A Dangerous Game

Chapter 1-2

He looked as though he had just stepped away from a convention of the National Organization for Marriage or the American Family Association.

So what the hell was he doing in a bar like Tricks? And talking to a tweaked-out bartender as though he knew him? Wren simply gazed at the man with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, as though he had run across a honey badger scurrying along the floor of the bar. He was that out of place.

The bartender, Chip, seemed frozen in his tracks. He gave a wary grin to Wren’s savior, and Wren could tell he was trying to conceal the browning stumps of his teeth. He looked from Wren to the right-winger, then back again. Finally he addressed Wren.

“You said a gin and tonic, right?”

Wren swallowed, feeling as though he had just passed through the looking glass into some sort of alternate universe. “Actually, I asked for a vodka and tonic.”

Chip nodded but stood frozen in his spot until the man standing behind Wren said, “Well, hadn’t you better get this young man his libation? I’m sure he’s not your only thirsty customer this afternoon.”

“Sure, sure,” Chip said, turning to the bottles and spigots behind him. He called over his shoulder, “And can I get you anything?”

“The usual.” The man’s voice was honeyed, deep, the tones of a preacher or someone who spoke professionally. His diction was as crisp and precise as his clothing.

Chip grinned, and Wren could tell he was flustered.

The man behind him let out a sigh, a sibilant hiss that conveyed disgust better than if he had cursed. “A club soda, easy ice, with a twist of lemon. Tall.”

Chip smiled, heedless of the condition of his teeth. “Right. Coming right up.”

Chip turned to busy himself getting their drinks. The man behind Wren moved next to him and spoke in soft, polite tones to the young Latino occupying the stool adjacent to Wren’s.

“Would you mind if I sat here? I haven’t seen my friend in ages, and we’d really like to catch up. Would it be too much trouble?”

The Latino, Wren could see, was beginning to form some sort of protest, but when he met the older man’s eyes, the fight went out of him like air out of a balloon.

“Sure thing, man. It’s all yours.”

He hopped from the stool, and Wren watched as he hurried away.

“My name is Davidson Chillingsworth, but you can call me Dave. Everybody does.”

He extended a perfectly manicured hand to Wren. Wren felt he had no choice but to take the hand and shake it. Chillingsworth’s grasp was firm and warm, his touch almost electric.

“I’m Wren. Wren Gallagher.” Suddenly the worries of the day dissipated in the sheer force that seemed to emanate from this man in waves. There was something commanding about his presence, something charismatic that made the concerns of one’s ordinary life seem trivial, no matter what they were. Wren felt almost as if he had been sucked into a spell.

“Wren? Now there’s a name one doesn’t hear every day. If I were a betting man—and I most decidedly am not—I would be willing to wager there’s a story behind that name.”

Wren shrugged. Chip set their drinks down before them, placing them each on a paper napkin and whispering “On the house” before hurrying away.

“My mom was something of a hippie, even though hippie days were way past her time, you know? When I was born, I was a month early and weighed barely four pounds. I was so small my mom said I put her in mind of a little bird. So, Wren.”

Dave looked him up and down and laughed. “You’re still on the small side, but you certainly seem to have filled out nicely.”

Dave’s gaze made Wren feel like he was on display, as though he were something getting prepared for weighing and measuring.

It’s like the guy’s evaluating me.

Wren didn’t know where the thought had come from.

“Well, yeah. I work out.” Wren grinned, immediately feeling foolish, and lifted the vodka and tonic to his lips with a trembling hand. Dave was making him nervous, he realized, and he didn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t the first time he had been hit on by an older man in Tricks, and he was pretty sure, all vanity aside, that it wouldn’t be the last. Tricks was that kind of place. It had a reputation for younger/older men pairings and an even seedier profile as a place where hustlers met up with clients.

“That much is obvious. You have excellent muscle tone and definition.”

Wren took another swallow of his drink and smiled, feeling like he was on a little firmer footing now. He expected Dave, at any moment, to follow up his comment with a squeeze of Wren’s bicep. This was a pickup, right? This guy knows the owner or has some other kind of pull in the bar and thinks he can get away with murder. Well, if he wants to ply me with a free drink or two, maybe I should just play along. He thought of the guy he had winked at earlier, and a small voice inside him admonished him not to play games. That everyone, no matter how old or decidedly unsexy, was worthy of respect.

Still, Wren didn’t know if he was smart enough to play games with this guy. There was something about him that caught him off guard, that paradoxically made him uneasy yet kept him rooted in place. “Thank you. I have to admit, though, most of the ripped stuff is just genetics. Lucky. I don’t work out that hard.”

Dave looked off, winsome. “Ah, to be young. To not have to work at it.”

Dave’s eyes, which Wren noticed for the first time were the palest shade of gray he had ever seen on a human being, focused on him.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, young man. Gravity and our metabolism catch up with us all too soon.”

They drank in silence for the next several minutes, and Wren watched as one of his favorite dancers, a blond named Arliss, mounted the stage to begin his set. Arliss was different from the other dancers. Sure, he had the lean, ripped bod and a memorable face, full lips and a mane of untamed pale blond hair, but the sleaze factor evident in most of the other dancers was absent when it came to Arliss. There was a sweetness about him, almost an innocence, despite the stories—stories that he had appeared in porn, that he narrowly escaped being the gangbang bottom in not only a bareback flick but a snuff film as well.

The story went that his boyfriend, Sean, had donned a leather mask and rescued him from the scene.

Who knew what was true and what was false at Tricks? Most of the dancers had tales to tell, and it was hard to separate the fabrications for the sake of color from the plain old unvarnished truth.

But Arliss definitely set himself apart from his fellow dancers. Even now, as he moved sensuously to an old Madonna tune, “Ray of Light,” there was something faraway in his eyes. For a moment Wren forgot himself and simply watched Arliss dance in his black thong, admiring how the muscles rippled up from his legs, through his torso, and on, rising to a magnificent chest and broad shoulders. Most of the guys drooled, Wren knew, over that body, but Wren allowed himself to see where Arliss’s gaze focused. It lit across the bar on a fairly nondescript but cute man in glasses who wore a small smile that conveyed he was somewhere else as he met Arliss’s eyes.

For the two men, Wren thought, no one else existed. He knew the guy Arliss was looking at was his boyfriend, Sean. If you spent any time in Tricks at all, you knew Sean belonged to Arliss and vice versa. Sean practically never missed a night of Arliss dancing, and the two always went home together after Arliss finished working. They were the proof that, even in an environment like this one, where youth was fleeting, lust dominated, and relationships lasted as long as an orgasm, true love could still be found. Arliss and Sean proved that “the one” still existed out there for everyone.

Wren grinned and wondered what it would be like to have such love and devotion in one’s life. Wren had certainly never been fortunate enough to have it happen to him. He had had a series of boyfriends, more like hookups really, but no one ever stuck. He had never felt that magic the books, movies, and songs liked to play up as Love with a capital L.

Wren didn’t really know what romantic love was, and he wasn’t sure he’d recognize it if it came up and kissed him on the cheek and pinched his butt. He hoped one day he would find out. He was still very young, after all.

“You like him, the dancer?”

Dave’s voice yanked Wren out of his reverie, returning him with a jolt to the tacky confines of Tricks and an older, clean-cut man staring down his nose at him.

“Oh yeah,” Wren said, wistful. “Arliss. He’s gorgeous.” He met Dave’s stare. “And taken.” He nodded across the bar. “That’s his boyfriend, Sean, over there.” Wren shook his head. “True love. You know?”

“I do indeed know. True love is a rare and wondrous thing. For most of us, it comes along but once in a lifetime, and then only if we are very, very lucky.”

“Yeah.” Wren took a sip of his drink and wondered how he had ended up here talking love philosophy with a guy who looked like a televangelist. It just went to show, you never knew how your day would wind up. Like he didn’t expect to lose his shitty customer service job today when he woke up this morning, but he had.

“A good-looking young man like you must have to fend off the offers from knights in shining armor.”

Wren resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. “Not so much.” He shrugged. “I haven’t met Mr. Right yet. Lots of Mr. Right Nows, if you know what I’m sayin’, but no Mr. Right.” He looked pointedly at Dave. “And certainly no knight in shining armor.”

Dave laughed. “Well, perhaps I exaggerate.” He leaned in close and spoke softly to Wren, almost paternally. “But what if I told you, dear Wren, that I could help you meet your Mr. Right? What if I told you I could help open the door to that wondrous and rare opportunity?”

“I’d say you were full of shit.”

Dave made a tsk sound. “Cursing does not become you, dear boy. Nor does skepticism. Haven’t I at least piqued your curiosity?”

Not really, Wren wanted to say, but he reminded himself that the guy had bought him a drink and rescued him from being tossed out of the bar. Shouldn’t he at least be polite? “Well, yeah. But I don’t see how. I mean, no offense, you seem like a really nice guy and all, but I don’t know if we’re a match.”

Dave chuckled. “I didn’t mean me, dear fellow. Heavens! I daresay that biting off a love match with me would be a bit more than you could chew.”

Dave’s pale eyes went dark for just a moment—it was the most amazing thing.

“But I own a business which—how shall I put it?—facilitates young men meeting other men who may or may not possess the requisites for a match made in heaven. Those choices are ultimately up to the individuals involved.”

Okay, so Wren had no idea what this dude was talking about—and it was starting to creep him out. “I don’t get you.”

Before Dave could answer, Chip re-approached them. “Are you boys doing okay? Need anything?”

Dave considered Wren’s half-empty—or was that half-full?—glass and said hurriedly, “Two more of the same.”

Chip hurried away. Quick sticks. Wren doubted the guy moved as fast for anyone else in the bar.

While Chip got their drinks, Dave pulled a black leather wallet from his pants pocket. The leather was rich, finely grained, and bore the discreet Prada logo in pewter. From it he extracted a business card and handed it to Wren.

Wren glanced down at the ivory card with its raised, shiny black lettering. The card bore only the words À Louer and a phone number with a North Side city prefix: 773.

“What does it mean?” Wren fingered the lettering on the card.

“It’s the name of my business. It’s French. It means ‘to connect, to find love.’”

Wren nodded, getting it. “So, what? You run some kind of escort service?”

Dave shook his head. “‘Escort service’ sounds so tawdry. I prefer to think of myself as a facilitator whereby men can meet other men. I like to think I help open a door to happiness. Yes.” Dave smiled, revealing rows of teeth that were so perfect and white Wren wondered if they were veneers or even dentures.