“She’s in Alaska,” Jase said. “We’ve been trying to get her back here. But she’s always busy with one thing or another.” His eyes seemed to light up when he talked about her. “We’d love her to meet Darius.”
Darius smiled. “I can’t wait to meet her, too. She sounds like a wonderful woman.” Yeah, right. Talk about the last thing Darius wanted to do in life.
“There’s Justin,” Hunter said, pointing to a little boy playing with an asinine battery-operated helicopter on a grassy area near a round table at the other side of the pool. He looked up at Jase and asked, “Can I go over there?”
Jase patted his annoying little head and smiled down at his spoiled-rotten face. “Yes. We’ll be over in a few minutes to say hello to Justin’s mom. But be good.”
Justin’s mom, Hillary, as far as Darius could gather, was the woman sitting at the round table. She’d been married to Josh right out of high school, a shotgun wedding because she’d been pregnant with Justin. When Josh eventually confided to her he was really a cocksucker and they’d divorced, they’d maintained a politically correct friendship.
Now Josh, Roland, Hillary, and Justin were one big happy modern family. Darius had heard all this from Luis very quickly since he’d started working for them. At the time he’d smiled. But he’d really been holding back his gag reflex.
From what he could see across the pool, Hillary was another one of those way–too-thin, always dressed in black, left-wing feminist types from Greenwich Village. She walked around in flat ballerina slippers and let her black hair fall down over her pale face in narrow strands. She was hunched over the round table reading something that afternoon, probably something to do with that ridiculous organization Luis belonged to called the Angel Association . That was another thing Darius couldn’t understand. Why the hell Luis cared about young women leaving their babies in Dumpsters went right over his head. As far as Darius saw it, if a young woman was planning to do something like that no one was going to stop her, not Luis, Hillary, or any other bleeding heart with good intentions.
Roland reached for Jase’s arm and said, “Wait until you see the new grill I got this summer. C’mon over and I’ll show you.” He spoke with a gentle tone. Darius pegged him for the bottom in the relationship. These things were always so obvious. Darius didn’t have to work hard to imagine Roland bent sideways with one leg in the air while the younger lover, Josh, fucked his brains out.
Jase told Luis he’d be right back, then followed Roland over to an outdoor kitchen area situated beneath a few tall oak trees. Darius looked around and sighed. The disco music was too loud and too out of date for Darius’s taste.
Though he wasn’t familiar with old disco music, he knew what it was when he heard it and he pressed his palm to his stomach and frowned. The other guests that surrounded the outdoor living space and splashed in the pool almost made him turn and leave. Most were out of shape, some more than others. Most had outdated hairstyles, some longer and puffier than others. Most wore skimpy little bikini bathing suits when they should have been wearing long, oversized swim trunks to camouflage their flabby, sagging bodies. This party was even more dismal than the time Leck Schneider decided to make a Men Over Fifty porn film and he asked Darius to help him with the auditions.
But good old Josh didn’t waste any time moving in on Luis when Jase disappeared with Roland. Darius watched closely as Josh put his palm on the small of Luis’s back and backed him into a wall of glass. Josh looked at Luis’s face, his eyes drifting between Luis’s eyes and lips, and said, “You have a nice tan this summer.” Then he lowered his hand to Luis’s ass and grabbed it.
Luis slid away from Josh fast, sending Darius a smile.
“Be good, Josh,” he said. “You’re going to give Darius the wrong impression.” He turned to Darius and said, “Josh is one of those aggressive guys who have trouble keeping his hands to himself. He and Roland have an open relationship. He means no harm.”
Darius smiled, suspecting Luis would have loved a good fuck from Josh.
“Don’t be so critical,” Josh said, trying harder to rest his hand on Luis’s ass.
Luis jumped back. “I’m not critical. I’m not interested in anyone but Jase.” Then he smiled at Darius and said, “But Jase and I have talked all this out with Roland and Josh. We don’t practice their lifestyle. But it’s none of our business and we don’t judge it.”
Darius laughed and said, “I understand.” But he was thinking, too much information, asshole. What the fuck did he care who Luis fucked? His stomach was turning and he felt like rolling his eyes. He could see by the elated expression on Luis’s face how he enjoyed the attention from Josh. Besides, Luis wasn’t fooling Darius. Darius had seen Luis in action: the little slut liked dick, the bigger the better. He’d seen the way Luis had lifted his leg while Jase had fucked him earlier.
He’d seen the pleasure in Luis’s eyes while Jase’s dick had been up his ass, splitting him apart. Darius knew an alley cat who knew how to arch his back when he saw one. He also suspected if it hadn’t been for Jase Nicholas, Luis would have been turning tricks instead of strutting around like a queen.
“Let’s go over and join Hillary,” Luis said. “I haven’t seen her all summer. The last time we got together in the city was at an Angel Association meeting in her bookstore on Bleecker Street.”
Josh said he’d join them in a little while. He wanted to talk to a few of the other guests. So Darius and Luis walked around the pool while the older guys inside the pool gazed up at them as if they were fresh meat, and joined Hillary at the round table. She stood halfway up and gave them each air-kisses on the cheek. Not a drop of makeup, straight black hair parted dead center. If she dressed like that when she’d been married to Josh, no wonder Josh wound up fucking guys. She sat down again and went right into her latest project about that confounded organization. Luis smiled and nodded as if he were truly interested. Darius sat back and folded his hands on his lap, watching Luis pretend to be interested when he probably wanted to yawn right in her skinny, pale face.
After they had something to eat—overcooked chicken breast and some kind of mushy whole-grain pasta salad Darius couldn’t identify—the two little boys started to argue.
Darius had been watching them while Luis and Hillary had been talking about their organization. Hunter tried to explain how to get the battery-operated helicopter higher in the air and Justin didn’t want to listen to his suggestions. In all fairness, even though Hunter’s irritating voice made the short hairs on the back of Darius’s neck stand at attention, that Justin kid sure was a dumb shit, just like his father, Josh.