Lethal Control, page 24
part #3 of The DuPage Parish Mysteries Series
Then, it was two weeks, and part of me was starting to…wonder. Not worry. Not exactly. But I was turning it over in my head more now. We’d both had what I considered normal sex drives until that night at the Stoplight. Sometimes we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Sometimes life got busy, and it’d be four, five, six days, and Eli would get up early and walk in on me in the shower, and he’d take care of that oversight right then and there. But it’d been two weeks, and I felt like someone had unplugged that part of my brain. I thought about calling my parents. God knows they’d have read an article about this kind of thing, and they’d have plenty to say. Then I thought about licking an electrical outlet for fun instead.
We didn’t see Pascal the Parlangua again; I liked to think that he was back in the bayou, not being harassed by Nelda Pie or her chimeras anymore, sunning himself on a muddy bank. That’s what he’d wanted when we’d asked for his help, and I hoped he’d gotten it. We didn’t see Joey Jaws, or the thing he’d become either, and I hoped that meant Pascal had handled his end of things.
We did see Posey and Reb once more. Just for a few minutes. Somebody rang the bell on a powdery-blue Saturday evening, and when I answered the door, there they were. They both looked better—the bruises gone, the cuts and scratches healed. They healed fast, just like Posey had told me. He had one arm around Reb’s slender shoulders, pulling the younger man against his side. I hoped Reb was ok with that; it didn’t look like Posey had any plans to let him go. Not anytime soon, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he said once we were all settled in the living room. Posey and I each had a Sugarfield, Eli had a can of hard seltzer, and Reb had a Coke. He was playing with the tab, not looking at any of us. Posey still hadn’t let go of him. “I was desperate, and I was stupid. I shouldn’t have listened to Dutch and Lurnice, but—”
When he didn’t continue, Eli smiled and said, “You would have done anything to get Reb back. It’s ok; we understand.”
“Thank you. I didn’t get a chance to say that. Thank you for saving his life. Our lives.”
Eli shrugged, and I said, “You’re welcome.”
“I want to pay you.”
“You don’t have to pay us,” I said.
“Be quiet and let him give us money,” Eli said.
“I don’t have any money, actually,” Posey said. He scratched his neck and offered an embarrassed smile. “But I’ve got something you might like.” He reached into his back pocket and passed me a folded piece of paper. It was the title to his truck, eighty-thousand dollars’ worth of Dodge Ram. He’d signed it over to me for a sale price of a dollar.
“I’m not taking your truck.”
“Not going to be any use to me where we’re going,” he said with a smile. “If you don’t take it, I’ll park it at the airport, and eventually, it’ll get towed.”
“That truck cost almost as much as this house,” I said.
“That sounds like the punchline to a coon-ass joke,” Eli said with a smirk. He glanced at Posey. “Where are you going?”
Posey opened his mouth, but Reb, still staring at his Coke, shook his head. With a crooked smile, Posey said, “How about I send you a postcard?”
When we walked them to the door, Reb looked up long enough for me to see snow-blue eyes, and then he tugged on Posey’s hand and looked intently at him.
Posey frowned, then nodded. “Reb told me things are settling down. Out there. In the bayous, in the woods. That hunter woman is still doing her thing, but without Nelda Pie adding to the pressure, things are calmer.”
“Humans are still pressing into their territory,” Eli said. “Eventually, they’re going to stumble onto something that doesn’t want to get out of their way.”
Posey shrugged. “Better is better. It’s not perfect.”
That night, as we sat on the couch streaming an episode of Nova, I tried to hold Eli’s hand.
He put up with it for about twenty seconds, and then he said, “I think I’m going to head to bed.”
When he left, I lay on the couch, watching nothing. Better is better, I thought. Better isn’t perfect.
The closest we came to talking about that night behind the Stoplight was when we had driven into Slidell, and we were waiting at the light for Rouses. Cars whipped past on the intersecting street. Big, puffy clouds moved overhead, and light dappled the asphalt and blazed along windshields and chrome.
Then everything started to change. Cars kept driving. Clouds kept scudding. But pressure began to build in my ears, and the world started to look flat. That’s the only way I can think to say it: like the cars and clouds and streetlight, even the Rouses, like they were all paper cutouts in a shoebox diorama, and someone was folding them down one by one. Eli whimpered and pressed a hand to the side of his head. Ten feet past the crossroads—the intersection, part of my brain insisted, you call it an intersection—the world blurred. I had felt this before, at the footpath crossroads behind the Stoplight. I had felt this thing coming to us, the immensity of the lwa like a wail unfurling. I thought maybe I was screaming, maybe the whole world was, but I couldn’t hear myself.
And then it was over. Around us, everybody went about their daily lives: people pulled into the Zaxby’s, people pulled out, people waited for the light to change, people played on their phones when they should have been watching the road. The clouds drifted along. The Rouses had, according to the sign, gumbo at the soup bar. My head was still ringing, and my throat hurt.
“What was that?” I asked Eli. His face was like chalk. “What happened?”
He shook his head. After a moment, though, he must have realized that wasn’t enough, so he said, “I don’t know.”
“Was that—” I made myself swallow. “Was it him?”
He nodded.
“What did he want?”
“I think—I think he wanted to say hello.”
The light changed, and someone behind us honked, and I eased my foot off the brake. And by the time we’d parked, I didn’t know what else to say. Apparently, neither did he.
In the third week, the lying started.
Eli would come home from work later than he’d said he would, and he’d tell me he’d gone to the library, or he’d gone for a walk, or he’d stopped for a pedicure.
“The library’s closed,” I’d say. Or, “You went for a walk after a whole day of giving walking tours?” Or, “Let me see.”
Instead, he’d laugh, or he’d make an excuse, or he’d lie again. And then he’d go for a run.
I walked in on him once, hiding something in the closet.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Great. Let me see nothing.”
“Dag, it’s nothing. It’s clothes. I was putting away clothes.”
“No lying. We’ve got rules. We’ve got rules for a reason, and that’s one of them.”
“You’re talking crazy. You realize that, right? You sound crazy.” He laughed to show me how crazy I was. “I’m going for a run.”
“It’s eleven o’clock at night. Where are you going on a run?”
“I’m going on a run,” he said and laughed again, you know, in case I’d missed it the first time. “What do you mean, where? You’re acting nuts.”
I let him go, because what was I going to do? Tie him down and make him tell me what was going on?
Actually, that didn’t sound too bad.
I went through the closet. I found the scale Eli thought I didn’t know about. I found the weights he said he’d donated. His carry-on suitcase was in there, and things started to make more sense. Then on the top shelf, behind his new running shoes—the ones he hadn’t worn yet—I found a credit card. A new one. One he’d opened without telling me.
Ok, I thought. Well, you figured this was coming. You knew it might happen. Eventually.
I put everything back. I sat on the bed. After a while, I turned off the lights and toed off my tennis shoes and lay on top of the covers, listening to the empty house in the dark. Better is better, I thought. And then, If this is better, then fuck me.
By Thanksgiving, we weren’t talking anymore.
We drove across the causeway, on our way back to Bragg, to spend the holiday with my parents because that was better than being stuck in the house, not talking to each other. The sky was clear. The air was pleasantly cool. The sun looked like a million different pieces to a million different puzzles scattered across the lake’s chop. In the truck’s wake, the sawgrass gave stiff little salutes. It was a stupid, expensive, showy truck. I loved it so much that I figured when Eli inevitably left, I’d probably find a way to move to Japan and marry it.
When we got to my parents’ house, Eli headed straight inside, while I grabbed bags from the back. Even on the front gallery, it already smelled like cinnamon and cloves and my mom’s rolls rising. On my way to the kitchen, I passed Eli and my mom heading down the hallway toward her bedroom.
“You want to give me a hand?” I called after them.
Eli ducked his head and walked faster; his face was blotchy, and he wouldn’t look at me.
My mom, however, stopped. “Thank God,” she said. “Dagobert, help your father, please. He’s getting catfished again.”
“What do you mean getting catfished?” I asked. As she turned to follow Eli down the hall, I called, “What do you mean again?”
I carried the groceries—our contribution to what would eventually become Thanksgiving dinner—into the kitchen, where my dad was sitting at the table, frowning at his phone through a pair of cheaters.
“What does Mom mean, you’re getting catfished?”
“Your mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He’s a very nice young man. He’s in the Coast Guard. Strong, too. Like an ox. You should see this tattoo he has. It’s like a tramp stamp, but for men, whatever that’s called.”
“It’s still called a tramp stamp,” I said. “What does Mom mean, ‘again’?”
He made a pshaw-ing noise. “It was a hundred dollars. And I still say if the poor boy needed the money, then he can have it.”
I took his phone. I stared at the naked-except-for-a-hand-towel, self-described muscle bottom, who was wearing a Coast Guard hat and had barbell nipple piercings.
“His name’s Brett,” my dad said.
“I don’t care what his name is. Why are you on Prowler?”
“It’s cheaper than Grindr.”
“Why are you on any hookup apps?” I heard my voice getting higher. I couldn’t help it. “Why are you asking this guy about his nipples? Are you gay? Are you and Mom getting a divorce?”
My dad laughed so hard that he started to cry. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his eyes.
“All right,” I finally said. “That’s enough.”
“Watch your tone, Dagobert.” My dad took his phone back. “I think you’d show a little gratitude. I only signed up for these fool things when I was worried you were having failure-to-launch syndrome—”
“That’s not a real thing. That’s a movie.”
“—and then you met Eli, and then I couldn’t figure out how to get it off of here, and now every once in a while a young man sends me a message, and it’s an excellent educational opportunity.”
“Oh my God.”
“Your mother and I have learned a lot.”
“Mom has seen this?”
“Don’t be a prude, son. Your mother has a vibrant sexual identity. Raw. Animalistic, even.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I could hear it again, my voice doing that thing where it sounded like I was about to have a stroke. “You can’t—why would you—never, ever, ever—”
“Brett has a great video on here, and you and Eli have been together for a while now. You probably need to spice things up in the bedroom—have you ever tried sucking a golf ball through a garden hose?”
I went out to the car to get the rest of our stuff. Before I murdered my dad, killed myself, or committed the first totally justified murder-suicide-mercy killing in the history of the world.
I sat in the truck for a while, listening to whale songs. With my eyes closed. It wasn’t a nap.
Then, after a while, I wiped my mouth and checked myself in the mirror and tried to rub the red crease out of my cheek. I got the rest of the groceries and carried them inside. Eli and my mom were working at the counter, talking in low voices. Eli glanced over his shoulder, and even though his eyes were still red, a huge smile grew on his face. He turned back to my mom and whispered something, and they both laughed.
“That’s real nice,” I said as I dropped the bags on the counter. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” my mom said.
“I’m asking my boyfriend, please.”
“Leave him alone, Dagobert. Go do something useful with your father. See if you can take down that shirtless pic he uploaded.”
“Why in the world would he upload a shirtless picture to a gay dating app?”
“My dear Lord,” my mom said, her face upturned like she thought God might answer. “How did you ever get a boyfriend?”
“He ate all my pizza and he slept in my bed and he took all his clothes off and he wouldn’t go away.”
Eli tried to kick me.
“It’s what people do on these apps, Dagobert.”
“I’m not helping Dad with his dating app. I’m getting new parents. I’ll put out an ad. I’ll find some who will be properly neglectful.”
“Ok, dear, but could you do it somewhere else, please? Somewhere quieter? Because Eli and I are trying to talk.”
“I cannot believe this.”
“Do you know what you could do? You could help your father build a shed. That would be nice.”
“I’m not building a shed on Thanksgiving.”
At that point, apparently, both my boyfriend and my mother were done talking to me because neither of them bothered to respond.
“Where would I even get the stuff to build one? It’s not like you’ve got all the supplies stacked in the backyard.”
My mom made some sort of brainless agreeing noise that told me she hadn’t heard anything I’d said. And then, to add insult to injury, she said, “That sounds nice, dear.”
I went into the living room.
My dad was watching golf. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me, and then he set an unopened bottle of Stella on the TV tray between us and slid it toward me. I opened it. The green glass was pleasantly cool and just the tiniest bit fogged.
“This is how alcohol abuse starts,” I said.
He nodded at the screen and said, “He’s going to bogey.”
I drank some beer.
More golf. More beer. Then my dad and I got kicked outside to fry the turkey, which made me wish I’d stolen some of the bomb squad gear from the sheriff’s department before I left—it was the culinary equivalent of cutting wires to see if something was going to explode, only this version involved dropping a fifteen pound maybe-still-frozen bird into a thirty-two-quart stainless-steel fryer full of hot peanut oil. It didn’t explode this year, and by the time the turkey was done, Eli and my mom had set the table, and dinner was ready.
It was a good meal. It was a great meal, actually, if you just rated the food. The turkey, of course, and cornbread dressing, and my mom’s rolls, and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top, and bacon-wrapped jalapenos my dad had done in the smoker the day before. Eli had added roasted parsnips and celeriac, shrimp cocktails, seafood stuffed mushrooms, and green beans with new potatoes. And then there was dessert: pumpkin pie, pumpkin trifle, pumpkin bread pudding. If you couldn’t tell, my mom was a firm believer in pumpkin.
As my mom started to collect dishes, I stood and said, “I’m doing those.”
“Don’t be silly, Dagobert.” If I hadn’t been trained as a deputy, if I hadn’t spent too much of my life dealing with addicts and thieves and punk kids (I could actually see Eli’s smile in my head when I heard my own thoughts), I would have missed how her eyes cut toward Eli. “You boys sit down and relax. Your father can help me.”
“They’re doing a course breakdown of Augusta—”
“Thank you, Hubert.”
Which, apparently settled matters.
Eli and I ended up on the back gallery. My parents had a couple of old rockers, and while the air was cool, it was cool in a pleasant sort of way. I went back inside and found us a couple of blankets, but by the time I got back, Eli was chafing his arms and shifting his weight from foot to foot. His eyes looked red again.
“Can we go for a walk?” he asked.
So, we went for a walk. The evening was that delicate blue that made me think of crushed stone and eyeshadow, and it rounded the edges off everything. The last light came in dramatic god rays, fat and skewed, that the clouds swallowed up as I watched. We followed my parents’ street for a while. Some houses, we could see the families inside—gathered around a table, or just moving back and forth, busy bodies on a busy day. In one, we saw an older, balding man in a Christmas sweater who was talking with his hands and slopping nog everywhere, and Eli laughed for the rest of the block. He was laughing too hard, and he stopped all of a sudden and looked twice as guilty.
Other houses, the doors stood open, and we could hear TVs playing—one of them, I was pretty sure, was showing one of the old Star Treks because you can’t hear those voices and not recognize them. A couple of kids who couldn’t have been older than eight or nine stood in their front yard, doing something productive that involved smashing a stick against the ground. A middle-aged lady with a flattop haircut and grizzly bear arms and shoulders was hanging Christmas lights—the chili pepper kind.
