Chapter Three
Kyle said he preferred to walk home, so he could clear his head and ended up wandering. The day was bright, and he was surprised at the amount of traffic downtown. It wasn't something he'd paid much attention to. On weekends, he would usually spend in bed, reading comic books and cheap science-fiction novels.
He headed across the lower side, considering going to Ester Shore Park, and then heard a loud, obnoxious squeal.
"Kyle! Oh KYLE!"
He spun on a heel as Darla scooted across the street, causing a car to stop. She blew a kiss to the driver who flipped her off.
She looked at him in shock.
"Kyle?"
He looked at her.
"Wow, the old boy got you good, huh? Oh my stars and garters! Well fortunately you're talking to the best make-up artist in all of Vancouver, I can get that all fixed up."
"What are you talking about," Kyle asked.
"That big honker on your neck, boy. Mikey must have seriously taken a liking to you."
Kyle blinked, and then smiled. He put a hand on neck.
"That bad, huh?" he said.
"It looks like you had a date with the monster from the black lagoon."
Kyle blushed.
"So you and Mikey, huh? Sitting in a tree!" she squealed, singing the rhyme. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!"
Kyle turned beet red.
"Hell honey, with that color you don't need no rouge," she teased further.
Kyle tried to strike back, "what are you doing out here?"
"It's Sunday boy yo! One of my best days. I got the god-fearing church boys who are all feeling sacrilegious and need head jobs."
Kyle's mouth went slack.
"I'm not kidding. They go to confessional at ten, and by one o'clock I've got a hundred bucks in my pocket! I only take Monday off, really."
Kyle's mouth went dry. There was something about this that turned his stomach, but he didn't know what it is.
"Say, Frankie's hanging out, selling lids. Let's go chat him up, see if we can get a free smoke."
Kyle pondered this for the briefest of seconds before she grabbed his arm, and drug him down the corner and down to the park end.
Amongst the bums and hangers-out, Frankie was there, chatting with some guy. They shook hands, although for anyone that looked carefully it was clear that something was exchanged in the shake.
Darla drug Kyle over to Frankie and squealed, "Will you take a look at this? We have to have a talk with Mikey!"
Frankie's eyebrow cocked.
"He did you good all right," Frankie said.
Kyle wasn't nearly as embarrassed, and sort of seemed to like the attention by this point. He shrugged.
"I was actually kind of worried about the big lug. I thought he'd have to settle for old heels-and-hose here," He said, thumbing his hand at Darla.
"Now you take that back!" She squealed at him.
Frankie, it seemed, loved nothing more than to yank the queen's chain. "Oh come on Darla, you've wanted him for ages. Everyone knows you've got a crush on him a mile long."
"Well I never!" She said, putting her hands on her hips.
There was a honking in the distance and Darla spun on a heel. She squealed loudly as a regular customer flagged her down. Flouncing over, she took off in the car.
Kyle was dumbfounded. He had really wanted some personal time, and was now drug halfway across the neighborhood.
"So you and Mike are an item?" Frankie inquired.
"Um, well, I don't know, I hope so," Kyle stammered.
"I hope it works, Kyle. Mike's a good man, and really he needs someone. He gets all lonely in that stupid little studio. He'll buy a lid from me now and then, or sometimes come down and stroke it off in a booth, but really, he's needing someone to love."
"You think?" Kyle asked hopefully.
"You get him drunk enough, and he'll cry for you. I tell you, that man is a romantic. Don't get me wrong, he can be a mean son of a gun if you push him, but he's very romantic."
Kyle would never want to be on Mike's bad side.
"Did you and he ever..." He trailed off.
"All I do is stroke, kid. That's me. I don't do no kissing, no romance. I'm strictly a fisting man."
Kyle looked at him as Frankie gestured, his hand was balled up around an imaginary cock.
"I don't like giving head, and you can just forget about the back door, but there's something cool about stroking that I can't get over. In the back room, nobody cares. I get to handle a lot of cocks, and I get myself off a time or two. Heck, if you want to head over there, I'll do you now." He said smiling.
"Uh, no, not right now," Kyle said. He had to talk to Mike, he really felt very unsafe.
The glint off Frankie's watch gave him an idea.
"Say, do you have the time?" He asked.
"Sure, it's a bit after noon."
"Damn, I'm late, I'm supposed to be over at my mother's house." He fabricated.
"Well get your butt outta here, I'll tell Darla you're gone, so she won't go hunting you down. I'll be seeing you around, right?" He asked.
Kyle grinned, "You sure will."
He walked home to his seedy apartment across from the porno store and climbed the stairs to the third floor. His apartment was number three-oh-three and inside it was a contract to the mess outside.
His prized collection of comics were all tidily bagged, alphabetically arranged and numerically sequenced. They were in acid-free boxes that sat under a card table, stacked neatly with a plastic tablecloth over them. That table held a goldfish tank with five fish in it, which he fed immediately and then sat on his futon.
He rose again, thinking about their comments, went to the bathroom.
What he saw astonished him.
Kyle's bruise, Mike's hickie, was huge. Easily three inches in diameter, a deep, rich purple with thick red striations. No way even his shaggy mane of strawberry blond hair could cover that thing up. What would he tell his mother? Oh hell.
It was true that he usually went over to her house on Sundays. He had to take the bus to do it and C-Tran, the local bus service had only a limited schedule on Sundays.
