sitting at the bar, waiting to welcome him? He wouldn’t have recognized him anyway, even if he had been.

  Still, the place felt right. It was exactly the sort of place that Daniella Bentham might have met and picked up a man, straight, but disguising himself as gay. Such an event would have been far more conspicuous in one of the more blatant make out spots, but here, several of the groups this particular evening were mixed sexes, and one female, lesbian, he thought, sat alone at the bar.

  Nobody would have questioned Daniella’s right to be here.

  In some of the other bars, unless she had come in with a group of males, she’d have stood out like a sore thumb, might even have gotten a cool reception. And most of those other bars, people didn’t go in groups. Pairs, sometimes, but they drew mostly singles.

  “Satisfied?” Tom asked. He was never comfortable in gay bars, was all too aware of the looks he got from the other patrons. If he’d been looking for action… but he wasn’t.

  Stanley was all the man he needed. Maybe more than he needed, but he was still wrestling with that issue.

  “I guess.” Stanley put his Tangueray and tonic aside practically untouched.

  “So, now? Home?”

  “I suppose so. Oh, what the hell, as long as we’re out, let’s check out a couple more places. It can’t hurt.”

  “What are we checking them for? Do you honestly think we’re going to find your brother in one of them?”

  “It could happen. I think Daniella may have found him in one.”

  Tom sighed and finished off his beer. “Okay. The Badlands is just up the street. And there’s another one on the corner, isn’t there?”

  “The Edge.”

  “Fine. And that’s the edge of my limit.”

  “Fair enough. The Badlands, then, and The Edge.”

  DEADLY DREAMS 163

  “And after that, home again.”

  “Jiggedy Jig.”

  They came outside to discover that a light drizzle had begun to fall. “Oh, maybe we should help her,” Stanley said, looking in the direction of the intersection. A young mother was struggling to get across the street with a little boy at one hand and a stroller in the other.

  Stanley took a step in that direction, but two men had stopped alongside her, and one of them, exchanging words with the mother, began to push the stroller across the street for her.

  Stanley shrugged and they started instead up the street in the direction of The Badlands.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” Tom said. “Why Andrew’s interest in you? What connection could he possibly see to a brother he never met, probably never knew existed?”

  “Maybe he knew. Just because I didn’t, doesn’t mean he didn’t. He might have grown up knowing all about me. What I don’t understand, is, how he vanished, why he wasn’t right there, in the house with Irene and me?”

  “Kidnapped, maybe?”

  “Maybe. But, you’d think that would be the sort of thing our parents would have mentioned. Why the silence?”

  “Maybe Hannibal had it right, the baby died and is buried somewhere, and the locals just didn’t find the grave.”

  “No, we know Andrew is out there, somewhere.”

  Tom grunted. “Which leaves the question—what is his interest in you?”

  Stanley thought for a moment. “There’s an essay by Lamb, it’s called, ‘Dream Children,’ and it’s about the children he never had—he never married.”

  “You think he was queer?”

  “He might have been. I don’t think I’ve ever read one way or the other. Anyway, that essay, I only remember it vaguely, I don’t think I liked it very much, to be honest. All about ghostly children, wanting stories of the families they never had, stories 164 Victor J. Banis

  about their pretty dead mother. ‘We are nothing,’ one of them says, ‘less than nothing, only dreams, only what might have been.’“

  “So, you’re saying, what? Andrew wants you to tell him stories about his mother?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? Somehow, they were parted. He was with her, and then he wasn’t. Losing your mother, well, he must wonder. He must have dreams.”

  Tom thought about that. “Not very pleasant ones, I wouldn’t think.”

  “No, I don’t think so either.”

  § § § § §

  A reluctant rain had begun to fall, seeming not at all to dampen the spirits of the Castro crowd—now more than before a gay crowd, the shoppers and the diners having finished their business and gone home or back to other neighborhoods.

  Toby walked fast, not so much because of the rain but because he was afraid the man beside him might yet change his mind. After all, he had only to look to the right or the left to see companions more appropriate.

  Andrew paid attention to no one, however, except a young mother trying to cross the street at Eighteenth and Castro, piloting a stroller with one hand and holding a little boy with the other. Andrew paused, asked politely, and pushed the stroller across for her; took the time, even, to kneel down and exchange friendly words with the little boy.

  “I love children,” was all he said afterward, which Toby took to be a good sign. Bad people, hustlers, rough trade, didn’t go out of their way to help strangers, didn’t make conversations with little boys. So he need have no fears on that score.

  Nevertheless, Toby had chafed at the delay, fearful that Andrew might yet vanish into the Castro throngs. He was still there, however, when they reached the door to the stairs that led up to Toby’s apartment. Toby had never been more aware of the dinginess of those stairs—the smell of stale grease and DEADLY DREAMS 165

  burned food that drifted up from the coffee shop below, the stains on the wall, the torn and patched linoleum.

  He led the way upward, embarrassed, half expecting to hear the footsteps behind him pause, begin to descend again. He wished just this once he’d left his cane at home, was altogether too conscious of its thump, thump, thump as he ascended.

  Really, though, he couldn’t walk more than a block or two without it before the pain in his knee became excruciating.

  When a hand reached upward and gave his bottom a caressing pat, he was so startled he almost dropped the cane, might have fallen, in fact, if the hand hadn’t lingered on his rear to steady him.

  “Nice buns,” the voice behind him said.

  It so electrified Toby, he all but leaped the next step. Did, in fact, stumble. Behind him, Andrew chuckled.

  “Nervous?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be. I’ll be in charge.” Andrew’s voice was a whisper, sibilant, promising; it slid up the stairs, twisted about Toby like a snake. “That’s how I like it. I’m a take-control kind of man.

  Should I have told you that before, perhaps? But, you’ll like it that way, too, won’t you, my running the show for us? That’s what turns me on. And, you’ll want to please me, won’t you? I got that impression. Was I right?”

  “Yes.” What else could he say? He still could not quite grasp that they were here, that this man was climbing the stairs with him. He couldn’t quite imagine why, but it was past the point now where reason might have questioned his good fortune. The gods had been kind to him, perhaps. One of those prayers of his, oft muttered, but rarely in expectation.

  There were some who liked older men, he’d heard of them.

  Older queens liked to talk about them, though he’d always wondered if maybe they didn’t exist except solely in wishful imaginations. Well, it seemed after all they did exist. One specimen did exist, in any case, and it was his great good 166 Victor J. Banis

  fortune to have crossed paths with that unique specimen tonight.

  No, he would do nothing to dash his miraculous good fortune. He would let Andrew take control, if that was what he liked, do whatever he chose. Certainly, Toby himself was in no condition, flustered as he was, to take any kind of control.

  Anyway, Andrew was right in his assessment, it would be a pleasure to please him. He fervently wanted to make him glad, whatever that might entail.

  He let them into the apartment, paused and looked around as if he had never seen this room before, embarrassed at how tawdry and unattractive it looked: the lumpy sofa with its cheap slipcover, the cigarette scarred table in the center of the room and the mismatched chairs around it, the plastic curtains at the windows. The abode of an old auntie, was what it looked like, an old auntie living on the cheap.

  “Home sweet home,” he said with a nervous laugh and, when Andrew said nothing, added, “It’s not much.”

  “It’s fine,” Andrew said, dismissing the room with no more than a quick glance. He looked at Toby instead, gave him one of those tight-lipped smiles. “Actually, I didn’t come for the décor.”

  “Oh.” Toby felt tongue tied and helpless. This was a new role for him, playing host to a—a what? A trick, he supposed, but somehow the word didn’t seem to fit anyone quite so splendid as the man standing in front of him, looking oddly amused, though Toby wasn’t sure just what he found so amusing. Me? But he was the one who picked me up, wasn’t he?

  “The bathroom’s just through there,” Toby managed to stammer, pointing, “and the bedroom…”

  “We don’t need the bedroom. This is fine. The couch will do. I think couches are sexy.” Andrew slipped off his leather jacket. There was a gun tucked down into the waistband of his jeans. He took it out and laid it aside on a lamp table.

  “Oh,” Toby said, alarmed. His mouth formed a wide circle.

  DEADLY DREAMS 167

  Andrew looked at him and at the revolver. “It’s just a gun.

  Does it bother you? I can put it in my gym bag.”

  “No. It’s just… are you some kind of policeman?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” That smile again.

  “You…” Toby thought of various possibilities, settled on the one that went with his age, with the time in which he had been younger. In those days, before all the gay liberation business, gay men often had as much to fear from police officers as they did from rough trade. “You’re not going to arrest me, are you?”

  Andrew seemed to find that amusing as well. “Arrest you? I picked you up, didn’t I? Why would I arrest you?”

  “Oh.” Toby seemed to be saying that a lot. This was all so unfamiliar. He’d never felt such a fool. “The bathroom,” he said again, pointing, “Do you want…?”

  “I want to fuck,” Andrew said. “Don’t you?”

  Toby reddened, but he bobbed his head up and down fervently. “Yes. Yes, I do.” He stared open-mouthed as Andrew began to unbutton his shirt. After a moment, Andrew paused and looked at a still fully clad Toby. “Are you going to leave all that on?”

  Toby began to undress, his fingers slow and clumsy. He was uncomfortably aware that Andrew was watching him with…

  with what? Not desire, at least not obviously. It was difficult for him to see desire in Andrew’s expression; but it must be there, mustn’t it? He’d made what he wanted unmistakably clear.

  From the beginning. Why else would he even be here? Unless…

  “Are you… did you want me to pay you?” Toby stammered.

  Andrew’s amusement grew. “Money? No, that’s not what I’m here for. I already told you, I want to fuck.”

  Which, Toby had to suppose was true. If this wasn’t what he wanted, what he desired, he needn’t have come. If he’d wanted something else—make that someone else—he could certainly have found them. He could not have been entirely unaware of the glances he’d gotten from others, not only at the bar, but on the short walk here.

  168 Victor J. Banis

  Yes, surely, the hard glitter of his eyes notwithstanding, Andrew must be feeling desire, must be looking forward with pleasure to what was to happen.

  Toby found himself tingling with pleasure, too, and just a touch of apprehension. What exactly, he wondered, slipping his trousers down, was going to happen?

  § § § § §

  “It’s all right if you want to groan, or cry out, or anything,”

  Andrew said. “I like it, if you want to know the truth. I enjoy knowing that it’s painful for my partner to accommodate me. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel very big.”

  Toby did groan, but it was not for his fucker’s pleasure, it was altogether involuntary. He hated being fucked in the ass, and Andrew didn’t need anything to make him feel big, he was big, really big. And rough. Really rough.

  Maybe if there’d been a bit more foreplay. Toby would love to have spent a generous amount of time fondling and kissing.

  He’d always liked that almost more than the actual sex.

  Andrew hadn’t kissed him at all, though, had turned his face away when Toby had summoned his courage and tried to kiss him. They hadn’t done anything, actually, beyond stripping and getting right down to it, Andrew shoving him peremptorily down onto the sofa.

  “Condom,” Toby had said when Andrew lifted his legs in the air.

  “I like it bareback,” was the answer, and with nothing more than a handful of spit for lubricant, Andrew had positioned his dick, his particularly large dick, at Toby’s asshole and, before Toby could object, shoved it in, hard, and deep.

  But, pain or no, how could he have objected, anyway, when here, above him, was surely the man of his dreams, of any gay male’s dreams. Toby looked up and, seeing Andrew’s eyes shut tight, took advantage of the opportunity to study him up close.

  Andrew’s face was actually contorted in a grimace, as if he were the one suffering the pain of what was quickly becoming an even more vicious assault, Andrew’s loins hammering DEADLY DREAMS 169

  downward, pounding himself in and out in a violent fury that seemed only a travesty of desire. That seemed, in fact, more like punishment being administered.

  Toby tried to remain silent, but finally he couldn’t help himself, he groaned aloud. Andrew’s eyes opened then and he looked down into Toby’s face. For a moment, Andrew’s expression might have been one of hate, disgust even. He smiled, but it was an icy smile, none of the flirtatious warmth with which he had smiled at Toby earlier, back at the Badlands.

  “Like it?” he asked, driving harder. “Like my dick up your ass, faggot?”

  Toby grimaced inwardly at the word, “faggot,” and a little frisson of fear went up his spine. Andrew had seemed so safe at the bar, so nice. This man above him might have been someone else altogether. Or, had Toby only wanted so very much for him to be nice, because he was so handsome, that he had overlooked whatever warning signals there might have been.

  But, had there been any? He couldn’t recall.

  “Uh,” he grunted, and managed to say, “Yes, sure.”

  “Liar.” Andrew laughed. “You don’t usually take it this way, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Toby admitted through clenched teeth.

  “I can tell. You’re tighter than a virgin.”

  “Actually…” Toby screwed up his courage, meant to ask him if he would stop. He wasn’t sure how much more he could endure.

  “I like it tight. The tighter the better. That’s the sweetest ass I’ve fucked in a long time, Toby.”

  After that, how could Toby ask him to stop, regardless of the risk, regardless of the pain? Andrew would be offended then, wouldn’t? He might withdraw from Toby’s ass, probably would withdraw if asked, but surely, he would withdraw altogether, withdraw from the apartment as well, gone like a dream on awakening.

  Still, there were other considerations besides the pain, and even as besotted as he was, he could not altogether dismiss 170 Victor J. Banis

  those concerns. “Will you…” he managed to stammer out, embarrassed to say it, but thinking it important, “will you pull out before you come,” and added a humiliating, “please.”

  “No,” Andrew said simply, and pounded him harder.

  Andrew stared down at the face below him, eyes now squeezed shut, mouth contorted in pain. The punishment he was inflicting gave Andrew pleasure, the only real pleasure he found in these experiences with other males. He loathed fucking them, but he loved making them suffer.

  He looked down between them, watched his dick piston in and out of the upturned ass. Unlike his wrinkled face, Toby’s ass was remarkably smooth, the skin so shining it might have been waxed.

  Amazing, Andrew thought, how much more slowly the body aged than the face, the age creeping only gradually downward, the chest sagging first, the waist spreading and drooping, while the butt often stayed youthful looking well into old age.

  The thought, “a baby’s bottom,” came unbidden into his mind, and in its wake, “a very sore bottom.”

  Spanky-spanky.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Andrew slept late. When he woke, however, he always woke immediately, never a moment of disorientation at finding himself in a strange bed, of wondering where he was. He knew where he was, and why.

  He had slept on the couch. He pushed the single blanket aside with his foot, letting it fall to the floor, a baby blue bundle, and stretched lazily, like a cat. Reaching down, he cupped his genitals in his hand and fondled them gently but without sexual interest; every morning’s ritual gesture, but one he was not even aware of performing, an unconscious confirmation of his maleness.

  He went naked into the small kitchen and made a pot of coffee, and while it was brewing went into the bathroom to pee and to shower. By the time he had toweled dry, the coffee was ready. He padded into the kitchen and poured himself a cup, carrying it back to the bathroom with it.

  He was shaving at the sink, with Toby’s razor, wondering if perhaps he ought to think of wearing a beard for a while, when he heard the sound of a key in the front door. He strode, still naked, into the apartment’s main room in time to see a tall, skinny man pause just inside the door.

  § § § § §

  Willard Blount’s mouth fell open at the sight of a naked stranger in Toby’s apartment. Of their own accord, Willard’s eyes dropped to the man’s crotch, where much of a morning hard-on was still in evidence.

  “Who are you?” Willard asked, unable to stop gawking.