by Gregory Ashe
“I said here!”
He inched toward the spot in front of North.
North was breathing slowly and deeply. He smelled like American Crew hair gel and clean sweat. One big hand came up, and Shaw flinched. North chuckled, a noise that was barely anything at all, just a rumble in his throat. He smoothed wet strands of hair away from Shaw’s forehead with his thumb, and then he undid the bun, gathered the hair, and redid it. When he’d finished, his hand rested on Shaw’s neck, sticky with sweat and hotter than the sun.
“That’s better,” he said, his voice husky. He wet his lips. He was breathing a little faster now.
“North?”
“Mm?” It was another subvocalized rumble.
“Did you chub up when you said, ‘You’re damn well going to start doing what I tell you’?”
His pupils contracted, as though refocusing on Shaw. “Jesus Christ.”
“It’s hard to tell in those jeans! And you know I’ve been encouraging you to explore your sexuality.”
“Stop. Talking.”
“Will you feel more comfortable if I tell you I did? Get a chub, I mean. A little.”
“Of course you did. You threw wood from watching that laundry commercial.”
“He had good arms! And I was thinking about you. Well, twenty-five-year-old you. When you could bench more.”
With the hand still on Shaw’s neck, North shoved and sent him stumbling. “Go away, Shaw.”
“Go where?”
“Down a manhole. Into traffic. I don’t care.”
“It’s interesting that your mind went straight to the word ‘manhole.’ I think we could explore that.”
“I’m sure you would. I know exactly how much you like people exploring your manhole.”
North looked so pleased with himself, smirking as he turned and headed down the block, that Shaw really only had one option left: he got a handful of dirt, ran up behind North, and dumped it down the back of his shirt.
“You little shit!” North shouted, but by then, Shaw was already running.
North ran after him. And boots or not, ‘TV’ or not, he was still terrifyingly fast.
They stalemated in a strip mall parking lot, with a plasticky Saturn sedan between them. North was panting, red-cheeked, and drenched in sweat. He kept leaning forward like he wanted to put his hands on his knees. Shaw’s hair had come loose, and he couldn’t catch his breath because he kept laughing.
“You—” North had to stop to suck air. “—are going to regret that.”
Shaw laughed harder, but when North took a staggering step, he held up both hands. “Truce! You can put dirt down my shirt and we’ll call it even.”
“No.” For the first time since Dick Laguerre had walked into their office, North looked like himself. The grin on his face had a hint of savagery. “You ran away; you’re going to pay for that.”
“North!”
“Ten noogies, seven pink bellies, and one serious waffle ass that’ll leave you standing for a week.”
“Two noogies. And you can pants me.”
“You like being pantsed. And half the time you’re commando, and I don’t want to have to bail you out of jail for public indecency again.”
“Mrs. Gutierrez is a widow! I thought she was worldly!”
“Eight noogies, five pink bellies, and I beat the hell out of your ass with a tennis racket.”
“Can’t you give me a Hertz donut?”
“No way.” Straightening, North pushed back sweaty hair. “Fine, we’ll get it all over with right now. Ro sham bo. Just one. And then we’re even.”
Shaw covered his junk. “With your Redwings on? My balls won’t drop for a month!”
For the next minute, they both took deep breaths. North kept wiping his face and grinning and then remembering he was supposed to be mad. The grin would transform into a ferocious scowl until he forgot again. Shaw mopped his face with his shirt. He caught North looking, and he knew what that look meant. He rucked his shirt up higher. He scratched his stomach and fanned himself with the hem of his shirt.
“You little slut.”
Shrugging, Shaw glanced around. “Would Tucker park his car somewhere like here?”
That look hadn’t left North’s eyes, but he answered in a normal enough voice. “A strip mall? No fucking way. These places are like pinball machines; cars get hit all the time. Dings and chipped paint are the stuff Tucker’s nightmares are made of.”
“But he has to go places. I mean, he doesn’t keep the Beamer in the garage all day.”
“He would if he could.” North ran his arm across his forehead; the sleeve of his shirt rode up, exposing the dense bristles of blond hair under his arm, dark now with sweat. “A place like this, he’d park as far away from everyone else as he could.”
“So he had patterns. Preferred parking. That kind of thing.”
“You think we can find the car because I know where Tucker liked to park?”
“I think the police couldn’t find it, and either Tucker honestly can’t remember where it is, or he doesn’t want anyone to find it. But he definitely was drunk that night, and we know he’d stopped parking at the motel. So he probably had somewhere else. Somewhere he thought was safer.”
“Sometimes he’d pick a Walmart or something,” North said after a moment. “The lots are big, and he had a good chance of finding a spot without any other cars near it. But when we’d go into the city, he wanted one of those parking garages with the cameras. His office had one, and he liked it because it wasn’t public access, so you know, regular pieces of shit like you and me couldn’t park there.”
“You’re a regular piece of shit,” Shaw said. “I’m a rainbow-dipped-unicorn piece of shit.”
“Pull your shirt up a little more.”
Shaw grinned, but he obliged. North’s eyes were predatory. “How far away is his office?”
“Too far to walk here.”
“But he’d prefer a parking structure.”
North rolled one shoulder. He bit the corner of his mouth. Then he said, “Come over here, and I’m going to be so nice to you.”
“We need to find Tucker’s car.”
“We’ll find it. Later. Get over here so I can show you how sweet I can be.”
“Gee, this is so awkward,” Shaw said, taking a step back.
North began to round the car.
“I’ve been seeing this guy,” Shaw said as he backpedaled some more. “He’s got all these issues; he’s a hot mess, really. He gets off on keeping me secret.”
“Sounds like a piece of shit. Park your ass right there, Shaw, or I’m going to change my mind and not be so nice.”
“He’s a pretty good guy, actually, but he’s been crazy horny lately. He can’t keep his hands off me. Probably because I’m a reincarnated Tantric sex god.”
North slid around the trunk of the car. “What you are,” he said, “is a bony-assed pain in my side that I can’t manage to get rid of.”
“Like that one.”
When Shaw pointed, North glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“Tucker might like a parking garage like that one.”
“Fine, we’ll check it out, but first—”
Shaw took off running again, and North’s explosive swearing followed him. Then the heavy thud of boots.
This part of The Gate was undergoing redevelopment. Some blocks were still the run-down strip malls and brick flats, but others featured new construction, part of the seep of gentrification from the medical and biotech sprawl south of I-44. The building Shaw headed for was part of that process. It was a multi-story outdoor mall, and in a year or five, nurses might pick up their coffees here, or engineers might get smoothies, or a harried personal assistant might pick up vegan bento boxes for a working lunch. Now, though, many of the storefronts were empty, and as Shaw’s steps beat along the exposed-aggregate walks, his breaths tasted like plaster, and the grind and s
hriek of a circular saw kept him company.
One of the anchor stores was a gym, and on the other side of plate-glass windows, men and women jogged and cycled and hefted and squeezed, some of them staring at Shaw as he ran past, others so caught up in their workouts (or in exhaustion) that their gazes didn’t even flicker. The muted thud of a pump-up song pounded through the glass.
Strong hands grabbed Shaw, spinning him as they came around the corner and then throwing him up against the wall.
“You.” North wheezed for breath. “Bastard.”
Shaw was laughing, trying to get away, and North kept pressing him back against the wall. Neither of them was trying very hard.
“Let me go,” Shaw kept saying. “I’ve got to get my pump on!”
“What fucking kind of pump are you going to get?” North had one hand on each bicep, and he squeezed. “These things? These spaghetti noodles?”
“No, I’ve been working out.” Shaw twisted, but North held him firm, bearing him back against the concrete until less than an inch separated them. “I do curls and hammer curls and those things where you have to put your hands on the floor and go up and down—”
“Pushups,” North growled. “You know they’re called pushups.”
“I’m going to beast it up. Beast mode. Beast reps.”
North shook him by the arms. “Do you think I need this right now? Do you think I need this crazy shit?” He kept trying not to smile. “You know what I’ve got going on? I’ve got my best friend reminding me every day how much I want him and how badly I fucked things up. I’ve got my mother- and father-in-law begging for my help because my husband, who is an abusive, cheating, manipulative piece of shit, might also be a murderer, and, oh yeah, he won’t divorce me, so I can’t even call him my ex. And on top of that, for some reason, I’m the one who has to keep that son of a bitch from going to prison. I’m not sleeping. I’m drinking way too much. I’m so stressed I went through two packs of—” He stopped.
“TV?” Shaw suggested.
“Candy,” North said in a flat voice. Then he shook Shaw again. “On top of all that, do you think I need this shit about chasing you in this heat and getting dirt down the back of my shirt and now all this fucking nonsense about beast mode and getting your swole on with your fucking gym buddy jabrones?” He shook him once more. “Is that what you think I need?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
North made a disgruntled noise.
“I know things have been hard for you.”
Something in North’s face softened. One of his thumbs traced a circle on Shaw’s arm, and the touch tightened Shaw’s skin, making goose bumps break out across his chest.
In a whisper, Shaw added, “And you didn’t even mention your, um, downstairs problem.”
North froze.
“You know.” Shaw waited, and when North didn’t do anything except glare, added, “Your hair trigger. Your quick-shot issue. Shortcoming. Gone in sixty seconds. What the kids these days are calling foregasm.”
Slowly and deliberately, North said, “I am going to murder you.”
“North, you don’t need to worry. They have numbing gels for that kind of thing now.”
North’s fingers tightened, but before he could do anything, a man’s voice called out, “What the hell is going on here? Hey, buddy, are you ok?”
Two men in tanks and gym shorts stood near the door, staring. Both guys were huge, and both guys looked like they wouldn’t mind a fight.
“We’re fine,” North said.
“He doesn’t look fine.”
“Yeah? You try dealing with him. See how you’re doing after five minutes of his shit.”
“Did this guy hurt you?” one of them asked Shaw.
“Everything’s under control,” Shaw said. “I’m an undercover FBI agent. We’ve been tracking this guy for a long time. He’s sick. He’s twisted. He buys these giant things of cheese puffs and eats the whole barrel in one day. And the things he makes guys do in bed…”
The look on the muscle-heads’ faces shifted.
“We can identify him by his crooked penis,” Shaw said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got him right where I want him.”
“Jesus Christ,” North muttered.
“Oh, no. Crooked shape. He’s got a crooked-shaped penis. That’s what I meant. Not, like, crooked in a criminal sense.”
The gym bros exchanged another look. One of them muttered, “Fucking queers,” and they went back inside.
Shaw turned back to North.
“Crooked shape?”
“It’s a good thing. It hits that spot just right.”
For one final moment, North tried to look furious. Then he dissolved into laughter, and Shaw started to laugh too, and they ended up on the hot cement walk, leaning against the wall, slumped against each other. North slid an arm around Shaw’s shoulders. Then, with surprising hesitance, he kissed Shaw’s temple.
“What was that for?” Shaw asked.
“I—I guess I needed this. Things have been fucking terrible the last few days. I feel like I’ve been in this fog. Or asleep. Or in a nightmare. I don’t know. Anyway, I kind of feel awake again. And human. And that’s thanks to you. Sometimes I think you’re the only person who knows me, the real me, and still likes me. I don’t know why you put up with me, but God, I am so grateful for it.”
Shaw got onto his knees and kissed North. North’s hand cupped his nape, fingers threading through the sweat-damp hair there. When the kiss broke, Shaw licked his lips and sat back on his heels.
“I love you,” Shaw said quietly. “You said you fucked things up, but we’re fixing things, right? I love you, and you love me, so we’re fixing things.”
The shadow was there again. “Yeah, of course I love you.”
Shaw closed his eyes.
“Shaw, I do. But as a friend. I love you so much as a friend, and this is what we’re good at. Look at how much fun we had today, and we can’t keep our hands off each other, and—hey, come on, can we be adults about this?”
Stumbling, Shaw made his way into the parking structure and up the ramp. His knees ached from the cement. His mouth tasted like North. He stopped halfway up and spat over the railing.
North caught up to him on the upper level, and they walked together in silence up and down the rows of cars.
Shaw saw it first, and he couldn’t bring himself to talk, so he pointed.
“Fuck,” North muttered. He took out his phone and placed a call. “Yeah, get an Uber and get over here. We found the Beamer.” He listened and then broke in. “Fine, fine, I got the point: the police have your keys. Call BMW Assist and have them unlock the doors. I don’t know if it constitutes evidence tampering, Tucker, because I haven’t seen what’s inside the fucking car. Just do it because I told you to!” His voice rose at the end until he was shouting, and then he pulled the phone away from his ear and tapped the screen furiously until he disconnected the call.
A behemoth of a Lincoln rolled past them, tires squeaking against the fresh concrete. The whine of the circular saw stopped and started. North stood near one of the openings in the wall, kicking the slab and staring out at the half-finished building behind them.
The BMW’s lights flashed, and the locks disengaged.
North produced disposable gloves from his pocket, handed a pair to Shaw, and pulled on his own. He opened the driver’s door and popped the trunk, and Shaw raised the lid to look in.
“Clubs are here,” Shaw said. “And the driver is missing.”
“If Tucker said the one in the motel was his, it was his. He wouldn’t make a mistake.”
“So how did someone get the driver? And when?”
“Well, Tucker’s been too busy this afternoon buying new clothes to check if the spare fob is at the house. I guess it’s important to have priorities.” North was half inside the car, examining the storage compartment in the center console. “And apparently he’s got a real shrin
king-violet situation on his hands because there’s a vial of Viagra in here. Serves him right, the ball-less fuck.” He got down on his knees, pulled out the floor mat, and set the mat aside. He twisted to check under the seat.
His swearing held a new viciousness.
“What?” Shaw asked.
North settled back into a squat, extracting a sheaf of papers from under the driver’s seat. No, not papers, Shaw realized. Photographs. Eight and a half by elevens. In color. After inspecting each one, North handed it to Shaw.
Rik with guys. Lots of different guys. Lots of young guys. Rik naked, in bed, and it was obviously the same room at the Sunset Stayaway. Rik with a guy’s leg over his shoulder, face screwed up as he plowed into the younger man. Rik at home. Rik with his wife. Rik walking into work at Herbert and Galleli.
“Someone was seriously obsessed with Rik,” Shaw said.
North let off another string of guttural swears. Then, standing, he took back the photos. “Yeah. Or someone wanted to make it look like Tucker was.”
Chapter 9
THEY FOUND TUCKER AT the Webster Groves house—the house that North had agreed, after two weeks of sleeping on the couch, after fights at dinner, after insane make-up sex, he didn’t need to be on the title for, because they loved each other, and besides, Tucker was covering the down payment. The last time North had been here, he had been drunk and hurting and on the verge of making a terrible mistake. That had been a couple of months before. In July, in the early afternoon, the light turned the leaves of the Japanese maple the color of blood, and North was surprised to find that pulling into the driveway still felt like coming home.
Tucker was unloading a box from a blue Volvo sedan.
“Oh, hey,” he said with unconvincing cheer. He’d showered. He wore boat shoes and crisp white shorts and an aquamarine polo. His latest affectation was a bracelet made up of thin strands of braided leather and tiny metal beads. North was willing to bet it had been hand-woven by a fair-trade commune living in yurts in eastern Mongolia, and it had probably cost over two hundred dollars. “How’d you guys find me? I mean, I didn’t know you were looking for me.”
“Nice try.” North looked at the box full of cleaning supplies. “Janet can’t make it?”
