Sidecar Read online

  But without even talking about it, Casey had stayed downstairs to keep an eye on Stacia. Now that the girl had eaten, she seemed less predatory and more sleepy, and sure enough, she dozed off on the chair. Casey woke her up and steered her toward his bedroom to put her to sleep. It had posters of George Michael in it now, and a new blue bedspread, because that was his favorite color, and blue-and-brown sheets, not hospital sheets anymore, that he’d gotten for Christmas. He hated letting her lie down there, but he felt like he had no choice. He took a spare blanket from the hall closet and the extra pillow and went to sleep on the couch.

  Joe came back down cautiously about an hour after he usually went to bed. “She asleep?” he asked from the stairway, and Casey looked up from his spot on the couch.

  “Yeah. It’s safe.”

  Joe grunted and rubbed the back of his neck. “Speak for yourself. I think we’re going to have to get a dog if you plan on bringing any more humans home, kid. I’m not sleeping well tonight, that’s for certain.”

  Casey refrained from pointing out that the most serious danger was from Stacia’s speculative, overtly sexual glances in Joe’s direction when they’d come in from the garage. If she was planning on a new sugar daddy, she had come to the wrong place—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make trouble before she figured that out.

  Joe ate a sandwich standing up, then ruffled Casey’s hair and went off to his shower and to bed. That had been an hour ago. The hinges on Casey’s door squeaked—not loudly, but Casey had been lightly dozing when they’d made their telltale little alarm, and his eyes had popped open. He lay, still and motionless on the couch, half expecting the ceramic clink of the cookie jar next.

  He didn’t hear anything for a moment, and then:

  THUMP!

  “Oh, ouch! You asshole!”

  “Stay out of my bed! Jesus Christ, you fuckin’ kids, you’re gonna be the death of me!”

  “But I was just gonna—”

  “You were just gonna go back to your own goddamned bed! I’m calling social services right the fuck now!”

  And to Casey’s surprise, as Stacia’s footsteps padded rapidly back to Casey’s room, sure enough, he heard Joe’s voice leaving a message for social services. Casey was mildly shocked—he hadn’t realized Joe had the number by the phone.

  But that was okay. Joe had never used it for Casey. They were a team. He liked that. He could live with that. It was okay.

  Mandolin Rain

  ~Joe

  THEY got a giant something dog. Joe had no idea what breed it was, but it was big and white with what looked like a black bandit’s mask across its eyes. Casey didn’t name it Bandit, though. He’d been watching lots and lots of movies with Joe, and Raising Arizona had been a favorite.

  They named the dog Hi. Hi Huxtable, because Casey watched a lot of television too.

  And Joe loved that dog almost as much as Casey did. It’d started out at about twenty pounds, and the damned dog could skid across the floor on his stomach and eat shoes like nobody’s business. Casey’s money, which Joe had been making him save for college and gas for the car, started paying for Frisbees, rubber toys, and replacement shoes as well. It was all right, though—Joe was glad Casey had found a calling. Apparently taking care of the dog gave him something that school and work did not, and Joe really liked that Casey wasn’t alone on the big spread when Joe was working late.

  So Hi Huxtable the dog was a wonderful addition to their family, and right now, at—Joe squinted at the clock radio—2:13 in the morning, he was barking his fool head off. Fuck.

  “Hi! Hi, goddammit, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” It was summer, which meant it got down to seventy degrees at night, so Joe left the windows open. The heater worked in the winter, but air-conditioning was not happening yet, so it was leave the windows open, turn on the fans, and dust like mad or everything would turn the rust color of the dirt on the ground outside.

  The dog kept barking, so Joe hauled his body out of bed, pulled on some scrub bottoms, and looked out the window. Oh fuck.

  Hi wasn’t the only one barking. Rufus was over there in the backyard barking too. The two of them were playing like long-denied friends—which they were, since they usually just licked each other’s ears across the fence line—but there was no reason for Rufus to be there unless Ira Kenby had left the gate open.

  Fuck. Joe swore and pounded down the stairs, calling for Casey. He wasn’t in the living room, which surprised Joe, because Dev’s motorcycle was still outside, so if he’d thought about it, Joe shouldn’t have been surprised by what he saw when he opened Casey’s door and shot the light on, but he was.

  Casey was naked, on his hands and knees, sideways to the door, and Dev was behind him, his cock fully sheathed in Casey’s ass. Casey was gasping—with pleasure, Joe was pretty sure, but also with surprise, because this was clearly something he didn’t have a lot of practice at, at least in the good way. The little jar of Vaseline from the medicine cabinet was next to them.

  There wasn’t a rubber in sight.

  Joe blinked hard twice, and Casey jerked his head sideways.

  Dev said, “Oh shit!”, pulled out, and literally threw himself on the ground next to the bed and rolled over in the comforter, which was lying half on the floor.

  Joe and Casey turned and looked after him in surprise, and then Joe’s sense of humor asserted itself and he choked back a giggle. “Rufus, uhm—”

  “Rufus?” Casey repeated incredulously, still looking at Dev.

  “He’s out, Casey. He’s playing with your retarded dog, and the two of them already dumped Dev’s motorcycle because they’re stupid. I’m worried about Ira—I need you to put Hi in the garage so I can take Rufus back.”

  While Joe was talking, Casey had rolled off the bed and pulled on a pair of scrubs that had been lying on the chair by the end table, suddenly all responsible and on task. “Yeah, Joe, I got it.”

  Joe nodded, pleased. He was the last person to tell the kid that he couldn’t get busy. He hadn’t been prepared—next time, he’d be damned sure to knock.

  “I’m, uhm, sorry ’bout….” Casey jerked his chin in Dev’s direction.

  Dev had pulled the comforter over his body and was huddling there, parallel to the base of the bed, his skinny shins and big feet sticking out at the end. He was pretending like they couldn’t see him.

  Casey grimaced and, finally, blushed. “I… uhm….” He stood up and slid on some moccasins the puppy hadn’t chewed on. “I, well, you know….”

  “Jesus, kid. You’ve been dating for months. I just didn’t realize you’d finally gotten your thing on. C’mon. Let’s leave so Dev can die in peace.”

  “Thanks,” came Dev’s muffled voice, and Joe finally started to like the kid, and then they had better things to do.

  Joe grabbed two leashes from the garage worktable on his way out. He called Rufus and Casey called Hi. They put Hi into the garage, and Joe took Rufus toward the small gate he’d cut into the fencing after the whole biting incident. Casey caught up with him as he neared Ira’s house, which was in even worse shape than Joe’s had been when Joe moved in.

  “Where’s the dog?” Joe asked as Rufus started to whine and tug at his lead.

  “I left him in the house with Dev.”

  “Isn’t Dev afraid of him?”

  “A little bit. Serves him right. I told him Vaseline would suck as lubricant.” Casey executed a weird little pelvic wiggle. “God, that shit’s gonna be in there for fucking ever.”

  Joe fought the temptation to bash his head into a tree just to get the image of Dev and Casey out of it. God, some things you did not want to know about a roommate. “Kid, there’s a Raley’s in the parking lot of McDonald’s. Buy some fucking condoms and some fucking lube before you start fucking again, okay?”

  “What is the whole condom thing about?” Casey asked irritably. “I’m pretty sure he’s not going to knock me up!”

  Rufus was pulling on Joe’s arm, but
Joe took a moment to stop still and turn to Casey, who was squinting at the dim path through the pine trees and red dirt. “Kid, have you not heard of VD? Did you think that’s just for girls with itchy cooters?”

  Casey’s confusion was heartbreaking. “But Joe, you had me get all sorts of shots after the social worker said I could stay. One of those would have taken care of the clap, you think? And Dev’s a… was a virgin. I mean, what’s to worry?”

  Joe closed his eyes, seeing the daily workweek that he kept from Casey flashing behind them. Curtained units, places where people wore hazard masks all day long and picked up extra pay to work. Skin with crackling lesions; haunted eyes, miserable with loneliness; and the patina of fear so thick it filled the nostrils with something even worse than hospital stink.

  “Look,” Joe said, knowing Rufus was getting more and more frantic with every passing moment, “you, me, and Dev, we’ve got to have a talk, okay? And it’s not going to be one any of us is going to be comfy having, so just throw on your bulletproof Underoos and we’ll have at it. But not now.” And with that, he gave in to his inner stirrings of unease and trotted after Rufus as the poor dog whined and pulled his way to Ira’s disintegrating cabin.

  Apparently the cabin wasn’t just disintegrating, it had disintegrated, with Ira in it. When they opened the front door—which no one ever locked—Ira called faintly to them. Rufus whimpered and ran through a plain living room decorated with piles of newspaper and old dusty furniture, and into the back bedroom.

  Ira had been married. His bedroom was actually neat and clean, with little rugs on either side of the bed and a woman’s vanity dresser, still laid out with a small mirror, comb, and matching brush, just like they’d been when Ira’s wife had died. But past the bedroom was the bathroom, and Joe turned on the light and steeled himself for what he’d see next.

  “Fuck me stupid!” Casey muttered, and Joe winced.

  “Help me,” Ira whimpered, but Joe wasn’t sure he could.

  The hallway floor under their feet felt creaky with dry rot, and Ira’s bathroom had apparently had enough. It had given out under Ira’s feet, and as Ira had flailed backward, his old bones had given out too. He lay there, scrawny, wrinkled, and naked, his bathrobe flopping around his skinny body, both of his legs obviously broken at the tibia and submerged in the subflooring of the bathroom.

  “Oh fuck,” Joe muttered. “We’re gonna need some fucking help.” Rufus was licking Ira’s face in comfort, and Joe hoped that worked.

  The first thing he did was call an ambulance, and the fire department, and then he got some blankets and made Ira more comfortable and less exposed. The old man wasn’t particularly coherent, and he mumbled for Dotty, his late wife, as his gnarled hand dug itself into Rufus’s ruff. His white hair—a bird’s nest under the best of times—was lank and sweaty on his tanned forehead, and Joe made sure he had a pillow under his head as he wrapped blankets around his chest, waist, and upper legs.

  Then he and Casey grimly analyzed the problem.

  “We gotta move his feet up,” Casey said, his voice husky. “Looking at it that way—it’s just wrong.”

  And Joe feared that Ira having his legs bent like that around his fractured bones was more than wrong. The flesh was mottled and swollen—Ira could be bleeding internally at the fracture site from the way it looked. Besides, the paramedics couldn’t care for him any better than Joe could when he was stuck halfway through his floor.

  Joe sent Casey to his garage to bring back the circular saw and a dolly, and had the kid crawl under the house to support Ira’s feet as he sawed around the cracked wood. At first he thought Casey was going to argue. The crawl space under the house was dark, especially in the middle of the night—dank, muddy, and there were spiders and other crawlies down there. Even if you weren’t a girl in a pink dress, it still wasn’t a picnic, and not everybody had the stomach for it. But Ira moaned in pain even as Casey was wrinkling his nose, and then the kid took an unhappy look at Joe and went to work.

  He kept up a running monologue of “Ick! Crap! What’s that! Oh, fucking ew! Jesus! Oh crap—is that a black widow? Oh gross! Oh God—something shit down here. I’m gonna need to sit in the bathtub for a fucking week!” but he did it, and he did it well. He never wavered while holding the dolly steady so Ira’s bones didn’t break through his skin, and he was gentle and steady as he pushed the dolly up so Joe could back Ira up and lay him flat, his legs lying on the piece of plywood, supported by the rolling wheels.

  By the time the paramedics got there, Ira had gone into shock, and Joe backed off as they wrapped the old man’s legs in pressure casts and administered fluids before dropping the gurney and lifting him on.

  Joe knew one of the guys, and Derrick clapped him on the shoulder as they were wheeling Ira out.

  “Nice work there—you want to do some ride-alongs?”

  Joe rolled his eyes. “I just want to know the old guy’s gonna be okay,” he said sincerely, and Derrick grimaced.

  “Gotta tell you, Joe, it’s not looking great. Whatever happens, I don’t think he’s going to be able to come back here to live.”

  Joe looked around the place, with the floorboard popping up and the drywall falling down, and sighed. “He’s got a son who lives in SoCal. I’ll give Richard a call and see if he can come get him settled someplace else.”

  Derrick nodded. “That would probably be a good idea. He’s going to be in the hospital for a while—if nothing else, he might like a visit.”

  “We’ll visit him,” said Casey, coming up behind them, and Joe turned and ruffled his hair.

  “You’re a good kid,” he said, feeling tired. The sun had risen in the last couple of minutes, and he found himself squinting into the red light. The temperature had dropped too, and the shorts and T-shirt he’d worn to bed were suddenly not nearly enough.

  Casey shrugged and grinned, and then a sudden look of panic crossed his face.

  “Oh shit! Dev!” and without another word he whistled for Rufus and went trotting down the path that led to their houses.

  Joe smiled a little. “D’you see that? Just took the dog, no questions asked. That’s my boy.”

  Derrick was looking at him with considerable warmth. “That’s the kid you took in, right?”

  Joe nodded and smiled a little. And then blushed. Derrick had light-brown hair with reddish tints, especially in the russet light, and light-brown eyes. He was a little younger than Joe, and apparently, he swung that way on occasion too.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “We’re sort of roommates.”

  Derrick’s grin cranked up a notch. “Would your roommate mind if you took a night off for dinner?”

  Joe blinked. He was not used to being come on to. Usually there was a gentle sort of waltz before he ended up having dinner. But Sharon had not taken the news of the social worker well at all and, after slapping his face (a surprise!) and yelling that Joe loved Casey more than he loved her (well, duh!), had marched off into the sunset. She’d actually quit the floor at Auburn and was currently working at the railroad as their on-call nurse, just to get away from him. It had been a long time since someone had shown Joe the sort of interest looking out from Derrick’s eyes right now.

  “Uhm, okay,” he said, feeling awkward. “You… uhm, I think you took my number when your partner was getting my info. Give me a call.”

  Derrick winked and promised he would, then hopped into the ambulance. The bus rattled down Ira’s road, which was as out of repair as the rest of the house, and Joe wandered back down the path between the trees, thinking that he was going to need a couple of hours of sleep before he got up to go to work.

  Then he saw Casey and Dev cozying up in front of Dev’s little four-banger motorbike, and he sighed. One more thing to do before he slept.

  He walked up to them and rolled his eyes when Dev turned bright red and buried his face in Casey’s shoulder.

  “Very cute,” Joe said dryly. “But ineffective. You two—tomorrow’s my day off
. We’re gonna take a little field trip and have ourselves a little discussion. No sex until then, okay? You hear me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Daniels,” Dev said, his face still tucked into Casey’s shoulder. Casey put his hand protectively on the back of Dev’s head and rolled his eyes at Joe.

  “You done intimidating him?” Casey asked mildly, and Joe grinned at him.

  “Nowhere near. Now I gotta go call Ira’s son and let him know what happened. I work today and tomorrow we’ve got a date, but I’ve got a feeling we’re spending the rest of our spare time up at Ira’s place, getting his shit in order, so don’t make any plans, okay?”

  Casey nodded. “Yeah, I got it. We keeping Rufus?”

  Joe’s lips quirked. “I’d lay odds. Let’s act like we’re gonna, okay? He’s going to be confused enough as it is.”

  And with that, he left the babes in boyland to have their sweet nothings while he dialed the number he’d gotten from Ira’s drawer while he’d been waiting for the paramedics to wheel Ira out. An hour later, after a conversation that involved Joe listening to Richard yell at his wife a lot for his suitcases and then complain bitterly about time he couldn’t afford to lose from work, Joe tramped back up his own stairs for a little shut-eye.

  God, tomorrow was going to suck.

  First he cleared it with his supervisor at work, who had looked at him with a combination of admiration and revulsion. “The kid’s getting it on with his boyfriend, and this is your idea of an intervention?”