Drawn Together

by Z. A. Maxfield

  The policeman, a Detective Jenkins, began by asking him a few questions regarding the incident and inquired into his plans for his future security. Yamane answered all his questions honestly, even if they seemed redundant. In the end, he had to admit this didn’t make him feel very safe.

  “Odd, isn’t it?” he said. “How your names are so similar.”

  “Our names?” asked Jenkins. “What names?”

  “You and Detective Jenks who was here earlier. He took my friend Rory to the station for questioning. I think he felt Rory could be an accomplice, but the more I think about it, the more I reject it entirely.”

  “Detective Jenks,” said Jenkins. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes. The nurse was here; she would know. Ask her. It was Detective Jenks; I’m sure of it.”

  * * *

  “Okay, I will,” said Jenkins. “And this detective, he took your friend for questioning?”

  “Yes,” said Yamane, whose hand and head were throbbing. “I just said that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said Jenkins. “The thing is, sir, there’s not a single Jenks that I know of connected to our department. Not one.”

  7

  By the time the two men hired to beat Rory senseless and throw him into the murky water began, he was already pretty convinced he would die right there at their hands. The first punch one of them threw was so impossibly hard he knew if he had more than the vile hospital coffee in his stomach, he would have lost it on the spot.

  After a minute or two, as they threw him back and forth, taking turns slamming meaty fists into his head and chest, he became almost detached. He felt like he was floating above the scene, as though disconnected from it. His only hope, the only chance he had, was to go down, stay down, and pretend he was already dead. If they threw him in the water unconscious, it would surely be all over for him.

  Rory hit the ground hard, face-first. He just lay there with an arm thrown out carelessly, hoping to hide his face.

  One of the men said, “Suppose that did it?”

  “Kick him,” said the other.

  Rory steeled himself for a punishing blow. Sure enough, the kick to his ribs was enough to make him want to cry out. Since his whole life depended on silence, he was silent.

  “Do it again,” said the first guy. “I didn’t see him move, but…”

  “Okay,” said the second, this time delivering a kick to his ribs so hard Rory felt them crack and hoped they didn’t puncture something. Tears began to run from his eyes, but he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, and the men didn’t detect he was still conscious.

  “He’s done,” said one.

  “Kind of disappointing, if you ask me, big guy like that.” said the other, who picked Rory up off the ground by the legs while the first took him by the arms.

  Rory’s plan had been a good one, but he didn’t count on the tremendous waves of pain he would experience when the two men picked up his broken body and carried him to the end of one of the docks. A sickening, dizzying sensation overcame him, and he slid into darkness.

  In his private, guarded hospital room, Yamane was inconsolable. The more agitated he became, the more pain he was in. At last the doctor ordered sedation. Detective Jenkins stayed by his side, talking quietly.

  “We’ve done everything we can, sir. I’m asking you to be patient. These things take time. We’ve got pictures of this Jenks -- taken from the security cameras in the parking garage -- circulating. We received the information your agent sent us from Japan, and someone is currently contacting the institution and the authorities in Northern California for information. We don’t even know if they mean him any harm. Please try to calm yourself. Getting upset solves nothing. Is there anything, anything at all you can think of that you haven’t told us?”

  “I’ve been thinking and thinking,” snapped Yamane. “At the time, it just didn’t occur to me. Why would it? He knew about the investigation. He told us about the room service waiter being found --”

  “What?” asked Jenkins, who seemed suddenly alert.

  “He said the room service waiter was found tied up in a linen closet with a head wound.”

  “When was this exactly?” Detective Jenkins took out his BlackBerry.

  “I don’t know, earlier, just before he took Rory. He said… He made me think that Rory was an accomplice.” Yamane rubbed his eyes with his good hand. “I knew he was wrong, but just for a moment, I doubted… That’s the last thing Rory saw. Shit.” Yamane hated himself.

  “I’m sure that he understands that we all have doubts every now and then,” Jenkins said gently, and Yamane sniffed. “Now is not the time, though, sir. Let’s hold off on thinking the worst. We’ve got people working on the tapes from the parking garage. If his car was parked in there, we’ll eventually get something. As a matter of fact, we didn’t find the missing waiter till well after he told you about it. I think we’ve found our inside man.” He used his BlackBerry to send a text message. “I shouldn’t be using this in here. I’ve got to go outside and make some calls.”

  Yamane was beginning to feel the effects of the sedative on his limbs. His legs were feeling heavier, and his arms tingled with a rubbery sensation. It wasn’t a bad feeling to let go for a while, so he let himself drift.

  Rory hit the water with barely a splash. In his mind, which seemed very far away from his physical body, he knew the cool liquid felt good against his skin, except where the salt burned. He floated and drifted, down and away from the dock, for what seemed like an eternity. His limbs had no strength, his will was gone, and it was pleasant and peaceful to descend into the inky green coolness of the water.

  Something drifted by his hand, seaweed probably, brushing against it. It reminded him of that morning, before all the chaos, when he’d wrapped Yamane’s silky black hair around his fist and gazed at him in that moment between sleep and wakefulness when Yamane being a man didn’t seem all that important.

  Something unfinished nagged at him, skittering away when he tried to comprehend it. Yamane wasn’t the first man he’d looked at that way. Yamane, the imaginary woman Yamane, was a dream he’d chased for so long, someone he had waited for, and he’d let other chances, other attractions, slip by without exploring them. He willed his eyes to open. He could see nothing but the watery darkness surrounding him. Some instinct, some purely animal drive, made him push himself to think clearly. Before he could panic, he saw the shimmering sunlight on the water. It seemed a long way away. He pushed toward it, praying his hardest that the two men who threw him in wouldn’t be waiting for him when he broke the surface.

  He finally felt the air on his face and sucked it into his lungs as quietly as physically possible. When he’d satisfied his body’s need, he looked around. He found himself behind a large fishing boat named The Lucky Player, which was tied to the dock and had, on the end of a towrope, a small inflatable dinghy. He swam to the smaller boat and put his arms over the sides, resting his tired limbs. He wasn’t too far away from a dock, but he couldn’t tell which one of them he had been thrown from. Taking the chance of being killed by someone after he’d survived the last ordeal was not an option. Rory heaved his body into the dinghy and just lay there, floating in and out of frightening dreams for a time.

  Something flapped and squawked next to Rory’s head. He opened his eyes to find an inquisitive seagull watching him intently. He had no way of knowing how much time had passed, but his shirt was a crisply dried, salty mess. He untied the dinghy and paddled it around the fishing boat to the dock. It took some doing, but he finally got himself up onto the wooden platform, no easy feat with broken ribs. As he slogged and staggered up the dock, he remembered again the first few days of the hurricane when he’d been certain he’d never be dry again. Rory was beginning to really hate water.

  There were no cars as far as he could see except ones that had been parked long-term by their owners. Hardly anything moved except sea birds. He walked away from the dock, assuming that sooner or
later, he’d find a bigger road or a person or a phone. He checked his pockets to find out if he still had any change. What seemed like a long distance away, at the mouth of the inlet road he was walking on, he saw a small shack. Rory kept his feet going, stumbling forward. When he got close, he realized it was some sort of security station, and in it, watching several closed-circuit televisions and an iPod video, was a uniformed security guard.

  “Hey,” said the guard, who fumbled out to stand in front of him. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  Rory didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so unfortunately, he did both at the same time. Eventually, he found himself sitting cross-legged on the ground with a cup of coffee in his hands laced with a generous amount of really cheap whiskey.

  “So, they just threw you in, just like that?” said his new best friend.

  “Just like that. Can you help me? I’ve got to get to Long Beach Memorial Hospital. I can’t walk much more.”

  “I could call the police for you.” The guard held out his hand. “I’m Allen.”

  Rory laughed. “A fake cop brought me here. Jeez. I’m from New Orleans and I got a beat-down in LA by a phony cop. Grandmère will never let me live it down.”

  “I get off at six o’clock. If you want to wait, I’ll drive you. Southern boy to Southern boy, you are a terrible mess.”

  The sun warmed the colors in the sky over the water as Allen drove Rory back to Long Beach. Crossing over the Vincent Thomas Bridge, Rory thanked God for his good fortune. It could so easily have been a one-way trip. Soon, he dozed off, or lost consciousness. After a while, he felt Allen’s hand gently shaking his shoulder.

  As he turned to leave the car, he felt overcome. “Thank you, Allen. I can’t thank you enough,” he said, shaking the man’s hand, gripping it hard. “Give me your card if you have one.”

  “Fresh out.” The man laughed. “Take care, buddy.”

  Rory exited the car in front of the hospital’s wide, automatic double doors. He looked back as Allen drove away. As he walked through the hospital lobby, he was aware of the stares of the people around him. He had one goal in his head, Yamane, and he didn’t see, didn’t hear, and didn’t care about anything or anyone else.

  He walked up to the information desk. “Where will I find Ran Yamane? I’m Rory Delaplaines, his domestic partner,” he lied, not caring to be very quiet or polite.

  “He’s in three-ten but --” the woman behind the desk began.

  “Thank you,” he said curtly. As he walked away he heard things like “stabbed in the hand” and “police guard,” but he kept on walking to the elevators. Rory had no doubt he’d meet with resistance, but after what he’d been through he felt a little bulletproof.

  Getting off the elevator on the third floor, he approached Yamane’s room, the only one currently being guarded by a uniformed officer. He walked up to the man, who had a coffee in one hand and casually flipped through an ancient copy of Teen People with the other.

  Rory stood before him. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re the guy,” said the officer, jumping to his feet excitedly. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I’m back,” said Rory curtly.

  The young officer took in Rory’s battered face, his bloodstained, filthy clothes, his damp shoes, and his current expression. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “You going to give me a hard time?” Rory demanded, his hand already on the door to Yamane’s room. “I’m going in.”

  The officer looked marginally sympathetic. “Go ahead. I’ll call you in found.”

  “Not to Jenks, he’s not a real cop, right?” he asked, holding his body rigid as if he had to decide whether to flee.

  “No, there’s no one named Jenks on this case,” said the officer earnestly. He pulled out his ID. “But I’m for real, and I’ll tell my superior you’ve been found.”

  Rory carefully looked his badge over. “You know, I’m all about trust, but from now on, it doesn’t matter what anyone shows me. I’m going to look after Yamane and myself as if every one of you is the bastard who did this to me.”

  “Understood,” said the officer, this time with true pity on his face. “But we won’t let you down again.”

  “I know,” said Rory. He turned and entered the room. Approaching the hospital bed, he noticed that Yamane was asleep, probably aided by some sort of sedative, because it was far too early. He put down the guardrail and sat on the side of the bed. Having reached his destination, Rory felt pain signals for the first time. His body was remarkably resilient. This would not be the first time Rory had taken advantage of that fact.

  Rory leaned over and looked at Yamane’s face. It was so beautiful in the late afternoon light that it took Rory’s breath away. The shocking beating he had taken combined with the stark terror of coming to what seemed certain to be the end of his life made him want to touch someone.

  Rory contented himself with stroking Yamane’s long hair gently with his fingers. As he did this, Yamane stirred slightly and opened his eyes. When he saw Rory, he immediately put his good arm out. Yamane said nothing but gathered Rory to him in an unyielding embrace.

  Yamane pulled Rory’s face into the crook of his neck, and his injured hand came over to gently stroke his back. Under this tender assault, Rory completely gave up control and cried like a baby.

  8

  “I’m sorry,” Rory said, standing up and wiping his face with the sleeve of his filthy shirt. “Wow. I don’t know what that was all about.”

  “I am so relieved to see you,” Yamane whispered. “I thought…”

  “We Delaplaines are a scrappy lot.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t expect to break down like that; I can’t remember the last time it happened. Probably when I was a little kid.”

  “It’s not important. Where have you been?” asked Yamane. “You look awful.”

  “I feel like I’m going to puke up a kidney.” Rory walked to the bathroom.

  While Rory was gone, Yamane signaled the nurse’s station. An impersonal voice came over the intercom. “Can I help you?”

  “I need some help in here. My friend is badly injured.”

  Rory came out of the bathroom, moving slowly. “It’s worse than I thought; I’m pretty sure I need medical attention.” Rory looked pale. The bruising on his flesh stood out against his bloodless face. “I’m sorry.”

  Jenkins came in, followed by a nurse with a wheelchair. “Shit,” said Jenkins. “You should have gone to emergency right away.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” murmured Rory, looking away. He moaned and put his head down.

  Jenkins helped him into the wheelchair. “I’m Jenkins. I’m the detective on Yamane’s case. I have lots of questions to ask you, but first, you get examined. For all we know, you’re bleeding internally.”

  “Well…actually we do know that,” said Rory tightly, “I am.” Rory started to laugh, and the nurse looked at him closely.

  “I think he’s going to crash,” she said. “Let’s get him down to the ER right away.”

  “Where are my clothes?” Yamane slid out of his hospital bed. “I’ll come with you.” He found a plastic bag with his personal things. His hospital gown flapped open.

  “Jenkins, stop checking out my girlfriend’s butt.” Yamane whirled around with his back to the closet.

  When Jenkins looked at him, appalled, Rory whispered, “Made you look.” Louder, he said, “Just kidding, princess.”

  Yamane raised his eyebrows. “Who are you calling princess?” Rory began to sing.

  “Oh, there he goes,” the nurse said to Jenkins. “This isn’t good; let’s get him out of here.”

  Yamane heard Rory singing and people scrambling around in the hallway as he tried frantically to dress. He was still a little shaky himself. His hand was virtually useless, so he just pulled on his shirt and coat without buttoning them. He pulled his jeans on and cursed the fact that they had a button too. He jammed his shoes on without socks
and staggered out to find the emergency room, dragging the stunned uniformed officer after him.

  Later, Jenkins sat in the waiting room of the ER with Yamane. “Did Rory tell you what happened to him?” he asked.

  “No. He was crying.”

  “I don’t blame him. I got a look at him as they were cutting his clothes off. He’s going to feel this day’s work for a long time.”

  “Was it really bad?”

  “Yeah,” Jenkins said simply. “Look, you’ve known each other what, two days?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that normal? To see a guy for two days and be like --”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “I’m sorry if that’s too personal. I know it’s a brave, new rainbow world and everything, but I’m slow to catch up to these things. Is it more accepted in Japan where you live?”

  “Hardly.” Yamane snorted. “Anyway, technically I’m from New York. I just live in Japan.”

  “Oh,” said Jenkins. “So, you met and then what? Love at first sight?”

  “Oh, hell no. He came here from Louisiana, thinking I was a woman. He wanted to sweep me off my feet.” Yamane felt tired. That seemed a long time ago. “He’s not gay. He was appalled. I’m pretty sure he was clueless… Then I teased him. I wish I hadn’t done that. He’d probably be home now if I hadn’t. It’s not what you think. Even I don’t know what it is. I just think we were thrown together here by something and we found each other. I think maybe we’re…friends.”

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe,” said Yamane. “I don’t know. Shit, that woman.”

  “Can you tell me about her?”

  “She thinks because I used to show her my work and ask her opinion in high school art class she owns me. Who can explain crazy people? Once, about four years ago, she asked me out for drinks. ‘I’m in Tokyo, haven’t seen you since high school, how’s it going?’ Next thing I know, I wake up bound and gagged in her rented apartment. She kept me there for weeks, running interference with my work and my family. She trashed my place. She killed my dog. I’ve never told anyone except the police and my agent. It’s not the kind of thing a man likes to admit. It’s not like I can’t take care of myself, but a little Rohypnol, a little rope, a little duct tape. You’re a police officer. I’m sure you’ve seen it. I got my life back and she was institutionalized quietly in the US. I thought she’d be there longer. Rory just happened to be getting breakfast with me this morning. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Yamane sighed. “But he’s a knight.”