High Lonesome

by Tanya Chris

  She sat across from him at the dirty beige table, her gun out of sight below the table top except for the leather flap fastened over its butt. Between them sat a recording device which she’d activated before they started and which she fiddled with whenever it was his turn to talk.

  He tried to focus on something other than the way she kept spinning the recorder, afraid its motion might make him sick again. He felt better today, so much better that he’d eaten a whole stack of pancakes for breakfast, but now the syrup sat heavy on his stomach.

  “And what was it that made you suggest Longline?” Agent Roderigo asked, giving the device another twirl.

  “I don’t know.” He’d already told her there wasn’t any particular meaning to it. “I wanted someplace where no one would recognize me so I Googled ‘remote places in California’ or something like that and Longline came up and it sounded like a place you’d go to meet a Russian spy, like The Eiger Sanction. I mean, where would you meet a Russian spy?”

  She smiled, the first sign he’d seen that she might be human. Pyotr had said to trust her, but it was hard for him to see past the badge and the gun to someone who wanted to help him.

  “So it had nothing to do with Joe?”

  “I told you I never knew Joe before I got up there. It had nothing to do with Joe.”

  It had nothing to do with Joe in any way that Joe was to blame for, that was for sure, but a part of him felt like it did have something to do with Joe, like some higher power or trick of fate had called him specifically to Longline to bring the three of them together. He didn’t know why he’d picked Longline. He only knew that he’d been meant to.

  Agent Roderigo let the Joe thing drop, which was a relief, but she didn’t stop questioning him, not for a long time, not until he felt like he’d told her every moment of every day he’d spent at the hut, right down to shitting in the outhouse and barfing into a bowl. He didn’t give her a blow-by-blowjob on the sex, but he was honest that it’d happened. Pyotr had told him to be honest.

  “They already know the bad things you did,” Pyotr had said before kissing him goodbye outside the examination room right there where everyone could see them. “Now they need to know the rest.”

  And so he told her that too.

  “Agent Seminov has asked that you be released to a rehab in Washington, DC and, following that, to his custody,” Agent Roderigo said when it got to the point where Tanner’s brain hurt as much as his stomach.

  Through his headache, it took him a few moments to work out who Agent Seminov was, which reminded him that he didn’t really know Pyotr that well. He nodded at Agent Roderigo anyway. He wanted to go home with Pyotr.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “You don’t have to be released into Agent Seminov’s care in order to get leniency. His opinion counts for something, yes, but we’ve heard his opinion at this point. We know his testimony. I want you to be aware that his recommendation for clemency isn’t contingent on your continuing a relationship with him.

  “OK,” he said slowly.

  “Has he coerced you in any way?” she asked. “You have the right to file charges if you feel that he sexually assaulted you or used his authority to compel you to provide sexual favors.”

  “What? No.” He shook his head vehemently, then put his mouth right over the recorder and said, “He didn’t do anything like that. I don’t want to file charges. I want to go to DC with him because I want to, not to get out of anything.”

  “Just had to make sure.” She pressed a button on the recording device and the red light went out. She leaned across the table, getting much too close to him because he’d been leaning forward too.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m an alcoholic. I don’t share that around here for a lot of obvious reasons.”

  He nodded even though it was hard for him to imagine this solid authority figure with an addiction problem.

  “You know that jumping straight into a relationship isn’t the best choice in early sobriety, right?”

  Yeah, he knew that. At the few NA meetings he’d gone to in the past, he’d gotten that message loud and clear. Relationships were a substitute drug, best left alone until his relationship with his drug of choice was better resolved.

  “But I’m not starting the relationship in early sobriety,” he argued, because he didn’t care whether it was advisable or not. He wasn’t walking away from Pyotr. “I started it while I was still using. And I’d still be using now if it wasn’t for him.”

  Agent Roderigo gave him a stern look and sat back in her seat. “He can’t be your Higher Power,” she said. “You can’t get clean for him.”

  “I know that. I know he can’t save me, that I have to do this myself. I want to be clean, but I want Pyotr too. Please let me go to DC. Maybe it won’t work between us, but please let us try.”

  She shook her head with a sigh, but he could tell she didn’t mean no. She just meant she was giving up on trying to argue him out of it.

  “Never thought I’d see any sign of humanity out of that man,” she said. “But even if I had, I never would’ve expected you.”

  She held out her hand and he shook it, relief tingling up his fingers. The handshake meant it was over, at least for today. There was a long road ahead of him, but there was something to look forward to at the end of it.

  Chapter 23

  Pyotr

  When Pyotr pushed open the door to their hotel room, the first thing he noticed was that Joe wasn’t in it. Panic welled up at finding the room empty, the second time that day he’d panicked over Joe going missing. He’d woken up that morning with Tanner draped over his chest and no sign of Joe anywhere.

  Not stopping to do more than pull on a layer of clothes, he’d yanked the door to their room open and stepped outside. The agent standing guard had nodded down the row of identical doors stretching towards the veranda and there Joe had been, sitting on a porch swing, a cup of coffee in his hand and his feet out in front of him, one foot tapping lazily to keep the swing in motion.

  Despite Joe’s relaxed appearance, he could tell when he got closer that Joe wasn’t relaxed. His face, turned to catch the sun rising over the mountains, was set in a scowl, and his shoulders were tense.

  “You’re up early,” Pyotr had said, dropping down onto the swing next to him.

  “Occupational hazard. I’m always up this early. Don’t always have time to catch the sunrise though.”

  “You doing OK?”

  “A lot to think about.”

  “Yeah.” He’d like to know more exactly what Joe was thinking about. “It’s been a wild ride.”

  Joe didn’t answer, but he handed his cup of coffee over and when Pyotr took it with a grateful smile, he curled his hand around Pyotr’s bicep and squeezed affectionately.

  The rising sun glinted off the band of rock under which Longline sat, coloring it orange. Too many ridges and peaks intervened to allow him to see Longline itself, but if he could see it, how small would it be? How inconsequential and how far off? In his mind it would always loom large and important—the place where he’d met the men who meant everything to him, the place where he’d almost lost them.

  Every once in a while, a car drove by, its headlights on, its engine a dull churning in the otherwise silent morning. The porch light flickered off overhead as the day grew brighter, and he and Joe passed the cup back and forth until it was empty.

  Joe looked down at it with a frown, but Pyotr knew it wasn’t the empty cup on his mind.

  “I wish I’d told you I was positive before we screwed around,” he said at last.

  “We talked about that. We agreed that disclosure wasn’t necessary given your viral load, especially since you were taking precautions.”

  “Yeah, generally, but …”

  “But what?” he took the coffee cup, which Joe had squeezed until it was more flat than round and put it down by their feet.

  “But I never cared whether my partner trusted me or not before. I want you t
o feel like you can trust me, and that wasn’t a good way to start.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Obviously.” Joe elbowed him in the side. “Not sure why, Secret Agent Man, but yeah. You’re doing the right thing by Tanner. You’re everything you said you were. You’ve been pretty straight-up honest with us both right from the beginning, and I haven’t given you the same back.”

  He wrapped his hand through Joe’s. “Don’t sweat it, babe. I know you’ve had reasons for the things you’ve done. Where it counts, I trust you.”

  “Are we crazy? Is this a delusion?”

  “Maybe, but if it’s a delusion, don’t spoil it for me. It’s the best delusion I’ve had in a long time.”

  He knew the three of them had a world of trouble to work through, that the very idea of the three of them being one thing together was a difficult reality, even discounting all the physical logistics in their way, but promise glimmered in front of him temptingly.

  That morning, with the sky all rosy-red and Joe’s hand in his and Tanner sleeping like an angel in the bed they’d shared last night, he’d felt hope.

  “You know Tanner’s road isn’t going to be easy,” Joe had said after a moment of shared quiet. “The reality of addiction is that relapse is so likely you have to expect it, especially with heroin. Don’t go into a relationship with him thinking he’s all over this just because he spent a couple of days clean. He’s a long way from over it.”

  “Did you relapse?”

  “Repeatedly. I’m not special. Even now …” Joe trailed off and Pyotr turned so he could look him straight in the face.

  “Six years is safer than four days, but you’re never safe. It’s never over. And with heroin, relapse is the most dangerous time of all. See, heroin addicts, when they relapse, they try to shoot the same dose they were used to, but they don’t have the same tolerance. So they OD. When we die, that’s how we die—by trying to get clean and failing.”

  Pyotr swallowed.

  “If you’re going to take on Tanner—”

  “I’m going to take him on,” he interrupted. That part wasn’t in question.

  “Then you need to get hold of some Naloxone. It’s a drug that can counteract overdose if delivered in time. Get some and carry it. And tell Tanner about what I just said. Warn him that if he starts, he has to start slow—just a little will be plenty, like when he did it the first time.”

  “That sounds like giving him instructions on how to relapse, like giving him permission to relapse.”

  “He doesn’t need your permission to relapse. Look, if you’re going to trust me about anything, trust me to know how the addict mind works.”

  The way Joe said it, it was like he already knew he wouldn’t be around to help with Tanner’s recovery. That was why Pyotr panicked when he and Tanner got back to the room after Tanner’s interview to find Joe missing again. He should never have told Joe he was free to leave. He should’ve have made him stay.

  Except he didn’t have that power.

  Tanner needed him. It was easy to hold on to someone who clung back, but Joe was more independent, used to living alone and fighting his own battles. He might like to be controlled in the bedroom, but not outside of the bedroom. Joe wouldn’t stick around just because he told him to.

  It was a bright end-of-summer day outside, but the room with its shades pulled to the street was dark. He flipped on the light to banish the shadows and in the harshness of the overhead light, he saw their packs lined up next to each other. His and Tanner’s and Joe’s—side by side in the same order they’d slept in, just the way they ought to be.

  Joe would be back. That was what the pack told him. He relaxed his shoulders and threw the room key onto the table, then dropped into a chair. There was nothing more draining than waiting. He looked up at Tanner hovering uncertainly nearby.

  “What do you need, Tasha? Are you hungry, sick, sleepy, horny?”

  Tanner giggled. “Are you going to baby me for the rest of my life?”

  “I hope so.” He pulled Tanner in between his legs and ran his hands up the long, straight lines of his torso.

  What Joe had told him that morning terrified him. He couldn’t bear the thought of Tanner relapsing, not just out of fear of the lengths to which Tanner might go in search of a high—the reality of which they’d all just lived through—but because he couldn’t stand to watch Tanner suffer through another detox. He wanted to shake him and make him promise to never, ever touch heroin again, but he didn’t need Joe to tell him it was a promise Tanner couldn’t make.

  They walked to a nearby gas station for snacks, because Tanner finally had an appetite again, and ate side-by-side on the bed, getting potato chip crumbs on the bedspread and sharing a giant-sized fountain soda while Tanner told him about playing baseball, about the injury that had ended his college career and the painkillers that had started his opioid addiction.

  They talked until Tanner got squirmy, his body edging closer and closer across the maroon spread.

  “You never fuck me,” he complained, his eyes all pleading, his tongue coming out to lick his lips. “Only Joe, never me.”

  He laughed and said, “You want me to fuck you, Tasha?” and then he fucked him, face-to-face, their bodies close and their mouths stealing kisses back and forth until Tanner grew too dazed and breathless to kiss anymore.

  He loved how deeply Tanner could sink into his pleasure, how he could lose himself so completely to everything but sensation. He moved slower and slower, drawing it out, their sweat-slick bodies sliding against each other, waiting, perhaps, for Joe to come in and join them, until his own pleasure overtook him. Then he fucked faster, bringing his hand to Tanner’s dick and coaxing him to an orgasm he shared as they panted into each other’s mouths.

  And still, Joe didn’t come.

  The light outside the blinds that shielded them from prying eyes died and he called and ordered Chinese, making sure to get enough for Joe too, but they’d finished eating before the mechanical snick of the lock finally heralded Joe’s return.

  Tanner ran over to kiss Joe but Pyotr only offered him a tight smile, knowing it must look as artificial as it felt. He was hurt, worried, stuck on the fact that Joe had been missing all day, that Joe might be missing from now on.

  “Hungry?” He gestured at the takeout containers on the table in front of him.

  “For Chinese? Always. They don’t deliver to the hut.” Joe fixed himself a plate and zapped it in the tiny microwave while Tanner filled him in on what had happened at the police station that morning. As Joe listened to Tanner, his eyes kept darting to Pyotr, testing his mood.

  “Where were you all afternoon?” Pyotr asked when he couldn’t pretend anymore that nothing was bothering him.

  “Went up to Ganymede.”

  “You had a day off and you chose to use it to hike up to Ganymede?”

  “I needed to check in. Find out what the game plan was.”

  “And you couldn’t have called them?”

  “Could’ve.” Joe shrugged. “It was a nice day for a hike though. Didn’t want to spend it cooped up in here and I didn’t know how long you’d be gone. You mad?”

  “Just didn’t know where you were.” And didn’t know if you were coming back, but he wasn’t going to say that part out loud.

  But then, fuck that. He was done with skulking around in the shadows. His life was going to be an open book from now on. So he said what he was thinking. “The three of us need to talk. About our future. Together.”

  “Yeah, OK.” Joe put down his fork and took a swallow from his bottle of water. Tanner sat down on the corner of the bed closest to the table and they both looked at Pyotr, waiting for him to take the lead.

  “Tanner’s coming to DC,” he started.

  “With you. Yeah, I know.”

  “And I want you to come too.”

  “We want you to come too,” Tanner put in.

  “We,” he agreed. “We want a relationship. Something
lasting, not just until this investigation ends and you go up to Longline and I go to DC and Tanner goes to San Diego. I know DC might not be ideal for you, and we don’t have to stay there forever, but it’s where Tanner’s going to rehab and it’s where my job is.”

  “It’s not where my job is. I have a job too, remember?”

  “A job that’s at fourteen thousand feet.”

  “Joe,” Tanner said. “I want you to know that I’m not choosing between you and Pyotr when I choose DC. We’re choosing—all three of us—to be part of the world again.”

  “I’m giving up undercover work.” He’d already talked to his supervisor about it. “And Tanner’s giving up the needle. For the three of us to be together, we need you to give up the mountain.”

  Chapter 24

  Joe

  “We need you to give up the mountain.”

  It wasn’t like he hadn’t known this was coming. The real point of walking up to Ganymede today had been to say goodbye to Susan. She’d told him she already had someone lined up to reopen the hut as soon as the CIA released it as a crime scene, then she’d pinned him with a glare that contrasted sharply with her bouncy red curls and general Muppet-like appearance.

  “How sure are you about this, Joe?”

  “Not sure,” he’d admitted. Not sure at all.

  “I don’t have to post the job right away. Don’t quit. Take a leave of absence. Let me cover for you until you’re sure.”

  “That’s going to be a major inconvenience.”

  “And you’re worth it. Best caretaker we’ve ever had up there and a good guy, to boot. I don’t know if this guy deserves you—”

  “Guys.”

  “Guys? How many new boyfriends have you got?”

  “Just two,” he’d said, like two wasn’t already twice as many as anyone would expect. “Is that ...?”

  “What, weird? Who cares? Be happy, Joe. Just be sure.”