On

n the park bench getting the most attention lounged a leather jacket, jeans and boots all filled with a very, very virile young man. He had the required deep chest, flat mid-section and unabashed sprawl that intrigues connoisseurs of this sort of thing no end. His face wasn't particularly handsome but it had another quality that made this lack irrelevant. It was merriment. His eyes twinkled with hellion delight. His grin was shockingly intimate and his wink simply shattering. A doll, simply a great big wonderful doll and the park fluttered about him.

However this cute thing had been quite solemn earlier in the evening as he sat at dinner. His right hand alternated working with a fork and a pencil; the latter toted up figures on how much cash he'd need to make the immediate future suitably comfortable. He frowned at the imposing total and sat sucking a tooth as he gazed at the figures. Suddenly he slapped down the pencil and said aloud, "Tonight I gotta make hay." He went upstairs three steps at a time, peeled off his suit and pawed his way to the back of the closet feeling for his "work clothes." He showered carefully before putting them on and began to get into the merry mood that always came over him each evening round about now. He sang and winked at himself in the mirror, practiced a few sultry glances, smiles and nods, then dabbed just a touch of cologne here and there. An artful touch and brilliant in its restraint. As usual it took a while to get into the jeans; it was hard to bend over afterward, but he felt trim as hell and positively exaltant once they were on.

Our boy parked two blocks from the park, hopped out and began a languid stroll toward the hot dog stand across the way. The lazy gait gave the correct impression of latent violence. Pairs of eyes here and there flicked over him with alert interest. He casually sidled up to a tall man to drink his coffee, started a conversation by asking for a match and grinning intimately. Not long after they lowered their voices and walked down the block together but parted company suddenly at the corner. Back at the stand there was animated conjecture as to why it had been no go.

He'd hardly been in the park five minutes before a middle aged man came up and asked him how to get to Wallingford Stadium. They got to talking and, not long after, strolled out of the park to the man's sedan which he drove to a parking lot behind the bank. They sat talking amiably about hi-fi, inflation and suddenly biology. Our boy apparently felt cramped in the sedan because he spread way out and relaxed all over the place. The man relaxed, too.

This lasted ten minutes. At the end of that time the man from the hot dog stand loomed up out of the darkness, showed a badge and murmured the usual in a tired voice. Our boy showed his badge, too. It was bright, intricate and somehow cold. Handcuffs were applied. The man just looked down at them with dazed eyes. The tall one said, "Hate to do this, but a poor underpaid cop's gotta make his living." Our boy also remarked on his own personal hard times and low pay, but the fool man just sat there as if stunned in his bright, new handcuffs. Our boy said, "Hell, let's get him down to the station. I got a real quota to make tonight."

Half an hour later the jeans were sprawled on another bench in the park. The twinkling eyes were as irresistible as ever and the fingers of his big hands rippled in exquisite idleness. A very shy high school boy hung around evidently trying to remember an opening gambit from Dale Carnegie; this localized amnesia hung over him like a protecting angel until a fat little waddler sailed right past him and plunked itself down on the bench beside jeaned ruin. His gambit would have been deplored by Carnegie: "It's a nice night, isn't it?" The answer was a most enchanting grin but our boy couldn't help watching the high school number stroll off in defeat.

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