Poppa's Cub Ch. 03

Chapter Three

Kyle said he preferred to walk home, so he could clear his head and ended up wandering. The day was bright, and he was surprised at the amount of traffic downtown. It wasn't something he'd paid much attention to. On weekends, he would usually spend in bed, reading comic books and cheap science-fiction novels.

He headed across the lower side, considering going to Ester Shore Park, and then heard a loud, obnoxious squeal.

"Kyle! Oh KYLE!"

He spun on a heel as Darla scooted across the street, causing a car to stop. She blew a kiss to the driver who flipped her off.

She looked at him in shock.

"Kyle?"

He looked at her.

"Wow, the old boy got you good, huh? Oh my stars and garters! Well fortunately you're talking to the best make-up artist in all of Vancouver, I can get that all fixed up."

"What are you talking about," Kyle asked.

"That big honker on your neck, boy. Mikey must have seriously taken a liking to you."

Kyle blinked, and then smiled. He put a hand on neck.

"That bad, huh?" he said.

"It looks like you had a date with the monster from the black lagoon."

Kyle blushed.

"So you and Mikey, huh? Sitting in a tree!" she squealed, singing the rhyme. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!"

Kyle turned beet red.

"Hell honey, with that color you don't need no rouge," she teased further.

Kyle tried to strike back, "what are you doing out here?"

"It's Sunday boy yo! One of my best days. I got the god-fearing church boys who are all feeling sacrilegious and need head jobs."

Kyle's mouth went slack.

"I'm not kidding. They go to confessional at ten, and by one o'clock I've got a hundred bucks in my pocket! I only take Monday off, really."

Kyle's mouth went dry. There was something about this that turned his stomach, but he didn't know what it is.

"Say, Frankie's hanging out, selling lids. Let's go chat him up, see if we can get a free smoke."

Kyle pondered this for the briefest of seconds before she grabbed his arm, and drug him down the corner and down to the park end.

Amongst the bums and hangers-out, Frankie was there, chatting with some guy. They shook hands, although for anyone that looked carefully it was clear that something was exchanged in the shake.

Darla drug Kyle over to Frankie and squealed, "Will you take a look at this? We have to have a talk with Mikey!"

Frankie's eyebrow cocked.

"He did you good all right," Frankie said.

Kyle wasn't nearly as embarrassed, and sort of seemed to like the attention by this point. He shrugged.

"I was actually kind of worried about the big lug. I thought he'd have to settle for old heels-and-hose here," He said, thumbing his hand at Darla.

"Now you take that back!" She squealed at him.

Frankie, it seemed, loved nothing more than to yank the queen's chain. "Oh come on Darla, you've wanted him for ages. Everyone knows you've got a crush on him a mile long."

"Well I never!" She said, putting her hands on her hips.

There was a honking in the distance and Darla spun on a heel. She squealed loudly as a regular customer flagged her down. Flouncing over, she took off in the car.

Kyle was dumbfounded. He had really wanted some personal time, and was now drug halfway across the neighborhood.

"So you and Mike are an item?" Frankie inquired.

"Um, well, I don't know, I hope so," Kyle stammered.

"I hope it works, Kyle. Mike's a good man, and really he needs someone. He gets all lonely in that stupid little studio. He'll buy a lid from me now and then, or sometimes come down and stroke it off in a booth, but really, he's needing someone to love."

"You think?" Kyle asked hopefully.

"You get him drunk enough, and he'll cry for you. I tell you, that man is a romantic. Don't get me wrong, he can be a mean son of a gun if you push him, but he's very romantic."

Kyle would never want to be on Mike's bad side.

"Did you and he ever..." He trailed off.

"All I do is stroke, kid. That's me. I don't do no kissing, no romance. I'm strictly a fisting man."

Kyle looked at him as Frankie gestured, his hand was balled up around an imaginary cock.

"I don't like giving head, and you can just forget about the back door, but there's something cool about stroking that I can't get over. In the back room, nobody cares. I get to handle a lot of cocks, and I get myself off a time or two. Heck, if you want to head over there, I'll do you now." He said smiling.

"Uh, no, not right now," Kyle said. He had to talk to Mike, he really felt very unsafe.

The glint off Frankie's watch gave him an idea.

"Say, do you have the time?" He asked.

"Sure, it's a bit after noon."

"Damn, I'm late, I'm supposed to be over at my mother's house." He fabricated.

"Well get your butt outta here, I'll tell Darla you're gone, so she won't go hunting you down. I'll be seeing you around, right?" He asked.

Kyle grinned, "You sure will."

He walked home to his seedy apartment across from the porno store and climbed the stairs to the third floor. His apartment was number three-oh-three and inside it was a contract to the mess outside.

His prized collection of comics were all tidily bagged, alphabetically arranged and numerically sequenced. They were in acid-free boxes that sat under a card table, stacked neatly with a plastic tablecloth over them. That table held a goldfish tank with five fish in it, which he fed immediately and then sat on his futon.

He rose again, thinking about their comments, went to the bathroom.

What he saw astonished him.

Kyle's bruise, Mike's hickie, was huge. Easily three inches in diameter, a deep, rich purple with thick red striations. No way even his shaggy mane of strawberry blond hair could cover that thing up. What would he tell his mother? Oh hell.

It was true that he usually went over to her house on Sundays. He had to take the bus to do it and C-Tran, the local bus service had only a limited schedule on Sundays.

He decided to call her instead. The phone rang a half dozen times and she didn't answer, so he suspected that she was out in the back, gardening. That was fine with him, he wanted some time to himself.

He went over to his futon and shifted it into couch position, and then lay on his side, in a sort of fetal position.

From here, he could listen to the traffic outside, and watch his fish. This was his retreat, his space. It was how he dealt with being a customer service representative at St. Joe's Hospital. He just sort of curled up into a ball, and let it all come out.

He cried a soft bit, trying to curl up with the body pillow his mother had given him for Christmas last. It was comfortable, certainly, but didn't feel like Mike. It didn't breathe, it didn't have his heart beat. It didn't tell him the sky wasn't going to fall in because he was a cocksucker.

Kyle thought a lot about that moment. He had no idea how he got it into his head that he should put his face down there. It seemed so natural. He wanted to please Mike, in any way he could. If it was a little head he wanted, then that was no problem.

But Mike hadn't even asked Kyle to stroke him, much less give him head. That was all his own doing, wasn't it? Somewhere deep inside, Kyle began to accept his attraction to the big man. The physical side of it was strong, and the emotional side huge.

He felt a twinge of another emotion. Jealousy.

He felt jealous of Jimmy.

Jimmy was eight, and frankly there wasn't much to be jealous of, but he took time away from Mike. Time he could be using to make Mike feel good, and time he could use to be pleasured by Mike's strong hands as well.

That was all silly, he eventually concluded, and felt good that he'd been able to actually pull himself out of that mental morass. With that confidence in his head, he drifted happily to sleep.

The phone rang, shattering his hard-won peaceful state.

He grumbled into the phone, "hello."

"What, you aren't even out of bed yet?" The voice, reminiscent of Darla's bellowed at him.

"Hi ma," He replied.

"What did I do, wake you up?" Kyle's mother blared out of the phone.

"Well actually, ma, you did." Kyle said grumpily. He did not like being awoken, particularly by the telephone and even more so by his mother on the telephone.

"Well why aren't you over here?" She nearly shouted into the phone.

"I missed the bus." He said.

"Well why didn't you call?" He could see her gesticulations in his mind's eye.

"I did. You didn't answer."

"I was out." She said.

He didn't bother to explain to her that that meant that if he would have shown up he would have been knocking on the door to an empty house. This of course did not stop her from bellowing at him.

"You're a schmuck leaving me all alone. What would your father say?"

"He'd probably be jealous." Kyle muttered a little too loud.

"What? What was that you little putz! Oy! If you were here I'd put your over my knee right now!"

Kyle smiled into the phone. Same old ma.

"So when are you going to move out of that dingy little apartment, and get a proper job?"

"Let the griping begin." Kyle said aloud, this time, quiet enough for her not to hear.

"I like my job, ma. Gives me freedom." He said to her, clearly.

"Freedom! FREEDOM! Bah! Your grandfather is rolling over in his grave, rest his soul. Freedom." She snorted.

"If I don't want to work, I don't have to. If I call in, and want work, I work. It's a good life." He said. To him, it was paradise working for St. Joe's in the float pool.

"As a secretary, a secretary! My son the male secretary! Oy vey!"

Kyle was smiling madly at this point. He'd scored the job through his intimate knowledge of computers and software, and had functioned in many different places at St. Joe's doing a variety of things. They called him frequently, and paid well.

"The least you could have done is go to school like your father and older brother."

"They're rabbis, ma." He said.

"When was the last time you went to temple? Huh? Tell me boy! You stopped going after your mitzvah!" She squalled at him.

Kyle let her rant for a moment or two, and then asked about her sister whom she could rant off on forever for quite some time.

"Oy! That little rat! Did you know she's still living with that filthy lesbian! In that dingy little apartment! Who knows what crap she's filling in my poor baby sister's head. Do you know she's twenty-eight and not even married? My mother, oy! She calls me every day asking about Sylvia," Kyle's mother ran the sentences together almost like a long, drawn out expletive.

Unexpectedly, there was a soft knock on the door, like a child's knocking.

Kyle frowned.

"Ma? Ma, hang on a second, there's someone at the door." He wondered who the hell that could be.

The knocking came again. This one was stronger, and more dominant.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Kyle muttered. "No ma, I'm not coming over, I meant who ever is at the door."

His eyes bugged out of his head when Mike stood there with little Jimmy around his shoulders, grinning madly.

"Ma? Are you there?" He bellowed into the phone, beckoning them inside to sit on the tattered kitchen chairs.

"Yes, boy who is it? Some more of your good-for-nothing friends no doubt!"

"Yeah, ma, some friends of mine."

"Oh so that's how it is! You'll entertain your friends on a Sunday, but you can't be bothered to go visit your poor old mother while your father is in New York."

"Ma, you weren't even home." He said exasperatedly.

"Well how do you know, you didn't even show up!"

Mike was grinning madly, as he could hear most everything.

"Ma, I've got to go, I have guests. You don't want me to be rude, do you?" He said, fishing a couple of sodas out of the fridge and dropping them in front of them.

"Who is it?" She demanded, "some good-for-nothing harlot no doubt! You just wait until I tell your father you're with a whore!"

Jimmy giggled and Mike couldn't restrain himself and let loose a belly laugh.

"What is that sound?" She exclaimed, "Is there a dog loose in your house? You have a whore who brings her dog over. Filthy things, dogs, you'll get fleas, you'll get rabies! Oy!"

Jimmy was laughing himself so hard he had some trouble breathing, and Mike immediately closed his mouth, watching the boy quickly. True to form, Jimmy's asthma kicked in and he took a couple of hits off his inhaler.

"Ma, I got to go now." He said again, becoming irritated.

"You just shack up with your whore, boy! See if I care! Your poor old mother living all alone. Don't you forget we pick up your father on Wednesday, come over in the afternoon, we'll have lunch."

"Yeah, ma," He said. "Love you ma."

"Oy my baby boy, I love you too even if you are going to meet with a harlot and her dog instead of sitting at home with your poor old mother. Shalom."

"Shalom," he said, hanging up the phone. To slam it down would have meant an immediate phone call back.

"That's quite a ringer you got there, Kyle." Mike laughed.

"Oy," Kyle said and then looked at him.

"So how..." he started.

Mike flipped Kyle's wallet at him.

"You left it at my house this morning when we were watching movies," Mike said. He emphasized the last part of the sentence.

"Oh." Kyle said. Considering the speed that Kyle had removed his pants, he wasn't entirely surprised by this development.

"Let me introduce Jimmy, my little brother." He said.

Jimmy offered a tiny hand, and Kyle shook it. He noticed the boy's hand's fingers were curled in, and didn't appear to be able to straighten. This he ignored and shook it firmly.

Jimmy was still having some problems breathing, and started to take slow, long deep breaths.

Kyle knelt before him, and put his hand on his knee.

"You gonna be okay? No dying in my apartment, we just met," he said concerned.

Jimmy giggled which caused him to cough a little more. Kyle watched him carefully as he took deeper breaths and said nothing, lest he go into further spasms.

Mike watched the two of them intently, feeling very good about Kyle.

"Hey," Jimmy said, pointing at Kyle.

"Hey what," Kyle said playfully.

"You got a girlfriend, like my cousin," he pointed to the mark.

"A girlfriend?" Kyle looked blankly.

"Yeah, my big brother's girlfriend makes marks like that on his neck. It's gross!" He affirmed importantly.

"So I have a girlfriend. So what?" He challenged the boy, and then looked at Mike.

Mike was not amused.

Kyle further pontificated, "She's cute too. She has an hourglass figure."

He looked Mike directly in the eye.

Mike's lips bunched up as the muscles around his nose and face contracted in a look of utter disgust.

He was about to say something when Jimmy piped up again:

"So have you knocked her up yet? My cousin says she's got a bun in the oven."

"No not yet, she hasn't let me get past first base," Kyle explained.

Mike sat back and crossed his arms.

"Aw," Jimmy said.

Kyle smirked, and enjoyed giving Mike a jab.

"You should talk to this old boy, I know a girl that's after him, too!" Kyle thumbed toward Mike.

"Yeah, but girls are icky! That's why I like Mike, he doesn't have a girlfriend!"

"Oh is that it?" Kyle said.

Mike interjected, "these girls, they are bad business. I tell you Kyle, you'll get her pregnant and the next thing you know, I'll be the best man at the wedding." He oddly mimicked Kyle's mother which was spooky to Kyle.

"I guess I'll just have to watch what I'm doing," Kyle said.

"Um, Kyle?" Jimmy asked. "I've got to go pee, where's the bathroom?"

"Down that hall, it's at the end. Don't trip on the towels." Kyle said.

When Mike heard the click of the door he spoke softly, "girlfriend huh."

Kyle stuck his tongue out at him and then walked to him, softly tracing Mike's high hairline.

"What am I supposed you say? Your big brother took me home last night, and turned me into a cocksucker," Kyle said. "I'm glad you came by, I needed to talk to you."

"About?"

"Darla and Frankie. I don't understand some things. They were really picking on me."

"You told them you were with me?"

"Darla just knew." Kyle said, his face a mask of confusion trying to read Mike.

"Don't worry about it," Mike offered.

Kyle felt relieved.

They both heard the flush, and Mike leaned up and kissed at Kyle's hand as the heard the bathroom door being unlocked.

Two steps down the hall, both the adult men said in stereo, "Wash your hands."

Jimmy grumbled, turning mid-way as both men stared at each other.

"Got dinner plans?" Mike asked.

"Top Ramen is my special friend," Kyle retorted.

Mike snorted, smirking.

"Let's go grab a pie," He said. "I'll buy."

"Wow. Thanks," Kyle said.

"No problem, you little schmuck," Mike said, emphasizing the vowel sounds in an almost perfect imitation of his mother.

Kyle stuck his tongue out at Mike.

The last thing Mike said to Kyle before Jimmy rounded the corner was, "you stick that tongue out on me, and I'll put it to good use."

Kyle flushed as Mike scooted Jimmy out the door.

He called, "pick you up at six."

Kyle nodded and went back to his couch to try to pretend the pillow was Mike, but this time, took off his pants.