Rentboy (5 page)

“I like hawks.” Fox did the same back, tapping Edward’s nose. “I like your nose.”

No one had ever said that before. “I was thinking of having a nose job. What do you think?”

Fox looked up at him. “Don’t.”

Under the rushing water Fox got down on his knees. Wondering what he was doing, Edward watched the top of Fox’s head. He almost screamed when Fox grabbed his willy with his teeth and sucked it into his mouth. Panting hard, Edward stood, his knees weak, jellylike, while Fox sucked hard on him. He placed both hands on Fox’s head as if giving him a benediction. Edward hadn’t thought it possible to come three times in quick succession, but he did, pumping his fluids into Fox’s mouth. When the last vestige of pleasure was wrung from his willy, he waited, unable to move. Fox wrapped both arms around Edward’s waist, hanging on to him.

Never in his life had Edward felt so unutterably grateful and happy and sated as he felt at that moment.
I could die right now and regret nothing.

“Fox, stand up.” Fox obeyed. “Come into the bedroom and let me make you happy again.” He took the sweet young face in both his hands, looking down at him. “What do you want me to do to you?”

“I want you to hold me and talk to me.”

“What about the other thing?” Edward asked.

“Sex? I love sex. It’s great. But right now I want you to hold me and talk to me.”

“Your wish is my command,” Edward said.

They dried off with Edward’s one towel. He brushed his teeth and rinsed the toothbrush under the running water for several minutes before handing it to Fox. “Sorry I don’t have a spare. I tend to buy things like that as I need then. That one’s quite new. I got it from the dentist last month at my checkup.”

“You’re funny, Eddie.” Fox took it and brushed his teeth.

“Suppose that’s better than being weird.”

They wandered into the bedroom. The minute they lay down, Edward took Fox into his arms. As if he had never had a hug in his life, Fox cuddled in close. “That was the most incredible thing in the world,” Edward said.

“What?” Fox threw his leg over Edward’s hip.

“You putting a condom on my willy and saying those words.”

“Willy?” Fox laughed outright. “Only five-year-olds say
willy
.”

“I can’t say the words you say. I wasn’t brought up that way. In my house everything to do with sex was all innuendo and euphemism. When I was fifteen, my dad said,
‘One day you’ll meet a girl, and you’ll want to get close to her. If you can’t wait until you’re married, be sure to protect yourself.’
I thought he was talking about my karate lessons. I couldn’t imagine giving a girl a jab to the throat.”

Fox burst out laughing so hard Edward could feel the vibrations from Fox’s belly against his own. When he could speak again, Fox said, “We didn’t exactly talk about sex at home either, but when you’re out with other blokes and in the clubs and you’re getting it on, you can’t exactly say, ‘Suck my willy.’ The dude would be in hysterics.”

“That’s just it. I’ve never been out in clubs with other blokes. A few beers in the student union pub after classes was the extent of my university socializing. And it’s been all downhill since then. I only went into a gay club once. None of the men paid a jot of attention to me. I had a beer and left feeling like Billy No Mates.”

“Is that why you were out looking for a rentboy?”

“Sad as it sounds, yes.” He might as well admit it.

“Say
cock
,” Fox said.

“No, I can’t,” Edward said.

“Yes, you can.” Fox shoved Edward onto his back and rested on one elbow, looking down at him.

He couldn’t stop smiling. Fox made him feel giddy.

“Go on. Say it. Say
fuck
and
cock
.”

What was wrong with him. It was like he became mute in the face of a couple of stupid words. Fox laughing at him didn’t help. It made him want to laugh too without knowing why. “Come on, Eddie. Say
cock
. You can do it.”

It came out as a whisper. “Cock.”

“Louder,” Fox said.

He had the most mischievous grin in the world, more on one side of his face than the other. There was a slight dimple in his chin when he laughed. Looking up at him, Edward felt deliriously, deliciously happy. Everything in his monotonous world was ramped up and exciting with Fox. “Cock,” he said a little louder.

“Shout it.”

“The neighbors!”

“Come on, shout it. All right, I’ll do it to show you how.”

“Fox, no!” Edward catapulted himself up and rolled over on top of Fox, attempting to press his hand over Fox’s mouth, but he was too late.

The room reverberated with the words, “Cock! Fuck!”

Finally getting control of him, Edward lay on top of Fox, gagging him with his hand. Utterly still, Fox looked up at him, making
mmmm
noises behind the hand. “I’ll only take my hand away if you promise not to shout.”

Fox nodded. Slowly Edward removed his hand. Fox began to laugh again, making Edward bounce on top of him. “Say the words, or I’ll start screaming them again.”

“Cock,” Edward whispered. “Fuck.” He rolled off onto his back, pulling Fox with him until their positions were reversed.

Fox rested his head on Edward’s chest, lying very still. “Now say
wank
.” Fox ran through a litany of sex-related slang while Edward repeated the words. Some were funnier than others, but they laughed at them all. After a long while Fox slid off. Edward rolled onto his side, drawing Fox into a tight embrace. “Put your leg over me, Eddie.”

Edward rested his thigh on Fox’s hip and drew Fox’s legs closer with his calf. “Like this?”

“Yeah, like that. Hold me tight.”

Fox fell asleep quickly, but Edward stayed awake for a long time, not wanting to miss a minute of being with this lovely, funny, sexy young man. An hour later, still unable to sleep, Edward rose, put on his glasses, and went naked into the living room. He had been meaning all day to clear up some work. For security he never saved any information on his hard drive. Everything to do with his work was saved on memory sticks. In the drawer in his desk was the stick with the information about the pesticide formula. The only other copy was in the safe in his lab. No one was going to get their hands on the original compound for Lintrane. Tests had proved it lethal to humans when it was supposed to kill only insects. The revised formula he had been working on for weeks was completely safe, and that was the one he would submit to the pharmaceutical company.

Edward took the memory stick with the dodgy data on it into the kitchen and put it on the wooden chopping board. With the meat mallet his mother had bought him and which he had never used for cooking, he smashed the memory stick and then dropped it in a plastic beaker full of water, poured salt into it, and went back to bed. Fox was still in the same position he had been in when Edward left. He lay down, pulled the young man into his arms, and finally fell asleep.

Tossing aside a science magazine and an empty pizza box, Fox sat on the couch to pull on his jeans and the black Gravel boots he’d bought from Sinister Soles on the Tottenham Court Road. As he fastened the buckles down the sides he speculated why Eddie had not wondered how a rentboy who supposedly lived in a box in a back alley could afford boots that cost a hundred and fifty quid. But the dude was a total nerd. He probably had no idea how much they cost.

Why did I have to admit I cut myself? Now he’ll think I’m some psychotic emo idiot who spends his spare time sitting in graveyards reading poems by Stevie Smith and Sylvia Plath.
But the very fact that he had admitted it at all made him wonder about Eddie and why he had trusted him. He’d never admitted to anyone before that the way he dealt with his pain was to create yet more of it.

Fox retrieved his black shirt and finished dressing.

Amid the clutter on the desk was Eddie’s laptop. Fox glanced at the bedroom door. All he needed to do was take the laptop and leave. Then he noticed a couple of memory sticks. The information his father wanted might be on those. Eddie would think he had taken the stuff to sell. But even as he shoved the computer into his leather backpack, the thought of Eddie waking up and seeing his laptop gone, believing him to be a common thief was untenable. He was such a lovely man, Fox wanted Eddie to think well of him. In the same instant a picture of what his father would do to him and the twins if he returned without it bloomed in his mind’s eye as he headed for the door.

Without knowing why, he crept back to the bedroom door to take one last look at Eddie. Naked, his lean body lay sprawled across the bed on his side; Eddie was really long and thin, almost as bony as Fox. And he was right; his nose was long and narrow, hawk-like, but it suited him.

Sorry, Eddie.

Quiet even in big boots, Fox made his way across the wood floor and left quickly. The house was silent. He went carefully down the staircase and let himself out into the pitch-black street. In the distance Big Ben chimed five o’clock.

I can’t go home yet. I hate being there. The twins will still be asleep, so they’ll be safe.

Fox walked away from the oasis of Eddie’s little flat, wondering how he could finish college, take care of the twins, keep a roof over their heads, and keep them all fed. There were two choices. Spend the next couple of years in constant fear of the next beating, worrying that the twins were being hurt, watching his mother drink herself into a coma, or kill the fucking bastard who was the cause of all their troubles.

* * * *

Outside St. Pancras Station a mobile tea wagon gave free tea and sandwiches to homeless people. There was always a lineup. Fox joined the end behind an elderly woman who smelled worse than the alley off Tisbury Court. When he got to the front, he looked up at the curly-haired man in the black shirt and white dog collar. “Can I have a cup of tea, no milk?”

The man handed him a mug of strong tea. “Spam or cheese sarnie”

“I don’t want a sandwich, thanks. Anyway, I’m a vegan.”

“A what?” The man looked dumbfounded. “You’re too thin. You should eat something.”

“The tea is great. Thanks.” Fox walked away and sat on a bench to drink from the heavy, chipped mug.
“That’s builder’s tea, that is,”
his mum always said when the tea was too strong and she was still sober enough to notice. There was a time when she had made him laugh, when she had tucked him into bed at night and kissed him and made nice meals. Now she spent her days like Fox and the twins, trying to avoid William Baillie’s fists.

“Are you homeless?”

Fox looked up from the depths of the mug as the man sat beside him on the bench. “I’m not Catholic.”

“Neither am I. I’m an Anglican.” The vicar’s brown eyes were really kind, reminding Fox for a minute of Eddie, but the man was much heavier built than Eddie, and older, probably midthirties. “Church of England, not Rome. Are you homeless, because to be honest, you don’t look it. You’re too clean.”

Had Eddie thought that too? “I suppose you see homeless people all the time.”

“Yes. And I’ve seen you around Tisbury Court a few times just lately. Prostitution is never the answer. There is always a way out of your problems.”

“I was just trying to decide what it is.”
Kill William Baillie or kill William Baillie.

“Do you have an answer yet? I can pray with you if you’d like.”

Fox met his gaze. “Are you, you know, sworn to secrecy like a Catholic priest?”

“Yes. I can hear a confession, and it is sacrosanct.”

“Good. Well, here it is. My confession. I’m going to kill my dad.”

Horror registered in the vicar’s eyes as his mouth dropped open. “What? You can’t do that.”

“I’ve got no choice, mate. It’s him or us.” Fox handed him the empty mug and walked away.

* * * *

At the front door Fox removed his boots. A quick look in the living room told him his mum was already in bed, either chased upstairs by his father or having struggled up there on her own before William Baillie got up.

Listening, as alert as a fox, he tried to tune in to his father. Should he do it now? No. He was too tired. In order to avoid getting home too soon he had walked part of the way before getting the tube and then the bus. All he wanted right now was to sleep. Quickly he ran on tiptoes up the stairs, carrying his boots. If he could make it to his bedroom without seeing his father, he could hide in the wardrobe to sleep for a while. No locks were allowed on any of the doors inside the house. Not even the bathroom. No one was allowed to avoid William Baillie even if they wanted to.

Inside Fox’s darkened bedroom, huddled in his bed, lay the twins. They whimpered when he opened the door. “What’s up?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “It’s me, Fox.” He switched on the lamp. The twins lay as they always did in bed, bodies wrapped around each other. They sat up gingerly. They’d been beaten again. “Did he belt your arses?” Four big eyes stared hollowly back at him. “Show me.”

The twins pulled off their pajamas to show recent red stripes across their backs and buttocks. Tears burned Fox’s eyes, and the urge to cut himself bubbled up inside him. He sat on the bed and gathered them into his arms. Despite the warm morning, they shivered uncontrollably. “When did he do it? Last night?”

Nothing. They looked at him, then laid their heads on his shoulders.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to kill him soon. I just need to figure out how.”

“Fox!” Baillie’s voice outside on the landing made them jump.

“Let’s get in the wardrobe, quick,” Fox whispered.

All three scrambled off the bed and into the wardrobe on the nest of pillows and blankets Fox had secreted there. By some miracle his father had never discovered the fairly obvious hiding place, because he would have remarked on it before now. Huddling together in the darkness, they waited in silence, hearing the bedroom door open, their father tramp around the room in his heavy army boots before leaving again. For a long time Fox held his twin siblings against him, until at last they all fell into a troubled sleep.