Hold Tight Read Free Page B

them on a rack. The man hiked his trousers and winked at Hank. He looked nice and slim.
    The woman opened a door to the right of the narrow stairway and Hank heard a radio. The man stayed back but Hank leaned forward, so he could see what was in there. It looked like an old lady’s parlor, with a red-faced, bald man and a pale boy sitting side by side on a flowery sofa. They kept their hands to themselves, demurely folded in their laps.
    “How are we doing, Father? I mean… Mr. Jones ,” said the woman. “Will you mind if these two gentlemen go ahead and use the room?”
    The bald man consented with a polite bow. He held up an empty glass. “Is it possible, Valeska…?”
    “Uf course. For such a constant friend as you, anything. I will tell Juke.” Pulling the door closed, she mumbled, “Drink me out of house and home, the hypocrite. So it is all yours. Leaving us with only one thing.”
    “Quite so,” said the man, taking a billfold from inside his jacket. He handed her a bill while he looked at Hank, as if the money proved something. Hank was used to money changing hands for this. Sometimes people paid him; now and then, Hank even paid them. Money made some people more comfortable with this, but it was of no matter to Hank.
    “And it has gone up a dollar since the last time,” said the woman. “The war, you know.”
    The man smiled, shook his head and gave her another dollar.
    “Fine.” She opened a door across the hall from the parlor and waved them inside. “I will be seeing you later. Enjoy.”
    The room was small, with scuffed linoleum patterned like a turkish carpet, and cabbage roses on the wallpaper. It looked like any room in any boarding house, except the bed had no blankets, only sheets. When Hank heard the door click shut, he spun around and grabbed the man.
    His hands were all over the man, inside the beltless trousers, under the shirt tail, over soft cotton drawers and stiffening cock. The man kept his teeth together when Hank kissed him. He laughed when Hank got himself tangled up in the suspenders. The man unhooked the suspenders, stepped back, kicked off his shoes and shed his trousers, then insisted on undressing Hank himself. He was already familiar with the uniform’s complicated fly and thirteen buttons. Hank couldn’t keep still; he touched and grabbed, undid the man’s bow tie and shirt, yanked the man’s drawers down so he could get a good look at him. Hank often had sex with clothes just opened or rearranged, like when he was hitchhiking or making do in a storage locker or the bushes, but what he really liked was stark nakedness, the way it had been those first times, when an aunt’s hired hand had shown him what they could do together after their swim in the pasture pond, squirreling around in the warm, wet grass while cows watched. Girls were for marriage and families, guys for getting your ashes hauled.
    In heaven and naked, Hank lay back and grinned while the man loved him with his mouth. Because he was paying, the man still seemed to think it was up to him to do everything, but Hank didn’t mind lying still for this, a cool mouth and tongue admiring his cock. He held the man’s crisp, brilliantined head with both hands, then stroked the man’s neck and shoulders. Hank’s hands were callused, so the man’s skin felt very smooth. Hank slipped a bare foot beneath the man’s stomach and brushed his leathery toes against the wispy hair and hard cock. With his other foot he stroked the man’s bottom.
    Hank wrestled the man up to him so he could feel more of him. After Hank’s cock, the man didn’t mind Hank’s tongue in his mouth. He still wore his socks and garters, which Hank pried off with his big toe. The man had a city body, spongey where it wasn’t bony, but the patches of warm, cool and lukewarm skin felt good. Hank hummed and moaned and laughed without fear of who might hear them. They were safe here.
    When Hank spit into his hand and reached between the