The View From Olympus Mons by Barry Creyton

Author:Barry Creyton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, sex workers, bartender, scientist, men with children, performance arts, reunited, deep closet, coming out, HIV/Aids, tear-jerker
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2022-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Los Angeles, California

THE STEADY BEEP of the heart monitor had a hypnotic effect on Craig, who’d lost all sense of time.

The letters addressed to him were laid out in profusion on a table under the single lamp in the hospital room. He rubbed his eyes, weary not from the long day he’d spent by Nate’s bed, but from the impact of what he’d read. The Nate he knew from his childhood was nowhere evident in these letters and diary entries. It was as if he’d been reading about a total stranger.

He searched the backpack and found a small wad of yellowing news clippings held together by a paperclip. Here was confirmation of what he’d read in Nate’s diary.

A tabloid headline:

STING UNCOVERS MALE PROSTITUTION RING

UNDERAGE BOYS IN SEX-FOR-PAY RACKET

A picture showed Chase being escorted from Gunners in handcuffs. And another of Nate in a smart, tailored suit as two police officers walked him through the lobby of the Palace Hotel. A black bar covered his eyes to conceal his identity.

The article detailed a court hearing where it was debated whether Nate would be tried as a juvenile or, as he would be eighteen by the time they went to trial, an adult. Craig rummaged through the backpack, but there was nothing else relating to the incident.

“It’s 7:30.”

The voice dragged Craig back to the here and now. Tauber was at the door. “Just called back to see how you’re doing. Can I bring you some dinner? There’s a fairly respectable cafeteria downstairs.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

The all-business nurse starched her way past Tauber and took command of the room as she checked Nate’s vitals, his connections to life support, and the monitor readout. She turned to Craig. “Mr. Hendricks,” she stated, “if you’d like to stay, we can set up a bed in here for you.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I could find a hotel and—”

“Our point being,” she continued, “we don’t really know how long…” She trailed off with a pointed glance at Nate.

“I’ll stay.”

The nurse nodded and left the room.

“Well. I’ll go see what culinary joys I can find in the café,” Tauber said as he turned to the door.

“Did you know about this?” Craig held up the news clipping.

Tauber turned back and squinted in the dim light. “Oh yes, I read most of the contents of his bag before I tracked you down. He was tried as a juvenile. He spent three months in Juvenile Hall before they went to trial, and, I think, nine or ten months in a correctional facility. The jury were divided on the suggestion that he was complicit in the old man’s death. I don’t know what happened to his, um, pimp.”

Craig shook his head in weary disbelief.

“If you read on, you’ll see he spent a pretty lonely time while he was—out of action. He records only two visitors, the guy who ran a bookstore in San Francisco, and his landlady. Apparently, a nice old thing who died of lung cancer before he was released.”

“He had no one,” Craig said almost to himself.

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