“Fer, please don’t make me come home.”
“What am I supposed to do? Less than a month ago—less than a month ago, Augustus—you called me and told me you’d gotten mugged. Then, yesterday, I got a call telling me you were unconscious in the hospital, beaten within an inch of your life. And if you open your mouth and tell me those things weren’t connected, I’m going to flip you over and spank your ass raw. Those rent boys you keep hiring with my money are going to think they’re plowing into a pair of traffic lights. Do you understand me?”
“Oh my God. This is actually worse than being dead. Do you understand that?”
“Augustus!”
“Ok, yes. I . . . I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Of course I worry! All I do is worry about you! Jesus fucking Christ, I worry about you getting your heart broken again, I worry about you getting gay bashed in this state that is the geographic equivalent of America’s pucker, I worry about your grades, I worry about your major, I worry about you getting a job when you graduate, I worry about you making the right kind of friends, I worry that you aren’t having enough fun, I worry that you’re having too much fun, I worry about you finding a nice guy that’ll get your tummy packed full of babies, I worry about you so much that I don’t sleep sometimes. I love you, you stupid drip of cocksnot. How the fuck am I not going to worry about you?”
Auggie cried some more. Fer cooled down after round two. Things got better, and they split the Jell-o that came with Auggie’s dinner and watched Wheel of Fortune on the CRT mounted in the corner.
“Fer,” Auggie said when Fer was getting ready to leave for his hotel. “Please don’t make me go home.”
Fer grunted.
“Please. I promise things will be different.”
“If,” Fer said as he pulled on an old barn coat that Auggie hadn’t even known he owned. “If you do not get sent to prison, where your asshole will be converted into a receptacle for toilet wine—if!” He held up a finger. “We can discuss maybe the possibility that you could be allowed provisionally to finish the semester.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Fer. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Jesus Christ,” Fer muttered as he left. “What the fuck did I do to deserve this?”
18
Theo spent two days in the county jail before a lawyer named Aniya Thompson bailed him out. The first day was bad. His hands hurt from the punches he’d landed, and the nurse wouldn’t give him anything stronger than Tylenol. He kept seeing flashes of the fight: the punch connecting with Auggie’s head; that drunken half-step; Auggie on the ground; the blizzard that had whited out his vision. Not since Luke, he would think to himself in sudden bursts of clarity. Not since Luke had he done anything like that, felt anything like that. And in other moments, with a vividness that made his guts twist, he would count all the pills he knew he still had stashed around the house. He would walk himself through each room: four behind that electrical outlet; one inside that burned-out lightbulb; a strip of Scotch tape with six where the jamb was loose. It was better than going to the movies.
The year before, Theo had visited an inmate at the Dore County Correctional Center with Auggie. Before coming into the building, as they’d sat in the Malibu, Theo had kissed Auggie. He’d done it for a lot of reasons: because he wanted to, because he’d been thinking about it for months, but mostly to make a point. Whatever the point had been, Theo had forgotten it, but he remembered the kiss. Remembered the softness of that expressive mouth under his own lips. Remembered Auggie’s owlish eyes after.
Thompson was wide-hipped and generously built, her hair in beaded braids. In her suit, she looked so fresh she might have just snagged her diploma from the dean and hustled off to take her first case. She waited while Theo collected his belongings.
“Who hired you?”
“Sorry. Client confidentiality.”
“It wasn’t my parents,” Theo said. “And it wasn’t my brothers. So who was it?”
“Mr. Stratford, I’ve got other things to do. I want to get you home, talk about options, and move on.”
“If it was Auggie, you can tell me. I won’t let him know.”
She put her hands on her hips. She looked like she was three seconds away from tapping her foot.
“Fine,” Theo said as he pulled on his coat. “I’ll figure it out.”
On the drive back, she said, “The Reese family isn’t pressing charges for the breaking and entering or the attempted burglary.”
“Nice of them, since I wasn’t attempting anything.”
“Regardless of what Wayne Reese decides in terms of civil action, I’m pretty sure the County Attorney will be moving forward with assault charges. She’ll start with second-degree, which is a felony, but if you’ll keep your mouth shut and let me do my best, I think we can get it down to fourth-degree, which is a whisker over the line into misdemeanor. Your boyfriend had been attacked and rendered unconscious. Normally, it’d be a pretty clear case of self-defense, but the damage you did . . .” She shook her head. “The county’s going to have a lot of fun with pictures of him in the hospital. People won’t be able to tell it’s Wayne Reese, that’s how bad it is. Tell me what happened.”
“I’ve already told everyone what happened.”
“Get used to it. You’re going to tell me a hundred times if I ask you to, so start talking.”
Theo worked his jaw. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Well, you’d better tell me about that too.”
Theo sketched out the events that had taken place from the moment Wayne walked into the house. Thompson asked questions. He ignored them. They drove the last ten minutes in silence.
“Think about what you want,” Thompson said when she dropped him at his house. “But if you dig in your heels now and then decide you want my help after they’ve got you in county again, my rates are double.”
Mumbling thanks, Theo got out of the car. He went inside, locked the door behind him, and went to the bathroom. He took down the shower curtain rod, held it at an angle, and rocked it back and forth until the plastic baggie slid free. He took two of the pills, replaced the bag, and returned the shower rod to its mounting. After dry swallowing, he leaned against the sink, his back to the mirror. He considered the floor, where he’d left a trail of muddy shoeprints and snowmelt. This isn’t normal, a part of his brain told him. Normal people aren’t in such a hurry that they can’t take off their shoes, can’t even wipe their feet before they get their fix. He pulled the towel from the rod and mopped up his trail, and then he toed off his boots near the door. He was vaguely aware that the furnace had turned on, the pills had kicked in, and he was flushed and sweating. Stripping out of his clothes, he stumbled to the couch, lay down, and fell asleep.
Knocking woke him.
Everything had balanced out by then, the slight cloudiness in his thinking just enough. Wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, he made his way to the door. Brown eyes, he thought. Mouth shifting nervously from grin to worry and back to grin. He’ll be tangled in his scarf, and I’ll have to help him out of it.