Of Leather And Dumpsters
In the four months that Darren had worked at the music shop, he’d begun to wonder whether or not there was a benefit outside of the employee discount and the ability to decide what was playing on the overhead when the manager let him lock up for the evening. The nice part about working for Corner Store Records was that it wasn’t a huge corporation – the pay was lower, but there weren’t all the nasty and awful little rules to pay attention to, either.
After a short stint in a bookstore where he wasn’t allowed to read, Darren decided that if he at least worked for a music store, there wasn’t any way they could keep him from listening. The job change had been quick and easy, and the pay cut wasn’t quite as bad as he’d imagined. He was already working hard on the starving artist image, so a few hundred less a month was really complementary to the look. Plus, he always harbored fantasies about turning into a rock star and wearing all kinds of outrageous leather pants and jackets.
At least, that was what he told himself when he wondered if he had enough spare change to go and by Ramen for the sixth night in a row.
Grimacing behind his magazine, Darren shifted on the stool he’d placed behind the register, and leaned his weight onto the countertop on one elbow. The chime of the door opening wasn’t enough to tear him away from his “Rolling Stone,” so he ignored it and trusted that the customer wasn’t entirely incompetent and could find the newest U2 album on his own.
But the point was, he’d been working here for almost half a year and things were leveling off. Darren sighed and turned the page on the magazine. Nothing interesting. It was just late enough to consider closing early, but there were still people in the store, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to balancing the till. Deciding it was futile to try and read, he tossed the magazine aside and hopped over the glass countertops and onto the ground. The registers were on a raised platform – the music shop used to be a small coffee house with a bit of a stage, and there hadn’t been much redecoration before the store opened. It gave the cashiers a sense of godliness when they had to hand change down.
Checking his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, he began to peruse the isles. Reshelving, reorganizing, realphabatizing. Saturday nights were the slowest, because he had to close, and it meant working not only after all the customers had left, but after all the employees had gone for the evening, as well.
The door chimed again, and this time he looked up to greet whoever it was that was coming in the door; to ask them if they needed any help finding anything.
And there were his additional employee benefits, rising maybe six feet tall in front of him. He’d only come into the store three times before, and only recently. He wore a blue motorcycle jacket with the sleeves permanently unzipped, and the style was so old that it lacked all frills like belts or useless pockets. It was always zipped halfway up, hinting at more peculiar band shirts or thrift store finds underneath. His hands shoved in the pockets of his pants, the man nodded at him, and, ducking his head, turned the other way.
Jesus.
Darren looked out the front door. There was no motorcycle, as far as he knew – the man only came after dark, but Darren was pretty sure that he walked. Which meant that he probably lived near by.
The name on the credit card he used every time he came in was Bradley Morton. He was the highlight of Darren’s Saturdays.
“Excuse me?”
Darren turned around to face some young grungy looking thing in her brother’s ripped up jeans and flannel shirt. He was so surprised at not having heard her approach that he checked around him just to make sure people weren’t staring at him.
“Can I have that?” She pointed to a record he held in his hand, and he offered it hastily forward. She snatched it from him, as if he might change his mind and take it back, and drifted to the other side of the store.
Darren blinked. He felt as if he’d just been hit and run.
Throwing his hair out of his eyes with a sweep of one hand, and tossing the other items he held into the discount bin, he made his way back up toward the register. At least he’d get to check out Bradley Morton a little closer tonight. Something to look forward to before Ramen.
* * *
“Hey. Kid.”
He turned, trying to not visibly squint into the darkness, searching for the voice that had addressed him. The alley behind Corner Store Records was dark and one-way, which was probably why Ben had picked it.
“You lookin’ for someone?” came the voice.
“I...” he started. “I know a guy from Edinborough?”
A snort of laughter and the flick of a lighter, which illuminated a strange face for a few moments, with deep eyes and a chunkier nose than suited him. The flickering made him look like a jack-o-lantern. “Good, kid.” The lighter flicked shut, and he could smell the sharp burn of a cigarette. “Don’t tell me your name. Stay right where you are. You got what you came for?”
“You’re...Ben Carey?”
“Mmm,” came the reply around the cigarette, which let the boy know, at least, that Ben wasn’t the man’s real name, or he’d have boxed the boy about the ears for saying it aloud.
He unzipped his motorcycle jacket and drew out a parcel wrapped in brown paper, and tossed it toward the man. He wasn’t sure if the smoking man was going to catch it, but at the last second, a hand reached out and plucked the package from the air. He could hear the rustle of brown paper being torn and peeled back as the man with the cigarette checked weight and quality.
With a grunt of satisfaction, the man drew on his cigarette – the boy followed the motion of the glow with a bit of apprehension – and then laughed, a quiet chuckle.
“You’re pretty dumb, you know that, kid?”
He didn’t answer.
“How old are you?” The smoking man motioned with his burning cigarette. “Seventeen?”
“Nineteen,” the boy answered, taking one step back, the hackles rising on his neck from the night breeze.
Ben shook his head, grinning manically to himself in the moonlight. “I mean, what kind of person doesn’t bring backup to the exchange?”
Another backward step. “Whu – ” the boy said, and that was it.
Instead of feeling the cool air of freedom at his back, the boy felt only two sets of very strong hands grabbing him by the arms, and he was spun and slammed, his back against the brick wall, his head feeling hot and wet at the back where it scratched and stuck in little tiny places along the brick.
What happened next was very surreal, strobe lights of memories that would stay with him until he died. He could feel his cheek scrape along the pavement, his shirt catching underneath his body and becoming tight on his neck. He could feel the print of a boot on the small of his back, just under his torso. The way the alley looked sideways, and the yellow and orange Vans tennis shoes that approached him that belonged to the laughing voice, rough around the edges with smoke.
The sound his fingers made when they broke.
He could feel the burn of the cigarette as it drove into his palm, but by then he was too far gone to cry out.
He wasn’t too thankful for that dark alley after that.
* * *
Ten o’clock came and went and Darren closed the store up tight, sliding the metal crosshatching across the front windows so that no one would break in and steal their merchandise during the night. Darren had a feeling that if anyone really wanted to break-and-enter, they’d find a way in through the skylight or the easily penetrable basement, but he tried not to mention that to the owner.
Shutting off lights as he went, Darren made his way to the back of the store.
Counting money he could never have. What fun.
Before the till was recounted, however, there were floors to be swept and garbage to be consolidated and thrown out in the giant dumpster out back. One day, Darren had convinced himself, someone was going to jump out of that dumpster and kill him. Usually he swung in the trash from as far away as possible and bolted back into the store, slamming home locks as quickly as possible.
It was quite possibly his one and only phobia, that dumpster.
Gearing up his adrenaline for the mad dash, Darren made sure he left the back door slightly ajar so he would be able to get back in unfettered. He swung the garbage bag over one shoulder and narrowed his tunnel vision at the dumpster.
He squinted in what he figured was a menacing way.
And then proceeded to jump out of his skin and stumble backward so fast into the brick of the alley that he scraped the flesh on his palms.
There was a noise. Coming from the dumpster.
Shit.
Darren dropped the trash and edged around one side, trying to will the darkness away so he could see the source of the noise without moving any closer to it. The noise repeated, a soft scraping sound, and it was getting louder.
Scrape. Scrape.
Darren had one hand back on the door knob, a foot in the door. He could call the police. They would be here relatively soon, at this time of night. It was still early. If he screamed, someone would hear him and come running.
Of course, then he would have to explain that the dumpster had come alive and was attacking him.
Scrape.
And that was when he saw it, and he bolted forward three steps before he even knew what he was doing to arrest his movement. It was a man dragging himself up a wall into a standing position. Darren squinted again.
“Are...are you alright?” Darren called out quietly so he didn’t startle the person. He backed up a step, too, just in case the battered man was a drug addict or minion of the dumpster of darkness.
There was no reply for a moment, and then the guy looked up at him and said, “I think I’m going to pass out.”
And then he did.
* * *
He felt like his entire body had been wrapped in cotton. He couldn’t move any of his arms or legs, and his ears seemed clogged and his sight was hazy, as if he was looking through something and into the outside world. But he was warm, and the hurt was very little if he just didn’t move at all, and he was breathing pretty steadily through his nose, so he thought he was going to live.
There were noises. He didn’t think Ben had dragged him off. He was fairly sure he remembered cardboard boxes.
A giant plastic rectangle zoomed into his field of vision, white, reading “DARREN!” in big block letters. It zoomed out, and then back in again, and it took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t his vision that was blurring, it was that the tag was really moving. He took this as a good sign, and figured it might be worth opening his mouth for.
He tried to say hello and it came out as “meluurg.”
The name tag jumped.
And then there was a face. His breathing jacked, and he thought it was probably the cottony feeling, but there was an angel looking down at him and biting its lower lip.
“Are you okay, Mr. Morton?”
He stared at the beautiful black hair and the dazzling blue eyes. He had been to the Gulf of Mexico, once, with his family, when he was very, very young. These eyes reminded him of the water there, and how there was no difference between the ocean and the sky.
“What?” He heard his own voice saying.
The other man frowned. “Isn’t that your name? I didn’t check ID. It’s just that you...sometimes...” He faltered, and looked away, confused and embarrassed.
“It’s Daniel,” he said. “My name is Daniel. Why did you think...” and then he gave a hacking cough and remembered the credit cards, the fake ID. “Never mind.”
Darren looked back at him with an appraising glance, trying to decide whether to believe him or not. Apparently he decided it didn’t matter, that there were more pressing issues. “What happened to you?”
“What do you mean?” Daniel said, and was about to lift his hand and say, ‘I’m fine, thanks, can you call me a taxi,’ when his fingers laced with pain and he had to turn his face into what he realized was a couch cushion.
“That’s what I mean,” Darren said dryly.
“Tripped. Fell.” Daniel raised his hand into his sight line without moving his fingers. He grimaced when he looked at them – they had turned into three giant, purple sausages.
“I know some first aid, I can set them, I think,” Darren said. That was when Daniel noticed the first aid kit was already opened, and most of his serious cuts were stinging with a freshly-ammonized feel.
“You think?” Daniel frowned, weighing the amount of questions this stranger would ask with the ones he would be forced to answer in a hospital. “Fine. Do it.”
“Sit up,” Darren urged him, and helped him angle upward. “Now straighten out your arm, like this. Okay, on the count of three, I’m going to – ”
“Sonofabitch!” Daniel yelped, as Darren straightened his fingers without even counting. Everything zoomed into living color and he sat bolt upright, adrenaline flooding his blood system and he stared at Darren. “What happened to ‘count of three’?”
Darren shrugged, examining the fingers. “Usually helps to distract people. How do they feel?” He snagged a bottle of Aspirin off the desk next to him, and pressed it into Daniel’s other hand.
“Hurts,” Daniel muttered, suddenly disgusted and ashamed of himself. How could he possibly have trusted Ben *not* to do this? He should have been expecting it. Anyone half as professional as he was would have been expecting it. And now he was empty handed, had lost his contacts, and was sitting in a strange room with a strange man to whom he could offer no explanations when the time for questions eventually came.
“As long as you can still feel it,” Darren was saying. “If it goes numb, let me know.”
Daniel nodded mutely, and popped the child-safety lid on the pain killers. He took three, dry, and grimaced at the slippery, bitter taste.
Darren was wrapping his hand and staring silently at him, trying not to look obvious. “Is there...do you have someone you could call?”
He snorted. “No.”
There was another stretch of awkward silence, where Darren proceeded to tip his fingers together and then pull them apart, one by one. “The police – ”
“No.” Daniel’s voice was getting stronger now, and he was thinking more clearly. He shifted himself fully upward, leaning back on the couch and grateful for its presence.
“Oh,” Darren said, letting that wash over him. Let him think what he wants, Daniel thought. Let him think I’m a drug dealer, or that I have a police record, or that I’m a registered pedophile.
Leaning back in his chair, Darren stared at the desk, and raised an eyebrow as if remembering something. “I still have to count the till,” he said.
Daniel watched the play of emotions on the man’s face for a moment. “You can lock me in here, if you want.”
Darren looked sufficiently amused to turn back to him. “You’re not going anywhere fast in your condition.” As if that settled some kind of personal decision, he leaned down under the desk and Daniel heard the sound of a combination lock being spun. “There isn’t much tonight,” came the muffled voice from under the desk. “It shouldn’t take us long.”
Us? Daniel filed the thought for later reference and shifted his gaze away from his torn clothing and battered limbs to the walls of, what he realized, must be the office of the music shop. He was sure he had seen Darren once or twice before when he had cased the store for exits and its lack of theft alarms or a direct line to the police. The walls were covered in promotional concert posters, mostly bands he had never heard of. They were sagging under their own weight, and the colors were faded, adding to the musty feel of the room.
Darren was dividing the bills into piles on the desk, and muttering under his breath. He looked up, as if startled, and motioned to the chair next to him. “Are you going to help or not?”
Daniel moved swiftly, letting his good hand brush the other man’s shoulder before he sat down. Darren looked up at him questioningly.
“Thanks,” Daniel said.
Darren hesitated, as if considering this, and then nodded once before shoving a pile of change over to the other side of the table and resumed his counting.
* * *
“This is what it feels like to hold two thousand dollars in your hands,” Daniel breathed. Suddenly, he was looking at Darren. “Let’s take it.”
Darren laughed. After an hour of mostly goofing off and getting to know one another, only about ten of which had been actual work, Daniel had said more outrageous things than that. Darren was just learning to let them slide. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear the stupidest thing anyone’s ever said come out of your mouth.”
“No, seriously,” Daniel said. “We can make it look like the store got broken into...”
“Daniel...”
“...we could do an anonymous tip from the police...”
“Daniel?”
“...you could stay here and play unconscious until the cops come and clear you, and then – “
“Daniel!’
The boy looked up, cradling his hand.
“No,” Darren said, sternly but kindly.
Daniel kicked his feet up onto the desk. “Fine,” he groused, and went back to counting pennies. Darren stifled a smirk of amusement as he clipped the bills together and shoved the wad into the still-open safe underneath the table. From there he got his first good look at Daniel’s frame. Long legs – nearly disproportionate to the rest of his body, that stretched up past his line of sight and into the darkness of the room above him. The small square of light that the room afforded the land-beneath-the-table let Darren notice his fight-stained blue jeans, and tennis shoes with the tread worn down to dirty-white nubs.
“You okay?” Daniel asked, and Darren banged his head on the underside of the desk.
“Fine, thank you,” Darren groused as he removed himself. “Nearly done with the change?”
“I’ve counted it twice,” Daniel said with pride, and shoved the little soldiered lines of coin into their respective buckets. His hair caught the light from the street lamp that shone through the window, harsh neon filtered down through the grimy glass, and Darren caught himself staring.
Daniel glanced at him from the corner of his eye as Darren shook himself and locked away the remaining funds. “I remember you,” Daniel said mysteriously.
Darren straightened and turned to look at him. “Oh?”
“I remember you staring earlier tonight.”
The words looked like they were causing Daniel serious pain. Darren felt his light complexion coloring slightly, and was glad for the shadowy room. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Daniel leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. “Why?”
“Why what?” He was more uncomfortable now than usual, and was reminded of why he enjoyed keeping to himself.
“Why were you staring at me? Why are you sorry?”
Darren wanted to crawl into the Dumpster of Evil. He cringed, remembering the remains of his vegetarian chili that he’d thrown out yesterday at lunch, and wondered if it would make better company. What was he supposed to say to an attractive misfit drug dealer who had been unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – without sounding more than it already did like a bad film noir?
“You’re handsome,” Darren blurted, and then, “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll say you are,” Daniel agreed, grinning and leaning even farther forward. “I’m ‘handsome’? What are you, twelve?”
Darren’s thoughts registered around ‘Guh?’
“I think you’re supposed to say ‘sexy’, now,” Daniel prompted him with a nudge of his knee.
“Sor-”
“Don’t,” Daniel commanded, a smile twitching at his lips. Darren grinned shyly. “So, you think I’m a sexy beast, eh?”
“I never said that,” Darren groused good-naturedly.
“Seeexy beast,” Daniel repeated, admiring his own arms and legs. “What parts, exactly, do you admire the most?”
“Not your mouth, that’s for sure.”
Daniel stilled at the challenge. “I think I can give you a few reasons to admire my mouth,” he said gravely.
“I’m sure you can,” Darren said, leaning forward boldly.
Their lips brushed tentatively, Darren wondering if he had ever thought the cute boy in the motorcycle jacket would be feeling him up when he’d been grousing to himself earlier that afternoon, and Daniel wondering where he could put his hands first. He had just decided on ‘thigh’ when Darren flew away from him.
“Shit,” Daniel said remorsefully at the same time Darren said, “Did you hear that?”
“Did I hear what?” Daniel asked, relief flooding him.
“Shit?” Darren echoed, confused. And then the noise sounded again. “That! There!”
“It’s just the dumpster,” Daniel said, amusement raising his eyebrows.
Darren didn’t have time to mock the phrase “just the dumpster,” because he was already clambering out of his chair and onto the couch to peer out the little window cut at the top of the room. “There’s someone out there.”
Curious as always, Daniel climbed up onto the sofa next to Darren and tried not to feel too much like a voyeur. Cold washed through him the next moment. Ben. “Ben.”
“Ben,” Darren echoed, drawing his own conclusions. “Will he go away, or does he need prodding?”
“What kind of prodding?” Daniel asked after serious consideration.
Darren turned to look at him. “There’s a shotgun under the desk.”
Daniel’s mouth set in a hard line as he thought. “No,” he said, turning back toward the window, ending the discussion.
“There’s the police,” Darren suggested.
“He’ll leave,” Daniel said, more to himself than Darren. “I’m sure he’ll leave.”
They both waited while the dumpsters emitted more frustrated noises. Daniel couldn’t imagine why Ben had returned for him, unless he’d felt the need for further violence, or that he posed some kind of additional threat just by being alive. Or he was feeling remorseful. Ben had strange mood swings, Daniel had learned over the course of their very brief acquaintance. It was always better to be somewhere else when the swing was in progress.
It wasn’t long before a shadowy figure returned to an idling car and pulled away in a screech of exhaust and tire tread.
Darren let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“Think he’ll come back?”
“I hope not,” Daniel said honestly, rubbing the back of his neck and feeling suddenly foolish for standing on his tip toes on a ramshackle sofa like a seven year old boy peeping over a neighbor’s fence. He moved his aching limbs slowly and climbed down. Darren looked down on him, the street light illuminating his face.
“Are you okay?” Darren asked.
“No,” Daniel said, suddenly feeling the weight of the evening and turning away from the other man, staring out into the room. “I mean, what the hell? I hurt everywhere, I have nowhere to sleep tonight, I’m out thousands of dollars, and I’d much rather be snogging you right now than thinking all this.” He paused for a moment and felt the sofa shift as Darren dropped down. “And you’re a perfect stranger.”
“You think I’m perfect?” was all Darren said.
Daniel just looked at him, wry amusement and weariness playing on his face.
Darren slung one arm over the younger man’s shoulders and leaned into him. “Look, it’s not so bad. You won’t hurt forever,” he reasoned, and planted a small kiss on Daniel’s neck. “You can sleep later.” Another kiss, this time on his jaw. Daniel made a low-sounding resonance that Darren figured was probably a growl, but focused on trying to remember the rest of the points. “The money we can’t do anything about…but you’ll forget it.” A soft kiss, full on the lips, and Daniel had turned himself towards the affection now. “Because we’re snogging.”
Daniel curled his mouth into a smile. “I love it when things come full circle.”
Darren turned out the small lamp on the desk and allowed the street light to illuminate the room with its dull orange glow.
“What’s this about coming full circle?”
“You’re more wicked than you look.”
“Just wait until I get that leather off you...”