Pick Up the Pieces

Chapter 4

Chapter 4Time passed. Days, weeks, months, and then all of a sudden it was September, 1991, and I’d been with them a year. We no longer lived in the tiny apartment Tim had first taken me to, although Paul and I still shared a bed. It wasn’t that the apartment wasn’t large; it was just there were a lot of boys.

As he’d promised, Tim got us off the streets and into posh hotel rooms. Our clients paid well, not only in cash but also in stock tips. We were on the road to becoming, as the saying went, “comfortable.”

A pimp tried to muscle in on our high-scale clients, and Tim—short but tough—beat the crap out of him while Cris made sure no one else got involved. Some of the pimp’s boys went with another stable that worked a different part of town, but some of them stayed with us.

After a while, they left, mostly because they couldn’t or wouldn’t follow Tim’s rules.

New boys, thrown out by their families, joined us, and they stayed or they left for pretty much the same reasons, although a few, when they left, chose to open their own branches of the business in New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. One even went to Chicago. He’d asked Paul and me to come with him, but when we looked it up on a map, saw it was on Lake Michigan, and read about the brutal winters, we’d both declined.

The nightmares of blood and knives, where I’d wake with my heart pounding and sweat pouring off me, gradually faded. I no longer looked like the scrawny kid who’d arrived in DC in 1990, flat broke. I ate regularly, and without the nervous tension that I’d be beaten if I didn’t bring home enough money, I began to fill out. Tim also took me to a gym and saw to it that I learned how to work out, and my muscles became sleek and toned.

I got my GED—which didn’t take long, since Tim helped out—and then began working on an associate’s degree in accounting. I had a head for numbers, and Tim wanted me working the business end of things.

On Tim’s twenty-third birthday, he announced he’d been at it long enough. He was going to retire and open a little club in Atlanta.

“I’m goin’ with you, dude.” Cris looked as if he expected a quarrel.

Instead, Tim smiled at him and touched the spot over Cris’s heart with his fingertips. “I’m glad.”

“You’ll come back and visit us?” I asked.

“You won’t be able to keep us away. And it works both ways, y’know. I’ll expect y’all to come on down and see us too.”

We took the night off and threw a surprise party for them, including friends and colleagues. Tim actually got misty, and when he tried to make a speech, he choked up.

And then it was time for coffee and cake. I had ordered a sheet cake from a local Italian bakery. Half the cake had a filling of chocolate pudding and half cannoli cream, and it was covered with whipped cream. Tom and Mike, who were talented when it came to crafts, had gotten some plastic model kits and put together a representation of a small bar, which was positioned on one corner of the cake. In elegant calligraphy was written, Good luck, Tim and Cris. Anything more would have been regarded as mushy.

I was in the kitchen, slicing the cake and putting each piece on a paper plate, when Tim joined me. He had a glass of wine in one hand, and he slid his other arm around my shoulders.

“Thank you for this, Sweets.”

“Hey, we all chipped in.”

“I know it was your idea.”

“It was the least I could do. If you hadn’t taken me in that first day, I’d be dead now.” I cleared my throat. “I’m gonna miss you, boss.”

“Me too.” He looked around at the mob crowding our apartment, then nodded toward the Kid and Tangerine, our two newest boys. “The Kid should be okay, but keep an eye on Tangerine. He wants to be in the big leagues, and he’s just not ready. One last bit of advice, Sweets.” He was turning the running of the business over to me, even though Paul, Tom, and Mike had been with him longer. “Paying rent is like pissing money down the drain. You need to find a reasonable property and buy it.”

“One of my regulars is in real estate.” We met each week during his lunch hour in a little motel just across the Potomac. “He might be willing to help.”

“Good.” He hugged me against him.

“Hey!” Cris walked into the kitchen. “Should I be jealous?”

“Asshole.” Tim let me go, went to him, and hugged him.

I could tell just by looking that the hug was different. “Have some cake.”

There was one boy from another stable—Charles—who kept giving me come-hither looks…He put a dab of whipped cream on my nose, then licked it off…The thing was he had a love ‘em and leave ‘em rep among the boys, although I had to admit I was curious. Well…perhaps another time.

We partied until the wee hours of the morning. Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, no one paired off to slip into any of the bedrooms.

Tim and Cris’s things had already been shipped ahead. The next day they followed them.

And it was back to work as usual.

* * * *

It was noon on a Wednesday. “That was great,” I sighed in repletion. It was almost the truth.

He turned me over and kissed the corner of my mouth. “I’m still looking for a property for you and the boys, but…I wish you’d let me set you up someplace, Sweetcheeks.” My real estate agent angled up and looked down into my eyes. “I have my eye on a sweet little apartment…”

I cradled his cheek. “I’m sorry, John. I’m just not the settling down kind.” I wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d fallen in love with me, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

I sometimes thought about it, though, about having just one man in my bed. I even went so far as to try to picture what he’d look like, but I never could, and I took that as a sign: it wasn’t going to happen for me. One day I’d get out of the business, maybe do some accounting to explain my assets to the IRS, but when I did, I would be alone.

I’d stay with the boys until that time.

“You deserve a better life than this. I can give it to you.”

Maybe, but even if I did move in with him, I knew it wouldn’t last. John—that really was his name—hadn’t come out to his family. They were local, and if he did something like that, it would get back to them.

“I appreciate it, babe, but I can’t let you do it.”

He sighed. “But I can still see you every Wednesday?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t want to spend it with anyone but you.”

“And since I can’t talk you into moving in with me, I’ll keep an eye out for a property that has promise.”

“Thanks, babe.”

* * * *

A couple of weeks later John called to tell me he’d found something, and Paul came with me to check it out.

It was deep and wide, three floors, a basement that scared the spit out of me—I was sure it was haunted—and a gabled attic. The backyard, when we got around to taking a look at it, was overrun to the point I was sure critters lived there.

“Bay windows, Sweets!” Paul gazed up at the second floor. “I love bay windows. And look! There are little Juliet balconies outside each window on the third floor, and turrets at both ends!”

The outside was run-down, and I looked at it dubiously. “I don’t know, John. I know you wouldn’t steer me wrong, but it looks…old.”

“Not old, not really. Well…it’s antebellum, but trust me, it’s solid. It was built by a well-to-do politician—”

“Are there any other kind?” I exchanged smiles with Paul. Some of our best customers were politicians.

John, who hadn’t heard me, continued. “—about twenty or thirty years before the Civil War.”

When they went in for large families. “It’s too big.” There were six of us at this point.

“You could rent out one or two of the floors, maybe even the attic. A little renovation and you’ll have additional income from the rentals.”

Paul looked interested. “We’d be landlords?”

“But who’ll want to rent here?” The neighborhood was as run-down as the house. No one was on the street, and even if they had been, I couldn’t see them caring enough to protest because a stable of rent boys might be moving in.

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I really shouldn’t be telling you this.” John glanced around as if he expected to find a mic shoved into his face, even though we were alone on the street. “I heard through the grapevine that this area is in transition. It’s been slated for gentrification.”

Paul was looking dreamy-eyed, and I decided I’d worry about the gentrification thing when and if it happened.

“How will our clients feel about coming to a neighborhood like this?”

“Sweetcheeks, I’d come here to see you, and you know how easily I can be intimidated. Your other clients will too.”

“And we can always go to the ones who won’t,” Paul said with a bounce.

Yeah, we could do that.

“Let’s go inside and take a look.”

* * * *

The first floor seemed more or less intact. “This was converted to a rooming house around the Second World War—there was a housing shortage in DC then.”

“Hmm.” A rooming house? “Can we get the owner to do the renovations?”

“The owner skipped out. The house is in foreclosure.”

“How much will it cost us to renovate it?”

“Not as much as you might think, Sweetcheeks. Oh, you’ll need to put in kitchens, more bathrooms on the second and third floors and in the attic, probably another bathroom on this floor as well…. Come this way.” He led us through a large dining room to a good-sized kitchen. “…But once that’s done….”

“Sweets, I really like it. I have a good feeling about it.” Paul was always having a good feeling about something or other. He was the optimist of our group.

“Let me show you the other floors before you make any decisions.”

I thought the second floor was horrible, the numerous rooms cramped, with only one bathroom at the end of the hall.

The third floor was better, but not by much. Like the second floor, there were many small bedrooms, and one bathroom to serve them.

“This used to be for the children. Their bedrooms, the nursery, schoolroom and playroom…”

For some reason, Paul fell in love with it. Probably those turrets.

“We could keep this floor for ourselves, Sweets.”

“There are too many bedrooms. We don’t have that many boys…” And I didn’t want that many.

“You could knock down some walls—”

“Y’see, Sweets? We could knock down walls!”

“—enlarge the bedrooms you want to keep—”

“There’s no kitchen.”

“—and put in any size kitchen you’d like.”

“There’s only one bathroom on the whole floor,” I huffed.

“You know there’s enough room to add more.”

“Let’s take a look at the top floor.”

“And that’s another thing, John. How come this politician, if he was so well-to-do, didn’t have a fourth floor for a ballroom?”

“This wasn’t choice real estate back in the 1830s or even the 1840s. I have a feeling it might have been for his”—John’s expression was sly, and he made finger quotes.—”second family. What need would they have for a ballroom?”

“It’s awfully big for a mistress.”

“He was probably what you might call prolific.”

“Why, that dirty dog!” I was becoming intrigued in spite of myself. I wondered if we could find out anything about the original owner.

We climbed to the top of the stairs, where a single door opened into a vestibule of doors, six in all.

“You’ll have plenty of storage under the gables.”

“We don’t have any need for storage.”

Paul frowned at me, but I ignored him.

“The attic was originally the servants’ quarters.” John threw open a door to the left. “The roof’s angles might make things a little awkward.”

“A little awkward?” The room was a square, about ten by ten, large enough maybe for a double bed and a night table but very little else. “Whoever rents this had better be short, or else he’ll keep banging his head on the ceiling.”

“But in the center of the room the ceiling is fine. I have a friend who’s an architect. He’ll love designing something wide open that can connect all these rooms into one usable space.”

“How much will he cost us?”

“We’ll work something out. I’d suggest offering this furnished.”

“That’s going to cost us too.”

“You’ve got to speculate to accumulate,” John said righteously.

I frowned at him.

“This would make a decent studio apartment, Sweets.” Paul was pacing off the distance from a window to a corner.

“Right under the roof? It’d be hot as hell in the summer.”

“Ever heard of air-conditioning?”

“There’s no elevator. We’d never find anyone who’d be willing to climb those stairs.”

“Now you’re being pissy.” Paul poked my shoulder.

He was right; I was being pissy. I was suddenly scared out of my wits. I could see the cost of this mounting higher and higher, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration how we’d heat this mausoleum. This was a big financial responsibility.

“How can we do this, John? How will we get a mortgage? Who’ll give us a mortgage?”

He grinned and stroked the shoulder Paul had poked. “You let me take care of that, Sweetcheeks.”

* * * *

True to his word, John got us the mortgage—he set up a dummy corporation to front for us—and the place was ours. Well, ours and the bank’s.

But while we were paying the mortgage, we were also paying rent on the apartment we couldn’t vacate as of yet, because it was going to take a while for the third floor to be ready for us to move in.

I spent the next four months chewing my nails as project after project went over budget “just a little.”

“We could ask Tim for a loan,” one of the boys suggested.

“I will personally castrate anyone who calls Tim about this.” He was having some problems of his own in Atlanta—none of the locations he’d looked at suited him—and was talking about moving to Savannah. I glared at Paul, since he was the one most likely to contact Tim. “This is our responsibility. We’ll deal with it on our own.”

“What about our retirement fund?” Paul suggested. Socked away in a safe-deposit box were high-risk stock certificates. “We could tap that—”

“We’d take too big a hit. The loss would be too great.”

“But we’d catch up—”

“No. People always say that and never do. Do you want to be hustling when you’re sixty-five?”

He subsided. The depressing picture of us as geriatric rent boys was more than enough to squash that notion.

We worked longer hours, sometimes taking on clients we’d have preferred not to. More than once one of us came home with welts or hand-sized bruises. I kept a list of those johns, dreaming of one day paying them back yet knowing how unlikely that would be.

The Kid came in early one morning sporting a black eye and a livid palm print on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Sweets. I didn’t duck fast enough.”

“Don’t worry about it. Take the rest of the week off.” By then the bruises would have faded, and concealer would cover up what was left of them.

Most johns didn’t like the reality of a rent boy’s life rubbed in their faces—they wouldn’t want him. And the ones who wouldn’t be turned off by how he looked would only add to his bruises.

I went to the kitchen, filled a dishcloth with ice cubes, whacked it on the counter to crush them, and handed it to him. “I promise you…”

“As God is your witness?” Paul smiled, but he looked exhausted. He and Tangerine had worked a party and had gotten in shortly before the Kid.

I met his eyes. “Once we make the move, we won’t be dealing with any of those sons of bitches again.”

* * * *

The first floor apartment was finished first. Whoever had done the work back in the forties had left the kitchen alone because the boarders would need to be fed. The only conversion was one very large space off to the side that had probably been some kind of informal room for the family. It had been made into four smaller bedrooms. They were renovated into two that were much roomier, and the additional bathroom John had mentioned was added. The rest of the apartment—library, living room, lounge—just needed to be refurbished.

“We can enclose the small porch off the kitchen and make it into a laundry room,” Paul said.

“It’s a veranda, you philistine.” I felt about verandas the same way Paul felt about turrets and bay windows, which was kind of odd, considering neither of us had ever had those amenities in our lives. “And are you out of your mind?” I snapped at him. “That space in the far corner will be perfect for a stackable washer and dryer….” I realized I’d reacted exactly as Paul wanted me to when I saw his smile. “Asshole.”

No one would want to rent it while there was still work going on overhead, at least that was what I told myself, so we moved in, setting up folding beds in the lounge and the library. Without the drain of the additional rent, we had some breathing space.

We went to bed to the sound of workmen overhead, and we woke to the sound of them packing up for the day. The other renovations took longer than the first floor, since in addition to the many walls that needed to be knocked down, the plumbing and wiring all needed to be updated. Tempers ran short, and b***h slaps were frequently exchanged. By the time the second floor was done, we were thankful for the buffer of that floor between us and the continued work.

Up in the attic, the thin walls that separated the bedrooms were torn down. The wood floor was sanded, and tile was laid down where the kitchen would eventually go. The single bathroom was enlarged and new fixtures selected to replace the chipped, dingy sink, tub, and toilet. The contractor had picked up an air conditioner that would be cut into an outside wall.

“Once everything is done, you can go shopping,” John suggested during one of our trysts.

I groaned. “More money.”

“You’ve got to speculate to accumulate.” He pounced on me, rolled me over, and slid into me. After he’d come and I’d cleaned him off, he continued. “Go to a local department store for linens and things and to Rockville for the furniture.”

“Pushy John.”

He laughed, kissed my cheek, and got dressed. “This is so much fun.”

I told Paul about it when I got home.

“We need to make a list!” He loved making lists. He found a pen and paper and muttered under his breath while he scribbled furiously. “Sheets, towels, pillowcases, blankets.” He looked up at me. “You’re the cook. You decide what pots we’ll need.”

“Gee, thanks.” I started my own list. Saucepans—one, two, and three quart. Skillets—four and eight inches.”

“Don’t forget utensils,” Paul reminded me.

“Got it.” That should do it. “Okay, all done.”

Paul frowned at me before going back to writing. “A set of Corelle dishes. That comes with soup or salad bowls, dessert plates, and coffee cups. Drinking glasses…. Should we get wine glasses?” He saw my expression. “Uh…Okay, no wine glasses. Silverware…” He tapped the end of his pen against his teeth before nodding to himself as if satisfied. “Okay, now, for the sleeping area, we’ll have to get a queen-size bed.”

“You know how expensive sheets and blankets are for that!”

“Ever heard of ‘bed-in-a-bag’?”

“Yeah, but what’s wrong with a double?”

“A queen will draw tenants. Besides, it will make us look like landlords who care.”

“You’re taking this ‘landlord’ thing a little too far, Paul.”

He flipped me off and continued writing. “Um…a dresser and night tables to go with the bed, and a couple of lamps, maybe. For the dining area, a table and chairs, a China cabinet, and—”

“Wait, don’t tell me. We have to get them a hutch and a buffet, too.”

This time he scowled at me. “Cooperate, Sweets. Now, for the living area, a sofa and recliner, and what do you think of a coffee table?”

“Sure. Why the f**k not?”

“Speculate to accumulate,” he singsonged, mimicking John, and kept on writing, but I saw the grin on his face and knew he was teasing me. I would never see him as a lover, but he was the brother I’d never had. “A small entertainment center and a twenty-inch color TV—”

“If whoever rents this wants to watch tapes, they can buy their own f*****g VCR. And their own stereo.”

“Can we get them a radio?”

This time I flipped him off.

Even though the attic apartment was finished in half the time of the first floor, it remained untenanted. No one seemed to want to rent it.

The third-floor apartment took the longest. We needed even more pipes added for the kitchen and the additional bathrooms, two en suite, a Jack and Jill, and a half bath, hookups for the washer and dryer, and more electrical outlets for everywhere, as well as cable connections and plenty of phone jacks. I chose the kitchen, since I would be doing most of the cooking, and while it wasn’t huge, it was big enough to hold all the essentials—stove, fridge, microwave, dishwasher—as well as an island and a peninsula that served as the breakfast bar.

“Sweets.” Paul and I were at a home-improvement store, looking over appliances. “How awesome is this?” He pointed out a fire-engine-red range and cooktop with a price tag of over five grand.

“Awesome, yeah, but the price!” My gaze was drawn to the display of stainless steel appliances. Then I resolutely turned to examine the white fridge and stove.

A salesman bustled up to us. “Can I help you?”

“Get the stainless steel.”

“It’s too expensive. White will work just as well.”

“Sweets. I saw the way you’ve been looking at the stainless steel.” He put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “Get them, babe.”

The salesman suddenly looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. He ran his eyes over us, curled his lips in a sneer, and stepped back.

“How much would your commission be on a sale like this?” I asked him.

He looked startled but told me, and I nodded.

“I’ll get them, darling,” I said to Paul, “but not here.” I took his hand and led him out of the store. “Bastard. Looking down on us because we’re working boys.”

“Um…Sweets? I think it was because we’re gay.”

“That’s just as bad. Let’s go to Sears.”

“It will cost more.”

“f**k the cost.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”