HARDY BOYS

Or, Pistols at Dawn

He lights a match and it flares until it’s swallowed by the night. He’s only a smoker on special occasions, but there’s rarely a more poignant moment to light a match than this.

“It’s darker than a sack of black,” he says, breath fogging on the night air, although he can’t see it happen. “Where the hell are you, man?”

“You’ve got quite a mouth on you,” comes a voice from the darkness, just as black and loud as his surroundings but increasing in volume.

“I’ve got quite a bit of everything,” he says, gesturing at his person, a motion wasted on the man and the night. “Whose idea was it to set this before sunrise?”

“Sounds a little more like a come-on than a snarky retort,” says the voice, stopping close so he exhales on the other’s forehead.

“And you’re standing a little too near ’n’ queer for it to be the latter,” he says.

The second man takes a step back.

“That’s better,” says the first. “This line of work has you walking fine.”

“What?” he says, brushing from his eyes the hair that tickles his face. “Was that a come-on?”

“No,” he says. “We walk a fine line — the line of work we walk.”

The first shakes his head, reaching in resignation out to grasp at the other man’s lapel. He smooths his hand over the leather.

“I mean that we teeter,” says the second, taking a second step, voice rising. “Men meeting in back alleys. It’s hard to distinguish between what’s crime and what’s sex these days.” He tightens the ponytail at the back of his head. “This is crime, for the record.”

“Oh,” he says. “We certainly do teeter.” He withdraws his hand. “It used to be when you pulled out a gun you were pretty well safe.”

The man snorts.

“Genre-wise, I mean,” says the second.

“Yeah,” he says. “Now you pull out a gun it’s probably more likely sex.”

“And you whip out a condom you’re probably swallowing it.”

The man snorts.

“It’d be stuffed full of drugs, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he says. “No winning.”

“We certainly don’t win.”

There’s a silence which might be comfortable were it not for their proximity.

“Not to mention irony,” pipes up one of them.

“Yeah,” responds the other promptly. “Irony.”

“Because it’s ironic to pull out a water gun or something.”

“Mm,” says the other. “Trading one weapon for another.”

“Knives for wordplays?”

“Guns for less effective guns.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“I stopped carrying mine. But this conversation’s loaded enough, I figure. If you don’t mind I’d like to go home soon.”

“Alone?” says the first, passably flippant.

“At all,” says the second; the words come pre-chewed from a corner of his cranium which is perennially annoyed by men like the first, touchy and untouchable at once.

“Well,” says the first, promptly. “Then. You’d better give me some, uh, bad news. I hope I don’t come out of this night owing you anything.”

“Good news, I’m afraid,” says the second, shifting his hands into his pockets with no initial intention of removing anything, although the gesture is ultimately fortuitous — or utilitarian. “The best.”

He pulls a key and a note out of his pockets, respectively.

“Wouldn’t matter if it weren’t respectively, would it?” says the first.

The second shrugs.

“Adverbs, man,” he says. “Love me some adverbs.”

“Weapons for words,” says the first.

The second rubs his hands over his face, massaging his eyes in circles. “God, I hope this night ends soon. You know, I’ve been wishing that at 11:11 for the past four years: I hope this night ends soon.”

“We might not be wishing for the right things,” he says. “We might be better off wishing for nothing.”

“We’re not in the nihilist back alley.”

“Those are usually very crowded,” says the first.

“Fuller,” says the second. “But somehow emptier.”

The first snorts.

“But anyway,” says the first. “Your, uh, jacket feels nice. Real leather.”

“Thanks,” says the second. “Surprised you can tell.”

“All in the fingers,” says the first, brushing his palms over the second’s sternum. “You’ve got business for me, though? Keys and envelopes or cloaks and daggers.”

“Yeah, actually. I’ve been waiting for us to finish with the mandatory profundity,” says the second, “again.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“Not wishing for the right things.”

“It’s well past 11:11,” says the first.

“Well past four years,” says the second, then shakes his head as if to clear it. “Now you’ve got me doing it.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Comes with the territory.”

The second snorts.

“So the real crime’s our conversation.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Not to mention loitering.”

The second snorts again.

“You’re funny.”

The first preens, unseen.

“You shouldn’t appreciate me. It only makes me more self-righteous,” he says.

The second laughs as brightly as daytime.

“We can’t all wear leather and gloom as well as you,” says the first.

“Think of me as your straight man,” says the second.

“There’s probably a joke in there somewhere,” says the first.

A beat.

“That was funny,” says the second, reaching out a hand to grapple with the cold buttons on the man’s shirt. He nods appraisingly, sticking out his bottom lip. “Denim,” he says. “Not bad.”

“Thanks,” says the first. “Suits my jeans.”

“Guys I do this for don’t wear denim,” he says. “The Hardy Boys wear denim, don’t they?”

“What, the gang?” says the second, pitched quite high, shrugging like his skin might hold him tightly.

“No, the fictional teenage detectives.”

“You don’t have to be rude,” he says, trying to take a step back and succeeding only in dragging his denim-clad form across brick. He shrugs the jacket off.

“Sorry,” says the second. “It’s the work. It’s not conducive to being sensitive.”

“You learn not to expect much,” says the first promptly, sighing.

“From us?”

“From anyone,” he says.

“So why do you?” says the second.

“Being insensitive again,” says the first, and the second hmms.

“It’s hard,” he says. “Harder than a bag of crag.”

“What’s crag?”

“Don’t spoil the analogy.”

“Right,” says the first promptly. “Crag.”

“Anyway,” says the second. “Cool like the weather,” he says. “Denim’s not so appealing to me.”

“Well, then,” says the first. “Our whole relationship’s based on lies.”

The second snorts.

“That’s not true,” he says. “Just half of it.”

The first shrugs, evidently not yet keyed into the fact that his gestures go unobserved.

“You’re right,” he says, exhaling. “We’ll always have leather.”

“Gay man’s motto.”

“I don’t know about that,” says the first.

“We’d best hurry,” says the second.

“Right,” says the first. He waves a hand in front of his face and brushes against the stubble on the man’s cheek. “The sun’ll rise soon, and won’t we be out of place? We’d best get this key stuff sorted.”

“Key stuff,” says the second, mostly to himself, although they’re standing so close it’s almost arbitrary to differentiate the two. “You obviously take your job very seriously.”

“What’s my job?” says the first. “My job’s to stand in alleys at abyss o’clock and pick up envelopes and keys from a leather-clad stranger whom, I’ll add, I’ve propositioned so many times he hasn’t been into that he’s probably lying about all the leather. False advertisement, everyone,” he says. “Get your false advertisement here.”

“Psh,” snorts the second. “Get it everywhere more like. Have I touched a nerve?”

“Not the right one.” He snorts and pulls a face. “God, gross.”

“Right,” the second bites. “Just give me the key and I’ll mosey my disgusting self on out of here.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he says, although he can’t follow it up with anything substantial. “Well, never mind,” he amends. “Be like whatever you want.”

The second sniffs and digs his hands into his pockets.

“Well, okay,” he says. “I don’t want to be like this at all, though.”

“Well, I don’t want to be like this either,” he says with some force, wincing because he does.

“So what do we do?” says the second. “What is there ever to do?”

“Not in me to do things,” says the first, silent after that.

“I can tell,” says the second eventually. “Since you haven’t even smashed second base with what you came here to bloody well pick up.” He kicks at unseen gravel. “Meanwhile the sun’s been rising merrily on higher.”

“I don’t think you used that correctly.”

The second squints.

“It’s a poetic term. I’m taking poetic license. Read me a poem which makes sense,” he says.

“I concede the point,” says the first, rubbing his open palms up and down his face. “But the problem is you’re not a poet and this isn’t poetry.”

“Impressive retort,” says the second. “Or at least I think you had the intent to impress.” He flattens down on his head the stray and the already flat hairs alike, and puckers his mouth. The rising sun begins to cast four long shadows through the windows overlooking their nook, impatient spectres standing by for a spectacle.

“It’s not like that,” he says finally. “Sometimes you want to sound smart,” he says, “or whatever.”

“Yeah,” says the first. “I feel that.”

He stretches out a hand and the second bats it away.

“Don’t feel it,” he says.

“Got it,” he says. He closes his eyes and nods, far too many times for it to be more about affirmation than indulgence. “But we’re having a moment, aren’t we?”

“Sometimes you want to sound smart,” he says again, though the words slice this time. “Or look,” he says, “I dunno. What’s a word? Demure. There’s one.”

“Demure,” he says. “Definitely.”

“Sometimes you wanna be, like, cantankerous,” he says, “or egregious, whatever that means, or twirly,” he says. “Sometimes you wanna be a word like precious.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think you want that.”

“Are you really telling me right now that I don’t wanna be precious?”

“No,” he says. “I think sometimes you want to be this,” he gestures, “and be called precious or demure or cantankerous. And what’s more,” he says, “I think the rest of the time you just want to be this, and you aren’t.”

“What’s the difference, mate? They call me this and so I’m this. They told me to come here with to pick up an envelope,” he snatches them from the second abruptly, thrusts so it collides with the man’s chest, crumpling, “and my keys,” which jangle existentially, “so the envelope is the envelope and the keys are the keys and the me is this,” he says. “And what’s said is done.”

The second shrugs, cooing to the right of the man’s face.

“Well, that’s precious,” he says. He fakes pulling a trigger, like the delivery of a punchline to the man’s side.

To the first’s credit, he oophs like he’s been shot.

“How do you feel?” says the second. “Did that make a difference?”

“I think I might want to kill you,” he responds seriously.

“That’s affirmation!” he says. “I’ve turned you into more of this than before. Some darknesses are more impenetrable than others.”

“That’s not a word,” says the first. “Though I concede the point.”

And the sun rises incrementally overhead.

“That’s the only pay-off any of us is receiving, I reckon,” says the second eventually. “They never give you enough time to just talk; you’ve always got to be lurking behind corners, crouched in dark alleys. That’s the killing part.”

“Are words ever?” says the first, “but you’re right,” ungunning his hand and finally feeling for his pistol, the same temperature as his jeans surrounding it in its place, and it feels less like a gun than almost everything he’s touched today, including nothing at all —

“I dunno,” says the second, “When I came out to my family. That was pretty fucked up. You know — word styles.”

The first takes a full step backward.

“No,” he says, “you can’t go telling me that shit.”

“Well, why the fuck’s fuck not?” he says, jovial.

“Diffuse and abstract,” the first breaks out a small commotion along his corner of the alley, “goddamn reasons.”

“I can take it.” The second chuckles, very low and very quiet. “I’m a hardy boy.” Then: “It’s really been the longest while. You couldn’t do this if you tried. I’ve out-queer-baited and, it’s worth mentioning, outstyled you.”

“I think it’s safe to say I am trying,” he counters, jerkily pressing his knee between the second’s thighs. “And hard.”

The second snorts. “And hard,” he mimics, and fails to grind down, something which would for years disappoint afresh the young man with the denim jacket, some evenings, the ones where he would go to tuck himself in after wish-o-clock, but without a blanket and too old to have made a wish at all. “You are bloody pistol-whipped. I’m doing shitheads like you a bloody service — “

“You’ve disappeared eight boys — “

“And a girl,” cuts in the second. “What are you, sexist too?”

“Don’t say too,” he splutters, “as if I’ve already killed you!”

The second belly laughs. “I don’t mean to imply you’re a murderer!”

“Well, thank you, I appreciate — ”

“I mean you’re a massive homophobe as well as being a dumb-dumb! You think I stage these night deals to murder kids? I suspect you don’t, and I know that shit because you fuckers watch your marks for weeks. I’m not a vigilante,” he says. “You know what? I was gonna disappear you whether you’d been sent here to kill me — which you had, may I point out, you high and mighty little shit — or not, out of the goodness of my heart. I’m not a vigilante, I’m — I’m a fucking saint’s saint’s saint’s saint. I’m the saint that Saint Augustine wishes he were but he was too busy fighting his fucking rich parents for the right to wear rags. And now your licence and birth certificate are on the floor and I’m not even gonna do you the sweetness of picking it up. I deserve at least thirteen windows of a one-hundred stained glass window shitty-ass Catholic mural.” Breathes. “Fuck,” he adds, for good measure. “At least lepers weren’t idiots.”

The first stands suddenly demure in the dawn, tilting his chin to the ground, seeming to belie a childish belief that those who can’t see are difficult to be seen. He’s still for some moments, as if sculpted by one who regularly found very little precious enough to lift a hand toward, but had known the value of doing so this once. After, he bends to the floor to retrieve the envelope before leaning around the second, who stands watchfully holding a cigarette, catching his breath as the first presses it deep into his back pocket.

“I’m Catholic, too,” says the first, on a breath. He follows with a small slide, a turn to ram his gun up against the second’s abdomen.

“Kiss me or kill me,” says the second, deflating, releasing his cigarette to the gravel. “Either’s a sin.”

The first doesn’t move, so he carries on. “But, you know, they’re both — generic. Generic sins. God’s gonna shit all over you either way, so you might as well trespass against me or transgress or what-have-you — ”

“Stop,” says the first. “I’ve decided. So stop talking. But — but we need to move. We’re exposed here. For — for what’s gonna go down. Yeah.”

“God’ll see us anywhere,” laughs the second, holding his arms out, sarcastic or not, as if to bask in some divine light. He walks, nonetheless, smoothly, along with the man until they fade from purview.