Rentboy

Fox
    had secreted there. By some miracle his father had never discovered the fairly obvious hiding place,
    because he would have remarked on it before now. Huddling together in the darkness, they waited in
    silence, hearing the bedroom door open, their father tramp around the room in his heavy army boots
    before leaving again. For a long time Fox held his twin siblings against him, until at last they all fell
    into a troubled sleep.

    * * * *
    With one hand Edward reached out, eyes still closed, expecting to feel Fox’s warm, skinny body

    beside him. Nothing. Disappointment washed through when he opened his eyes. Fox was gone.
    Edward placed his hand on the bed where the young man had slept, finding it cool. He’d obviously
    been gone for a while. And he had left without being paid again.
    Did he leave a note, he wondered hopefully. “Don’t be ridiculous, Edward.” It was not as if they
    were in a relationship or anything, his bloke gone off to work early, leaving him a note to say good-
    bye like a normal couple.
    Reluctant to start the day alone, Edward sat up on the side of the bed. The memory of fucking
    Fox in the shower came flooding back, and he had an instant erection. Naked, he walked to the
    bathroom. The used condom and foil packet still rested in the drain. Edward scooped them up and
    pressed them to his nose. Too much water had washed over them to leave behind any scent of Fox.
    But he could not make himself toss them in the bin and instead placed both carefully on the edge of the
    sink before turning on the shower.
    Edward rarely masturbated, not even with his morning hard-on. Thoughts of the day’s work
    ahead would distract him until his willy fell limp. But this morning everywhere he looked he saw
    Fox. The clean white tiles in the shower disappeared as he closed his eyes and saw Fox facing the
    wall, saying, “Fuck me.” As if the young man were there still, he leaned against the wall and gripped
    his penis. In a few fast strokes the hot friction of his hand brought on an orgasm that rocked his body
    and left him gasping. Was he in love with a prostitute, or was he just taking his first sexual encounter
    too far in his mind? Making more of it than there was and certainly more than Fox felt.
    “I wish you were my boyfriend, Fox.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m not. I’m a whore.”
    That had summed it up.
    After a quick shave, he dressed in his usual corduroy trousers and fastened the buttons on his
    shirt with its unobtrusive dark green checkers. Compared to Fox he was so damn boring. He always
    thought when he finally got a boyfriend, it would be a man like himself, an academic who was
    hopeless in bed and never understood jokes or the finer points of casual discourse. Then there was
    Fox with his sharp mind and his sexual experience. It would never work. He’d bore the pants off a
    man like Fox. The only way he got the pants off him now was to pay.
    In the living room he admonished himself loudly, “He’s not your boyfriend. Don’t be such a
    loser.”
    Staring at his messy desk, he stopped short. He was sure he’d left his laptop there. It was always
    there. Every day he got home, hung his coat in the cupboard, and put his laptop on the desk with his
    keys. Was it possible he had thrown the computer in the cupboard? He’d done it a couple of times
    before, but then he always found his jacket lying on the desk, and the jacket wasn’t there. “Silly
    sausage, Edward.” His mother always called him that. “It’s been boiling out. You haven’t worn a
    jacket in a fortnight.”
    Relief together with a slight feeling of panic clutching his belly, Edward opened the coat
    cupboard. The vacuum cleaner stood on the floor, its hose curled like a snake waiting to slither out. A
    collection of shoes, all needing a good polishing, were piled up beside it. His old briefcase with the
    broken buckle that he kept planning to throw out was slumped against the wall.
    No computer. No Fox.
    Edward ran back to his desk and began rummaging around for the memory sticks. Gone as well.
    “Shit!” he screamed. He never said shit , at least not out loud, but it was the only answer to his utter
    and complete stupidity. Despite his degree from Oxford and his well-paid job teaching and doing
    research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Dr. Edward Atherton was an
    unmitigated fool. He should have been a court jester, not a scientist. He trusted people he should not
    trust. He loaned money