Union Atlantic Page 0,54

the mouth of the bottle he'd been drinking from. "I like being here."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I just do."

"Well, I got to get some sleep. Time for you to go."

"Would you mind ... I mean, it's okay if you would, but would you mind if maybe ... I stayed over?"

"Where? On the couch?"

"Okay," he said, his eyes brimming with fear and longing. "If that's what you want."

"Jesus. Come on, then," Doug said, leading him up the stairs to the bedroom.

What Nate wanted, and what Doug let him do once he had turned out the light, was to lay his head down on Doug's stomach and take his dick in his mouth. He had never really touched Nate before but he palmed the top of his head now, guiding his motion. It had been a long time since he'd been given a blow job and though the boy was no professional his eagerness helped.

Afterward, he couldn't sleep, not with Nate in the bed beside him. He tried for a while before fetching his computer from downstairs and starting in on more work. A box in the corner of his screen showed the Nikkei continuing to drop. Eventually, after nodding off for an hour or so, he got up and showered.

When he came back into the room to dress, Nate had woken and rolled over onto his back, his face blurry with sleep, his cheek marked by the creases of the pillowcase.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Quarter to six. I'm going to work. You should get up."

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and sat upright in his frayed T-shirt and boxers, his fuzzy, unshaven jaw giving him even more of a grunge look than usual. He smelled of pot most nights and had that laconic, hangdog look that stoners wore.

"Don't you have school?"

"It's senior week," he said, yawning.

A lifetime of doing only girls and now Doug had got himself into this. A hand job or two was one thing - a convenience - but now the kid was blowing him. The way he looked at Doug in the closet mirror was almost worshipful, his need clinging in a way that a girl wanting Doug to call her never had. He felt implicated somehow, and it galled him.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"What?" Doug said.

"Have you ever done this before?"

"Done what?"

"Been with a guy."

"I got an idea," Doug said, pulling a tie off the rack and quickly knotting it. "Let's skip the conversation part. Okay? Let's keep it simple."

___________

DOWNSTAIRS, he was about to open the front door when something caught his eye through the window.

"Unbelievable. Just look at that."

Charlotte Graves and her two hounds were standing beside the garage, the woman leaning down to gather twigs which she deposited in a plastic shopping bag dangling from her wrist, while the dogs sniffed impatiently at the grass. In the gray dawn, the three of them looked like figures in a dream, a nightmare in fact, as if the world had been emptied by plague, leaving only these ragged scavengers.

"Feel like saying hello to your tutor?"

"No. She's just walking them. She'll keep moving."

"You bet she will."

Doug crossed the circle of the driveway before she noticed his approach. Startled, she stood sharply upright, yanking the dogs to attention. The Doberman bared his teeth and snarled.

"What do you think you're doing here?"

"You're up earlier than usual," she said.

"You realize you're trespassing. Your property is a hundred yards that way," he said, pointing her back up the hill.

She grinned. "The interesting thing is, Mr. Fanning, not only am I not trespassing, but you are. It's a strange bit of law, but there it is - I didn't write it. You'll understand soon enough. Soon enough," she said.

"You're mad. You're totally mad."

"So I'm often told. These days, even my dogs might agree with you. But they're like you. They don't know who they are. Or rather, they're pretending to be people they aren't, which I suppose amounts to the same thing."

"Listen to me," he said, moving a step closer, causing the mastiff to start barking, saliva dripping from his black gums.

"Samuel! Quiet!" she scolded. Amazingly enough, the animal obeyed. "They're usually not so boisterous at this hour. That's why I walk them early: my mind's clearer than theirs." A light rain had slickened the grass and was slowly dampening Doug's jacket. "I can see things more lucidly at this time of day," she said. "For instance, why did you build this house? To support a belief about yourself,