“What?” I ask, looking at the gun. It’s a revolver, an old .38 special, I think. But the way he’s holding it, I don’t think he’s ever pointed a gun at anyone before. His arms are bent, both of them holding the handle. He has a finger on the trigger, though. That’s all that matters.
“My pictures,” he says, moving forward, the gun shaking. I put my hands up, back away, toward my desk. “I know you’ve been giving them out. I heard about it. But there are some important ones I need back. So where are they?”
“Jonathan?” I ask. He flinches. “He give you that bruise?” I point at my own eye. “Me too. I don’t have his photos.”
“Liar,” he says, lifting the gun a little. I shift to my left, off-center.
“They’re all in that cabinet,” I say, pointing at a cabinet that holds old case files, and so is mostly empty. “Check for yourself.”
He narrows his eyes. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? Just some pretty boy in over his head?” His voice is rising; he gives each of his words a fullness like he’s on stage and is expecting applause at the end of the line. Every syllable is a meal.
“I don’t think that at all, Danny,” I say. “Well, aside from the pretty.”
He smirks. “Go get them out.” He motions with the gun to the file cabinet. I take my chance and duck low. I rise with the palm of my fist, knocking the gun up. I hear his hands loosen and I grab, but so does he, and it fires. It shoots up, away from us, but with enough force to knock Danny’s hand back. I grab the gun and immediately open the chamber, dumping the bullets out. Danny frowns at me, trying to swipe the gun back, but I hold it out of reach.
“You bitch,” he says.
“I’m trying to help you out, Danny. I really don’t have the photos. Jonathan, or whatever his name is, he gave me four days to find them or he’s killing me and burning this place down. I have two days left, after tonight. I’ve been looking all over for them. Is that why you want them? Why you went into hiding? He threaten you, too?”
Danny sighs, his body going slack, and swaying, like he’s going to fall. He lifts his hand to his forehead.
“I need a drink,” he moans, the words long in his mouth.
“Fine,” I say, putting the gun in my pocket. “Let’s go downstairs, I’ll buy you a drink, and you can tell me all about your little blackmail scheme.”
He rolls his eyes, but walks to the door. I follow him out and lock it behind me.
“So you’ve seen my photos?” he asks, as we walk to the stairs and down them.
“I have,” I say.
“You like them?” He grins, cat-like. “We could do some of our own, y’know?”
“I don’t have enough money to be worth blackmailing,” I tell him. “Plus, who would you show them to? My employer? She’s probably here tonight, and she’d have a good time making fun of me, but not enough I’d pay to stop it.”
“Well then, how about we just do it for fun?” he asks, turning around. He’s a step below me and his face is level to my chest, but he looks up, then starts to kneel.
“Get up,” I say, shaking my head. “This isn’t working on me, Danny. Come on. We can help each other out.”
“I just think I’m entitled to a good time before I die,” he says, his voice haughty, as he turns back around. “I deserve it, after everything I’ve been through.”
“Well, after we talk everything through, you can try picking someone up. I’m sure you’ll have no problem.”
He smiles at that. “That’s nice of you to say.” He opens the stairwell door into the Ruby. We go to the bar, where Gene raises an eyebrow and I just shake my head, but order myself a drink and one for Danny, who asks for a pink squirrel, making Gene get out an old bottle of crème de noyaux from the bottom shelf. He hands the drink over, frothy pale pink, and I lead Danny to an out-of-the-way table, where he drinks his pink squirrel and I sip at whatever Gene mixed up for me, which tastes like if an orange spent the night in Vegas. I look at him, bringing the pale-pink glass to his lips, his eyes darting around the room, taking in the crowd. His expression goes a mile a minute, frowning, then looking sly, then licking his lips. I wonder if he knows his sister is dead. I wonder if I have to tell him.
Eventually, his expression seems to grow steadier and he looks back at me.
“So what do you want?” he asks.
“I want to know who else had access to the locker where the photos were kept,” I say. “Who even knew about them, besides you and Donna?”
He frowns. “So you found her? Where is she? She was supposed to meet me two days ago.”
I sigh and look at my drink. “Danny … your sister … she’s dead.”
“What?” he says, narrowing his eyes and crossing his arms. “Absolutely not. You’re trying to trick me.”
“I only got into the locker because I found the key on her body,” I say.
“But…” He pauses, swallows, his hand rising to his throat as the drink shakes in his other hand. “Then…”
“I assume it was Jonathan, looking for you.”
“No, no, no,” he says. “I don’t believe you. You stole it off her. Or she gave it to you. She thought you could protect her maybe.”
“Danny, I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”
“Someone would have told me!” He slams his drink down. “Stop lying!”
A few people are looking over at us, so I lean back, try to relax. “Who else could have taken the photos?” I ask. “Who else knew about them?”
“But…” Danny’s eyes go far away, like he’s trying to figure something out. When they finally come back, he starts to cry. “Who killed her?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Jonathan?”
“He didn’t know … no one knew about any of it. They guessed it was me, which I should have known…” He dabs at his eyes with the napkin from his drink. I take out a handkerchief and hand it to him. He blows his nose. “We just wanted more money for our act,” he says, his eyes pleading. He’s quiet now, his voice shaky and sad. “The act is spectacular. We’re spectacular! We were going to be famous. Our whole lives we knew it. We could sing in perfect harmony since we were four. We didn’t look so alike, but makeup, a dress … it was fun. And funny, but in a clever way, and still so good. We just needed more money. They kept saying that—that our dresses were old-fashioned, our makeup was cheap. We just needed…” He starts to cry again, covering his face with both his hands. “I turned tricks to make ends meet, you know, but it wasn’t enough. So I thought we could cash out. What’s a little blackmail if it made us famous like we were supposed to be…” His voice dissolves into heavy sobs. Real ones, not acting.
“I’m really sorry, kid,” I say. I want to tell him he should never have done what he did, that blackmail is dangerous, not to mention the people he was blackmailing. But he knows all that now. He knows it the way you know a knife through the chest—with a sudden, awful awareness.
He cries some more, and I sip my drink until he blows his nose. He looks at me, his eyes red.
“Where is she?” he asks.
“The water,” I tell him. I don’t have to explain why I moved her body, not now. “The police weren’t going to do anything but cause problems, so I gave her a burial I thought was most peaceful.”
“She liked the water,” he says, sniffing. “I’ll put up a stone by the beach or something. I’ll say goodbye there…” He drifts off, his eyes red and distant. Then he takes a long sip of his drink.
“So if Jonathan didn’t know about her,” I say, hoping to get some answers, “who did? Who would have killed her? Who would have taken the photos?”
His eyes go away again, but come back quickly, his face going cold then cracking into a sneer.
“That bitch,” he whispers.
“Helen?” I ask, but he’s not looking at me. I grab his wrist. “Danny, who?”
Suddenly the lights flicker. No, no, not another raid, not now.
The music stops, Danny looks confused. I glance up at Gene, who motions at the stairwell with his head, but then the elevator doors open with a chime, and the cops pour in.
I glance over at Danny, to see if he’s going to cause a scene, but he’s just as used to this as the rest of us—why wouldn’t he be? His face goes calm, almost demure, as the cops spread out through the people who aren’t dancing anymore, among the tables, into the bathrooms.
“What is this?” Elsie asks, striding forward. She must have been in the crowd before and I didn’t see her. “I just paid up, and I paid well.”
“Yeah,” says the lead cop, “but we were thinking about the last raid here, and your bartender. He was a little mouthy. Gave us some backtalk.” He glances over at Gene and my whole body goes cold.
A cop grabs Gene from behind the bar and pulls him out to stand next to Elsie.
“You don’t get to do that,” the lead cop says to Gene. “Not without paying some price. You gotta remember your place, especially a fairy like you. Where you from, China?”
Gene keeps his eyes on the ground, but I can see the slight shake in his shoulders.
“Oh, now you’re not talking back?” the cop says. “That’s fine. Sometimes to teach a lesson, no one needs to talk much.” He raises his fist and without thinking I’m out of my chair and across the room. I catch the fist, midair. I manage not to punch the cop back, but I take the fist and guide it, gently, into my shoulder, taking the hit instead of Gene. It knocks me back a little. I hear a few people in the crowd gasp, watching us.
“Andy,” Gene says in a whisper. “No, if—”
“What are you, his boyfriend?” the cop asks. “You just assaulted an officer, you know. That’s how you get arrested around here.”
I swallow. If I’m arrested, I’m dead. And then no one can save the Ruby from being burned down.
“Oh, quit it,” Elsie says, exasperated. “We paid up. You’re not supposed to be here. You want me to start going around town telling all the other bars that we paid up and you raided anyway? How much do you all make off our bribes, hm? All of them combined, I mean? There are a lot of our kind of bars in this town, Officer, and I know for a fact that you’re not the top of the food chain. I can tell the bars not to pay, tell them it was all because you broke the rules. How’s the pension fund going to look without our donations, hm?”
The cop glares at her, his tongue licking his teeth. “You’re a mouthy broad, too.”
“I am,” Elsie says with a smile. “And I own this place, and I give money to fundraisers and mingle with the elite, your bosses. Because I am the elite. I am one of your bosses.” She takes a step forward. “There’s a tax for being like us in this town, sure. But we paid it. You don’t get to drag people in just because you want to anymore. We can sue you, same as the Black Cat did.”
“He assaulted me,” the officer says, spitting a little.
“Did he?” Elsie says. “I didn’t see it. Did you?” she asks a woman next to her, who shakes her head. “You?” she asks another guy, who shakes his head. “Seems like a lot of people didn’t see that, Officer. Now leave.” Another cop steps forward as if to argue but she glares at him, too. “Get the fuck out or I’ll tell every other bar in town to stop paying those bribes. We’ll unionize. How about that?”
“Bitch,” the cop says. Elsie yawns. The cop whistles, and the rest of them head for the elevator, marching out, looking angry and glum. When the elevator door closes, the whole room breathes together, relieved.
“It’s going to be worse next time,” I say. “You should have let them take me.”
She pats me on the cheek. “No chance,” she says. She turns to the band. “Play! Let’s get this place alive again!”
The band starts up and people start dancing. Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I turn around, and it’s Gene, looking at me with something like wonder.
“You could have gone to prison,” he says. “Even just a night in lockup, and you’d be dead. We both know it. You should have let them hit me.”
“I … didn’t know how,” I say.
He smiles, and then suddenly launches himself at me and we’re kissing. Not like last time, when I was kissing because I was alive and I wanted to kiss someone. This time I’m kissing Gene because he’s Gene. And it’s not like kissing anyone else. There’s no fancy French word for it—or, there probably is, but I don’t know it. My body feels like Christmas tinsel, shaking in the breeze, tinging and shining and ringing, and all I can feel is Gene, my arms around his waist, his around my shoulders, our lips, our tongues, our bodies. Something new. Something so much steadier than the ocean ever was.
“All right, you two, you have a room upstairs, take it there,” Elsie says, and we break apart, grinning like schoolboys who just got caught pulling a prank.
“I should get back behind the bar,” Gene says, still grinning.
“And I was interrogating a suspect to find out where those photos are, so this place doesn’t get burned down.”
We’re still holding each other; people dance around us. We don’t move. But then the weight of what I just said hits me, and I start to pull away and he nods.
“Go,” he says, still smiling. I turn away and head back to the table where I left Danny. He’s gone, his drink still half-finished. I frown and look around. He could be dancing, so I go to the bar and stand on it for a sec, looking out over the crowd. A few people near me applaud, but I don’t see Danny. I hop down and run upstairs, check my office, the dressing rooms. Not there either. So I run downstairs to the street, and look out both ways. He’s gone.
I’ve gone to Danny’s apartment so often at this point, people probably think I’m his roommate, but he’s not there again this time. It’s the same as the last. Which means he’s in the wind again. For someone who so clearly likes a scene, he’s real good at waiting in the wings. And without him, I’m out of leads again, aside from willow trees.
And, I realize, putting my hands in my pockets, the gun. I fish it out and look at it in the light of the floor lamp in Danny’s apartment. The thing must be twenty years old. There’s no tag or anything to show where it came from, but if Danny did pawn some stuff to buy it, then it shouldn’t be hard to find where—only a few places in the city deal with guns. I glance at my watch. It’s too late to go to any of them now, but it might be a stronger lead than the trees. And I still have to go peek in some windows.
I head to the willow-tree houses I marked and creep around outside them. It takes a few hours, but I don’t see any blue-and-pink sofas, and I’m only nearly caught once, when I let out a groan after climbing over a fence, because I hit the ground on one of my bruised sides. It’s not much, but it’s a handful of houses I know aren’t the ones from Helen and Donna’s photos.
By the time I get back to the Ruby, it’s after eleven, and the place is still dancing, but not as full as it was before. Gene smiles at me when I walk up to the bar. Lee is already sitting at it, her hair a short bob, in a red sequin dress.
“I hear you made a scene,” she says to me. Then she looks at Gene. “Both of you.”
Gene blushes furiously and looks down.
“It was a gut reaction,” I say, though I feel my own cheeks color, too.
“What body parts are you counting as your gut these days?” she says, grinning and sipping her drink through a straw.
“All right,” I say, blushing even more. “Any luck with gossiping your way into a lead?”
“Give it time,” she says. “I’ve only just sent out feelers last night.”
“I don’t know how much time we have,” I say. “Danny got away.”
“Was that my fault?” Gene asks, looking shocked.
“No, he was going to give me the slip any way he could. The cops are what gave him the distraction he needed. But he did leave me his gun, so I’m going to check around some pawnshops, see if I can get a lead that way. I used to have good relationships with most of the guys pawning in town.”
“Used to?” Lee asks.
“When I was on the force. Not sure how they’ll respond to me now. Or what they’ve heard about why I left.”
“Be careful,” Gene says.
“I will,” I say.
Lee finishes her drink and puts it down on the bar, then stands. “I’m on in a few minutes. You sticking around, Gene, or you and Andy going to go upstairs? I’ll sing real loud if you need me to cover moaning.”
Gene blushes again, but then looks at me, questioning. And I want to, I really want to bring him up to my room and make him moan.
“Well, that’s a decision I’m not a part of. Night, boys,” she says, getting up and walking to the stage.
“I mean, I am off in a few minutes,” Gene says, putting his hand on the bar.
I look at his hand, then put mine over it and weave my fingers through his.
“I did something kind of heroic today,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah, you did.”
“And I don’t want you making a decision because of that,” I say. “I didn’t do it because I wanted you to come to my room tonight. I did it because I couldn’t not do it.”
“So, no,” he says, disappointed. I feel his fingers go slack.
“Not tonight,” I say. “You told me to wait a week, remember? You didn’t believe I was done with James. Although … I am,” I say, suddenly remembering everything today has been. “I really, really am. Today has been a lot.”
“How about,” he says, squeezing my hand again, “we just go upstairs and talk about it? Your day, I mean. You’re right, waiting is a good idea. I mean … I know I want to go upstairs with you. I’ve wanted to for months.”
I laugh. “I still can’t believe that. I felt like you were just being nice.”
“We don’t have quiet moments,” he says. “Like I said. So either we go upstairs and talk, or you go out and get beat up again.”
I laugh. “Well, your shirt is up there anyway.”
He takes my hand as we go upstairs. I unlock the door to my apartment nervously, aware of the showgirls and -boys staring, cackling.
“I pour your drinks, remember,” Gene says to them. “Show some respect.”
They laugh at that, but go into their dressing rooms. In my apartment, he grabs my collar and kisses me, hard, and I kiss him back, our bodies close. He pushes me against the door, with enough force I drop my hat on the floor, and we don’t stop kissing for what seems like an hour.
“I thought we said—” I start, panting.
“Just that,” Gene says. “We didn’t really get to finish before. Elsie interrupted. But now we can talk.”
I laugh. “Now I don’t want to.”
He laughs. “Nope,” he says simply, sitting down in the chair he was in the other night, watching me sleep. “You were right. So … tell me about your day.”
I sigh, sitting down across from him at my tiny table. “Mine was long,” I say. “Tell me about yours?”
“Well, I volunteer at a soup kitchen once a week, so I served some soup at lunch, looked at a few bruises on a homeless woman. I’m more there to try to help out folks who can’t afford a doctor. The shelter knows I used to be in medical school, they don’t ask why I’m not anymore.”
“What do you think would happen if they knew?”
“Oh, I’d be fired for sure,” he says with a shrug. “Well, not fired, ’cause I’m not paid. But banned. They don’t need the reputation of having a pervert inspecting homeless people’s bodies. Newspapers would love that story. And I don’t want to be a poster boy for what people hate. I’m not white, I’m not rich, I can’t protect myself the way Elsie does. Plus, there’s a chance folks would just start beating up random guys who they thought were me—and that could mean Chinese, Japanese, Mexican. People mistake Filipino for all of them.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
He smiles. “It’s okay. If we can’t talk about that with other people like us, what are we supposed to do? Bottle it all up? That’s why I like being a bartender, honestly. People tell me their problems—and at a gay bar, it’s always gay problems. And I can say ‘Yeah, I get it,’ and they know it’s not just them feeling it.”
I smile, and our eyes meet and we’re quiet for a moment.
“You’re so busy, I’m surprised you have time for that,” I say. “You never have time to talk to me.”
He glares. “I always have time for you. You just always take your drink and sit at a table instead of hanging around.”
“I don’t want to bother you, you’re working. Plus I don’t want to take up space at the bar, take money out of Elsie’s pockets.”
He shakes his head. “Andy, you need to get this through your brain or I’m going to worry you’ve taken one too many concussions—you belong here as much as any of us. You’re one of us. You don’t need to sit off to the side or make room for someone else. You get your place, too. Elsie has been telling you this for months. She literally gave you rooms.”
I look around at my little studio, my home, that she gave me. Pale-pink light comes in off the sign, but with the lights on, it just makes everything feel warmer.
“I suppose you’re right,” I say. My eyes fall back down to the table. I put my hand on it and he immediately reaches across and takes it. “Tell me about the rest of your day?”
“Not much else,” he says with a shrug. “After the soup kitchen, I came here, tended bar, got saved by a handsome detective, then served some more drinks.”
“Tell me more about this handsome detective,” I say, serious. “Do I need to beat him up?”
Gene laughs for longer than I think the joke deserves. “You already do,” he says finally. “Constantly.”
I laugh at that too. “Well, I hope you like watching men fight over you.”
“Not usually, but I don’t mind it in this case.” He squeezes my hand. “Now how about you? Your day?”
I sigh and take out a cigarette and light it. “You want one?”
He shakes his head.
“You want me to put mine out?”
He shakes his head again. I take a long drag and tell him about my day. About the fight, about the past, about the murder.
“I hate that they think they did it to protect me. Killing someone. Making me so scared I ran away from life.”
“People do things to protect people they love,” Gene says. “If Elsie hadn’t stepped in and that cop arrested you, you’d…”
I grin. “You think I love you?”
He smiles, coy. “I think you like me, we’ll see.” He shrugs, still grinning, then squeezes my hand again. “But I’m sorry about your day, the raid, the fight with your friends.”
“At least it’s ending well,” I say. “And maybe the fight was a long time coming. I look back at the war, at all of us, and it’s like it was so good until it all stopped suddenly. And that scared me, I think, so I locked it all up, the past, tried not to think about the good times if they could end so suddenly. But it wasn’t all good, it turns out. It was good and bad. And I sort of just want to lock it all up again. I just want the future now.”
“It wasn’t all bad though, Andy. You can remember the good.”
“Maybe. But the past is a ball of string, tangled and knotted. I can’t pull on one happy memory now without getting a bunch of others.”
“That’s how I feel about medical school,” he says with a nod. “But now I can look back at it like it’s … through glass, y’know. I can remember the good stuff, and smile, and the bad stuff comes with it, but it’s all under glass, a diorama. It can’t do anything to me now. I pick what happens next.”
“That’s what I want to do, too,” I say. “I want to pick what happens next, and not keep getting tangled in that knot.”
“So what do you want, then?”
“I like what I’m doing, so I’d like to keep doing it—being a detective here. Which means the place can’t go up in flames.”
“What else?”
“Well, I’d like a fella,” I say. “Maybe. Not like it was with James, where it was so many things at once I don’t know what we were. I want a man of my own.”
“Of your own?”
I nod.
“Have anyone in mind?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.
“Well, I do remember someone saying they wanted to come up here, shoving me against the door, and kissing me.”
“Do you?” he asks. His skin looks soft in the light. “I really am going to worry about those concussions.”
“All right, so what kind of man do you think I should go for?”
He takes a big, fake sigh. “Well, I don’t know. But I can tell you what I like in men.”
“All right.” I lean back, watching him.
“Well, I like a man who never gets into any trouble. One with a nice, safe job. Like an accountant. Are you an accountant?”
I laugh. “I could be.”
“Well, that’s a good start. I also like a man who doesn’t drink or smoke too much. A little is all right, but too much seems to me to be a want of moral character.”
“A want?”
“Yes,” he says, very serious. “A want.”
“Well, I like a man who likes alcohol so much he gives it out,” I say. “And tests his bartending skills on me when he’s practicing.”
“I’m not testing—”
I raise an eyebrow and he blushes for a moment, then laughs.
“Well, if you like being tested on, sounds like a good match.”
“I do. And I like a guy who knows how to take good care of me.”
“Good care?”
“Very good care.”
“You have a thing for being nursed back to health?”
“I didn’t before, but the past few months, I seem to have developed one.”
“How peculiar.”
“Isn’t it?”
He stands up, and comes over to my side of the table, then sits down on my knee, looking down at me. His thighs are soft on my leg, and I wrap my arm around his waist, feeling the muscles of his torso through his shirt.
“I have no idea where you’re going to find a man like that,” he says.
“Me neither, but I guess you’ll do in the meanwhile,” I say, stretching my neck up and kissing him. He tastes like mint, somehow, with a hint of gin underneath, like he might evaporate off my tongue. He kisses me back, and we kiss for a while, his arms on my shoulders, then my neck and face, my hands pulling him close and warm. Our bodies press together, still clothed, like kids making out in the back seat of a car. My body aches but it sings, too, loud enough to cancel out any pain. He stands up. He’s smiling, his skin flushed. Somehow, my body is still singing, looking at him.
“I’m going home now,” he says, still smiling. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” I say.
He walks out the door, and I lie down in bed, feeling like a waning fire. I fall asleep in my clothes.