Page 48 of A Long Con

It’s immature and egotistical to say, but this remark puffed my pride more than anything. “You like a hung man?”

“Oh, of course. Who doesn’t?”

“Next time I’ll drill you in the ass. We’ll do it missionary style and I’ll fuck you like a girl.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” He kissed my glans, giving it a short sweep of the tongue. “I’m the cock virgin here.”

What? “Waterman never barebacked you like his son?”

Now Berkeley sort of looked at the ground. “No. I wouldn’t let him. I was his boy, but I wanted to explore my Dom side with other people.”

This puffed me more than anything, and I could barely contain myself. I walked, dick swinging, to the tossed bag of tacos. Salsa stained the wall, but the tacos were mostly intact. Grabbing a towel from the bathroom, I spread that on the vinyl chair I’d already made slick with jizz. Berkeley stayed on the carpet while he fished a taco from the bag.

Before he could take a bite, I lifted his chin in my fingers and forced him to look at me. Again, I had no prediction I was about to do this. Sometimes I just take the leap and be done with it. I seem to have no control over my impulses—like Phineas Gage, I often wonder.

“Hey. You know I love you. And not like a son, Berkeley. Like another man on an equal footing.”

He actually blushed, tried to look at my feet. My heart started pounding when I realized what I’d said. For once luck was with me, because he answered,

“I love the fuck out of you too, Royal. And not just like an artist with his manager.” He grinned when he looked back to my face. “Like a real grown man who’s tossing out all the junk of his childhood.”

We ate. I could barely swallow, that’s how inflated I was with my own ego. I was pleased with myself, for once.

After a few munches, Berkeley said, “You’re not green anymore.”

“What?”

“Your aura. When I first met you, it was this forest green, a brilliant emerald. It turned brownish for awhile, and I wondered where it was headed. Now I know. You’re fire engine red.”

I smiled. “What does that mean?”

“It means I like myself when I see you.”

His phone on his jeans buzzed, and Berkeley crawled to the pants to see the message.

He looked up at me, his face empty, questioning.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Cloud. My mother’s gone downhill. He says I better come right away.”

I nodded. “We’ll do that after a good night’s sleep. What do you say . . . boy?”

He was quick to cheer up. “Master,” he agreed. “Sleep.”

We were going to hang a left at Show Low and tear through Phoenix to get home.

We’d been steadily gaining altitude in the flat landscape. Now we motored through the ponderosa pine, a welcome break from the desert. I’d been in the fucking desert so long I talked to the saguaros. Juniper and pinyon pine were scattered here and there, and I breathed deeply in the scent.

I’d slept deeply and dreamlessly. It was no big surprise Elaine was going down the tubes. She’d been in the palliative facility the past couple times I’d visited her. She had to stay in bed, as the slightest exertion could lead to a fatal coughing fit. Because she had to wear the nebulizer over her face, there wasn’t much in the way of conversation. I mostly held her hand and spouted a monologue about how the house was coming along. I knew that, as a life-long hoarder, she wouldn’t be thrilled about me tossing her junk, and I even had to stay away from that subject.

I still hadn’t brought up my frozen sister.

As a twinless twin, I’d been experiencing a weird sense of loss. Why did it take my aunt to tell me about her? Why had Elaine made it a secret and, worse, kept her body in the freezer? So she could look at it once in awhile and remember how, well, how she’d killed her? What did my twin die from, anyway? Who keeps bodies lying around? Wouldn’t the hospital have disposed of the body? Or maybe it had been sudden, after she’d returned home. Maybe some accident. My aunt claimed to believe it had been SIDS, but I was suspecting something more nefarious.

These issues really consumed me more than Elaine’s death did.

When Royal, riding point, motioned me to the side of the road, I passively went along. We had no painting, we had no rug, and no way of finding that fucking Ira Hogshead. Yeah. He looked like he had a pig’s face for a head.