A BOY AT LIBERTY

I woke to daylight streaming through the windows, soft and blue, the absence of street noise suggesting it must be very early still.

Lingering in the warm margins of unconsciousness, I stretched deliciously and was startled to discover a hard-on beneath the pair of Lita’s jeans I’d gone to sleep in. Morning woodies were yet another thing I’d all but forgotten, but now the urge to complete things was quickly becoming merciless. Though I couldn’t see up onto her bed, the measured whisper of Lita’s breathing told me she was there. I was lying in her clothes, her bedding, had nothing but my shirt to clean up with, and if she’d woken up to find me doing that, I’d have had to flee immediately—forever—no matter what kind of dumpster I ended up sleeping in. I might even have had to leave this whole part of town, and how would the Stbrich brothers find me then?

Either she had come back very quietly, or I’d slept very soundly despite my hardwood mattress. Her party clothes lay in a pile on the floor now, leaving me to wonder what she was sleeping in, which only further kindled my almost painful condition. Waiting for the damn urge to subside was torment. I’d forgotten what a problem this had been once, centuries ago—even when I hadn’t been cooped up in the same room with a possibly naked woman.

I rolled onto my side, and found two shiny keys and a note lying on the floor beside me. Matt, Large one opens the front door. Small one’s my room. Don’t lose them. Don’t loan them—to anyone for any reason. If you wake before I do, leave quietly. I got in late. XO, Lita.

Eager to escape, I grabbed the keys and note, and rolled silently to my feet, looking back to find Lita tangled, unconscious, in her satin sheets, one black bra-covered breast partially exposed. Grimacing at my hopeless situation, I tiptoed to the bookshelf for the pencil she kept there, scribbled ‘Back before lunch’ on the bottom of her note, and set it on the floor beside my empty blanket before creeping quietly out the door. After pulling it carefully shut behind me and relocking it with my new key, I hurried to the bathroom to relieve a variety of urgent needs. Then I trotted down the stairwell to the kitchen for a bowl of Lita’s granola, dutifully washed up my dishes, and went out into the fresh, if ghostly, morning.

As I started passing open breakfast places, I realized it must be later than I’d thought, and wondered where all the usual crowds and traffic were—before recalling it was Sunday.

The morning had a kind of ‘blank canvas’ quality as I strolled along in my clean clothes, realizing that I was finally free for the first time since my new life had started. There were no immediate problems left to solve, and no one with any idea where I was or what I should be doing—except, of course, for Lita, who would likely sleep for hours yet, and probably be relieved to find herself free of me for a while after that. So, what to do with all this freedom?

Answers proved elusive for a kid without any friends or money…especially one being careful to avoid the attention of alien spies. Or policemen. I’d fled that hospital wearing a vanished man’s clothes and wallet only a couple weeks earlier—and, just last Wednesday, beaten on that ATM before thinking about video surveillance. Who knew how many photos of me had been distributed to local patrolmen by now? Maybe I wasn’t quite so free after all. My first night alone in the city had taught me how hard it was for an unaccompanied boy to hang out anywhere for long—despite having had money to spend then. Now, even if I just walked around like I was going somewhere, how long before someone was called about my persistent presence? Catcher and his friends had certainly noticed me pretty quickly. As an adult, I could have done whatever I wished. If anyone had noticed, they’d just have chalked it up to ‘not their business.’ But was there really anything for the boy I was now to do here but go back and hide in Lita’s room? The Stbrich brothers seemed unlikely to ‘find me’ there.

The boy I was now… Since yesterday, it had become clear to me that, in The Lady’s compound, surrounded by people who knew what I really was, I’d mostly just gone on feeling—and acting—like a man stuck in a boy’s body. Out here, among people who had no idea I was anything else, and mustn’t be given any cause to wonder, I really did need to start owning this new…condition more completely. Living it. Rain had insisted that accepting and believing that fact, all the way down, would be crucial to protecting myself now. I was a boy. That wasn’t just a pretense. …Or even if it was in some ways, I really had to set that down and inhabit the part. But what did that mean? Specifically.

I began to realize that this time might be spent best just learning how to be a boy.

Which was likely done most effectively by hanging out with other boys, I supposed; a problem given that I didn’t know any. It wasn’t like I’d be making their acquaintance in school this time around. The only boys around here that I could imagine a strange, unaccompanied kid being allowed to approach were the kind Catcher hung out with. And approaching them was going to mean facing down some other fears as well—which, in light of the previous day’s ruminations, might not be a waste of time for me either.

I began to scan the street for signs of my new ‘crowd,’ but found none, and supposed it was still too early for their kind to be out. My kind, I revised, trying to imagine myself walking up and bumping knuckles with some street kid, wondering whether I should introduce myself, or just sit down next to them and say, ‘Hey.’

As I passed the tattoo parlor with its giant image of the Tree, I wondered again when the Stbrich brothers might show up, and how they’d make themselves known to me. Then it occurred to me to wonder if I had already done so. Lita had seemed to think Catcher’s assistance sort of strange. Had he been one of Mikayl’s sons? Had that been why he’d taken me under wing like that? There seemed no family resemblance to Mikayl at all, and I could not imagine that dapper man’s sons looking half as pierced or weathered as Catcher had. Then again, I’d seen how little ‘appearances’ mattered to their kind. Who could know what Catcher might really look like—when he wasn’t being Catcher? But then, I dismissed the idea, recalling how many people here seemed to have known Catcher for years. I had trouble believing that the Stbrich brothers had spent that much of their lives down here on the Avenue.

Passing another breakfast place, I was ambushed by the scents of frying ham and eggs, and pastry, and again lamented my lack of money. I thought of asking Lita to put off the thrift store, and take me down instead to see those Path and Passage people. She seemed happy enough to let me freeload now, but how long could such largess remain comfortable—for either of us? I didn’t want to find out. I wanted a job. Any job that could restore my power to sit down to a plate of all the things I was smelling now.

The delightful waft of breakfast foods was suddenly joined by a whiff of sour body odor, just before a beefy arm came down hard across my shoulders. I whipped around to find Billboard grinning at me, as if daring me to protest his chummy embrace.

“What now?” I asked, trying not to let my terror show.

“What now?” he parroted. “’S’that how you greet a friend, homes? I just come to say welcome to the neighborhood, and that Janus hopes there’s no hard feelings about our little check-in yesterday, right?”

“No. Of course there aren’t.” Was this some result of Lita’s diplomacy on my behalf at the party last night? I wanted to shrug his arm off of me, but didn’t quite dare.

“So you should come hang with us,” said Billboard. “It’s great you’re such good friends with Lita. She’s pretty fine, ain’t she? Where’s she got you sleepin’, anyway?”

I shrugged his arm off after all, and turned to glare at him, flushed with both embarrassment and anger. “In a blanket on the floor—just where you’d expect. And if by ‘fine’ you mean she’s very generous and helpful, yes, she is.”

Billboard’s brows climbed up a notch. “Ain’t you fancy,” he said. “She’s generous alright, and ain’t just Janus and you knows it around here. She’s great for cuddlin’ up with strays, but lemme warn ya, super fly, she’s a tease. What Lita giveth, Lita takes away again, soon as some new stray comes along. So enjoy the party, vato, but don’t give her nothin’ you’ll care about when the music stops. And that’s the friendliest advice anybody’s gonna give you here.”

“You think I’m her boyfriend?” I asked in disbelief. “I met her yesterday! I’m hardly half her age! If that’s what’s got you guys so twisted up, you can relax.”  

Billboard smirked. “Bet you’re still a virgin, huh.”

“What business is that of yours?” I demanded, reckless with umbrage.

“Thought so.” His smirk widened. “She could take care of that for you.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said, my appetite for eggs and bacon vanished in disgust. “I think I’d better go.”

“Yeah. You better,” said Billboard pointedly. Then he smiled cherubically and added, “But you come and see us sometime soon, right? And tell Lita we came by to say hi, okay?”

“You bet,” I said, turning to go. He chuckled as I walked away. Come see us. Right! Lita’s boyfriend? Me? Total psychos—not that this surprised me any. That much had seemed clear the moment they’d appeared the day before.

Whatever had come of her efforts at détente last night, Lita clearly hadn’t made them like me any better. But Billboard hadn’t hurt me either, physically at least, so maybe some kind of truce, however insincere, had been agreed to. A warm, dry place to sleep, food, a shower, and a live-in advisor on how to make it in this world was worth a little hazing from the local thugs, I supposed, but I wondered if she realized what they were thinking—about her, and us. It was embarrassing! I wasn’t going to say a thing to her about this encounter. It could only get her mad—and maybe make her rethink letting me stay. I didn’t want to risk that. Not before she’d gotten me hooked up with her friends at that program anyway.

I headed back for Lita’s place, where I found her up and, to my relief, dressed, if perhaps a bit hung over. Definitely not the right time to report Billboard’s visitation, even if I’d wanted to. We went down to the kitchen where I had a second breakfast as she nursed a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. Then we took my garbage bag of filthy clothing to the laundry room and put them, along with a fist full of Lita’s quarters, into the washer.

As soon as they were in the dryer, Lita took me down the Avenue to “a thrift store with attitude,” as she put it. The red neon sign out front said, ‘Cautionary Retail.’ She bought me two pairs of jeans—one black, one blue—and a black fabric jacket, sound enough to last a while, but “beat up enough to look respectable,” she informed me. She also got me three old band-tour T-shirts, two of them black to hide the dirt, she said, and one bright red, “to set off your hair when you want to look nice.” She got me seven pairs of used, cotton boxers and seven pairs of black tube socks as well. “No more stinking up my room,” she said. “You change every day, and do your own laundry.” That seemed fair, especially as the bill came to more like fifteen dollars—which she still insisted was her pleasure to provide. As we left the store, I promised I’d do all our dishes and her laundry too, if she wished, and even clean her room until she felt my debt was paid. She just grinned and said she’d love two more of me for Christmas.

Back at her place, we went down to pull my old clothes out of the dryer, and found them already in a jumbled pile on top of the machine.

Lita looked chagrined. “I shouldn’t have gone out with them in there. People don’t like having to deal with other people’s stuff in the machines when they come to do their wash. So don’t follow my example, okay?” She gave me a grim smile. “Do as I say, not as I do. I’m heading up to the room now. Just come up with those when you’re done, and we’ll figure out where to keep your stuff.”

“Okay. See you in a minute.” As she left, I shoved a hand into the big side pockets of my freshly laundered cargo pants to flatten them out before starting to fold my clothes. In the second pocket, my fingers found something that felt like a small pile of marbles. Thinking that some gravel must have gotten in there and survived the wash cycle somehow, I scooped it out, and opened my hand to find those three geist stones Piper had given me, then taken back at breakfast the day before. “What the…?” My mouth fell open as I stared at them, certain I’d have felt these rattling around in there at some point yesterday—or noticed them when I’d undressed for the shower. In fact, I had checked all these pockets just from decades of bachelor’s habit before we’d put them into the machine—which meant…that Piper, or someone she trusted a lot…must have put these here while Lita and I had been shopping?

The hair on my arms was standing straight up. They’d clearly known right where I was and what I was doing. Did she have someone living in this building—to keep tabs on me? I didn’t see how that could have been arranged. They couldn’t have known I’d meet Lita. …Unless Lita hadn’t been an accident.

Had this ‘lucky situation’ been arranged? If so, by whom? Was Catcher working for Piper? Or Stacy, with her all-seeing cards? …Or Lita even? Were they all of Piper’s kind? Were these geist stones some way of saying not to worry; I wasn’t alone? But that made no sense either. Piper had made it clear how much trouble she’d be in if anyone had known she was giving me these stones. So this couldn’t be a message from anyone but her. Could she herself be watching over me? I turned to look around the dim, concrete room. There was nowhere to hide; just a folding table, some shelves and a little open plumbing. Still, I wondered if she might be there invisibly—like one of their hidden doorways. But I was alone here, so why should she hide?

I needed to get a handle on my paranoia. Someone knew where I was. And they appeared to be looking after me. Hardly surprising, I supposed, and, upon reflection, not a bad thing. I just needed to settle down. Nothing any weirder about this than everything else in my life was now.

I shoved the three stones into the pocket of the jeans I was wearing, wondering how I’d keep them hidden in Lita’s tiny room, and finished folding my clothes. Then, after one last glance around the room, I headed upstairs, understanding very clearly now that the ‘freedom’ I’d briefly imagined that morning was as illusory as everything else in this new life of mine.