Page 167 - Rainbow County and Other Stories

Rainbow County 155

of his real father, the original missing person, whom he had never
seen.
He was seated, stretched slightly back straddling a locker-
room bench. He was a little older than Robert, and bigger, very
blond, with a fully developed chest over his washboard abdomen.
His thick wrists connected his athlete’s hands to his powerful
arms. He wore football pads across his broad shoulders, and a
football helmet, and, between his casually spread legs, he was
erect. His eyes looked directly from the helmet into the camera
and directly out of the page into Robert’s face. The face-guard
on the helmet covered his mouth. No New Testament word of
mercy could spring from those Old Testament lips that Robert
knew were set, mean and hard and without mercy. He looked
directly out at Robert. He was erect and Robert knew he faced
the powerful, inevitable Face of God.
“I must,” he said to Lloyd, “have this.” He rose out of the
barber chair. “Ask any amount, anything. Only let me buy this
from you.”
Lloyd thought to press the trade for sex, but the young man
seemed too volatile. Besides, a quick flash of looking down the
barrel of a handgun made him think better of it. “That one you
can have,” he said.
“I can’t just take it. I learned my lesson about that the hard
way.”
“Then trade me something, anything,” Lloyd said. “I won’t
take your money.” He stared into Robert’s ecstatic wild eyes and
suddenly, more than he wanted him, he wanted him very much
gone.
“I don’t have anything,” Robert said.
Lloyd laughed nervously at him. “Everybody’s got something.”
Robert mentally searched his car. He had his clothes. He had
the loaded handgun. “Nothing,” he said.
In the room, he seemed volatile.
In the mirrors, he looked vulnerable.
Lloyd, fighting his rising lust, chided himself for being a cau-
tious old fool. He threw risk against the wind. The boy was right.
Danger was aphrodisiac. He put his hand on Robert’s knee and
slowly smoothed his palm up the inside of his thigh.

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