Sin to Get Saved Read online

  “No. Please. Don’t.” Hubert looked at the wall-sized drawing for a minute, then two before a smile began to spread. “Let’s keep it,” he finally said. “I don’t remember my mama—she was long gone by then—but I remember when I drew this, I thought maybe one day I could be happy. Shucks.” He laughed, looking at naked Bartholomew. “Maybe it is two boys, at that.”

  “It’s my favorite so far,” Bartholomew said.

  “Mine, too.”

  “Then it stays.” Bartholomew joined Hubert on the couch. He sat at the other end, but soon moved closer. He reached for Hubert’s hand; met his eyes when he took it. Is this okay?

  Hubert nodded with a tentative smile. He squeezed Bartholomew’s hand, but made no move to enhance their physical proximity. Bartholomew cast his best Meaningful Glance in the direction of the hallway that led to the bedroom. Hubert smiled.

  Hubert blushed.

  Hubert stayed glued to the couch.

  “Maybe a snack?” Bartholomew suggested. He was on a roll with his powers of prestidigitation. Hubert sighed. Then he laughed—he hadn’t meant to sound quite so relieved. “Sounds good,” he said.

  Bartholomew smiled. Flicked his finger, and suddenly the house was all but buried in food. Tables creaked under piles of meat and cheese and fruit and bread. Empanadas and cabbage rolls and deviled eggs were scattered among pans of lasagna and platters of sushi. Huge pots of soup and rice and sauces bursting with spices Hubert had never smelled before simmered alongside flaky fish and crispy fowl. White wine flowed from urns held aloft by ice sculptures lined with chilled delicacies, red bubbled up from between piles of pears and baskets of brie. Towers of cakes and spires of sweets reached for the ceiling, and Bartholomew made a show of his ability to summon whatever dish had appeal and clear a spot front and center.

  Hubert mostly gaped. The Cracker Barrel fed him a meal on every shift, it wasn’t like he’d grown up in a dark German fairy tale, lucky to subsist on the scraps that fell from his grandad’s table. But nor was he anybody’s gourmand; he’d never heard of most of the foods Bartholomew offered him. Food with names he couldn’t pronounce, like tzatziki and gulab jamun and chechebsa, bubbling sauces and blistered breads and fish that Hubert would swear were still looking right at him. He gamely tried most everything Bartholomew scooped up, until it became evident that Bartholomew was having more fun with the faces Hubert was making than with trying to find him new flavors.

  “Maybe tomorrow we could go back to sandwiches?” Hubert suggested.

  Bartholomew laughed. “Yeah, maybe. We have the rest of forever, I guess you don’t have to taste everything today. One more thing, though?”

  “What’s that?” Hubert asked warily.

  “Have you really never tasted chocolate?”

  Hubert shook his head. He shrugged. “I wasn’t supposed to. I tried real hard not to give my grandad more reasons to get mad at me. He had so many already…”

  “I understand.” Bartholomew reached out a hand. A small paper box materialized even as the rest of the buffet evaporated. “I love it, though. It’s like my favorite thing. Would you try a little taste?”

  He held out the box, which contained two small squares of chocolate in plain paper wrappers. Hubert had never been especially tempted by chocolate, but Bartholomew’s face was so eager with excitement, there was no way to refuse. Hubert pulled one of the pieces from the box, and Bartholomew plucked the second as the box reverted to the thin air from which it had been coaxed. He smiled, set the little bon-bon against his lower lip, then waited for Hubert to taste first.

  Hubert bit through the thinly drizzled membrane into what might as well have been butter and closed his eyes with a rapturous mmmm. The chocolate splattered his mouth with velvety sweet even as it melted down his throat, and he popped what was left of his little square in behind it. He mmmmed again as he licked tiny blots of chocolate off his fingers and smiled as Bartholomew ate his piece whole. Bartholomew held up his own melt-spotted fingers and Hubert surprised them both by taking Bartholomew’s wrist, pulling his hand up to his own mouth, and licking the angel’s fingers clean one by one. Bartholomew offered Hubert his other hand, and he took those fingers in his mouth, too, savoring the delirious new flavor of a man in his mouth without even tasting the chocolate.

  Bartholomew smiled at Hubert. “So all’s I had to do all this time was cover myself in chocolate?” he asked. Hubert shrugged; it was a revelation to him, too.

  “You know what would be fun, then?”

  Hubert did. They said together, “A chocolate waterfall.”

  They scurried out to the deck. Hubert threw himself into Bartholomew’s arms and they leapt into the air. The thrill of riding the wind pressed against Bartholomew was especially exquisite now that Hubert no longer felt the need to scold himself for thinking as much. They glided slow and easy across the expanse of the front lawn, and when it suddenly dropped away, so too did Bartholomew dive, wings flat against his back. Cliff face rushed by, then they skimmed the foamy waves, skidding to a stop in the sand just a short distance up the beach.

  Holding hands, they scampered across the sand towards a stand of trees from within which trickled a creek. They walked its banks against its current, the creek growing wider and wilder with every two steps. By the time they walked a quarter of a mile they’d left Sonoma behind and were wending their way past peacocks and rainbow-barked trees into the heart of a Hawaiian enclave. Hubert heard great crashing and splashing before they rounded the corner and nearly fell into the rock-rimmed pool at the base of a cliff-side cascade. It was water, cool and clear; Hubert imagined from above the pool might almost appear empty, were the falls not churning the surface.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Bartholomew flashed a proprietary grin. “Nice, right? It’s not the only waterfall I know how to make, but it’s my favorite.”

  “But I don’t see chocolate.”

  “You will. Come on, let’s get in.”

  “I…I’m not much of a swimmer.”

  “The water’s not very deep. Come on, let’s get in.”

  “But I don’t have any swim trunks.” Hubert stalled. He’d loved the taste of chocolate, and the salty flavor of Bartholomew underneath it had done crazy muddling things to his mind, but what was he supposed to do now? He wasn’t going to wade into the water in trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, and he was suddenly gripped by the fear that if he took off so much as his shoes, he would die of shame.

  Bartholomew leveled a look at Hubert; he wasn’t buying it. “I pulled this entire ecosystem out of thin air, and I’m about to turn the water into chocolate. If you need me to summon a sporting goods store, I’ll do it, but what if you just try taking off your clothes?”

  Hubert blushed.

  Bartholomew softened. “Hubert…”

  Hubert looked at his feet. “I’m just…I’m a little shy.”

  “That’s okay, Hubert. It’s just us. Here, I’ll turn my back.” Bartholomew did so. “Does that help?”

  Hubert toyed with the snaps on his shirt but couldn’t bring himself to tug on one. “Not really.”

  “I’ll get in, then.” Bartholomew dove across the shallow water. “I won’t even watch or anything,” he hollered when he surfaced on the other side of the pool. “See?” He made a show of splashing around. “Just frolicking, here. You go on about your business.”

  Hubert laughed. He wriggled out of his shoes, but danged if his snaps weren’t acting like they were glued shut.

  “Maybe if I help you?” Bartholomew materialized at Hubert’s side as if by magic, reminding Hubert: he wouldn’t die of shame; he was dead already. Once he remembered he got to do his Heaven on his terms, his clothes evaporated. He stood with Bartholomew as naked as Adam had ever stood with Eve—or Steve or anybody else—only in a garden for the splendors of which he would have pined from within Eden itself.

  “Well what do you know,” Bartholomew exclaimed, “that did help!”

  Hubert smile
d. He’d always been tormented—and not just by other kids, but at home and at church, and inside his own head most of all—for being a pipsqueak. He was short, he was slight, he was white as wallpaper paste; he had arms like spaghetti noodles and a butt no bigger than two tennis balls and a belly so tiny and flat his stick-figure drawing was a life-like self-portrait. And as soon as Bartholomew took it in his arms, Hubert exulted in his body. He wanted to sing out his gratitude to a Creator that would gift him with such a vessel that allowed him to smell, to taste—to press up against and be drenched in arousal by the solidity of—the body of another. When Bartholomew touched his lips to Hubert’s, Hubert could scarcely manage the urge to try to crawl inside Bartholomew; he mashed his face into Bartholomew’s with the force of such need the angel backed away, laughing an “Ow.”

  “You ready for the water?”

  Hubert gulped at the air. “I’m ready for anything.”

  Bartholomew laughed. “Then follow me.”

  They waded into the pool. It was deeper near where the waterfall splashed down, but still not above Hubert’s shoulders. He could paddle like a dog or float on his back, but mostly he climbed around on Bartholomew, reveling in the first feelings that had ever managed to trample their way through a lifetime of self-recrimination.

  “Ready?” Bartholomew asked.

  “Ready.” Hubert nodded eagerly.

  Bartholomew flicked his finger, and the ravings of a mad chocolatier were suddenly made manifest, from the liquid fudge that flowed over the side of the cocoa cliffs down to the delicate sugared petals of the pink poolside hibiscus. Hubert giggled with glee and slogged through chest-deep ganache to cavort in the candied rain of the falls. Bartholomew followed, and soon they were both drenched. Hubert had chocolate in his hair and up his nose and between his toes; Bartholomew’s wings drooped under the wet weight, his muscles enrobed in sweet relief until he resembled nothing so much as a scrumptious sculpture.

  Hubert was inspired to tug Bartholomew out from under the deluge, whereupon he set about licking Bartholomew clean. First his thumb, then a finger, then another, then a third. From his pinky to his wrist, then up the ropy muscles of his forearm to the pool at his elbow. He nibbled at his biceps, the underside of his triceps, then plunged into his pits, inhaling the sweet even as he savored the stink. He ate the chocolate off the subtle dome of Bartholomew’s new belly, lapped it from his navel, then gobbled at his nipples until he wasn’t sure eternity was going to be quite long enough for him to get all the candy-coated Bartholomew he wanted. His tongue sluiced through the syrup streaming along the sinews of Bartholomew’s neck, and when his lips lit upon Bartholomew’s, Hubert knew—he certainly prayed—as he drank them that their brown-buttered bodies would melt, at long, delicious last, into one.

  Starting at Hubert’s mouth, Bartholomew took it in his turn to rove the bon-bon of Hubert’s body. He licked the chocolate from the base of Hubert’s neck, slurped it from the hair on his chest, then coaxed him to float on his back, the better to drink from the basin of his sunken belly. Hubert moaned and mewled and writhed under the rapture of Bartholomew’s tongue as it wend its way lower and lower, until Bartholomew took him in his mouth in his entirety and Hubert was blinded by bliss; he hadn’t known his body capable of such jubilation, and when Bartholomew slurped him empty, the euphoric explosion rattled Hubert’s bones. He laughed until he didn’t think he’d be able to stop, then he laughed again.

  “Bartholomew,” he panted as he slowly regained what composure was available to him floating naked in a pool of chocolate in the arms of an angel.

  “Yes, Hubert?”

  “Do you think you could, you know…” Hubert couldn’t believe he was asking this. He couldn’t believe he wanted it, but it was the only thought he presently had room for in his head or in his heart. He stammered and stuttered, but he locked eyes with Bartholomew and he got it out. “I mean, if you want, do you think you could…take me?”

  Bartholomew widened his eyes with a smile. “Yes, Hubert.”

  With another flick of Bartholomew’s finger, the chocolate was gone. As suddenly as it had changed, now again water was water, rocks were rocks. Hubert and Bartholomew were still slathered in the sweet stuff, but they washed clean under the falls, Hubert wringing out his hair while Bartholomew fluffed his feathers in the stream of cool water.

  “Can we always take showers here?”

  “You’re in Heaven, Hubert. We can do whatever you want.”

  The lascivious grin that spread across Hubert’s face made Bartholomew laugh. “Yes,” he said, “even that.” He stroked himself once to highlight his length and rigidity; he, too, was ready. “Come on,” he said, leading Hubert back the way they’d come.

  When they reached the beach, Bartholomew spread his arms along with his wings. Hubert stepped into his invitation. Bartholomew turned him so Hubert’s itty bitty butt was pressed up against Bartholomew’s front, then spread Hubert’s cheeks by way of introducing himself. Hubert closed his eyes and moaned a gentle Oh, wow, so Bartholomew wrapped his arms around Hubert and they took to the sky.

  They flew out over the ocean. Bartholomew pumped his wings until all Hubert could see was sky, then coasted on the current. The wind buffeted them gently, but Bartholomew had a grip on Hubert; up, down, over here, over there, they went together.

  Hubert pressed himself against Bartholomew’s front, felt the angel stiffen. He felt himself pulsing in readiness, and while he’d never taken so much as a cotton swab, his only fear about taking Bartholomew inside him was suddenly that it might not happen soon enough.

  When Bartholomew made to ready Hubert with a magically slicked finger, Hubert thought he would black out, but when Bartholomew withdrew, Hubert nearly cried. “That’s it?”

  Bartholomew laughed. “Uh, no. This is it.”

  He breached Hubert, slow and steady, and Hubert felt the whole world blossom open just as he was doing. The tickle of Bartholomew’s tip was titillating, but as Hubert spread wider to accommodate the angel’s entirety, he encountered resistance. Hubert wanted Bartholomew badly, but his body threw up a barricade Hubert feared would be unbreakable. Bartholomew forged ahead, though, and the flash of pain disintegrated in an explosion of gratification that only deepened as Bartholomew did the same. Hubert howled into the wind.

  “Are you okay?”

  Hubert nodded. “Please…”

  Bartholomew started to pull out. “You sure?”

  Hubert reached around and put a hand on Bartholomew’s backside. “Please,” he said again. “Never stop doing that.”

  Grinning, Bartholomew rode Hubert as together they rode the wind. When he plunged with urgency, so too did his wings beat harder, so that the faster he pumped Hubert, the faster they barreled through the sky. When he slowed and teased Hubert more playfully, they glided and bobbed on the waves of the wind.

  Hubert had flown with Bartholomew enough to trust that he was safe. He wasn’t going to die, after all, so he turned his body over to the wind and the wings and the Wow! factor of Bartholomew inside him. Now Bartholomew was moaning, too, and suddenly he seized Hubert tight. They pitched, and with furious flaps of Bartholomew’s wings, they zoomed higher. Hubert would feel Bartholomew ease almost out of him, then with each surge of his wings, he’d plunge deeper than before, and both men would yowl their need for more. Hubert had never been in an airplane, or a rocket ship for that matter, but he knew they’d flown higher than any old man-made flying machine could hope to go, when Bartholomew tucked his wings. At the very apex of their flight, Bartholomew reared up, and in free-fall he gave himself completely to Hubert with pump after pump. They hurtled through space towards the onrushing sea, and Hubert cried out. For a sickening second, he was filled with fear, but Bartholomew, clutching him tightly, allowed them to keep falling, faster and faster, and Hubert’s fear—of his grandad, of his Lord, of his own body and heart—couldn’t keep up. He felt it expelled; watched it disintegrate; wept thanks to the wind as it scattere
d the dark, useless shards.

  Bartholomew slowly opened his wings, and by the time they drifted down in front of the house, they alit on the lawn as gently as butterflies. Hubert clapped his hands and wriggled around in Bartholomew’s embrace to kiss him. When he pulled away, he was laughing and dancing, saying “Let’s go again!”

  * * * *

  When Hubert awoke, he felt as luminous as the rays of sunshine that danced around the room, whose curtains there had certainly been no time to close. The glamorous bed was now a thousand shades of purple, the sheets a shimmering satin, the pillows a playground of patterns and polka dots.

  Hubert was spent, but he was no longer sleepy. He wriggled to sit up, and Bartholomew adjusted his wing to keep Hubert covered and snug. Hubert had never slept in the altogether before. Come to that, he’d never been naked that he could remember that he wasn’t stepping into or out of the tub. Certainly never in bed, and with someone else! He waited for shame to shoot through him; tested his heart for revulsion, his conscience for recrimination. Finding none, he laughed. He peeked under Bartholomew’s protective wing, saw the same old Hubert as always. Same knobby knees, same pencil thighs and pokey hip bones, same sunken chest with the same little nipples no bigger than the mother-of-pearl snaps on his favorite shirt. Gazing down at the golden angel snuggled against him, slack-jawed and snoring, nothing but muscles and that meatball butt, scraggly little Hubert, with his morning breath and his hair sticking up every which way, felt beautiful for the first time. He laughed again. Bartholomew had been right. Just before they’d fallen into bed together, Hubert had asked him, “You know how before, you told me it’s only temptation if I resist it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, what do they call it if I give in?”

  Bartholomew smiled. Put his arms around the wisp of Hubert’s waist and pulled him close. Dipped his head and tasted Hubert’s lips ever-so-gently. Put his forehead against Hubert’s and looked through his eyes into his soul and said with a smile, “That, Hubert, is what they call Heaven.”