Rough Trade

by Todd Robinson

  I put the Kool-aid back down. “Can we please stop talking about my boner?”

  “Please?” said Phil.

  “Also my vote,” Ollie said.

  “Well, I’m glad we’re all in agreement on my dick,” I said. “Moving on, can somebody also get me something to drink that isn’t a Jonestown Refresher?” Ollie took a bottle of spring water from the bag and handed it to me. “I’ll take one of those donuts too.”

  Ollie opened the box, and I plucked a Boston Crème out of the mix. Ollie said, “I didn’t know if bringing you to a hospital was the best idea. Phil here got on the horn to Sophie, and took care of it the best we could.”

  For all I knew, the entirety of the Boston Police Department was hunting both the deceased Buick and my ass. The only thing that might have kept them from my doorstep was the storm raging outside. “Yeah. Things are sticky right now.”

  Ollie shoved half a bear claw into his mouth. “Where’s Junior? I tried to call him, but he’s not picking up. It’s going straight to voice mail.”

  “Cops got him.”

  He stopped chewing. “The hell for?”

  “Murder.”

  This time, he inhaled a good chunk, coughing and wheezing. Phil whacked him on the back. Sophie got excited. “Ooh!” she said. “Can I give you the Heimlich?”

  “I’m okay,” Ollie wheezed. “Liquid.” He grabbed the first thing nearby, which was the laced Kool-Aid.

  “Ollie, you might want to find something else to drin—never mind.” He took a big belt before I could stop him.

  He looked at the cup. “Aw crap. This is going to fuck me up, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yeah,” Sophie said, nodding with a Cheshire smile. “You ever taken that stuff before?”

  “No,” Ollie said, staring into the glass.

  “You’ll feel it in about ten minutes.”

  “Just enjoy the ride, man,” Phil said, bobbing his head with a grin, ever the goddamn hippy.

  “I didn’t want a ride,” Ollie said to me.

  “Well, you’re getting one,” Sophie said, giving Ollie the same thumbs-up she’d given my boner. Which just made it all a little weirder.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “While I’m immensely grateful to all involved for not letting me die in the snow, Ollie and I need to discuss some matters.”

  “Like your friend getting arrested for murder?” Sophie said, fascinated.

  “That he didn’t commit. And as far as I know, he hasn’t been charged yet.”

  “Who did he not murder, then?”

  It was then that I noticed Sophie’s pinpoint pupils. If I had to guess, she’d given the Oxy a test run of her own. “Everyone on earth. That’s who he didn’t murder.”

  “Whoa,” she said.

  “C’mon,” said Phil, noticeably eager to remove himself from his stabbed neighbor, the neighbor’s recently-in-drag friend, murder conversation, and the recent boner sighting.

  “Can we borrow this DVD?” Sophie said, pointing to Godzilla.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Once they had vacated, I gingerly lowered myself to the couch out of habit and anticipation, more than because of any pain I was in. The dope was doing its job.

  Ollie sat in my ratty chair and looked at his hands.

  “Where do you want to begin?” Ollie asked.

  I decided to go right after the elephant in the room. “You gay, Ollie?”

  “Yup,” he said, staring out the window at the blinding snowstorm.

  “Huh,” I said, letting it sink in for a moment. It didn’t take too long, since I think there was a part of my subconscious that may have already suspected, and the, you know, “dressed in drag at the gay club” hint. “There any reason you’ve kept that to yourself all these years?”

  Ollie looked back to me with incredulity. “You honestly asking me that?”

  “Half and half. You don’t think it’s something we could have handled?”

  “You? Probably. Twitch, possibly.” He stopped there.

  “Junior—”

  He cut me off. “No fucking way.”

  I sighed. He wasn’t wrong. I thought. I didn’t know. I tapped out a cigarette from my pack while I thought about the next thing I was going to say. “He doesn’t hate you. You’re family. I don’t think he could.”

  “You don’t think he could? Almost everything negative in his lingo relates back to something I either am, enjoy, and do. Every prick at the bar is a ‘cocksucker.’ Every time he has a bad day, he ‘took one up the ass.’ Everything and everyone he considers to be less than living up to his own scale of masculinity is either ‘faggy’ or just ‘a faggot.’”

  He had me there. I’d never put too much thought into his insensitive vernacular, since none of it applied directly to me.

  “It’s not personal. It’s never personal,” I said.

  “It is. It’s just that you guys never knew it was.”

  “We never knew because you didn’t tell us.”

  “And now we’re talking in a circle.” Ollie chewed on a thumbnail. A thumbnail that I couldn’t forget had recently been polished red.

  Looked like I still had some road to travel before I didn’t deserve every word Ollie said. “Does it help you knowing that we’re not consciously ragging on gay people when we use those words? I’m not tearing down Oedipus when I call someone a motherfucker.”

  “Seriously? That’s worse.”

  “How is that worse?”

  “Because it’s not conscious. Every time, you’re subconsciously and habitually thinking of me as a second-class citizen. And the dismissal of my hurt as something I should just ‘get over’ is also personal. Whether you realize it or not, you guys are always using me and who I am to describe something rotten.”

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I had left to say.

  “Will Junior be? And can either one of you at least try to change your colorful descriptives?”

  “Fuck it. I’m a creative guy. I’ve been meaning to get more innovative with my cursing anyway. How do the terms twatwaffle, shitblimp, and cockpickle sit with you?”

  Ollie squinted. “Cockpickle?”

  “Cockpickle.”

  “I feel like cockpickle should offend me, but have no idea why.”

  “C’mon man. You gotta give me cockpickle.”

  “I think I now know why it’s offensive.”

  “Fair enough.” I ground my cigarette out in the ashtray.

  “Couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t expressed any thoughts about how Junior might handle this information.”

  “You know Junior.”

  “I do. And I also know that something in him got twisted after the whole incident with Zach Bingham.”

  Jesus. Zach Bingham.

  For me, Zach was just another story. Just a few brush strokes in an enormous painting filled with similar depictions of anarchy and chaos. But that painting’s frame had been getting smaller all week, and now, all I could see was that one day, the one incident that had a hell of a lot more impact on my family than I’d ever realized.

  Now that I too was looking at that big picture through the small frame, I could not only understand how things had changed for Junior from that point on, but how it changed everything for Ollie too. Changed how he related to Junior, a man who he was supposed to think of as family. And who was supposed to feel the same for him.

  What was there that I could say? That I could do? We were creatures made up of our wounds. All of us. Some of them you walked away from. Others left you with a limp. Others left you with pain you woke up with every day. But if the pain wasn’t yours, you might never notice how much it hurt the person across from you.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  Ollie thought about it for a minute, picking at a chocolate glazed the whole time. “Don’t say anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  Ollie looked at me over the glasses he was no longer wearing. It was just a look he gave so many times that
it was automatic, glasses or not.

  I’d never seen the kid in contacts before. Never even knew he had them.

  That was the least of things that I didn’t know about one of my closest friends.

  “Can I say I’m sorry?” I said.

  Ollie closed his eyes. “That counts as saying something.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For things I might have said over the last twenty or so years. I’m sorry that made you feel like you had to hide yourself from me…from us.”

  Ollie’s face went red with anger. “Now that’s the most insulting thing you could have said.”

  “What? How?”

  “You fucking assume that I’m not who I am. That ‘Ollie’ has been a construct to keep myself safe from you all these years. I’m still me, Boo. There’s nothing, no goddamn thing about who I am that I’ve kept hidden from you guys. Nothing except one detail that shouldn’t make a difference one way or the other because it’s never affected you one way or the other until this fucking afternoon.”

  I had nothing. He was right.

  “Can I say I’m sorry for saying that?”

  Ollie rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you keep talking.”

  “I won’t,” I said again. “But you should.”

  Ollie didn’t say anything.

  “Can we start with anything you might know about Byron Walsh?” I reached for my smokes again, and lances of pain shot through me before I even made it a third of the way.

  Ollie shook his head, confused. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  “He’s dead. Junior’s being accused of doing the deed. Can you hand me those?” I pointed to my Parliaments and my lighter.

  Ollie’s mouth fell open as he handed them to me. “How did…what…?”

  “It’s a long story that I promise to fill in the blanks on later.”

  “When were you going to tell me that?”

  “Sooner than later? Anything you know about the guy that can help me maybe find the real guy who did?”

  “I didn’t know him.”

  The hell? “Wasn’t he in your band?” I lit a smoke and inhaled deeply.

  “Not really. I just replaced him after the other guys kicked him out. He was Ellie Confidential. Last night was my first gig. And undoubtedly my last.”

  “Why’d he get kicked out?”

  Ollie shrugged. “Never asked. But from what I could glean from conversations the other guys had, he was supposedly into some really shady stuff.”

  I tucked that into my No Shit file. “Think any of the other band members might be able to shine a light on that shadiness?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think they’ll be eager to talk to you after last night. I think you broke Nathan’s jaw in the melee.”

  “Who’s Nathan?”

  “The bass player.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry I fucked up your gig.” Damn, I had a lot of sorrys to drop at Ollie’s feet, didn’t I?

  Ollie shrugged, but I could see he was really bummed out about it.

  “You were seriously great,” I said. “I’d like to see you perform again sometime.”

  A tiny, proud smile crept across Ollie’s lips. “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. I promise not to fuck up your next band too.”

  “Please don’t.”

  Then the blue and red lights flared through the snow, illuminating my living room through the gloom and driving blizzard.

  Fuck.

  “They here for you?” Ollie asked.

  “Good chance they are.” The thick flakes had accumulated over the window. I saw a lone figure walking from the car.

  Ollie stood. “What are we going to do?”

  I tossed Ollie the keys to the Omni. “You lay low. Can you crack a cell phone password?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You sure? It’s an IPhone. Freaking F.B.I. took months on that shit, and I need it yesterday.

  Ollie smiled at me, his upper lip curling towards a sneer, but the old fire back in his eyes. The fire that that could burn the world down when we needed each other. “I look like the fucking F.B.I. to you?”

  That’s my boy.

  “In the office at the Cellar, there’s a cell that I need the numbers off of, messages too. Audrey has keys.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “I can access the records for incoming and outgoing calls faster than I can crack the phone,” Ollie said.

  “Do whatever you can. Get it to Underdog.”

  The polite doorbell ring turned into an insistent pounding on the door.

  I grabbed my coat. Just in case. Then I realized I had no idea why they were here. Was I only going to get questioned or was I about to be straight-up charged with Byron’s murder? Were they there for the riot at the club that I’d inadvertently been a catalyst of, and the dozen or so assaults that had happened as a result?

  Oh yeah, Galal Shaughness too. Almost forgot about that guy.

  Jesus, there were a lot of potential reasons I was about to get walked away in handcuffs.

  I girded myself against all of them as I opened the door.

  I wasn’t, however, girded against the snow-covered Junior standing in the doorway.

  “What’s up, faggots!” he yelled.

  Of course he did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Thanks, Officers,” Junior said, waving to the departing police car. The officer on our side gave Junior a halfhearted thumbs-up as they pulled away slowly, tires skidding in the slush.

  “Holy hell, it’s cold,” Junior said, pushing his way past me into the apartment.

  Between the shock of his sudden appearance and the painkillers, the bajillion or so questions that immediately crowded to the front of my mouth all tripped over each other and fell in a sprawl at the tip of my tongue. What came out was, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “Ollie!” Junior said, arms wide. What with the conversation we were just having, I saw Ollie’s shoulders tense under Junior’s smothering bro-hug. “Jesus, did I interrupt a circle jerk or something?”

  “What?” I said.

  “What?” Junior said, a stupid grin plastered on his mug. Then he started really laughing hard. “What the fuck are you wearing, Ollie?” he said, waving a hand over Ollie’s horrible, horrible tie-dye.

  “I fell in the fucking snow. My shit got all wet. Gigantor over there didn’t have any clothes to fit me, so I borrowed from upstairs,” Ollie said without missing a beat.

  I was a little astonished at how easily, how quickly he’d crafted a lie. Guess when you’ve had to do it your whole life…

  “Jesus,” Junior said. “You look like a trannie Mothra.”

  I started coughing.

  Ollie shot me a look that said, Are you fucking kidding me?

  For Christ’s sake, were we always this bad?

  “And where are your glasses?” Junior asked Ollie.

  “I’m uh…trying contacts out.”

  Junior pursed his lips. “Not bad. You look twenty percent less of a dork.”

  I cut in. “What the hell happened? How are you here?” I said.

  “Detectives kept me as long as they could without charging me. End of the day, I kept my mouth shut apart from telling them that we didn’t know what happened to the homo after we dropped him at the beach.”

  I felt the burn of the words, knowing that what I was feeling was only a tenth of the intensity with which Ollie’d felt them for the last two decades. But for the first time in my life, I felt them.

  Ollie, like he always had, didn’t react at all.

  “So with heavy hearts and a lack of evidence on their side, they had to cut me loose. Ooh, donuts.” Junior shoved half a coconut donut into his mouth.

  “But why are you here. Specifically?”

  Junior held up a finger while he chewed furiously through the mouthful. “Where was
I supposed to go? You have my car.” Flakes of coconut flew from his mouth. “Which reminds me, what the fuck did you do with it? They kept trying to get me to talk smack about you, telling me that once they got their hands on it, they would have both our asses.”

  My mind raced for a plausible answer without full-on lying. “With everything that’s happened, I figured it might not be the best idea to tool around in Miss Kitty.”

  “Very smart, my brother. Very smart. Please don’t tell me that you traded it in for that Omni in front.” Junior stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth.

  “Yeah…that.”

  A pause.

  My heart skipped.

  Then Junior burst out laughing so hard chunks of half-chewed dough came flying out under the force of his guffaws. “But seriously, we’re still deeply screwed over here. Just because they didn’t have enough dirt to bury our asses right now don’t mean they’re not looking for a backhoe. What do we got?”

  “And please start from the beginning. I’m very confused right now,” Ollie said.

  With everything that had happened, Ollie still didn’t know the first thing about the events that had led us to this point.

  I laid it out the best I could, leaving out some points that weren’t necessarily an important part of the narrative.

  I didn’t mention anything about the execution of one Galal Shaughness. I figured if that came back to bite us on the ass, I could at least spare the two of them from having to lie about their knowledge.

  I left out the execution of Miss Kitty. That way another murder could be excised from the narrative: my own.

  What I gave Ollie were the assaults, both Byron’s and my own, then brought them both up to date on the fuckload of money in the false trumpet case.

  I noticed Junior’s bug-eyes and…was he panting?

  “How much money did you say was in there?” he said softly.

  “Not sure. I didn’t give it a full count.”

  “Estimate me.”

  “Over a hundred G. At least.”

  “Mexico.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on.” Junior took off his jacket, tossed it into my bedroom, and shut the door. Then he went into the bathroom. “I haven’t taken a comfortable crap in two days. You nearly made me shart my drawers. Let me take care of this before we continue.”