Free Boulevard by Jim Grimsley

him the story, Curtis called Umberto to the office in front of Alan and handed Umberto a book of matches. “Here,” Curtis said.
    â€œThat’s it?”
    â€œAlan, what do you think you’re doing?”
    â€œHe was going through your desk. You don’t let people go through your desk.”
    â€œThere’s nothing in my desk,” Curtis said, “I don’t keep anything in it. I don’t even lock it.”
    â€œYou don’t let people go through your desk.” Alan waved one hand in the air and stalked away. “What kind of boss are you?”
    At the end of the shift, Curtis handed Newell a pay envelope and gave him a receipt to sign. Inside was a check for one hundred and fourteen dollars and thirteen cents. “I can cash it for you if you sign it over to me,” Curtis said, and Newell waited, and Curtis looked at him, and then turned the check over and said, “Sign it across here. Sign your name.”
    Later he went to Mac’s, as he had come to think of the adult bookstore, and hung out there for a while. This time he changed three dollars for quarters with the woman at the cash register, a platinum blond he had never seen before. “Where’s Mac?” he asked.
    â€œThis is his night to prowl with the alley cats.” She gave him a grin, her lips caked with pink lipstick. “He’ll be back tomorrow. You a friend of his?”
    â€œNo. I just speak to him when I come in.”
    Newell walked behind the curtain for the first time. The booths were a maze of partitions, heading off two ways, though not quite in straight paths. He wandered in the dark spaces, trying to read the postings for each movie in the blue-tinged light. He could not bring himself to enter any of the movies except the one called, “Roger,”which was apparently a man by himself, and that seemed like a good way to start, to Newell, but he found there were already three people in the booth when he opened the door. In that tiny space there was hardly room for another, nice as they were to invite him.
    When he headed to the store again, he took a wrong turn and found himself at a door to the courtyard. He had known the old house had a courtyard but was seeing it for the first time, ivy climbing one wall, a picnic table at the center. A man stood in the courtyard, big-shouldered, heavy-jawed. He looked like Rod the Rock, and Newell found himself staring. The man wore a dark jacket, a shirt open at the collar; he glanced at Newell, smiled, nodded his head. So handsome. Newell’s heart was pounding. Someone called out, “Jack.” A woman’s voice, and the man moved toward the sound. It pleased Newell to have heard the man’s name. Jack. Nodding to Newell again, Jack disappeared, and Newell waited there a moment, in case the guy should reappear.
    Newell wandered among the magazines for a while, but since Mac was off tonight, he figured he would go away and come back again later in the week. Walking home, he was grateful for the quiet, the row of old street-lamps, the crooked pavements, the wall of buildings massed at the street. Once he left the bookstore, that doorway blended into the wall, as did all the other doorways, hiding all the other rooms like that one, where anything might happen.
    On Bourbon Street he stopped and bought a tight, white T-shirt with the words “Vieux Carre” printedacross it, and the outline of an ornate gallery, intricate ironwork, in shiny blue applique. He bought a size small and figured he couldn’t get any tighter than that, so he paid seven dollars for the T-shirt and felt pleased that he would have something new to wear tomorrow.
    The next day, in the T-shirt, he felt as though he were putting on a show in the restaurant, slipping between the tables, with men watching him from all sides, and some of them flirting, trying to talk to him. Later, Curtis called Newell to his office and said, “You’re really