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ECHO PARK

by Stephen Shore

one

From where Sergei is crouched straddling the rooftop, he can see right up Tucker's shorts. He’s aware, too, that Tucker does this on purpose. Tucker bites down on a string of nails between his pearly-whites, teeth as perfect as his are a ramshackle fence. Methodically the youth lays down a shingle, pulling out a pair of nails and securing the oyster grey tile in place. He then crab-walks up two feet closer to ready the nails for the next shingle. While hammering, he looks up at Sergei in his wary, enticing way (the shit) and scratches his balls, also on display. Sergei knows that, too, is for his benefit. Sergei avoids his glance, looking down from his rooftop peak and secures a top ridge cap. Since Tucker is close to laying the final, upper-most course of shingles, he’s almost on top of Sergei. His balls will soon be close enough to touch. Sergei has the choice of getting caught staring or looking away.

Sergei takes wire rim glasses from his shirt pocket and wraps them around the backs of his ears. The view from the roof of this Echo Park home is epic. Last night’s windstorm blew away the city basin’s smog, and today you can actually see, as the crow flies, Santa Monica fifteen miles away. Even the ocean white caps are in view along with a sprinkling of colorful sails over the coastline: past old Hollywood, past Beverly Hills, past Brentwood, right down to fucking Santa Monica beach, miniature palm trees and all. The blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean is almost the exact shade, cold and deep, of Tucker’s blue eyes. The view up Tucker’s shorts is even more resplendent. The sun slashes directly over the young man's large hanging pink crown. Beyond his bare thigh you can even make out a dark nestle of pubes. Inside the gloom glints the thin metal P.A. piercing Tucker’s dickhead. Why would he ruin such perfection? To Sergei, the wonderment is an obsession. Tucker’s crouch has his left leg bent up toward Sergei on the upside of the roof at a right angle. The other leg, muscular and taught, is straight out, balancing him against the roof’s pitch. The baggy, black gym shorts are long and droop open enough to let the warm afternoon breeze flap the spidery silk, swaying his long, hanging ballsack in the same warm breeze. Sergei feels his own balls churn within his patched second-hand jeans. The breeze up here on the roof blows Tucker’s honey hair off his shoulders. If not for his red cap it would blow in his face, but the cap holds it down. He nails his last shingle at roof’s peak next to Sergei, then stands, scales back down the roof to his last course of shingles that will finish this side of the house. Sergei quickly replaces his glasses in his pocket hoping Tucker hadn’t noticed them. He feels they make him older than his thirty years. His bald spot doesn't help.

"Boss-man," says Tucker calling to him. Sergei shields his eyes against the sun, arching its descent toward the ocean. “Only got a few more in my row, then what?” Tucker's voice is sonorous. Sergei learned sonorous in English class last night, and it describes Tucker’s voice to a tee he thinks. Deep and full. He has no right to have a voice so rich, when his own is so tinny, so scratchy with these foreign, garbled words always fighting with his tongue—and from a face so striking he feels he's always caught staring at it, at him. Admit it though: You’d spot Tucker easily in a crowd, even if he wasn’t wearing only shorts, tennis shoes and nothing more. He isn’t a pumped up gym rat, but his bare torso’s a perfect V—broad, smooth shoulders paring down to a slim, taut waist. His arms are cut like a bronze statue from working construction outdoors for Sergei and his brother since graduating two years ago from high school. His chest is flat and tanned; his chiseled pecs rise and fall with each breath. Sergei, his foreman, thinks what, indeed, was next after the last row of shingles are laid. A casual invite for a Friday beer after work? Maybe enough to have him once again pass out drunk on his living room couch. Was that a onetime fluke, he wonders? Did Tucker have any idea how long he stood with only the hall light falling onto the couch, him on the couch lying shirtless, asleep, Sergei in the archway watching him breathe?

The wind changes slightly so Tucker is now directly upwind of him. He can smell the suntan oil and his sweat. Being near-sighted, it’s the first time Sergei can make out the words on Tucker’s red cap. Make America Great Again.

A brown cloud of small wrens suddenly swoops down toward the roof and then scatter overhead. They gathers again into a mass and disappear as one formation over a hillside ridge. Sergei sits back on his butt, seeing Tucker in a different light. “Really, man?” Sergei asks flattening his lips, soured by Tucker’s cap.

Tucker sees what Sergei sees. “Fuck yeah. Trump that bitch, yo.” But Tucker hears the disapproval in the question, takes off his cap, reaches in the pocket of his shorts and takes out a black hair band. His face is impassive. He twists a pony tail, sticks the band over it, and puts the cap back on. He looks down at Sergei, asks, “You think owner-man would mind if I use his shower before I take off tonight?”

Sergei thinks about it—tries not to ponder the scene. “You have towel?" he asks. Tucker nods. "You lock up afterward then, okay?”

“Da,” Tucker mocks Sergei’s concern with a smirk and a wink. He knows what works on Sergei.

At the lip of the roof Sergei hears his older brother Alexei—or Alex, as he insists now that he’s married a pretty American girl named Jenny—clanking up the aluminum rungs. Alex pops his bald head up at the top of the ladder. He scans the two figures at the rooftop, shakes his head. He raises his eyebrows, opens his eyes wide, and swears, “What the fuck? You guys aren’t done?” He eyes Tucker, guardedly observing how Sergei is eyeing him, or specifically—he knows his brother weakness—is trying not to eye him. “Come on, man. I told you I want to knock off early. Jenny wants to go to her parents' house and show off the baby. Serge, she wants you to come too.”

Tucker says, “Fifteen, twenty minutes max, bro. Right, boss-man?”

“Da,” says Sergei, spreading his legs out, straddling the roof, and hammers down another roof ridge cap.

Alex disappears as Tucker inches over to nail his last few shingles. He squats close, facing away from Sergei. Sergei can’t help but admire the width of his fleshy back. He’s maybe a foot away. Sergei stills smells him. It’s not lost on him that Tucker’s crouch exposes more than an inch of his butt crack. In fact, in the bright sunlight streaming down his spine, Sergei sees the brown swirl of butt hair blooming out of Tucker’s waistband. He even sees the parted canyon of entangled hair that disappears down into darkness. He follows a trickle of sweat traveling down his spine like a rollercoaster that falls into the canyon. He's staring again. He knows he shouldn’t. This close, he mesmerized looking up at Tucker’s back spread wide and billowed like a sail. He’s examining Tucker’s large tattoo. He can’t tell if the tribal ink covering his back is supposed to be wings of an angel or wings of a bat. Tucker shuffles up another inch closer to attack a nail at mid-shingle. Sergei’s close enough to see beads of sweat perched on swirls of crack hair. He loves his brother but he feels trapped inside his brother’s life. However crisply in focus the glistening beads are, now only inches away. Tonight at his brother’s in-law’s house passing around a braised pork roast, canned green beans, and a concoction of something called marshmallow salad, he’ll think about those beads; forever, most likely, he’ll see how out of reach they are.

***

Sergei and Alex putt-putt down the street in their nondescript foreign coup. Sad! thinks Tucker taking his day-pack from the bed of his truck and walks back to the house.

It's weird, this house, you gotta admit it. He looks up at the scattershot pink structure, at its many angles and levels. Nothing straight about it, especially the owner, Alex joked to him when they started the job. The only thing at ground level's the one-car garage. The green garage door folds sideways; he’d never seen a garage door like that. A staircase to the left leads up the steep cliff to a stone landing where there's a glimpse of downtown Los Angeles. Mostly, however, the landing faces out to the flatlands of South Central L.A. To the west, the trees of the hillside block any view of the ocean. The front door is an arch and inches thick, probably the original mahogany from the 1920s when the house was built. There’s a caged peephole with hinges of heavy ironwork supporting it. So ornate is the door he's surprised someone hadn't stolen it in the fifties when the hills had a bad, destitute reputation. The hills had been reclaimed in the seventies by artists, and now were being taken to the next level of gentrification, this time by the gays. Alex said, however, this owner had been here from back-in-the-day, was the original owner apparently. How old would that make him? No way, Tucker rejects the thought.

Terracotta pottery with bougainvillea surround the stone landing. Large palms fronds overhang the entrance making the area, even in the ninety degree afternoon, shaded, and feel almost cool. A spare key hides under a small ceramic frog next to the door, and Tucker lets himself in.

Inside, the entrance is small but with the arched picture window above the garage expands the view to the hills of Hollywood and that makes it feel larger than it is. An archway to the left are heavily curtained with red velvet drapes hiding a staircase that leads to the main floor. Tucker wonders why cover the staircase? Seems bizarre. Lots of wallpaper on this floor. Printed bougainvillea and palm fronds again reminiscent of the outside landing. Tucker hates coordination. Reminds him too much of his mother, where everything—white carpet, white drapes, white bath towels—had to conform. You’d probably miss it, but under the stairway a glass nob opens to a closet camouflaged with matching wallpaper. A table stands in front of the railing with a glass bowl filled with loose change and several individual keys. Even a few decorative doubloons are in the mix, which brings out Tucker’s smirk. Doubloons. He likes the word. Pirates, like. He thinks about stealing one. Who’d notice one missing? It clinks in his pocket again his car keys.

The stairway isn’t grand but nicely refurbished with twisted Spanish iron balusters and a smooth, heavy metal rail. He and Sergei had toured the house looking for the bathroom once before. He remembered there were many staircases, some oddly leading to just one room. Yeah, the house was weird like that. It was as if someone one day woke up with a bright idea and added another room on a whim. That's how the house was: added onto randomly, haphazard, no real design, no architectural plan, just a collection of impulses built serendipitously up the side of a mountain. His mother would hate it, which is why he was suddenly fond of its oddness.

He remembers you go up the stair and back to the master bedroom on the main floor to find the bathroom. He's taking his time though. He doesn't have any real plans. No one's waiting for him. His latest girlfriend is visiting her sister in Seattle, his parents are in Beijing. This is as good of a place as any. Here's the dining room on the main floor landing, a large kitchen is in back. He strolls through the kitchen, opens an ancient fridge that has a pull down handle that releases the latch—very kid-dangerous, he thinks—to see what's cold. He feels coldness crawl over his ankles as he imagines all the kiddies that suffocated playing hide and go seek inside these antique deathtraps stored in people’s garages. He spies milk in a glass bottle, a half-filled bottle of Pinot Grigio, no beer. He picks up the wine, recognizes it as a decent label from a very old year. Uncorks it, brings the neck to his lips and chugs a good amount before he tastes that it's horribly rancid. Must have turned. Puts it back. Goes to the sink and bends over to sip from the faucet trying to get the bad taste out of his mouth.

Back out in the dining room there's a small room to the right. It has an arched window that opens to a balcony, which overlooks the stone landing he came in from. Wallpaper in here is of large red Chinese lanterns. There's an old oak desk in the middle facing the window. He peaks in a drawer. There's several manila folders. He pulls one out. Yellowed photographs of naked men. None handsome or good looking, but tough, some of them almost sinister, criminal. They look to Tucker like derelicts, homeless men, drug addicts. They lay naked on mattresses, passed out, eyes rolled back in their heads, under overpasses, in flophouses; a few in this room, same desk, chair, Chinese lantern wallpaper, propped on a stool jacking, grimy fingers holding a girlie magazine. Smoking. Spurt dripping from their fingers. Gross. He puts them back and closes the drawer. He’s a little weirded out, backs out of the room.

The house is silent except for a clock ticking somewhere. The opposite side of the dining room is the master bedroom and through it is the master bath. He looks up, sees dust play through sunlight from the great room upstairs. He has a sudden urge to see the sunset.

A set of stairs perpendicular to the dining room leads up to the great room. Not really large as a great room would imply, but its double-height ceiling gives the feeling of vast openness. The dark walnut rafters are exposed and glow from the late afternoon light. Once he climbs to the top, over the side he observes the dining room below, the silk table runner, two ornate candelabras, the dark, black felt paintings of bulls and toreadors on the wall, vibrant red splashes of blood on felt. Three stories above street level, he looks out to the city. The height clears the lower canyons and expands out to a vista of the entire city. Far off in the distance, seaward, he sees colored lights of Santa Monica’s Ferris wheel turning, sailboats coming back into the marina for the night, tankers trolling off the coast of South Bay beaches, Palos Verdes where he lives with his parents is flickering awake, all the way over to Long Beach with its oil rigs that dot the coastline. It's a rare day in L.A. when you see this much. The sun still has a ways before it sets, but there's the beginning of pink tinge to the sky. A yellow ribbon of wavering light follows the sun across the water. He figures it'll set in another hour. He'd like to be on the freeway by then.

Opposite the window is a huge fireplace, not that one's ever needed in L.A. In front of the hearth is a couch that’s facing the window, its back facing away from the empty grate. He flops down and kicks his sneakers up on a heavy wooden coffee table. There's a silver tray with crystal glasses and two decanters, one with clear liquid, one dark amber. He picks up the dark liquid decanter and smells very oaky scotch, pours himself a good amount in one of the crystals. Looks out to the city, toasts himself in the reflection. He grabs his crotch for no discernible reason but simply because it feels good. He sticks out his tongue. It’s a signature Tucker move, a nod to heavy metal aspirations abandoned in high school but still lingers in his mental self-image. He takes another sip, feels it burn his lips, tongue, throat, then roasts in his belly. He's feeling exceptionally good and he's getting hard. He's inclined, against his better judgment, to whip out his hefty meat and beat off right there on a stranger's couch. A gong from a clock strikes the half hour. He swigs the rest of the glass and sets it back on the tray.

He hops down the staircase and back to master bathroom. Palos Verdes where he grew up is nouveau riche gated community, but this bathroom he recognizes as old wealth; wealth from when L.A. was new, only an idea on the edges of the desert. All original fixtures. Spacious, cavernous even. Pair of white porcelain faucets that read Hot and Cold at the sink, white tiles with a stripe of mint green at chest height; hand-laid hexagon tiles in elaborate patterns cover the floor. The toilet's metal and huge, flushes with a pull chain atop a tank that sits at head height. It’s been a long day. He lets his shorts fall to the floor and steps out of his shoes, puts his backpack on the counter. He opens the toilet lid. He's semi-rigid so he needs to carefully aim his piss over his P.A. He tilts over so it points straight down, not splashing out in random streams. He gushes powerfully for a few solid minutes, relishing the release and enjoying the loud, echoing noise it's making in the bowel. He shakes his dick a few times and goes back to the mirror. He pulls the band off his ponytail, shakes out his mane, and stuffs the band in his pack's front zipper. He's tempted to use one of the big white plush monogrammed towels on the rack. SM, reads the monogram. Funny. Instead, he takes out a small terrycloth green and white striped beach towel he’d grabbed from his pool house and flops it over the glass shower stall.

Peering down, Tucker notices a lower drawer partially open. There's something flesh colored inside. He opens it more and finds a cone-shaped piece of rubber that then tapers down to a slab of pink rubber. He's heard about butt plugs but never held one. By all rights he should be skeeved out but he isn't; mostly he's curious. He picks it up and feels its heft and density; where it’s soft and gives; where it's rigid. It's pretty large. So fags put these up their butts? Why would you do that? He puts it back in the drawer, closes it, and washes his hands.

He gets in the shower and picks up a hanging metal hose. He understands the nozzle's for cleaning out and let it drop. He turns on the faucet and water spouts out the hose in a spray that makes the hose dance and clang around the stall. He reached up and turns a nob connected to the wall pipe that makes water run through the showerhead rather than the hose. He rinses off the day. The spray feels like rain and the splatter clacks against the tile and glass enclosure. He takes a bar of soap from a tiled shelf and lathes his pits, his butt, his pubes. His gets a full eight-inch erection from doing this and it's soaped and ready to go. He gives it a couple of whacks, then holds his balls and starts getting into it. First he thinks of tits, huge tits swinging, bouncy and wet. Fleshy, hanging low, with large pink areolas. A couple of hairs around the edge. Pussies pushed open showing pink and purple velvety interiors. Veins and imperfections. But then there's an image of a derelict man on a mattress under an overpass, his prison tattoos, a lewd pose pulling up his legs showing off his dirty hole, another picture of a filthy kid wanking to a girlie magazine, cum drooling down his stomach. Tucker's edging. He switches his mind to cunts he's fucked, sloppy twats, the night he first fuck his girlfriend, her dry tight virgin pussy, barely any hair, but the image is pushed out, he's edging more to the feeling and heft of the butt plug, knowing it's been up someone's butthole, that huge thing, what it must feel like going in. Like un-taking a shit. He spurts hard and spurts hard again, right across the shower stall. A big wad of cum runs down the glass. He shakes and steadies his knees putting a hand on the tiled wall. He strokes himself a few times more, contracting with each stroke. Polishing his nob hurts and he stops.

There's a bottle of shampoo on the floor. He picks it up and smells it. It isn’t too flowery. He rinses off his hands and lathers his head, massages his scalp, and then rinses his head back with the sensual streams running through his hair. Some soap gets in his eyes and he turns around and lets the water wash over his face. He rubs his eye sockets and floods his face with water. His body loosens; the soot, the sun, wash away until he's fully relaxed, freshly jacked and ready to head home. His dick's still hard. He shuts off the water. He clicks open the gold handled door and wipes himself with his beach towel. A hairdryer sits next to his pack on the counter. He sets it on high, brushing out his hair with his fingers. Straight, parted in the middle, feathered to perfection—he's satisfied. His dick's still hard, which is increasingly weird, but looking at himself in the mirror he looks pretty hot. He thinks about taking a selfie. Nah, instead goes for his jeans and tee-shirt in his backpack. The pack is light and empty. He opens a back compartment. Also empty. He looks on the floor for his shorts. Missing. He's being punked. He put his knuckles on the counter. "Hey!" he shouts, echoing against the tile. "Yo, bitch! Not funny!" He smacks his hands on the counter. The only thing not missing is his red cap, which he puts on. He tries wrapping the towel around his waist but it comes up short. He goes out naked, towel in hand, looking for the thief.

He darts through the master bedroom into the dining room. Dusk's approaching and the wooden floorboards creak throughout the house. He stops to listen. Only thing he hears is a slow tick-tock. "Hello?" he calls up to the living room before bounding up the stairs. The sunset has gone from pink to red, the sun’s a few inches above the water. He looks out to see if there's a car outside. The driveway's deserted. It's possible someone had parked in the garage but he isn't going out in his mini towel to find out. He thinks maybe he can borrow something in the owner's closet. He'll bring it back on Monday. But why won't his dick go down? He feels it’s harder than ever; it almost hurts.

The bedroom's in the back part of the house built into the hillside. It's cavernous and dark in here. He switches on a light which does little to fill the darkness. The light's produced by two forty watt bulbs in separate ivory domes placed yards apart on the expansive ceiling. The room paneled in rich mahogany easily drinks up the jaundiced light. The four poster bed's enormous, with carved pillars on each corner. Small loops of rope are evident peaking up from where the mattress meets the headboard. The less he thinks about this the better. He finds the closet secreted within the wood paneling next to the bed. He opens it up revealing a shadowy cave. He can't see a thing inside but senses it goes in extremely far. He reaches around the door looking for a switch but finds nothing. He enters cautiously raising his hand in the air hoping to find a hanging chain. A few feet in and he's still searching. It's probably the biggest walk-in he's ever seen—or not seen. About ten paces in his hand hits a small piece of string. He tugs it and the closet bursts with a harsh glare of a naked hundred watt bulb. It’s blinding. As his eyes adjust he realizes he’s surrounded by an enormous collection of leather jackets; beneath the jackets hang leather pants, some with, some without crotches; a row of various height boots stack against the back wall; above them a row of caps, a second shelf of masks, some with zippers for eyes, some with, some without mouths; next to them a few gas masks; opposite the jackets are harnesses and vests, also some rubber shorts and tops, one piece is shiny rubber that encases from head to feet with only a hole at the mouth and a hole for a dick. From the enormous size of the jackets and pants he figures it fits someone tall and either extremely fat or exceedingly muscular—none of the above he wants to meet in his present naked and erect state. He hears the closet door click shut. He turns around to leave but someone naked is blocking his way. He jumps back only to realize it's a full length mirror on the back of the door. He wedges the door open and lets the light spill into the room.

There's a dresser where he should find something, underwear, shorts, a sweater, something that will get him to his truck and out of here. In the first drawer he finds handcuffs and wrist restraints. A second drawer is full of rope and bandages. He starts to get panicked and rifles through drawers several at a time. Blindfolds, ball gags, leg restraints, studded arm bands, cock rings, long metal rods, medical instruments that he can't even begin to think what they're for, tubes of lube, KY, jars of Vaseline, a can of Crisco, a drawer filled with large and extra-large dildoes, a box of small brown vials. The vials are slimy and smell off-putting. In fact the whole room has a stale scent of grease. Now that there's more light he can see the bed is covered by a large rubber sheet and streaked with grease. Art on the wall is of men with exaggerated nipples and massive cocks, fisting, fucking, and pissing on each other. The entire ceiling's mirrored. He sees himself on the ceiling looking down at himself, cock still tauntingly erect.

Also, upside down in the reflection, taking up the entire doorway, a bearded man all in leather smacks his palm with a nightstick. “Not the kind of house you want to break into,” says the figure.