Keeping Promise Rock (23 page)

“Yeah,” Crick muttered, blushing. He knew. “We’re sort of putting that relationship on hold until I get back. That there was my family.

They’re all I need.”

It took a while to get used to the Twitter website, and for a while, their posts were stilted and dumb. But after a while, Crick got almost as quick with his thumbs on the teeny keyboard as Benny seemed to be, and Deacon was catching up. It never did take the place of letters, for which Crick was sincerely grateful. Every so often, he would tell the truth, which was that his heart was bursting out of his skin with the hiding and the being careful—he’d even borrowed some porn and visited the bathroom, just to make everyone think he was het, which he had to put down as one of the most asinine things he’d ever done. So he would threaten to lose it, and Deacon would write him another tender, painful, real love letter, and he would tape it up to keep it safe and put it in his burgeoning wallet.

But even those didn’t ease the pain when, in February, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

DP @Crick—prettiest baby ever. See the link.

And God, was she. Benny looked tired and older and so scared as she held the wrinkled little goober, but the goober herself had big, blue Keeping Promise Rock

eyes, the same shape as Benny’s and Crick’s. There was a shot, taken by Benny, with Deacon’s big hands around that tiny body. Deacon looked…

happy. There was a joy shining from him as he looked at that baby, and Crick knew, without a doubt, that he’d missed something important, something huge, and that his sister had given Deacon something he’d never be able to, even if it was just until she got her shit together and left.

Crick @DP—you’re already in love, I can tell.

DP @Crick—she’s got your eyes.

And Crick had to fight back tears. Ah, Jesus…
Deacon, don’t get
attached. The little goober will only break your heart. It must run in the
family.

Crick @DP—Don’t let her break your heart.

DP @Crick—It’s stronger than it used to be. It’ll stay strong enough
for all of you.

Crick @DP—gotta go. Give Benny and Parry Angel my love.

And you, Deacon. Take most of my love for yourself.

So Crick was in a bad way when his two weeks’ worth of leave finally went through—especially because by the time he was actually on the plane for USO Germany, it was Jon and Amy’s first anniversary.

The minute he got to base, he checked out and had the really bad fucking fortune to meet Private Jimmy as he stood in front of the base. He was waiting for the bus that would take him to Berlin, the train, and eventually to Paris. Deacon said he should go—following that bit of advice was the least Crick could do, since once he got back to The Pulpit,

he didn’t intend to go anywhere again without Deacon by his side.

“Hey, Lieu—where you off to?” It sounded innocuous enough, but Crick must have been really desperate for any sort of human contact whatsofuckingever, because eventually, that little greeting ended him up at a strip club in Berlin. “C’mon, Crick—give me a send off! I’m going home to work a McJob, probably, and this could be the last time I see the world.”

As Fraulein Wundertits shook her thing to the techno-industrial music in the converted warehouse, Crick had to ask himself if this was what Jimmy had in mind. He certainly couldn’t ask Jimmy—the music was too goddamned loud. There was a buzzing in his pocket, and he pulled out his phone. It was Benny.

@Crick—Naked with something hot yet?

@Benny—Not tonight, Shorty. Heart hurts.

@Crick—Deac’s too. Comet’s brushed to a sheen.

@Benny—I’m on leave and I’m not home.

@Crick—Think we don’t know that, jackass?

@Benny—Go away, some chick’s shaking her tits and I’m
pretending to care.

@Crick—Do something I wouldn’t do. It’ll make Deacon happy.

@Benny—HA!

@Crick—He thinks of you alone. It hurts him.

@ Benny—I can’t have this conversation now. Tomorrow.

@Crick—Tomorrow.

“Who’s on the horn, Crick?” Jimmy had to lean forward and shout in Crick’s ear, and Crick shrugged. He was tired, heartsick, and incredibly lonely, but not even that could make Jimmy’s gap-toothed, sandy-haired, square-headed face interesting enough to even consider.

“My sister.”

“Well, tell her you’re busy—look!”

Crick looked. There was Fraulein Wundertits, looking suggestively at him from the doorway to the dressing room behind the stage. She was pretty, she had a nice smile, and she was wearing a red silk dressing gown.

Crick sighed. Maybe this would be good cover—he could go pretend to be heterosexual in order to give up pretending that he was interested in showing poor Jimmy a good time.

“I should go talk to her,” he screamed over the pounding techno-industrial-metal of the club, and Jimmy grinned.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Jimmy yelled, and Crick sent back a sincere, “I wouldn’t count on that, Private. Good luck in the States!” before he grabbed his duffel and made his way through the throng of people circling the stage. In a minute, he was all cozy, snuggled back into the hallway with a pretty girl.

“Hello, GI,” the girl said in an appealing—and strong—accent. “I have a… a deal for you, you like?”

He looked at her and had to smile—she was very pretty. Her face was small and round, with enormous blue eyes—heavily made up with attached lashes—and her hair was up in a beguiling, two-toned ponytail.

He figured if he was straight, he’d bend her over here and now, but he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It was quieter in the back stage; he didn’t have to scream. “You’re very pretty”—and now he smiled with incredible embarrassment—“but you’re not really my type.” He spotted a door at the end of the dark hall, slung his duffel over his shoulder, and turned to walk towards it when he felt her hand on his sleeve. “American?” He turned and smiled politely again and was totally blown away when she said, “You are more my brother’s type?” Crick knew his jaw had dropped, and then it was suddenly twenty degrees hotter in his casual fatigues. “Um….” Her smile was both gentle and ironic. “You Americans—you make these things so hard. Here—my shift is over, let me change.” He thought she’d just let him stay out in the hallway, but apparently, now that she knew he wasn’t interested in her, she wasn’t interested in keeping up pretenses. She dragged him back into a dressing room only slightly bigger than an airplane toilet, dropped her silk robe, and started pulling on clothes while Crick squashed himself against the door like she was a wet dog.

“What’s the matter, American? Afraid you’ll catch girl cooties?” Crick wondered if he’d ever be able to explain this to Deacon and then thought maybe Deacon would laugh his ass off. Deacon, at least, would know what to do with a naked German chick who’d come on to him.

“I just don’t know if I’m up for a random hook-up,” he said apologetically. “Your brother may hate me on sight!” The girl shrugged. “If he hates you, he may like your cash. If he likes you, it will be no charge.”

“But I’m not interested,” he tried to protest, but she reached around him and opened the door. He fell out into the hallway, and she grabbed his hand and hauled him after her.

“Sure you are. You have the loneliest eyes I’ve ever seen.” 156

Oh geez, he looked so hard-up that random strippers were picking him out of a crowd and hooking him up with their brothers? Wonderful.

It had rained the night before, and the girl’s platform heels smacked lightly on the wet pavement. Crick could see neon signs reflected in the black puddles, and he had a slightly disjointed feeling—what in the fuck was Carrick James Francis doing here, in this alien city, with this very determined stripper?

“Um… what’s your name?” he asked, and she laughed.

“Anke—why does it matter? You’re not going to screw me!”

“It seemed polite,” he mumbled, and pretty much determined that, after he explained to her brother that this was a big misunderstanding, he’d ask for directions to the monorail. He understood it went all night.

Anke didn’t live far. He had a decent bead on where the main thoroughfare was from the strip club, and he thought he might find his way back there and then to the train, when she hauled him up about six flights of stairs to a small, seedy apartment at the end of a concrete hallway. She didn’t knock but dragged Crick into a small kitchen-cum-living room and then went down a hallway about six inches wider than she was and knocked on the door to his left.

“Stefan!” she called. “Stefan—wake up. I brought you home something.”

“Ist es ’was zum essen?”
came a voice, and she turned the knob and stuck her head in.

“That’s up to you. But he’s American, so speak English,
bitte
.”
Anke backed out of the hallway and looked at Crick with a bright smile. “The rest is up to you, American. If you shower in the morning, don’t use all the water.” And then she ducked into the room across the hall with a cheery wave.

“Dammit, Anke—it’s my night….” A head appeared in the open doorway, and then two very blue eyes turned towards Crick. “Hello.

Danke, kleine Schwester!”

“Bitteschön, Stefan—sei süß. Er ist einsam.”

“Lonely,” the boy said with an even heavier accent than his sister.

“Ja, das kann ich sehen.”

Crick was starting to wonder if he’d had “lonely” tattooed on his forehead when he was asleep—first Private Jimmy, and now random brother and sister in back-alley, Berlin.

“Look, Stefan, is it? Yeah… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean for this to go so far. If you could just give me some directions back to the monorail….” Crick started backing slowly towards the door, feeling both sheepish and surreal. Then Stefan came out, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and not much else, and Crick stopped backing out.

Oh, he was pretty. Not as pretty as Deacon, but, well… God. It had just been so long since he’d been able to even
look
at a man that way.

Stefan’s muscles were small but well-defined. He was tall—not as tall as Crick, but a little taller than Deacon, and besides the white-blonde hair and the blue eyes, he had a sweet little oval of a face and full, pouting lips.

Pretty. Pretty and wearing boxer shorts.

Out of nowhere came the thought that the condoms Deacon had given him were still in his duffel bag, and he gave his pecker a stern talking-to before looking up to tell Stefan “no” again.

Stefan had moved, and those pretty blue eyes were right in front of Crick.

“You are lonely, American—it’s my night off. Come—all we have to do is sit on my bed and talk. I will not bite.” A grin—a quick, fierce, tight little grin that made Crick’s chest hurt—and then he added, “Unless you want me to.”

Crick shook his head. “It’s… it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about him,” he said. “He’s… he’s waiting for me.” Stefan nodded like he’d seen it before. “American military—it makes things hard, I know. Come. Do you have a picture?” Crick found he was digging for his wallet before they even got into Stefan’s room. Stefan’s room was a mess—clothes, food boxes, scraps of paper with phone numbers—but Stefan cleared off a spot on his bed without embarrassment and patted it for Crick to sit down. Crick pulled out the pictures of Deacon that Benny had been sending. The one where he was asleep on the couch with the baby was more recent, and he was looking a little less like a famine victim in that one. The one where he was nose to nose with Comet was still one of his favorites, and a new one where he was sitting on a horse and grinning self-consciously into the 158

camera showed him off at his best. But he didn’t stop there—he pulled out all of them, and the letters too.

Stefan’s grin was faintly ironic. “It’s a good thing it is my night off—there’s no room in that wallet for cash!” Crick blushed. “I keep the cash somewhere else,” he said, and Stefan laughed. It was a nice laugh—a few hard breaths, a round, rolling sound, and then he moved his attention onward.

“He’s very pretty,” Stefan said, looking at the pictures. “His eyes are sad, like yours.”

“He’s been in my life since I was nine,” Crick tried to explain. “It’s hard being apart.”

Stefan reached out and put his hand on Crick’s as it was lying there on the bed. “You think he wants you to be this lonely? You want him to be so lonely?”

Crick closed his eyes. “I… I just want so bad to talk about him,” he said.

Stefan closed his hand on Crick’s, and Crick found he was squeezing it back. “What’s your name, American?”

“Crick.”

“Crick?”

“Short for Carrick.”

Another one of those fierce, tight grins, and Crick’s heart started pounding in his chest. “And what’s his name?” Crick closed his eyes so he could save the sounds in his mouth when he said them. “Deacon. Deacon Parish Winters.”

“He’s a good man, this Deacon?” Stefan asked gently, and Crick kept his eyes closed and nodded, even though he could feel the puff of Stefan’s breath on his face when he spoke. “A good man will forgive you, Crick. If my sister saw your loneliness in the middle of a dance, I don’t see how he couldn’t.”

Stefan’s breath was very near—it wasn’t sour, exactly, but he hadn’t brushed his teeth since he last slept either. But he didn’t smoke (and it felt like most of Germany did) and he didn’t have alcohol on his breath, and he was… warm. Warm and male. Crick put out his hand and splayed his fingers across that smooth, bare chest.

“I just wanted to say his name,” Crick protested, feeling his loneliness burn behind his eyelids and blur at the fringe of his lashes.

“Then keep your eyes closed,” Stefan murmured, touching lips with him. “Keep your eyes closed and speak his name.”

“Deacon,” Crick breathed, just before Stefan’s mouth claimed his.

Crick got up quietly the next morning and put on his boxers, taking care not to wake Stefan as he did so. He cleaned up the condom wrappers and threw them in the trash and went into the miniscule bathroom and gave himself a GI shower with a washcloth and some of Anke’s scented soap. When he was done, he dressed in his fatigues from the day before, since they weren’t much the worse for wear, put on his boots, and bent and kissed Stefan on the cheek.