Sidecar Read online

  One night Casey was late enough back from his shift—which ended at nine—that Joe began to pace, stalking from one end of the yard to the other, his hands in the pockets of his lined leather jacket, his booted feet crunching in the one or two inches of snow that had hit the ground the night before. He heard the puttering whine of a motorcycle with a small engine and a light frame about three minutes before the shitty-looking UJM with the peeling electric-teal paint job on the tank pulled up. Casey was on the back, and because there wasn’t a bitch seat, he was scooted forward so far his crotch must have been rubbing the other kid’s ass for the entire ride. His head was as bare as a baby’s ass, and he was shivering in the hooded sweatshirt he’d worn to school that morning.

  The kid on the front was in full regalia: a helmet with a windscreen, leather jacket, leather riding gloves, and a scarf. Joe’s jaw tightened. Casey got off the back of the bike, blowing on his hands and looking apologetically at Joe.

  “I’m sorry,” he chattered as he took a few awkward steps forward. “The truck wouldn’t start. I tried getting it jumped and everything, and I d-d-d-idn’t figure out what it was.”

  Joe closed his eyes and swore. Okay. That was forgivable. Then he opened his eyes and narrowed them on the kid with the helmet.

  “Take your helmet off,” he snarled, and the kid did. Joe didn’t like him any better without it. He had a narrow face, with acne (it was the age—Clearasil wasn’t helping Casey none either), but he sported about six hairs on his chin and five on his upper lip and was trying to pass them off as a goatee. His eyes were nice—blue-green, lined with dark lashes—but Joe was not going to be pacified by the thought that Casey’s hormones allowed him to overcome his common sense.

  Joe glared at the boy long enough to make him uncomfortable.

  “Casey, I thought you said you didn’t live with your dad?”

  “C’mere,” Joe snapped. The kid did, taking a few tentative steps in. Joe gave him a quick open-palmed smack on the side of the head.

  “Hey!”

  “That hurt?”

  The kid just gaped at him, and Casey was screaming “Joe!” behind them.

  “Did that hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  “What do you think a crash would feel like?”

  The kid’s mouth opened and closed, Casey shut up abruptly, and Joe nodded. “’Kay, I’ll give you points. You were trying to do a good deed. Good for you. Points for good intentions. Do you see his head? Nice shape, right?”

  The kid nodded, those pretty eyes wide and apprehensive, and his gaze raked Casey over. He stopped for a moment to make soft eye contact with Casey himself, who smiled encouragingly. Wonderful. “Yeah, I guess,” he stammered.

  “Glad you think so. Now I’ve ridden a bike in that canyon for a year, and I’ve flipped it twice, and I’ve been riding for fifteen years. What do you think would happen to that pretty melon you like so much if you flipped your fuckin’ bike?”

  To his credit, the kid let his jaw drop in fear, and he closed his mouth and swallowed. “Wouldn’t be good,” he muttered.

  Joe nodded. “Yeah. Wouldn’t be good. I’ve seen firsthand how it wouldn’t be good.” He shuddered, trying not to replay a slide show of the worst moments from his ER and ICU rotations. “Next time you have a friend on your bike, you either carry an extra or you go without, you hear me? That’s the right thing to do.”

  The kid nodded, his cheeks going paler in the cold and those expressive eyes welling up and shiny under the full moon.

  Joe sighed. “Go inside. There’s coffee made if you want. You can warm up before you go home.”

  “Thanks,” the kid whispered. He took some stiff-legged steps to the house, apparently planning to take Joe up on the offer, and Joe turned to Casey, who was looking embarrassed and still cold in the silver dark.

  “Sorry, Joe,” he muttered, not looking Joe in the eyes.

  Joe took a few steps in and put an arm over his shoulders, as much to warm him up as to steer him inside. “Jesus fucking Christ, kid, you ever hear of a goddamned phone? Scared the shit out of me.”

  Casey’s look was eloquent. “You were worried?”

  “’Course I was. You’ve been a model prisoner—always on time, no stopping to screw around, and suddenly you’re late? I would have come pick you up… not that you probably didn’t enjoy this ride more,” he said slyly.

  They’d reached the porch, and Joe stepped back to let Casey go through first. Casey’s cheeks were flushed, and he had the sort of complexion that would show that easily, so it was fun to watch.

  “He’s nice to me. But he goes to the regular high school.”

  Joe shrugged. “So?”

  Casey looked sideways. “Don’t think he’s ever been kissed.”

  “Kid?”

  Casey turned toward him, those defiant gray eyes of his trying their best to be hard. “Yeah?”

  “You’re still a kid. That shit you’re worried about? You can tell him if you want, but mostly, that’s yours to keep. As long as you use a rubber on your pecker when the time comes, it’s no one’s business unless you want it to be.”

  Casey frowned. “Why would I need a rubber on my peck—”

  “Casey?” Motorcycle Boy was already in the kitchen, and Joe had to admit, he sure did know how to make himself at home.

  “Yeah, Dev?”

  “Uhm… do you have milk? And sugar? And maybe some chocolate? I really hate coffee.”

  Casey pulled his head back and screwed up one side of his mouth. “Well, why did you pour yourself some, you moron?”

  “He said I should!” Dev peered around the partition that separated the kitchen from the entryway into the living room. His mouth made a perfectly round O when he saw Joe, and Joe tried very hard not to ruin the scary-man thing he apparently had going by laughing.

  Casey grimaced and muttered something like “Dumber than diaper shit,” and then pulled on a brittle, bright smile that Joe had never seen before. He walked into the kitchen and flashed that smile at Dev, then took the cup of coffee from him and set it on the counter. He started rummaging in the refrigerator while Dev stood by, looking at him helplessly. When Casey came out, he had a plastic gallon of milk, and he grabbed the sugar from the counter, reaching around Dev, and under his arms, and behind his back. When he finished, they were chest to chest, and Dev was blushing furiously, and Casey’s obvious irritation had faded to a faintly predatory look.

  Joe watched with interest, laughing softly to himself. God, the kid was resilient—a survivor of the first water. Joe loved him to death.

  Dev licked his lips, the gesture innocent enough, but Joe saw his cue. He backed out of the kitchen slowly, just as Casey leaned forward for a kiss.

  A half an hour later, he sat reading The Talisman by Stephen King (which he adored—it was his second reading, and he rarely reread a book) and was surprised by a soft knock on the door.

  “Yeah?”

  The door cracked open and Casey came in, looking lost. Joe was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. He used the book to gesture to the bottom of the bed, and Casey sat down, folding one leg under himself. He was still wearing his McDonald’s uniform pants—charcoal gray—and the rugby shirt that topped them, and he smelled faintly of grease and cooking meat. Usually he liked to shower as soon as he got home, but apparently tonight he’d had other things to do. His brown-gold hair was a little greasy, and his button nose was shiny and about to break out, but he’d put on maybe twenty pounds, and Joe thought he looked a long way from the scrawny half-dead thing he’d had to delouse four months earlier. His mother, a perpetual feeder of strays, would be proud.

  “I repeat, ‘Yeah?’”

  Casey grinned at him like he knew Joe was only trying to be grumpy and didn’t really have the heart for it. “I kissed him.”

  Joe kept his smile gentle under his beard. “Yeah?”

  “He’d been kissed before.”

  “By a boy?”

  “No.”<
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  “How’d he take it?”

  Casey laughed and looked down as his foot—covered in a slightly rank sweat sock—swung against the bottom of the bed frame. “He said he’d maybe like to do more of it.”

  Joe leaned forward and ruffled his hair, and Casey caught his hand.

  “You think this is going to change the way I feel about you?” Casey asked, and Joe pulled his hand away and threw himself back against the pillow with a sigh.

  “I’ll take the bike to town tomorrow and fix the truck while you’re in school. If nothing else, I’ve got a friend who can give you a ride—”

  Casey shook his head too quickly. “All right,” he said, brusquely, swallowing hard. “I get it. Off-limits. We’ll get the car fixed, we keep our little household going, we don’t talk about that.” Suddenly he stopped moving and pinned Joe back to the bed with those remarkable gray eyes. “Someday, I’m going to be old enough, and you’re going to have to deal with this—and don’t tell me I’ll have moved on by then. Even if I do, I don’t want to hear it now. But right now, I’ll be up and ready early, because you have to be at work at one, and I want you to have time to fix the truck and not have to hurry too fast, okay?”

  Joe nodded and pretended his heart wasn’t pattering in his ears in reaction to the sudden frightening prospect of fighting off Casey’s advances in a very real way. It was a good thing the kid had a head on his shoulders, or their cozy little household of two would be very, very doomed.

  “Yeah.” The quiet in the bare room hung heavily, but Casey wasn’t moving. Joe took a deep breath, not wanting to stop Casey from coming in and speaking his peace if he needed to. “You going to be doing more of it?” he asked.

  Casey looked up from the spot of secret sauce that he’d been scratching off the knee of his twill uniform pants. “What?”

  “Kissing Dev?”

  Casey blushed. “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s sweet and stupid, and he likes you. You need some of that.”

  Casey’s eyes slid sideways. “It’s not going to stay all John Hughes forever, you know.”

  “John who?”

  “God—when was the last time you went to the movies?”

  Joe opened his mouth and shut it. “I—”

  “You don’t even have a VCR.”

  “Well, I’ve—”

  “Look, after we fix the truck, let’s get one. There’s a rental place right in Foresthill. We don’t even have to go to Auburn. We can watch movies when we have time, okay?”

  “Yeah, kid, whatever you say. The twentieth century can move into the living room. I hear you.”

  Casey was abruptly the boy he needed to be and not the predatory, seductive man he’d been trying to be only moments before. “It’s about fucking time,” he said, pleased. He sobered for a moment and added, “Can I have Dev over to watch movies too?”

  All of the tension Joe had been holding in his neck and shoulders dribbled out. “Yeah, kid. Yeah. That’s fine. So, the kiss. It was okay?”

  Casey paused for a minute, searching for words. “It was coffee with too much cream and sugar,” he said eventually. He looked up at Joe, his grin a little bit evil. “And I like mine black.”

  Joe rolled his eyes, and they spoke for a few minutes more, and then Casey stood up and made to turn around. He paused at the bed, then whirled around and threw himself into Joe’s arms for a purely platonic, purely joyful hug. Joe returned it, feeling proud. This kid was going to grow up, fall in love, have a life. Joe could say he had a part of that. It felt every bit as good as his parents’ church services had said it would, and for a moment, as he watched Casey turn wordlessly and dart into the bathroom for his long-delayed shower, he almost believed, just like he had as a child, before his sister had died and his faith had been all sobbed out and bled away like his broken heart.

  But then, life with Casey would tend to be that way for Joe—moments of gorgeous, shining faith and moments of agonizing, painful doubt. Joe was young in his way too. It would take him years before he recognized the ebb and flow of true love.

  The Way It Is

  ~Casey

  1988

  CASEY remembered Joe’s stash box from when Joe had been hurt and Casey had been rifling his drawers to find a sweatshirt. It didn’t take a whole lot of resourcefulness to dig it out of Joe’s underwear drawer now, an intricately carved wooden box that smelled of patchouli and pot.

  Casey resolutely didn’t think of how much he hadn’t liked pot the first few times he’d tried it. Joe had had three cans of beer in the inside refrigerator—had being the operative word—and Casey thought that if he drank the other two cans in the garage refrigerator, he’d throw up. And they weren’t working. They made him woozy and weird, but he was still pissed and hurt and sad, and if the beer didn’t get rid of that shit, then maybe the pot would.

  There was an art to rolling a number. Casey had never quite mastered it when he’d lived at home, but then, he’d never had his own stash. He had it now. Joe wasn’t due home until midnight—another twelve-hour shift. Joe said they were great for the paycheck, and Casey could tell that working three or four twelves in a row could really free up the rest of his week, but they tired Joe out like nothing else. He usually spent his first day off sleeping. So this was his fourth in a row, and he wasn’t due back until midnight, and Casey could safely abuse his body until he forgot about the thing that had set him off.

  He sat at the couch and drunkenly rolled joints until he had a neat stack of dusty-smelling marijuana cigarettes in the little compartment, and then he took the handy-dandy lighter and lit up.

  His choking scared the shit out of the cats. All three of the fuzzy orange furballs went hauling ass for the unused upstairs until he’d calmed down and mastered the art of breathing once again, but by then? By then his head was nice and floaty, perfectly detachable from the rest of his body, and he was far, far away.

  He was still far, far away when Joe walked in less than an hour later. He was also down at least two joints, and the cats were all dizzily humping his leg and his arm and his ankle in an attempt to get even closer to that wonderful, unusual smell.

  “Oh shit,” Casey said, blinking watery eyes. It didn’t stop him from taking his next toke, though. He really didn’t want to lose this excellent feeling of not giving a perfectly round ripe shit about anything at all.

  Joe took a cautious look around the house, saw the three beer cans lined up neatly on the table, and the open box of stash. He blinked a couple of times and then swallowed hard, like he was trying to swallow his temper. He took three deep breaths, started coughing, and walked to the kitchen.

  He came back with a half a gallon of vanilla ice cream and a spoon. He handed it to Casey, and when Casey reached out for it, Joe took the joint from him and inhaled, grimacing when the smoke hit his throat.

  “Oh Christ, kid. This is the worst weed in history.”

  Casey shoved a spoonful of ice cream in his mouth and actually shuddered, it tasted so good. “Thank God,” he mumbled, trying to swallow and talk at the same time. “I thought the whole world was just nucking fucking futs, uhm, nuts, to be voluntarily doing that shit when it sucked this bad.”

  Joe sighed and plopped into the stuffed chair and propped his feet up on the end table. “Well, I reckon it’s been about two years since I got this. It’s old. It’s not supposed to be this hard to get high. Sort of defeats the purpose.”

  Casey nodded, totally sinking into the absolute joy of the ice cream. “Yeah, well, the purpose was to get high. It worked.”

  Joe inhaled again and nodded, exhaling before he spoke. “Bitchin’, kid. And helpful, since I’m not planning on buying any more of this shit. Can you tell me why we’re smoking two-year-old weed?”

  Casey swallowed and looked at him sorrowfully. “You weren’t supposed to be home.”

  Joe nodded and grabbed the little alligator clip from the box so they cou
ld smoke the roach down to the last of the paper. “Yeah, well, they stopped me at eight hours. Said twelve was too much overtime this week, it was a new policy. So you didn’t want me to see?”

  Casey shook his head no, then took another bite, then held his palm to his eyeball in pain. “Fuck… fuck… ice cream headache… ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch….”

  Joe was quiet until the explosion of cold in Casey’s head went away. When Casey looked up, Joe had a glass of tepid water at his elbow, and Casey drank that, grateful to feel the last of the ice cream headache go away. Good. Casey wasn’t finished wiping out the half gallon yet.

  “So…?” Joe asked, and as high as Casey undoubtedly was, he wasn’t high enough to forget the question. God, if only he could fucking forget something.

  “So I wanted to be high and asleep when you got home,” Casey said miserably, thinking that the ice cream, rich, creamy, full of milk and carbohydrates, might be the only thing that understood him.

  Joe nodded and gently put the roach out in the ashtray Casey had been using. It didn’t get a lot of service in Joe’s house—Casey had been lucky to find it.

  “So this was part of a plan,” Joe prodded, and Casey took another bite, then swirled the melty ice cream around his mouth moodily before answering.

  “Yes,” he decided after a moment. “I planned to get high.”

  “And when did you plan to get high, Casey? I’ve got to say, after three months of stone-cold sobriety, I’m sort of wondering why this suddenly seemed like such a good plan.”

  Casey put the ice cream down dispiritedly. “I don’t really like getting high,” he confessed. “I didn’t like it before, either. I just… people keep saying that you do it to forget shit. I wanted to forget something.”

  Joe laughed a little. “You mean like, I don’t know, a magic potion?”

  Casey nodded, not seeing any irony in it at all. “Yeah. I wanted a magic potion to make me forget.”