by Greg Herren
“No.” He frowned. “Bill is a very special person, but sometimes…sometimes I wonder about him, you know? He doesn’t really talk about his past very much, but Bill doesn’t want to have a partner, you know what I mean? He prefers to hire someone for his sexual needs, and I guess he gets his emotional needs filled by his protégés.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “I’ve met some of his former protégés. It’s a pretty impressive list of men, you know.”
“I’m sure.” I put the wine glass back down. Stop drinking, you dumbass, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time since I’d first sat down. I was feeling it; I was starting to slur my speech, and that wasn’t a good sign. I was going to have to take a cab home. Even though it wasn’t very far, I didn’t trust myself to drive my car.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. I shouldn’t have the wine, it’s not mixing well with the medication I’m taking.” I heard the words come tumbling out, all slurred and running together as I detailed my car accident and the damage to my back. Yes, you should definitely tell your client that you’re not at a hundred percent. Of course as soon as I said that I heard myself explaining that I had a partner named Abby who did most of the legwork and so forth, on and on and on. Shut the fuck up, Chanse!
“I wanted to make sure you knew there was nothing going on with Bill and me,” I heard him saying from what sounded like a thousand miles away. He was smiling at me. “I hope you don’t mind my saying you’re a very attractive man.” He slipped a black American Express card on the bill tray, which our waitress swept away. “And I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive home.”
My tongue felt very thick in my mouth. “I’m going to call a cab.”
“Nonsense. I can drive you.” He signed the charge slip and pushed his chair back. “Can you walk?”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. I felt a bit wobbly—my head was so wasted I couldn’t really focus, but I could stand. I could walk without staggering. I put my coat on and walked out the front door. The cold air was bracing as I stood, waiting for him to lead me along Washington Avenue. He unlocked a Mercedes and helped me into the passenger seat.
I vaguely remember telling him how to get to my house. The blackness was crowding in on the edges of my vision and my brain as I got out of the car and fumbled for my keys.
I remember him helping me inside, and then everything else was lost in a fog.
Chapter Eight
It was four in the morning when I woke up with my back in agony.
It felt like I had been stabbed in the lower back with a red-hot poker that was now being twisted slowly. I was gasping, barely able to breathe, as I reached out for my nightstand. I kept my prescription bottles there for just such an emergency.
I groped around in the dark, not caring which bottle I grabbed, only caring about making the fucking pain go the fuck away. The pain was so intense I would have done anything in that moment for relief. I was vaguely aware of the red numbers glowing on the digital clock as I finally managed to close my hand on one of the bottles. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the goddamned child-proof cap off. I swore under my breath as I fished out a pill with my index finger. I dry-swallowed it, tears running down my face, and took a deep breath. I was now wide-awake, and any chance of going back to sleep was negligible until the pain went away.
As I ground my teeth together, waiting for whatever pill I’d just taken to kick in, I became vaguely aware of someone snoring softly beside me in my bed. Who the hell is that? flashed through my mind before the pain crowded it right out again. This attack was one of the worst I’d had so far. In that moment I would have sold my soul to the devil to make my back stop hurting. I clenched my hands into fists so hard I could feel the nails cutting into the skin of my palms. I focused on my breathing—it’s always about the breathing—making sure to inhale as deeply as possible, holding it for a moment before letting it all out and starting over again.
I was never sure if the breathing worked or was simply a way to distract the mind from the pain. But on the other hand, I’d been panting so rapidly it was also possible I could hyperventilate, and that wouldn’t help at all. So I focused on controlling my breathing since I couldn’t control the pain.
It felt like hours before the pain began to subside, but a glance at the clock showed it hadn’t been more than three minutes.
Funny how pain can affect time, I thought, turning my head to look at the person sharing my bed. I had no idea who it was, but logic—now that my brain was capable of thinking logically again—told me it had to be Tom Ziebell. I racked my brain, trying to remember what happened the night before, with no luck. I couldn’t remember anything past dinner, no matter how hard I strained my brain. The Vicodin / red wine combination had apparently erased everything from that point on.
Note to self, abstain completely when on pain meds. This is why the prescriptions come with a warning about drinking. I just hope I didn’t make a complete jackass out of myself. But he’s still here—so that has to be a good sign, right? At least I know I didn’t turn into a drooling idiot.
I could feel the edges of my brain starting to get fuzzy, which meant I’d taken an Oxy. Just as well, I thought, it’ll probably put me back to sleep in a moment.
I rolled over onto my side, carefully so I didn’t jar my back, to get a look at him. My eyes had adjusted to the dark somewhat, so I could make out his shoulders and the back of his head. His body was an amorphous outline underneath the blankets.
How fucked up was I? What did we do?
It had been years since I’d woken up in my bed after a blackout with a stranger in my bed. When I’d first moved to New Orleans, it had been an almost nightly event. I’d grown up in a repressive, deeply religious small town in East Texas, firmly believing my attraction to other men was going to send me straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Getting a football scholarship to LSU got me the hell out of Cottonwood Wells, but I was pretty naïve. Every once in a while I would drive down to the French Quarter and cruise the gay section looking for sex. I didn’t drink while I was in college very much—mostly I smoked pot—so when I graduated and got the job with the New Orleans Police Department I discovered the great joy of blunting the edges with alcohol. I got an apartment on Dumaine Street between Chartres and Royal, and I used to lose myself in the gay bars every night I could. Despite being a cop, I wasn’t worried about having to pee in a cup—as long as I didn’t discharge my gun in the line of duty and stayed within the rules while on the job, no one was going to question me about anything. I took anything and everything I could get my hands on—Ecstasy, Special K, pot, poppers, meth, coke—and washed it down with a steady diet of vodka-cranberries, heavy on the vodka. The parade of strangers who passed through my bed ran the entire gamut of types. I didn’t discriminate against twinks or gym queens or circuit boys or leather daddies or bears or whoever caught my fancy at whatever bar I was at that night. Even though Blaine and I had gone through the police academy training program together, I hadn’t known he was gay until I ran into him one night on the dance floor at the Parade. I’d started moving away from that kind of life when I moved out of the Quarter. After I started dating Paul we’d go dancing together every once in a while, but he didn’t drink anything other than water. When I was with him I didn’t get blackout wasted, and we always came home together alone. After he died, and after the flood, there was a couple of lost years when I was crazy—well, crazier, at any rate—and I once again lost myself in drugs, alcohol, and an endless parade of nameless, faceless male bodies. Rory had helped me come back into myself, get some sort of control over my life.
And now I was single again, waking up in bed next to someone I barely knew with no idea what had happened or how he got there.
I was just thinking about getting out of bed to set the coffeemaker for later that morning when an alarm started going off from his side of the bed. I recognized it—my phone had the same alarm setting. He moaned and
shifted a bit. The sound stopped and he sat up in the bed without saying anything. He moved delicately and carefully, clearly worried about waking me up.
“I’m awake,” I said into the darkness, reaching for the pull chain on the nightstand lamp. I tugged on it and the lamp’s weak yellow light illuminated the bed and everything lower, casting shadows into the corners. His back was hairless, the skin remarkably smooth, the muscles in his shoulders and upper back rippling as he turned from side to side. There was a small mole on his right shoulder blade.
He turned and smiled at me. His hair was pointing out in every direction from his head; his big round heavy-lidded eyes were half-closed. “Didn’t mean to wake you, sorry.” He yawned and shivered. “Man, it’s cold in here.”
“I was already awake,” I replied, my tongue starting to feel a bit thicker. “Had to take a pain pill. There’s a robe over there on the chair if you want it. Sorry about the cold, there never seems to be any point in turning the heat on. I can get up and turn the heater on, if you want me to.”
He started to laugh but it was cut off by another yawn. “That’s okay—you don’t need to get up.” He got out of bed and walked barefoot over to the chair. He was just wearing a pair of red silk boxers. His skin was very pale, his thickly muscled legs dusted with light brown hair. He slipped my robe on and sat back down on the edge of the bed. “Thanks for letting me stay over,” he said, fighting off another yawn. He put one of his big hands on the blankets over my right leg. “I was too tired and buzzed to drive out to Belle Riviere last night.” He covered his thick lips as he yawned again. “Sorry.”
I sat up, reaching for the sweatpants I always kept on the floor beside the bed. I slid them up my legs. Everything was starting to blur a bit on the edges. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a few breaths. “I’m the one who owes you an apology,” I said, pulling my ratty old LSU sweatshirt over my head. “I shouldn’t have had that wine after taking a Vicodin. Did you have to carry me out of Coquette?”
He laughed. “No, but you were having some problems for sure. I imagine everyone in the place thought you were drunk out of your mind.”
“Great.” I slipped my feet into my house shoes and walked over to my closet. I reached up onto the top shelf and got down the pair Rory used to wear when he slept over. “Here, put these on. No sense in freezing your feet. I’ll go start some coffee for you and turn the heat on. It doesn’t take long for the place to get warmer. You’re welcome to shower, if you want.” I shrugged. “By the time the coffee’s ready and you get out of the shower, it should be bearable.”
“You sure?” He yawned again. “I can just shower when I get home, but it would help wake me up.” He rubbed his upper arms. “And coffee sounds too good to be true.”
“Seriously, I don’t mind—it’s the least I can do since you got me home safely.” I stifled a yawn of my own. My legs were starting to tingle from the Oxy. If I didn’t start moving around I was going to fall back asleep—and I had to let him out. The problem with having a dead bolt that only locks and unlocks with a key, I thought, standing up a little shakily. “I’d loan you some clothes, too, but I don’t think they’d fit you.”
He grinned back at me. “I’m good—I’ll just stop by the house on my way to the office and change.” He yawned and stretched again, the robe falling open to reveal his strong torso. There was a small patch of light brown hair in the center of his chest and a trail of them running from his navel to the waistband of his boxers. “I don’t have to be in the office till around seven. I’ll even have time for breakfast.”
If that was supposed to be a hint, it fell on deaf ears. I didn’t owe him that much.
“Let me get in and out of the bathroom first,” I said. I switched the thermostat to heat before walking into the bathroom and brushing my teeth. My scalp felt like it was crawling—another effect of the Oxy, and I was vaguely aware I looked a little blurry in the bathroom mirror. I splashed some hot water on my face. I found a spare toothbrush in one of the vanity drawers and handed it to him with a cheery smile. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He brushed his lips against my cheek as he walked past me into the bathroom.
I headed into the kitchen and got the coffeemaker started, then popped an English muffin into the toaster as I heard the shower start. I stood over the vent, letting hot air blow up my legs while I waited for the muffin to pop up and enough coffee to gather in the pot for a cup. I smeared peanut butter on the hot muffin and wolfed it down, washing it down with the coffee. The apartment was starting to warm up, but the floor was still so cold I could feel it through the soles of my house shoes.
I walked back into the bedroom, shaking my head. How do you ask someone if anything happened last night? In the old days when this sort of thing happened I just always assumed something had, and I’d never been wrong. I didn’t miss those days in the least.
I found my cell phone in my jacket pocket—completely dead, of course. I carried it back into the living room and plugged it in. While it charged up to enough juice to come on, I poured myself another cup of coffee and sat down on the couch. I was still a bit foggy, but the coffee was helping. I wasn’t going to be falling back to sleep any time soon, so I might as well get some work done.
When my phone came back up, I moaned. I had about six missed calls from Venus and three from Blaine—and scores of text messages wondering where the hell I was.
“Shit,” I said, remembering Venus telling me to meet them last night at the Avenue Pub so we could compare notes about the Lovejoy murder. I’d completely forgotten about it.
They were probably pissed at me, and they had every right to be.
And instead of meeting them, you were having sex with a suspect. Maybe.
I leaned back on the couch with another moan. The stupid painkillers were seriously fucking with my brain. The aftermath of the flood—the combination of PTSD and Xanax—had proved lethal to my once-flawless memory. The years after the flood were sketchy. Those years almost didn’t seem real, like they’d happened to someone else. I remembered some of my cases—especially the one where I almost took the law into my own hands and killed someone—through a gauzy shroud, like my brain had smeared Vaseline over my memories and thoughts. I’d had so many panic attacks, taken so many pills, drank too much. It had taken me years to finally realize I was on a dangerous road. The last thing in the world I needed was another fucking addiction.
The cortisone shot was looking better and better.
I heard the shower shut off. “How do you take your coffee?” I called out as I walked back down the hallway, making a mental note to call both Blaine and Venus back. They usually were up by six, which wasn’t that far off.
“Black’s fine,” Tom said, sticking his head back out the door. His hair was wet, the drops of water hanging from the ends of his curls.
He was really adorable. And sexy.
I wouldn’t mind having sex with him—I would just prefer to have it happen when I’d be able to remember it.
I was relatively certain it would be memorable.
I filled a mug and handed it to him through the doorway. He was blow-drying his hair with the little portable Rory had kept here. I stood there and watched him for a moment as he sipped his coffee and smiled back at me. He seemed like a nice guy, but—
He’s a suspect in a murder and a robbery, dumbass. Keep your head on straight.
He was also incredibly attractive. He was smart, was studying for the bar, had an amazing body and a sort of similar background to mine. That smile was irresistible. I tore myself away from staring at him and gathered his clothes from the floor on the other side of the bed, neatly folded them, and carried them back to the bathroom, where I handed them to him as he was running a brush through the unruly curls. After walking back into the kitchen for more coffee, I sat on the couch to wait for him.
I stared up at the enormous black-and-white print mounted on the wall several feet above my television. I’d taken it down
after the flood, when I thought I’d come to terms with losing Paul the way I had and stopped blaming myself for it. It was from his days in college when he did some nude modeling. He was sitting on the edge of a chair, with his back to the camera. One hand was running through his dark curly hair, and he was slightly turning toward the camera, so that his upturned face was in profile. Every muscle was tensed and flexed, veins bulging in his arms, a slight shadow falling across the whiteness of his untanned buttocks. Paul had been so beautiful, so perfectly formed, that sometimes looking at him took my breath away. He was black Irish—both of his parents were born in Ireland, both still had heavy brogues I could listen to all day. His hair had been bluish-black and curly, his eyes a startling wintry ice blue. The photograph had hung in his apartment uptown, and after he died his mother had given it to me.
I’d originally hung it in penance, so I would always remember what my selfishness and inflexibility, my horrible temper, had cost me. Every time I looked at it, it reminded me to try to be a better person, to not be the insanely jealous possessive prick who’d lost Paul.
When I finally realized, in the weeks after the flood, that I wasn’t to blame, that it wasn’t my fault, that I wasn’t the center of the universe and everything bad happened as punishment for my sins, I’d taken it down and put it in the closet.
It was a gorgeous print—Rory was the one who convinced me to rehang it. “For one thing, it’s a beautiful piece of art by a top photographer,” he’d pointed out, “and it’s of someone you loved, who was really important to you. Why would you want to forget him? And now you’re at the point where you can remember him and smile, right? You don’t still blame yourself, do you?”
He’d been right, even if I hadn’t been willing to listen to him or believe him when he said it. It took another couple of weeks before I could steel myself to seeing the image every time I walked into my living room—but he’d been right about that, the way he’d been right about so many other things. He’d been good for me on so many levels…it was a shame it hadn’t worked out the way either of us had hoped. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to get close to someone again after Paul’s death. Even after accepting I wasn’t to blame, I still didn’t believe I deserved to be happy. Rory had helped me realize that I did deserve some happiness.
