Goodfellow and Mills

Naked and yawning, Danny Brandenburg ambled down the stairs and into the kitchen, a big yellow tomcat materializing at his feet as he walked, twining around his ankles as he stepped off the bottom step onto the chilly tiled floor.

"Hey, man." He bent down and petted the cat, then pulled a bag of kibble from under the sink and topped up the bowl on the floor next to the end of the counter. "We didn't disturb your repose, did we?" The cat looked at him and chirped, then buried his face in the food bowl, crunching enthusiastically. "I guess not."

Danny turned on the coffeepot, picked up a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from the counter and pulled them over his ears, then wandered over to stand in front of the plate glass window, yawning again, scratching his flat belly, looking out at the railroad tracks and the long brick face of the real estate office across the way in the hazy morning light.

The premises of Danny Brandenburg Photography were narrow but deep, divided into zones. At the front was the Parlor: a nice rug, a table, and some comfortable chairs, the table scattered with albums of photos, the walls hung with an assortment of framed prints. Behind that was the Workroom: here a heavy wooden bench stood pushed against one wall, scarred and patched, occupied by a sophisticated computer workstation, while against the opposite wall rested a large flat-file cabinet with deep shelving mounted to the wall above it, the shelves cluttered with stacks of portfolios and deed boxes. The rear third of the space was the Kitchen, taken up by a compact kitchen with an island in the middle serving as the table. An open stairway led to a sleeping loft and bathroom over a dim storage area in which could be seen a bicycle, a number of large plastic bins, and an antique Deardorff large-format camera on its tripod.

"Mornin'!"

Danny turned and walked back into the kitchen. Another man, also naked, was descending the steps from the loft.

"Same to you, Josh. Coffee?"

Joshua Bridges took the mug with a grateful nod, then leaned over and pecked Danny on the forehead. "Thanks. I had fun last night."

"Me, too. I've never picked up a man at Central Farm Supply before. I always assumed the cowboys were off limits."

"Not all of us," Joshua said, grinning over the edge of his mug. "I'm free-range. No fences."

Danny returned the grin. "Did you get your shopping done before you were so rudely interrupted?"

"Layer feed for the chickens and a half-dozen bags of mushroom compost. They're gonna deliver them on Tuesday. I had just finished placing the order when you smacked me in the back with your roll of contractor paper. Your timing was impeccable."

Danny grinned, sipping coffee. "The shopping cart had an agenda all its own. I'm sorry about the collision, but I'm glad it gave me a chance to meet you."

Joshua ambled out to the front of the shop, and Danny admired the muscularity of his butt and legs as he walked. A farmer, Joshua Bridges sported the iconic farmer's tan, his face, neck and arms honey-brown, with most of the rest of his body various shades of pink and cream-pale. His fleshy dick hung relaxed and complacent from its nest of reddish-brown pubic hair, a marked contrast to the rigid jackhammer it had been only the night before. Josh stopped to look at the photos on the wall, sipping his coffee as he moved from one to the next.

"Ha!" He looked at Danny and then pointed at a pair of square prints, in identical black frames, hanging side by side. Danny walked over to stand next to him.

"Mary Anne Culverson," Joshua reminisced. "She was two years ahead of me in high school. Her brother Cameron and I played football together. I gave him a blow job once out on the running track. His dick tasted like dried oregano. Our friendship was never quite the same after that experiment, but I did get invited to his sister's wedding.

In the photo on the left, a wedding party was arrayed on a platform three feet above the ground in front of an audience of about a dozen people. The man officiating stood facing the camera; in the background was an open field with a line of woods in the distance. The bride and groom stood in front of the official, facing each other, holding hands and smiling. Three bridesmaids stood next to the bride, matched by three groomsmen on the opposite side. The guests were standing in two groups, their backs to the camera, with a wide aisle between them allowing a clear view of the wedding party. The bride was wearing a simple white dress and a crown of flowers trailing a veil. The groom was wearing a dark suit.

The photo on the right depicted the exact same scene, except that now everyone in the image was nude. The only clothing visible were the flower crowns of the bride and bridesmaids. One of the groomsmen was trying to conceal an erection.

"That's me, right there," Joshua said, pointing to a tall man standing on the aisle two or three people back from the front. "You can see the sunflower tattoo on my butt." He tapped another male figure deeper into the crowd. "That's my brother. Joe wasn't going to do this thing because he was afraid his girlfriend would hear about it and freak out." He pointed to the wedding party. "Toni's the skinny bridesmaid on the end. Joe never could figure women.

"Mary Anne was in such a rage when her parents tried to keep her from marrying Charlie Crittenden, she planned the whole wedding just to spite them and everybody else who had crossed her. No family showed up, just Charlie's wild-ass sisters and a few friends. She was right, and they were wrong, of course: Charlie settled right down after he started dating Mary Ann, and they've had a very happy marriage."

"I admit that I was nervous and kind of amazed when she told me what she had in mind," Danny told him. "I was afraid we'd have a mob of Baptists with torches and pitchforks storming the field. It went really well, though, and everybody was very good-natured about the inconveniences."

"Carlos Taylor took some grief about his hardon, but he found over time that it actually improved his dating success." Joshua sipped his coffee and ginned. "It was a really impressive hardon, and it lasted all the way through the reception."

Danny took Joshua's coffee cup and set it on the table with his own, then turned the young man to face him and dropped to a squat at his feet, grinning up at him.

"There's nothing quite like an impressive hardon," he said. After that, his mouth was too full to say any more.

Joshua looked down at him for a few moments, then twined his fingers through Danny's tousled, mouse-brown hair, and closed his eyes in rapture.

Danny Brandenburg earned his bread and butter from portrait photography and from memorializing weddings, anniversaries, funerals, and civic galas of one kind or another for the social elites of Bancroft. He had been set up in business by celebrity novelist Hayden Lodge, whose non-profit Bancroft Old Town Redevelopment Foundation owned, improved, and maintained two-thirds of the town west of the railroad tracks.

Danny and Hayden had arrived in Bancroft at about the same time.

Hayden Lodge had come to Bancroft hoping to fulfill his dream of using his new-found wealth to create a better world, starting with the town's famously impoverished and largely abandoned industrial district, a target he had chosen after reading a National Geographic profile of the dying community.

Danny Colville, meanwhile, had shaken off the mud and rage of a desperate childhood in Mississippi and changed his name after attending a concert of Bach concertos. As Danny Brandenburg he finished college with bachelor's degrees in both photography and digital graphic design and set out to create a new life to go with his new identity, hopefully under the sunny skies of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Unfortunately, the age-raddled Honda Civic that he had purchased to deliver him to that new life surrendered to the ravages of time halfway through his journey, and he ended up stranded in the unprepossessing town of Bancroft. He spent a week sleeping out of his car in the parking lot of a defunct grocery store until a chance conversation with a nearby shop owner led to a photography gig at a local agricultural fair, at which he met Hayden Lodge. A casual conversation had led to casual sex, which led to still more casual sex, which ultimately ripened into a friendship that went well beyond casual. In the twenty years since that meeting, Hayden had loaned Danny the money to rent and equip a digital photography studio, and Danny had undertaken to document Hayden's impact on the town, along the way developing a vast collection of historical information and materials extending back to the town's founding and beyond. He ended up staying and becoming part of Hayden's new community -- what's more, he became its memory.

For today, however, Danny Brandenburg was simply a slight, pale man teetering on the near side of forty, a little shorter than average, a little thinner, with fluffy dusty-brown hair and the big, beseeching brown eyes of a Labrador Retriever, which he partially obscured with a pair of old-fashioned round wire-frame glasses that he wore for astigmatism. He considered his eyes a mixed blessing, rendering him "cute" rather than "hot", although he did not hesitate to turn the full force of their puppy-dog charm on the occasional handsome farmhand if he thought it might improve his chances of a romp in the hay.

Joshua had dressed and said his goodbyes, and the two men had promised to stay in touch -- a promise that neither intended to actively pursue, although both would be more than happy to take advantage of any chance meetings that might occur in the future. Bancroft was a small town, and coincidences, both happy and otherwise, were rife.

"What's the matter, punkin?"

Curry was back, shoving the side of his head up against Danny's ankles. "More food? Damn, boy. We've got to get a handle on our diet. I'm getting squishy across the middle and you're starting to lose your feline grace and dignity."

He sprinkled another handful of kibble into the cat's dish, then put the bag away and stood rubbing at a gluey smear that was drying on the corner of his mouth.

Josh tastes like oregano, too. Must be something in the water on that side of town. With a chuckle, he climbed the stairs to shower and dress.