Chapter 1 - Permit to stay

In early June, the Northern Italian landscape was at its lushest, and the frequent thunderstorms of the season hadn´t yielded to the hot and dry midsummer yet. The trees and fields were glossy with deep, luxurious shades of green which would lose their sheen in July when the summer anticyclone would faithfully bounce approaching Atlantic storm fronts beyond the Alps, turning Italian cities into unbearable furnaces and driving the populace to seaside resorts. The hot afternoon sun was blazing from nearly overhead, as there were less than three weeks to the summer solstice, and the howling wind barely managed to keep us comfortable from the heat as Angelo´s authentic, convertible US Army jeep roared along the autostrada from Milan towards the southernmost peaks of the Alps rearing ahead of us. The mountains stood in stark contrast to the sun-drenched plain, shadowed by white clouds billowing above them in huge standing waves that seemed likely to crash down the slopes any moment due to their sheer weight. And sometimes they did; cloudbursts could turn tranquil mountain valleys into frothing, unstoppable torrents in a matter of minutes. Yet most often, upon reaching the Alps, the sun inexplicably continued to shine through seemingly stationary gaps in the cloud cover for the benefit of high-altitude sunbathers. However, this Sunday we weren´t going to Val Maggia on the Swiss side for a day of sun, swimming and cruising along the meandering alpine river, but to visit Angelo´s parents´ villa by the Como lake to see if the recent storms had toppled trees in the garden, blown away roof tiles, or in any other way damaged the old building cherished by his family as their holiday residence. I´d been there twice before and remembering our previous visits made me wonder if there was a hidden agenda to this one as well.

I threw a quick sideways glance at his direction to probe my feelings about the possible outcome of the afternoon. At six feet four inches, Angelo´s height was the first thing people noticed about him, followed by either the handsome face if he was wearing something baggy and modest as usual, or the massive gym-trained body in those rare occasions when he was feeling reckless or sufficiently unrefined to show it off. Today he was wearing a pair of military shorts and a tank top, further feeding my suspicions about his motives for the trip. He had unmistakably grown during the year I´d known him, and despite his shocked denials I remained convinced that human glands alone could not pump out sufficient amounts of testosterone to produce a physique like his. Not that I could claim innocence on the subject myself. I decided I´d have no qualms about him cheating on his boyfriend Luca, which actually was a foregone conclusion as we´d never gotten along well, me being not only Angelo´s best friend but also an occasional – and for the time being, former – fuck buddy.

“How are things with Luca?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the wind.

“Could be better,” Angelo replied.

“Is he getting tired of the role of a battered housewife?”

Angelo shot me an annoyed look, then grinned. "You shouldn´t joke about it."

“Well, you warned him from the start. He knew what he was getting into.”

“No, he probably didn´t,” Angelo said, returning serious.

“What did you do this time?”

He shrugged. “I had to take him to emergency room two days ago. Apparent concussion.”

“Was it?”

“No. But it could have been.”

“Angelo…”

“I know.”

Several people, some of them complete strangers, had come to warn me after I´d first met Angelo. I had discounted the stories as envious gossip, given the universal interest people showed for him every time we went out, but shortly afterwards he had told me himself that some of it was true. Wryly, he had added that ever since his violent streak became known more people than ever came on to him.

“Did he leave you?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“They never do,” Angelo answered, merely stating a fact.

He took the exit ramp to Como, paid the fare at the toll booth, and soon we were on a narrow and winding state road hairpinning up to the mountains. Even by Italian standards the landscape was overwhelmingly beautiful, with an airy blue haze suffusing the verdant mountains whose slopes plunged dramatically straight into the glittering lake. The shoreline was crowded with old pictoresque palazzos, like a thin strip of Venice transplanted in the Alps, and here and there, far above the lake, a few solitaire villas clung to the mountains. Angelo´s was one of these, and we had to turn to a narrow and dangerous-looking road to reach the estate. As we climbed higher I couldn´t help wishing that whoever had built the road had included safety barriers as well. A single incautious swerve would be sufficient to send us tumbling down into the fathomless depths of the lake, which looked far more sinister now than at the beginning of the ascent, and as if on cue one of the ubiquitous clouds covered the sun and turned the water almost black. To distract myself with gossip, I turned to Angelo.

“So, what exactly happened with Luca? Did he deserve it?”

Angelo frowned slightly as he tackled yet another steep curve. “No. Not really.”

“Not really? What does that mean?”

“He just wasn´t as co-operative as he should be.”

I waited.

When there was no answer, I pressed on. “Is this, unco-operativeness, related to things like the red thatch marks I saw on his biceps two weeks ago at the dinner? When he reached for the wine?”

“He´s fixated on his biceps, so I like to give them some extra attention,” Angelo replied with a grin. “The marks are never permanent, though.”

“I figured that´s why he never comes to the swimming pool with us.”

“Quite right.”

“Isn´t it getting to be the time to dump him? Before you really hurt him?”

He nodded. “You might be right. It´d be a pity, though. I picked him up from the hospital the next morning and we had, quote, the best sex ever, unquote.”

I believed it. "Well, when the time comes, don´t ask me to replace him."

Angelo laughed. “I wouldn´t dare.”

He slowed down, and turned to a driveway that was, if possible, even more dangerous than the main road. The wheels of the jeep crunched over minor landslides that had fallen on the hairpinning drive, and several times the trees came so close on both sides that Angelo had to slow down to almost nothing to keep the branches from sweeping us from our seats. Then the trees fell back, and an ancient stone bridge, possibly dating back to Romans, took us over a deep and narrow canyon and delivered us to the front yard of the palazzo, separated from the precipice by a reassuringly sturdy-looking balustrade. I jumped off the car, and once again was awestruck by the beauty of the place. The villa wasn´t one of the largest or most exclusive in the area, but it was a superb example of 19^th–century craftsmanship nevertheless. The ocra stonework had weathered beautifully, and the effect was further enhanced by tall, narrow windows with their rust-colored wrought-iron bars, and a row of large terracotta vases with palm trees. The building had one floor, except for the beautifully proportioned, narrow tower on the left side which was two stories high, vaguely modeled after a medieval castle, and topped by a roofed terrace. The back garden ascended steeply behind the villa, offering a view to the cypresses and gnarled sea pines, and some overgrown bushes with dark red flowers in bloom. A small brook ran through the garden, forming a series of small cascades before vanishing into the canyon. To the opposite direction, the view over the lake was incomparable.

“I can´t believe you grew up here,” was my lame and repetitive first comment every time I visited the place.

“It´s not bad,” he agreed. “And it does look attractive after a few weeks spent in the Milan smog.”

“There are no signs of the storm,” I noted. “Should we check out the back?”

The path to the backyard passed too close to the canyon for my liking, considering that a part of the passage was cantilevered, and should the old construction give in we´d have plenty of time to reach terminal velocity – literally – before smashing into the rocks below. Admittedly, a collapse wasn´t very likely after almost two hundred years of impeccable service, but I was glad nevertheless when I found myself back on the firm ground. Apart from a few torn branches, scattered here and there, the backyard had survived the storms in pristine condition. Almost.

“Angelo,” I said, standing still. “Look at the back door.”

A small window, the one right above the handle, had been smashed in. The door was unlocked as Angelo tried the handle. He stepped in, and I followed, unsure if it was the wisest thing to do. The back door lead directly into the living room, and we stood still, listening.

The house was silent, but only for a moment. The inevitable creaks of a large old building were there; and the roof tiles clicked almost inaudibly as they shifted under the hot sunshine. The thick stone walls had absorbed the heat of the day, and inside the air was still pleasureably cool, and smelled faintly of dry wood. Shafts of daylight leaked in through sheer white floor-to-ceiling curtains, and the massive but sparse furniture added to the airy, uncluttered feeling of the room. An open door lead to a small dining room adjacent to the kitchen, and on the other side of the living room, along the wall, a staircase of dark wood climbed to the second floor of the tower. Underneath the staircase was a short corridor to enter the master bedroom, and a large, modernized bathroom. There were no signs of burglary.

Carefully, to avoid making noise on the tiled floor, Angelo walked to the dining room where he could see into the kitchen. I followed him, and saw that his intuition had been right. The dining room was as impeccable as the rest, but on the kitchen table lay the remains of a simple meal: an opened bottle of mineral water, half a loaf of bread on rumpled white paper, some cheese and a tomato. Angelo gestured me to stay in the dining room, where I could guard the rest of the house, while he stepped into the kitchen for a closer look. It crossed my mind that the intruder might be armed, but then remembered that guns weren´t as ubiquitous in Italy as back home in Texas, and to keep one at home was almost unheard of. I heard Angelo move around in the kitchen for a little while, and when he returned he looked serious but not overtly alarmed.

Then it was the turn of the rest of the first floor. Again, Angelo gestured me to remain in the living room where I could see all the exits and warn him if someone appeared on top of the stairs. As I waited, I made some calculations and came to the conclusion that it would take at least two hours for the police to arrive if I slipped outside and called 112 on my cell phone – which might ring any moment. I snatched it from my pocket, and turned it off. It took Angelo only few seconds to check the rooms, and I showed him my phone when he reappeared. He nodded, pulled out his own and turned it off as well.

We proceeded to the second floor. Luckily, the wooden part of the staircase was massive enough to make almost no noise at all as we slowly went up, step by step. At the corner of the living room the stairs turned, and continued upwards within the stone structure of the tower. The second floor held two bedrooms and another, smaller bathroom, and when we reached the landing we saw that two of the doors were closed but the third one, leading to a bedroom, was a little ajar. Very quietly, Angelo stepped to the door, and slowly pushed it open. His eyes widened, but he didn´t move. I went to him, and peered into the shadowy room.

The wooden shutters were closed, but the inner glass windows had been left open, to allow a light breeze and some light pass through the slants of the shutters. The long white curtains were swaying a little, and suddenly the filtered daylight turned brighter as a cloud moved away from the sun. The white sheets of the bed glowed as if illuminated from within, and in the bed, partly covered by the sheets, lay a dark-haired young man, fast asleep. He was lying on his back, head turned to the side, one curled hand raised on his pillow and slightly touching his cheek, and his eyelashes fluttered slightly as he dreamt. He was wearing only a fresh pair of plain white underwear, some nameless brand that could be found at large department stores or supermarkets, and on the floor next to the bed, in a small heap, were his jeans and a white t-shirt.

As I stared at him I realized he was much younger than I had first thought. His face belonged to a kid of only sixteen or seventeen, but his hands, although carefully scrubbed, bore the evidence of a job at a construction site and thus explained the well-muscled body. His skin was perfectly smooth, with only a tiny whiff of visible hair above the waistband of his underwear, and none on the chest, and there was just a trace of baby fat still clinging to his belly and cheeks. The neck was strong, and the set of his eyes unusual, making me think the boy was of Eastern European origin, perhaps a Romanian who were famous for their good looks. I glanced at Angelo, and could tell I wasn´t the only one mesmerized by the sight. He noticed my glance and shrugged, somewhat amused. But then, instead of politely knocking on the door to wake up the boy, he entered the room taking advantage of his entitlement as the owner of the house, and looked around enquiringly. Not quite sure about his intentions, I followed.

In a corner, behind the bed, was a worn canvas gym bag with all the boy´s belongings. There were some clothes, topped by a frayed brown envelope which seemed to contain a few photographs and a letter, and a small unopened package of cheap potato chips. The edge of a passport poked out from a side pocket. A small frown appeared on Angelo´s face as he observed the bag and then turned back to the boy. I knew he wasn´t going to call the police.

Despite our silent entry the boy was growing restless, aware in his sleep that something was not right. He sighed, turned to his side, and then his eyes opened. Instantly, he was wide awake. He snapped into action, trying to jump on his feet next to the bed, but snagged by the sheets he nearly fell down and had to seek support from the bedside table. Angelo stepped between him and the door, seemingly relaxed and unthreatening, but his size was quite enough to frighten the boy whose eyes darted between the two of us, trying to figure out who we were, and how we were going to hurt him. He was breathing fast, almost gasping, and his blue Slavic eyes were wide with panic as he quickly glanced sideways, looking for something to defend himself with.

“Calm down,” I said slowly, in my accented Italian. “We won´t harm you.”

He made no answer, but since neither I nor Angelo was moving he stood still as well, observing us more closely. Then, while assessing Angelo, he nervously realized he was wearing nothing but a pair of briefs, and his eyes searched for his clothes. He didn´t dare to pick them up, though, afraid that we´d assault him if he let his guard down.

“Angelo,” I said. “Tell him to calm down.”

“He´s right,” Angelo obeyed. “We won´t hurt you. Do you speak Italian?” he added tentatively as the boy didn´t react to his words.

The boy nodded, but didn´t move. He gave me another glance, confirming his impression of me being foreigner like himself, and turned back to Angelo.

“Your – place?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The boy gestured around him. “Not harm your place.”

His voice was soft and low, and despite the accent he pronounced the words quite clearly.

Angelo nodded. “I saw that. How long have you been here?”

Now the boy blushed, and shifted on his feet. “Three weeks.”

The two were staring at each other, and then the boy blinked twice, having realized something. He glanced at me, then Angelo again. His eyes widened a little. The atmosphere of the room shifted, and in my mind I quickly had to suppress an image of the three of us in the bed, naked, the boy´s face incredulous and slack-jawed with pleasure as he discovered what two men could do to him.

“Put on your clothes,” I said, pointing at his jeans, afraid that the kid would freak out.

“What´s your name?” Angelo asked politely, following my lead, as the kid picked up his jeans.

“Jan.”

Pulling on his t-shirt, which was soiled with concrete dust and some dark stains, he added, “I have job. No home.”

“Where are you from?”

“Romania.”

Jan finished tying up the laces of his sneakers, which were in pretty bad shape, and asked, “Want eat?”

He moved towards the door, as if being the host inviting us for a late lunch, but as Angelo stepped aside to let him pass Jan suddenly gave him a hard shove, with all his might, and tried to slip through the door. Angelo hardly budged, being far too heavy for the boy, but taken by surprise he almost let the boy slip by before reacting. He reached out and grabbed Jan by the t-shirt, pulling him back, and the side seam of the shirt ripped all the way up to his armpit. Instinctively Angelo let go, and the boy was out of the room and running. Angelo cursed, more for having ripped the shirt than for letting the boy go, and ran after him, pounding down the stairs two steps at time. The kid was faster, though, and by the time we had stomped through the living room and reached the front yard, he had already crossed the brigde and was running along the road. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder, mouth agape, the ruined white t-shirt flapping in the wind, and seeing us follow him he dived into the undergrowth, beginning the long breakneck descent towards the lake. When we reached the edge of the road he was plunging recklessly down the slope, holding on to trees and bushes, and risking to break his leg or worse any moment.

“Slow down!” Angelo yelled after him. “We´re not following you!”

Jan came to a halt, hanging on to a branch, and looked upwards to us.

“Come back,” Angelo continued. “I want to help.”

For a moment, the kid stared at us with a blank expression, and then he turned his back and carried on with his descent, this time without hurry. Angelo cursed again, under his breath.

“Is there a road down there? Can we get to him by car?” I asked.

Angelo thought for a moment, and shook his head. “Not in time. We´d have to drive back almost to Como to take that road.”

“Is he going to make it without breaking his neck?”

Angelo looked grim. “I hope so.”

We watched Jan until the last glimpse of his white shirt had vanished from view. When we were sure he was so far below that we couldn´t possibly any longer hear him shout for help, we slowly returned to the house. A dark cloud had risen above the lake, and on the windshield of the car there were tiny droplets.

“It´s starting to rain,” Angelo said, disheartened.

“He would probably have bolted anyway, but the way you stared at him sure didn´t help.”

“And you didn´t?” Angelo looked at me, incredulous. “You should have seen your face!”

“Ehm, maybe you´re right,” I backpedalled, and changed the subject. “All his stuff is here. Those photos… What are we going to do?”

“I´ll make some phone calls.”

We retreated into the house, and the rain started in earnest. To the north, where the lake vanished behind the mountains, a few jagged lightnings reached down from the clouds but they were too far for the thunder to be heard. Angelo spent the next forty-five minutes sprawled on the huge leather couch in the living room, talking on his cell phone, calling every local constructor whose number he could get. No one knew anything about a Romanian called Jan. Frustrated, he threw the phone down and stared outside through the rain-streaked windows.

“The kid´s an illegal alien, underage, and with no working permit. They´re not going to tell me anything.”

“Maybe we should pack his things up,” I suggested, “and take them somewhere he can get them.”

“Where?” Angelo asked, but stood up.

I was stumped. “The front door? When we leave? I mean, we have to do something.”

“The eave isn´t wide enough to protect the bag from rain.” He paused. “We´ll leave the bag inside, on a chair in front of the back door. So the kid will know it´s OK to break the window again to get to it. That is, if we find someone to fix it before he comes back.”

“I like that,” I agreed.

The upstairs window was still open, and the room was chilly. The few possessions of the boy seemed even more wretched now that he was gone. While I closed the window, Angelo picked up the passport and flipped through the pages.

“Jan Tariceanu,” he said unhappily. “Not seventeen yet. And there´s no permit to stay.”

We started gathering his things, and packed them in the canvas bag. Next to the bed, on the floor, we found an old, dog-eared issue of Playgirl.

“That´s from my room,” Angelo said, staring at the magazine. “Put it in the bag.”

“Planning ahead?” I asked, squeezing in the magazine. “Should we write your phone number on the cover?”

“Not a bad idea. Not at all,” Angelo answered, his mood lifting up a bit.

When everything was ready, we stood up and looked around the room. The bed had remained untouched, and the depression left by Jan´s body was still discernible. The image of the three of us in the bed crossed my mind again, this time with Jan wearing nothing but his torn t-shirt, and when I turned to Angelo I saw he´d been thinking somewhere along the same lines. He gave me a knowing smile, one that I recognized.

Darkness had fallen when we left the house for the ride back to Milan. It was still raining, and occasional distant flashes of lightning illuminated the lake and the mountains, and the road seemed more treacherous than ever. Before closing the doors behind us, Angelo had left a note on Jan´s bag:

“I want to help. This is a serious offer. Call 347-5431153. Angelo.”

Chapter 2 - The out call

Ever since I´d made my latest career move I no longer had to spend my evenings, especially on Sundays, fretting over the early wake-up call the next morning. I could sleep as late as I wanted, usually getting up at leisurely one o´clock in the afternoon, sometimes even later if I felt particularly slothful and had earned well the previous days. Having gone through my slow-motion morning routines of high-protein breakfast and reading the daily papers on line, I set off for the gym, looking forward to my daily dose of male flesh in various stages of undress and, fairly regularly, arousal. Even the first whiff of the locker room as I entered, with its mixture of soap, detergent, and the strong underlying male scent, was often sufficient to give me a quick stab of a hard-on that subsided only when my nose became accustomed to the smell. The situation wasn´t much easier in the weight room, where most Italian men seemed to shun baggy sportswear and most of them wore outfits that were designed to show off not only their muscles but their sturdy genitals as well, and in great detail.

On Monday evening, after the workout, I got a call from one of my favourite clients on my way home. Marco was a handsome Italian financial adviser in his early forties, always impeccable in his Armani suit which hinted at the muscular gym-trained body underneath, and he never took off his wedding ring before visiting me. It was always a turn-on to watch his strong hand slide up and down my shaft, caressing the bulging veins and the leaking head, while the pale golden ring glinted wickedly in the dim light of my apartment. He wanted to book me for Wednesday evening, and I certainly had no objections. In addition to great sex, each of his visits paid half of the monthly rent, and so I was in quite good mood when I got off the antiquated yellow tram and dropped by the corner store to buy some pasta farfalle and pesto genovese. With Marco visiting on Wednesday, I could easily afford a night off and either rent a DVD or check out the new bathhouse – although unfavourably reviewed - that had recently opened only few blocks from my place. A movie with Angelo was out of question, as Luca had just returned from Rome where he´d been visiting his parents for a couple of days.

There was no elevator in my building, and I climbed the four floors to the small loft apartment I´d been renting for almost a year, ever since I moved to Milan after my brief and unlucky stay in New York. The furnishings were still far from complete; there was nothing but a low couch of minimalist, white design which had been unreasonably expensive despite being second-hand, and an old 1950s metallic reading light I had found in a thrift shop. The white walls were bare as I never seemed to find anything that I wanted to see staring back at me day after day, and likewise there were no carpets on the gleaming hardwood floor. There was no table either; my laptop computer lay on the floor next to the couch that doubled as my bed, along with a small acquarium Angelo had given me for my birthday. The kitchen was hardly any more practical than the living room, as I had spent my money on two period barstools by a Scandinavian designer and continued to use the countertop as a table. However, the few pieces of furniture I had were all first-rate, and I happily ignored the remarks on my weird unfinished choices by guests who frequently risked stepping on my computer.

I prepared the farfalle al pesto, and turned on the TV to see if there was anything interesting on while I wolfed down the pasta. Despite the networks´ best efforts to keep their viewers watching, and most of all to keep them awake, the programming backfired miserably as my eyelids began feeling heavy after clicking through channels showing an Italian TV series about the tribulations of a particularly full-breasted Roman actress, a footballer´s girlfriend guessing the number of beans in a glass jar, and something that resembled celebrity karaoke. Admittedly, my lassitude wasn´t all due to the lousy programs, as Angelo had decided that an afternoon in Como hadn´t been enough and had stayed over in my place until the early hours. I wondered if he´d had trouble staying awake during all those mind-numbing meetings about procedural pitfalls or something similar in his family´s law firm where he was going to be a partner in not too distant future.

The ring of my phone woke me up, and apart from the flickering blue light of the TV set, now showing a rerun of Get Smart, the apartment was in the dark. My phone was unable to ID the caller, but as far as I could tell the prefix belonged to a residential line in Milan.

“Am I speaking with Erik?”

“That´s me,” I replied, rationing some professional good humor into my voice since I had discovered, to my surprise, that most clients preferred someone who sounded nice instead of a single-minded sex maniac.

“You gave me your number in Piazza Trento some time ago,” he said. The voice was matter-of-fact, and not very friendly. “I´d like to see you tonight, if that´s fine with you.”

“Sure.” I only gave my number to men I liked, much to the chagrin of Sebastian, my Brazilian friend who had put the idea of hustling into my head. It´s unprofessional, he kept telling me, as if choosing one´s clients were comparable to a priest sending away people who wanted to confess.

“You said you do both in and out calls,” the man continued. “Could you come over here, let´s say, in a half an hour? I live near the city center.”

“Sounds fine to me. What´s your address?”

“There´s something I´d like to explain to you first. We´re a male couple, both tops, and sometimes we do a threesome with a friend who likes it rough. What we´d like you to do is to come here and fuck him while we watch.”

So there would be two men I hadn´t seen before. I hesitated a moment.

“You´d find us wearing leather, and our friend already tied to a bed,” the man continued. “It´s an unusual scene, so we´d pay double. For each of us.”

That was six times my regular fee. “Would you want me to wear leather, too? Or restraints?”

“No, that won´t be necessary,” the man assured me.

“All right. I´ll be over in half an hour.”

The man gave me the address. “I´ll add the taxi fares to your fee. We´d like you to get here as soon as possible.”

Keeping an eye on the clock I quickly swallowed a few cookies and a yoghurt, thinking back at the conversation. I felt uneasy about a bondage scene with total strangers, but at the same time the idea was making my heart beat faster. If everything went right the job could be particularly exciting, and then there was the not inconsiderable amount of money they´d pay me for topping their helpless friend. I put on a t-shirt and a pair of cammies, stacked a side pocket with lube and condoms, slipped my cell phone in the other, and called a cab.

I hadn´t known there were mansions with private gardens so close to the very center of the city. When the cab driver turned away from one of the main thoroughfares I was quite surprised by the lavishness of the small street he had entered. The houses looked like something one might expect to see in Côte d´Azur facing the Mediterranean and not in the center of a major industrial city. The sidewalks were lined with huge trees that engulfed the streetlights until they became merely ornamental, glittering uncertainly through the foliage and doing little to illuminate the street itself. I paid the driver, and as the car vanished into the darkness I stood still awhile, studying the place. All the houses were surrounded by inhospitable spiky fences, or brick walls with their tops undoubtedly sprinkled with broken glass, and many of them were unlit since, I presumed, the inhabitants were presently either residing at the Paris Ritz or relaxing in the Caribbean. The air smelled fresh and at the same time of moist earth, like in a large city park, and the sound of the traffic was reduced into a distant hum. The house I was standing in front of had two floors, and it had been built noticeably later than the others, perhaps replacing an older mansion that had been hit during the Allied bombings during the World War II and deemed irreparable. Less ornamented than the others, it bore the marks of postwar architecture although by no means could one call the building modest. All the curtains were drawn, letting only faint suggestions of light through to indicate that someone was home, and to get my libido up and running I spent a moment imagining what was happening behind the darkened façade of the house. Then I pressed the gate buzzer.

The lock clicked open almost immediately. I stepped through, and the heavy gate swung back with suprising force and clanged shut, making me jump. No neighbors opened their windows to protest, though, with the trees stifling the noise as efficiently as they hid the other houses from view. Privacy was clearly highly appreciated in this enclave of privilege. The garden was rather narrow but skillfully designed, with its two large maples among the culprits smothering the street lights, and to compensate the effect there were several dim garden lanterns to draw attention to the some of the best features: a rosebush that seemed to be bursting with deep red blooms, another one with delicate white flowers, and an ancient marble fountain sprouting water from the jug of a rather mouldy female figure. A stairway, lined with potted palm trees, lead to a porch that ran the width of the house and served no other purpose but to accommodate another extensive array of plants, some of them creeping up the pillars to almost hide the terracotta roof of the porch, and others dangling down to the ground, their blooms swaying in an occasional breeze. I pressed another buzzer, and cranked the old-fashioned handle after hearing the click of the lock. The door was so heavy it had to be armored, and it took some effort to push it open.

I found myself in an empty vestibule, with the host apparently unwilling to risk a glimpse of his leather kit to any neighbors despite the protection provided by the trees. I closed the door behind me, and walked into the living room, an expression that seemed inadequate for such a large shadowy space. The most prominent feature was a large fireplace of grey marble, with a massive leather couch and two matching armchairs facing it. Generously proportioned oil paintings hang on the walls, mostly portraits, each with its own muted spotlight, the only source of illumination in the room. There were various antique tables, vases with enormous flower settings, and three potted trees between the front windows, but any further details were lost on me as my attention focused on the sole figure standing in front of me.

He was an inch or two shorter than me but obviously no stranger to steroids, and he wasn´t in full leather drag as I had expected. Instead, he was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt that showed off the beginnings of a gut, but given the thick muscular arms and legs the overall effect was proportionate and, undeniably, quite stimulating. Adding to the perverse appeal was a pair of black kid gloves, which had always been a turn-on for me, and a perfectly fitting executioner´s black leather hood that removed all expression from his eyes. The skin of his powerfully built arms was tanned, and of a shade that suggested him being from the south of Italy. I felt a sudden rush of blood into my groin, building up a pleasureable heaviness against my cammies.

“Hi Erik,” the man said. “You´re looking good.”

“So are you,” I said, sincerely.

“Let´s get this part over and done with.” He handed me a few banknotes which I pocketed without looking at them. “Let´s go upstairs.”

Most of the house was in the dark, and I had to pay attention not to stumble as I followed him through a library with floor-to-ceiling shelving and a massive mahogany writing desk, and all the appropriate paraphernalia including an large-sized antique globe held in an old-fashioned wooden framework. Then we climbed a wide staircase, and continued along a corridor with several doors, some of them open, others closed, and I caught a partial look of several lavishly furnished bedrooms and a home theater. Only one of the rooms was illuminated; the master bedroom, at the end of the corridor. It was decorated as the rest of the house, with dark gleaming wood and rich, embroidered fabrics that shimmered in the dim light of two bedside lamps. For a moment, I paused at the doorway, taking in the view.

Leaning against a rococo writing desk, arms crossed across his chest and in harsh contrast to the delicate piece of furniture, stood the other top. He was wearing a pair of black trousers and a t-shirt as well, and the same type of gloves and hood as his friend. He was taller, with a more average build, and perhaps because of him standing still and not talking, only staring at me with the deadened eyes through the black mask, I reckoned him as the more aggressive one, the one I´d have to watch out for. Next to him, on top of the desk, almost hidden by a black gym bag, I noticed an open beer can. Then my eyes were drawn to the man tied to the canopied bed.

He was lying on his stomach, spread-eagled, his ankles and wrists tightly secured to the bedposts with smooth hemp rope that drew his body taut and left him utterly powerless. He was completely naked except for another black leather hood, but this one was more elaborate than the others. It fastened tightly in place with a belt around his neck, and it included a snap-on blindfold and an efficient leather belt gag with either an extra large or inflatable rubber ball that completely filled up his mouth, judging by the pitiful, muffled groans he was fighting to let out. The muscles of his back flexed as the blinded man vainly struggled to free himself, and there were signs of rope burn already as he alternatively bunched his hands into fists and then tried to reach out with extended fingers, searching for leverage or help that couldn´t be found. He looked uncommonly agitated, giving the impression of being truly afraid, and I glanced questioningly at the two tops.

“He´s good, isn´t he?” the one who had paid me said.

The man in the bed was in good shape and clearly worked out regularly, but I pegged him between fifty and sixty years old, whereas the two men were probably the same age as Angelo, in their early thirties. The setup made me wonder if the two men were in fact my colleagues.

“Want something to drink?” the beer guzzler asked, and picked up a can from the bag. He threw it at me, without waiting for an answer, and I caught the can in midair. It was a popular energy drink I liked, and I popped the lid open and took a sip.

The words had an alarming effect on the captive. Realizing I had arrived, he began squirming frantically, choking on the gag as he repeatedly tried to shout. Again, I looked at the men, and they smiled at me smugly. I turned back to the slave, and watching him fight the bondage I sipped at the drink, letting my hard-on grow until it visibly tented my cammies and I had to unzip them. Even behind their masks I could tell the men were impressed by what they saw.

“We´d like you to fuck him bareback. For extra.”

I inhaled sharply. “Sorry, guys. I´d like to, but that´s just something I don´t do.”

“That´s OK,” the more talkative one responed. “But we want you to come inside him, even if you´re using a condom.”

“That I can do,” I said, setting down the drink and pulling off my t-shirt. “Do you want to see him take my cock down his throat first?”

“No, we just want you to fuck him,” the one next to the drawer said, and turned to his bag. “But first you have to open him up.”

He pulled out a spectacular chromed dildo with massively ribbed shaft, and a bottle of lube. I had stripped off all my clothes now, and the man gestured me to climb on the bed between the spread legs of the man. The victim went into another fit of convulsions when he felt my weight settle on the bed behind him, and, smiling, the hooded topman handed the dildo over to me. It felt cold and heavy, and at close range the shaft seemed disproportionately thick. Unless the captive was accustomed to something that size it would take a long time and a lot of effort to work it in, and it would be painful.

The prop master snapped open the transparent bottle of lube. I expected him to slowly rub the thick liquid into his slave´s ass, and then play a little, slip in a finger or two to tease the man´s prostate and make him squirm, perhaps while lubing up my hard-on with his other hand. Instead, he simply poured the liquid between the man´s cheeks, and stepped back to watch the effect it had on him. Now the man was fighting even harder than before against the restraints, but it only helped the lube to seep deeper in between his buttocks and as he felt the touch of the slick liquid on his anus his whole body went rigid, and he let out another choked whimper, shaking his head. With one hand, I spread his asscheeks, and nudged the tight little opening with the blunt head of the dildo. Watching the man struggle had made my cock so hard it was starting to ache from within, and I felt an early drop of precum force its way along my pisstube. A glistening bead of liquid appeared on the tip of my cock, grew in size, and in slow motion dropped between the man´s legs.

“Wait,” the more muscular man said. “I really want to see you fuck him. Do you mind?”

He stepped next to me, and lifted the dildo from my hands. I gave it to him, naturally, but now I was getting a little annoyed by the inaptitude of the two. There was also the consideration of putting on a good show to ensure they´d call me again, and so far the scene had been remarkably dull except for the captive´s performance. So I picked up a condom, and made sure they noticed how difficult the girth of my dick made the task of slipping it on. Once ready, I slapped the man´s glistening asscheeks with my hard-on a few times, to lube up the rubber, while forcing a finger into him to seek out his prostate. He was very tight, fighting my entry, but when I reached the goal the clenched ring of muscle suddenly loosened up, and I instantly took advantage of the fact and slipped in a second finger. Then I couldn´t wait any longer. I grabbed the root of my shaft with one hand and pointed it at the opening, and began the penetration, very slowly, enjoying the tightness and heat engulfing my cock. The man let out muffled, throaty whimpers, and his body opened up to me. I slipped in all the way. For a moment, I stayed still to savor him, and to allow him to adjust to my size, and when I felt him start to relax I began the fuck.

Almost immediately, the more muscular topman moved to my side.

“Can I touch you?” he asked.

“Sure,” I grunted. Finally things were going right.

He stepped behind me, and I felt his strong gloved hands grip my trapezius muscles and start to massage them. I reached out and took his left hand, bringing it down to cup my pectoral and tease the nipple. He did it for a while, unenthusiastically, then pulled his hand back and continued with my shoulders. I restrained myself from making a face, aware that his friend was watching, and decided to give up on the two and focus on the man I was fucking. He had stopped squirming, and I could feel him start to respond to my long, slow thrusts.

“Are you close to coming?” the man behind me asked.

I felt an urge to turn and slap his face, hard. “Already?”

“I want to see you come,” he murmured. “To fill that scumbag.”

If that´s what you want, I thought, completely put off by his manner. They were paying me so well it didn´t matter if this was just a one off job. I picked up speed, hoping he´d stop massaging my shoulders as his touch had become truly annoying. Then I realized he wasn´t enjoying it either, and that he really didn´t know how to touch a man, nor was he familiar with men´s bodies. I knew the kind, a bisexual married man with little or no experience on the subject. Most often the clumsiness was endearing - and they learned fast - but this one I judged a lost cause, among those who even kept compulsively rubbing me between the balls and the anus, unable to kick the habit, as if that was where the pleasure lay for a man as well. Or perhaps they were afraid to actually touch men´s genitals, I didn’t know; there was no way to ask one politely why they were such incompetent lovers. In any case, I was now glad that this one was limiting himself to my shoulders.

So the whole setup made no sense, unless the sub intentionally sought out straight thugs to rough him up, and a gay one to actually fuck him as the others weren´t up to it. Theoretically it made sense, but my instincts told me something was wrong with the scenario. The details didn´t add up. My annoyance began to turn into preoccupation and I decided I needed to finish the job as soon as possible and get the hell out of the house. I picked up speed and tried to muster a fantasy that would do the trick, but believing me close to coming the man moved his left hand to my gay buttock and squeezed. It felt as if he were checking out a loaf of bread at a bakery, instantly postponing my orgasm, and I removed the hand as gently as I could, under the circumstances. I closed my eyes, and conjured images of Jan in the place of the tied up client, which worked wonders. I groaned out loud to let the men know what was happening, and let go. My pleasure was as faked as the thug´s caresses, and when I was done and he wrapped his arms around me from behind I almost shuddered.

“Pull it out,” he coaxed me. “I want to see.”

I complied. The slave went silent, pressing his head against the mattress in sign of abject fear, his body shaking, as I slowly slipped out of him.

“Very good,” the thug said as he saw the full condom.

His embrace became tighter, and when I made a move to step out of the bed he suddenly squeezed me hard, forcing the air out of my lungs.

“Now,” he said as I tried to throw myself sideways to break his grip, and I now realized the other man had moved out of my sight towards the end of the fuck.

A foul-smelling rag was pushed to my face. I fought to free myself but the man holding me was too strong, and in seconds the room turned into a blur. I flailed inefficiently as my muscles lost all their strength and he set me down on the bed, and then darkness fell and I slept.

Chapter 3 - Gabriele Zaigler

I was lying on the floor on my stomach, and my hands were hurting, badly. So was my head. It took some effort to force my eyes open, and I decided it was better to lay still for a while longer, merely trying to adjust my eyes to the light.

The room appeared perfectly normal. There was no sign of a fight, and no sign of the thugs either. The black gym bag was gone. I let out a sigh of relief, and turned to my hands to see what was wrong with them. A grey electric cord – a phone cord, I realized – was wrapped around them, forming a garrote. There were visible bruises on my palms where the cord had been pulled tight. I stared at them for a moment, and then the implications of what I was seeing began to sunk into my sluggish brain. I looked around and noticed the old-fashioned telephone dropped on the floor, on the other side of the bed, and the receiver silent at the end its cord under the rococo desk. Then I saw that the loops of rope were still knotted around the bedposts, but from the floor it was impossible to tell if someone was still lying on top of the bed.

I rolled onto my back, unwilling to stand up, afraid that I would vomit if I did, and even more afraid of what I would find once I did get on my feet. Very slowly, trying to breathe regularly and not go into hyperventilation, I began to unwound the cord around my hands. They were shaking badly, and the cord became entangled. I stopped, took a deep breath, and carefully undid the knot. The bruises would remain visible for days, I realized. They were no accident. They had been added intentionally after whatever had taken place was over.

When my head had cleared a little more I gradually sat up, leaning on the hardwood floor with one hand, fighting nausea, and keeping my eyes averted from the bed. However, at the edge of my vision, I couldn´t help seeing the soles of the feet of the dead man. He was still tied to the bed, in the same position. I stood up, and recoiled from the sight.

His back, buttocks and thighs had been whipped or caned savagely while he was still alive, as almost every lash had bled copiously onto the bed. An extremely wealthy client – he wouldn´t have paid the special fee otherwise – had once wanted to whip me, and I knew how surprisingly painful the experience was even when utmost restraint was practiced. I stared at the sight, aghast, and couldn´t imagine the pain the man had endured, and yet it hadn´t been sufficient for the thugs. The huge steel dildo had been inserted deep into his anus, whether before or after the whipping I couldn´t tell, and remembering how tight the man had been I knew he could never have been able to accommodate the ribbed shaft without brutal violence. My legs were becoming wobbly again, no longer because of the drug, and I had to lean on a wall to stay upright.

The hood had been removed, and I realized that not even the most truculent slash movies had ever dared to portray the signs of strangulation truthfully. The man´s disfigured face was dark and swollen, bloodshot eyes gaping wide open, and a black tongue, grotesquely engorged, protruded from the grimacing mouth. It crossed my mind that until recently this was what people had gathered to watch as a pastime in the town marketplace. My stomach churned, both at the sight and the thought of people watching it happen, and I turned away. After blinking a few times to clear my vision I glanced around the room to see if my clothes were still there, but then something in the back of my mind made me look at the man again, and with a sinking feeling I realized I knew him. Not personally, although I had worked for his company before my modeling agency had so humiliatingly fired me. It was Gabriele Zaigler.

His self-made fashion empire provided a significant percentage of Italy´s economy and export figures and employed tens of thousands of people through its fashion, make-up and luxury goods subsidiaries, not to mention the indirect locomotive effect he had on the industry and the prestige of the entire nation. To know his name suddenly made it all so much worse, and for a moment I thought I was going to lose it and start yelling, perhaps running. Smashing things. I took a few deep breaths and managed to regain a degree of self-control, focusing tightly on one of the oil paintings on the wall, staring at a stupid-looking, gnarling lapdog at the skirt hems of a society lady. The grisly details of Gabriele´s death would be the news story of the year, and I would be the lurid and mean half of it. Another spell of nausea and dizziness came over me, and I had to sit down, turning away from Gabriele and burying my head in my hands.

The thugs had told him what was going to happen before my arrival. They´d tied him up, gagged him, and told him. All the time I´d been fucking him, he´d known. My instincts, and reason, had warned me something was wrong, but I´d chosen to ignore them for the money, and for the thrill of taking a helpless man tied to a bed.

My cammies were still lying on the floor – there was an almost hidden bloodstain on one of the legs, and certainly not by accident – and I reluctantly picked them up. My cell phone had vanished from the side pocket. The thugs had called me come from Gabriele Zaigler´s home number, and it would take the police merely minutes to check his record and find out who´d been called. Come to think of it, my phone was probably hidden somewhere in the house to be found by the investigators, perhaps fallen under a couch in my presumed hurry to escape the crime scene. That would save the police a lot of trouble, if the fingerprints on the hideous metal dildo weren´t clear enough. I remembered the energy drink can, of which there was no sign, and who knew how many other objects had been pressed into my hands and left around the house to be tested and matched against the prints in my apartment. Not even that would be necessary, I realized. About a month earlier, a police patrol had picked me up from Piazza Trento and taken me to a station to be photographed and fingerprinted. No charges had been pressed, as prostitution wasn´t illegal in Italy, but the police did their best to have a file on every hustler in town in case they murdered a client. And a telephone cord was apparently the classic device used by drug-crazed, gay-panicked straight hustlers who killed their clients when they suddenly realized they liked what they were doing. Then I remembered the hitmen´s obsession for the used condom, and couldn´t help glancing at the dead body. DNA evidence would be found in his anal cavity, sealing the case against me.

I could squirm as much I wanted, but there was no getting out of the hook. I felt a sudden shock of irrational anger towards Gabriele Zaigler. People didn´t usually get professional mafia hitmen after them unless they deserved it. However, one brief look at his terrified, suffering face cured me of this lack of sympathy. I stood still for a moment, unsure what to do, and then opened the nearest cupboard – my fingerprints were all over the place in any case – and picked up the first piece of white fabric I saw. It turned out to be a silk sheet, and I laid it down over his twisted body, the most I was able to do to show him some respect.

When I was pulling on my t-shirt, and wiping tears from my face, another thought occurred to me. No one would believe it was just a coincidence that I had worked for his label for the previous season´s advertising campaign. There would be tabloid stories of casting couch and long-standing mercenary relationship, jealousy and greed, despite the fact that I had never met him in person and the casting had been done by his art director, who had also supervised the photo shoot. I wondered if the thugs had known about my work, and chosen me because of it.

The police should already have arrived. I had to get out of the house. I headed for the corridor, found the lights and flicked them on, and yet hesitated to step forward when I saw the long line of doors, some of them gaping open like black mouths. Get a grip, I told myself. The thugs are gone. There´s no one else here. Yet I almost ran for the staircase, unable to muster any sangue froid, and as I turned the corner to the stairs I looked back, half expecting Gabriele´s agonized corpse to stand at the bedroom door, waving at me. Of course there was no one.

Cautiously, I crossed the library, and the living room, and found myself holding my breath as I slipped out of the front door. All the surrounding houses were dark, and the street was quiet. But then, it didn’t really matter; all the necessary evidence had already been planted. I walked fast towards the circonvallazione, a thoroughfare that circled the very center of the city, to find myself a cab. I was past caring if the driver would later recognize me, as the most important thing was to get home as soon as possible, gather my things, and go. It would take less than half an hour for the police to arrive at my place once they found the cell phone. I stopped at the corner of the circonvallazione when a new and alarming thought crossed my mind. Why hadn´t the police arrived already, catching me red-handed in the crime scene? Why hadn´t the thugs called 112, complaining about ruckus and screaming from Gabriele Zaigler´s house?

I was the only one who´d seen the two thugs. If I was to, say, commit suicide at home after having realized what I´d done, the case would be closed. No one would ever suspect anything. There had been no need to carry my drugged body away from Gabriele´s house, arousing suspicions and perhaps being seen, when they knew I´d run back to my own apartment and in their hands as soon as I woke up. It was a foregone conclusion that no hustler would call the police after waking up next to a dead client.

I hated the idea of involving him, but I had no other choice but to call Angelo. I reached Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and continued to Piazza Duomo where there were two newsagent´s open through the night. I bought a phone card and finally found an unvandalized booth near Piazza San Babila, with the receiver still attached to the main unit and no chewing gum shoved into the card slot. Then I realized I didn´t know Angelo´s number. It had been memorized in my cell phone. I searched the instructions plaque I´d always laughed at – who didn´t know how to use a telephone? – but there it was, the number for elenco abbonati. I called the operator, hoping no maniac or vengeful ex-boyfriend had forced Angelo to switch to a secret number, but I was lucky. As his phone rang, I glanced at the digital clock set on top of one of the buildings. It was half past three.

“Pronto?” a cranky voice answered. It wasn´t Angelo.

“Luca, is that you?” I asked, cursing under my breath. “This is Erik. Can I talk to Angelo?”

“Oh, you.” He sounded like I was calling for a donation for starving children. “What time is it?”

“It´s late. Is he there?”

“He´s asleep.”

There was a moment of silence, and then I heard Angelo´s voice in the background. Luca mumbled something, and Angelo picked up the phone.

"Erik? Is everything all right?”

“No. I need to talk to you. Without Luca listening in.” There was a pause, as we both knew the consequences of excluding a boyfriend from a late night call. “Please.”

“Just a moment. I´ll take the phone to the living room.”

I heard more mumbling, then someone raised his voice, and a moment later a door closed.

“OK, I´m getting worried here. What´s going on?”

I told Angelo everything that had happened. Every now and then he asked a relevant question, calm and business-like.

Having finished, I asked, “What should I do? Call the police?”

I had expected him to say yes, outright, and when there was a silence instead it hit me how hopeless my situation really was.

“I don´t work in criminal law,” he started. “But if those bastards haven´t made any mistakes, like leaving DNA in the house, or letting someone see them enter, it would be very difficult to defend you in court. Let me think.”

There was another pause. “I´ll pick you up there in San Babila in about twenty minutes.”

“Thanks, Angelo.” I was so relieved my knees went weak.

“Are there any taxis waiting for clients?”

“Two.”

“Stay close to them,” he warned before hanging up.

Chapter 4 - Aiding and abetting

Half an hour passed, and there was no sign of Angelo. One by one, the waiting cabs received a call and left, or perhaps they grew tired and went home to sleep. Hiding in the shadows of a portico, I warily kept scanning the empty piazza and almost bolted when a street-sweeper appeared behind a corner with an age-old broom that the city had not seen fit to update to something more modern and efficient. He barely glanced at my direction, probably judging me a drunk blond northern tourist, and disappeared into the direction of the Duomo. Every now and then I heard a car approach, but none of them was the large German sedan Angelo used for work -he could hardly present himself with a convertible army jeep at a law firm- and I promptly retreated back into the shadows, heart thumping. When forty minutes had passed a police car rumbled by, causing my legs to tremble so badly I almost stumbled as I stepped back into my hiding place, and as soon as it had vanished a BMW Roadster slowed down and stopped at the cab rank, with no one getting off. The roof of the convertible was up, hiding the driver, and as I watched the reflection of the car on a shop window I could feel the trembling of my legs get worse and worse. Then the headlights flared quickly, and I hesitantly emerged in sight, trying to see inside the car. The dark shape of the driver leaned over the passenger seat, and the door opened. It was Angelo. I jumped in.

“Did - did you see the police car?” I stuttered.

“Yes,” he answered coolly, but his expression was worried as he observed me. “Are you OK?”

I nodded. “Whose car is this?”

He switched gears. “Luca´s. I´ll explain you later.”

After an acceleration of only a hundred meters he slammed down the brakes and parked between two vans in one heart-stopping swerve, as only Italians can. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into a tight bear hug, his chin resting on top of my head. For a while, neither one moved. It wasn´t the most comfortable position imaginable, with the rather ostentatious chrome and leather gear stick digging into my hip, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“You almost got yourself killed tonight,” he said accusingly, never having been too happy about my career choice.

He let go of me, after a final crushing squeeze, and I slid back to my seat as he steered the car back into the late night traffic.

“Gabriele Zaigler did.”

Angelo winced. “I met him a couple of times. He seemed like a nice guy, and I´m really sorry for him.” He glanced at me. “But, you know, I´m not that surprised.”

“What do you mean?”

“It´s an open secret that when he started his business he was backed by the mafia,” Angelo said. “Then during the recession everyone else had to cut back their production except him, and afterwards there was a Guardia di Finanza probe into money laundering.” His tone turned caustic. “Nothing came out of it, naturally.”

“I see.” And I did. Mafia collusion was a rather widely used term in Italian. “Do you think it was a coincidence that the police fingerprinted me just a month ago? And that I have worked for Gabriele?”

Angelo thought about it for a moment. “I think it´s just a coincidence. I mean, you´re very special and everything- “ he flashed me one of his wicked smiles “- and you made quite a splash when you first came to Milan, but there was hardly enough time for you to become famous before that-“

“I get the picture,” I interrupted.

“Of course, there may be a closeted mafioso who reads L´Uomo Vogue.”

He almost managed to make me smile this time, but not quite, and seeing that he´d failed Angelo reached out with one hand and grabbed me by the neck, the way I liked, and after pulling me a little closer kneaded lightly the tender spot under my ear with his thumb. A warm reassuring feeling spread into my chest. There was someone in this world who liked me.

We were in the outer circonvallazione, and I noticed the Autostrada sign. “So, where are we going?”

“You´re going to have a long holiday in Tuscany.”

“Tuscany. Sounds good.”

The drive would take us three or four hours. There would be plenty of time to talk. I sat back in my seat, with my muscles slowly relaxing as I soaked up the feeling of temporary safety Angelo´s presence gave me. I would ask questions later. About fifteen minutes later we were out of the city, and passed into the autostrada proper through a toll booth. I had spent the time doing my best to calm down, but I still started to shake every few minutes when the memory of Gabriele´s face crashed back into my mind.

I finally felt calm enough to try some coherent conversation. “So tell me about this holiday in Tuscany.”

“It´s an old farm house not far from Pisa, in the hill country,” Angelo said. “The place belongs to a friend of mine, Carlo, but he´s in Boston until September and I happen to know where the spare key is hidden.”

“Carlo doesn´t know that I´ll be staying in his place?”

“It´s safer that way. And don´t worry, we´re good friends. If anything should happen, like someone else should show up, just mention my name and it´ll be OK.”

“I don´t like that ´if someone should show up´ part.”

“It won´t happen, trust me. I wouldn´t take you to a place where strangers suddenly pop up. I only told you as a precaution.” He looked at me, anxiously. “Now, calm down. Stop shaking. I promise, no one will come.”

I drew a few deep breaths. “I´m fine.”

He reached out and rubbed my neck again with his thumb, and I started feeling better.

“What am I going to do about money?” I asked after a while. “My bank card is in my apartment-“

“Don´t worry about it,” Angelo interrupted, emphatically. “I´ll take care of that part, and besides, you won´t be needing any. I´ll come down once a week with a load of groceries.” He shifted in his seat, uncomfortably. “Another reason why you don´t need any money is because you can´t leave the house. By tomorrow evening everyone in the whole country will recognize you.”

“My fifteen minutes.”

“I´m afraid it´ll last longer than that.”

The silhouette of the towering mountains ahead had turned visible against sky that was paling into a cool, crisp summer morning. Soon the road began the ascent, and the lush greenery, glistening with dew, almost spilled onto the road from the steep mountain walls. The view had a sharp-edged reality, different from the plain of the river Po where traces of thin haze remained even in the clearest days, and once again I watched enthralled as the road curved along the slopes in broad sweeps, slipped into tunnels and reappeared on top of breath-taking viaducts. Higher and higher we rose, our ears popping frequently in the thinning air, even inside the long tunnels, which seemed odd and a little unsettling as there was no other sense of gradient.

As we emerged from one of the tunnels, ever closer to the topmost pass we´d have to traverse, the sun had risen high enough to slip into view from between mountain peaks. Its rays were slanting across the valley, and at the bottom, far below us, a river that was meandering lazily within its course of white rocks and sand glittered like black mercury. Here and there a lonely farmhouse clung to the slopes, barely visible, deeply embedded into the lush forest. Then the road curved around a mountain, and an odd construction with a vague resemblance to the top of the Seattle space needle came into view.

“There it is,” Angelo said, contented. “An Autogrill.”

“We´re stopping? I´m - hungry,” I realized.

“You can´t come in,” Angelo announced. “With your looks, people remember you. I´ll bring you something.”

“Well…” I hesitated. “I should use the bathroom.”

“There´s a rest area ahead, we can stop there.”

“It´s not one of those, is it?” Certain rest areas, all over the country, were famous for gay cruising.

“How would I know?” Angelo said archly, implying the presence of someone better acquinted with subject.

He parked the car as far from the building as possible without being conspicuous about it, and while he was inside the shop I tried to look as invisible as possible when passers-by stared at the fancy roadster. When Angelo returned he handed me a chicken sandwich and a soft drink.

“And now let´s take you to the toilets.”

He made it sound like a cruising expedition to the Grand Central Station, and I gave him a weak smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Some ten minutes later he slowed down the car. “There it is.”

The rest area had been built in a rare level spot which hadn´t required extensive landscaping. There was a long, narrow parking lot separated from the road by a line of trees, a small park with a few tables and benches, and the white utilities building. Angelo came to a halt with a flourish expected from a BMW Roadster, and I got off. The only other vehicle present was a semi with foreign logos plastered on the sides, and as I walked by I saw Prague written under the ads. So it came from the Czech Republic, with the driver hopefully asleep in the cabin and oblivious to other visitors to the rest area.

The toilet was quite filthy, as I had expected, and I decided not to use the stalls but one of the two urinals crammed into a narrow corridor-like space. I had just started when a shadow fell into the room. Someone entering the toilet had blocked the doorway and, nervous as I was, my flow instantly dried up. I was left standing with my dick in my hand, staring at a spot on the wall in front of my eyes and trying to relax as the figure stepped next to me and unzipped his pants. I waited a few moments, but there was no sound, and my heart started beating faster. As the silence stretched uncomfortably I tried to form a picture of the man at the edge of my vision, all the while struggling to let go. He was probably a little shorter than me, but clearly heavier, with a strongly built body that was going to seed. He was wearing a white t-shirt, tight over his belly, the sleeves barely able to accommodate the burly arms, and his jeans were spectacularly ill-fitting, or so I thought, unwilling to glance at him even fleetingly. His face was a dark blur, with a thick stubble and black hair cut very short, almost military-style. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I looked down, reflexively. The man was holding a wide-backed, veined dick in his fist, squeezing it slowly to make the long, drooping foreskin slide upwards to expose the dark red glans. My face went hot, and I focused my eyes back on the spot on the wall.

Nothing happened for a moment. There was no way I could urinate with a Czech truck driver masturbating next to me. I started tucking myself back into my underwear, a task made somewhat difficult due to the infuriating hold the steroids were having over me, and the man nudged me with his massive shoulder.

“I see you like,” he said in heavily accented Italian, and gave another squeeze to his bloated cock. “Touch it.”

“No,” I said quietly but resolutely.

However, having to palm down the bulge in my underwear, to be able to zip up my pants, rather undermined my credibility.

He took half a step back, to better show himself, and to make it more difficult to pass by him in the cramped space. His eyes were blue, and narrowed. This was no friendly come-on, but something the man seemed to expect as his due.

“You like.”

He was fully erect now, the sloppy excess of foreskin slipping back and forth over the swollen head with each stroke of his hand. A vein throbbing at the back of his hard-on snaked all the way down to the foreskin, puffing it up, and his breathing was getting distinctly deep and fast. I´d have to push him aside to be able to leave the urinal, and there was no telling how he´d react. I had pegged him straight, with a wife waiting back home, and being shoved by someone he considered an Italian tearoom cocksucker would not be taken lightly.

I almost said, “Jealous boyfriend in the car. Big one,” but held back the last moment.

There was still a chance he hadn´t noticed Angelo, and wouldn´t even remember me if I didn´t make a scene. I laid my hand on his shoulder, and feigning a friendly smile, shook my head ruefully.

“Big cock. But can´t now,” I said, to satisfy his ego while gently exerting pressure to move him aside.

He didn´t budge, and now both of us were clearly starting to lose patience. I considered slugging the man, as I was no weakling myself, but I knew I couldn´t match him in meanness and I´d be in the losing end if a fight broke out. Besides, to put it mildly, I had already had more than my share of violence for one day. Slowly but firmly I pushed my way past him, ignoring the thick pressure of his erection against my leg, but when he grabbed my hand and placed it on his dick I snarled at him and yanked my hand back. Suddenly furious, I refused to run to Angelo for cover and entered a cubicle, slamming the door hard behind me, uncaring if a hand or a leg was crushed in the process. Fortunately, the man had held back, impressed by my snarl, and no fisticuffs ensued. I heard him scuffle outside the stall while I forced myself to calm down, but I managed to finish my business only after he had left the building.

There was no sign of him when I came out of the toilet, walked to the car and slumped down on my seat.

“That was quick,” Angelo quipped, throwing a leer at the direction of the truck, but I could tell he was worried and seeing my expression his frown deepened. “Did you get into trouble with the trucker? I saw him follow you.”

“Let´s just go,” I answered. “I´ll tell you on the way.”

He shook his head, unbelievingly. “Can´t leave you alone for a second.” He started the car. “He´s going to remember you, no doubt about it.”

“The truck is from Czech Republic, and he barely speaks Italian. I don´t think he watches the news here. And he didn´t see you.”

“But he saw the car.”

“Luca won´t like that one bit.”

“He sure won´t,” Angelo answered, maneuvering the car back to the autostrada and towards Genoa.

Chapter 5 - Mediterranean

It didn´t take long for Angelo to pry out all the details of the incident, as much to distract me as to satisfy his ever morbid curiosity, and half grudgingly I described him everything he wanted to know. I was still depicting the special throbbing character of the trucker´s foreskin when the road reached it highest point and we began the descent towards Genoa and the Mediterranean coast. Just having the mountain ridge between me and Milan was enough to make me feel a little better.

Angelo narrowed his eyes as the car entered another tunnel, leaving the bright sunlight behind.

“I´ll have to call the police as soon as I get back home,” he said.

I turned to him, alarmed.

He glanced at me. “They´ll check my phone record, too. Sooner or later.”

“That phone booth…” my voice trailed off. “They´ll figure it out.”

“In a way it´s a good thing,” Angelo claimed bravely. “Someone has to tell the police about those two mafia thugs.”

“I shouldn´t have called you.”

“Who else could you have called?” He glanced at me. “Calm down, you look like you´re going to start shaking again. I´ll just tell them you called and asked for help, and I said no.”

“Will they believe that?”

“What else can they do? They can´t prove anything. If they check the autostrada surveillance recordings they won´t see my car, and my cell phone is back home together with Luca who´ll give me an alibi.”

“He´s happy about that, I´m sure.”

Angelo choose not to comment. “I´ll tell the police that you decided to blackmail a married client into taking you to France.”

“I should have thought of that.”

Angelo chuckled at the very idea. “You? A cold-blooded blackmailer? Please.”

I threw him a dirty glance, with no discernible effect. We fell into listening to the radio but after a while, when the transmission was blocked by a tunnel and there was no longer music to distract me, I was back in Gabriele´s house with my mind replaying our encounter and that brief moment during sex when there had been a flicker of connection between us. It made me shudder to think how dismissive I´d been about it, those last moments of his life, and how he must have felt it.

About half an hour later we reached the outskirts of Genoa. Unwelcomingly, the autostrada entry to the city passed through an unsettling cemetary valley crowded with elaborate mausoleums and statues set in tiers on both sides of the road. My voice faltered in midsentence, and I felt Angelo´s reassuring hand on my thigh. I tried not to think either Gabriele or what would happen if an earthquake or a landslide hit us while we were driving through the macabre passage. Instead, I focused on the Mediterranean Sea, glittering beyond the high buildings of the city center, shockingly blue in the morning sun and dotted with white sails. I didn´t have a chance to see much else of Genoa as Angelo picked a ring road, avoiding the city proper, and soon we were back in the mountains with only an occasional sparkle of the sea visible to the right. Then, about ten minutes later, he swerved to an exit ramp without an explanation.

“We´re still in Liguria,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Pieve Ligure.”

I couldn´t believe it. “The gay beach?”

“Right. It´ll be empty this hour,” Angelo reassured me. “You deserve a quick splash in the sea before holing up in the house for the summer.”

“Is it really safe? I mean, you´re in enough trouble as it is. And it´s an illegal beach, too.”

“Yes, the cliff overhead is dangerous,” he shrugged. “But you need something… normal, before I leave you alone.”

The breakneck beach could only be considered normal by Italians, I thought, but Angelo was right. A few minutes in the waves with a friend would be an important step away from the previous night.

The narrow state road hugging the coast was another spectacle with its view over the sea, sharp turns and unexpected plunges and ascents, and lines of lemon and orange trees squeezed dangerously close to the – presumably – two lanes. We passed through an arch of an ancient fortress, then turned to a side road, and Angelo parked the car at an alarmingly steep uphill stretch as if it was the most natural thing to do.

“We don´t have swimsuits,” I noted.

“So?”

There was no fighting his kind of logic, and we climbed over a railing separating the road from the abyss. There was a sign that said “FORBIDDEN AREA - OFFENDERS WILL BE PROSECUTED ACCORDING TO ALL ARTICLES OF LAW”, which we happily ignored and began the descent. The slope was almost vertical, except for the places where it was vertical, and frayed nylon ropes tied to a couple of gnarled trees which inexplicably managed to hold on to the mountain wall were the only thing keeping us from plunging into the chasm. Halfway through, the path passed along the top of an odd concrete wall that had no apparent purpose, requiring tightrope-walking skills from the prospective sunbathers lest they end smashed on the rocks far below. The rocks themselves, sized between large suitcases and Japanese cars, had fallen from the overhanging cliff with no regard for the unlucky muscleboys sunbathing at their landing sites. It wasn´t hard to see why the beach had been outlawed, even discounting the crusades of local christian politicians against out-of-town gay men polluting their sea. The narrow shingle beach, wedged between boulders as tall as houses, was isolated by two sharp promontories of bare rock which made every other access impossible, and when we reached the bottom the distinct sound of the beach made itself heard with every long, lazy wave.

A straight nudist couple was sprawled on the beach – as far from the cliff as possible – enjoying a respite from gay activities, or perhaps expecting some to help pass the boring hours of sunbathing. Angelo set a bottle of orange juice he had brought along in a pool of cool water in the shadow of a boulder, and pulled off his t-shirt, followed by his shoes and khakis. Then it was the turn for his white underwear, and I watched the strong muscles of his back and legs flex rhythmically as he waded into the waves. After a quick glance at the direction of the couple I removed my clothes as well, and followed Angelo. It was still early morning, and the water was unpleasantly cool at first, but I got used to it after a few strokes. For a while we bobbed up and down in the water like two corks, grinning stupidly. Then I happened to glance back at the beach and noticed that the straight couple was gone. Angelo followed my gaze, but instead of searching for them he turned the other way and scanned the sea.

“Cazzo! A police boat,” he said, kicking water. “Follow me.”

His head slipped under the surface, and I saw him turn underwater and start diving towards the boulders, the surge from his powerful kick making me sway. I took a deep breath, jack-knifed my body, and dived as cleanly as I could. The bottom was mostly covered by green algae, with some colorful sea creatures either jetting by, or clinging to the rocks below, and the dancing reflection of the sun´s glitter would have been hypnotizing if it hadn´t been for the rising dread that made my swimming inefficient, forcing me to surface for breath much sooner than I had planned. Feeling horribly exposed, I managed to gasp twice as quickly as I could before I was lifted to the crest of the next tall wave, my head clearly visible to all directions, and with my lungs still burning I plunged back into the quiet of the sea. Ahead of me, I saw Angelo vanish into a dark shadow between two huge boulders, but I needed to breathe so badly that I had to rise to the surface again for more air. Another rising wave was lifting me alarmingly high and I almost inhaled a mouthful of water in my panicky hurry to dive. Finally the shadow of a boulder darkened the water around me and I slipped between the rocks, rising to the surface with my face scrunched with the pain of oxygen deprivation. Angelo caught a hold of me and kept my head above the water while I gasped for air, and tried to warn him that the police had seen me.

“I know they did,” he said, his big arms tightening around me.

I stared at him, incredulous. “Then why did we-“

“For appearance´s sake,” Angelo said, explaining things to a dumb foreigner. “If they´re straight they´ll pretend they saw no one. I mean, why bother?”

“And if they´re not straight?”

“They´ll come after us only if they´re nosy closet cases.”

“Isn´t that what most Italians are?” I asked, receiving a poke in the ribs as an answer.

We waited, with the waves gently swaying us and Angelo´s arms conspicuously holding me despite the snooping police boat. I was getting distracted by the warmth of his body, and the thick hardening cylinder of flesh pressing against my leg.

A couple of minutes passed, but there was no sign of the law enforcement.

“I told you they were straight,” Angelo mumbled into my ear, his large hands cupping my butt and hitching me higher.

His hard-on pushed in between my thighs, like a long thick beer can filled with warm water, and I wound my arms around his neck for balance. Then his big, muscular tongue slipped into my mouth, and after a while we forgot all about the police.

Chapter 6 - Breaking news

The hill country of Tuscany was shimmering in the late morning heat as Angelo slowed down the car, and turned to a dirt road ravaged by potholes. Carefully he manoeuvred the car around the worst depressions, scraping the bottom of the car only a few times as the road climbed the side of a hill adorned with cypresses and gnarled bushes, with some purple and blue flowers struggling to be seen among the tall grass of the underbrush. After this brief patch of wilderness we were soon lifted high enough for a grander view of the legendary Tuscan landscape, and without a doubt there were worse places on Earth to go into hiding. A series of rolling hills extended to all directions, the furthest ones ever deepening shades of blue until they disappeared into the haze, and the sky above held a procession of tall, shimmering white cumulus clouds that cast their play of shadows over the countryside. Fields of various shades of green and ochre blanketed the land, divided by lines of ubiquitous cypresses and dark green bushes, and each farm was surrounded by its own copse of trees to offer shade from the hot glare of the sun. Ahead of us, on top of the hill, stood the crumbling old farmhouse where I was to spend my summer in exile.

The dark brown, two-storey house was shaped like an L, with the longer wing apparently having been a shelter or a barn as there were still visible ruts leading to the large door. All windows of the shorter wing were closed with green shutters that badly needed painting, and the roof – mercifully intact – was laid with classic Italian terracotta tiles. The car came to a halt under a widely branched evergreen tree with an explosion of shiny, waxy leaves, and as soon as I stepped out of the car I was enclosed in their faint but pleasant smell, mixed with the weaker and more unreliable wisps of scent from wild rose bushes that had conquered the southern wall of the house. Crickets were singing loudly everywhere, and from a distance I could hear the low bark of a shepherd dog. A pale yellow butterfly fluttered by, seemingly attracted by the roses, but it was carried away by a gentle gust of the warm breeze. I stood still in the shadow of the old tree, overcome by the immediate sense of restful well-being and that mysterious spell of Tuscany which, somehow, always went beyond the dazzling beauty of the place.

A few mouldy terracotta vases, some of them broken, were heaped next to the barn door, and after rummaging among them for a few seconds Angelo stood up with a triumphant smile.

“We don´t have to break in,” he said, dangling a set of keys that looked as old as the building itself.

“That´s not a very original hiding place,” I replied, disapprovingly.

Angelo shrugged, and slipped the key into the lock. “It´s the countryside, and there´s nothing worth stealing in the house anyway.”

“That´s what I was afraid of.”

He looked up. “Don´t you like this place?”

“I do,” I said honestly. “It looks great.”

The floor plan was rather puzzling, and a little unnerving as well, I discovered. We entered a small, dark room with a fireplace, and in a corner there was a doorway – without a door – that lead into a black and seemingly fathomless space. It was the barn, and as I peeked in I saw large, peculiar shapes of rusty farm tools where a little light was cast from the doorway, leaving the rest of the space in complete darkness. I looked for a light switch, but there was none, and I wasn´t sure I liked the idea of not having a locked door between my bedroom and this creepy part of the house once the night fell and I was here on my own. Even the room with the fireplace had only a tiny deep-set window, half covered with old cobwebs, and my unease increased. The shadowy kitchen was the only other room on the ground floor but it was reasonably modern, dating back to 1950s, and the worn-out fixtures held a certain charm. The overgrown roses covered the window, letting in greenish, dappled light, and the room was pleasantly cool after the heat outside. I tried the tap, and after fifteen seconds the initially brackish water turned clear. In the meanwhile Angelo had turned on the ancient fridge, and it came alive with sputtering noises that settled into a high-pitched wheeze.

“Let´s have a look at the upstairs before bringing in the groceries,” he said.

The stairs were narrow and worn, but the white-washed bathroom, above the kitchen, was a pleasant surprise. It had been recently renovated, and boasted an actual glass-walled shower booth along with all other modern necessities, most of which were fitted into bamboo furnishings. The view from the window was magnificent, albeit obstructed with the usual spiderwebs. It was warmer up here, with the the sun-beaten roof and rafters visible above us, but the room was tall and the air had the pleasurable smell of dry wood. The corridor, with ancient terracotta flooring, lead to two large bedrooms, one of which was in shambles, but the other one was in fairly good shape with the white-washed walls and raftered ceiling. The furniture consisted of a king-size bed, a simple nightstand, and a badly scratched but pictoresque cupboard that seemed to predate the house itself. The floor was made of uneven slabs of grey stone, and the only illumination came from a bare light bulb hanging from a frayed wire that looked as if it would burst in flames as soon as someone threw the switch. I loved the place.

“I thought Carlo had done something to this house,” Angelo said, aghast. “It was like this when I first saw it two years ago.”

“I like it.”

“There was a TV set in the kitchen, did you notice?”

It had been a portable black and white 14-inch model, a throwback to the early days of television, and I had no doubt it was going to bring me bad news very soon. I stepped to the window, almost tripping as my foot hit one of the uneven stone slabs, and wrangled the window open. The green shutters made a hideous creaking noise as I forced them open, revealing the celebrated view. The warm breeze, and the singing of crickets invaded the room. Alarmed by the sudden sunlight, a spider with long spindly legs scampered into safety under the bed.

“I bought some insect repellant,” Angelo announced, pleased with himself. “Let´s go and get the groceries.”

We carried the bags into the kitchen, and set them on a sturdy peasant table that an antique dealer would die for. I fiddled with the TV set, to see if it was working, and after hesitating for a minute the screen lit up and the picture settled into a more or less normal shape. The news was on, and the camera was zooming on a bloodstained pavement in the outskirts of some southern town. The frenzy about Gabriele´s death hadn´t started yet.

“I really have to get going,” Angelo said apologetically, wrapping his big arms around me from behind and almost crushing my ribcage. “It´s later than I thought, and Luca will be frantic. I´ll be back as soon as I can, with more food and some extras.”

Then he was gone, and after the sound of the BMW had vanished I stood in the middle of the kitchen, stumped. Two bees busied themselves on the roses outside the window while the TV switched subject and droned on about the latest Vatican denouncements. Afraid that panic would return now that I was alone, I busied myself with the groceries, and found out that I would suffer neither hunger nor second-rate food, everything being up to the strictest of Italian culinary standards. At the bottom of the last bag I found a thick paperback novel Angelo had thrown in for entertainment, I promessi sposi by Alessandro Manzoni. Clearly he was taking advantage of my situation under duress to prove that there was more to Italian culture than the Berlusconi TV channels.

The sight of the book, and the ensuing yawn, made me remember I hadn´t slept all night. I dragged myself upstairs, closed the shutters of the bedroom, and after pulling off my clothes and scaring away any lurking bugs from the bed I threw myself on the thick, crumpled white duvets that smelled of dry cotton and summer. The house might look rough and tumble, but whoever had designed it had done a great job. Either that, or someone had been there quite recently. Too tired to care, I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and trying to keep my mind vacant.

I woke up from a nightmare so suddenly that for a brief moment I was unable to move. Then my body was released from the paralysis of sleep and I could roll on my back, and draw a shaky breath as my eyes raked the room. I was alone; it had only been the dream. I hadn´t had it for a little more than a year now, ever since I moved to New York from Houston, and had completely forgotten about it. Well, it hadn´t forgotten about me, apparently.

The soft glow of a hill country dusk was slipping into the room through the shutters. I lay still, postponing the moment I´d have to get out of the bed, walk downstairs, and turn on the TV. The ghastly news extras would have started by now, and if they didn´t have my name yet they´d have it before the night was over. I stood up, stepped to the window, and opened the shutters to allow the cooling evening breeze to enter the room. Sun had already set, and the sky was a deepening shade of blue with distant towering clouds glowing orange and pink, casting a warm glow over the landscape. I took a deep breath, and let the soothing effect of the hill country wash over me. As I watched, clouds thickened from the north, and streetlights flickered on in a small town tucked in a valley perhaps a mile away. Occasionally, the headlights of a car would pass through the town, and a few seconds later the distant hum of the motor reached the house. Life went on, so close to the house.

Descending the stairs I got a little jolt as I saw the gaping black doorway of the shed again, and wished I had spent more time exploring it during the day. It took some conscious effort to turn my back to the darkness as I entered the kitchen, and to not look over my shoulder as I prepared a whopping sandwich, opened a bottle of ice-cold Pepsi, and sat down at the old sturdy table. The kitchen light was hung with a flimsy old lampshade, faded colorless, but it seemed right for the room which still retained its original character of a poor country kitchen, furnished with old-fashioned fixtures and home-made shelves that were sparingly adorned by few small, painted flowers, so faded that they almost blended into the woodwork. Pieces of straw stuck out visibly from under the white plaster that covered the lower two thirds of the walls. My eyes lingered over the pathetic little flowers, and I wondered about the person who had painted them, and about her day-to-day life, so different from the well-heeled Milanese who came here now for their rustic holidays.

All the while, the blank dark grey screen of the TV set mocked me, daring me to turn it on. In the end I stood up, flicked the switch, and returned to my seat to watch the screen gradually light up. Two curved lines painstakingly expanded into a black and white image of Gabriele´s house, panned from the street that was partially illuminated by the camera crew and crowded with curious onlookers. Two police cars were parked in front of the closed gate, their lights flickering. A few lit candles clung to the wall circling the house, accompanied by some flowers, and the camera operator tried to make the most of them. My appetite was gone; I set the sandwich down on the chipped, white plate. The view shifted back to the studio, to the channel´s main news anchor, whose expression was appropriately sober except for an occasional, slightly bewildered look in his eyes that made me wonder if he´d known Gabriele personally.

“...of interest,” he was saying when the sound came on, “The police haven´t released any detailed information yet, but only few minutes ago Channel 5 was able to confirm the rumors that the homicide was committed with unimaginable brutality, and according to our sources there is reason to believe the act was carefully planned, suggesting a pre-existing relationship between the victim and the perpetrator.”

The director cut into an archive photo of Gabriele standing on a catwalk and surrounded by a group of his models, all male. I´d never done a runway show and obviously wasn´t in the photo, but it was clear that the Channel 5´s mole in the police already knew where the investigation was heading. More photos of Gabriele followed, shot in various other contexts. I glanced down at my hands, the bruises still fresh across my palms.

When I looked up, the prime minister was on. He expressed his condolences to Gabriele´s family and co-workers, talked for a while about Gabriele´s contribution to the Italian economy and national prestige, and added, “I have just talked with the interior minister, and I assured him the police will receive every assistance necessary to capture this heinous criminal as soon as possible. I´ve been told that the identity of the perpetrator shoud be confirmed and released to the media any time now, and even as we speak the police is already looking for him.”

I took another sip of my drink, to send down a bitter taste seeping up to my mouth. For a moment I thought I was going to be sick, but then got hold of myself. More people followed the prime minister on the screen, mostly celebrities who´d been Gabriele´s friends, and a couple of politicians who didn´t hesitate to grasp a moment of air time. I tried other channels, and most of them were having a live newscast on, with the rest running banners announcing the next update. I sat there, feeling cold, and grateful about Italy´s penal code neither carrying death penalty nor foreseeing extradiction back to Texas. Unable to tear myself away, I watched a recapitulation of Gabriele´s life, followed by a summary of everything the channel had found out so far.

“A friend, alarmed by Gabriele Zaigler not appearing for a meeting and not answering his telephone, found him brutally murdered in his home in the center of Milan this morning about ten o´clock. The friend, whose identity hasn´t been revealed, is presently under sedation in the San Carlo hospital, after having collaborated with the police earlier today. Several types of evidence pointing at the identity of the perpetrator have been found at the crime scene, and we´re expecting the police to release the information any moment now, including photographic material. It is believed that a some kind of pre-existing relationship between the victim and the murderer existed, both professional and personal, and we´ll fill you in all the details as soon as they become available.”

The director cut back to the scene outside Gabriele´s house, but as nothing was happening there an interview came on, of a former showgirl and present talk show host who was famous for the longest legs in Italy.

“We´ve always been great friends with Gabriele, and I think there´s definitely something not right about the circumstances of his death,” she declared belligerently. “I know him well, and if what I´ve been hearing is confirmed it simply cannot be the truth. Something´s wrong here.”

I leaned my head on my hands, and stared blindly at the worn terracotta tiles of the kitchen floor. So there was someone on my side; the longest legs in Italy, with all the credibility they brought into play. From what I was hearing, Angelo´s call to the police hadn´t had much of an effect, unsurprisingly. In my mind´s eye I saw Ocham, an old man in incongruous flowing robes, pointing his razor at me with a righteous frown.

Outside night had fallen, and the feeble light of the kitchen had begun attracting moths. With soft bumps they kept hitting the small kitchen window, and a little further, away from the faint circle of light, bats would be hunting in the dark and feasting on the small creatures taken in by my lamp. Some of them, both prays and predators, undoubtedly spent their days asleep in the dark shed.

The recorded interview was interrupted without a warning, in midsentence, with a little squeak. The anchorman was back, looking excited, and went into a quick self-promotional spiel.

After having reminded the viewers what a wonderful channel they were watching, he continued, “Our corrispondents have an important update, just in...”

My face filled the weakly lit grey screen. The anchorman´s speech hadn´t been all hype: Channel 5 had hit the jackpot. Either because they were the best at corrupting the police, or thanks to a quick-moving super producer in their staff, they´d found the ad for Gabriele´s fragrance for men I´d done last spring, with his name featured prominently at the bottom of the page. It was a simple black-and-white photo, shot against black backdrop, and the art director had made a prolonged fuss over how my expression was everything and would have to be perfect. The final result, a hint of a smile, was clearly unsuitable for a brutal killer and undoubtedly half the staff of Channel 5 was at the very moment frantically searching for something more appropriate. The photo shoot had been one of my last, too, as only two weeks later I´d been fired from the agency. I was sure that story would find its way to the news media as well. The voice of the anchorman became a distant, indistinct drone, repeating my name, Erik Loefgren, Erik Loefgren, Erik Loefgren.

“…Texan known by the police as a person connected to the Milanese underworld of male prostitution,” he was saying when I focused back on the transmission. “It is not known if Gabriele Zaigler was aware of this connection” – better not to risk a libel case with the estate – “as they must have met during the fragrance photo shoot. We do not wish, and cannot, speculate what may have caused the homicidal rage that brought Gabriele Zaigler´s life to an end, but one thing is clear: Erik Loefgren is a severely disturbed person, with extremely dangerous sadistic tendencies, and members of the public should not attempt to apprehend him if they see him. Please call the police, and wait for their arrival. It is not known whether he carries arms, but utmost caution is paramount if you should meet him.”

A new picture replaced Gabriele´s ad on the screen. This one was from the very last job, a spread for swimsuits we´d shot in a small island off Sardinia, famous for the unique pink beach formed by sand of dead corals and surrounded by amazingly turquoise sea. A special permit from the government had been necessary to access the island and we´d been severely warned not to carry away the tiniest amount of the sand as souvenir. The photo itself was a replica of a famous X-rated picture every gay on the planet had seen on the internet, but the twist here was that I wasn´t naked and the thin layer of sand sticking to my skin was pink; somehow in the new context the most innocuous of colors took on a sense of degeneration, even depravity, far beyond the vague original suggestion. I noticed that the company logo hadn´t been cropped out, even though it wasn´t Gabriele´s. The old maxim held true: any publicity is good publicity.

Then the newscast cycled back to the beginning while the producer scrambled for more news about my involvement, and of me as a person. I switched to RaiUno and watched a few more minutes before switching to yet another channel. Helpless to stop, I stayed in front of the TV all evening, forcing myself to eat every now and then. Shortly after midnight I couldn´t take it any longer. I clicked off the TV set, and leaned on the old cranky refrigerator, arms folded over my chest. I felt down and agitated, and angry, definitely not in the mood to settle down with an old classic like Promessi Sposi. Most of the people still awake would probably be watching the news; I could afford to take a walk to reconnoitre the surroundings, ready to duck into bushes if I saw approaching headlights. In an hour or so, there would be fresh updates on the investigation, and the manhunt.

I realized we hadn´t thought of clothes. I was still wearing nothing but my underwear, and upstairs I had only what I had brought along, my cammies and a t-shirt, and one pair of socks and shoes. Then, with a shudder, I remembered that the cammies were still smeared with blood. I wouldn´t be able to put them on until they´d been thoroughly washed. So I dragged myself upstairs, picked up my clothes and took them to the bathroom, and spent the next hour kneading them in hot water which always seemed to take on a reddish hue no matter how many times I changed it. After hanging the washing I went back to the television to see the last newscast of the night, but none of the channels had anything new to add. I spent the rest of the night watching movies, each of them older than the previous one, as the morning, very slowly, crept closer.

Chapter 7 - Scrutinized

Photos from the crime scene were leaked to the press the next morning. All the networks judged them too gruesome to be shown on air, even heavily pixeled, but they were widely commented and apparently a weekly tabloid magazine was speed-printing a special edition with them. The comments were cautious as most of the details couldn´t even be mentioned on television, let alone shown, but obviously the photos were all over the internet and the networks didn´t hesitate to show the shocked expressions of people accessing the pages. There was no talk of other suspects; at least publicly, the police was focusing their efforts entirely on making a tight case against me, and the military branch of law enforcement, the carabinieri, had been called to set up checkpoints at various crucial spots of the transport system. I wondered if the Czech truck driver had already left the country, and if not, would he report to the police someone he´d tried to fuck in a lavatory. Due to luck and Angelo´s cautiousness, the couple on the beach had never been close enough to be able to identify me.

At eleven in the morning, after the sleepless night, I mercifully began feeling drowsy and almost fell asleep in front of the television. I went upstairs, had a hot shower to make sure I was as relaxed and sluggish as possible, and lay down on the bed. I´d closed the shutters, leaving the windows open, and gusts of the temperate morning wind carried soft, muted sounds of the countryside into the room. There were the crickets, and some birds; every now and then, a dog barked in the distance; and occasionally a car or the low rumble of a tractor could be heard. Bees hummed outside the shutters, as if curious of the shadows beyond the slats. With little creaks and snaps the house settled into the sundrenched day, and for the first time after the out call I felt something akin to calm. For a few hours at least I´d be asleep, unaware of what was happening in the outside world.

This time it wasn´t a nightmare that woke me up, but thunder. The room was dim, due to the storm, and faint tapping noises came from the shutters like fingers trying to pry their way in. Rain was falling. Another crack of thunder rolled over the countryside, this one closer, reminding me that the house was near the top of a hill, surrounded by trees, and thus an excellent target for a lightning strike. Perhaps it would be better to move downstairs. The corridor and the stairs had only those small deep-set windows, leaving the way downstairs in the dark, and I clicked the old-fashioned switch. Nothing happened. The storm had taken out the lights. The television wouldn´t work. I was partly aggravated, partly relieved as I entered the kitchen for my late breakfast which I now would eat without the company of gloating newscasters. Back home, the media would be all over the story by now, digging up each and every even halfway newsworthy item from my past. Thinking back, I decided there weren´t all that many, but the Houston trailer park would certainly be one of the highlights if someone found the right angle and interviewed my old neighbors.

The small window let in just enough light to allow me to prepare a cold sandwich, in a colorless gloom that was occasionally spiked by a lightning. The thunderstorm remained at safe distance, however, and I felt rather calm until a loud snap from the next room made me spring to my feet. I backed away from the door, heart thumping. Someone must have gotten into the odd, small living room of the ground floor through the shed. I stood still, my spine and hands tingling, listening. A minute passed, then two. Only the tap of the raindrops on the window could be heard, and the faint rustling of the rose bushes as wind buffeted them against the wall. The evening was turning into night, and light was fading. In a matter of minutes I could hardly see my way to the door. I couldn´t just stand and wait.

I picked up a knife from the table. The mere thought of using it made me nauseous, but the amount of adrenaline coursing in my veins would get me through if I had to defend myself. Very slowly, listening carefully for more noises, I stepped to the kitchen door, closer to the darkness and the night terrors, some of them no longer irrational. I could see nothing, and realized I was framed by the doorway of the slightly brighter kitchen. I lost my nerve. Suddenly I was running up the stairs, panicky, and upon reaching the second floor I slammed my hand on the light switch as I ran by. Instantly, unflickering, the lights came on. I spun around, to face whatever was chasing me, the knife ready, but rather unsurprisingly – now with the lights on – there was nothing and no one. For a few heartbeats I stood still, gathering my wits, then returned to the ground floor, somewhat wobbly on my feet. The kitchen and the living room were still in the dark, but this time it had little effect on me. I flicked on the rest of the lights, and saw that the room with the fireplace was empty. The alarming snap had come from the main fuse box, next to the door, when the electricity had come back on. Half disgusted, half amused with myself, and not yet fully recovered, I stared at the battered grey box. Running away in panic seemed to have become my new modus operandi.

Now the television would be working, too. Leaving all the lights on I went back to the kitchen, turned on the cranky old thing, and sat down to finish my sandwich while waiting for the tube to warm up. Most of the channels had returned to normal programming, limiting the coverage to newscasts, but RaiUno happened to be running its daily tabloid show, obviously focused on the case. A breathless female presenter was moderating discussion with a psychologist and a district prosecutor.

“… always a surprise to neighbors and co-workers,” she was saying. “Is there really no way to distinguish the monsters among us?”

A slideshow of new pictures was running in the background, from my one and only photo shoot in New York before I´d been dispatched to Europe. It had been for an erotic underwear catalogue, and wearing nothing but black boots, and a pair of black nylon briefs, I was pulling on a pair of leather gloves with a presumably menacing attitude. However, as often is the case with such catalogues, the overall impression was more incongruous than intimidating due to the surgical white backdrop, in addition to my blond looks. In the meanwhile, the experts were disagreeing over the question, with the psychologist claiming there were certain warning signs and the prosecutor asserting that basically even your grandmother could snap and go into a killing spree. The fetish photo set in the background, and my career in male prostitution were discussed next.

“Of course, his childhood experiences have been a major influence,” the psychologist was saying, crossing his legs. “Being repeatedly placed in temporary foster homes and institutions can´t but leave a mark on a young person.”

“Yet most of them don´t turn into brutal killers,” the prosecutor doggedly repeated, following his script.

They went at it for a while, partly serious and partly for showmanship. I watched them dissect what they had learned of my childhood, getting a few basic facts right but with no connection to the reality I knew.

Yes, it had been a chequered childhood; yet I couldn´t recall any specific traumas that might have led me into a life of squalor, or homicidal frenzy. Of course, there was the last foster home, Carlton´s, but by the time I´d already been a teenager and more or less aware of what was happening. More pictures came on, but surely none satisfying to the photo editors as I was mostly wearing a smile suggestive of other things than violence, or at least not me as the perpetrator. Promptly, the presenter asked the psychologist to analyze the photos.

Well aware of the exicengies of showbusiness, and the danger of going against the producer´s rendering of facts lest he not be re-invited, the psychologist remained stumped for a moment before recovering.

“At first sight, this person doesn´t seem to fit the profile of a dangerously aggressive person,” he started, stating the obvious. “He´s been portrayed as an object, a focus, instead of an active participant, and even in the fetish series there is an attitude of rather complying to the needs of others than to his own. Never does he convey a sense of power, or self-determination. Logically, this type of dehumanization is taken to its extreme form in the act of paid sex, and an unusual and degrading request by the client, especially if brusquely repeated, may have caused a sudden violent retaliation.”

“Unusual and degrading request?” the presenter asked, innocently.

The psychologist deftly sidestepped the question. “It´s also known that a certain type of client likes to call the prostitute with debasing names during the act.”

“Oh,” the presenter said, appearing genuinely shocked. “And this sudden retaliation can take the form of the atrocities Gabriele Zaigler was subjected to?”

Again, the psychologist hesitated. ”It´s quite possible, although I would presume that´s not the case here, given the … set-up, and type and degree of anger exhibited.”

“The set-up does seem quite elaborate,” the presenter noted.

“Exactly.”

A new person appeared in the screens behind them. Mrs. Renshaw, the trailer park manager, speaking in Italian. I couldn´t believe the channel had gone through the trouble of dubbing her.

“Un bravo ragazzo, a well-behaved kid,” she said, filling the screen and touching the ample front of her green viscose jacket. “Ma non molto simpatico. Always made it clear he was too good for us hard-working decent people living here. Goes to show you, doesn´t it.”

She didn´t mention Helman´s with their mullets and bibles, or the Ponzi´s whose children sported new, mysterious bruises every week, or how she´d closed her eyes to the fact that a sixteen-year-old had been living there on his own.

“And those friends,” she said disapprovingly. “They were both much older than him, over thirty, them big weightlifters or something, visiting a high-school kid.” She shook her head in dramatic regret. “If I´d known then what I know now, I would have put a stop to it. Yes Ma´m.”

“Did you know their names?” the invisible reporter asked.

“No Ma´m,” Mrs Renshaw added disdainfully. “Kept to themselves, those two, and for a good reason too.”

Scott and Jake. I´d met them at the YMCA where I´d started working out after moving away from Carlton´s. One day, leaving the gym, I found that my bike had a flat tyre and I was still standing in front of the building, trying to decide what to do, when two huge bodybuilders I´d seen a few times but never talked to stopped on their way to the parking lot. They were both wearing shorts and tank tops, and I tried not to stare at their arms.

The blond jarhead I´d nicknamed Bouncer glanced at the tyre, then ran his eyes over me.

“Need a ride, kid?” he asked.

I barely had time to nod before he lifted up the bike and carried it over to the back of his pick-up truck, setting it down none too gently. His friend looked after Bouncer, amused.

“Let´s go, blondie,” he said to me. “I´m Jake. He´s Scott.”

I climbed into the truck, and found myself squeezed between the two of them. They asked me where I lived and when I told them Scott took a quick sideways look at me.

“The trailer park?” he asked.

“I live on my own,” I defended myself.

“You?” Jake said. “How old are you?”

I could hardly explain him the situation with Carlton´s, and decided to add a couple of years. Scott looked at me skeptically.

“Eighteen, huh?”

There was something in his voice that suddenly made the pit of my stomach tingle as if I were in a descending speed elevator, and also made me very conscious of how much bigger than me they both were. Jake´s massive thigh graced my knee, making my heart skip a few beats every now and then while I was being told that Scott was divorced, paid alimony for a kid and his high school sweetheart ex-wife in Florida, and Jake, who was Cuban as I´d suspected, had been living together with a girlfriend for two years. They weren´t too impressed by the trailer park, but as Scott stopped the car in front of my trailer they invited themselves in, “to make sure I had everything I needed”.

That turned out to be weed. The men sat down on the worn couch – the only furniture in the living room in addition to the TV - which almost collapsed under their combined weight, and pulled out a joint from Scott´s Marlboro pack. I´d only smoked a couple of times before, to look cool in front of some friends, and I really didn´t much like the effect as pot only seemed to make me sleepy after the quick initial light-headedness. Scott and Jake saw me hesitate, and made a face.

“What are you waiting, come here,” Scott ordered, waving the joint and moving his leg to make the minimum room required for me to cram myself in between them.

I was getting really nervous, and worried that they´d notice the way my crotch was starting to bulge.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked, turning towards the kitchen area.

“What have you got?” Jake said.

“Um… Pepsi?”

“Figures,” Scott said, shaking his head. “We´ll see about that later.”

Feeling desperately awkward I finally sat down on the couch between them while Jake lighted the joint and took the first toke. Their huge bodies felt hard and warm against mine.

“So what do you say, buddy?” Scott asked Jake over my head. “Let´s get the little cocksucker started?”

He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back on the couch before I could get up.

“You really thought we didn´t notice, the way you´ve been staring at us?” Scott snorted, cupping my chin with his big hand to push my head back against the couch.

Suddenly Jake´s mouth was on mine, and his fingers clamped my nose shut. I couldn´t open my mouth wide enough to breathe, with his thick soft lips sealed around mine, and the image of a lion smothering its prey flittered in my mind as I tried to squirm free, my arms and legs seemingly blocked from every direction by bulging hard muscle. I tried to hold back but soon I had to give in, and with a long forceful breath Jake filled my lungs with the smoke. We exchanged the smoke a few times before he let me go, and passed the joint to Scott who repeated the procedure.

I was already feeling weird, after only two tokes, and when they continued I realized what they were doing. I was being forced to smoke twice the amount they did, in addition to being half their size, and when I rebelled and tried to free myself they easily held me down and continued forcing the smoke into my lungs. Very soon I was lying back in their arms, grinning slowly at the ceiling, happy to have made new friends. My eyelids weighed a ton, and the light was too bright, so I closed my eyes and while their hands stripped off my clothes, piece by piece, studying every detail they found underneath, I felt myself grow totally hard.

A few more tokes, and I was lifted in the air and carried to the bedroom.

“Oh man,” I mumbled as they lay me on the bed, face down.

My legs were spread wide open. Someone said something but I didn´t understand the words, and I heard one of them leave the room for a moment as hands pulled my asscheeks wide open and a slippery warm tongue slithered into the crack. I moaned into the mattress as the slithering muscle invaded my hole, squirming deeper into the tight chute, but all too soon the other man was back and interrupted the rim job. Something cool and oily was poured into my asscrack and rubbed into the hole.

“Now be quiet, kid,” Scott said somewhere above me, and I felt a blunt thick knob pushing against my asshole.

He increased the pressure and apparently I wasn´t quiet enough as a big hand closed over my mouth. There was burning pain as I felt his hard-on stretch my hole wide open, and then the breathtaking sensation of a huge dick sliding all the way in. I closed my eyes and there were colors dancing on the insides of my eyelids, making me feel dizzy, and then the pain went away and a wave after wave of odd, cram-full pleasure started throbbing through my body as Scott settled into the fuck. The hand covering my mouth was removed, but came back right away. Evidently I was still making noises the neighbors might hear.

Then Scott´s weight came down on me and the massive arms closed tightly around my chest, almost crushing me, as his deep, powerful thrusts picked up speed. He groaned loudly and drove his cock to the hilt, pushing his heavy balls against mine, and began shooting his load. I was gasping for breath under his weight, my face turning swollen and blue before he was done, and when he got off me Jake took his place, holding me down by the arms and kicking my legs wide apart. His thick shaft slid almost effortlessly into the dripping, stretched hole, and I heard myself let out a breathless moan.

Jake was a talker, and muttered obscenities into my ear while he pounded my ass. I had hard time focusing on what he was saying but the effect was undeniable. I felt myself being pulled closer and closer to orgasm, and when Jake climbed higher on top of me and his cock began rubbing against my prostate with every long hard thrust, I couldn´t stop myself. He felt my asshole tighten and contract around his hard-on as I started squirting my load, and grabbing me by the shoulders, pushing my face against the mattress, he followed suit.

We were still lying on the bed, breathless, when Scott came back.

“Kid you ain´t got nothing in the fridge,” he complained. “I´ll go and get us some burgers.”

Twenty minutes later he was back, with a huge sack of burgers and fries and shakes and whatnot, and not a moment too soon as Jake and I had already finished what little there had been in the fridge, including a pint of out-of-date yoghurt. After we´d finished eating every last fry Scott and Jake smoked some more, but this time I wasn´t given any.

“If you´re too stoned you can´t suck cock, not the way we like it,” was Scott´s reckoning.

I was hooked on them from the start. A month later, when Jake and his girlfriend got into a real bad, prolonged fight, he told me that the only reason he stayed with her was to make sure people wouldn´t get any ideas if they learned about him and Scott visiting me. He had a good reason to be worried as my neighbors were starting to give them dirty looks, even though the men always took care that I stayed silent no matter what they did to me in the trailer. They´d been coming over for six months, at least twice a week, when they decided I´d grown tall enough, and started shooting me up with steroids. I never gained another inch but it seemed I ballooned twenty pounds of muscle overnight, and the injections made my senior year a hell of totally uncotrollable erections, a fact skillfully exploited by the two in the evenings they came over. I used to covertly stare at my schoolmates, in class, busy doing their calculus, and wonder if they also had an illicit second life behind their bright-eyed chastity pledges and Sunday schools. Well, I never found out; I made few friends at school, wasn´t much interested in video games the others were obsessing about, and I could hardly tell them how I spent my evenings instead.

The people in the Roman studio were frowning over Mrs. Renshaw´s comments.

“There seems to be a constant pattern of sexual exploitation in this person´s life,” the psychologist said gravely. “It doesn´t surprise me, at all.”

I felt like laughing out loud as I remembered the things I´d done with Scott and Jake. A passive victim, indeed. Then the prosecutor re-entered the conversation for the last few minutes of the program, with little to add. On top of the hour I checked out the other channels, but the late news weren´t on yet and I decided I needed the long-awaited walk to calm my nerves. I went upstairs and put on my cammies and the t-shirt, hoping that I had some way to communicate with Angelo to remind him to bring me more clothes the next time he drove down from Milan.

Outside the rain had stopped, and the air felt pleasantly cool. The last light of the day was gone. I locked the door carefully, stood still for a moment in front of the house, just breathing the fresh, humid night air, and then walked down the driveway to the narrow country road. I was so full of pent up energy and frustration that I broke into run, enjoying the cool wind on my face, and the strain on my leg muscles. The road wound around the hill of my house, and gradually the valley beyond came into view, showing another small town hugging the side of a gently sloping mountain at some distance. Wary of the lights ahead, I didn´t dare to go very far from the house, and then I noticed the headlights of a car moving towards me. I quickly turned around, looking for a copse of trees where I could dash into, saw none, and wished I had at least a cap to cover my blond hair. When the car drove by I casually looked sideways to make it more difficult for them to see my face. Perhaps the walk hadn´t been such a good idea after all; country folk could be very curious about people moving into their neighborhood, and stopping the car to say hello probably wouldn´t have been considered out of line.

For a moment, the headlights lit up a house on top of the nearest hill, a sumptuous villa that had never been a mere farmhouse and which I had carefully studied from my window. It had a beautifully tended garden complete with several carefully positioned, tall classical statues, a fountain and a large swimming pool, and a separate house for employees. The main building had two storeys, with a wide terrace complete with glossy hardwood furniture, and one wing held a green dome reminiscent of an old church. The swimming pool lights weren´t on, however, and neither were any lights in the buildings. The proprietors clearly belonged to the same class of people as Gabriele´s neighbors, leaving all the houses most worth living in for the impersonal care of hired help.

The residence wasn´t surrounded by a wall, and there was no sign of a security system. Whoever owned the place clearly didn´t keep his art collection there. I jumped over a ditch and crossed a field, getting the legs of my cammies all wet, and slowly made my way into the garden. No alarms sounded, a pack of dobermanns didn´t pound on me, and not even an old crickety janitor appeared to threaten me with a broomstick. Keeping an eye on the black windows, I stripped off and descended into the pleasantly tepid, dark water of the swimming pool. After a few laps, as I turned to float on my back, I saw that the cloud cover was breaking and a ghostly moon appeared intermittently, as though signaling me some hidden message, or a warning. I laughed at myself, exhilarated by the exercise. As if any further warning was necessary, given the situation. But I was alive, and it was summer in Tuscany, and a good friend was looking after me and would soon return. Then I remembered that the television was waiting for me in the kitchen, demanding to be turned on as soon as I re-entered the house, and my mood darkened. I swam a few more laps but the joy was gone, and I soon scampered up on the poolside, pulled my clothes on and went back to my safe but temporary home. I looked once back over my shoulder, at the dark silhouette of the villa, wondering who the owners were and hoping that they would stay away as long as possible.

Chapter 8 - I know who you are

The next couple of days my food cache dwindled worryingly, and there was no sign of Angelo. I was considering rationing what little remained when late the following evening I heard the rumble of a car on the driveway and, heart thumping, climbed upstairs to see if it was him, the police, or a complete stranger coming to claim his house. Blinded by the headlights, I recognized the car only when it reached the yard: Luca´s convertible, with the top down, driven by Angelo. He was alone, and waved at me as he turned off the motor. The entire car seemed to be filled with bags that were spilling their contents all over; food, clothes, books. I ran down, my stomach growling in anticipation, and slammed the front door open.

“I can tell you´re glad to see me,” Angelo said with a chuckle, and gave me a bear hug in the shaft of light spilling from the living room.

“And all that food,” I said, extracting myself before he felt my swelling erection. “I was getting worried.”

He looked at me gravely, at arms lenght. “Sorry I couldn´t come earlier. The police have been following me, and it took some effort to slip away.”

“Luca must be loving all this.”

“He likes TV the best, actually. They´ve been saying pretty awful things about you. I saw your foster parents´ interview yesterday.”

I´d seen it, too. Christina Carlton had looked more pious than ever, with her hair pulled tightly back and streaked with grey, and her lips more sunken in and narrow than I had remembered. As I had expected, she had done all the talking, with Greg first standing next to her armchair, his military past evident in his haircut and erect bearing, and then settling down in his own chair by her side. Through the perfectly pressed and well-fitting blue shirt it was clear that he hadn´t given up his horseback riding and workout regimes, and for a guy in his mid-forties he was in great shape – for a guy of any age, actually. Strangely enough, he didn´t look any older to my eyes; when I´d last seen him I´d been too young to have much perspective for people´s ages. And after all these years, just seeing him had still the power to make me feel agitated, as I´d gained perspective on other matters as well and now knew how remarkably well-endowed he was inside the narrow-hipped khaki pants. During the whole interview he hadn´t uttered a single word, his face set in stone. No one would have guessed that he was probably feeling like a man about to be hanged. If and when I was caught, no defense team in their right mind would exclude him as part of their strategy, which meant that he´d inevitably join me in the slammer and with a far more infamous charge than mere manslaughter.

“She looked like a real bitch,” Angelo said, grabbing a handful of bags and hauling them out of the car. “Was it really hard living with them?”

I shook my head but said nothing, and Angelo threw me one of his quizzical glances.

Of course Christina Carlton had guessed what had been going on, and the interview was part of her payback for Greg, and a prelude for a hefty divorce settlement if everything was to come out.

I´d been living with them for less than three months when it happened for the first time. Christina, a registered nurse, regularly worked night shifts at the hospital and left the house shortly after dinner, leaving me and Greg to fend for ourselves. It had been fun; rented movies, the scooter, their outdoors jacuzzi in the Houston winter. We spent a lot of time together, in a mutual attempt to make my stay with them work – I didn´t want to go back to the institution – and somewhere along the way a new kind of tension crept in. I was still a skinny curious thirteen-year-old, and so I thought it was only natural that I´d covertly study Greg´s strong arms and legs, the smooth hair covering his pectorals, and the flexing of his abs as he climbed into the jacuzzi. And, most of all, the breathtakingly heavy bulge in his swimsuit when he then got up from the bubbling water, with the wet fabric clinging to his body and showing the thick curve of flesh inside.

I knew he had noticed me staring, but it still was a major shock to unexpectedly hear him enter my room without a word one night, to feel his weight on my bed and have the bedcovers pulled away, followed by my briefs, and a moment later, without any further preamble, the slick, large tongue of a man driving warmly between my spread asscheeks and into the sensitive little opening. A bewildering five minutes had followed, with me scampering away from him, half paralyzed with fear, and him holding me down, asking for my forgiveness, saying it had been a terrible misunderstanding, and that it would never happen again, and I should never tell anyone. All the while he talked, in my confusion I could think of little else but how good it had felt; his weight, the big hands, the slick warmth. I promised I´d never tell anyone, and he left my room, distraught. Less than a week later he had fucked me for the first time.

That´s how I got my run-down trailer at sixteen, telling him it couldn´t go on any longer and that he owed me a special arrangement for what he´d been doing to me for three years. He must have gone through hell convincing Christina to sign all the necessary papers. I never learned how Greg actually had managed it, but Christina hardly said a word to me ever after.

“You´re awfully quiet,” Angelo said, preoccupied, as we dragged the last bags into the kitchen. “Are you mad at me, for bringing you here? You´re thinking of going to the police, aren´t you?”

I looked at him, surprised. “Of course not. I mean, the case is closed. Everyone thinks I did it.”

“Not everyone.”

“You and Carola Chiara,” I grinned, knowing that the connection with the longest legs in Italy wouldn´t be much appreciated by him.

“Oh shut up,” he said, his smile then gradually hardening into a look that I recognized.

My heartbeat picked up. “So, did Jan call?” I asked, delaying the moment we´d end up upstairs.

“He did,” Angelo replied, self-satisfied, and nonchalantly studied the line of Barilla packages he´d brought, as if completely engrossed.

“So you´re fucking both of us now?” I asked, mock-scandalized.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” A mischievous grin. “Luca thinks I left for Tuscany two hours earlier than I actually did.”

“You´ve just fucked Jan?” Now I was a little scandalized, and not just a little jealous as well. However, I wasn´t quite sure if it was for Angelo or Jan. “Where?”

“What do you think?”

“You took him home? To your bed? You fucked him in a bed that smells of Luca?”

“You make it sound so evil,” Angelo said, pleased.

I imagined the two, and my throat went dry. “So what was he like? Embarrassed, frightened? Turned on?”

“All of the above, in that order.”

“You dog.” I stacked seven large packages of cherry and strawberry yoghurt in the fridge. “Has the police given you a lot of trouble?”

“Some. But mostly Channel 5,” Angelo replied. “They´re fixated on the idea that I desperately want to tell them everything about you.”

“How much are they offering?”

“Quite a lot, and much more if I hand over any photos of you which, quote, reveal your character, unquote.”

“Not those photos, I hope.”

He laughed. “No, although I must say they do reveal your character.” Several paperbacks appeared from yet another bag, and he piled them on the table.

I asked the big question. “The police really don´t know any more than what the TV says?”

“I´ve called them a few times, and my dad has some connections through his law firm, too. They´ve found no hard evidence about the two thugs.”

“And the mafia angle?”

Angelo looked grim, and shrugged. “Gabriele´s a national hero, and his company is one of the biggest Italian exporters. A mafia investigation would be considered most unpatriotic.”

I had to sit down. The last, weak glimmer of hope I´d been nursing was gone.

“I have a surprise for you,” Angelo said with a mysterious smile, his timing perfect as usual. “It´s in the trunk of the car.”

He reappeared, carrying a slim black bag, and a grey plastic one filled with DVDs. From the black bag he produced a brand-new notebook computer, and set it on the table.

“Angelo,” was all I could say.

“It has wireless and TV cards,” he told me. “You don´t have to watch that old horror any longer, and you have internet access. I brought a couple of games, too. But don´t email me – I´m sure my account is tapped, just like my phones.”

I was overwhelmed. The long days and nights in the house had started to become unbearable. But there was something I needed even more than games and movies.

“Want to go upstairs?”

Later, fresh from our shower together, Angelo checked his wristwatch and made a face.

“I have to go.” He started gathering his clothes, rumpled heaps on the floor. “I hate to leave you here.”

“Well, a country house in Tuscany isn´t nearly as bad as a jail cell in Milan. Even without all the tattooed brutes.” I watched him pull on his shorts. “You´re not going to get in trouble with the police, are you?”

“No, if I´m careful.”

A few minutes later he was gone. I sat in the kitchen, staring at the pile of DVDs and games, not nearly as sanguine as I´d been in front of Angelo, but trying to see the brighter side of things nevertheless. Then it crossed my mind that the police might not be the only ones keeping an eye on Angelo and following him. I quickly decided I didn´t like this line of reasoning, but now I was glad for the odd design of the house, the small downstairs windows and the unwieldy but sturdy front door that would be impossible to break down, along with the padlocked entrance to the shed.

I went online, and first checked out major news sites back home. A powerful New York publicist had just declared, earlier in the day, that two of her clients categorically – and truthfully – deniend having ever met me. One of the clients was a well-known movie star with a long history of fighting gay rumors. What the hell is this, I wondered, and skimming through the article I found out that I had allegedly started my hustling career already in New York, and my job at the Keller gym had merely been a cover. Keller had been forced to issue a statement denouncing any allegations that gay prostitutes used their gyms as hunting ground – truthfully again, at least as far as I knew – or that gay sex took place in the premises. The second claim, wishful at best, had undoubtedly provoked numerous chortles among New Yorkers.

The Italian media reports, for the most part, seemed somewhat more accurate. But there was one gaping omission: the phone book of my cellular. Differently from the crime scene photos, the police had managed to keep the memorized numbers from the press. This type of efficiency was highly unusual, not to say unique, which made it clear that among my clients there had been at least one person with nearly frightening clout, a person who would definitely prefer me to remain missing for ever. And there were two others who, although not quite in the same league with Gabriele Zaigler, would inevitably find themselves in every newscast if the phone numbers came out.

The sun was already coming up when I finished my news binge. I had a quick meal, brushed my teeth, and staggered to bed. It was going to be another hot, long day in Tuscany, slept away in the dark cool upstairs bedroom.

--------------

June turned into a scorchingly hot July, and day by day, exhausted by the heat, the country dragged on towards the universal vacation month of August. Gabriele gradually slipped into yesterday´s news, and so did I, and only occasionally, when an unsuspecting Scandinavian tourist bearing a resemblance to me was hauled into questura to be questioned by the police, I was back on television. Supposedly I´d slipped through the EU border somewhere far from Italy, helped by malavita, or by the human traffickers who imported female prostitutes into the country. Even a few kooky conspiracy theories had cropped up, but curiously enough all of them had to do with politics and none with the mafia. Angelo kept showing up faithfully at least once a week, despite the deteriorating situation with Luca. There had been two more trips to the emergency room, one to stitch a badly bleeding cheekbone, and another for an almost broken arm. The two seemed to be walking an awfully thin line.

In Tuscany, however, life proceeded without drama. I slept through the hot days, with a large ventilator humming next to the bed, and woke up at dusk to spend the night with the computer, or reading paperback novels Angelo heaped on me, while the night wind stealing through the open windows gradually carried away the heat radiating from the thick walls of the farmhouse. Then, very late at night, when I was sure everyone in the neighborhood was fast asleep, I walked across the fields to the big house that claimed the hill next to mine and discharged my nervous energy in the dark cool water of the swimming pool. Every night, the pool was immaculate; clearly someone had to look after the house during the long, bright daylight hours that I spent asleep. The clean antiseptic smell of chlorine lingered in the water, there were never leaves floating on the surface, and the tiled pool area was swept of dust and leaves carried by the capricious Tuscan wind. Yet, at night, the magnificent house was always unlit, just a dark shadow rising up to the whirl of stars twinkling madly over the hill country.

One night, I was floating on my back in the pool, quietly staring upwards at the stars as I tried not to contemplate my future. Sooner or later, fall would be here, and I´d have nowhere to go. Angelo couldn´t keep protecting me forever. I took a deep breath, and plunged into the dark water, diving into the coolest water at the very bottom. Then, shockingly, the pool lights came on.

For a moment I froze, in a weird jack-knifed position I had blindly wiggled myself into in the dark water, and started drifting upwards. Quickly I kicked myself deeper into the water, instinctively seeking shelter, then realized it was the very wrong thing to do. I just had to get out as soon as possible, and make a run for it, leaving my clothes behind. I burst to the surface, swam to the edge of the pool, and pulled myself up, looking towards the house. Most of it was still dark; only one room on the ground floor had lights switched on, but I was too late just the same. The person who had caught me was already halfway between the house and the pool, and most likely had seen enough to recognize me. Yet he walked closer, although more slowly, and haltingly stopped thirty feet away, looking uncertain. He was only a boy of seventeen or eighteen, and had probably expected to find some local kid of his own age in the pool instead of an adult who was much taller and heavier than him, and clearly a foreigner as well. His little prank had turned into potentially serious business. For a moment neither of us moved, him standing hesitantly at the edge of the light, unsure if he should claim his rights as the owner of the place, in front of a naked, dripping man.

The kid was clearly Italian, with short, almost jet-black hair, and his large dark eyes, framed by exceptionally long lashes, glittered in the light reflected from the water. His nose was short and a little stubby, childlike, and the effect was emphasized by lips that seemed too full and with a curve too sensuous for a kid so young. Even his ears collaborated; they protruded ever so slightly, enough to make him look like an apprehensive little animal that had ventured out from a forest. The cheekbones were wide and softened by remains of baby fat he hadn´t had time to shed yet, but in contrast to the rest of his features the jawline was sturdy and masculine, and although slim as any kid of his age his body was clearly shaped by some kind of sport. He was wearing a pair of baggy shorts and a loose tank top, and even by Italian standards he was extremely good-looking, in a way the made one feel partly protective and partly roguish, and something more primitive still.

He frowned a little, as if trying to remember something, and then his eyes widened. With a sharp intake of breath he took one step backwards, trying to reason himself out of the situation, afraid he was wrong and would make a fool of himself. But there was no mistake; he knew who I was. Letting out a small, choked sound he turned and fled.

Chapter 9 - Ivan

I had no time to make a decision. Instincts took over, and I tore after him, gaining fast on the panicked kid. The house was too close, though, and I saw that he would make it in time. I picked up speed and veered off the path, onto the lawn, where my bare feet found better purchase, and then the kid was already at the door, pulling it open, but his momentum was too high and he didn´t get the door open quickly enough. Trying to slip through, he hit the edge of the half-open door with his shoulder instead and was thrown sideways, crashing into the frame, and then I was upon him. I wrapped my arms around him from behind and picked him up, letting my own speed and weight push us through the door and into the unilluminated house before he had time to cry for help. The door slammed close behind us.

“Hel-“ he started, but I tightened my hold, squeezing air out of his lungs, and the cry turned into a toneless, prolonged whimper.

Then he was kicking and thrashing with all his might, gasping for breath to cry out again, and even with my superior size and strength I was having trouble keeping him under control. Something that looked like a coffee table went crashing against a lamp, turning it over with shattering of glass, and his next kick landed so painfully on my shin that my grip partially loosened. Instantly, like an eel, the kid almost slipped free, and I let him go, surprising him, but before he had time to recover and slip away I gave him a quick powerful shove at his back and sent him stumbling over a large, deeply padded leather couch. For a brief moment he remained sprawled on the back of the couch, trying to get a grip on the smooth material, but then I was on top of him and had my arms around him again, and as we slid down on the seat, locked together, he managed a sideways twist and landed under me, face to face. I had his upper body pinned under my weight, his arms useless within my hold, but he kept kicking and trying to push us down from the couch, and it took me a while to wrap my legs efficiently around his and completely immobilize him. The kid bucked and strained under me, but he was already out of breath and slowly I tightened my hold, like a constrictor, until he lay still, mouth agape, desperately laboring for each short intake of breath, his body taut like a spring. He let out a few whimpers, like a frightened puppy, and then even the little sounds died out. He was mine.

The sudden awareness that I could do whatever I wanted to him sunk like molten lead into the pit of my stomach, and my groin. There was no instinct to hurt the kid – pain had never really been my thing – but I was telling myself that he, like every kid of his age, secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken by another man. The way I had wondered about Scott and Jake, and Greg. And in any case, you´ll be in jail tomorrow, and for good, my mind reasoned. This is your last chance. Do it. The kid let out a moan, little more than another scared whimper, but instead of stalling me it only made the animal urge grow more intense. I was completely unable to focus on anything but the way his small muscular body felt under my weight, helpless in the hands of a stronger and bigger man.

I held back for an instant, to prolong the moment, but the pause was just long enough to allow my brain to start reasserting itself, and make comparisons between what I was doing and what had happened with Gabriele. It wasn´t the same thing, I tried to tell myself, but I knew it was, in a way. I´d damage the kid if I went ahead. I had to stop and let him go. I had to.

Slowly, carefully, I loosened my hold, enough for him to breath easily but not to fight me.

“Calm down,” I whispered hoarsely, in Italian. “I won´t hurt you. I promise. Just calm down.”

A shiver ran through his body, but he said nothing.

“A friend brought me here to be safe,” I said, my eyes fixed on his, hoping there was enough light in the room for him to see I was telling the truth. “To that farmhouse next to yours. He knows I didn´t do it.”

“C-Carlo´s house?” he stuttered, but I could hear his voice was smooth, and matched his looks perfectly.

“Carlo is in Boston, so one of his best friends did it,” I explained, perhaps implying more than what was the actual truth.

He clearly held Carlo in high esteem, as I felt him relax for a brief moment before he tensed up again. His eyes roamed the dark room to find something to help him. “But all the things they say about you-“

“Most of them are lies,” I said firmly. “Not all, but most. Do you believe everything you see on Channel 5?”

“No,” he said, even a little upset that I could imagine him so naïve.

“Look me in the eyes,” I ordered, and emphasizing every word repeated, “I – did – not – kill – Gabriele. It was a setup. And I won´t hurt you either.”

But I wasn´t letting go of him yet, either. We lay still, in mockery of lovers´ embrace. There was a trace of mint in his breath. I saw him coming down from his room, sleepy-eyed, for Mint Oreos and cold milk. A mischievous smile as he realized some local boy was taking advantage of his swimming pool, believing there was no one home.

I could feel his pulse slow down. He was starting to trust me. He let out a few long sighs, as if dissipating fear through his breath. I loosened my grip on him a little more.

“What´s your name?”

“Ivan.”

Suddenly he tensed up again, and his eyes flew wide open. Now that the first rush of panic was gone he had remembered that the man holding him down was completely naked, and realized that the hardness pressing against his thigh was something more than just my leg. Instantly he was fighting me again, squirming madly to free himself, and all I could do was to tighten my arms around him.

“I won´t-“ I started, then stopped.

The kid wasn´t fighting because he was afraid of me. His body had reacted at once. An unmistakable, swelling bulge in his baggy shorts was giving him away, and this time apprehension almost brought tears into his eyes; I could see tiny glints of reflected light in them as he blinked rapidly, straining his neck to get away from me.

“Let go of me,” he cried, his voice rising. “Now, I want to go now.”

“Stay calm,” I murmured. “I won´t hurt you.”

“D-on´t,” he begged, his breath catching, and for a moment he stopped moving, eyes closed, trying to collect himself, but then he shivered violently and he was fighting me again.

His struggle had lost its focus, though, with the recognition of what was happening to him, and gradually he grew still. We lay together, my arms around him, saying nothing. A minute passed, then two. Slowly, very slowly, his taut body was giving in, the hard muscles melting together with mine, one by one, in a silent war that he was powerless to fight. I watched him, in the quiet, shadowy room. I waited. Inevitably, in the end, his eyes were drawn to mine. One of my hands slid downwards underneath him and pressed against the small of his back, pushing his abs against mine, and I felt him inhale sharply. The fingers of my other hand slipped into his silky, jet black hair, and gently gripped a fistful. I lowered my face closer to his, letting our breaths come together, and as my lips brushed the side of his mouth he turned his face to a kiss, surprising me.

Some time later I discovered that his mouth and tongue knew their way around a man – like most Italian teenagers, I suspected – but to go through the ultimate, brutal part was something he´d never done before. It took place upstairs, in his room, surrounded by familiar things: there was a poster for an old video game on the wall, an amateur telescope, and a shelf with several model cars he still hadn´t had the heart to get rid of. From the window, the lights of Carlo´s house could be seen.

Later, he rolled on to his side, facing a wall, his back turned to me. I lay next to him, watching the back of his head, trying to gauge his mood, and when I touched his shoulder, playfully, he shrunk away from my touch.

“Go. Now,” he said, his voice strained, but his education won out and he added, “Please.”

“I will,” I said, and sat up on the edge of his bed. “It´ll be ok-“

“No it won´t,” he almost yelled, suddenly losing it. “You bastard. My girlfriend is coming over tomorrow for the weekend.”

I stood up, staring at the immobile figure huddled under a sheet he had pulled over himself. There are extremely few situations when a touch or a kind word won´t help and only make things worse, and this was one of them. The only way to help him was to go.

I was on my way out when he added, “I should call the police. There´s a reward for you.”

I stood still, and turned back to him. The kid was so upset he was becoming irrational – or rational, depending on the point of view – and I wondered if I should stay to make sure he did nothing rash either to himself, or to me. Did he believe that doing the law-abiding thing now would cleanse him, in his mind, of what had happened? And return him among ordinary people, where he now felt expelled from? I decided that during the next ten minutes, he might think so.

Hating myself, I told him, “Go ahead, call the police. The whole country will know that you´re so hungry for dick that even someone you think a killer and a whore gets your ass up in the air. Now what would your girlfriend say?”

“Get the fuck out,” he yelled. “Get out! And don´t you ever come back to my house!”

I left the room and descended to the ground floor, not particularly proud of myself, and came to a halt at the foot of the staircase. Quietly, I stood in the shadows, listening. After what I´d said I doubted he´d call the police, and if he did – well, there was nothing I could do about it. But I couldn´t leave him all alone, not just yet. Everything was quiet for a while. Then I heard steps and the shower went on, and I couldn´t shake the image of him rummaging for his dad´s razors in the bathroom cabinet, face devoid of expression. Slowly, I walked back upstairs. The bathroom door was ajar, and carefully I moved close enough to look into the room. I saw his profile on the mirror, his generous lips now pursed into a tight line, eyes staring blankly at the tiled wall of the shower stall as he lathered himself with handfuls of liquid soap. After only few seconds, instinct warned him that someone was watching and he jerked his head around. As he saw me his jaw dropped, and he started violently, backing into the corner of the stall.

Gesturing him to stay calm I stepped into the doorway, and raising my voice, to make sure he heard me over the running water, I said, “I just wanted to make sure you weren´t going to harm yourself." I paused. "I´ll be going now.” Then, unable to stop myself, I added, “I´m sorry about what I said. You´ve done nothing wrong. Remember that.”

I didn´t wait for an answer. I walked out of the house, still in the nude, and picked up my clothes from the poolside. Away from the brightly lit water, in the safety of darkness, I got dressed. The light had attracted insects, and there were bats darting around the glittering pool in their inscrutable, startling ways, perhaps the very same ones that spent their days sleeping in my shed. I finished tying up my shoelaces, and after a last glance at Ivan´s room upstairs started down the road.

Chapter 10 - Night visitors

For the next half an hour, I stood at the window of my bedroom, lights off, enjoying the scent of the night breeze and the view of the hill country, revealed by stars and the lights of the distant town. If Ivan called the police, I would never again see a wide open space like this; it would be close, grey walls, dirty windows with iron bars covered with old chipped paint, and perhaps a patch of blue sky if I was lucky. But no one came along the road, no black cars with flashing blue lights, and after a while more mundane needs took over. I was ravenous, and prepared the last of the fresh pasta Angelo had brought a few days earlier, with pesto siciliano, and ate it upstairs with the plate set, somewhat precariously, on the window sill.

Should I be proud of myself, I wondered, having been able to defuse an emergency that by all counts should have landed me in jail? But then, I wasn´t the one paying the price: it was Ivan, alone in the big house, going through his own personal hell. And what did that make me? A self-centered opportunist, or something worse? My victim of circumstance spiel was starting to wear awfully thin.

This was going nowhere, I decided. This was not the time for existential resolutions, they weren´t something I could afford. Day-to-day crisis management would have to do, for now, and I needed to take my mind off the night´s events. On the floor, by the bed, lay two books I was reading contemporaneously, both by Italian authors, as in charge of my entertainment Angelo kept showering me with Italian productions whether it be Fellini or Rossellini movies or books by Oriana Fallaci and Pierpaolo Pasolini. After some deliberation I settled on watching once again my favorite comedy, Mario Monicelli´s Parenti serpenti, a love-and-hate story about close Italian family ties.

When I woke up the next afternoon and opened the shutters of my window, Ivan´s house had come to life. A gardener was at work in the garden, large green canvas sunshades had been set in the terrace to protect sets of rattan chairs and tables, and there were two people lounging by the swimming pool. Ivan was sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet in the water, and his girlfriend was lying in a deck chair sunbathing. I took a step back into the room, not wanting Ivan to see me watching over them after the havoc I´d brought him the previous night, but he had already noticed and stood up, turning his back. A moment later he had disappeared into the house. His girlfriend took off what no doubt was the latest in Italian sunglass design and turned her head, perhaps calling for him, but when he didn´t return she seemed to shrug, and then lay back and put her glasses on. The little soap opera was a welcome change to the excruciating monotony of my days, but when nothing more happened I gave up and went down to the kitchen for breakfast.

A few hours later, when the sun had already set, I heard the sound of a car approaching. Heart thumping, sure that the girl had figured something was wrong and extracted a confession out of Ivan, I sprung to the window. However, it was Angelo´s army jeep, with him looking as good as ever with his massive legs stretching a pair of military shorts, perfectly matched with a black t-shirt and a baseball cap, a two-day stubble, and a grin. I hadn´t been expecting him for another two days, and anxiously descended to let him in, afraid there was trouble. However, he gave me his usual bear hug, asked if everything was all right, and began hauling bags into the kitchen.

“How come you´re here so early this week?” I asked, a little suspiciously. “Is everything fine in Milan?”

“Just peachy,” he answered, pulling three baguettes from a bag and setting them on the counter.

“I see… Luca is doing his battered housewife routine?”

Angelo rolled his eyes. “He´s been home from work for two days and I thought I needed a break.”

“Why has he been home?”

“He can´t sit down.”

I stared at Angelo. “What did you do this time?”

“There was a fight-“

“I figured that,” I said dryly.

“-and I whipped his ass,” he finished. “With a belt. Hard.”

“And he let you do it, I mean just like that?” Getting clobbered without a warning was one thing, but belt… that was time-consuming.

“He was tied up.”

“And he didn´t shout? The neighbors?”

“I stuffed a sports sock in his mouth,” Angelo explained, and added, “Secured with a jockstrap.”

“That sounds, well, rather organized,” I said disapprovingly. “Are you taking him to the next level?”

“There´s no need to be sarcastic.”

“I´m not sarcastic, I´m worried. It´s one thing to embrace the SM lifestyle-“

“Not sarcastic, huh?”

“-and another being delusional like him. I mean, he truly believes the women´s magazines he reads at his hair salon! He thinks that he´s getting beaten up only because he´s got such capacity for love but you´ve taken away his self-esteem-“ I paused, trying not to laugh.

“You don´t much like battered housewives, do you?” Angelo said, unable to stay serious himself.

“Not his type.” I made a face. “He´ll land you in jail to feel himself empowered. Then he finds a new boyfriend who makes him cower in the corners, just like before.”

“He´s rather good at the cowering part,” Angelo said pensively. “He gives the best head like that.”

I sighed. “I rest my case. That´s not saying that I approve of the evil things you do.”

We went on like that, half serious and half childish, while putting away the groceries and sorting out the movies he´d brought.

“And Jan? What´s he up to?”

“He´s working in Milan now. Started on Monday.”

“How convenient,” I commented. “Doing what?”

“Construction, like in Como,” Angelo said. “He should get his papers from Questura in a couple of weeks.”

“I bet he´s worked hard for those papers...”

“He has.” Angelo gave me a wink. “And now it´s time for you to earn your upkeep.”

Later, still in bed, I told him about Ivan. He listened, and nodded, but didn´t comment.

“I know I shouldn´t have used their pool, but you don´t know how hard it gets-“

“It´s OK,” he answered, his thumb caressing my cheek.

“But the longer this whole thing goes on, the bigger risk it is for you, too-” I started.

His thumb moved on my lips to shut me up. “What else can we do?”

“I could give myself up.”

“For something you didn´t do?” Angelo looked at me with a frown. “We´ve discussed this already. I don´t let my friends down, so let´s drop the subject.”

“Angelo. I can´t stay here forever.”

“I´ll find you another place.” He pulled me on my feet, and dragged me to the bathroom and the shower. “Jan knows some people who might be able to help.”

The human traffickers.

“But it takes time to organize everything.” He poured liquid soap all over me, and began spreading it all over my back with slow, sensuous strokes. “Which suits me just fine.”

I could tell it did. His thick cock, rubbing against my slippery ass, was definitely growing tumescent.

Then, out of the blue, he asked, “So when can I see this kid?”

There was a new undertone to his question. He was curious, no doubt about it, but also a little annoyed, or even jealous.

“I don´t think that´s a good idea,” I said, instantly preoccupied, knowing Angelo´s wiles in matters involving sex. “Not at all.”

“Hmm… I could lose my way, and go ask directions.”

“After he´s seen your car parked here?”

“So you think he´s been watching?” Again, the touch of resentment. I was starting to enjoy myself.

“You bet. And so far I haven´t seen him touch his girlfriend once.”

“So you´ve been watching, too?” He swirled me around, to face him.

“Just a few peeks.”

“Right.” His curtness took me by surprise, but then his soapy hands wandered at my backside, cupping my buttocks.

“Just don´t see him again,” Angelo said firmly. “Better not take any chances.”

“Look who´s talking,” I countered, and licked at his muscular neck as fingers probed between my asscheeks. “Ouch. Take it easy.”

“Yeah?” His tongue slipped into my mouth, and his finger moved in deeper. I was held in place by his big arms, unable to slip away, as he ruthlessly probed my ass until my hard-on was leaking helplessly against his thighs. Then he turned me around, my face squashed against the trasparent wall of the shower cubicle as he grabbed me by the wrists and held my arms above my head, and I felt his hard cock poke at my glutes. The blunt smooth head slipped in between the cheeks, found the opening, and gradually forced its way deeper into my ass. I shivered as the muscle gave in, stretching tight around Angelo´s thick shaft, and he groaned into my ear with raw pleasure.

A couple of hours later, when he was gone, I wondered what the media would make of him if the whole thing blew up on our faces. Carrying on with a sixteen-year-old illegal alien from Romania; regularly checking his official boyfriend into an emergency room for domestic abuse; and then, last but not least, me; and all of it behind an impeccable front of an affluent Milanese professional. Not to mention a lawyer. It would never cross anyone´s mind that he was giving us all exactly what we needed most.

The only breaks from my weekend routine were the sightings of Ivan and the girl by the pool, or dining at the terrace in candlelight. Even from the distance, I could tell things were not quite right between them. There was no horseplay in the pool, no laughter carried over across the depression between the houses, and there was no sight of relentless teenaged holding of hands. There was public kissing, though, and somehow always facing Carlo´s house, but the couple rarely disappeared out of sight after one of these bouts despite what seemed an evident arousal packing Ivan´s blue speedos. More than once I caught her staring after him, arms slightly raised, as if puzzled or hurt by something he´d said. The kid needed a lesson in good manners, apparently. While watching them I was careful to stay in the shadows of my room, mostly because I didn´t want Ivan to know I had nothing better to do than to spy on a messed-up straight kid making out with his girlfriend.

On Monday he was alone again. The girlfriend had returned to Milan, presumably, and the staff had either gone home or retired into their quarters by the time I woke up in the late afternoon. I opened the shutters to find him working on a book by the poolside, occasionally jotting down notes, and every now and then laying back in the deck chair and staring up at the blue cloudless sky. I figured he´d been exiled to the country to study for some important exam coming up in September. After a short while I got bored with nothing happening, and following the usual very late breakfast I returned to my own books and videos, only occasionally glancing over at his house when I stood up and walked around the room to stretch my legs. Once I caught him climbing up from the pool, dripping water, and shooting a quick look at the direction of Carlo´s house as he adjusted his wet speedos, a racy yellow pair this time.

Evenings were already falling noticeably earlier than in June, an observation that only added to my anxieties, and now that the pool was off limits I had to go for awkward walks in the fields to avoid car headlights. The walks were demoralizing affairs with my shoes usually sloshing wet from copious night dew or from landing my feet into ditches, and I wondered if I should trust Angelo´s claims that there were few poisonous snakes in Italy. Scorpions could only be found in the very south of the peninsula, I seemed to remember having heard him say. Despite these dangers, real or merely embarrassing, the walks did keep me from starting to babble to myself senselessly, closed in the hot stuffy house.

Tuesday seemed to have a detrimental effect on Ivan´s studies. He only stayed in place for a few minutes at a time, either by the poolside or the terrace, and then disappeared into the house for about ten minutes with his books before reappearing outside. Interestingly, the books no longer covered his speedos while he lay back in the deck chair, contemplating the sky, and the way he positioned himself in the chair suggested that he believed – not inaccurately – that he was being a discreet cocktease. Furthermore, the trip from his chair to the edge of the pool took considerably longer than previously and when I awarded his efforts by appearing at the window, leaning on the sill, shirtless, his small but noticeable start while standing at the edge of the pool made it more than clear that he´d been keeping an eye on Carlo´s house. He gracefully dived into the water, stayed in quite a while, presumably to keep me hanging on the edge of my sill, and when he finally got out he couldn´t help a quick glance at my direction. Obviously, I was nowhere to be seen; I´d been playing the game far longer than him. However, when the night fell I felt as little in control as he probably did, roaming the house as I waited for the safety of darkness for my time outdoors, trying not to remember his expression of pain and awe as I slowly forced my way into his smooth tight body, and the wonder in his eyes when the pleasure finally set in. That night I had the longest walk so far, almost to the edge of the town where, like an exile or a wraith circling a gathering of people and not quite audacious or substantial enough to become part of it, I was scared away by the lights and sounds of ordinary life. I heard two sisters argue vehemently who should clean their room; dogs barking as they sensed my presence and warned their pack; televisions tuned into the same channel, sending out their canned voices slightly out of step with each other while the blue flicker faithfully increased and diminished in unison. I stood at the edge of darkness, my craving for Angelo and Ivan like a slow burn within, a vicious unrelenting need, and I wished humans could howl at the moon the way canines do to unburden themselves. I couldn´t help smiling at the thought; being caught howling would certainly give my defense some good material to work with.

Ivan´s house was all quiet and dark when I returned. There was a sudden glimpse of white light in the garden as I walked by, and after a brief flash of alarm I realized it was the reflection of the crescent new moon over the swimming pool. I calculated the approximate odds for the angles having been just right for me to see the reflection, and came to the quick conclusion that they were vanishingly small; yet it had happened. Perhaps something similar would happen with the mess I found myself in, and for a moment I felt my spirits lift – there was only one way for them to go – but it didn´t last for long. Counting on improbabilities certainly wasn´t the most practical way to handle one´s affairs. I reached Carlo´s house, and the lit upstairs window casting a warm yellow glow over the front yard and the surrounding cypresses gave me an unexpected sense of coming home. I stood outside in the dark for a while, with the moon and the night breeze, enjoying the durable, efficient esthetics of the house, and wishing it was mine.

The next day there was no sight of Ivan. A couple of books lay abandoned on the garden table next to his deck chair by the pool, their pages randomly turned by the wind, and a large towel of deep, intense blue had been thrown carelessly down on the tiles as if he´d left in a hurry. A gardener was mowing the lawns with a miniature tractor and someone wearing black was cleaning the windows, now wiping the last two ones dry. By the time I had prepared and finished my breakfast of fried eggs and thick crusty slices of Sicilian bread, with ice-cold orange juice, both the gardener and the maid were gone and the books and the towel had vanished. However, shortly after sunset a few of the rooms lit up, including Ivan´s, and through the tall, arched living room windows the blue flicker of his huge TV set grew visible as the night fell. The radical change of habits seemed odd and I naturally wondered what had prompted it, as mere tediousness of his books didn´t explain the sudden aversion to swimming and to the frequent public adjustings of his speedos. In any case, it made for a boring day for me, having to do without the minor soap opera of his faltering heterosexuality, and I was getting ready unusually early for my nightly walk when there was a knock on the door. I hadn´t heard the arrival of Angelo´s car which could only mean that whoever was behind the door was someone local, or a plainclothes policeman pretending to be one. Besides, Angelo never visited this late. My heart was suddenly racing as I walked to the living room, despite having decided long ago what to do in a situation like this.

“Who is it?” I called through the heavy door.

The answer was almost inaudible mumble, and I repeated my question, more severely. There was a pause that did nothing good for my pulse, and then one word made it through the thick wood.

“Ivan.”

My plan hadn´t contemplated opening the door, but after a moment I decided it would be the best course of action, or at least the most interesting. As soon as I unlocked the door Ivan slipped in, clearly petrified with the thought of someone seeing him. I closed the door, keeping an eye on him as I made sure the lock made its usual loud grating noise as I turned the key. He started a little with the noise, and his eyes darted around the room.

“Are- are you alone?” he asked, eyes settling on the dark doorway to the shed as if a pack of howling devils might ride out from there any moment.

“Yes. And you?”

He looked at me, wide-eyed and uncomprehending at first, and then attempted a smile. “I haven´t called the police, if that´s what you mean.”

Fighting the impulse to pick him up and carry him upstairs, better if kicking and screaming, I let some friendliness creep into my voice. “Good.”

“I´m sorry about what I said,” Ivan blurted out. “I didn´t mean it, I was… confused.”

“It´s OK,” I said after a moment of suspense, as if there had been an actual possibility of me asking him to go. Then I added, “Your weekend didn´t seem to go too well.”

His shoulders slumped, and he was about to say something but then held back and only said, “No.”

I could do the day-time TV psychologist act, smile comprehendingly and give bland supporting advice until he gently fell into my bed. How boring, though.

Instead, I said off-handedly, “Tonight, you´re not going to run away as soon as I´ve finished fucking that gorgeous ass of yours?”

He let out a little gasp, hearing it said out loud, but there was a fleeting look of relief in his eyes as well.

“Eh, well, I might,” he stuttered awkwardly. “It´s so – new to me.”

“Maybe I should tie you up first, so you can´t.”

It took him half a second to realize I was joking, probably because I wasn´t, and he cocked his head, smiling. His slightly protruding ears turned the smile impish and enormously appealing, and I gave up the games and pulled him into a tight embrace. He was shaking, and as I lead him upstairs he held tight on to my arm as if the stairs were cascades and any moment the current might tear us apart and carry him away, downstream.

Chapter 11 - Downward spiral

The August that year was unusual, Ivan told me. In the first week there had already been three thunderstorms, which ordinarily only managed to break into the cupola of heat over the Mediterranean towards the end of the month, starting from the north. For a few hours after each storm the temperature dropped ten degrees centigrade, to the great relief of everyone, and strangely enough, the summer was considered all the more beautiful because of the downpours. In the weekend between July and August a mass exodus had left the large cities empty as Italians either returned to their paese, the town where their family originated, or alternatively moved to a seaside resort or to the mountains if they weren´t enthusiastic about spending a month with relatives and in-laws. The industrial production of the country came to a grinding halt as all the largest factories shut down for the entire month, a sign of pure Mediterranean madness to Americans, and most Northern Europeans as well. Ivan´s parents weren´t an exception to the rule, and they were spending the first two weeks of August in the countryside before flying to Tokyo for ten days, an arrangement which put Ivan under tremendous stress as he juggled between his daytime perfect son act and his covert nighttime escapades to my place. Then his parents went to visit an uncle for two days and that night he insisted I go to the big house and fuck him in his room, to leave my scent in his bedclothes.

“Marinella´s family has returned from Paris,” he grimly said the following night, back in my place, lying naked on top of white sheets that made him look superbly tanned and very Mediterranean. “And my parents have invited her for the weekend.”

“I thought you´d broken up,” I said, leaning on one elbow and running my fingertips over the smooth perfect globes of his glutes.

“Well, sort of,” he answered, squirming a little. “But she wants to see me, and my parents want me to see her.”

“I see. So she´s coming.”

“I´m afraid so.” There was a trace of panic in his voice. “She knows something´s wrong.”

“Well, kid, for the last three weeks you´ve been fucked by a man every single night except the one we spent talking-” I tickled him, and he let out a spontaneous laugher like a child who hasn´t learned to repress himself yet. “-so she´s probably right.”

His face turned serious, “When she was here the last time, you know, after you and me, I couldn´t come with her any longer. I continued doing it, but it just… became impossible, until I thought about the things you did to me, and then...” he made a quick arching gesture, and one of his funny faces, making me laugh. “But she knew something wasn´t right, that I wasn´t really there with her.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Are you out of your mind?” Ivan regarded me with surprised alarm.

It was the quintessential Italian reaction, and I couldn´t help laughing again at his expression of incredulity at the mere idea of telling the truth. Then I grabbed him by the hard muscular waist and dragged him over to me, feigning hostility. “So you´re going to sleep with her?”

Naturally, he knew nothing about my continuing trysts with Angelo. There was little doubt the kid was falling, hard, and although I had warned him not to come over the nights there was a car parked in front of the house, with the excuse of ensuring Angelo his anonymity in case Ivan was ever questioned by the police, I couldn´t help worrying what would happen if he somehow found out. After Angelo´s last visit, it had taken Ivan fifteen minutes to show up at my door, at 3am, and a major effort had been necessary to keep him from climbing upstairs to discover the fucked over bed and the still wet bathroom floor. I´d seated him at the kitchen table and we´d had a long talk over glasses of the white wine I hadn´t had time to drink with Angelo, and before leaving, at the door, his face flush with the wine and some embarrassment, Ivan had revealed he was so glad about the way we´d spent the time just talking because it meant our relationship wasn´t only about sex.

He was taken in by my aggressive tone, and said hurriedly, “I´ll have to sleep with her, otherwise-“

“What, she´ll tell your parents?”

He nodded vigorously. “Everyone would notice something´s wrong if I didn´t. Our families are old friends, and ever since we were kids they´ve always thought we´d get married.”

Apparently, the kid wasn´t coming out of the closet any time soon.

“And if you can´t do it? If there´s trouble again?”

With a smug smile, he said, “There won´t be. I have many more things to think about this time.”

It was almost four o´clock in the morning, and it was time for him to sneak back home to catch some sleep to avoid suspicions. He pulled on his clothes and we went downstairs to finish off a bottle of orange juice before he left.

“Well, um, actually Marinella´s coming tomorrow already,” he said quickly, sipping his drink.

“Tomorrow?” This time my frustration was real. “It´s only Thursday.”

He shrugged. “My parents are worried about us, so they invited her early.”

The “us” referring to him and Marinella made me realize that the inchoate lurch of something I´d just felt was jealousy. I considered lugging him back upstairs for an extra half an hour but it was late, and he needed his sleep to be able to study the next day, in addition to charming Marinella of course. Once he was gone, I walked around the house restlessly, thinking of the long nights ahead without his addictive presence. There were signs of him all over the house: a single sock that had disappeared mysteriously and was later discovered in the cold fireplace downstairs, and had been left there untouched as a proof of our hurry that previous night; his toothbrush; a piece of crust of a sandwich he had wolfed down after the first quick round of sex. I was certain Ivan couldn´t help visiting me when everyone else at the big house was asleep, but there was no way we could spend more than an hour together each night, perhaps not even that. Luckily, Angelo was expected to show up on Friday or Saturday, this time driving up from Rome where he was spending the week with a reluctant Luca before moving down to Taormina, in Sicily, for ten days to celebrate the pinnacle of the Italian holiday season, the Ferragosto.

As it turned out I needn´t have worried about being bored. The next day I was back in the headlines, big time. When I woke up and tottered downstairs for my breakfast, eyes barely open as I flicked through national TV channels, I came across a teaser about a possible breakthrough in the case. I sat up straight, all traces of sleep suddenly washed away from my system as tried to figure out what exactly they were referring to. With a shaking hand I set down the orange juice, lest I spill it, and was told that the Police Chief of Milan, Dottor Matarazzi, would hold a news conference at 7pm, and according to anonymous sources within the police force they apparently had found an eyewitness. Logically, a witness could only help my case, but as I wasn´t accustomed to Italians displaying anything similar to logic I was plunged back into the severe anxiety of my first days in the house, when even the slightest noise outside sent me running to the windows and when I sometimes had even had trouble breathing as if a tight, smothering belt had been fastened around my chest. I didn´t know how long the channels had been running the teasers, and wondered if Ivan had heard the news already or if wooing Marinella had required all his attention. Angelo would probably be on the gay beach in Ostia, outside Rome, and the news would spread there like a wildfire as soon as someone happened to hear about it. During the hours preceding the news conference I tried to play several games, watch a movie, and read one of the Italian novels Angelo kept showering me with, the latest one consisting of two gay short stories by Pier Paolo Pasolini, but none of the attempts lasted for more than fifteen minutes before I had to get up and try something else. Two of the networks would be running the conference live, and well before seven I was already in front of the computer, suffering my way through the interminable advertising that was being thrown into the suddenly coveted slots. At ten past seven the live feed from Prefettura began, Dottor Matarazzi entered the room, and the show began.

The lingering hope that the eyewitness would help my case was quickly vanquished. Although the witness´ identity wasn´t disclosed, it was immediately clear that Matarazzi was talking about the Czech truck driver. Having returned to Italy he had learned that there was now a substantial reward on information leading to my capture, provided by Gabriele´s family, and he had promptly marched to the nearest police station. Whatever story he had told them obviously had very little to do with reality, but the point wasn´t what had happened, but where and when. A large traditional map was brought behind Matarazzi, in a strikingly unhollywoodian manner despite the carefully studied beginning of the conference, and he proceeded to point out the main roads forking off from Genoa.

“Whoever was helping him - Loefgren didn´t have a car, and all the persons who rented a car in Milan the following morning have been controlled - most likely either continued to the north and took him across the border to France, or chose the autostrada to the south towards Tuscany, Rome, and eventually perhaps Sicily.”

So far there had been no mention of Angelo. His bogus story about me blackmailing a client had apparently been successful and he continued to take extensive precautions every time he visited me, never even bringing his cell phone along to avoid leaving a trace on towers, but I wondered if the police was aware that he was spending his holidays in Rome and if that would now seem suspicious. I remembered how he´d taken me to the beach that morning to break the gruesome spell of the night, despite the personal danger he was putting himself in, and the thought of him facing jail time as an accomplice tightened the smothering belt around my chest one more notch.

“In Italy, the most likely hiding places are the coastal towns, and even more so Rome,” Matarazzi added. “We´re hoping that the public collaborates…”

Rome. He´d said it. There was no way Angelo could come to me this weekend, not now. I would be all right until Thursday or Friday with emergency rations and then, hopefully, Ivan might be able to help until Angelo thought it reasonably safe to visit me again. However, I found the idea extremely aggravating. It was one thing to be helped by one´s best friend, and another to ask for help from a teenager who thought he was in love with you and so could neither consider the situation objectively nor refuse you. It made me feel dirty in a way that even my worst hustling experiences hadn´t, and after thinking about it for a moment, while Matarazzi droned on about matters everyone in Italy already knew, I realized I couldn´t do it; this was the moment to exit Ivan´s life before I messed him up as well.

Then it was time for the questions, and the first journalist went straight to the point. “Your eyewitness didn´t see the person helping Loefgren?”

Matarazzi shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. However, he believes that the car, which he didn´t see clearly, was of ´new design´.”

Would a classic sports car count as new design, I wondered. Hopefully not.

In the meanwhile, Matarazzi continued. “Consequently we´ve been re-checking the cars of every person who has been in contact with Loefgren.”

“In contact with Loefgren? You´re talking about the people whose numbers were found in his phone?”

“Yes, we´re including them. Along with everyone in his complete phone record.”

There were several demands, quite loud, to release the list of all the numbers.

“That´s obviously out of question,” Matarazzi answered curtly.

The rest of the conference dealt with subjects I had already heard time and time again on the news and talk shows, except one surprising question regarding a recent divorce of one of the major national football stars.

“Is there any truth to the rumors that Paolo del Zardi´s wife filed for divorce because his number was found in Loefgren´s cell phone?”

“That is completely untrue. I can tell you with the most absolute certainty that his number is not in the list.”

“And the Bonamici divorce?”

Matarazzi´s conviction wavered for a fraction of a second, and realizing it he almost lost his temper. “Are you going to ask me about every recent divorce in the country? I´m here to talk to journalists and not gossip columnists.”

He had answered the question badly, and he knew it. From now on Signor Bonamici, whoever he was, would be branded as my client, and judging by Matarazzi´s reaction he most likely had been. No more questions were allowed, infuriating the crowd, and Matarazzi left the room looking rather grim for someone who had finally had some good news to tell.

At three a.m., a small rock flew into my room, bounced from the wall and landed somewhere under my bed. Smiling at the teenage antic, I turned off the light and found my way downstairs. Ivan slipped in and I felt his full lips close on mine in the darkness, his breath warm and sweet, and as we kissed I slipped a hand into his loose trousers from the back, and cupped one of the smooth round buttocks. He pulled back, wanting to slow down, and I let my hands rest on his hard, slim waist.

“I was worried at first when I heard the news,” he whispered, as if someone was listening. “But you´re safe, they don´t know you´re here.” He let out a soft mischievous chuckle. “You should have heard what my parents said about you while they were watching the news. If they knew–”

“Ivan.” I took his head between my hands, making him look up to me even though we were in almost complete darkness. “You can´t come here again until we know that the police isn´t following Angelo.”

He tried to protest and I pressed my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, the way I sometimes did while fucking him rougher than usual. This time he pushed my hand away.

“Like hell.” He stood still for a moment, silently fighting the idea. “And how long would that be?”

“A week, at least. Probably two, or more.”

“No way.” His took a few fast breaths. “In two weeks´ time he may have taken you somewhere else. You´d leave without telling me, wouldn´t you?”

“I´d probably have to. This is no game, Ivan.”

“You´re right, it´s no game,” he hissed. “Not to me.”

Then he was gone, out of the old creaky door and into the darkness of the hot summer night. I waited for a while, but he didn´t come back, and in the end I locked the door again. I stood in the dark, thinking about the way he felt in my arms, my heart still beating fast, and I cursed myself, unable to decide if wanting to fuck him meant I was weak and giving in to my basest instincts, or if I was being strong not giving a damn about social conventions. Me and my motives were no longer the point, however; the risks Ivan was taking were fast becoming very real.

The next evening, close to midnight, I lay in my bed with the lights out to watch the flashes of one of the anomalous storms of the season raging in the distance, too far for the thundering to be heard. The night breeze had brought in fresh air from the storm front, and the house was pleasantly cool; I would sleep under covers tonight, for the first time since the high summer had started. Ivan hadn´t yet reappeared, which was to be expected with his show of temper the previous night and Marinella´s presence in the house, but I found myself unable to focus on anything else while I was waiting for him.

I knew he´d come; after having done his duty with Marinella he´d be at my door, and the awareness of seeing him soon was like a constant low wattage charge buzzing through my body. Idly, I touched my hard-on straining against the simple white briefs that were a continuing turn-on to him, and thought of the things I´d do to the kid as soon as he arrived. Then I heard the car.

The pit of my stomach went cold with the usual adrenaline shock, and without turning the light on I moved cautiously to the window. Instead of flashing blue and red I only saw the familiar headlights of Luca´s BMW; Angelo had gotten away from Rome. My erection swelled back to full hardness, threatening to burst the seams of the white briefs, as I walked downstairs and opened the door.

It was Luca.

His eyes dropped to my bulging hard-on, and the expression on his face tightened even further, if that was possible. I quickly stepped back, and turned away while gesturing him to enter.

“Come on in,” I said, talking to him over my shoulder and aiming for the right pitch of modesty. “I was waiting for someone who lives near by. I´ll be right back.”

“Right,” I heard him say as I walked up the stairs to the second floor.

He´s going to call the police tonight, I thought. The way he looked, he won´t care if the fallout brings him down, too. This is fucking it.

Chapter 12 - Unsheltered

When I returned downstairs, wearing bermudas and acting as if my badly misplaced welcome erection had never taken place, Luca was dragging heavy plastic bags from the car into the kitchen while carefully avoiding eye contact.

“Is Angelo all right?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

“Yes.”

“Is he in Rome?”

“Yes.” Luca slammed another two bags on the kitchen table. “He´s driving around in his jeep, followed by the police.”

“Damn,” I muttered. “This is getting out of hand.”

“You said it.”

To keep myself from flinging a Barilla tomato and basil jar at him, I started putting the groceries away and offered, sincerely, “I´m really sorry that you´ve gotten involved with all this.”

He didn´t answer, but I thought I saw a sneer at the edge of my vision. Admittedly, he had plenty of good reasons to be angry with me, but the bitching was starting to get on my nerves. I delicately set the last Barilla jar into the cupboard. When I turned back, he was staring at me with a curious expression.

“Would you show me around? I´d like to see the house.”

“Sure,” I said.

I took him upstairs and showed him the bathroom, pointing at a few curious features of the architecture, then lead him to the bedrooms. He gave a fleeting glance into the provisional, unfinished one, and stepped into mine, looking around, his eyes moving from the computer to the books, and to the open cupboard where I kept my clothes. He observed the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling with refined distaste before turning to me.

“He fucks both Jan and you, doesn´t he?”

I looked surprised – I was – but for a brief moment he had read the answer in my eyes, and we both acknowledged the passing of information.

In Rome, do as Romans do. “I don´t know what you´re talking about,” I said slowly.

“You bastard. I bet you have threesomes here together.” His hands were gathering into fists.

We stood still, staring at each other across the room.

Denying the truth had been the best approach, I decided. I had done Luca a favor, making it easier for him to believe Angelo when later tonight big fists would be convincing him about Angelo never having cheated on his boyfriends. Possibly they´d even avoid a trip to the emergency room. Besides, I was sure that the only reason Luca had asked the question was to stir up another fight with Angelo; maybe their sex life had been boring lately.

I had to hand it to Luca: he was playing the part quite well, standing under the bare light bulb like a picture of triumphant, righteous indignation in expensive trousers and a retro t-shirt, and with the perfect haircut. He was very good-looking, safely beyond any caprices of personal tastes, with a sheen that more frequently comes with money than with education and eyes like two magnificent pieces of glass surrounded by a world not up to their standards. The moment of triumph was quickly passing, though. The postponed recognition that he´d have to deal with the results of his ruse was inescapably catching up with him, and there was an intimation of deeper feeling in his eyes, perhaps betrayed by their inability to fully express their owner.

“How you must have laughed at me,” he said, his full curved lips turning white.

It wasn´t true but I could only shrug, as if saying he was imagining things, but it turned out to be an unwise gesture from my part. He wasn´t going to lower himself to actually hit me, so he looked around the room, wild-eyed, and grabbed the first thing at his reach, the notebook computer lying on top of the bed. With a snarl he hurled the offending present from Angelo out of the window, but the power cord snagged and spoiled the trajectory, rather detracting from the gesture. The edge of the computer smashed a window pane before disappearing into the night and landing on something outside with an ominous, loud metallic clang.

There was a brief flicker of horror on his face as he took a step toward the window to assess the damage to his BMW, all other considerations forgotten. Then he stopped and turned back to me. His mouth opened, but not a word came out, and he marched past me and down the stairs, slamming the front door behind him. A moment later a crashing sound echoed from the front yard as he finished off the poor computer, before climbing in his car and speeding away.

I stood at the window with a sinking feeling, watching the receding flashes of brakelights as he assaulted the winding country road, and tried to figure out what would happen next. None of the possibilities looked good, and I wondered if Angelo´s fists would be able to resolve the situation this time, after the mortifying scene that had just played out. I glanced around, taking stock of what to take with me if I had to leave in a hurry. The only bag I had was an old rucksack Angelo hadn´t bothered to take back to Milan with him, and it wouldn´t hold much.

However, I struggled to believe Luca would do something to hurt Angelo outright, at least after he had calmed down a bit, and I was still hesitating whether to pack or not when I heard a familiar, cautious voice outside.

“Erik!”

It was Ivan, the little spy, undoubtedly having taken advantage of his telescope once again, and I wondered if it was time to present him with a pair of infrared night goggles. When I opened the door he was standing in the shadow of the house, studying the remains of the computer.

He glanced up at me and asked, puzzled, as he slipped in, “Was that Angelo?”

“No. That was his boyfriend.”

“The spoiled bitch?”

The kid had extracted more pillow talk information than was good for him. “I never used those words.”

“Well, I got the picture. Besides, I didn´t think it was you who threw the computer out. What happened?”

I told him everything, including the sex between me and Angelo, hoping that the knowledge would send him back to Marinella and out of the harm´s way. For a while it seemed like the plan might work, with him standing in the kitchen with his back to the sink, hands clasping at the edge of the counter and his face as pale as his knuckles. He thought it over, and when he spoke his voice was thick.

“That´s sort of like me and Marinella, isn´t it,” he said.

“Well, not really,” I answered, not at all pleased with his reasoning but unable to find a more convincing retort. “Listen, I think I should go for a long walk, just in case Luca does something stupid.”

“I´ll bring the telescope out and we set it somewhere we can see the house,” he said instantly.

“I don´t think that´s necessary,” I curbed his enthusiasm. “But I think I´ll bring some clothes, just in case.” And a bottle of lube, most definitely.

We threw some clothes and a loaf of bread into the backpack, then added a couple of tomatoes, a package of smoked ham and a bottle of spring water to fill the bag to capacity. All the while I kept an eye on Ivan, calculating the chances he´d obey me if I told him to go and leave me on my own, but the look on his face spoke clearly. I should have known better than to hook up with a teenager full of determination and enthusiasm for what he regarded as his first serious affair. With another man, at least.

Leaving the lights on, we slipped out of the door and into the shadows. Lightnings still occasionally lit up distant clouds towering over the higher mountains of the inland, and helped us dodge the ditches and occasional potholes while we walked across the fields towards the garden of his house where, Ivan claimed, he knew a perfect spot for us to keep an eye on the valley even without his precious telescope. It was near the top of the hill, within a copse of trees, and from a safe distance from the main building. As soon as we arrived, he was off to the house, and after a few minutes he returned with a blanket and a carton of ice cream, and two spoons. We settled down comfortably, soon feeding each other and giggling quietly in the dark when the ice cream ended up where it wasn’t supposed to.

I was licking away a dab of strawberry from his neck when I suddenly felt his body tense up.

Sitting up, I looked around, alarmed, and caught a glimpse of blue light in the direction of the town. Then it was gone.

“A police car,” Ivan said, almost inaudibly, his ice cream forgotten. “Probably a coincidence.”

Neither of us resumed eating, and as we sat still, in silence, I felt his hand creep into mine. The nervous, playful atmosphere had been shattered and, perhaps for the first time, he realized that the trouble coming my way was real and in the long run, inevitable. He pulled himself closer, shivering a little, and rubbed his head on my shoulder. His body was warm in the cool night air. Another car passed through the town, and then another. Neither one was flashing blue lights.

“A rush hour,” I whispered, and when the lights of the fourth one lit up the distant main street I added, “This could be it, kid.”

We waited.

“I´ll hide you in the cellar,” Ivan murmured. “No one ever goes there. You´ll be safe until tomorrow night.”

I shook my head. “If they´re really coming after me, you go back to your room and stay there.”

“Can you hear that?” Ivan asked softly.

There was a low hum in the night, from the direction of the valley. Then three dark cars emerged from the night and crept into the faint circle of light cast from the windows of Carlo´s house, and as we slowly stood up and withdrew deeper into the copse several policemen got out of the first two cars, some of them quickly disappearing behind the house. Suddenly, the headlights of several more cars approaching along the road were turned on, along with their flickering blue lights, and from the back of one of the cars already outside Carlo´s house a man let out two German shepherds.

“They´ve got sniffer dogs,” Ivan gasped.

For a second, we both stared at the scene, frozen. Then I managed to gather some of my wits.

“Go,” I ordered, turning around, but he grabbed me by the arms.

“The dogs will find you in five minutes,” he said. “Your only chance is to let me help you. You know the road behind this hill?” He didn´t wait for an answer. “Run down there. I´ll catch up with you on my scooter, the police won´t stop me when I drive by alone, and I´ll take you far enough to be safe from the dogs. There are a bunch of small roads in this area from farm to farm, they can´t block all of them.”

What he was saying made sense, but I still hesitated. This was the moment to make my decision. I could do the right thing, send the kid home and be caught; or I could continue my scramble for freedom, in ever more squalid terms, dragging Angelo and Ivan and whoever else helped me down. I was about to turn and walk back to Carlo´s house when a thought occurred to me: I hadn´t done it. I was not the murderer. A hustler, yes, and a runaway and a troublemaker, and probably not the most marvellous human being around, but not a murderer. It wasn´t my fault that the Italian police were either negligent or incompetent; if they weren´t doing their job, it was fully in other people´s rights to help me, and in mine to be helped. Even in the worst case scenario, I could hardly imagine Ivan being punished with more than a harsh reprimand if his involvement came to light. One look at him, and all the judges could do was to forgive him his youthful trustfulness. No such clemency would be extended to Angelo, however, and to keep running was to keep him from harm.

I nodded and gave Ivan a quick hug, caressing one of his cute protruding ears, and started the rush down the uneven, dark hillside. After a while there was the sound of his scooter starting, and I thought I heard a dog bark. Then one of my feet hit a shallow pothole, reaching the ground only a fraction of a second later than it should have, but the delay was enough to send an adrenaline shock through my body and I almost fell, more due to the shock than actual loss of balance. I slowed down, and headed towards the pale winding line of the dirt road barely visible in the night. The sound of Ivan´s scooter became audible once again, and soon the single headlight pierced the darkness as he appeared behind one of the hills. One look at his direction made me lose my night vision and I had to slow down again, and I realized that he´d drive by before I could reach the road. Maddeningly, I was only twenty feet from the road as he roared past, too deafened by the motor to hear my calls, and there was nothing else to be done but run after him, feeling desperate and stupid. He soon turned back, however, and his lights picked me up. I thought it wise to jump off the road and away from the beam of light as soon as I was sure he´d seen me. A few moments later I was behind him on the scooter, frantically pulling on a helmet he had handed out from the back casket, and grabbing him by the waist with one arm as he speeded up the scooter like a madman. The rutted old road was in horrible condition and we kept jouncing in all directions as he steered this way and that to avoid the worst of the potholes, and somehow he managed to keep us away from the ditches.

“Where are we going?” I yelled over the motor and the wind.

“Torre di Pisa.”

The leaning tower of Pisa? Obviously, I had heard him wrong – at least I hoped so – and unwilling to distract him with further questions tried to figure out other places that sounded somewhat similar, and in the end decided he might have meant Marina di Pisa, which made slightly more sense. I calculated it would take us at least two hours to reach the coast, depending on the route, and tried to settle as comfortably as possible on the narrow, bouncing seat.

Chapter 13 - Marina di Pisa

It was Saturday night, in the holiday month of August, and the traffic grew steadily heavier as we approached the coast. Ivan therefore judged it relatively safe to use certain stretches of main roads every now and then, even though it made us both feel horribly exposed. About an hour into the journey we entered the outskirts of a small town, keeping a wary eye on all the approaching headlights, and stopped at an automated gas station to fill the scooter up. Thankful for the emergency funds Angelo had left me, I gave Ivan two bills for the machine and stood by, stretching my legs, as he proceeded with the smelly job. Once he was finished, he pulled out a cell phone from his pocket and checked the display.

“Eleven missed calls,” he grumbled, looking worried. “My parents. I have to call them back.”

He pressed a couple of keys, and the call was answered even before he had time to lift the phone to his ear.

“I´m fine, just fine,” he said, with the appropriate amount of teenage irritation. “I´m over at Enzo´s, in Pisa, watching TV. You don´t know him. Never mind that, what´s going on?”

A truck carrying two huge concrete elements rumbled into the parking lot, contradicting Ivan´s claims about the imaginary Enzo, and he had to wait for a moment before the call could be continued. Once the driver had turned off the engine Ivan resumed the conversation, listening for a while, and then interrupted, innocently, “Oh, that was why the police stopped me?” However, hearing the answer his expression clouded, he squinted, and then a frown appeared. “No, of course not. What, you let those dogs into the house?”

His focus shifted to me from the call, even as he listened to the anxious warbling voice from the other end. The next question was for my benefit. “What did you say? The dogs ran straight into my room? Why would they do that?”

The pitch of his mother´s voice rose. “That´s what we want to know, too.” More incomprehensible talk followed.

“No. No,” Ivan answered. “If they say that, they´re crazy. No, I´m not coming home, I´m in Pisa, I don´t know Enzo´s home number.”

Someone else came on the phone, with a deeper voice. His father. I thought I heard something like “The dogs were howling around the bed, for Chrissakes-“

Ivan listened for a while, and then interrupted, “If they want to look for me, let them. I don´t care.” Now he was starting to look anxious himself, defying his own father, not an easy task for an Italian. “Listen, I have to go now-“

“He´s with you isn´t he?” This time I could hear his father´s voice quite clearly. “Is he holding you hostage?”

“Don´t be stupid,” Ivan snapped, but his face had turned pale. “I´m just fine. I have to go now. I´ll be home tomorrow morning.”

He ended the call before his father could answer, and started to push the phone back into his pocket, his hand shaking.

“Ivan, the phone leaves a trace,” I said. “When the police checks it they know where we are.”

He nodded, and was starting to turn it off when he saw the truck he hadn´t paid much attention to before.

“It has Roman licence plates,” he said contemplatively, thought about it for a second, and then pitched the phone into a hollow in one of the concrete elements. “At the rate my parents keep calling the battery will go dead pretty soon, but there should be a nice southward trace by then.”

I stared at him, impressed. “You just threw away your music collection.”

He shrugged. “I´ll download it again.”

“Ivan.” I started, gnawed my lip, knowing how stubborn the kid was. “Maybe you really should go back. If your parents think that you´ve been kidnapped they´ll go crazy with worry.”

“That´s what they´ll say,” Ivan answered with a sneer. “For the neighbors´ sake. And stop telling me what to do, thank you.”

“So what are we doing?”

“First I thought I´d take you to our boat for the night but it doesn´t seem like a good idea now,” he said unhappily, but then immediately added. “I have a plan B, though.”

“Which is?” I didn´t want to sound sceptical, but I was beginning to think we were on a dead end street and driving too fast.

“Have you ever seen anyone alone on a boat in Italy?”

I thought about it for a second, and shook my head. The images that came to my mind all pertained to white boats crammed to capacity by young men wearing speedos and usually making a lot of noise.

“I´ll call a friend,” he said, pulling on his helmet.

The apparent lack of details about his plan worried me as we took to the road again. Also, I had to get in touch with Angelo as soon as possible, supposing he hadn´t already been locked up.

The trip had taken longer than expected, and morning was drawing closer. The traffic, however, only seemed to be getting heavier and I suspected that not all the drivers had abstained from drinking. Luckily they kept the police busy enough, and the one patrol car that passed by never saw us thanks to two cars Ivan strategically wedged us in between. The sun was already lighting up the edges of the highest clouds to the east when we entered a small, pictoresque coastal town and found a functioning phone booth, a minor miracle. This time, as I waited, I didn´t take my helmet off to keep my blond hair hidden. The call itself didn´t take long but I noticed that the machine gave no coins back.

“I got Roberto on his cell phone,” he started. “He´s in Marocco with his family.”

“Damn,” I cursed. “Listen-“

“Wait,” he interrupted. “His grandmother is at home. Robbie will call her, and she´ll give us the key to the marina where their boat is moored. We can stay there for a day or two.”

“What did you tell him? Won´t he call the police as soon as the news comes out?”

“I didn´t have to tell him anything, he´s in Marocco,” Ivan reminded me. “I only implied that I needed a place where I could take a girl behind Marinella´s back.”

“The ever valid Italian excuse,” I muttered, shaking my head disapprovingly as if I could afford it. “What about the granny? She won´t even open the door if you don´t show respect and take the helmet off.”

“Right… well, I´ll tell her it´s my brother´s, and so small that it nearly rips my ears off when I put it on or take it off.”

“I don´t know about your brother but the rest of the story is no lie,” I laughed, earning a hard cuff on the side of my helmet.

Roberto´s house was only a two minutes´ drive away, an old-fashioned villa surrounded by a small but lush garden, and while I waited outside Ivan went in to charm the old lady. Soon he returned, with a wide grin and a happily jangling set of keys.

“She´s a bit addle-brained, I think,” he said with good-humored Italian straight-forwardness. “Not only did she give me the marina key, but the one to the boat as well. We can go and have a ride if there´s enough gas in the tank.”

“Won´t the marina janitor, or whatever his title is, call the police when a boat disappears?”

“First he´ll call the granny, and she´ll say that everything´s all right,” Ivan answered.

“Are you sure?”

“If we stay holed in the boat it´ll look more suspicious than taking it out,” Ivan reasoned. “And we´ll get a sunstroke hiding in the cabin all day.”

“True.”

Still, the idea of going pleasure-boating while half the police force of the country was chasing us seemed a bit outlandish. On the other hand, frolicking in the sea would hardly be what was expected of us, and to spend the afternoon slowly rogering Ivan in the cabin, with all the rope one was sure to have available on a boat, and no one within earshot, was not an invitation easily turned down. Besides, if the shore patrol caught us in the act, with Ivan helplessly tied up, no further proof of his innocence would be necessary.

We found an open bar and bought a cache of food, and got some change for me to call Angelo. Back at the phone booth I put a call through to the emergency number Angelo had given me. Thankfully, the cell phone number was working, but it rang several times before Jan answered sounding sleepy and alarmed at the same time.

“Jan, this is a friend of Angelo´s,” I started, but he interrupted me right away.

“He told me that… eh, someone, might call and leave a message.” His voice was suddenly quite friendly, and I remembered our first and only meeting in the villa by the lake and on what a different footing we´d been then.

“Great… listen, would you tell him to meet me tomorrow, that´s Monday, in the pine woods near the bars at midnight? The bars - he´ll know what I´m talking about.”

“All right,” Jan answered, sounding a little puzzled.

“If either one can´t be there on Monday, I´ll be there on Tuesday at the same time,” I added quickly.

“I´ll tell him,” Jan promised. “I hope to see you soon. Take care.”

We began the last leg of the ride, leaving the town behind, and soon I noticed that there were unmistakable glimpses of rippling blue water in between copses of trees to the right side of the road.

“What´s that?” I shouted over the wind, pointing at the water. “Not the sea already?”

“The river Arno,” Ivan yelled back.

I was somewhat stunned by the answer, and nearly dropped the heavy shopping bag I was holding between us. The River Arno, whose almost holy waters, albeit rather polluted ones, had run under the Ponte Vecchio in Florence probably only yesterday, and here we were obliviously riding a scooter right next to it as if it were little more than just another ditch. Traveling in Italy was tricky business; ask an innocent question and the answer is likely to contain words such as Michelangelo, Giotto, or Vestal Virgins.

Then Ivan slowed down, his head scanning the riverside trees and bushes, apparently looking for a hiding place for the scooter. Suddenly a salty sea breeze penetrated into my helmet, and delivered the wave of exhilaration that the first smell of sea always brings. Ahead of us, above another copse of luscious trees, I could now see the edge of a forest of gently swaying white masts. Ivan found a place he judged safe enough, and after drudging the scooter into a thicket across a narrow field, hoping that the two cars that passed by in the meanwhile didn´t find our actions alarmingly odd, we headed for the marina. The gate was still locked this early in the morning, and after seeing we had the key the only person about, an expensively groomed tall man tinkering with the ropes of his sailboat, didn´t ask us any questions despite quizzically following us with his eyes. Under his watchful gaze Ivan lead us to the motorboat, and jumped on board.

The boat had looked deceptively small from the outside, as I discovered that the cabin nevertheless had room for two beds and a tiny kitchen, and a cleverly hidden toilet. Despite the size the only correct word for the vehicle was yacht, with its white streamlined shape, enough room on the front deck for sunbathing, and the back designed for an easy descent into water for a swim. The chromed railings were spotless, and the whole thing gleamed with almost blinding brightness in the early morning sun. We ducked into the cabin and pulled off our helmets with a sigh of relief, but there was not enough time to start fussing with the groceries.

“How are we going to get out of here with that snoop out there?” I asked.

“We´ll improvise,” Ivan answered, familiar with the boat.

He rummaged through a series of minuscule cupboards and came up with a dusty baseball cap, a whitish rag that had clearly been used for cleaning the kitchen and perhaps something nastier as well, and a pair of sunglasses so old that the lenses were scratched useless. In the process he also found a black-and-white portable TV set, with a five-inch screen.

“You go sunbathing on the front deck-“ he started.

“What are you saying?” I interrupted, uncomprehending and shocked by the mere idea of exposing myself publicly after the weeks spent inside the farmhouse.

“Boat thieves don´t sunbathe at work,” Ivan explained. “We cover your hair with the rag, and these sunglasses are so large that I bet they belong to Roberto´s mother. If no one can see her wrinkles with these, they won´t recognize you either.”

“All right, you´re the expert on boat behavior,” I agreed warily as he tried on the baseball cap, pulling it down to cover his face.

Once my disguise was ready, including bare chest, Ivan switched on the motor, ran a quick checklist including the amount of gas we had, and told me to step outside and give him instructions lest we hit the jetty and attract our relentlessly curious neighbor. Careful to keep my back towards him, I managed to guide us away from the quayside, and as we inched our way towards the center of Arno I gave a friendly wave at the man, and climbed on the glamorous although uncomfortably curving front deck. As soon as we were safely out of the harbor I´d plug in the TV and find out all the details of my latest dasdardly deeds, wondering which crime received longer sentence in Italy, murder or kidnapping and statutory rape of someone who was most likely still a minor.

Chapter 14 - Torre del Lago

The wind was blowing straight in from the sea, letting rough waters make their way into the river estuary through the opening in the brakewater. The boat bounced up and down, spraying me with the cool white foam flying off the tops of the waves as they were slashed by the bow, and with each passing swell the electric hollow rollercoaster feeling in the pit of my stomach was switched on and off. Ahead of us, the sea turned into a brilliant turquoise as if underneath the water the seabed itself was glowing with light, and then farther along suddenly darkened into a deep fathomless blue that I´d always found unsettling. Even now my heart beat a little faster with the thought of us gliding recklessly hundreds of yards above the invisible, dark sea bottom, with only an insubstantial and treacherous liquid sustaining us from the deathly, mysterious depths. To shake off these thoughts I scampered back to Ivan, shedding my disguise of rags and ´70s sunglasses and trying not to fall overboard.

“Do we have enough gas to get to Torre del Lago?” I asked, dropping down on the seat next to him.

He made some quick mental calculations, and nodded. “Not enough to get back, though. Why?”

“I´m meeting Angelo there tomorrow at midnight.”

We had cleared the wavebreaker and he steered the boat to the north, but a frown was deepening between his eyebrows.

“What is it?” I asked, even if I already knew what was bringing him down.

“Is that where you´re planning to dump me?”

Overcome by the feeling in his voice, I stood up and hugged him tightly from behind.

“I´m not going to dump you,” I answered, my voice sufficiently convincing now that he couldn´t see my expression. “We´ll decide together what´s the best thing to do.”

I felt him relax in my arms. “We better.”

I should have gone into the cabin to put away the groceries before the choppy sea ground them into pulp, and to hook up the TV, but these were going to be the last two days I´d ever see Ivan. I remained standing behind him, kissing his smooth neck and my hands resting on the narrow muscular waist, while my skipper manouvered the boat ever farther from the shoreline.

“Why Torre del Lago?”

“Angelo took me there last summer,” I explained. “There´s a gay beach, a few gay clubs, and a gay cruising area in the pinewoods behind the beach. That´s where I´ll – we´ll – meet him because it´s dark and safe.”

“Gay pinewoods? At night? That´s safe?” Ivan seemed alarmed with all three concepts, each more worrying than the previous one.

“Well,” I hesitated, “perhaps it´s better if I go there alone.”

“No.” He shook off my hands. “I´m in trouble already, have been since yesterday, and now I´ve practically stolen this boat for you. So what difference does it make if I stay with you a little longer? Why do you keep selling me short?”

“Because every minute you spend with me you´re getting deeper into that trouble. It´s just not right.”

“I´ll be the judge of that. I´m not a little kid, you know? I can decide for myself.”

“Can you, I mean legally? Are you really eighteen like you said?”

He didn´t answer.

“Ivan…” I said, laying my hands on his shoulders, half expecting him to shake them off this time as well. My erection was pushing painfully against the leg of my pants, and as the boat swayed he could feel it press against his back. “I don´t think the Italian law is as strict as American, but when they catch me I´ll probably get the local equivalent of death penalty for what I´ve done to you.”

“But you´ve done nothing wrong!”

“You didn’t think so the night we first met.” I slipped my hand under his t-shirt, my fingertips tracing the curves of his taut abdominals.

“No one will ever know about that.”

“Let´s see what they do know. I´ll check if the TV works.”

The abbreviated early morning news were on, and as expected we were the main headline. Ivan couldn´t hear the commentary to where he was standing, and I had to relay it to him over the wind and the low groan of the motor. Through the cabin door, I could only see his legs and the lump of his groin, and the smooth hard curve of the muscles of his belly when the wind occasionally picked up the waist of his t-shirt. We´d have to find a place to anchor the boat soon.

“The call was anonymous,” I called out to him, relieved that Luca had at least had the common sense of not to implicate himself and Angelo. “They say I´d left the house only moments before their arrival, and – wait – happened to catch you riding your scooter alone and abducted you. And you´re just barely seventeen.”

Unfazed by the revelation, Ivan called back, “Why not steal just the scooter? Why me, too?”

“Wait – they´re saying that you´re exceptionally attractive – here´s the photo, they´re right – and I´m a sick murderous pervert, and there should be death penalty in Italy for certain crimes.”

Despite my dismissive version of the newscast I couldn´t help a rush of the old familiar panic, but smiled nevertheless when I heard the urgency in Ivan´s voice.

“Which photo?” he called. “Was it good?”

“Yes, very good,” I reassured him. Brutta figura was the worst thing imaginable to an Italian. “Here´s more of them, you´ll soon be as famous as I am.”

His family hadn´t provided only the best photos in the family album, there was a statement as well. “They´re asking me to let you go, and not to harm you…”

“Are they on TV?” Ivan took a quick peek into the cabin.

“No, not yet, it´s just a written plea.” I listened to some more. “They think we might be in Rome, your phone trick worked.”

He sneaked a quick look into the cabin again, smiling proudly. The last piece of information the newsdesk had was that the owner of the house – Carlo´s name wasn´t mentioned – was living abroad and the authorities hadn´t been able to reach him yet. I wondered how long it would take for the police to connect Carlo and Angelo, and if the fact would be sufficiently incriminating to throw Angelo into jail. Then the newscast was over, promising live coverage with ´an expert panel´ starting at nine. Out of Ivan´s sight I sat on the berth, my head resting on my hands, as I tried to figure a way out for my friends. It was useless, of course, as even giving myself up wouldn´t now stop the investigation no matter what lies I told the police. Furthermore, the agonizing moment when I´d have to leave Ivan was inexorably moving closer at seemingly increasing speed, as if the time itself was accelerating, and I still had no idea how to make it happen. No amount of reasonable talk would sway him; in the end I´d have to resort to something vile.

There were no secluded bays in this part of the coast, but we anchored the boat near the shore in front of a wide swath of forest with only a barely visible strip of a beach beneath the trees. A few other boats had chosen the same area but as all of us had done it for privacy´s sake none of them came alarmingly close, and in fear of powerful binoculars we always wore sunglasses and headgear when out in sight, even while swimming. We splashed like two children, had sex, napped, devoured sandwiches, had sex again. Every now and then I caught him staring at me coldly, aware of the impending betrayal, but the stare always melted into a smile and an embrace with the certainty that he´d outwit me when the moment came. In the meanwhile, the TV news and commentary went from bad to worse as there was no word from Ivan to his parents, and by the time we woke up on Monday morning the whole country believed I´d done away with him and dumped the body in the sea in Ostia, or in certain more pictoresque versions into the river Tiber in the very outskirts of Rome after repeatedly having had my way with him. Ivan´s parents kept asking for silenzio stampa, which the news organizations naturally ignored; Ivan was far too good-looking, perfect for the role of the innocent, and there was much emphasis on his age. Marinella was interviewed by the Berlusconi´s flagship Channel 5, Ivan´s schoolmates and cousin by RaiUno, and the lesser characters of the drama by the equally lesser channels. At first we made fun of the newscasts, although somewhat awkwardly, and then stopped commenting on them altogether as the more vicious pundits took over.

Late in the Monday evening we had our last swim, reluctantly scampered back onboard, our spirits dampened and heavy, and soon before sunset Ivan switched on the motor. His eyes shimmered in the last warm rays of the sun as he looked at me, there was a twitch to the side of his mouth, and I had to turn away to clear the sudden lump in my throat. The night fell; the pinpoints of light of the coast slowly slid past us as the digital numbers of the GPS display clicked closer to the location neither of us wanted to reach. Then, inevitably, I recognized the lights of Torre del Lago and the flurry of people crowding the beachfront bars, and the night breeze carried the music to us over the water. It was already ten past eleven, and we didn´t have time to find a proper place for the boat. Protected by darkness, Ivan took us as close to the shore as he dared, anchored the boat, and we took off our clothes and stashed them into the plastic bag along with our money. The water felt cold as I slipped in, holding the bag high above my head, closely followed by Ivan.

“What if someone rams into the boat,” I asked him, bobbing in the waves and looking back at the dark hulk silhoutted against the night sky.

“No one will, I think this is a restricted area because of the beach,” he answered, kicking water next to me. “And it´s too close to the shore anyway.”

I felt his warm hand touch my arm underwater, and we turned and swam towards the lights and the noisy, happy crowd.

Chapter 15 - Cruising and eavesdropping

Perhaps two hundred feet of dunes and dried out grass separated the sea from the road and the bars, and a tall hedge running along the road provided further protection from curious eyes. We stood in the shadows for a while, waiting for the humid night breeze from the sea to at least partially dry us, and started then awkwardly to pull on our clothes. A couple, holding hands, walked by but paid no attention to two people in partial state of undress, no doubt their minds occupied by similar plans. The wind picked up a few words of their murmur, and I tensed up alarmed when I thought I heard them mention Ivan´s name although they couldn´t possibly have recognized us in the dark. I must have heard wrong, and even if I hadn´t, it wasn´t such an unusual name in Italy after all.

Completely lost, never having been to Torre del Lago, Ivan grabbed my hand as we stumbled across the dunes towards the dead end of the seafront road where, after the last two gay bars, the cruising area began. I had remembered the place correctly; there was enough light from the stars and the bars to make it possible to see people´s outlines but not their faces. A sandy track snaked its way from the road to a clearing at the edge of the pine forest where it split into a number of paths leading into the darkness, rather like Medea´s hair, and black shapes were slowly drifting about, trying to figure out their peers´ vital numbers by the few visible cues available. The low thump of bass from the nearest bar pervaded the air, like a quick heartbeat. Ivan´s wristwatch, with its brief blue glow, indicated 11:36pm.

“Are they really having sex in there,” he murmured into my ear, incredulous and rather excited.

“Yes they are,” I answered, pulling him close and slipping my tongue into his mouth. His lips were still a bit salty with seawater, and as I licked them clean I felt his body respond. “It´s not midnight yet,” I added suggestively.

For a moment he thought I was being serious, and let out a little gasp with the idea of plunging into the darkness where anything might happen.

Perhaps it was better to reassure him. “We don´t have time, Angelo´s probably here already.”

I explained him that one of the paths from the clearing went straight through the forest to a road where people parked their cars when they came to the beach during daytime, and that was the most likely route we´d take with Angelo. He´d be relatively easy to recognize even as a mere dark outline, with his height and muscles. After a couple of minutes no one matching him walked by, however, and every now and then I had to display the not so subtle signs of disinterest when someone veered close by to see if either one of us was worth a try. Ivan was too curious and excited to send out the proper signals, so I was constantly pegged as the nasty jealous lover. Now that we were doing little else but standing still, the air started feeling cold, and the humidity seeping in from the sea seemed to be condensing everywhere. Each time I shifted my feet, clammy blades of grass tickled my ankles like a myriad of cold steel knives. A couple, deep in conversation, walked towards the clearing from the bars and unwilling to interrupt their gossiping stopped not far from us before entering the woods. This time I was certain I heard them mention my name – there weren´t too many Eriks around in Italy – and I gave Ivan a nudge, to surreptitiously move us a few steps closer. One of the speakers had a short haircut that made his head resemble a frequently nodding dark box.

“No one believes it´s a coincidence,” he said dismissively to his more average-shaped friend. “Of course the kid arranged for the house, they must have known each other already in Milan.”

“I don´t know,” the other hesitated. “I mean, an underage dumb kid like that…”

I could feel Ivan stiffen with indignation next to me.

“He´s seventeen, that´s old enough,” the box boy replied. “If my neighbors had had a kid like that I´d have ended up in jail, too. Have you seen the photos?”

“I sure have.”

“And guess what I heard just this week? A friend of mine has a friend who has a gay friend at the police, and they have a big problem with fingerprints.”

“What kind of problem?” the other one said, almost matching my own interest, despite the weak hearsay connection.

“OK, this a secret, they don´t want anyone to know because it would mess up the investigation,” the nodding box said lowering his voice, as if he hadn´t already told the story innumerable times during the evening, and I lost the beginning before I managed to move a little closer.

“…the prints on the gate and the front door. I mean, how is that possible? It was Gabriele´s house, he was at home, but there was not a single fingerprint of his on the door handles!”

I could feel Ivan´s hand grab my arm, almost convulsively.

“That´s weird,” the friend said, impressed.

“There were only Dario´s and Erik´s prints, you know, Dario the guy who found him? And that bumbling police officer´s, the one who entered first.”

It was disconcerting to hear strangers use my name with such familiarity, as if we´d been friends for ages.

The box continued, “So what they think is that someone may have wiped the door handles before Erik went in.” He paused to let the implications sink in, before finishing, “So the two made-up thugs Angelo reported to the police really were there. I guess they didn´t want to alarm Gabriele, walking in already wearing murder gloves.”

“Why aren´t they telling this?”

“They have no other evidence, none, and it won´t stand in court. And it´s Gabriele Zaigler, for heaven´s sake! Why would those two thugs have been there? Think about it for just a second!”

“The mafia money laundering,” his friend said darkly.

“Exactly. Remember what happened with the Giulio Andreotti trial?”

I had no idea who Giulio Andreotti was, but the friend let out a knowing snort, and then added, “Everybody in the bar was talking about the Bonamici divorce.”

“Who´s Bonamici,” I whispered into Ivan´s ear very cautiously, even if the box boy already knew quite well he had an audience, and Ivan responded with two high-end brand names, quite well-known internationally.

The boxer let out a wicked chuckle. “He´s not the only one. There´s Cipriani – that right-wing member of the Milan city council – and,” there was a pause for effect, “Ricucci.”

“No,” was the flabbergasted answer. “The president of the Lombardy region?”

“Right. And they´re from the same political party, by the way. But everyone already knew he´s a closet case.”

“I didn´t.”

“His number wasn´t found on Erik´s phone, he´s too smart for that, but the police traced his calls just the same.”

I was sort of taken aback by the news. I had no idea who these men were, couldn´t match the names with faces, but the titles sounded rather impressive anyway. The box mentioned two other men, but when I turned to Ivan he could only shrug in the darkness. Disappointingly, not all my clients were household names.

“So maybe he´s not guilty after all,” the other guy mused.

“Of course he´s not,” the box boy snapped. “But he´ll get convicted anyway. And I´m so bored with the whole story, that´s all everyone´s been talking about the whole night and the whole summer, blah blah blah. And there are so many curious people, too,” he added, with a poignant glance at our direction.

The friends parted ways and proceeded into the woods, to opposite directions, to make sure they wouldn´t unwittingly perform fellatio on each other under the dark trees.

“Did you hear that,” Ivan said, excited.

“I did, and he´s right, I´ll get convicted if Angelo doesn´t show up soon.”

It was ten past midnight already, and knowing Angelo he would have been here already had been able to make it.

“How long will the boat be safe where it is?” I asked Ivan.

“I have no idea,” he answered nervously. “But I´d guess until Coast Guard sees it in radar.”

After a while, Ivan whispered, “I need to go for a pee,” and hesitantly disappeared into the nearest thicket.

I was left standing alone and suddenly all the men walking by slowed down as they passed by and, after some scrutiny, stepped closer. I turned my back but didn´t want to move away, to make sure Ivan would find me, and then one of them walked right in front of me and encouraged either by drink or a joint snapped his lighter on at close range. Seeing my face his eyes first widened and he started to smile, but soon the smile turned into a puzzled frown, exactly like Ivan´s when he had seen me for the first time by the pool, and then he gasped, taking a step backwards. My first instict had been to punch him out cold, but not being a habitual fighter I suspected it wouldn´t happen as quickly and elegantly as on TV, and would more likely result in him lying on the ground with a bloody nose, screaming for help, and me nursing a couple of broken bones in my hand, probably screaming almost as loudly as he would. So I smiled.

The effect was remarkable. Horror-struck, the man dropped the lighter and took two tentative steps back, almost stumbling in the sudden darkness, and gasped again.

“It´s he- him,” he cried out thinly. “Erik - Erik Loefgren! He´s here!”

As he turned and fled, a voice called out from the bushes, “And I´ve got Prince Harry´s dick in my mouth!”

Ivan was instantly back, grabbing my arm, pulling me this way and that, unsure where we should go, to the boat or into the woods, and I was just about to turn to the direction where we´d left the boat when a tall figure strode towards us across the clearing.

“It´s me,” Angelo rumbled with his low unmistakable voice. “This way.”

Hanging onto his coattails, figuratively speaking, we rushed into the darkness and towards the road on the other side of the forest. Soon all light from the bars was left behind and the tall pitch-black trees crowded closer to us, leaving only a narrow path of stars above as our guide, and we had to slow down to an agitated octogenarian pace.

“Sorry I was late,” Angelo said, his hand pressing on my shoulder. “There had been an accident on the Autostrada near Perugia, and we were completely stuck for an hour.”

“We?”

“Jan is waiting in the car,” he said, almost stepping off the path in his hurry. “Where have you been since you left the house?”

“Ivan stole a yacht.”

“What?” Angelo shot a glance backwards, despite the darkness, and the tone of his voice changed. “Wait – he´s still here with us?”

“Of course I am,” Ivan answered, but I could tell he´d been taken aback by Angelo´s tone.

“Ivan, you can´t come along,” Angelo said, stopping to glare back at me. “I thought that was clear.”

“It´s not, and if I go back the police will get their hands on me in half an hour,” Ivan stated firmly, having regained his self-assurance. “The friends of that fool back there will believe him, and sooner or later they´ll call the police, but they won´t have any proof without me.”

Except for the boat, I thought, but said nothing. I knew Ivan wouldn´t back down, and trying to convince him would be a lengthy waste of time with someone like Angelo who wasn´t accustomed having his authority questioned, especially by a teenager. Unwilling to verbally confirm Ivan´s half-truth, I gave Angelo a shove and got him moving.

“Accomplice to kidnapping a minor, then,” he grumbled.

“You can´t be charged with anything if I say I came along willingly,” Ivan said at Angelo´s back.

There was no reply, and undoubtedly another clash would ensue as soon as we reached the car. But when we finally left the forest behind and scampered to the road I got a surprise: instead of a car, Angelo had brought a small camper van.

“Let´s get in before anyone can see us,” he said, with a sharp glance at Ivan as he let us in.

Jan was waiting for us, in the passenger seat, and only gave us a nod with a hint of a serious smile as he recognized me. Angelo walked around the car, got on, and started the ignition.

“Get on the floor where no one can see you,” he ordered, backing the car on the road from under the trees.

There was a tiny kitchen area, complete with a table surrounded by wide couch-like seats on three sides, a door that probably lead into a claustrophobically small toilet, hopefully with a shower, and a living-room area with barely enough room for another couch. Up, above Angelo and Jan, was a ledge fitted with a queen-size bed. With some prodding I discovered that the mattress of the couch next to us could be pulled out, and I set it on the floor. Ivan flopped down next to me and we lay back in silence, watching the street lights flicker by, casting odd moving shadows inside the van.

“Where did you get this thing?” I asked after a few minutes when I thought I saw Angelo´s shoulders relax a little.

“An old college friend of mine from Rome rented it for us.”

“Has there been any – trouble? With the police I mean,” I added quickly, not wanting to discuss Luca yet.

“I was questioned for half an hour in Questura on Sunday,” Angelo answered over his shoulder. “In the middle of the afternoon, so I couldn´t go to the beach.”

“Right, the worst thing imaginable,” I said. “Why only half an hour?”

“The whole thing was organized just for appearance´s sake. With the alibi Luca gave me I´m pretty much untouchable.”

“I see.” Again, I wondered about Luca´s family connections, and since it had been Angelo to bring up his name I asked, “And where´s he now?”

Angelo shrugged. “The twerp flew to Miami, or New York, I forget which, after I acted sweet and comprehending and refused to beat him into pulp.”

“That´s so cruel of you.”

Ivan glanced at me, at loss. Jan was staring ahead, sphinx-like, as if he hadn´t been listening at all.

“What about Carlo?” I asked. “What happens when they find out you know him?”

“I called and warned him. He´ll forget to mention my name.”

“I heard that many people believe I organized the safe house,” Ivan intervened, his campaign to win Angelo over getting in first gear. “That´ll make things easier until Erik´s been cleared, won´t it?”

Briefly lit by a passing streetlight, Jan glanced back at Ivan with an inscrutable expression that could have been anything from suspicion to lust. I was startled with the idea, but then, it would only be natural if Jan and Ivan hit it off. Despite the more pressing matters at hand, the thought lead me to speculate about the sleeping arrangements.

“I´ve heard that one, too,” Angelo conceded. “It does help, for the time being. In the end the truth will come out, though.”

“The later, the better,” Ivan said, relieved by the fact that he´d been deigned with an answer.

I´d forgotten how intimidating Angelo could be, and wondered if Jan´s silence had something to do with it.

“So, where are we going?” I asked.

“Gallipoli.”

“Where´s that?”

“In Puglia,” Ivan informed me helpfully. “The heel of Italy.”

“Jan´s friends will pick you up there on Ferragosto, from a beach,” Angelo said, glancing at his side.

Jan gave him a silent nod, but then found it necessary to add, “Some people my friends know.”

“And take me where?”

“Abroad.”

“I´ve heard about that country, but I´m not quite sure where it is,” I quipped.

“We aren´t either. Not yet,” was Angelo´s reply.

Great, I thought, but said nothing to avoid offending Jan who was, after all, putting his neck on the line.

It was an odd way to travel, lying on a soft mattress on the floor of a house, sort of. Then the procession of street lights vanished as Angelo took us to some small country road, and Ivan snuggled up closer to me. His presence remained a brief comfort, however, as it crossed my mind that these were the only friends I had in this world, and Ferragosto and the Gallipoli beach were now less than a week away. I had every reason to believe that Jan´s contacts, not friends as he had pointed out himself, were the same people who forced their human cargo into the black nighttime sea at gunpoint whenever Guardia Costiera intervened; men, women and children alike, with no concern whether they could swim or not. I resolved to carry some kind of a weapon on board, given the fact that my simple disappearence would remove any risk the traffickers might face. The headlights of a car going the opposite direction briefly glared into the interior of the van, and I realized Jan´s head was no longer in sight, lowered somewhere below the back of the wide single front seat, and there was a hint of a lazy smile I recognized on Angelo´s lips.

Chapter 16 - Ghost town

For the next three nights, we drove slowly and painstakingly towards south, high along the mountain range that runs like a backbone the whole length of Italy. We kept to the smallest country roads, driving only at night, and spent the days hiding in out-of-the-way areas in high altitude where there was less chance of running into people. Angelo had stacked the van with food but we still needed gas and water for the camper´s tanks, and when we stopped at small town garages only Jan left the car to take care of the transactions while the rest of us waited inside, with curtains drawn, hoping that the garage owners weren´t curious enough to come snooping around.

The first night we only got as far to the south as Umbria, past the city of Assisi, and as the sun rose we found a copse of trees that shielded us from a few distant farmhouses. I hadn´t realized how maddeningly crowded Europe was; the continent was so crammed with towns and villages that there was almost no trace left of the wide open spaces that I´d grown up with in Texas, and only up in the mountains there were still areas that were relatively uninhabited. The air was fresh, too, which was fortunate as keeping the air conditioning off allowed us to make fewer stops for fuel.

We spent the day either sleeping or hanging around close to the camper, ready to duck in and drive away if anyone seemed to approach our little forest. In between long naps we cooked pasta and talked, but somewhat surprisingly Jan and Ivan weren´t hitting it off. They regarded each other warily, and the little conversation they had among themselves was stilted.

And, of course, we watched the news. Until 11 a.m. none of the channels had nothing new to say, only meaningless updates on the chase of the heinous child kidnapper – namely me – but we knew our luck wasn´t goint to last. By noon the connection between the abandoned boat owned by Ivan´s friend, Roberto, and the rumor about the cruising area sighting were starting to leak, and this time it was the never squeamish Italia Uno channel which breathlessly reported the news first. It didn´t really matter if the story turned out to be false later during the day as Italia Uno had no credibility left to lose, their headline news most nights consisting of psychics working for the Italian police and Channel 5 showgirls´ latest boot fashions. Obviously, they didn´t much bother with a boring old stolen boat; the dish consisted of me hunting new victims in a forest notorious of nightly gay orgies, only minutes after having murdered Ivan and thrown his body to sharks. An hour later the more reputable news channels joined in on the fray, and Channel 5 was already inteviewing Roberto´s sweetly befuddled grandmother when the police from Milan arrived to question her.

“He was so friendly,” she kept protesting, apparently thinking it had been me, hiding behind the helmet, to have picked up the keys. “I can´t believe he just went and killed that boy.”

She was followed by a famous Christian Party MP, interviewed in front of a church. “This proves beyond doubt that in our country there is a powerful clandestine gay mafia that stops at nothing to protect their own. Every parent should be concerned what may happen to their children if these attempts to legalize homosexual marriage should be successful.”

Ivan scoffed at the TV set, and Jan regarded the ranting MP with his usual imperturbability.

“These people shall be punished for their crimes!” the MP had time to declare before the discussion in the studio turned back into the more titillating possibilities of the gay cruising area.

“I told you so,” I said to Jan. “You´re going to get into trouble over this.”

He glanced up to me, wide-eyed. “But Mr. Judge, I´m only seventeen. I was psychologically manipulated into submission.”

“Psychologically?” Angelo asked, his eyes lingering over my crotch. “I can tell he´s manipulating you right now.” He turned to Jan. “I think we should go for a walk.”

The second night the kids rode in the back, sprawled on the mattress on the floor and exchanging a few words sporadically, while I took the navigator´s seat and Angelo drove as usual. He kept ribbing my map-reading abilities while refusing to acknowledge that his countrymen had forgotten to put up half of the roadsigns, and his eyes looked very dark in the dashboard lights whenever he glanced at me. We both knew it was going to happen, sooner or later; we´d never been able to spend more than a couple of hours together without ending up in bed or the nearest secluded spot, which had once included a dressing room at the Emporio Armani store while trying on speedos, with a salesguy Angelo had once fucked closing an eye in exchange for having his workday lightened up by a quick show of Angelo´s speedo-wrapped hard-on, and a chance to adjust it to confirm that the size of the swimsuit really was way too small.

We reached the Molise region before morning, without incidents of any kind, and after the third night of driving we were down in Basilicata. Puglia, our destination, wasn´t far away, and we had three more leisurely days to drive the length of the “heel” of Italy down to Gallipoli. Then, in the early morning light, we chanced upon a ghost town.

Built of old, weathered and now partly moss-covered and slowly crumbling stone, the small town seemed to have grown out of earth on its own accord. The winding mountain road gradually turned into a street, and lost its way among the narrow, maze-like alleys. All the glass panes and shutters were long gone, and the empty black windows gave me an unsettling feeling of someone watching us as the van came to a halt in the small central piazza. Amazingly, proving the quality of past workmanship, a fountain still disgorged a narrow stream of water into a moss-filled basin. Looking around, we judged that the last inhabitants had moved away, either emigrating to North or the New World, or to the more fertile coast close by, at least fifty years earlier. Far in the distance, across a valley, a piece of a busy road could be seen. The place was perfect for spending a couple of days to wind down before the last leg of the drive, and it was a recipe for disaster.

As we prepared the breakfast, before going to sleep for the day, I noticed Jan throwing one of his sphinx-like yet inquisitive glances every now and then towards me and Angelo. Ivan, on the other hand, of more trusting nature, didn´t seem to notice the tension. I tried to avoid being alone with Angelo as much as I could; after all the things Ivan had done for me I couldn´t imagine anything more rotten that cheating on him. Furthermore, for the last couple of days, a lot had been said on TV about the fact that the bloodhounds had run straight into his room, “drooling and howling” around his bed, and there had been less and less talk of kidnapping although he wasn´t being directly accused of complicity yet. There were easier ways to come out than on national television, amidst the irated public denials by your own family, and I could tell it was weighing on him heavily.

We were munching on thick, crusty slices of Sicilian bread, with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, when the morning news came on TV. The headline item was the prefect of Rome declaring in an impromptu press conference that Angelo had violated the request to remain in town, and coudn´t be found in Milan either, contrary to the reports of his friends who claimed that tired of the media attention Angelo had left Rome merely to get back home. Then it was Ivan´s turn to take a beating: “there was firm evidence of physical relationship” with the “known murderer”. It didn´t take much imagination to see that within hours he´d be an official accomplice.

Trying to lighten up the atmosphere, Angelo quipped, “Bonnie, could you pass the bread?” but Ivan wasn´t ready to joke about it, and Angelo quickly apologized after seeing his expression.

The car was too hot to sleep in, and so we dragged mattresses into two houses which looked as if they might not collapse on us as soon as someone sneezed. Ivan was biting his lip, to keep himself from crying I suspected, while we set up our little camp for the last time. Once we left this place it would be time to part, and he´d be alone, with a hell of consequences to pay. And Channel 5 having found – or paid – two of his former classmates to tell on air, at the end of the newscast, that they´d always considered him “a bit queer” certainly didn´t help. The house smelled musty, but it was cool inside, and I cradled Ivan in my arms as we ducked under the covers.

It was already early evening with the summer sun close to the horizon when I woke up. The slanted golden rays entered the room through the empty windows, slowly creeping along the grey weathered stones of the walls, and the air felt uncomfortably warm. I looked by my side and saw that Ivan wasn´t awake yet, having slept poorly all day long, and I carefully extracted his arm wrapped around my chest and stood up. He remained asleep, face flushed and his full lips slightly open, and looking younger than ever. I cursed myself, once again, for having dragged him into this mess. Quietly I left the room, and entered the central piazza. Outside, the high mountain wind was pleasantly cool, and I quickly grabbed some breakfast and had a makeshift shower under the fountain stream. Ivan was still asleep, there was no sign of Angelo and Jan, and I decided to explore the old, derelict town.

Despite the neglect, or perhaps because of it, the place actually looked magnificent. Narrow, stone-paved street and the houses seemed so much part of the landscape that they almost appeared camouflaged, and occasional wild trees, breaking through a crack in the street and slowly but inexorably displacing the adiacent slabs of stone, only accentuated the impression. The empty black windows were spooky, though, and when I heard something akin a soft, echoing wail I stopped, my heart thumping, and tried to smile at myself for having immediately thought of some ghostly presence from the past, haunting the abandoned town. It´s just the wind, passing through the hollow, old crumbling houses, I told myself.

After a few steps, however, I heard the sound again. This time, it had sounded distinctly more human, and I could even make out the direction it had come from. Worried, I walked faster towards the house I thought it had come from, and stopped at the empty doorway, peering into the shadows.

The building might have been a stall originally, but the elements, scouring the place for decades, had carried away any trace of animal presence. A line of three worn-out wooden pillars ran along the center of the room, and between two of them, secured by two leather belts tied around his wrists, arms stretched out to their full length, naked Jan was held in kneeling position. Behind him, looking shockingly tall and muscular next to the much smaller boy, Angelo was crouched on his knees, one hand holding a tight fistful of Jan´s hair, pulling his head back. The other hand was placed on the boy´s abdominals to keep him in place while Angelo, with a slow deliberation, thrusting forward with his narrow, muscular hips, forced another inch of his massive hard-on in between Jan´s tensed buttocks. Only the topmost third of the thick, veined shaft had already slipped in; there was still a long way to go before full penetration. The boy let out another cry, pleading Angelo to stop.

I stood still, transfixed by the sight. Neither of them moved for a moment, and then, noticing the shadow I was casting into the room, Angelo slowly turned to look at me. Our eyes locked as his grip on Jan´s hair tightened, pulling the boy´s head further back, and this time, no longer satisfied with the slow progress, he thrust several inches of his hard dick into the quivering boy in one graceful move. Jan wailed, and a sheen of sweat broke out all over his body.

Only after taking the first step I realized I was walking towards them, and Angelo, never taking his eyes from mine, pushed Jan´s head forward to my direction. His other hand moved up from Jan´s abs, cupped the boy´s jaw, and pulled his mouth wide open. I stopped in front of them, undid the buttons of my shorts, and slipped my rock-hard dick into Jan´s gaping mouth. The soft, wet lips closed around the pulsing shaft, and his swirling tongue went straight for the sweet spot under the crown. I groaned, and my knees almost buckled with the intense pleasure that shot through my body. Then he swallowed the entire length of my cock, an impressive feat, and I felt the muscles of his throat convulse around the shaft in choked wail as Angelo drove his hard-on to the hilt. Jan could do nothing to stop us as we fucked him, trading places several times, teasing and stretching his tight slippery holes before forcing our cocks back into him again and again. Despite his cries, Jan´s dick remained rock-hard the whole time, and with a slow, long thrust against his prostate we could always squeeze yet another thick glob of precum out of him, a glob that was then wiped off his dripping cockhead and fed into his mouth. We were using Jan exactly the way I had imagined while I´d been masturbating in the lonely farmhouse in Tuscany.

That had been before the arrival of Ivan, of course. Gradually the thoughts of him were coming back from the back of my mind where I had pushed them, and just momentarily imagining Ivan´s face in Jan´s place instantly brought me into a helpless, tainted orgasm. I shot my load all over Jan´s face, already shrinking back in shame from what I´d done.

“Calm down, it´s OK,” Angelo said, seeing my expression.

But it wasn´t all right. Far from it. I quickly wiped myself clean, and almost ran out of the place, still buttoning up. On the way back to the van I slowed down, trying to compose myself and knowing that I´d have to tell Ivan right away what had happened. However, I discovered that there was no need. He wasn´t in the house where we´d slept, and when I entered the van I saw that all the kitchenware and food that had been on the table had been struck down, now laying scattered on the floor, and one of the side windows had a large fracture, probably from the nearly full and heavy water bottle that was now slowly leaking its contents on a couch. A suitcase lay on the floor, half of its contents spilling out. Ivan was gone.

Chapter 17 - The Hello Kitty brigade

Darkness had fallen, but we were still sitting on an eroded stone wall at the edge of the town, watching the lights of speeding cars in the road far across the valley. Jan had brought us two bottles of wine from the van, and we had almost finished them, in silence. Woozy from the wine, Jan had cuddled up under Angelo´s arm, and I kept looking straight ahead to avoid seeing the two of them.

“You really think he won´t call the police?” Angelo asked, dubiously.

I shook my head, trying to look convincing. “I´ve seen him furious but never spiteful.” I paused, remembering the disastrous first night. “Well. I did once, actually.”

“Great.”

Our search party hadn´t found Ivan in the town, and it had been Jan who´d spotted him in the valley, walking fast towards the road in the last light of the day. We´d gathered behind the stone wall to watch him go, as there was no way to catch up with him before he reached the road and the darkness fell, making the return trip impossible. An overwhelming mixture of just god-awful feelings was churning in my chest, and I almost burst into a howl when Ivan reached the road and all we could do was to watch as a truck picked him up, almost immediately, and took him away.

“My sunglasses and a baseball cap are missing,” Angelo told me. “I´d say wherever he´s going he wants to go incognito.”

“That won´t last long.”

The night fell in earnest. Angelo and Jan prepared a makeshift dinner of country bread and various Italian cheeses, and while they were eating and I was staring at my slice Angelo said, “If he´d called the police with the truck driver´s phone they´d already be here. Or if the driver had recognized him.”

“How could he not recognize Ivan?” I asked. “I mean, even with the sunglasses – at night – “

“Maybe the kid chose some foreign truck on purpose,” Angelo interrupted me. “He´s not dumb. I bet you told him about the Czech driver.”

“I did.”

“Shouldn´t we get going?” Jan asked. “He´s going to meet other people besides the truck driver, sooner or later.”

“I don´t think it makes much of a difference, leaving or not. We can only hope that he doesn´t talk and that he´s far enough from here when they catch him,” Angelo said.

When they catch him.

“We can´t go back to the north,” Angelo continued. “And he knows where we´ll be in two days´ time, in any case.”

Suddenly something crossed my mind. “What happens to Jan if they catch him with us now?”

After a brief silence, Angelo answered, “He´ll be deported, most likely.”

I turned to Jan. “We´re going to take you somewhere you can catch a bus or a train back to Milan. I won´t let you-“

“We don´t have the GPS coordinates yet,” Jan interrupted. “And my people won´t give them to anyone but me.”

I cursed.

“Angelo is my friend,” Jan said simply. “I won´t leave him.”

The night was very bad. I couldn´t sleep, having dozed all day long, and after a while I ordered the others to leave me alone as I was too upset to be anything but awful company. To have your friends consoling you for an hour or two was all right, but there´s a limit to everything. Angelo and Jan retired into their house, and I went wandering into the starlit ruins of the town, as much to distract myself as to avoid hearing the whispers and occasional groans through the glassless windows of the occupied house.

The town was spookier than ever, but I was beyond caring. Walking the streets that hadn´t known humans for decades, I kept listening for the sound of helicopters, police cars, dogs. And Ivan: I was having a crazy, silent conversation with him, as if he was walking next to me and defeating my every attempt at explaining, and apologizing, with merely a word or two. Finally I sat down on the worn steps of a steep, narrow alley, and leaned my shoulder on a wall of a house that was still emanating heat from the day´s sun. I was a wretched being; I deserved all the shit that had happened to me.

I don´t know how long I sat there before I heard steps. It was Angelo, alone, looking for me. Somehow he saw into the darkness of the alley, and walked up to me. The tall, dark shape sat down next to me, and a big arm pulled me close to him. Neither of us said a word. We just sat there for the longest time, in silence, until Angelo nudged me and claimed that his bum was falling asleep. As we walked back to the van, he asked if I wanted to sleep in the other house with him and Jan but I shook my head. He didn´t insist, and gave me one of his bear hugs before letting me go.

They caught Ivan the next afternoon. After a couple of hours of sleep I´d been watching TV all morning until I collapsed around ten o´clock, and Angelo practically had to carry me back into my house to get some sleep. Then, a few hours later, I woke up to Angelo standing in the doorway and calling my name.

“You better come,” he said.

Jan was already in the caravan, eyes glued to the TV set. It was the hateful Berlusconi Channel 5, once again leaving competitors in the dust. There was the text “Edizione Straordinaria” plastered across the screen, and just as I sat down on the edge of a couch the director switched away from the studio and into a view from a fast-moving helicopter, but all one could see were blurry treetops.

“What-“ I started, and then the camera picked up a passenger train.

“They believe that someone in the train recognized him and called the police,” Angelo explained. “Maybe the ticket controller, or another passanger.”

An excited voice-over from the TV´s tinny speakers went on, unstoppable, while the train kept running through forests and fields on the screen.

“We´ve just been told that the train won´t stop until Ancona,” the male voice continued, clearly stunned. “Apparently, the police don´t want to take a chance that Ivan Capitani will somehow be able to leave the train before they have adequate safety measures in place.”

Angelo chuckled, incredulous. “They have a trainload of crazy yelling people in there right now. There´s going to be a riot in Ancona.”

“Maybe Ivan can get away in the scuffle,” I hoped.

“Anything can happen there,” Angelo replied, shaking his head, still in disbelief.

More information gradually came in as the train ran through small towns and passed by the waiting passengers at full speed. The helicopter camera often panned to these groups of people, catching their confusion and then the hand-shaking frustration as they realized that whatever their destination, they weren´t going to get there. About a half an hour before the train reached Ancona, Channel 5 managed to get a phone connection to a passenger on board the train. The line wasn´t very good with the background noise, but after a few repeated questions the story got through. Apparently there were lots of different rumors going around among the passengers, but most seemed in accord that a passenger had recognized Ivan and alerted the ticket controller. An entire carriage had been emptied for Ivan; few people had protested as they´d been evicted from their seats by the controllers, probably because of the presence of a now hugely famous person, but the procedure had taken time because everyone had tried to catch a glimpse of him and snap a photo with their phones.

It didn´t take long before the first photos started showing up on TV. Channel 5 had once again outbid the oth