The transformation in Jack had been dramatic after the visit to the cemetery. Rick don’t know if the sheltie only needed to assure himself that his father, indeed, was gone or whether he was moved by the son’s breakdown at the car in the cemetery and saw something in Rick of his father. Whatever it was, from the time they drove away from the cemetery, Jack wouldn’t leave Rick’s side and seemed almost to be wooing him.
Rick and Jack mercifully had avoided a meeting with Calvin in the front hall of the apartment building when they returned from the cemetery, but Rick knew it was just a case of putting off the inevitable. But then, at that moment he still intended on finding Jack a new home. Rick just hadn’t been able to carry through with his intent to drop Jack off at the SPCA on the way home from the cemetery. The man and the dog had bonded in some way, and Rick couldn’t bring himself to be so hardhearted toward Jack with his dad still warm in the grave. He’d give it a few days.
Rick’s dad. There was something inevitable in all of this. Rick was thinking more of his dad when he was dead than he had ever thought of his dad when he was alive. And Rick was thinking of him in more than one dimension. Maybe there had been something more than perversity in his foisting of Jack off on his son. Rick could imagine him—still—liking the thought of causing his son concern and making him squirm. But Rick couldn’t think of his father doing that to Jack. Rick hadn’t been exaggerating when he thought of Jack as the love of his father’s life. And thinking on the flip side of the issue—thinking of what was good for Jack as opposed to what was mean-spirited toward his son, Rick had to think that perhaps his dad’s final request was intentional. Perhaps he was giving his son a gift rather than a burden. And perhaps he was entrusting Rick with the one thing he loved best—something Rick’s father may have thought Rick needed to complete his life.
These thoughts gave Rick pause, so that when he returned to the apartment, it had been with Jack in tow.
They had stopped at the park so that Jack could relieve himself before they tried to sneak back into the apartment house. And Jack was as good as gold as the two crept into the foyer and slid down along the side of the staircase to the door to Rick’s apartment. Jack didn’t bark or even whine and he lifted his paws and set them down so intentionally and delicately as they moved that Rick had to stifle a laugh of his own at the image of the two of them sneaking past Calvin’s door.
They could hear the TV going full blast inside Calvin’s apartment. The Redskins and Cowboys having at each other on the football field, and they could hear the clicking of barbells as well—Calvin working his body as he watched the television. They had paused just inside the door to the street and Jack looked at Calvin’s door and then up into his new master’s face, and Rick swore that the sheltie winked at him.
Once in the apartment, Jack sat beside the dining table and followed Rick’s movements with his eyes. They were sad eyes, and each time Rick looked at him, he saw his father—and thought of the trust he was placing in his son’s hands.
As Rick settled on the sofa and turned his own TV set to the football game and stared, unseeing at the teams chasing each other up and down the field, his mind was racing. He couldn’t afford to move. He’d just bought a car above his pay bracket and he’d have to sacrifice the deposit on the apartment if he left. Chances were slim he could even find another apartment at this price within walking distance of the office—especially one that would accept a dog—and he couldn’t afford to pay movers anyway. Regardless, Rick’s mind was working over the list of his friends who were strong enough to lift an end of the sofa he was sitting on and dumb enough to agree to help him move.
Jack was whining now, but softly. Rick looked over at him, in fear that he was building up to another session of howling that would bring Calvin’s heavy fist pounding at the apartment door. But Rick saw that Jack was asleep now, his muzzle buried down in his splayed front legs, and Rick couldn’t bring himself to try to nudge him into silence. Jack had lost his master, and he seemed to realize that fully now. He was probably feeling more lost and unsure of what to do now than Rick was.
Rick felt the first warnings of a migraine coming on. He was thinking too hard, he knew—and with too little prospect of finding a way out of this maze. Rick couldn’t keep Jack here—at least he couldn’t without giving Calvin what he wanted from him. And the very thought of that sent shudders through Rick’s body and his temples started to throb. But Rick knew now that he couldn’t just toss Jack away either. This would be his ultimate failure as a son. It was one thing for his father to miss the mark continually all these years. It was yet another for his son to do the same—to perpetuate those mistakes down through the generations. Rick had declared long ago that he wouldn’t go down the same path as his father had in messing up relationships.
And there was no question now that Rick had a relationship with Jack. He hadn’t had one before he had left for his dad’s funeral, but he couldn’t deny that he had one now after the man and dog had visited the grave together.
Rick felt the silky softness of hair brush against his hand—and that wet nose again. Jack was no longer asleep. He was in front of Rick now as he sat on the sofa, nudging him and laying his muzzle in Rick’s lap. Rick didn’t know if it was to reassure and comfort him or to seek assurance himself. And he didn’t care which it was. Rick’s head was clearing and his mind was telling him just to let the decisions slide until tomorrow. The day had already been rough and momentous enough.
Rick flicked off the TV set and rose and padded into the kitchen. Jack followed along beside him and sat in the doorway as Rick filled his food and water bowls and signaled where he was to sleep—on a blanket Rick folded up and laid on the floor under the kitchen window, beside the refrigerator.
Jack watched Rick move from refrigerator to bowl and sink to bowl and to the kitchen window, and when Rick patted the blanket, Jack rose right up and walked over to the blanket and hunched down on it with a huffing sound that Rick took for acceptance and contentment.
Rick switched off the lights in the kitchen and living room and went into the bedroom and beyond to the bathroom, where he showered. He closed the door between his bedroom and the living room, listening for the click that didn’t come, the mechanism of the doorknob having become unaligned because of the warping of the door, and climbed into bed and was fast asleep much more quickly than he thought would happen on a day like today.
The next morning Rick awoke with the sensation of being weighted down, to find Jack stretched out beside him in the bed, his muzzle resting on Rick’s side and a foreleg stretched over his hip. Jack was snoring, but quietly. Rick lay there for almost an hour, not daring to move, not wanting to disturb his new companion’s sleep—strangely content and whole.
Jack was Rick’s dog now. If he had to go, Rick would go too.
* * * *
“I told you about that dog. You were going to get rid of it. You know what the lease says. And you knew it before the dog showed up.”
“Oh, come on, Calvin. He’s been here for nearly two weeks and you didn’t even know he was still here. He’s a good dog, and he’s quiet. He isn’t a yap yap dog like the one the guy in 3B has. And you let him stay.”
It had been a mistake to say that. And Rick knew it was as soon as the words had come out of his mouth. Jack indeed had been a good dog, smart enough to know that his existence here hinged on that. And Rick knew it had been hard for him. He was a free-range dog; he’d never had to be cooped up in an apartment like he was with Rick. But he had been quiet and the two had avoided Calvin for two weeks. Rick had known it was just skirting along the inevitable, though. The one thing the dog and his new master had to do was to get Jack out and to the park a couple of times a day. It wasn’t just so he could relieve himself. Jack was an active dog; he had to run free at least a couple of times a day to keep his muscle tone up.
The man and his dog had actually been lucky to be able to spin it out this long before Calvin caught them either coming or going.
Rick knew what Calvin was after, how he would use this for leverage. And Rick had played right into his hands by mentioning the dog in 3B again.
“You know why I let the guy in 3B have his dog,” Calvin said. He was wearing a grin on his face. Knowing that Rick had trapped himself. “And the same deal is available to you. You know what I want.”
“You can’t just play favorites like that, Calvin. I could call the owner of the building and tell him you’ve let the other dog be here. You might lose your job and your apartment.”
“Why, yes you could, Rick. That wouldn’t keep you from being tossed out on your kiester, of course, but it would give me a good laugh. Bet you don’t know that the building is owned by my brother-in-law. He’d overlook anything I was doing as long as I didn’t move back in with them.”
The two men stood there, in a standoff, Jack looking up from one to the other, wagging his tail. Trusting in his new master. Rick could see it in his eyes. The nearly two weeks hadn’t made any of it easier for Rick. With each passing day, he had grown to love Jack more. Rick hadn’t realized how solitary and self-centered his life had been. Once again he had to wonder if his father had been more attuned to his son’s life and loneliness and monotonous routine than even Rick was. With each passing day, Rick increasingly saw Jack as a gift and a lifesaver.
Calvin broke the silence. “You know what you can do to keep this dog here, Rick. Think about it. But not too long. Tomorrow I call a moving company and as soon as they can book it, they’ll be here moving your things out onto the street. Then I won’t care where you and your pooch go.”
He gave Rick a meaningful look and turned and walked to his doorway. He turned again and said, “I think I’ll leave this door open for a while and go back to my bedroom and take a little nap.” He winked at Rick then and disappeared into his apartment.
Rick felt himself trembling all over, and he fumbled with his keys and then couldn’t quite get the door key into the lock. Jack nuzzled his nose into Rick’s hand, and he finally was able to insert the key and turn the lock.
Rick went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a slug of Scotch. He chugged that and went back into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. Jack was right there at Rick’s knee, raising his paw to his master’s leg and looking up at him with those trusting eyes of his.
Rick sat there for perhaps a half hour, Jack in continuous attendance, and then Rick sighed, stood up and crossed to the door. He locked Jack in and crossed the landing. Calvin’s door was still open. Rick walked in and slowly crossed his living space, zigzagging around the exercise equipment that helped keep Calvin so pumped up.
The bedroom door was open too, and when Rick entered, he saw Calvin standing at the window, wearing nothing but a big grin. He had been stroking himself off and it wasn’t just his grin that was big. He gestured toward the bed.
“I changed the sheets just for you,” Calvin said.
Rick saw that Calvin was holding two pairs of handcuffs at his side, and he started to back out of the door. But Calvin was quick. Rick turned and was moving fast, but Calvin was faster. He landed on Rick’s back and brought him to the floor. Rick continued to try to pull himself along the nubby carpet toward the door, but Calvin was bigger and stronger—much stronger.
“You came for it. I like a guy who makes me fight for it, but you gotta say yes, or it’s you and your dog outta here. Say yes to it, baby, or go back to your apartment and pack. You came to me for it.” He lay there on top of Rick on the floor, both of them panting, but Rick resigned, not fighting it now.
“Yes,” he murmured.
They held for a couple of moments and then Calvin snorted a low laugh. “So, you don’t want to do it on the bed,” he muttered as he tore Rick’s shirt from his back, popping buttons with a ripping sound. “We can do it on floor just as well. Or are you having second thoughts? Already starting to pack for that move? Found another place that will take that mutt of yours?”
Rick moaned in defeat. “No, please. I’ll do it. Just don’t—"
But Calvin wasn’t listening to him now. He’d won—and the both knew he had. He dragged Rick up from the floor like he was a sack of potatoes, but rather than hauling him back into the bedroom, he carried him over to the area he’d marked off as his exercise area and dropped him down on his back on a weight bench where he had a heavy barbell suspended on a rack. Rick made an effort to struggle up to a sitting position, but Calvin backhanded him across the face sharply, and said, “Stay. Either say you’re moving or lay back and take me. I don’t like a tease.”
Stunned by the unexpected blow, Rick laid back on the bench while Calvin handcuffed his wrists to the suspended barbell at each side and stripped his trousers off.
There was initial pain, Calvin not giving Rick nearly enough time to adjust to him, but once Calvin’s cock was buried deep inside him and Calvin was lost in the rhythm of the fuck, thinking only of his pleasure and release, Calvin was much like any other man Rick had been with. It wasn’t like Rick hadn’t been with men before. And now that Rick had crossed that barrier with Calvin, knowing that this would now become a routine for them, Rick just gritted his teeth, hooked his legs on Calvin’s hips, and pushed his mind into an alternate universe—one where he and his dog, Jack, were rambling in a lush parkland.
After mastering Rick on the exercise bench, releasing the young man from the handcuffs, and sitting off to the side and nursing a beer for a while as he watched Rick lying on the bench, stretched out, naked now, arms and legs dangling to the side, and panting lightly, Calvin pulled Rick off the bench like he weighed no more than a pillow of feathers, carried him over to his bed, tossed him down on his back, slapped his legs open, and fucked him again. There was no fight left in Rick anymore. He lay there, arms and legs stretched out, pelvis rolled up, cheek to sheets, tongue hanging out, completely open and vulnerable to Calvin’s rutting, letting the crude bodybuilder do what he wanted.
“Three days from now again,” Calvin growled, propped up on his elbows in the bed, as Rick picked up his clothes afterward and put on enough of them not to be embarrassed to stumble back to his own apartment. He didn’t argue.
Later, in the night, Rick heard Jack nudging at his bedroom door until it opened on the misaligned latch. Rick heard the sheltie padding across the floor and felt the weight of him jumping up on the bed—momentarily disturbing his master with the image of Calvin’s weight descending on him in the bed across the landing earlier that day—and Rick lifted his hand and let it fall on Jack’s silky neck as the dog nuzzled into Rick’s body with a sigh.
There was a full moon out, and Rick had left the curtains open, not wanting to be in complete darkness on this, his first time of giving in to Calvin’s blackmail. So, he was able to see the look in Jack’s eyes as he lowered his head on his master’s belly. It was such a look of trust and contentment that a tear came to Rick’s eyes and he realized that it was a fair enough bargain, not too much of a price to pay, to have Jack with him.
One thing was damn sure, though. He and Jack were moving as soon as possible.
