Published: 2 May 2022

I discussed all this with Simon at home that night and he agreed that a sour apple could spoil the whole bunch and we were going to be well rid of her. He looked over all the stats of the other agents and said that he thought I had made a very good investment. I looked at him, with nothing but love in my eyes and told him no, we made an investment in our future and then slid the closing papers over to him and it was then he recognized the last page as one I had him sign the day before the closing, telling him we needed a household account at the bank and I needed his signature so he could also deposit or pay out from the account. What I had him sign, as I had kept him occupied by playing with his dick, was the partnership papers, making us equal partners in Black & White Realty Co., the corporation purchasing the realty company from Mr. Wilkins, with both Simon and I listed as equal partners. I then pulled his shocked face to mine and kissed his lips. When his arms wrapped around my shoulders I asked him to marry me. I think his answer was yes because I felt his tongue trying to mate with mine and instead of saying yes when we both came up for air, he asked me when.

We worked out the details at breakfast, it was the first time we were able to talk in complete sentences since we tumbled into bed after he asked me “When?” With the Christmas and New Years holidays coming up we decided to see if it would be possible to hold our ceremony poolside at the casino so we went to see the events coordinator there and he seemed pleased by the idea and quickly looked up in his computer the week between Christmas and New Years Eve and told us to wait just a moment and he scurried down the hall and came back shortly with the CEO of the casino and they offered to make a spectacle of our wedding by offering to hold the ceremony immediately before midnight and then the casino’s fireworks would go off right after we had been pronounced husbands. I couldn’t think of anything more tacky and I turned to Simon and apparently he felt the same way as he was shaking his head back and forth.

What was agreed on was that our ceremony, although small, would be held in public view of the spot where we had met, poolside, in the day time, two days after Christmas. They offered their justice of the peace and the venue free of charge, and a catered reception for forty people right after the ceremony. With that all agreed to we returned home and made a list of those we should invite before Simon left for his afternoon classes and then a short shift at the casino.

I made calls to Harry and Ray to invite them and to make sure they knew we wanted them to stay with us and then I drove to the realty office and invited the remaining agents and their significant others to attend, it didn’t escape my notice that the troublesome older female agent wasn’t there and her station had been cleared out already, two weeks ahead of time. There would now be space to bring a new agent on board.

One of the first things Simon proposed to me was that our company offer Realtor classes to prospective agents. He himself had taken the courses, at the college level and he thought that he and one of his assistant professors would make a good teaching team for the basics needed to pass the license test required to be a Realtor. The classes would be held three evenings a week for three months and if we started in January we’d be finished with the classes by the time the next state exams would be held. We received the go ahead by the local board of Realtor’s, then the state and then the blessings of the national board. We had the space, there was an unused couple of big rooms on the second floor of the office and we had those cleaned up and banquet tables and chairs set up in a classroom configuration in one of the two big rooms. When we placed an ad in the local papers and notices at the Lied Institute for real estate studies at UNLV, I was the first to sign up. We had so many sign up for the course we had to set up the second unused space as another classroom and took on another assistant professor at the institute to help.

We discussed all his with Harry when he came out to spend two weeks with us for Christmas and for our wedding. I think he had other things in mind as well because we got to spend quite abit of time with his friend Brad, the lawyer he had met while out on the town when he had last visited. They had apparently spent a lot of time on the phone and internet since then, because Harry told us he was going to move here in the new year and actively pursue Brad. Brad was all for that and before the new year they had asked if we would consider renting them the second floor offices after our classes were over, they wanted to open a new practice once Harry had received state certification from Nevada. They both had a passion for helping people close on their new properties, and they figured what better place for their new offices, but above a Realtor’s office. We did them one better, we took over the space to our side and we’d be side by side, we figured we could put a door between the two spaces and then still use the second floor rooms for other class sessions.

Our wedding was very low key, but we and our 38 guests had an audience of hundreds as the casino had announced our betrothals in the casino and we heard there were bets that we would or wouldn’t kiss after the vows were exchanged (we did). There was a lot of applause when we walked hand in hand back up the aisle and we were followed by our best men, Harry and Brad. The luncheon served by the casino after was scrumptious and it received rave reviews from all the attendees. We mingled and schmoozed and we even danced together and with others after our first dance together. It was a fun night and when we were in our marital bed later that night we vowed to have a family together, even if it meant adopting to avoid the diaper changes we both said we didn’t want to do.

In January Simon stepped right in to the management role at the office as I had to prepare for the next stint at the casino with my troupe. I first contacted the ones who couldn’t attend the wedding and confirmed they would be ready to come out to Vegas in February and then, using the performer’s preferences in the numbers they would do, I set the order of the performances, giving all approximately the same amount of stage time. Every month we would either change the whole line up of numbers, or switch the numbers around a bit so the show always looked and sounded fresh. Blocking and sound checks and lighting would all be worked out the week before the shows began when everyone involved would be in town, with the “girls” assigned their rooms at the casino hotel, and I would be staying with Simon at our home.

So Simon would work the office before attending classes and I would cover in the afternoons. By now everyone in the office knew about my performances and I had even blocked off enough tables for them and their significant others to watch the opening night show. They found the little changes to the office routine a better deal for them, we had hired a receptionist who steered the cold calls to the agent on duty and sent individual agent calls to their own voice mail. We had spruced up the meeting room on the first floor so it wasn’t so shopworn for when they met with their clients and /or the mortgage company reps. We often received tickets to shows in town and we often took some of our agents with us to see them.

When the billboards went up about the shows we were about to start there was a definite buzz within the public, as those who lived here began to put 1 and 1 together and we had a measurable increase in business. I had never hid what I had been doing for a living, and there were those who just didn’t care one way or another who sold them their house or who sold their current one, it was that kind of atmosphere in town.

Our opening rehearsals went off without a hitch, except for a few blisters from not having had heels on for five months. My voice was real good and I had no troubles with it at all. Most weeks for the first few months Simon would make about 4 shows a week, now he didn’t have to work as a waiter at the casino for spending money. It was May when he was informed he would be graduating with honors and it was the next weekend I had to take the state Realtor’s license exam. It was a very comprehensive exam that covered everything from real estate law to financing. The rest of my class was there as well and I was pleased I had finished before anyone else, but before standing up and handing it in to the proctor I went over it again, actually correcting two simple mistakes I had marked down.

Then, after a few others had stood and handed their sheets in I did so too, watching as the proctor at the desk ran my answer sheets through the machine that looked like a computerized voting machine tabulator and there were a series of muted beeps and the proctor congratulated me, saying I was the first of the day to get all the answers answered correctly. 90% of the answers were multiple choice and you filled in a circle next to the correct answer. The other 10% were dummy questions like, name the State you live in, or, what will you do if you pass this test? I really thought they threw these questions in to give you a break from filling in all those dots.

Our empty cubicle back in January had been filled by a retired agency owner who had found retirement not to his liking, Mr. Wilkins, who had retained his broker’s license, and both Simon and I were going to work out our apprenticeship with him for our first three sales, as required by the board of Realtors. My first listing was a McMansion that an executive at the casino wanted to unload after his divorce. He had proven the house was not part of the marital property, that he had owned it and paid all the bills for it all through his three year marriage to a show girl who refused to get pregnant after they had tied the knot, claiming she didn’t want to loose her figure, even though he had written proof she had agreed to bear his children.

The house was out on Painted Feather Way, a hilly enclave of the rich, and it was over 10 thousand square feet of living space. The comps suggested a ten million dollar selling price and I had luckily set up an appointment with a studio exec. from Los Angeles for an afternoon showing. I had been to the house a couple of times during my stint at the casino and it was a very modern looking home with a lot of mission style influences. I showed the property to the executive and he left, saying he would have to think about it and was about to lock the house back up when an older car pulled into the fore court and an older couple got out and asked if I was the listing agent. I introduced myself and asked how I could help them.

The couple explained that they had seen my sign at the curb and had always loved the look of the house ever since it had been completed just 8 years before, and wondered if I had time to show it once more now to them. I immediately thought they were a sweet older couple who wanted to snoop a little, and not having to do anything for the next hour I told them I’d be glad to. The couple loved the views from the expansive rooms and also from the terraces carved into the hillside. The pool wasn’t huge, but it was large and had one end covered by a tiled roof that extended over the barbecue area. As we were entering the house again the husband asked what the asking price was and I told them that the seller was asking for offers over ten million.

The couple talked as they walked to their car after thanking me and then they both came back to me and asked if an offer of ten and a half million would be a good starting place to kick off the negotiations. I invited them back to the office to write up an offer and they followed me and we then went in and we wrote up the all cash offer. While I was making copies of the offer I googled them and found out that they had just sold their pharmaceutical company for hundreds of millions so I felt a lot more comfortable with the offer and their ability to pay if it was accepted. I asked if they had a local lawyer to handle the closing if their offer was accepted and when they told me “no” I mentioned the law offices next door, of Harry and his partner Brad, and after getting their contact numbers I asked them to wait and I’d call the seller and present their offer.

The seller accepted their offer and I faxed him a copy of the offer and he faxed it back signed, and said he’d stop at the office to sign the original on his way home that afternoon. I congratulated the buyers and told them they now needed a lawyer to represent them in the closing, which would take place the next week.

All worked out well, everyone got what they wanted and I had earned for me and the company a cool half million plus, Harry and Brad had their first big closing in their new combined offices and had gained very wealthy clients for all heir local needs. That night’s show was a great one for me, I knew that my sale of my own listing was a fluke, but it really made me feel great and I threw all that into the show. Between the shows and the real estate the six months went quickly and it was getting close to the month the show would move to the big theater in LA. for the last month of my last tour and I was so going to miss Simon. We made love constantly, we said, to try and get one of us pregnant.

We were heading to the office one day about 3 weeks before my departure when Simon asked if I thought if Kris, the younger agent in the office, would make a good office manager. I asked if she was unhappy being an agent and he said he thought she had something else on her mind, now that she was engaged herself and her focus seemed to be on marrying the divorced father of two she was betrothed to. He said she might just be ready for a 9 to 5 job because now she would have a family to help support and want to spend time with. We asked her about this when we were actually in our office and she said she’d love to do it. She wouldn’t have to spend her nights and weekends showing houses when she’d rather be home with her new family.

So that’s how Kris became the office manager and she really picked up on it right away and that’s how Simon was able to come and spend time almost every week with me in LA. The last two weeks in LA our show was filmed for a documentary by the local PBS station which guaranteed a full house for the last two weeks of our show. The shows went really well, but my mind was almost constantly drawn to Simon and our life back in Las Vegas. I couldn’t wait to be back home, to take a plane and fly back to him, and our company.

I had been home about three weeks and Simon and I were leaving the office and driving home when we noticed a young boy by the side of the road, just walking, well trudging, with cars speeding past him as he toiled along, dragging a dufflebag behind him. He couldn’t have been older that 7 or 8 and looked quite dirty and unkempt. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and Simon hopped out and began talking to the lad. It turned out his mother hadn’t come back to the car they were living in and a guy came to the car and told the kid to take off or he’d beat him. Simon determined where the car had been parked and when we drove by it some time later there were three guys in it drinking and god knows what else. The boy, Thomas, told us he didn’t know any of them, but that one of the guys looked like the guy who had run him off earlier that day.

We took Thomas to the local precinct and inquired if they had any information about Thomas’s mother and they informed us that the mother had been found in the local park, beaten badly and under the influence of some substance or other. She had been taken to the county hospital. Before we went there we informed the officer we had been talking to that three men had taken over the woman’s car and had forced Thomas out of it and we gave him the location of the vehicle and we informed him that they were still there and might have something to do with the condition she was currently in. Simon and I gave him our business cards and we told him we’d reunite her with her son.

At the county hospital we were taken to the intensive care unit and brought to Thomas’s mother’s side. Miss Hoag certainly didn’t look well at all and her little boy was soon up on her bed and hugging her arm, about the only thing not covered in bruises or bandages. She was lucid enough to recognize her own son and thanked us when we told her what had occurred. She in turn haltingly told us what had happened to her. She had tried to apply for a job and the guy wanted her to put out for him so she left and while walking through the park had succumbed to her urges and had bought some pills with the last of her money, intending to off herself, when she was joined by three homeless men and they began to drink and she passed out. She really didn’t know anything about her beating and now all she wanted was to die. Simon went to talk to a nurse out in the hall and then went and made a call to Harry and Brad. Harry showed up about 45 minutes later with a sheaf of papers and told us to take Thomas out to eat and then come back.

When we returned from the Burger King, about a block and a half away, Thomas had a vanilla milkshake for his mom, her favorite. He and she shared it as Harry explained what he had done while we were gone. He had Thomas’s mother, Miss. Hoag, sign over parental rights to Simon and I. He would file the documents in family court the next day, and Thomas would be ours to raise.

It was an emotional goodbye for the two of them, but we promised them both we’d bring him back the next day to visit. We helped him take a shower at home and then a snack of soup and crackers before bed and in the morning the clothes he had worn were washed and dried before we took off for the hospital. On route there I received a call from the policeman we had spoken to the other day and he informed us that the three men had been apprehended in Miss Hoag’s car and that the child’s clothing had been set aside for him and we could pick them up at the station. He informed us there was evidence they were the ones responsible for her beating and appropriate charges were being levied against them, with further charges to be filed at a later date. He would keep us informed about that and about when the car could be reclaimed, it was impounded for evidence right now.

Harry told us that the custody had been approved the next afternoon while we were all out shopping for new clothes for Thomas. When we walked down an aisle and he stopped to look at something, if it was age appropriate we snagged it when he wasn’t looking and put it in the cart along with the sneakers and shoes, jeans and slacks, t shirts and underwear, shirts and pullovers. He was pleased we were all choosing and in the clothing department he had asked what we thought about this shirt or that pair of jeans. Our lives were about to change, and there were no diapers involved.

We were called that same night from the hospital, Thomas’ mother had passed and we gave them the name of a funeral parlor to contact for the pick up of her body so she could be cremated as she had requested. We told Tom (as he said we could call him) the next day and he said she had told him she was going away forever and he wouldn’t see her again, but we told him she must have loved him a lot to have made sure that he came to live with us. We would be his family and he would have to pick out which bedroom he wanted to be his own, from all the unused ones upstairs. He said he liked the one he had been using the last two days so when the washing had been completed we took that and all the other stuff we had also gotten for him and we set everything in his room and we all pitched in to put it all away. He said he liked living in a house again but our house was huge compared to where he and his mother used to live. We asked where he went to school and he said it was far away, where they used to live, so we asked Harry if he could find where that had been from the car’s registration or something else that the police had of Miss Hoag’s.

He told us in the office the next day that it was a small town in the Western part of the state called Mina and he had already requested a school transcript from them so we could enroll Tom in school. From what Harry had found out Miss Hoag had been a brothel worker just outside of town and had quit when she got pregnant and had lived with the father in a trailer until the birth and he had taken off for parts unknown and that no father was listed on Tom’s birth certificate which was recovered by the police and he now had. He said we’d need that, plus the transcript from his old school, and the court decree naming us his guardians when we enrolled him in grade school as soon as the transcript arrived in a day or two. So Tom and I had something in common.

We were bonding with him and on those occasions one or both of us went to the office we took him with us and he got to be a favorite of Kris and Mr. Wilkins in no time. When at home, no matter how hot it was he loved being in the pool with us. We taught him the essentials of swimming and water safety and he was a fast learner and loved to be tossed around in the pool. He once asked us at dinner if we were married and when we told him we were, he told us that was good, parents should be married if they were going to have kids. It didn’t faze him one bit that we were two guys, as long as we were married.

By the time he was 12, Tom was able to do a lot of the chores at the realty office, like running off copies, filling the coffee maker, looking up things on the computers, helping to keep kids occupied if they came in with their parents, answering the phone if Kris was busy. He was an A student in school and popular with the other students, but we did notice he had more male visitors to the house and pool than girls, but it was early days even at that age, but by 14 he was sure he was gay and was not hesitant to tell us about his crushes.

By the time the realty company had been ours for 10 years Tom was 18 and had already finished his first year of college, following in his dads’ footsteps and attending the Lied Institute For Real Estate Studies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. We couldn’t be prouder of him and his boyfriend, Seth, one of Kris’s step sons and a classmate of Tom’s and a frequent visitor at our house. Simon told me one night in bed that we would be getting our freedom back when Tom and Seth graduated in three years and started taking over the business, and I laughed and held him closer, and said, “What in the world would we do with it? We’re happy doing just what we’re doing, sure there is room for them in the company, but there will always be room for us, we’ve been free to be whatever we wanted for the last 15 years, I think we have a lot to teach our son and his lover.”

THE END

The only payment our authors receive for their efforts are your emails. Art deserves to hear from you if you are reading his stories. Art in Key West 11 at gmail dot com.

If you are using webmail please include, on the subject line, [CR] (name of story). This let’s the author know 2 things: Where you read the story and which story you are writing about.

3,570 views