by Amy Lane
“That bruise on his face told me a whole lot,” Bobby retorted. “What medication are we giving her, exactly?” He looked back over to the bed to see what Reg was doing, but he was out. He couldn’t hear this conversation or be embarrassed that it was being held without him.
“She’s paranoid schizophrenic,” Lance said. “And when she got hold of the knife last week, she’d stopped taking a pretty stiff cocktail of antipsychotics. Reg has been trying to get her on it again, but she’s damned smart. I think he has to literally scrub the sedatives against her teeth to get her to swallow them, and usually when he’s done there, she’ll take the rest. But it’s not easy, and it won’t sit right. You’ll be putting a tiny woman into a three-point restraint and shoving shit down her throat. I had to do it during my psych rotation, and I’m telling you, Veronica is as bad as it gets without tying her to the bed and putting a needle in her arm so she has to take her cocktail by IV.”
Bobby swallowed but held firm. “Then maybe we should get there by eight so we can get her before the last batch wears off.”
Lance shook his head and then told Skylar—hulking, good-natured surfer-blond Skylar—to keep an eye on Reg.
“Yeah,” he said seriously, channel surfing from the couch. “I’ll make him some more juice and keep an eye on his temp. I’ll call you guys if anything changes.”
“Do that,” Lance said shortly, making to leave.
Bobby couldn’t just go. He ran back to the bedroom for a minute so he could squat down by the head of the bed. “We’re going to take care of your sister,” he said softly. “But that’s ’cause you want us to. Not ’cause she’s more important than you, okay?”
Reg opened sleepy eyes. “Thank you,” he said, smiling slightly. “I totally owe you.”
“Naw.” And then, because he was in this house where guys fucked other guys sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for money, he leaned forward and kissed Reg’s forehead. Reg couldn’t call him queer or expect Bobby to suck his dick. He did, in fact, just snuggle down under his blanket and shiver.
“Nice,” he whispered. “Bye, Bobby.”
“Back in the morning. Ask the guys if you get hungry.”
“Skylar’s a good guy. Eight-inch cock—but he fucks real sweet.”
Bobby let out a shocked laugh, but Reg was already back asleep. He was going to have to get used to Reg reciting porn stats on his friends. It wasn’t a way Bobby had ever thought of relating with the world.
VERONICA WAS unexpected.
Lance let himself in with a key, and they found her sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly into space. A tiny woman with way too much graying brown hair falling in her eyes, she wore old pajamas, stretched and faded thin. Her eyes fell on Lance—tall, tanned, dark-haired, blue-eyed Lance—and something sparked in them, something almost girlish.
“Hi, Veronica,” Lance said smoothly. “I hope you don’t mind we let ourselves in?”
“Where’s Reggie?” she asked—but not rudely. Everything about her was relaxed and tranquil.
Bobby remembered when his father seemed relaxed and tranquil, right before his mom walked in front of him during a big play on TV or made too much noise in the kitchen cooking dinner.
“Your brother’s sick,” Lance said softly. “He wanted us to come make sure you were okay.” He walked to a cupboard and found her medication, just where Reg had told them. He was in the process of pulling the bottles down when she made her move, darting for the depths of the house toward a set of stairs.
Bobby was bigger, taller, and faster—he tackled her before she got to the stairs, and like Lance had told him, took one arm behind her back and then the other, perching his knee in the small of her back while she thrashed.
She was stronger than she looked—and damned determined—but like Trina had noted this past week, most of his muscles weren’t for show.
Which made what he was doing feel so much worse.
Oh God.
She was tiny.
Reg wasn’t a big guy, and as much as he worked out like the rest of them, he just didn’t have the body for bulk. His sister was built like he was, small but solid, and her wrists felt like brittle sticks under his hands.
“Please,” he begged. “Please, Veronica. Don’t fight like this. Man, we’re just trying to help—”
“Poison!” she screeched. “Poison!”
Lance walked up steadily, without urgency. “Veronica, I’m going to pry open your mouth and use the tongue depressor to open your throat. Then I’m going to push the pills in while I hold your jaw. It’s not going to be comfortable, and I’d rather not do it, but you can stop me now if you just—”
“Ulf!” Bobby grunted as she gave a particularly hard thrash.
“Cooperate,” Lance finished, sinking to a squat and following through. Bobby thought about how hard he must have been pushing so she didn’t bite down on his fingers and grimaced. God, he must have been bruising the shit out of her mouth.
He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt a draft on his cheeks, and then her thrashing stopped.
“No,” she wailed, facedown on the dirty floor. “No, no, no, no, no…. No poison. God, Lance, why you gotta see me like this?”
Bobby’s heart constricted.
She had a crush. On her brother’s friend. Of course. Normal people had crushes; why couldn’t she? But this friend had to shove pills down her throat while Bobby put a body lock on her, and the betrayal must have been…
Acute.
She cried some more, and Bobby stood up and helped her to her feet. “Want to come sit down?” he said quietly. “I’ll make you some food.”
“There’s nothing in the fridge,” she wept. “Reggie’s been sick.”
“I’ll call out for pizza,” Lance said, stripping off the gloves he’d worn during the procedure. “Whole works—salad, soda, meat-lover’s special, on me.”
Bobby’s stomach gurgled, and he knew the hand on Veronica’s shoulder shook. “I’ll go in halvesies if you order two,” he said plaintively.
Lance’s eyes got big. “Hey, didn’t you work today?”
Bobby gave him a weak smile. “I am so damned hungry,” he admitted. Lance’s chuckle made everything normal then. Most natural thing in the world to walk Reg’s sister to the battered tapestry couch in the living room and give her the remote.
A thing he regretted doing not an hour later.
“The Fox News channel?” he asked under his breath as he and Lance cleaned off the table enough to set the pizza on. “Like… the Fox News channel?”
Lance shuddered. “She’s paranoid, Bobby. She thinks everything is out to get her. Who better to tell her she’s right?”
“Oh my God,” Bobby muttered. “That’s heinous. Reg doesn’t own guns, does he?”
Lance dropped the pizza box onto the table from a bigger height than he’d probably planned. “God no. He had to lock up the goddamned knives. Why?”
“Because—they’re all screeching about minorities and shit—she’s telling me all the brown people—her word, by the way—are out to get her. If she’ll attack her brother with a knife, can we not let her have a gun?”
“Yeah—I think Reg is smarter than that.”
Bobby frowned. “Of course he is. But if she wanders out of here on her own one day, some asshole will sell her one.”
Lance grunted and turned to lean on one of the flaking counters. “Yeah. I know. It’s reason number one hundred and twelve why this is a bad situation all around.”
Bobby let out a groan and laced his fingers behind his neck. He didn’t even know Reg. But then he didn’t know Dex that well either, and Dex had done him more than a solid. Dex had taken care of him the best way he could. Bobby believed in pay-it-forward, but it was more even than that.
Reg was decent. And kind. And cute and funny. And he was sticking with his sister through the bad times when Bobby had cut and run, leaving his mom to fend for herself on Frank Gilmore’s property. Not tha
t Frank would be asking the same favors as Keith, but still.
Bobby admired Reg and liked him, and this situation was just not fair.
“You said he was smarter than that,” Lance said, cutting into his thoughts.
“Well, yeah. Why?”
“Not everybody sees that in Reg.”
Bobby thought about it, about Reg’s sad little admission that he’d tried to cheat to stay out of the “dumb” class.
“Schools don’t always know,” he said, thinking about it. “The kind of smart you are to be in school isn’t the only smart there is. My… my girlfriend’s brother was top ten in his class. Ten years from now, he’ll still be in Dogpatch, knocking up his wife.”
Lance’s mouth twisted. “Bobby, I gave Reg an IQ test once—and I know they’re biased as hell, but he asked. It came back in the low eighties, which isn’t technically intellectually disabled, but it’s not genius level either.”
Bobby grunted, uncomfortable. “What’s your point?”
“The only reason I haven’t reported this situation to somebody is that Reg is an adult. A fully functioning, equal in the eyes of the law adult. If we start interfering with this ‘for his own good’”—Lance raised air quotes, and Bobby felt like shit—“we’re saying he’s not our equal, he’s disabled in some way.” Lance looked away unhappily. “I mean… he’s my friend. I can’t look the guy in the eye or hook up with him or even shoot a scene with him if he’s… he’s a child.”
“I don’t see him as a child,” Bobby said, feeling sick to his stomach. God. Lance was right. How awful would it be for Reg to be hanging out with all the guys from Johnnies, only to find it was some sort of pity? But it wasn’t—that wasn’t why Skylar was giving up his bed or his produce. That wasn’t why Billy had spent ten minutes crushing ice, or even why Dex had sent the guy home with Bobby to make sure he’d be okay. It certainly wasn’t why Lance was here.
Lance who “hooked up” with him.
“Then why?” Lance asked baldly. “You hardly know him.”
Bobby looked away. “I like him,” he said, voice small. “I just… I mean, I guess you guys are a thing, but… you know. He was nice to me.”
“We’re not a thing,” Lance said dryly. Then he sobered. “You go ahead and like him. Don’t mind me. I’m getting protective—because you’re right. This situation isn’t safe, but I don’t know what else to do about it besides be his friend.”
Bobby smiled a little, but he was tired, and it fell flat. “Everyone I know lives over a hundred miles away,” he said. “If this is what I gotta do to have friends, well, it’s a lot less of a pain in the ass than driving back up past Truckee.”
Lance’s smile was a little dim too. “Have some pizza, Bobby. Sit on the couch and fall asleep if you have to—I mean, you shot a scene!”
Bobby nodded, suddenly exhausted. “Yeah.” He yawned. “And I haven’t had my man-nap yet.”
Lance shook his head and pursed his lips. “Poor baby. Reg was the one who told me to take a long bath and to eat my favorite carbs and basically treat myself on scene days. We haven’t shown you much of the good side of the business.”
Bobby shrugged. Money in his pocket, friends, and pizza. “Maybe next time,” he said philosophically.
“Who you up on the schedule with?”
Bobby smiled. “Well, I got a girl named Rachel next week—”
“But…,” Lance asked leadingly, and Bobby flushed. “It’s okay, you know,” Lance said softly, probably responding to the heat in Bobby’s cheeks.
“What is?” But he knew.
“If you like boys more than girls. It’s… it’s perfectly normal. You know that, right? Sometimes it’s boys we like best, sometimes it’s girls.” Lance smiled reassuringly, and Bobby thought he was going to make an amazing doctor.
“I guess after I do a few more of each, I’ll find out,” Bobby said with dignity. But he remembered that moment today when he thought Dex held the keys to the world. He remembered that yearning—the buried yearning—when he’d wanted to touch Keith Gilmore softly, with sweetness under their skin. He remembered the onerous sense of duty that came with knowing he was going to have to spend time alone with Jessica.
He knew.
Lance knew too, apparently, because he kept his handsome, vaguely exotic-eyed face completely bland when he nodded. “Okay, then. So you’ve had a girl, a boy, you’re getting another girl—who’s your next boy?”
Bobby couldn’t let it go. Lance—God, so handsome, so put together. And he was gonna be a fuckin’ doctor. They all knew that. “Are you?” he asked gruffly.
“Am I what?” Lance folded his arms across a chest someone should be writing home about.
“More, uh, comfortable with boys than girls?” Bobby squeaked.
Lance pursed his lips, almost like a maiden aunt. “I’m gay, Bobby. I got no problems with what I do. Do you have a problem with me admitting I’m not just gay when the film rolls?”
Bobby considered that carefully—because so far, Lance was the only one he’d heard admit it. But Bobby still wanted to be Lance when he grew up, so, “No problems,” he said, hoping Lance believed him.
“Good.”
And Bobby heard it, a sort of relief. This comfort he’d felt—the easy sexuality among the guys in the apartment, the way Reg copped to sleeping with pretty much everybody in the company—it wasn’t all easy. He saw it then, that there were pockets of silence in the banter and secret heartbeats in the healthy bodies.
“So,” Lance continued in the beats between Bobby’s understanding, “who’s your next guy?”
Bobby had to smile—shop talk. It was surprisingly neutral. “Ethan,” he said, “but Reg has him first next week.”
“Ethan and Reg have shot together—they’ll be money.” He sobered. “If Reg gets better in time. But that’s our job. Anyway, Ethan’s a good shoot. You’ll like him. He should show you a better time.”
Bobby shrugged and got himself a plate full of pizza. He didn’t have the words to say he’d rather be back in the crowded apartment, watching Reg sleep, than having a “better time.” After their discussion, he wasn’t sure if Lance would believe him anyway.
OF COURSE, he hadn’t shot with Ethan yet either. He might have changed his mind if he had—but maybe not.
The night passed without incident. Reg’s sister went to sleep when she was supposed to and woke up and took her medication without any ruckus. Lance had to go to school then, so he took Bobby’s truck, rolling his eyes at how big it was. Bobby wasn’t sure what to do next—besides play on his decrepit phone—and thank God he had his charger. His options were sit in the living room and watch Fox & Friends or, well, clean the house.
He picked cleaning the house. By the time Skylar came by with Reg’s vintage orange Camaro—Rick riding behind him in Skylar’s Prius—he’d gotten the corners of the kitchen floor clean of the greasy, hairy residue that tended to collect there and measured for new tile, as well as for new cabinets, and even started the calculations for how much lumber and nails would be needed to start on the porch.
After taking a leak in the downstairs bathroom and tiptoeing over the dry rot—and worrying that the toilet would crash through the floor along with all the crappy toiletries, thick with a layer of dust—he added everything for the bathroom to the list.
God, he could work out in the mornings, do his three-hour shift at the café, and come here and fix shit. He wouldn’t be lying if he told Reg it was more for his own therapy than to help Reg out. Working out, hanging at the apartment, shooting scenes—Bobby was used to working his ass off. He could already see boredom sliding down the pike at warp speed on a three-hundred-pound ass.
A part of him bitched about the cost of lumber and home improvement while he was trying to save money for his mom, but a part of him was thinking that he knew how to get lumber wholesale, and he had his own tools and some of his own supplies.
And he had to do something with his time, right?
>
“Whatcha doin’?” Skylar asked, throwing Bobby the keys as he knelt on the porch, doing calculations on an old envelope with the stub of a pencil he’d found in Reg’s drawer.
“Figuring out how much wood I’d need to fix this place up,” he said without thinking.
Skylar stared. “You can do that?” he asked, awe in his voice, and Bobby looked up, smiling into Skylar’s surfer-boy face.
“Yeah, I can do that. I came down to Sacramento to work construction. There’s not much to do in Dogpatch besides help people fix their houses and maybe build a barn or two.”
Rick walked up next to Skylar, both of them wearing black jeans with white stitching and spendy leather jackets in the October chill. Bobby was wearing the same jeans he’d put on after he’d showered when he was done with the shoot—practically transparent 501’s—with a T-shirt that had holes in the neck and a sweatshirt he’d had to buy to be on the varsity boys’ wrestling team.
“Did he just say Dogpatch?” Rick asked. His face was a little leaner than Skylar’s, and he had brown hair with one of those widow’s-peak hairlines that would probably start receding by thirty, but his wide-blue-eyed expression was practically identical to Skylar’s.
“He did,” Skylar muttered, staring at the porch. “Did you just say Dogpatch? Isn’t that a neighborhood in San Francisco?”
Bobby rolled his eyes. “It’s also a town south of Colton in the Tahoe National Forest. Wow, you guys. I’ve seen maps. Sacramento isn’t the only city in the world, you know.”
“Well,” Skylar said drolly, “it’s not Dogpatch.”
He had to laugh. “So few places are.” He sobered. “How’s Reg?”
“He needs another two days of antibiotics and sleep. Lance wanted to know if you wanted a break. You could drive Reg’s Camaro to the apartment—we left a space for it—and stay with Reg.”
Bobby nodded in relief. “And next time I come here, I’ll have some supplies,” he said, feeling enthusiasm in his stomach. Then he frowned. “I can’t decide which one I should start with—”
