Love on Stage
LOVE ON STAGE
Neil Plakcy
www.loose-id.com
Love on Stage
Copyright © September 2014 by Neil Plakcy
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781623005191
Editor: Maryam Salim
Cover Artist: G.D. Leigh
Published in the United States of America
Loose Id LLC
PO Box 806
San Francisco CA 94104-0806
www.loose-id.com
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning
This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
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Dedication
For Marc: We were strangers, starting out on a journey, never dreaming what we’d have to go through.
Acknowledgment
Once again, I have to thank my terrific editor, Maryam Salim, as well as all the staff at Loose Id who help make my work sing. Gratitude goes as well to my most excellent critique partners: Miriam Auerbach, Christine Jackson, Kris Montee, and Sharon Potts. Their advice is reflected in everything I write. Brody and Griffin get me up and walking when I’d rather be sitting at the computer, and my writer friends at Broward College keep me energized about the process of putting together words on the page.
Contradictions
Gavin Kaczmarek expertly dumped a bag of organic Ethiopian coffee beans into the grinder, set the dial to Turkish fine, and flipped the switch. The alarm on the dark-roast pot was ringing behind him, and he turned it off and removed the glass pot from the burner. He pulled two shots from the tray of the espresso machine and poured them into a china mug, then reached for the pitcher of hot milk.
At six-one, Gavin was slim but muscular, with a tribal tattoo around his right bicep. He had been told often that he looked like a young Robert Redford, with a Nordic profile, a dimple in his chin, and a smile around his eyes. He kept his golden blond hair glossy and shoulder-length.
Humming along with the song on the stereo system, he placed a big spoon over the mouth of the pitcher and filled the mug. He pivoted to the grinder just as it finished and flipped the switch off with his elbow. Then he dropped the spoon in the sink and swirled the remaining foam in the pitcher into the shape of a leaf, finishing with a tiny doodle of his own invention. He handed the mug to the customer—an elderly woman in black tights and an electric-blue tank top, with a pink-tinged bouffant that had been lacquered in place.
She smiled a gap-toothed grin and took the mug, and Gavin bagged up the finely ground coffee beans for the customer behind her. He flirted with everybody—men, women, young, old. It didn’t matter. A raised eyebrow or a sexy smile added to the pileup of coins and bills in the tip jar. And sometimes Gavin was slipped a business card or had a phone number written on the back of a receipt. The women never got a call back, but if the guy was cute or sexy or just different, Gavin often made the call, though he denied it to his boss—a Kenyan immigrant named Careful Handa.
Java Joe’s, where Gavin worked the opening shift, was a funky fair-trade coffee shop a block off Lincoln Road. The place buzzed with office workers until nine, when there was a brief respite before the beauty school students, consultants meeting clients, medical staff in scrubs, and elderly java junkies showed up.
Gavin had unspoken nicknames for most of the regular customers, from Saggy Boob Lady to Hot Hasidic Guy to South American Soccer Mom. Because all of Java Joe’s products were certified kosher, they did a good business with students and staff at the nearby rabbinical colleges, and Gavin was always amazed at how someone could live in twenty-first-century Miami and yet still dress like they had in seventeenth-century Poland.
Around ten, Music Dude came in for his regular Jumbo Joe with extra foam. He was skinny and serious-looking, with hipster glasses, a goatee, and thinning hair, and had to be at least thirty. But there was something about him that Gavin liked, and if things were slow, he’d fantasize a bit about seeing the guy naked, and his dick would jump.
Music Dude always had high-tech earbuds, and when he’d pull them out to order, Gavin could hear all kinds of tunes, from Brazilian sambas to blue-eyed soul to rap. A couple of times Gavin had seen him working on a laptop with what looked like musical notations on the screen.
Gavin made the Jumbo Joe, a sixteen-ounce latte with two extra shots, and instead of his regular leaf, he drew a musical note with the foam and served up the coffee with a bit of song. “
I love java, sweet and hot, whoops Mr. Moto I’m a coffeepot
.”
“Your voice has a nice tone,” Music Dude said. “But you’re losing your breath on the lower register.”
“You know about stuff like that?” Gavin asked as he handed Music Dude his coffee.
“It’s what I do. Digital music production.”
“Very cool.” Gavin struggled for something else to say, but there was a line of customers out the door, and he felt tongue-tied.
“Have a good day,” Music Dude said. He took his coffee and left.
Gavin was bummed. He had hoped to impress the guy, though he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he was super handsome or anything.
He went back to work, making coffees for Slope-Shouldered Tall Guy, Russian Realtor Lady, and a raft of others who weren’t regular enough to have nicknames. At noon he signed out and walked to the corner of Lincoln and Alton, where a big orange school bus was idling in the crosswalk.
He signed in with the pimply-faced photographer’s assistant and took a seat halfway back, across from Tate, another model he’d worked with in the past.
As the bus took off, he looked around at the half dozen other models and the mixed bag of crew members. He leaned over to Tate and asked, “You know where we’re going?”
“I hear the underwear company rented out the locker room at the Miami Dolphins training center,” Tate said.
“Maybe there will be a stray Dolphin hanging around,” Gavin said. “I’d do a pro football player in a heartbeat.”
“Too early for pre-season practice,” Tate said.
Gavin had met Tate on his first modeling gig. He was a nice guy, despite having the kind of good looks that immediately put Gavin on the defensive—oval face, high cheekbones, tanned skin, and shoulder-length dark-brown hair. Gavin preferred to hang around with guys less good-looking than he was, but he made an exception for Tate.
When they walked into the locker room, the team’s presence was everywhere, from the trophies along the wall, to the big sign that read THE ROAD TO THE SUPER BOWL STARTS HERE.
The stylist pulled Gavin’s shoulder-length hair into a ponytail and slicked it down with gel. He was handed a red-and-black jockstrap studded with silver metal bolts, which he slipped on. The stylist fiddled with the position of the waistband, then sprayed his shoulders and chest with water so that he’d look like he’d just come from a sweaty workout.
He was directed to a bench in front of an open locker, and the stylist pooled a pair of slacks around his bare feet to look as if he’d just stepped out of them. There was an erotic kick to being in a place suffused with so much testosterone, and so far the photographer, a slim Asian guy wearing one of those vests that hunters wore during deer season, had chastised two of the models for getting boners.
Suddenly the photographer was right beside him, his lens up in Gavin’s face. The camera’s rapid shutter clicks reminded Gavin of the sound the crickets made back home in Wisconsin. He was looking forward to spending the Independence Day weekend with his family at their summer home at Starlit Lake.
“Don’t think about anything!” the photographer demanded. “You are a blank canvas. An empty shell. A mannequin to display the clothes.”
Gavin imagined that the photographer was his father, yelling at him for some screw-up, and switched to the distant-focused look he had perfected as a teenager. He emptied his mind and stared straight ahead.