Looking For It

by Michael Thomas Ford

Genres: Family Life; Small Town & Rural; LGBT Gay

Synopsis

Mike Monaghan is the bartender at the Engine Room, a meeting place for the small but thriving community of gay men in Cold Falls, New York. As Mike pours beer, wipes glasses and hears everything, he's also witness to the men who come here looking for what they need--sex, direction, friendship, spiritual fulfillment, and love. People like: Stephen Darby--As an accountant, he knows many secrets. But Stephen has his own secret, one he's never been able to share with anyone close to him. Being the perfect son costs him dearly, and now it may take from him the one man he longs for. Pete Thayer--Playing it straight, Pete takes out his frustrations on transmissions and engines during the day, then spends his nights trying to quench his needs through anonymous sex. But once the thrill of the forbidden begins to fade, what will he be left with? John and Russell--The golden couple in town has the ideal relationship everyone wants. But behind the scenes, their storybook marriage is on the verge of facing some explosive trials that will shake both men completely. Father Thomas Dunn--More and more the gentle priest is feeling a need to express the secret desires that conflict with his devotion to the church, sending his faith into a tailspin and making him question what he really wants from life. Simon Bird--He's a fixture in town, an old queen everyone finds amusing and entertaining. Still mourning the loss of his longtime lover, Simon yearns to find love and a place in a culture that worships youth and beauty. As Mike hands these men their drinks, he marvels at their determination, strength and foolishness. But most of all, he begins to question his own dissatisfaction, pondering what's missing from his own life, and what risks he may have to take to find fulfillment. Looking For It is an extraordinarily human tale of community, friendship, and the search for happiness. With unflinching honesty, keen insight, and his trademark humor, Michael Thomas Ford weaves together the unforgettable stories of these seven men, chronicling their dreams, hurts, heartbreaks, joys, and hopes, while taking readers on an emotional journey to find what it is we're all looking for.

Release date: July 19, 2012

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

“Another fireman. That makes five.”

John Ellison took a sip of his vodka tonic and regarded the man in the yellow slicker and red plastic helmet with an air of weary disdain. “You’d think they’d at least try not to look like overgrown kindergartners.”

Mike Monaghan, preoccupied with trying to remember the order the nun waiting at the other end of the bar had just given him, nodded absentmindedly as he poured gin over the ice in a glass, neatly popped the caps from two Rolling Rocks, and searched beneath the counter for the bottle of vermouth. Damn it, Paulie, he thought, silently cursing the barback whose duty it was to set up before the evening rush. Why can’t you ever put things back where they belong?

“I know this is the Engine Room, and I’m sure they think they’re being very clever, but can’t they show a little more imagination?” said John.

“Actually, engine rooms are on ships and submarines, not in fire stations,” Mike remarked as he grabbed a pile of napkins to hand to the nun along with his drinks. “Technically, they should be dressed as sailors.”

“That makes it even worse,” said John, draining his glass. “Not only are they unoriginal, they’re ignorant.”

“Well, it was very original of you to come as Mr. Rogers,” Mike told him, eyeing the blue cardigan John had buttoned almost all the way up. “I know I definitely want to be your neighbor.”

“Fuck you,” John shot back. “For your information, this is what all self-respecting high school science teachers wear.”

“The stuff of teenage boys’ wet dreams,” joked Mike as he took John’s empty glass and refilled it.

“What have I missed?”

A man took the seat next to John at the bar. Leaning over, he kissed John quickly on the mouth.

“Nothing,” said John. “Just the annual Halloween Faggot Parade and Masquerade Ball.”

“Russell, I don’t know how you live with this bitter queen,” Mike said. Anticipating the request he knew was coming, he poured a rum and Coke and slid it to the man who had just joined them.

Russell took the drink, lifted it to his lips in salute, and took a deep swig before replying. “I’m just with him for the sex,” he said, earning a laugh from Mike and a roll of the eyes from John.

“How was the sale?” asked John, changing the subject.

Russell groaned. “Three hundred overweight women all insisting they were size fours,” he said wearily. “I barely made it out alive.”

“Oh, the perils of retail,” said John.

“I didn’t even have time to come up with a costume,” said Russell.

“Thank God,” John told him, sounding relieved. “There are enough cowboys, Batmen, and lumberjacks here to recreate an episode of Let’s Make a Deal.”

“Actually, I think those lumberjacks are lesbians,” Mike teased. “And since you’re asking, I’ll take what’s behind door number two.”

Russell laughed. “You don’t have to be so uptight,” he said to his lover. “Halloween is supposed to be fun.”

John snorted. “Excuse me if I’m a little tired of this nonsense. All day long I had to teach chemistry to children dressed as gangbangers and hookers,” he said. “Not that every day isn’t like that.”

“You should have gone as Grand Master J,” suggested Mike. “Pimp Daddy of the science lab. You could show them how to make their own street drugs. That would get them interested in chemistry.”

“I don’t see you in a costume,” John retorted. “If you think this is so much fun, how come you’re not dressed in some inane getup?”

“I am in costume,” Mike said. “Can’t you tell? I’m a straight guy.”

Russell laughed as John shook his head. Mike, noticing a ghost waving a ten-dollar bill at him, excused himself to attend to the customer.

“Can we go now?” John asked Russell.

“Go?” Russell said. “They’re just about to start the drag show.”

“That’s exactly why I want to go,” said John. “I’ve got a splitting headache, and being here isn’t helping.”

Russell looked down into his drink. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “We can go. Let me say good night to Mike.”

John stood up. “I’ll be outside,” he told his partner.

As John pushed his way through the crowd toward the door, Russell finished his drink and set the empty glass on the bar. He caught Mike’s eye and waved.

“You’re leaving?” asked Mike, coming over and automatically sweeping the empty glass into the plastic tub beneath the counter.

Russell sighed. “Her majesty has a headache.”

“So send him home by himself,” suggested Mike.

Russell shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m pretty beat anyway. I’ll see you later.”

Mike nodded and watched as Russell left. Russell and John had been coming into the bar regularly for the six years Mike had worked there, and still he hadn’t figured out what kept them together. One of these days, he thought, he’d unravel the mystery. But tonight wasn’t the night. Tonight he had too much else to do.

He turned his attention to the customers lined up three deep at the bar. Within moments he was busy mixing drinks, his hands finding the bottles, ice, and wedges of lime as his mind ticked off the orders: three martinis for Wonder Woman, a shot of Jack Daniels and a Cosmo for the scarecrow, and a Budweiser for the devil with the wicked smile. Then he was on to a new set of faces and the next round.

“What’s an old queen have to do to get a sidecar around here?”

“Simon!” Mike said, leaning across the bar to kiss the cheek of the man addressing him. He eyed the old-fashioned black dress and powdered wig Simon was wearing. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked as he began putting together the sidecar.

“What did I just say?” asked Simon primly. “I’m an old queen.”

Seeing Mike’s confusion, Simon shook his head. “You children have no sense of history,” he said. “Victoria. I’m Queen Victoria.”

Mike nodded. “Oh,” he said. “I get it.”

Simon took his sidecar and handed Mike a five. “Don’t feel badly about not knowing,” he said. “Someone else complimented me on my Zsa Zsa Gabor costume. There are, I’m afraid, disadvantages to being the oldest one in a room.”

Behind Simon a drag queen sporting a pink-sequined dress, enormous breasts, and a beehive hairdo that added a good two feet to her height stepped onto the small stage that had been erected for the evening. Taking up a microphone, she flashed a red-lipped smile, batted her false eyelashes, and addressed the crowd.

“Happy Halloween!” she shouted. “Welcome to the Engine Room. So, what will it be tonight, tricks or treats?”

“Tricks!” shouted the crowd.

The crowd around the bar thinned as people turned to watch the show. Simon pulled out a stool and sat down. “She got that from Walter, you know,” he said to Mike.

Mike knew. He’d heard Simon’s stories about Walter many times. Everyone in the bar had, particularly in the year since Walter had died.

“He was so lovely,” Simon said, speaking to no one in particular. “So beautiful.”

Mike looked at Simon’s face. Caked with makeup, it reminded him of a crumbling painting. How old was Simon, he wondered? Surely he must be almost seventy. And Walter had been even older. Mike, picturing Walter, tried to imagine the wrinkled little man with the white mustache who’d worn corduroy trousers and neatly pressed plaid shirts dressed in drag.

“I remember the first time I saw him,” Simon said. “It was at a party given by my friend Harold Carver. We didn’t have a bar to go to back then, but Harold was wealthy and had a big house in Saratoga. Every weekend we went there. Escaped, really. From our lives. One weekend someone brought Walter along as a guest. Friday night he made his entrance to dinner dressed in a beaded gown, and I fell in love with him.”

Simon looked at Mike and smiled, the pancake makeup on his cheeks cracking and flaking off. “I know it all sounds terribly fey,” he said. “But he wasn’t playing at being a woman. It was just his way of having fun.” Simon sighed deeply. “It all seems so much easier now, doesn’t it? We have our bars, and parades, and we’re on television for everyone to see. People talk about how terrible it was back then, how we had to hide who we were. But they forget that it was also magical. We had our own secret world. Maybe we were afraid sometimes, but we weren’t unhappy.”

Simon looked down into his glass. “We weren’t unhappy,” he repeated. “Not then.”

“Would you like another one?” Mike asked him, nodding at the empty drink. “It’s on the house.”

Simon shook his head. “Thank you, but no. One makes me maudlin. Two will make me positively morose. I think I should probably take myself home before I become a spectacle.”

“You’re going to miss the costume contest,” Mike told him.

“That is a misfortune I will have to live with,” Simon said, standing up. “I pray that I am up to it.”

He waved away the change Mike had placed on the bar. Mike pocketed it as Simon turned and melted into the crowd. With only a few customers waiting, Mike enjoyed the relative quiet. The drag show was in full force, but he was able to block it out. It was a trick he’d developed during years of bartending in places whose clientele favored the cover of blaring music over the ability to communicate with those around them. He simply tuned the noise out, losing himself in his work or his thoughts.

He observed the action from within this sphere of artificial silence, surrounded by the chaos that was Halloween at the Engine Room but at the same time removed from it. As he straightened the bottles and restocked the napkins, he watched the faces of the patrons. Many of them he recognized, but others were strangers to him. This was to be expected. The Engine Room was one of only three gay bars in a two-hour radius. The towns of upstate New York had many charms, but the availability of entertainment for the queer community was not one of them.

Oddly, this was one of the things that appealed to Mike about life in Cold Falls. He’d lived in larger cities, Albany and Syracuse for several years and a brief three-month stint in Buffalo one summer, but he preferred the quieter atmosphere of the smaller towns. Not that Cold Falls was merely a flyspeck on the map of New York State. An hour north of Utica, it shared with that city a history and economy based in brewing. Founded a hundred years earlier, Cold Falls Ale continued to be the bar’s best seller, beating out Coors and Budweiser by almost three to one. An image of the falls that gave the town its name graced the label, and the brewery’s motto—“Give me a cold one”—was regularly shouted out by customers, each of whom Mike rewarded with a friendly laugh suggesting that it was the first time he’d heard such cleverness.

He didn’t mind. He liked his customers. Like the town itself, they had quickly become familiar to him, until he knew their faces and names in the same way that he knew the most recognizable of Cold Falls’ landmarks: the brewery, the falls, the statue of the town’s lone celebrity (Cuthbert Applewhite, a dairy farmer who had distinguished himself in 1892 by preventing an assassination attempt against presidential candidate and former fellow upstate New Yorker Grover Cleveland during a campaign stop, and who after Cleveland had secured his second, improbable, term in office had been awarded a medal of distinction that he wore for the rest of his life, even when mucking out the barn).

In addition to their names, Mike knew their stories as well. He fell easily into the time-honored role most bartenders held along with their ability to mix drinks, that of father confessor and unpaid therapist. The tips he received were just as often tokens of appreciation for the advice he dispensed as they were for the strength of his cocktails, even if all he’d done was nod sympathetically during a patron’s rambling, boozy dissection of a recent breakup.

Stories. It was all about stories. Everyone had one, and almost everyone wanted to tell it. All he did was listen to them, and for that his customers were thankful. He was like a book they were writing, recording the events of their lives in his head. Maybe, he thought occasionally, one day he would write them all down. But who, he asked himself, would want to read it? To whom would the individual stories of heartbreak and joy be of any interest besides those who told them? It was, Mike thought as he washed and dried a wineglass, one of the less appealing characteristics of human beings, the ability to be completely uninterested in the lives of those around them while desperately longing for someone to pay them attention.

A burst of cheering made him look up. On the stage, the beehived drag queen was putting a crown on the head of a muscular man half-heartedly dressed as a pirate, the primary clues to his identity being the patch on one eye and the stuffed parrot somehow affixed to his shoulder. Apart from these props he was nearly nude, which Mike assumed was the reason for his popularity.

“How about showing us your Jolly Roger?” the drag queen teased, shamelessly pawing the pirate’s chest as the crowd roared.

“Can I get a cold one?”

Mike looked away from the action to see a skeleton standing at the bar. He wore a black turtleneck and pants painted with crude representations of bones. His hair was slicked back and his face, too, was painted black and white to resemble a skull. His eyes were misshapen white spots above a ghostly mouth, and the overall effect was unsettling.

“Great costume,” Mike remarked as he pulled a beer from the ice-filled chest and handed it to the man.

“Thanks,” came the short reply. “How much?”

“Two bucks,” answered Mike.

Three dollar bills were slapped on the bar. Then the skeleton man turned away, scanning the crowd.

Mike took the money, putting two of the bills into the register and adding the third to the rest of his tips. The man, he guessed, wasn’t one of the regulars, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to ask the price of a beer, which hadn’t changed in well over a year. Probably he was one of the visitors who came in only on nights like this, when they could hide behind the anonymity of a costume. Maybe there was a wife at home, perhaps a kid or two. Mike saw a lot of guys like that. They came to the Engine Room from other small cities, driving an hour or more to ensure invisibility while they spent a night living other lives.

Usually he saw them only once, but sometimes they showed up at regular intervals. Apart from their nervousness and unfamiliarity, they were easy to spot. Often they forgot to remove their wedding rings. He glanced at the left hand of the skeleton man. It was bare. Still, that meant nothing. Not all of them were married, of course. Some were simply afraid of who they were.

The man moved away, out of Mike’s sight. Looking for something, Mike thought. He was looking for something. They all were. That’s why they came there.

What was it with faggots that they liked to dress up like women? Pete Thayer stared at the drag queen standing on the stage. He was rambling on and on, grinning at everyone and throwing his hands all over the place. Pete couldn’t stand to look at his face, painted up like a clown’s. Someone needed to take the queen out back and show him how a real man acted.

That was the problem with fags; they wanted to be women. Not all of them, but most of them. That’s why so many of them were wearing dresses or girly costumes. Even the ones dressed as men were trying too hard to look masculine, hiding their sissiness behind military uniforms and football player getups. But Pete knew that once the clothes came off, the masculinity would fall with them to the floor of the bedroom, discarded like so much make-believe.

He took a swig of his beer and leaned against the wall. His eyes scanned the bar, looking for anything to relieve his boredom. The possibilities were few and far between. There was a cowboy by the pool table who wasn’t too bad, and at the back of the room a guy dressed as a baby wearing nothing but a diaper. The costume was a turnoff, but the guy at least had a hairy chest and didn’t seem too swishy.

Pete decided to give the baby a shot and started walking toward him. Halfway there he found his way blocked by a guy in a devil outfit. The devil looked him up and down and smiled.

“Nice costume,” he said.

Pete nodded. He wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“That paint sort of glows,” the devil continued. “Is it fluorescent?”

“Yeah,” said Pete curtly. Fluorescent? Who the hell cared? It was paint. He’d grabbed the bottle from the back room at the shop. The costume was a last-minute thing, pulled together in about ten minutes.

“You should have won a prize,” the devil said, grinning broadly. “It’s really cool.”

Behind the devil Pete saw the baby getting ready to leave with someone dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. He quickly looked for the cowboy, but he, too, was gone.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the devil asked him.

Pete looked at the guy. He was shirtless, like the baby, although his chest was smooth. But at least it was well muscled. His skin was painted red. On his head was perched a set of horns, and he had a goatee. He was wearing red boxer briefs and black work boots. He would do.

“I have a better idea,” Pete said. “Why don’t you and I take a little trip to hell.”

The devil looked at him, confused.

“Let’s get out of here,” Pete explained.

The devil nodded. “Oh,” he said. “I get it. Funny. Well, I’m sort of here with some friends. I should—”

“Okay,” Pete interrupted. “No problem.”

He turned to go, but the devil grabbed his arm. “I guess I could leave a little early,” he said.

“Then let’s go,” Pete told him.

He walked toward the door, knowing the devil would be right behind him. They always were, predictable as Monday morning. As the door of the Engine Room closed behind him, the devil was there beside him.

“I’m Mark,” the devil said.

“Dan,” Pete told him. “Where’s your car?”

“Over here.”

Pete followed Mark to his car, waiting for Mark to unlock it and then getting in. When they were inside, Mark leaned over and tried to kiss him. Pete put his hand on the back of Mark’s head and pushed it down to his crotch instead.

Mark’s fingers fumbled with Pete’s zipper, pulling it down and reaching inside. Unrestrained by underwear, Pete’s dick slid out easily. A moment later Mark’s mouth was sliding up and down it hungrily and Pete was growing hard. He leaned back, shut his eyes, and lost himself in the warmth of the mouth that serviced him.

When he felt himself begin to come, he said nothing. His load exploded into Mark’s mouth and he felt Mark gag for a moment before swallowing hard. When he was done, Pete pulled his softening cock from Mark’s mouth and zipped up. He opened the car door and got out, leaving Mark looking up at him with a puzzled expression.

Pete shut the door quickly, blotting out the sight of Mark’s face with its smeared red makeup and the horns hanging askew. He walked briskly away from the car toward the one he’d driven to the bar. It wasn’t his; it belonged to a customer from the shop. He would never drive his own car to a fag bar. It was too recognizable.

He got into the borrowed car and left the parking lot. He was home within fifteen minutes, where he parked the car in the garage and shut the door. Once safely inside the house, he went to the bathroom, where he turned the shower on, stripped off his painted clothes, and stuffed them into the small garbage can beneath the sink.

The water was too hot, but he left it that way. It would help wash away the dirt. Maybe, he thought vaguely as he soaped himself, it would also kill anything the queer’s mouth had left on his dick. He scrubbed his skin hard with a washcloth, wiping away the oily drugstore makeup he’d bought to create his skeleton face. He watched it run down his body and into the drain, a milky stream that ran clear after several minutes. Still he scrubbed, making sure he was rid of any lingering taint. You could never be too careful.

Turning the water off, he stepped from the shower and dropped the washcloth into the trash on top of the clothes. Grabbing a towel from the hook behind the door, he dried himself and walked into his bedroom. He flopped onto the bed and reached for the remote on the bedside table.

The TV came on with a click. Another push of a button set the tape inside the VCR whirring, and a moment later the image of a big-breasted blonde getting fucked from behind filled the screen. Pete stared at the TV, idly playing with himself while the girl’s partner, an unattractive but hugely endowed man, thrust in and out of her pussy. The girl’s tits jiggled and her lipsticked mouth was open in an expression of ecstasy as squeaky little “ohs” and “yeahs” filled the air.

After a few minutes the camera moved in, moving behind and above the couple to focus on the pink folds between the girl’s legs. The man pulled his cock out and rubbed the swollen head against the girl’s asshole. Pressing it against the pinkish-brown pucker, he slid inside her, the length of him disappearing between her cheeks.

Pete lay back and spread his legs. His cock angled across his belly, untouched, as he wet a finger and slid it beneath his balls and began to rub his asshole. His eyes were fixed on the dick that was pounding the girl’s butt. It moved in and out with increasing force, stretching her wide. The skin was slick and shiny with lube. He wondered what it felt like for the girl to have such a thing inside her.

He’d fucked a girl like that once. Like the girl in the film, she’d had blond hair and store-bought tits. He’d met her at a party. Fourth of July, maybe. He couldn’t remember. What he did remember was how he’d been fucking her from behind and suddenly wondered what it would feel like to stick his piece in her ass. Without asking, he’d done it. She was so drunk she hadn’t even really noticed, groaning a little at first and then going right back to mumbling some foul-mouthed crap she apparently thought was sexy.

He’d blocked out her voice, concentrating on how tight her ass felt around him. He’d come quickly, before he was ready, and it had made him angry. He’d left the girl on her hands and knees, pulling on his jeans and leaving before she could ask him where he was going.

What would it feel like to have something as big as a cock in your ass? He slid his finger inside himself, poking gently. Just a finger hurt a little. He couldn’t imagine what a dick must feel like. Especially one as big as the one on his TV screen. Christ, it had to be a good ten inches long. His own was eight. He knew because he’d measured it once just for the hell of it. Eight inches. Man, those faggots loved his big cock. They always said so when they sucked him off.

He’d never fucked a guy. Some of them had wanted him to, but he wouldn’t do it. Who knew what kind of shit you could get from that. Not that the idea didn’t have some appeal. The girl—what was her name, Amy? Kelly?—had been virgin tight. Probably a guy wouldn’t be, though, especially some queer who’d been plowed by everything he could get in there.

He slid more of his finger inside himself. His ass tightened around him and he felt his balls give a jump. He moved in and out a little, fucking his own ass. In the film the guy was pulling almost all the way out and slamming back in. The head of his dick would appear for a moment, the girl’s asshole almost closing. Then he would push back into her, his balls slapping against her as he nailed her.

Pete added a second finger to the first, gritting his teeth as he stretched himself open. How did those fags stand it? He was about to pull his hand away when suddenly his ass relaxed, as if something had stopped resisting and opened up. The pain ebbed and his fingers were simply surrounded by heat. He could almost feel the blood pounding in his ass.

He started to fuck himself with his hand, matching the motions of the guy in the movie. With his free hand he gripped his cock tightly. He imagined fucking the girl. His fist was her ass, tight around his dick. She was moaning as he pumped her. He was giving it to her hard, the way he liked it.

Behind him was a guy. Maybe the man in the film, maybe someone else. A cock was pressing against his asshole, pushing its way inside. As he fucked the girl, he too was getting fucked. He closed his eyes and imagined it, the three of them rocking together on the bed, his dick and the other guy’s moving in tandem, sliding in and out like the pistons of an engine. It was like they were both fucking the girl, the other man’s dick connected to Pete’s inside.

He heard loud moans and opened his eyes. On the screen the man had pulled his dick out of the girl’s ass and was spraying a thick load over her back. Pete pumped himself harder and came too. His ass tightened around his fingers and he erupted with a shout. Cum splattered across his chest in thick drops, leaving behind a pearly trail caught in the dark hair of his stomach.

He pulled his hand away from his ass and reached for a T-shirt on the floor. He used it to wipe the stickiness from his skin, then tossed it back on the floor. The TV was shut off and he was left in the darkness of the room, looking up at the ceiling.

He reached for the pack of Marlboros on the bedside table. Pulling one free, he flicked his lighter to life and lit it. The smoke felt good as he drew it into his lungs, a cloudy darkness that surrounded his thoughts. The end of the cigarette glowed redly in the dark like a star.

He exhaled, blowing the smoke into the air. He lifted his fingers to his nose and inhaled the scent of himself. It clung to his skin, thick and ripe, like the smell of leaves in the fall. Is that what he smelled like inside? He had expected it to be different, dirtier. But it wasn’t; it was rich and dark, like the smoke that fell over him like invisible rain.

He licked a fingertip, expecting to taste something sour. Again he was surprised. The taste that met his tongue was nothing like that. Instead it had a sweetness to it. He sucked on his finger, drawing it inside. Minutes ago it had been inside his ass, filling him. Now he was tasting himself. He was both repulsed and thrilled by the act. He thought about the times when girls had sucked him after he’d pulled his cock from their pussies. Watching them lick their own juices from his skin, he’d wanted to fuck them all over again.

He was no girl, though, he told himself. He didn’t get fucked. His fantasy had been about something else. What, he wasn’t sure and didn’t want to think too much about. It was just something that had popped into his head, that was all. He’d just wondered what it might feel like. Nothing more. And now he knew.

He removed his finger and took a long drag on his cigarette, blotting out the taste in his mouth with the bitter kiss of tobacco. In a few minutes he would get up and wash his hands. He would use lots of hot water and soap, just like his mother had made him do when he was littler. “You can’t be too careful,” she’d always said as she watched him to make sure he didn’t just run his hands under the tap to fool her.

“You can’t be too careful.” He repeated the phrase out loud. It was the guiding principle of his mother’s life, and like a good boy, he followed it himself. Well, mostly. He suspected his mother wouldn’t approve of certain aspects of his life. But still, he was careful.

He’d almost totally forgotten about his encounter with Mark earlier in the evening, but now the guy’s face came to him. He recalled the red skin, the two little horns.

“You got a blowjob from the devil,” he told himself. He laughed. The idea was so ridiculous he couldn’t help but find it funny. After all, he was a nice Catholic boy. He’d done altar service, gone through CCD, all that crap. Sometimes he still went to Mass, at least on holidays or when his mother demanded he accompany her. What would Father Fitzpatrick think about his former altar boy getting a knob job from Satan? Maybe he was a cocksucker himself, although Pete doubted it. Despite the recent rash of abuse revelations, he could honestly say that Father Fitzpatrick had never once done anything like that to him or, as far as he knew, any of his friends.

Maybe he would stop by the church tomorrow, he thought. It was, after all, All Saints’ Day. He could light a candle for his grandmother. It had been a while since he’d done that. His mother would like it if he did.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and got up. Going into the bathroom, he turned on the water in the sink and began to scrub.

“You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

Father Thomas Dunn looked out at the congregation. There were a surprising number of them given that it was six o’clock on a rainy Wednesday morning. Then again, most of them were elderly. They had nothing else to do, nowhere else to be. The chance that they’d spent the previous evening trick-or-treating or attending Halloween parties was remote. Probably they’d locked themselves in their houses and turned off the porch lights to discourage any children who might come around.

It was an unkind thought, and he admonished himself