Into the River (20 page)

Devon nodded.

“We only came over because I knew you’d be here. He’s got an amazing keyboard technique, Devon.” Steph turned to Briggs. “What did Willie say about it?”

Briggs wouldn’t be drawn so Steph tried a new tack. “Let’s go to the practice room and you can do us something soulful.”

He ran on ahead, calling back to them as they walked along the corridor. “I know … that piece by Erik Satie, da da da da da da dum.”

“This?” Briggs stroked out the poignant, silky notes.

Steph clasped his shoulders and breathed huskily in his ear, “God, that’s so sexy. You could get someone to do anything with that music.” He caught Devon’s eyes in an ironic flash.

“What was it that Willie said? Go on … tell us. Pleasey please …”

Briggs blushed but then said, “Oh something like, ‘it’s the sort of technique that can’t be taught’.”

“It’s true, Devon, feel his hands. Go on, feel them.”

Briggs seemed reluctant to offer them and Devon felt a bit awkward, too.

Steph grabbed both their hands and put them together. Then for a moment or two the three of them were yoked together in Steph’s grip.

“There. Not so hard, huh?”

Devon looked at Briggs’s face. It was inflamed and bumpy with acne, but being in the proximity of Steph made him redder than ever.

Steph toyed with Briggs, treading the fine line between teasing and tormenting.

“Barry, what do you look for in a girl?”

“Do you look for the same thing in a boy?”

“Ever had a girlfriend?”

“Ever done it?”

Briggs tried to answer honestly and candidly but was being set ever more testing questions.

“Who do you think of when you’re playing with yourself?”

“Ever been down on someone?”

Devon could see the relief on Briggs’s face when Steph finally excused himself to go to the toilet. It was short-lived: the moment he returned, Steph was at it again from a new tack.

“God, it’s weird. That music, so soft but so powerful too, sort of licks away at you.” He stuck his face only inches from Briggs’s. “Know what I mean?”

Briggs nodded and began to play again.

Steph leaned over his back and said, “God, that makes me so horny, why do you play it? You know the effect it has on me.”

He straightened up and when Briggs and Devon looked at him it was obvious he had an enormous erection. He looked down at his bulging trousers, and then threw back his arms as if surprised, “My God, what is happening to me? Barry what have you done to me?”

Devon twigged to it a moment before Briggs lunged out from the piano stool to touch it.

Steph jumped back with a laugh and pulled down the front of his trousers to reveal the cardboard tube he had secreted whilst in the toilet. Everyone laughed but Devon and Steph laughed a lot longer than Briggs.

“I guess you guys better be going.”

Steph was tucking in his pants again. “Yes, Barry, you’re right, I think we’d better.”

He had a fake shocked expression, as if he’d been violated, and as he walked out, he reached around to cover his arse.

They ran clear of the building, laughing and squawking, and didn’t stop until they were back on their beds in the dorm.

“Steph, what was all that about?”

“I wanted to show you something. Something I learned. Something you need to know.”

“I need to know that? I don’t think so.”

“Yes you do. In lots of ways you’re still just a naïve little Maori boy from the Coast.”

“Don’t you call me that.”

“Well, you are. And you know it. Look, Devon …” Steph stood up to see if there was anyone lurking in the other pens. “I told you that I had a boring holiday. That all I did was read and sleep, but I was lying.”

“So what did you do? Go to all the gay bars of Wellington?”

“Gay? Straight? That’s such shit, Devon.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Course it is. During the holidays I found a friend. A secret friend.”

“I don’t know that I want to hear this story.”

“My friend …”

“The word is ‘he’, I reckon …”

“Okay, he then, was secret not because he was a he, but because he was much older than me, one of my father’s colleagues.”

Devon didn’t say anything.

“There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong, but they didn’t. I reckon I learnt more in those ten days than I did all of last year.”

Devon put his fingers in his ears. “I don’t want to hear this, Steph …”

Steph came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You know how we had that argument with Mr Carell, the one about Achilles and Patrolocus? The great fag debate?”

“So you decided to put it to the test?”

“No, it’s just that I wanted to make my a priori knowledge a bit more a posteriori.”

“Yeah. So you put your posterior on the line?”

“Forget the sex stuff. That’s just packaging. It opened a door and I peered through. The stuff I saw … well, it changed the way I look at things. I stopped being scared. Nothing scares me now.”

“Briggs sure doesn’t.”

“He’s nothing. Just something to practise on.”

“So you spent your holidays doing stuff for your father’s friends?”

“Just one friend. He’s got a boy my age.”

Devon was appalled. “Poor kid, that’s all I can say. Jesus, he’s someone’s dad. Steph, how sick is that?”

Steph continued unabashed. “The thing is, Devon, we’re in charge now. I told you it’s us.”

“Until another cunt like Hartnell comes along. He will. Briggs might turn into one.”

“Ha! He’s my pet. I’ll show you. You want a hamburger? Something at the shops?”

“Maybe …”

“Wait here.” Steph hurried off. He was back in about five minutes.

“So where’s the burger?”

“You wait.”

Devon was beginning to feel a bit queasy. Steph had gone too far. About ten minutes later, Briggs came hurrying in with takeaway packs from McDonald’s.

Later Devon said, “That’s sick, Steph. In some ways that’s even sicker than the games you were playing in the green room.”

Steph looked up from the
Vogue
he was reading, “Don’t look a gift-Briggs in the mouth.”

As Devon suspected, the path that Steph had shown him the previous weekend had only just begun. The following Saturday morning, while the others were off doing sport, Steph proposed that they should go and call on Willie in his flat.

“I don’t think so. Just because you’re his little pet in the music suite doesn’t mean that he’ll want you turning up on his doorstep first thing on Saturday morning.”

“You’re wrong, Devon. That’s exactly what it means. I know for a fact that he always sleeps in on Saturday mornings, so he will
be thrilled to see us.”

“Well, he may be pleased to see you, but I doubt he’s going to be pleased to see me.”

“Oh it’s ‘the more the merrier’ with him, you wait and see.”

They got Newmarket leave, as it was called, and went towards Mount Eden where Willie’s flat was located. It was a big house and he rented the back half of it.

His red Mini was parked in the driveway.

Steph pointed to it. “You’d like this, I’m guessing. I’ll get him to give us a ride in it later.”

It took a number of knocks before Willie came to the door.

It opened a crack first on the end of a chain. Devon glimpsed a dishevelled Willie lurking in the gloom.

“So it’s you.”

“T’is I, Willie, are you going to let us in?”

“Who’s with you?”

“My trusty side-kick, Devon Santos, of course. You didn’t expect me to come alone?”

The door closed and they heard the chain being unhooked. Inside the flat was the sort of chaos that Devon relished. Such a contrast from the severe order of Marsden House. Everything lay everywhere. The hall floor was strewn with dirty clothes and underwear. This led directly into the sitting room where, amongst everything else, there was a piano, an immense TV, and stereo speakers. Scattered around were mixing boards, CDs, a laptop, some bongo drums, a couple of acoustic guitars.

There was only one couch and it looked as if Willie had spent the night there. Takeaway boxes lay on the floor and the huge screen flashed endlessly as though Willie had fallen asleep in front of it. He flopped onto the piano stool.

“Take a pew,” he said, indicating the couch. Willie surveyed the mess, as if noticing it for the first time. “Yeah, I was up late last night, ripping through DVDs of nineties’ musicals, looking for stuff to steal. I must’ve finally keeled over about three a.m.”

He paused as if losing track. “The next thing I hear is you two banging at the door.” He yawned and scratched his balls absently. “You could’ve been anyone.”

“Well you were wrong. It was someone. Us.”

“I feel like my head’s been sat on by an elephant. My IQ must be in the single digits.”

He stood up and peered through the curtains.

“What do you say we go for a swim? I need something to cut through the static.”

“Yeah, why not? It’s winter. The beach is logical,” said Steph.

“We haven’t got any togs,” said Devon, more thinking out loud than actually saying anything.

“Togs? What are they? Don’t need togs man, we can go to Ladies’ Bay, swim in the nick.” Willie searched around and came back with a couple of stained old towels.

“Here … these okay?”

So they were off. Devon squeezed into the back seat and Willie, warming to the task, fired up the sounds.

“Industrial techno …” he said, as if answering a question. “Great for straightening out battered brains. Re-programming.”

They wound their way around the waterfront. The Saturday morning traffic was frenetic with families all going places. Willie fancied himself as a zippy driver but was thwarted at every turn. At the end of the winding esplanade they climbed up to a cliff-top look out. There were a few seats and an arrow showing a path to the beach. After they had parked, Willie led the way as they threaded their way down the cliff. Steph seemed familiar with the place and Devon wondered if he and Willie had been here before.

The beach, predictably, was deserted. It was an overcast day in winter, bordering on bleak. Devon and Steph sat on the pebbly foreshore, determined that this was as far as they were going. Willie made a big point of being energetic and, looking neither right nor left, dropped his trousers, then slid off his underpants.
He stood there in front of them as if it was the most normal thing in the world. His cock was large and he flapped it around as he wrestled out of his upper garments. Devon tried to look somewhere else but it was pointless. This display seemed to have been engineered for Steph’s benefit.

Willie, now completely naked, was eager to get the others to follow suit. “Come on you two, let’s have them off. Don’t be pussy.”

Devon looked at Steph. He was sure that this sort of “Yo ho! Last one in’s a rotten egg” sort of thing was so un-Steph. However, a moment later, he stood up and began to slide out of his clothes. Willie stood by with undisguised interest then ran out into the grey water.

Devon waited for a moment to see whether Steph was indeed going to go through with it and then took his clothes off too. For a moment they both stood on the edge of the sea looking at each other’s cocks.

“Yeah, I reckon it’s the thought of the cold water,” Steph said, as though answering an observation made by Devon.

“Didn’t seem to have that effect on Willie.”

“Willie’s willie,” said Steph and they both sniggered and then began to edge their way into the freezing water.

Willie turned to them as the seawater rose to the level of his balls. “Come on then, no girly noises.” Then he dove forward and swam strongly away from the shore.

Devon turned to Steph — he was sure he would bale at this point — but he lunged awkwardly into the water, so Devon ¡ suit. It was unbelievably cold. Devon could feel his heart beat madly against his rib cage.

After four or five strokes, Steph turned to him. “I reckon we’ve done enough. He wants to kill himself, let him.”

They both turned and powered back to shore. An elderly couple appeared as they reached their clothes. They had walked around the corner from the next beach. The boys huddled in the security
of their towels, hoping they would walk quickly by.

It was not to be. The woman seemed determined to speak to them.

“It looks cold, boys.”

Devon grinned. “It is cold.”

“Your father doesn’t seem to mind.” She indicated Willie’s bobbing head one hundred and fifty metres from shore.

“No brain, no pain,” said Steph and the couple laughed and moved off.

Once they were a decent distance away, Devon and Steph struggled back into their sticky clothes, still half wet. What had been a very quick operation when they first arrived became tricky as their clothes bunched and caught on their wet bodies.

As the couple cleared the next cliff and disappeared into the next bay, Willie re-appeared a little sheepishly. His attempts to be nonchalant seemed forced and slightly desperate. Devon noticed the cold water had shrunk his cock considerably, but it recovered once again as he stood in front of the two of them and dried it vigorously.

“Okay, Willie, check. Got the message.” Steph seemed unimpressed.

Willie slipped on his underpants, sat next to the boys and lit up. Steph put his hand out absently and Willie passed the joint to him. It was obviously a ritual of theirs. Steph took a quick hit and passed it to Devon. He had a puff and passed it back. Willie looked on approvingly.

“You do that well, Devon. Been smoking long?”

“Ever since I was about ten.”

“Hmm. Hard core,” said Willie.

Steph looked away as if hiding a smile.

When they got back to the flat, Willie suggested they have a shower to warm up. Devon didn’t like the idea but Steph went in like it was no big deal.

Willie dug around until he found a DVD of the movie
Platoon
.
“You might like this.”

For the next few minutes Devon did everything he could think of to block out the thought of what was happening in the next room.

When Steph finally re-appeared he seemed a bit distracted.

“He’ll be in there for a while, a good chance to score.”