, too.” His hopeful lip-bitten smile drew a resigned shoulder—slump from me.
“Keep her in the guest room?”
“Yessir.”
He looked so happy. I wanted to roll my eyes. “She has a carrier?”
“Yessir, in Peter’s room, under the computer desk.”
“And stop calling me sir?”
“Yessi— Austin.”
“Kid?”
“Yes?”
“You’d better fucking cure AIDS or something.” I got up to leave.
“Austin, sir.” He stopped me again. I gave up on getting him to stop calling me sir. And nearly abandoned the prospect of leaving.
“You have a dog, too?” I asked. “Maybe parakeets and a family of illegal aliens in the basement? Or genetically engineered humans that you’ve created to answer everything in the form of a question?”
He blinked and stared. I was either not funny, or he felt very guilty. “Don’t snoop?” He said—or asked—even his commands were questions.
“The ‘key to Peter’ is just out there in the open ready to be seen?” I answered dubiously.
“Did you know Peter didn’t finish school past seventh grade?”
Rubbing my face with both hands, I decided Cai was going to parcel out information in bundles of riddles. He would be a great teacher, though, if he went that route; he would always lead the students to discover the answer rather than being told it. “No, I didn’t,” I replied. The knowledge made an awful sense and brought back my protective feelings toward Peter.
“Even back before we left home, he had a lot of trouble with school. I think he was glad not to have to go to class. But Joe made him and Darryl both enroll in high school. He was sixteen, and they put him in remedial classes because he was so far behind and didn’t read well. He just couldn’t catch up. He never asked for help. After a few months, he dropped out. But Joe made him get his GED.”
“Whatever you’re trying to tell me is not computing. Are you saying Peter isn’t smart, Cai?”
“No. I’m saying Peter hated school because he couldn’t do most of the work. And he only let me help him with a few college courses when he was near failing. He won’t ever ask for help for himself. But he’s smart. A different kind of smart than you or I. He doesn’t think like we do.”
“Cai?”
‘Yessir? Um…Austin, sir?” He winced again.
“No one thinks like you.” That brought on another blush. I hesitated. “Anything else before I try to leave, again?”
He shook his head no, and became immersed in the blank wall. I grabbed the remote and flipped on the television.
Just for fun, I clicked until I saw a cartoon. Cai’s attention slowly drifted to the screen. I left him watching Scooby’s and Shaggy’s fearful run from a zombie.
Demons
I decided to do my morning run by jogging to the house the boys shared. I estimated it to be about two miles, not even close to my usual workout. By the time I arrived, I’d barely broken a sweat. To prolong the run I did a few laps around the nearby park.
Cheesman Park had a haunted history involving unmoved graves and ghosts. That sordid tale was nothing compared to the rumors about the park now. This century it was known more for gay cruising.
Much like the bar where Darryl worked, rumors abounded of casual sexual encounters in parked cars or in the clusters of trees encircling the park. My first lap revealed they were more than rumors.
As I rounded a corner, a guy in his mid-to-late thirties zoomed toward me with his shirt off. My pace slowed as we made eye contact. I made the mistake of following the curve of his neck down his chest and over his sculpted stomach. It was the first time since meeting Peter that I’d allowed myself an open admiration of another man. The breath I held released when he passed, and I picked up my pace. Seconds later, he joined me at my side.
“Hey,” I said, hiding my surprise behind a smile. Dark hair, hazel eyes, very muscular. Hot body. My cock seemed to agree. I was embarrassed by my attraction. Maybe I hadn’t fully embraced the gay.
“Hey, yourself. I haven’t seen you here before.”
“First time.”
“That so?” Other than his body, he wasn’t gorgeous. Not ugly in any sense, just a regular guy, like me. “Well, First Time, I’m Interested.”
Don’t say it, Austin. Don’t say it. “Where?”