Drew Smith - Arcade

He knew what to do when we got inside. He locked the door behind us then put a couple of tokens in the slot. The movie started loud, and he quickly turned it down. Then he turned around and kissed me. He was a great kisser, and my dick hardened instantly. I reached down and felt his pants. His dick was stiff too. I could tell he was wearing briefs because of the way his hard-on was bent and curled under.

We kissed for several minutes without removing our clothes. It felt so good that I wondered if I was in love with Malcolm, and if I was at the start of something as complicated and difficult as whatever I was emerging from.

“Wait here,” he said suddenly. He left the booth.

I didn’t lock it after him, and a man in a John Deere cap poked his head inside. “No thank you,” I whispered to him. “I’m already with someone else. He’ll be right back.”

When Malcolm returned he had a condom and a little bottle of lube from the front counter.

“You just bought these?”

“Yeah.”

He kissed me, and this time he pulled at my shirt, looking for the buttons. Malcolm got my shirt off, then we took his off. Then we paused to take off our shoes, and get out of our pants and underwear. A minute later we were completely naked except for his long black socks and my white gym socks. It was the first time I’d been undressed in one of the booths.

He lay back on one of the benches and I lay on top of him. I reached down and felt his dick. I held it together with mine and jerked us off while we kissed.

“Put it on,” he said, pressing the condom into my hand.

I stood up and tore open the rubber package while he put lube on his dick and ass. When I had the rubber on, he put lube on my dick, and said, “Come on.”

He lifted his legs for me, and I pressed them back with my hands. He reached down and found my cock and pushed it against his ass.

“Slow,” he said.

I didn’t move until I felt him relaxing a little at a time. A few seconds later, my dick had disappeared into him completely and I was kissing him, feeling my balls against his rear end.

“Go on,” he said.

I started to fuck him, holding his legs. I looked into his eyes and he smiled like he was containing a laugh. Then the movie stopped, and it was black in the booth. I felt him beneath me and regretted that I had delayed meeting him for so long.

I tried to take it slow, but I felt like I was going to come after just a couple of minutes.

“I’m going to come,” I whispered. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” he whispered. “Kiss me. I’m about to come too.”

Then we did, and I could feel it pulsing out of him, dripping off my stomach as we kissed. Then we both exhaled, and I rested my head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the top of my head.

SOMEONE CAME INTO THE LOBBY WHILE I WAS ON THE PHONEtaking a reservation. I didn’t pay him any attention at first. He only glanced at me before turning his back to look at some maps and fliers that were set out on a table in the lobby.

Before I was off the phone, a woman and her daughter arrived to check-in. Then a man in a suit lined up behind them. When I hung up, I started checking in the woman, and a Norwegian guest came in to ask why he might be having trouble with the wi-fi.

I helped him with the wi-fi on his phone, and I got the woman to sign her paperwork and directed her to her room.

I checked in the man in the suit. Then the phone rang while he was signing his paperwork. I put the phone call on hold and directed the man in the suit to his room.

All along, the guy who had entered earlier stood at the table. When I bothered focusing my attention on him, I recognized something familiar — the distracted air of someone pretending to look at something but actually just stalling.

“Can I help you with something?” I said.

He turned and looked at me.

It was the kid.

“No,” he said. “You can take your call.”

“You sure?” I said.

“Yeah.”

I picked up the phone, and took a reservation from a woman. Normally, I detested lengthy conversations with guests, but I spent much longer than necessary on the phone with her in hopes that another person would enter the lobby. I pretended to be ridiculously friendly and helpful so that he would hear me. I hoped I wasn’t about to be murdered or even confronted.

The call ended at last.

Even after I hung up, the kid stayed there at the table, pretending to examine a bus schedule and a flyer for a company offering double decker bus tours.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” I said.

He turned around and looked at me. I thought he was about to say something, but he just kept staring. The seconds ticked past, and I could feel my face turn red and my throat close up.

His face was red too. It was the first time I was able to get a good impression of him. I could almost see what the cop would want with him. Maybe there was something handsome in him. Beneath the baby fat, I thought I could see something dignified. A jawline. Broad shoulders.

The map in the kid’s hands shook. It seemed likely that he would remove a gun or a knife from his pants and that would be the end of me. But after staring at one another for several seconds, he nodded. Then, with trembling hands, he folded the bus map, put it back on the table and left.

FANTASIZING WAYS TO ESCAPE THE LOBBY, I IMAGINED THEpossibility of a career at the arcade. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw that I didn’t really want to work out there so much as I wanted to have an arcade of my own.

I thought about getting into the industry, the newsletters I never would have known existed, the catalogs and invitations to sleazy conventions where I’d meet guys who’d seen it all. Maybe one would make a project of me, teaching me the business the way Burgess Meredith taught Sylvester Stallone how to box in Rocky. Maybe I’d speak at his funeral and inherit his chain of arcades and car washes, the son he’d never had.

I’d be like Bruce Mailman, the owner of the New St. Marks Baths in New York. Like the St. Mark’s, we’d never close. I read that, though the building had been open and operating as a bathhouse for more than seventy years, the city had been forced to buy a lock when they shut it down in 1985 because no one who worked there — not even the owners — had a key to the place. They’d never closed up before, not even for holidays.

My employees and I would all have horror stories about cleaning up booths and the bathroom. We’d have favorite regulars and guys we wanted to sleep with, and guys we absolutely loathed, and guys we banned. We’d have an endless supply of anecdotes for one another about the things we had seen and the conversations we’d had, and no one would understand except for those of us who worked there.

Maybe manning the counter, I’d meet fascinating and fun people, and maybe when I did, I could join them in a booth, leaving the front desk unattended like a sidewalk newsstand from the 1950s, with a stack of tokens and a note reading “Honor System.”

I EMAILED MALCOLM TO TELL HIM ABOUT THE VISIT FROMthe kid. I couldn’t talk about it out loud yet.

His reply arrived just a few minutes later.

“Sounds to me like that’s finished. And like maybe it’s time for you to move on. Since it seems like you’re never going to ask, you know I could get you a job, right? A pretty good one. All you have to do is say the word. Of course, you’d have to tell me your real name.”