James reached for his glasses on the night table. Even in this surreal moment of broken sleep, he still could drink in the sight of his lover’s body.
Thomas Newcombe Baird. The only white man he had ever seen naked, outside of a medical textbook or a muscle magazine. The curve of head and neck as Tommy stared down past the fire escape. His shoulder-length shag had been clipped just this morning; the fat man with the trimmer laughed about giving White Jesus a haircut. Tommy’s shy little smile, eyes downcast as the brown silk fell like feathers from his Teutonic skull.
The angelic spread of his shoulders. The long, liquid muscles of his back and legs. The way his chin and chest lifted as he ran down the gravel paths in the park, stride extending into effortless thoroughbred speed. The sculpted line of his spine, the dimples just below his lean waist.
Tommy turned his head, a skull with two eye-pits of shadow. “You should sleep.” He spoke softly. “It’s hours ‘til dawn.”
“Me? You’re the one who has to drive.”
Tommy turned and pointed his chin at the storm sweeping the gutters below. “He’s back again.”
James felt a chill. “At this hour?” He stood up, wrapping the sheets around his waist and throwing the tail over his shoulder like a toga. He went to the window and saw the ominous figure on the corner, water streaming down the dome of a black umbrella. “Is it the same guy…?”
“Hard to tell, with the coat and hat. I reckon they dress that way so you can’t tell ‘em apart.”
James hugged himself with a shiver. “I’ve never been ‘staked out’ before. I don’t like it.”
Tommy put a bare arm around his shoulders and drew him close. As always, his skin seemed to radiate an envelope of seductive heat; James leaned into him like a sparrow huddled in the glow of a street lamp.
“You must be important.” Tommy’s voice was low, half-amused. “The FBI doesn’t follow nobodies, right?”
“They follow nobodies just fine,” James replied acidly. “The somebodies get shot.”
He felt the silent wave that passed through Tommy, the quickening of the heart, the tightening of the arm around his shoulder. “They’re going to have to go through me first. That’s all I can say.”
James shook his head sadly. “Is that why you’re coming on this trip? Because you think they won’t ‘go through you’?”
“No.” The arm was tighter now. “I grew up down there, hon. Ran away from that place a long time ago. I know what happens to folk who get in the way.”
James turned, letting his chest and belly flatten against Tommy, reaching up to touch his cheek with a cupped hand. “You know I have to go. Lena and Walt are counting on me to help with voter registration. They’re covering three counties this year. There’s no way they can do it on their own—and they’re my friends. I can’t let them down.”
Tommy closed his eyes, tilting his head to let his cheek lie in the palm of his lover’s hand.
“But really, Tom…there’s no reason you have to come.” He spoke as gently as he could as he dropped his hand. “I know you don’t want to go back.”
Tommy shivered. “I might still have….family, down in Carolina. Looking for me.”
James nodded. “Abel and I can manage.”
Tommy snorted. “Abel and you will do what, exactly? Hitch-hike to Tennessee?”
James drew in a long breath. “We could get bus tickets. I can afford it.”
“Money can’t always buy safe passage, hon.”
James rolled his eyes. “We wouldn’t even have to sit together. We could ride down quietly and pretend not to know each other. Like perfectly respectable folks.”
It was Tommy’s turn to unsheathe the edge of his tongue. “With you sitting in the back of the bus? Like ‘respectable folks’?”
James stiffened. “If need be. Yes.” He raised his chin defiantly. “I choose my battles. You know that.”
“I do.” Tommy shook his head. “I’m sorry, James. I don’t want to go down South. I’d do anything if you’d stay with me. But if you’re going…I just…can’t let you leave me behind.”
“I wasn’t! Tom, I would never—”
“You would. You were going to try.” The words shook as he spoke. “And I cannot bear it, James.” Tommy opened his arms, still perfectly nude, palms open. A gesture of surrender. “Please don’t leave me here alone.”
James looked up and saw light follow the tracks of silent tears. “Tom… come on, now…” He was moving forward, the sheets forgotten and tangling around his legs.
Tommy’s arms closed around him. The bigger man was shaking now, crushing him close. “I’m scared.” A high boyish whisper. “What if something happens down there?”
James swallowed twice before he could speak. “If something happens…? Then you’d be safe. Tom…”
“No. You can’t leave me, James. If anything happens to you…it has to happen to me. It has to.” His voice broke. “I cannot live if you’re gone.”
“Tom. Tommy.” He murmured the name over and over again, stroking the smooth back and shoulders, punctuating his caresses with “It’s all right” as if the words were a mantra.
I know you love me. I love you back, he wanted to say. I won’t ever leave you. But those words would not come.
In two years, he had never said anything like that aloud.
He opened the door at dawn to find Abel Feinman standing on the front step with his suitcase. Feinman was wearing Moroccan brown slacks and a green Paisley shirt…and still hadn’t cut his hair.
James looked him up and down, silently disapproving of his rabbinical beard and luxuriant mane of oily black curls. He held the silence so long that Abel pushed up the bridge of his glasses and cracked a nervous smile. “What, am I at the wrong house or something? Let me in already.”
James invited him in with a sarcastic wave of his hand. “You couldn’t find a barber, man?”
Abel set down the suitcase in the foyer. “Sorry, James. Couldn’t go through with it.”
James rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I bet. What did Joanie say, exactly?”
Abel had the grace to look down at his loafers. “Aaaaah…she said something about Samson and Delilah. And told me I was going to look like a baby-faced narc….”
“Who’s a narc, now?” Tommy came around the bend of the curving stairs, a suitcase in each hand. He was already wearing his Sherpa jacket and aviator glasses. “Better not be talking about me.”
Abel looked up and laughed out loud. “Jesus, Tom. What’d you do, enlist?”
Tommy smiled and stepped out the open door. “I’ll just bring the car around.”
James gave Abel another look over the golden rims of his glasses. When he had full eye contact, he deliberately dropped his gaze to the avocado-green suitcase on the floor. Then back up into Abel’s eyes, lips pursed.
“Anything I need to worry about in there?”
The beatnik could read his mind. “Aawww, c’mon James…”
“C’mon my ass. You already proved you can’t listen to instructions. I told you to clean yourself up.”
“I did!” Abel flapped a hand defensively up and down, indicating his new JC Penney ensemble. “This is all brand new! Everything in my suitcase too! I spent twenty dollars, man!”
“That’s not what I meant. And you damn well know it.” James cocked a fist on one hip, and put out the other hand palm up, making a “gimme” gesture. “You look like Phineas Freak, Abel. Nothing I can do about that now, but I’ll be damned if I’m riding with your dope.”
Feinman rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake…”