Doubling Back

"Strummer?" She certainly seemed surprised to see him here.

"I was in town. I saw in the paper that you had a gallery opening and I wanted to see if I could figure out your paintings yet."

Nadine Wingfield still seemed to be in shock and confused.

"You'll be happy to know that I still can't figure out how easy it is for you to sell them for five and six figures. And who is this? Your new guy?"

"What? Oh, no, this is my son, Johnny." Nadine said, still off balance. "My fiancé is over there. Adrian Chipping. You know him, of course. And I'll have to admit that I saw in the paper that you were in Charleston this weekend too."

"I saw it and told her you were here." That was the son, Johnny, chiming in. He was giving Strummer a look of awe. Strummer wondered how tied to his mother's apron strings the young man was to still be going by the name of Johnny. He must be at least eighteen or nineteen.

The three of them were standing there, in the middle of the Atrium Art Gallery in Charleston, for the opening of the Autumn Leaves collection of international abstract artist Nadine Wingfield. Nadine's artwork was on all of the walls. High-flying collectors and gallery owners from all up and down the East Coast were swirling around them. Until Strummer approached, the gallery owner, Ricky Fenton, had been ushering them through in a semblance of a reception line. He looked a bit disgruntled when Strummer planted his feet in front of Nadine but fluttered off to lift praises and the investment value of her works to a group of the city's glitterati while he waited Strummer out in moving on.

Champagne was flowing; conversation was easy and twittering—except that it was moving around the three people standing in the middle of the gallery, leaving them in a buffered island of isolation. Before—before Strummer Selchek had come in and she had seen him—Nadine had been the center of attention of all. With the arrival of Strummer, though, somehow the atmosphere—but just in that group of three—changed and everyone instinctively knew not to approach. Some apparently recognized Strummer and wondered at the incongruity of his presence here. But just the fact that he was here took some of the spotlight off Nadine.

"Adrian Chipping? The movie actor? Well, well, well. And this is your son. I didn't know . . . And how old is he?"

Strummer hadn't given Nadine's son more than a passing, assessing glance yet, but Johnny certainly had been giving Strummer the eye. "You're Strummer Selchek, lead singer for the Jax. The classic rock band," Johnny blurted out. This was spoken like perhaps Strummer didn't remember who he was. It certainly, though, questioned why he'd be in an art gallery.

"I'm surprised you've ever heard of us," Strummer said, focusing on the young man for the first time. "Johnny was it?"

"He's nineteen. You asked how old he was," Nadine said. "Johnny's nineteen."

"Yes, of course he is," Strummer said.

"He's a student down in Savannah. Came up for my opening," Nadine said. "He's at the Savannah College of Art and Design."

"Ah, art. Of course." He was talking to Nadine, but his eyes now were locked on her son, Johnny. And Johnny's gaze was glued to Strummer as well.

"Yes. Graphic art, though, not fine art." Nadine's words.

"And I'm in a band too," Johnny said. "I play guitar and sing . . . like you, I guess." His voice tapered off at the end. "Mom's talked about you. It would be great if we could talk and you could give me some pointers."

Strummer looked deep into Johnny's eyes. There was something there. Something Strummer knew so well. It was more than just pointers this young man was interested in.

"We're getting married in June. Adrian and I," Nadine said, gesturing toward the young actor schmoozing with an expensively dressed couple across the gallery space.

"Of course," Strummer said, turning his attention back to the woman. "This would be what? The fourth?"

"The fifth, I think," Nadine said, with a laugh. There was ice in the laugh, though. "You know me. We have a date; we just don't have a place yet. You know, the publicity and all. We don't want fuss."

"Oh, no, can't have fuss," Strummer said. "But if you want a place for your wedding, I know of a great place. Very private. St. Thomas. A small resort on a beautiful bay. I bet you could have it all to yourselves."

"Why that sounds . . . but here comes Adrian now. Adrian, this is Strummer Selchek. We go way back, don't we, Strummer?"

"Almost twenty years, yes," Strummer said, looking at Adrian, the movie star women found so dreamy, but seeing that Adrian was looking at Johnny. That look again. "Half my lifetime ago," he continued. "Not quite that for Nadine, though, eh, Nadine?" But he didn't wait for an answer. "Nice meeting you, Adrian. Congratulations. Nadine tells me you two are getting married. Best of luck on that. I should be going. This is Nadine's opening, and here I am keeping her away from buyers. It was great seeing you again, Nadine. And meeting you two. Adrian. Johnny."

He turned and left the gallery by the Meeting Street exit en route to the Mills House Hotel. As he left, Ricky Fenton materialized at Nadine's shoulder and the crowd descended on her again. Strummer could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as he left. It hadn't been a good idea to just drop in on her like this. Not after twenty years. But she'd just dropped out on him, and he couldn't resist returning the jab.

Johnny Wingfield caught up with him within two blocks, and just a couple of blocks away from the Mills House.

"Hey, man, hold up," Johnny called, and, with a sigh of his own, Strummer stopped and moved off to the side by the display window of a closed antique store. That's about all he'd seen in this section of Charleston—art galleries and antique stores. To the west, beyond the Mills House, the neighborhood changed to college—Charleston College, where his band was playing the next night, in what no doubt would be a packed and noisy arena.

"We didn't get a chance to talk," Johnny said, as he came up to Strummer. "I wanted to talk to you about your band."

"You don't really want to talk to me about my band, do you?" Strummer asked, putting a hand on Johnny's upper arm. Johnny looked at the hand and then back up into Strummer's face. The shudder that went through Johnny's body was felt—and understood—by them both. "Well, sure, you do want to talk about the band, I guess, but that's not what you really want from me, is it? You know about me, don't you?"

"Uh . . . yeah," Johnny said.

"You know what I like. Who I like to go with. What I like to do with them."

"Yeah, I do," the young man said. He wasn't backing away.

"I have a sound check rehearsal to do over at the college but not until later this evening. I'm at the Mills House, down the street here. Are you going to come up to my room with me?"

"Yeah, I want to do that."

"There a bar around here first, do you think?"

"There's one just over on Charles Street," Johnny answered. "But I can't—"

"I can order for both of us and you can just sit at a table away from the bar when I do it. Buying your own drink is just one thing you're really too young to do. If—"

"No, that sounds good to me," Johnny said, nervously. "Let's go to the bar."

"And to my hotel afterward, right? You're sure?"

"Right, I'm sure."

* * * *

Strummer put an arm under Johnny's waist, both of them naked and on the bed in Strummer's hotel room, and raised the young man's pelvis at a higher angle. Johnny's thighs were spread and his legs were bent, his feet flat on the surface of the bed. Strummer's knees were pressed between the young man's thighs and his torso was hovering over Johnny's. The young man moaned as the older man sank his cock a couple of inches deeper into Johnny's channel. "God, you're tight," Strummer murmured.

"Shit, you're big," Johnny whimpered. "Fuck me. Fuck me, hard, daddy." Leveraging on his feet, Johnny thrust his pelvis higher, taking Strummer's cock deeper inside him.

"You're not new to this, are you?"

"Shit, no, man. But they're usually not this big."

"Is this what you've heard about me? How I need to fuck two fans before a concert? And how big I am?"

"Yes. Yes. Fuck me . . . what? What are you doing? Oh, shit what?"

Strummer had pulled out of Johnny's channel and had pulled the young man's torso up to his, with Johnny's thighs over Strummers. He was frotting their two cocks together, encasing them both with one hand and stroking them, while he stopped further questions from Johnny by possessing the young man's mouth with his. He had Johnny's chest to his with an arm around the young man's back.

"It isn't all about fucking in the ass," Strummer said when their lips parted. "There are other games we can play. Suck me." He pulled Johnny's head down into his lap, and, gagging a bit, Johnny opened his mouth over Strummer's thick cock and gave him head.

"Fuck me now," Johnny said, at length, when he'd gotten Strummer hard as a rock.

"I don't think so, not yet," Strummer answered, as he brought them back together, Johnny's thighs over his, the two positioned chest to chest.

"What are you doing?" Johnny asked.

"Never done this before? It's called docking."

"What? Shit."

Johnny was cut. Strummer wasn't. Strummer had moved their cock heads to where they were kissing, and then he pulled his foreskin over Johnny's bulb and started stroking the cocks together.

"Oh, shit. Fuck. I'm gonna come," Johnny said after a few minutes of this.

"So am I," Strummer answered. "And that's the idea. Let's see how close we can come together."

They groaned, moaned, and sighed together. Then they jerked together, and cum from a mutual ejaculation was mingling and oozing out from the rim of Strummer's foreskin.

With a grunt, Strummer rolled over to the side and stretched his body against Johnny's, Johnny's buttocks were nestled into his crotch. He got his cock pressed between Johnny's butt cheeks, with the underside of his cock rubbing across Johnny's anus.

"Fuck me. Please fuck me," Johnny whined.

"In St. Thomas. In St. Thomas, we'll go all the way," Strummer whispered, his lips in the hollow of Johnny's throat.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I want you to do something for me. I want you to convince your mother to have her wedding in St. Thomas. On Magen's Bay. At a place called Jack's Resort. They'll clear the place for you. You come with her and I'll fuck your lights out there—and give you any pointers you want on the band."

"Fuck me. Fuck me now," Johnny whimpered.

"I'll get you off again now, but you want all of this cock inside you again. doing you good, find a way to get your mother's wedding at Jack's Resort in St. Thomas."

Johnny shuddered and moaned, as Strummer entered his ass with the fingers of one hand, searching for and finding the young man's prostate, while the other hand squeezed and rolled Johnny's balls and milked his cock.

* * * *

"What were you thinking, John?" Jack Jones, co-owner of Jack's Resort on Magen's Bay, in St. Thomas, asked.

The two owners of the resort, John Selchek, known publicly by his nickname, Strummer, and Jack Jones, the drummer in the same Jax band Strummer was lead singer for, were sitting under the trellis on the patio of the resort's main building. They were looking down into the beach some thirty feet below, where Nadine was sitting under an umbrella and reading a book and Adrian and Johnny were cavorting in the surf. All of the members of the band had names that were some form of "John," so the Jax title for the band had come naturally.

Strummer could see the play between the two beautiful men in Speedos for what it was—some sort of frustrated foreplay—and he was surprised that Nadine couldn't see that. But perhaps she could and was enjoying the frustration of it.

"Nadine needed somewhere private to get married," Strummer answered. "I saw her in Charleston and it just sort of entered the conversation that we had this resort here."

"I think it's you being bitter again and scheming. You just can't let it go, can you?" Jack said. "It's been, what, seventeen, eighteen years?"

"Twenty years."

"Surely not. Nadine looks too good for it to have been that long."

"Strange that you would forget," Strummer said. "But, you're right. Nadine's always been a stunner. And she's always gone for younger men. Adrian is young enough to be her son, you know? I guess I could as easily say that Nadine is old enough to be his mother. And speaking of that, isn't her son the young hunk? Did you know Nadine had a son, Jack? He's nineteen."

"No, I didn't," Jack said, looking away—away from both Strummer and the group down on the sand. "You're not going to . . . you know, are you?"

"You know Nadine is trying to lay thick hints that her Johnny is mine, conceived before she and I were to be married—before she left me at the altar."

"See, now, that's what I meant when I asked you what you were up to," Jack said, swiveling his head back to take a hard look at his band mate. "Bringing Nadine and this Adrian guy here to get married. You just keep picking at the scab, don't you? You just can't give it up. Nadine never was right for you anyway, John. You aren't even into women."

"I didn't know that at the time," Strummer said, "I enjoyed fucking women enough at the time. It could be that panthers like Nadine soured me on women." But then he doggedly returned to his own line of conversation. "Johnny couldn't be mine. I'm sterile. I knew it then. I was told that it was because I had had mumps. And, yes, Jack, I have had Johnny. He's not mine; he's free game for me. You'd be surprised how easy a lay he is and how experienced he is. And I plan to have Johnny again. Probably later this afternoon. I won't be taking advantage of him or anything. He's panting for it. He's begging for it from me."

"You're playing with fire here, John," Jack said, his voice taking on a frustrated and disgusted tone. "I don't know why you brought this here, why you have to work out your little revenge here in St. Thomas."

"Yes, I think you do know, Jack," Strummer said, turning his face away from watching Adrian and Johnny frolicking in the surf. "I don't think the cast of characters was complete before I brought them here. You know, as beautiful as Nadine still is, I don't think she realizes why Adrian is marrying her. Do you know why Adrian is marrying Nadine, Jack?"

Jack didn't respond. He sat there, not looking at either Strummer or the threesome down by the water. He had directed his gaze across the side of the slope they were on, where single-unit cabins of the resort were set in lush tropical gardens.

"He's marrying her to get close to Johnny," Strummer continued. "He wants to fuck Johnny. And you know what? I'm sure Johnny will let him, that Johnny has been leading him on. How does that set with you, Jack? Johnny isn't my son. I wonder whose he is. Don't you wonder that as well, Jack?"

"I've heard enough of this," Jack snorted. "I have work to do. And I think you'll understand if I just stay out of all of this." Jack heaved himself up from his chair and melted into the building behind them.

"Oh, I doubt very much that you can stay out of this, good buddy," Strummer said to no one in particular after Jack had left. He did notice, though, that Nadine had been looking up at them from the beach and now had pulled herself up from the sand and was climbing the winding staircase up from the beach. Adrian and Johnny were coming out of the surf and plopping down on the sand on beach towels. They were lying close together—very close together.

When Nadine appeared at the top of the stairs, she asked, "Was that Jack I saw you with up here?"

It was the first thing Nadine had said to him since they'd arrived in St. Thomas and Jack Jones had picked them up at the airport in a small van. She had been pissed to learn that Jack was an owner of the resort she was coming to. She was even more pissed when she saw that Strummer had come—uninvited—to the wedding.

"Yes, you just missed him," Strummer answered. "You two didn't seem to have much to say to each other on the drive from the airport."

"That was a shitty thing you did, John. We should have turned right around and gotten back on the airplane. You set all of this up, didn't you?"

"You haven't told Adrian anything, have you? None of it."

She didn't answer that. She plopped down in the chair Jack had vacated and called out to the building behind them, "What does someone have to do to get a drink in this dump?"

A well-built, young black man in shorts and a colorful T-shirt stretched across a muscular chest appeared to take her drink order. She gave him her order, a smile, and a favorable assessing scrutiny. Strummer did the same—the scrutiny, not the drink order. He lost interest, though, in seeing the black guy ogle Nadine. Not only was the guy highly likely to be a top—and thus of no functional use to Strummer—but he also obviously was in to women.

"You haven't told Adrian how many times you've been married before, have you? And that it's always been a younger man. I bet you haven't even told him that you've already flipped right past fifty."

"I suppose you are going to tell him that," she jabbed back. "That's why you lured us here, wasn't it? And Jack. Jack being here, owning this place."

"Jack and I own it together," Strummer countered. "You're not going to tell Adrian that you and Jack were married once, are you? That he was one of the five."

She shrugged and then looked up and smiled at the hunky waiter, who had returned with her Mai Tai.

"I've met Adrian. He has Mr. Innocent Lamb to the Slaughter written all over him. Did you tell him that you and I once were going to be married—that you left me at the altar? That you ran off and married Jack Jones instead? Twenty years ago."

She shrugged again and turned her head away, looking down at her young fiancé and her younger son, stretched out on towels on the beach. Both of them had achingly beautiful bodies.

"Johnny is Jack's son, isn't he, Nadine? He sure as hell isn't mine. Don't even try to go there. I'm sterile and was then. And I have the medical records to prove it, if need be. I'll bet you never told Jack about him. You were married and divorced from Jack so fast that it made my head spin."

Nadine was stunned at the news that Strummer was sterile, but she was fast at regrouping. "It didn't bother you enough to even miss a band concert, did it? It didn't do a damn thing between you and Jack," she turned her head and spat at Strummer. Her voice was cutting, but she, herself, wasn't heated. She was cold as ice. "It didn't stop you and Jack from being thick as thieves."

"Is that what you were trying to do, Nadine? Drive a wedge between Jack and me? Break up Jax? Was that all that that was about twenty years ago? You were jealous of the friendship between me and Jack? You wanted me to lose the band?"

"Friendship? Was that what you called it? Didn't faze the two of you at the time. Tell me, were you fucking Jack then—while you were fucking me and then later, after Jack and I were married?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Strummer said, as he stood from the table. It had been afterward—to break Nadine and Jack up—but this wasn't the time or place to loose that particular arrow. "I think we've had enough jousting for now. But tell me, if I could arrange it before you and Adrian tied the knot, would you want me to come to your room? Did you come to St. Thomas because it was a great place to marry Adrian or because you wanted to have another crack at me?"

She didn't answer. She lifted the rim of the Mai Tai glass to her lips and gazed at him over the rim.

"Is that silence a no?" he asked.

After a long pause, she said, "No, it's not a no. Of them all you were always the best. Anytime you want to come to my room, I'll receive you."