“I need you to cover for me,” Nate said.
“Cover for what?”
“I told my mother I was going to visit you. I’ve been gone a bunch lately and I think she’s starting to suspect. I just don’t want her to worry, you know?”
“Where are you?”
“The Ritz.”
“Oh, my God. You’re with him! That is so hot. I mean I should probably be worrying about you as a friend or whatever, but that guy is smokin’. It’s so much easier for you guys. The boys in my art history class don’t even look at me they’re so busy checking each other out. They were comparing underwear brands yesterday. But what’s with the hotel?”
“He’s negotiating some kind of deal. They stay here all night.”
“And he asked you to come with him?”
Nate hesitated, not wanting to disappoint Emily by upending the image behind her playful envy. Besides, what sense could he make of his circumstance if it didn’t conform in part, at least, to other people’s more ordinary arrangements? How could he explain to her that despite all he and Doug had done they had never actually kissed?
“Do you miss Jason?”
“That drooling pothead? Maybe. I did meet this one guy in Intro Psych. He’s German, so at least he knows how to have a conversation. I don’t know. This English professor last week, he handed out the syllabus and told us we’d be reading nineteenth-century novels with heroes and heroines our age or not much older, and he asked if we thought our feelings were important enough to write books about. So this one kid said, how could his feelings matter if they didn’t have any consequences, like marriage or kids or your reputation? Of course, he looked like he was on meds, but it riled my roommate up enough to insist our feelings about politics mattered. Which I sort of agree with. But who wants to read a novel about some vegetarian’s journey to an antiwar stance?”
“Doesn’t it depend on how intense they are?” Nate asked, a little jealous that Emily got to spend her time considering such things.
“What do you mean?”
“Your feelings. I mean if they’re intense enough, they have consequences, right?”
“You’re really gone on this guy, aren’t you?”
Just then he heard a knocking at the door. “I gotta go,” he said. “He’s back.”
“Okay, lover boy. Take care of yourself.”
When Nate opened the door he was dumbfounded by the sight of Mr. Holland. For a moment the two of them beheld each other in bewildered silence.
“Nate. Hi there. This is Doug Fanning’s room, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said, unable to conceive of any reason he would be staying at the Ritz-Carlton on his own dime.
Stepping past Nate, Mr. Holland entered the room, looking about with a befuddled expression, which fell away as he took in the unmade bed and the clothes on the chairs and Nate’s knapsack lying on the floor.
Unlike Mrs. Holland, who rarely managed to hide her aggression toward Jason’s friends, Mr. Holland had always greeted them warmly. He seemed cheered by the idea that his son had friends at all, as inattentive parents often were, relieved by some vague notion of their child’s social success. He was friendly in a general way. But he suffered from no lack of focus now.
“Is Jason with you? Is he in the hotel?”
Nate realized he was being offered an escape route. If he could rope Jason into the story somehow and then get to him before his father did, he might save himself. But he couldn’t put the pieces together quickly enough.
“Actually … I know Mr. Fanning. From Finden.”
“From Finden? I see.”
He glanced at his watch, as if recalculating the odds on a particularly complicated bet. Nate understood that he wouldn’t be asked to explain himself any further, and that this was probably a bad thing. “Well,” Mr. Holland said, “I need to see Doug. So if he drops by, maybe you could tell him I’m downstairs.”
He was already back through the door when he turned, as if halted by the belated awareness that their acquaintance required some parting pleasantry. “Anyhow,” he said, “say hello to your parents for me.”
AS THE CAR came to a stop in front of the hotel, Doug’s phone rang.
“Are you in the building yet?” Holland asked.
“Yeah, I’m here. Are we closing the deal with Taconic?”
There was a pause and it sounded as if Jeffrey were holding his hand over the receiver. “So, yeah,” he said. “Good that you’re here. Just sit tight, another forty-five minutes, an hour maybe. I just have to go over a few more things with the lawyers and then we’ll all meet in the ballroom.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. The deal’s fine. I just want you close at the end, that’s all.”
A liveried bellhop opened the car door and Doug passed through the revolving glass into the lobby. Beyond the elevator bank, to the right of the front desk, two heavyset white guys in navy-blue wind-breakers were talking quietly to the hotel manager. They had wires in their ears and walkie-talkies on their belts. They weren’t secret service and they didn’t look private. FBI, maybe. Definitely federal.
Doug considered walking back onto the sidewalk and hailing a cab. But if they were here for him, how far would he get? Not today or tomorrow, but next week or next month? He would need time to arrange things, on his terms.
As soon as he entered the room upstairs, Nate came up off the bed, all eagerness and alarm.
“I kept trying your phone,” he said. “I didn’t know where you were.”
Doug tossed his briefcase on the couch and crossed to the window. Nothing unusual down on the street. No squad cars or agents. He regretted now having let Nate come here but when he’d told him he would be staying in the city for a while, he’d practically begged. He had arrived with a suitcase and a bag of books, as if they were on vacation together.
As a practical matter, Nate had been expendable as soon as he’d delivered the files back in July. And yet in the months since they had spent as much time together as ever. Doug had kept telling himself that getting off helped him sleep. That Nate was just experimenting, and he was just killing time. But the more he used the boy’s body, the more frustrated he’d become.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“Why? Is something the matter?”
The collar of his faded blue polo was tucked under on one side and his hair, as usual, was a mess.
“What did you do?” Doug said, sliding his thumb down Nate’s smooth cheek. “Shave?”
“Yeah. You think I’m too scruffy. It’s my Ritz-Carlton look.”
He took hold of Doug’s hand and guided it down to his hip. “You look good in that suit,” he said, stepping in close, their faces just a few inches apart.
His gall rising, Doug turned Nate around and pushed him forward onto the bed.
“After this,” he said, “you’re leaving. You understand?”
When Nate had removed his shirt and jeans, he rolled onto his back.
“What are you doing?”
“I never get to look at you,” Nate said.
Doug grabbed him by the backs of the knees and pressed his thighs to his chest, bending him open. Holding him down like that, he fiddled with his own belt and trousers, amazed and repulsed by the endlessness of the boy’s need. He spit in his hand and entered him with a single jab. Nate winced, his eyes watering, but Doug kept going. This was the thing — why he had kept him around. To tackle a male body, one like his own boyish self, to push it and get at it, his dick and this fucking just a means to the end. To fuck weakness, to pummel it.