The young man sat at the sidewalk café in Fairfax City near George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., sipping coffee and shyly looking around him. Several tables away from him and behind him sat a somewhat older man, perhaps in his forties, but very good looking in a dark, foxy sort of way. This man also was drinking coffee and looking around. But he was more assured in his demeanor and spent much of his time watching the younger man.
The younger man was a strikingly good-looking blond—one who many other patrons of the café, which specialized in gay college students from the nearby university, would call twinky, cute, almost beautiful, his features combined, pale blue eyes; long, dark eyelashes; a shy smile; and sensuous lips. The overall impression was soft, almost feminine. He didn't have feminine mannerisms, though. It was more that he was shy and unsure of himself in this environment.
In this venue, though, he was a man magnet. Some professor types and a few more athletic types from the university and even some cruising businessmen from across northern Virginia were circling around the table where he sat—a two-seat table—like bees shopping for pollen. Several of them asked if the other seat at his table was taken in the time that the man sitting behind him observed his actions—this despite there being more than enough tables available in mid afternoon. But each time the young man hesitated and eventually said that he was sorry but that he was expecting someone.
After an hour's observation, the dark presence behind him, Darien, decided that the one the young man was waiting for was someone named courage. He concluded that the young man knew what he sought but didn't have the courage to accept what was offered. This even though the men asking if he wanted company universally were very well put together.
At length the young man pulled something from the leather portfolio that had been sitting on the table top, rose, and walked over to a notice board that the café kept near the entrance to the indoor section of the café. He posted a notice on the board, looked around, and then left the café. On his way out, a college jock type black guy reached out with a beefy hand and arrested the young man's progress by touching his forearm. They talked briefly. Darien watched closely, thinking that, at last, a hookup had been made and that the two young men would leave together. But the young blond, blushing, pulled away and hurriedly left the café.
When the young man was gone, Darien rose from his table and walked over to the notice board. He had watched carefully to see what the young man had posted there and quickly located it. It was one of those "service's offered" notices, made on a computer, and had separated strips of paper along the bottom that gave a telephone number. There was an address on the notice. Darien took the notice off the board, folded it, and put it in his pocket.
He wouldn't keep it, he thought. He was just borrowing it for a couple of days—so that his would be the first response.
Darien left the café and got into his black Porsche Boxster convertible in time to see the young man, in a light blue Corolla sedan, pull out of a parking space and head east on Old Lee Highway, Route 29, toward the Capitol Beltway that circled the nation's capital.
Darien followed the Corolla at a distance. He had the address printed on the notice, but he wanted to see what kind of place it was. The young man stopped, once, at a small grocery store inside the beltway. Darien was heartened at the evidence that the one plastic bag the young man came out of the store with indicated the young man was cooking for just one.
Darien pulled up to the curb on a shaded, tree-lined, long-established residential street of Falls Church, a Revolutionary War-era town that had been swallowed up by the near suburbs of Washington, D.C. The houses now in this area mostly weren't large and were built in the styles of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the federal bureaucracy at the center was burgeoning and the need for expansion in Washington's bedroom communities in Virginia and Maryland was pressing. The houses were mostly of mellow red brick, and most of them were enclosed in billowing azalea bushes and were well maintained—in keeping with their current value of more than half a million dollars each because of location, location, location.
The house that the young man stopped at was a split foyer. The portico porch was set half way between the first and second floor and the first floor was buried up to the bottom of its windows in the ground. The lots along the street slopped to the rear so that even the basements of the one-story ramblers were "walk-out" at the rear.
The young man pulled into a parking apron wide enough for two cars that was set off in front of the split foyer and walked up to the front door of the house. He used keys in two locks to enter the house and, Darien could tell, went down to the lower level, because twilight was setting in and lights were turned on on that level.
Darien gave a tight little smile and drove off slowly. Chances were very good, he thought, that he had found his bait. The young guy had shown in the café that he was a man magnet.
* * * *
"How old did you say you were?"
Andrew Temple hadn't said how old he was, but he was polite by nature and more than a bit nervous, so he answered. "I'm twenty-two."
Darien wasn't blessed with politeness, but the young man had something he wanted, so he, in turn, didn't say what he was thinking—that Andrew Temple didn't look nearly as old as twenty-two. This too, though, fell in with Darien's intentions. "It's just that this is a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood. It seems strange that one so young owned it. You do own it, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, it's mine. I inherited it. We moved here my third year in high school. My mother and me. My father had died. My mother wasn't well, though. My parents had me late in life. Soon after we moved in, my mother became an invalid and spent much of her time upstairs. There's a full layout upstairs. Three bedrooms and two baths. A nice living room, dining room, kitchen and family room made out of a screened porch on the back of the house. I wouldn't rent to more than two, so each could have a bath of his own and there'd be a guest room the two could split the use of. Would you like to see it now?"
"Later," Darien answered. "I'd like to listen to you now. So it's the upstairs you want to rent rooms in?"
He was leaning over the coffee table, giving the young man his full attention. This both gratified and rattled Andrew. He was used to people trying to get close to him—naturally drawn to him—but he usually avoided being alone with anyone else because he was so self-conscious and torn by what he wanted—and afraid of how easily he was aroused by handsome, fit, self-confident men. And Darien was all of that, in a dark, mysterious, dangerous sort of way. Darien was everything that aroused Andrew in his isolated little world. This was the stuff of his dreams, but now that the man was here, in his living room—on the ground floor of the house—Andrew was trembling with nerves.
