Page 163 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 133

phone, Charley-Pop died.
“I’m sorry,” Kick said.
“He’s better off dead,” Ryan said.
“I mean I’m sorry I asked you to come back.”
Ryan, with tears misting his vision, looked at his golden man. “You
can have anything you want.”
“Then I owe you,” Kick said. “For this one, I really owe you.”

11

After Charley-Pop’s Death, Ryan needed something he knew he
couldn’t have. Kick would not approve. Ryan had it before Kick and he
needed it again. He had a need for physical discipline learned in the class-
rooms and chapel of Misericordia. Monsignor Linotti had drilled into the
young seminarians their need to identify with the scourged and crucified
young Christ. That discipline, he explained to them, was the discipline of
joy. Whatever it was, Ryan needed it with Charley-Pop dead and buried,
even more than he needed it before when he had lived with Teddy.
“Are you alright?” Kick asked.
“I’m fine,” Ryan said. He deflected Kick from one truth to another.
“I was so used to Charley being sick, I can’t believe he’s dead.” He was
becoming expert at prevaricating, at denying himself to fit Kick’s notion
of how the two of them should be bonded together in the world. Ryan
took his self-denial as the discipline he needed. It would have to do. Kick’s
will was his will. It was his new way of being. He told himself he didn’t
need the old ways of anonymous S&M anymore.
But he was wrong.
“I have to drive to El Lay for a week,” Kick said. “Want to come
along?”
Ryan saw his chance and took it. “I have some things I have to do,”
he said. “Christmas shopping.”
“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” Kick said. “I’ve always
admired your discipline.”
“Actually, I need to be even more disciplined,” Ryan said.
“Go for it,” Kick said.
Ryan wondered if Kick knew what he meant. He didn’t want to betray
their relationship, but he needed something more strange than familiar.
He could do what he had to do and still remember the home team. Kick’s
departure was his opportunity.
Ryan left the Victorian and drove to the Barracks on Folsom. At the

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK