Lucid (Part 2)

"Have you had any breakfast?" I asked Alex.

"No, I haven't even thought about it."

"Do you want something - my treat."

He hesitated, then said "Yes, please." The pale, but beautiful smile reappeared briefly.

There was a supermarket with a decent cafe near where I lived, and I suggested this to him.

"That would be great, Dan, thank you".

Half an hour or so later, and a portion of cereal and two bacon rolls heavier, Alex was starting to look far more like an everyday teenager than the distraught waif I'd come across at the station. We hadn't talked much while he was eating, which suited me, because I still didn't have a clue what to do about him, and his preoccupation with food gave me time to think a little. The obvious answer was to simply take him to the local police station, tell them the story and let them sort him and his parents out. As we walked across the supermarket car park, I told him that was what I was thinking of. He looked horrified.

"NO, no way, they'll put me in a children's home!" He looked like he was going to run again.

The vehemence of his reaction and the evident fear in his voice brought me up short, it immediately smacked of a bad memory. I tried to be the logical adult to his, as I saw it, irrational child.

"Maybe overnight or something, until they can contact your parents. It's not as if they've left the country."

"NO. I'll sleep at the rubbish dump before I go to one of those places. My friend at my old school, his mum and dad were killed in a car crash and he had to go to a home. He got beaten up and all his stuff was stolen, and no-one did anything about it, and he wasn't even gay. They'll kill me if I go there." The panic was almost palpable.

"OK, I can understand why you're worried, but you need to understand something about my position. Can you calm down and listen to me for a minute?" He nodded uncertainly.

"Alex, if I keep you with me and don't tell anyone, I could be charged with abducting you."

"What does abducting mean?"

"Kidnapping, basically. Keeping you against your will, keeping you away from the people who are supposed to be looking after you."

"But you're not keeping me against my will, I'd rather be with you than sitting at that bus stop or in my garden."

"That's not how the law would see it, I'm afraid. Anyway, I haven't asked you yet, isn't there anyone else who could look after you, aunts, uncles, that kind of thing?"

"There's only my grandma, and my mum and dad are there - I don't want to go and have them shouting at me and calling me names all over again, and anyway, I haven't got any money to get there."

"They wouldn't call you names in front of your grandma, surely?"

"They might - I've heard my grandma talking about 'queers' like she hates them, it frightens me, because I know I'm one of those people she hates."

This was becoming more difficult by the moment - I was standing in a supermarket car park with a child I'd only met about an hour earlier, who was in a very fragile emotional state, who was terrified of the authorities and almost equally terrified by his own family, probably more justifiably in the latter case than the former, if everything he said was true, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I did what many others have done in the face of difficult decisions - I vacillated.

"Alex, I live near here. Are you all right if we go to my house to give us more time to decide what to do? The same promise I made you when you first got in my car still applies."

For the first time that day, I was treated to the full-on Alex smile, dimples and all. I think I knew the answer to my question at that point.

****

Lunchtime had come and gone, the afternoon had passed in a mixture of chitchat, video games and TV, he told me about his school, his old school, his primary school, his friends, with the pointed exception of Lawrence, his life, interests, hobbies, I told him about my family, my job, all of the same kinds of things that he talked about, all pretty inconsequential and certainly not getting us any nearer to the resolution of the basic problem - what the hell was I going to do about this boy who was sitting in my living room as though it was the most natural place in the world for him to be. I knew my wife would ring me at some stage, probably the early evening, to let me know that she and my daughter had arrived safely and to catch up on the news of our respective days, so I asked Alex if he could be quiet while I was on the phone - I felt guilty about misleading my wife, but I couldn't see any way at that point of explaining to her what was going on - and he was as good as gold, he would've put the proverbial quiet mouse to shame.

"Thank you," I told him when I hung up the phone, "it could have been a tricky moment if I'd had to tell the unexpurgated story of who was here, and why."

"Un-what?" he giggled.

"Unexpurgated, it means nothing left out."

His face fell noticeably, as though a cloud had just passed over a sunny landscape. "Sorry, I'm causing you a lot of trouble, aren't I?"

"Nothing we can't cope with, sunshine, at least at the moment" I said, as light-heartedly as I could manage in the circumstances.

There was another hurdle approaching, after I'd cooked an evening meal for us, and Alex broached the subject while I was still thinking about how best to deal with it.

"Dan...can I stay here tonight?"

Given that it was almost 10:30, it was a question that almost answered itself - I wasn't about to throw him out onto the street, and the only other option would've been to revert to Plan A and take him to the police station, which I knew wasn't on any realistic agenda of Alex's, and, in any case, I'd had a couple of large glasses of wine and wasn't really in any legal state to drive.

"I guess that's the only sensible thing we can do at this time of day - you can sleep in my daughter's room. The only other problem is what you wear - you don't want to sleep in your outdoor clothes, and there's nothing of mine that won't be way too big for you. I know boys get very sensitive about this kind of thing - I was a boy myself, about a million years ago, so I really do know - but how about wearing some of my daughter's pyjamas, she's about the same size as you?"

Alex wrinkled his nose, but he didn't really have too many other options. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Yeah, I'll get hold of the Town Crier and tell him to announce it on the Guildhall steps!" Luckily, he realised I was pulling his leg and the Alex smile lit up his face, something that had happened more and more as the day had progressed. Once again, though, the darkness caught up with him for a moment, and I could tell he was about to say something.

"Dan...thank you for what you've done today, I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't helped me."

Then he did something that took me completely unawares - he threw his arms around my neck and kissed me full on the lips. I was stunned, both at what he'd done, and at how delightful it felt. I couldn't remember ever kissing a boy before, in my whole life, but it seemed like something that was just perfect, tailor-made for me. It was unbelievable, two seconds of physical contact that had the potential to change everything for ever. Alex looked at me, and a slight smile, Mona Lisa-like, pervaded his face.

"Dan...I think I've done something for you now." My God, if only you knew, I thought. But he did know, how he knew, I've no idea, but he knew. He leant towards me and there was that sweet, so sweet gentle pressure again, longer this time, I would have guessed at hours' worth of bliss, but it must've been only a few moments, I could taste the soft drink he'd had earlier, he could no doubt taste the Chardonnay I'd been drinking. The timeless moment ended, one entity became two. I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Nice?" he asked.

"What do you think? I've never, ever, been kissed like that in my life."

Alex chuckled, the sound like a stream bubbling over rocks on a moorland hillside. "Lawrence taught me that, he's so sexy." The first mention of Lawrence since Alex had told me the story of their being caught in flagrante. "You're not bad yourself, either." the boy continued. What was he trying to say, trying to suggest?

"Alex, it's been a long day for both of us, why don't you go and take a shower and get ready for bed - I'll go and sort you out some towels and bedding and find the least girly pyjamas in my daughter's wardrobe."

There was an unspoken question in his eyes as he looked up at me when I stood up, but I shook my head very slightly, bringing tears close once again for him. "Save yourself for Lawrence. You're very special, but it just wouldn't be right." He nodded, he understood. That slight, enigmatic smile returned, at the same time as a single teardrop rolled down his cheek.

****

"Not woken up yet, then".

"Alex, hi. Sorry, it just took me a few seconds to get my head round why there was a boy in my bedroom."

"Shall I open the curtains?"

"OK - just give me a minute, though, I think I've got a bit of a headache."

"You were a very good boy last night, Dan - I would've got in bed with you if you'd let me." He reached out and gently held my wrist - odd, that, my wrist, as though he was about to take my pulse, then the curtains were pulled aside, and my world exploded into oceans of pain.

"Some indications of consciousness, a good sign, after the injuries he suffered. A little more sedative might be in order until we can assess the brain damage more accurately, and some extra analgesia - we don't want him waking up with the worst headache of his life."

"What happened to him, anyway, I wasn't on duty yesterday."

"He stopped a father beating up his son outside the station, saved the boy's life by all accounts, the father had gone berserk, something about the boy being gay. The boy ran off, but the father picked up a road worker's shovel and beat this poor sod about the head with it. It took four or five men to haul the father away, too late for our man here, though. Can we have the sedative, please?"

The blessed darkness returns.