Paul Lampson took a long drag from the joint and set it in a blue ceramic ashtray shaped like an elephant. A bottle of red wine sat on the table beside the couch. Paul saw he’d forgotten a glass. He padded to the kitchen in bare feet, his socks and work shoes kicked off. He was dressed in green nurse’s scrubs, baggy and wrinkled after a twelve-hour shift, his fourth in as many days. But now he had three blessed days off.
Even better, Terry had two days free; maybe they could go to the beach, spend a day in the sun, giggling as tan men strutted by in swimsuits.
“I give that one a five-point-eight.”
“Five-five. The hair is so 2006.”
“Oooooh. Over there in the green cut-offs. Six-five?”
“Girl, that’s a full six-nine.”
All talk, Paul thought as he opened the cabinet and retrieved a wineglass. He and Terry had been a … Jeez, a couple? … for months now. Other men were on a Look-but-don’t-touch basis. And the arrangement seemed as good for Terry as it was for Paul.
Paul returned to the living room, picked up the iPod remote and pressed play, Tony Bennett singing through the stereo system.
“I left my heart, in San Francisco …”
The corny old song was both a joke and a vision. The plan was to move to San Francisco in the fall, a city where they could be themselves.
Terry had grown up in rural Alabama, wounded by a macho culture – beaten up in school as teachers looked the other way – and a father that tossed him out when he was seventeen. Paul had come up in Atlanta, still southern, but more progressive. Plus his parents had accepted his sexuality.
But San Francisco was the New World. Terry had been there twice, and knew it was where he needed to be. Where they needed to be.
Paul reclined on the couch and relit the dead joint. Moving would be tough. But as a nurse specializing in cardiac rehabilitative care he was highly employable; by working extra shifts he might pull seventy grand a year. Plus he was taking classes to become a nurse practitioner.
Terry was another story, waiting tables not so lucrative. But at twenty-four it was time for him to find his life’s work. Until then, a waiter at a toney place might pull over thirty if he hustled.
Paul smiled to himself. Terry certainly had hustling experience, though of a different sort, a rough little piece of trade when the pair met at a bar, a hard-partying druggie more confused than malevolent. But under that kiss-my-ass exterior was a sensitive kid who sought stability.
Paul walked to the window. The sun lit the long canebrake across the street and a mockingbird called from the brush. There was a FOR SALE sign on the lot with the canebrake, thickly overgrown with bramble. Their house sat alone, past a marsh, a wide culvert, and a suburb that died aborning, a few rotting stakes marking lots never sold. The nearest dwellings were a third of a mile away.
Though the area was decrepit and an eastern wind brought the scent of the swamp, the house was near the highway, the rent was right and they’d been allowed to decorate as they pleased, which meant bright paint on every inside wall and flowers in the yard. When Terry had moved in – two months ago – he’d insisted on paying half the rent and had taken responsibility for keeping the yard in good condition, finding peace in working with flowers.
The only fear Paul had in moving was placing new temptations in front of his partner. Terry was a hard drinker by the time he was eighteen, with a heavy reliance on pills as well, OxyContin, Lortabs, Percocets. He’d been a monster when they’d met, offering drunken, shrieking anger one night, crying jags the next.
But the pair had discovered kindred angels within one another, slowly engaging Terry’s demons and – if not fully vanquishing them – pushing them toward the horizon. As long as I’m there, Paul thought, watching a wavering line of pelicans glide across the tops of the cane, Terry will be safe. And as long as Terry’s with me, I’ll be happy.
Gregory pulled down the small lane, past the marsh where yesterday he’d reconnoitered the house. The gray Corolla was gone. Gregory knew it would be, a simple phone call having established the other man would be working for at least another hour.
Gregory looked for nearby eyes and saw none. He wasn’t in his daily vehicle, but a beater truck he’d purchased for his work, nondescript, the license tag obscured with mud. If stopped by the police, he’d simply claim the mud came from driving past a construction site and he’d wash it clean as soon as possible.
Thanks to Ema’s television-inspired ramblings on police procedures, Gregory had spent ten hours of the last twenty-four studying online law-enforcement sites. The amount of information was incredible.
Plus he’d started recording the TV show Cops. On some cable channels it ran for hours at a time.
Gregory pulled into the driveway beside a battered red Honda Civic. He flipped a cheap plastic messenger bag over his shoulder, the current choice for style among the hip. Gregory liked it because the unzipped top allowed immediate access to his necessaries and its plastic manufacture shed no fibers. He’d made a few other changes as well.
Tumbling a penny in his gloved hand, he approached the door. Just before pressing the doorbell, he dropped the coin into his bag. He had a wonderful idea for the penny.
It was going to make a statement.