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BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

CHAPTER 4-SECURITY

BRIAN’S POV

we got to install microwave ovens,
custom kitchen deliveries,
we got to move these refrigerators,
we got to move these color TV's


Zeek Zirrolli patrolled the streets of New York City looking for work like a homeless man looks for food. The day you met him, he handed you a business card that looked like it’d been through the washing machine.


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You looked at him like he was a moron.

“This is your business card?”

“Yes, sir.” He was proud of it.

“Don’t you have a new one? One that doesn’t look like a dog ate it?”

“No, sir. Not on me. I recycle ‘em. Saves me money.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that he was Gabe’s older brother and you were in a desperate situation, you would have given it back to him and told him to come back when he had a fresh one. But you couldn’t. You were between the proverbial rock and hard place.

So when the electrical system at Babylon proved to be no match for a bomb that had gone off almost two years ago, you were sufficiently impressed when Gabe wielded his cell phone on his second day of work and called his brother. Luckily, Zeek was just across town, unpacking and installing shelves for his little brother.

“Babycakes tells me that you need an electrician,” he told you after he gave you his raggedy business card.

“Babycakes?” Gabe looked like he wanted to crawl under your conference room table.

“Yeah, Babycakes. You know, my baby brother, here.” He pointed to Gabe at the table, who was turning eight shades of red at that very moment.

Gabe looked close to death, “Zeek, do you mind?”

Zeek reminded you of the Professor, only with rocks in his head instead of brains. You studied him for a minute or so, looked at his hands, rough, dirty, and callused, and decided he had a Gilligan-simplicity about him. That he was probably harmless. That he was one of those guys that constantly wore black t-shirts reading ‘SECURITY,’ even when he wasn’t securing anything. You imagined him having an entire closet full of them.

It wasn’t your imagination.

And Zeek had never met a stranger.

He fixed your problem at Babylon that day, and almost three thousand dollars later you had an upgraded electrical system that according to Zeek, “Based on my load calculations, you still have plenty of space in that box to add more shit. You’re set, man. You. Are. Set.”

“Load calculations? You can do math?” you inquired as you surveyed the finished product, albeit with no idea what you were supposed to be looking at. You flipped the switch and everything worked. That was about as far as your electrical knowledge was taking you.

“Nah, I can’t do math, man, but my calculator can.” He shook it in your face. “Kmart, man. Nine ninety-five. On sale. Nine-ninety five.”

When the lights were back on and the boys of Liberty Avenue were drinking and sinking into one another again, you wrote Zeek a check for three thousand nine dollars and ninety-five cents to cover the cost of his calculator and gave him a box of brand new, re-designed business cards that were all clean.

“Here, Popeye. Here’s a check and a little something for your trouble.” He opened the box and seemed amazed. Apparently he’d never actually seen business cards in a box before.

“I just print ‘em out on my printer, but it jams all the time, my printer, so this is real cool, man.”

“Please throw away the old ones. A man with a dingy business card is unrefined and pathetic.”

“Whatever you say, Boss Man. Whatever you say.”

“And you can stop repeating yourself at the end of every sentence. It’s highly annoying.”

“I’ll work on it, Boss Man. I’ll work on it.” You realized right then that you can lead a horse to water, but he’s still gonna tell you about it three times.

*********************
oh, that ain't workin'
that's the way you do it,
get your money for nothin'
get your chicks for free


Over the years, Zeek’s bounced for you, fixed electrical nightmares, unpacked and installed equipment, tended bar, and wired the security system at your humble abode, The Palace. He’s moved more furniture than Ethan Allen’s Labor Day Sale. Hell, the loft elevator broke one day, and Zeek had it fixed before any other technician could get his ass over there. And you were both high as kites at the time. You sat in the hallway eating Fritos, drinking tequila, smoking weed, and handing him tools when he asked for them.  You know more about small hand tools now than you ever wanted to know—powered and otherwise. You were content with your dildos, beads, cock rings, screwdriver, and a hammer. And lube. Lubricant was a tool as far as you were concerned.  By the time he’d gotten the elevator running again, you were out of pot. Zeek offered to score some for you that weekend when he was back in the city. You took him up on his offer, “I want good shit, Zeek. Not crap.”

“Don’t you worry, Boss Man. I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry.”

You figured if Zeek ever got busted buying drugs for you, they’d never be able to get back to you because you were pretty sure Zeek didn’t even know your real name. You were ‘Boss Man’ the day he met you, and you figured you’d be ‘Boss Man’ until you died.

Fine with you. You’d certainly been called worse.

He told you the story of why he calls Gabe ‘Babycakes’ while he was testing the elevator, watching it go up and down. Zeek’s very easy to entertain. “When Gabe was a baby, he thought that ‘Pattycake’ song was ‘Babycake,’ and he sang it every fucking minute. ‘Babycake, babycake-“

“Maybe he just didn’t know anyone named ‘Patty,’” You fell over on your side laughing. Zeek told you to lay off the tequila because that joke wasn’t even funny, it was just—

“Pathetic?”

“Yeah, man, pathetic. That’s like your favorite word. Everything with you is ‘pathetic this,' and 'pathetic that.’”

“Whoa, that’s really pathetic. My obsession with the word ‘pathetic.’”

“Dude, you’re stoned out of your fucking mind.”

“No, not ‘dude.’ ‘Boss Man.’”

“All right, ‘Boss Man,’ you’re stoned out of your fucking mind.”

“Oh my god, I’m so pathetic.” You were laying on the floor in the doorway with your legs inside the loft and your upper body in the hall.

“And you say I repeat myself?”

“Hey, if you slam this door real hard right now, you’ll slice me in two pieces, like a magician.” He stood up, rolling his eyes at you, and dragged you by your legs back into your loft.

“Dude, you’re fucked up.”

“’Boss Man.’ ’Boss Man.’”

“I’m gonna leave now, and I’m gonna shut this door. Don’t drive home. Just sleep here tonight. Want me to cart your ass to the bed, or can you handle it?”

“I can handle it. I can handle everything, but, Zeek, I hafta tell you something: I seriously am that pathetic,” you said to him as he was putting on his jacket, shaking his head at you.

“Nah, man. You’re not pathetic. You’re just lonely.”

“I’m just lonely,” you repeated back to him. “Very. Fucking. Lonely.”

“Night, Boss Man.” He put the tequila out of your reach. “I’ll see you in a week or so or when something else breaks.”

“God, if anything else breaks, that’ll be so pathetic.”

“Take it easy, Boss Man. Take it easy,” he said to you as he stepped over you and walked out the door.

You fell asleep right where he left you, sprawled on your hardwood floor wearing an extra-large t-shirt that said: ‘SECURITY.’

*********************
not a present for your friends to open

The half-melted, filthy snow and ice crunched under your black boots as you made your way from your parking space into the loft on December 24, 2006. You’d spent that afternoon, after working the majority of the day, relaxing and surfing the net for your own personal Christmas present. When you opened the door to your loft, you realized that Santa had already come. There was a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue on the bar with a bow and note:

Brian,
I was hoping I’d get to see you, but I guess it’s not timing out right.
I’m leaving town in a couple of hours, spending Christmas with friends
in Key West, if you can believe that. Anyway, I wanted to give you this.
Please give Gus and Jenny a hug for me. And Mel and Lindz.

Merry Christmas,
Justin


When you opened the note a check fell out and floated to the floor. You picked it up and stared at it. Five hundred dollars. The memo on the check said, to pay you back, it’s a start.

You didn’t want his money. You thought about tearing it up but then decided not to.

You didn’t even know why you were there, at the loft, except that you did. The festive Christmas décor at the house wasn’t for you; it was for Gus. You figured you should stay away from it, or it wouldn’t stand a chance of still being around whenever he arrived the next morning. So you hired someone to make the place merry and left for the entire month of December, living at the loft until the elves were coming after Christmas to get rid of everything. Your neighbors left cards in your doorway complimenting you on the yuletide splendor you’d created for the neighborhood.

You threw them in the fireplace.

The cards.

Not your neighbors.

It was your second Christmas without Justin. Seemed ridiculous to think of a Christmas without him considering you’d never thought of a Christmas with him, but it was snowing and you were standing in front of the window at nine thirty that evening smoking and laughing to yourself as the trick you were about to fuck talked to his sister on his cell phone.

Rudy.

His name was Rudolph, and you were going to fuck him on Christmas Eve. That and his unrelentingly, hot, holiday ass seemed to be a perfect match for your freshly lit cigarette. The self-pity mixed with a little whiskey made it feel like every other Christmas you could ever remember. You didn’t know why you let him tell you his name.

Rudy was full of holiday spirit and your cock when you bent him over a table and taught him the difference between naughty and nice. It didn’t take him long to realize which one you were. He was smarter than most. Probably why he’d been chosen to guide Santa’s sleigh.

You’d seen him around Babylon lately, dropping less-than-subtle hints about wanting to be one of the million your dick had served. It’d become a rite of passage for these club kids of late, to be chosen by you. Made you feel like a head of a fraternity that, as the 'brothers' got to know, wouldn’t have you as a member.

Because it wasn’t a matter of give and take with you. It was, quite simply, a matter of take.

Rudy was putting his jeans back on and insisted upon chatting you up, “You know, there’s a contest going on among us: ‘See how long Kinney will let you remain in his presence after he’s fucked you.’”

“That’s a ridiculous name for a contest. What’s the prize?”

“Don’t know. Notoriety, I guess. I hear the record so far is twelve minutes. We’ll, since July, anyway. We start over every six months.”

“How sporting of you. How much longer would you have to be in my face to make twelve minutes, thirty seconds?”

“A little under seven minutes.”

“Well, stop talking, and you can break the record.”

Rudy sat down on your sofa and looked at his watch. You poured yourself another shot of Johnnie Walker and drank it, the bottle dangling from your hand as you made your way to your bedroom. You cast a glance back over your shoulder, “Merry Christmas, Rudolph. Guess you always were Santa’s favorite.”

*********************
you’ll be doin’ all right, with your Christmas of white,
but I’ll have a blue, blue Christmas


You heard the door of the loft close and rolled over to stare out the window, your hand wandering between your legs. You felt yourself, still hard for him, Justin, not the misfit boy, and told yourself that you wouldn’t do this. Promised yourself as the whiskey burned through your body that you wouldn’t lay here, a victim of your own impending intoxication, and imagine him. Naked, tight, and so, so warm.

But you were lying to yourself and you knew it.

It’s only a lie if they make you lie.

He was making you lie, haunting you. Ghost of Whiskey-bearing, Note-Leaving, Blond Boy Past.

You stared at the gift he brought, your eyes fixating on the label:


The Rarest Blend


Johnnie Walker Blue Label is our rarest blend. This isn’t a whiskey for beginners. It’s challenging and an acquired taste, but like the finest rewards in life is worth it. Blue Label is made from a few exceptional whiskies with powerful flavours. Each bottle is precious to us and individually numbered. Each contains a rare taste and gives an intense experience.

Each bottle is precious to us and individually numbered.

Felt odd and slightly lesbianic to be empathizing with a bottle of whiskey.

Each contains a rare taste and gives an intense experience.

But it wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.

You screwed the lid back on and laid the bottle on his pillow, eyeing the way the amber liquid settled until your eyes finally closed.

And to all a good night...

*********************
goodbye stranger it's been nice
hope you find your paradise


He made it here. He got here. All by himself. Without you.

You don’t know how.

You don’t know how he doesn’t need you.

He runs toward you on the beach, on this beautiful beach, excited, like a small child. He’s so tan.

So naked.

Just like you. Naked. Only you’re pale.

You’ve never seen the sun.

“Brian!” You reach out and touch him, his skin so hot. No response to your touch. “You’re here!”

“I’m here.”

“I’m so glad!” He’s so glad.

He runs toward the water, the sand flying under his feet.

“Justin! WAIT!”

Waves over his shoulder, without looking back, wants you to follow him, to run. So you run on the burning sand, catching up to him at the water’s edge. There are people all over this beach, not nude like the two of you. They see you, but they don’t. You grab his arm when you catch up to him, the salt water lapping at his feet. There’s a beautiful, light layer of sand covering his body now. Something you’ve never seen before.

You pant, out of breath, “Wait. Wait.” He smiles, not really at you. Never really looks at you. But there are things he needs to see.

“Why are you here?” you demand of him.

He laughs and does a little dance.

“’Cause I won the bet!” Another little dance, his feet in the wet sand.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!” So happy, so giddy. His eyes travel down your naked body and back up again, doesn’t phase him.

“No, you didn’t.” You got that guy first. Plain and simple. Fair and square. Got cancer to prove it. He splashes his feet in the warm, shallow water.

“Yes, I did!” He’s not mad, just positive that he’s right, happy as a clam on the shores of fucking Ibiza? Happy and pissing you off. You try to grab him again to get his attention but it’s like he’s too slippery.

“Justin, you did not win that fucking bet. I did, and you know it.”

“Ha! Wrong bet!” He runs several feet away from you, squats down and starts digging for something in the sand. You walk over to him and kick at him with your bare feet. He falls back on his ass and looks up at you. “I don’t want sand in my ass, Brian.”

Not so happy now.

“Whatever. What bet?” He lies on his back and starts making a sand angel, like there’s even such a thing as a ‘sand angel.’ You kick his calf when it comes in your direction. “What? Fucking? Bet?” He stops his naked, horizontal jumping jacks and looks right at you, a self-satisfied smile on his face.

“The first night I met you, I bet myself that you’d fall in love me,” he starts right back flapping his arms again, “and then that you’d take me on an all-expense paid trip to the holiday destination of my dreams!”

Your nostrils flare, “I didn’t take you here.”

He smiles at an airplane flying by, “I know. One out of two’s not bad.”

Midnight on the beach.

Strings of sparkly lights everywhere. Attached to nothing.

He nudges you with his foot, “Hey, you’re hard.” You look down, and he’s right, you are.

And you’re jerking off right over him.

“Come all over me!” He closes his eyes and opens his mouth, his toes wiggling in anticipation.

“Are you sure?”

He nods, drumming his fingers on the top of your foot., “Yeah, just take it easy.” You look around and don’t see anybody watching you, close your eyes and stroke, feeling how good it feels to be about to come, that just-about-to-burst sensation inside of you, his fingers tapping on your toes. It comes out of you, warm, white stripes, fast, but taking forever, the wind and the water beating against you.

Sand scraping your skin.

You open your eyes, completely spent, the sand perfectly smooth in front of you. And you know he was never there.

************************
get out of my dreams
get into my car


"Happy Holidays, Mr. Kinney. Today is Monday, December 25, 2006. The time is seven eleven a.m. The current temperature is forty-two degrees. Road advisories have been issued for your area due to snow accumulation. Please use caution and increase following distance. You may enter your destination now.”

“HOME.”

“Home is entered as your destination. Thank you.”

“NATIONAL.”

“Well, Moms and Dads, I hope you’ve gotten all of your holiday shopping done because today is judgemen-"


“MESSAGES.”

“You have one new message—"


“PLAY.”

“Today. Twelve thirteen a.m. Hey, it’s me. Sorry I missed you yesterday. I was in a rush. I hope you got the present I left you….and the check. It’s really warm down here. I’ve never been in a warm climate for Christmas. It’s kind of weird…….Well, I just wanted to call and wish you Merry Christmas…. I hope Gus and Jenny like the t-shirts I sent them. I know it’s not very original to send ‘I LOVE NEW YORK’ shirts, but I didn’t really know what to get them…..Guess I feel like I don’t really know them anymore…..Anyway, have a good holiday and take care of yourself. I’ll talk to you soon……….I can’t believe this thing let me talk this long. I thought it used to cut me off…… Okay, well, I guess I should go. You probably wish I shut up a long time ago. Bye.”


“ARCHIVE.”

 

Lyrics from Dire Straits Money for Nothing, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elvis Presley’s Blue Christmas, Supertramp’s Goodbye Stranger, and Billy Ocean’s Carribean Queen. Description of Johnnie Walker Blue Label is copyrighted. No infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work of fiction.

Chapter End Notes:

Original publication date 8/11/05.

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