I gave his knee a squeeze. King Chaos loomed up ahead of us. Cripes.
I was glad I was too tall to ride. It looked like a stiff neck with Valium written all over it, even from the ground. The train tooted and chugged and pulled up to the spot we’d first climbed on. Jacob turned to give me a hand down, and then didn’t bother letting go of my hand. This was unusual for him. He’s not really into public displays of affection.
But he was having a sentimental kind of day.
Barbara and Clayton both stood and walked over. Clayton said, as if we were all talking about whether the clouds would turn to rain, or if we’d prefer pizza to burgers, “This kid Tyler at school says that faggots are perverts and they should all be put in jail.” Barbara went white. I let go of Jacob’s hand not because I gave a rat’s ass what an eleven-year-old snotnosed punk thought of me touching his uncle, but because I wanted to attempt to catch his mother if she fainted.
“Clayton Joseph,” Barbara barked. She sounded like Jacob telling a crackhead to drop his weapon. “You apologize this very second.”
“But that’s what he said.” Clayton’s whine cut through my head like a dentist’s drill. “I’m not making it up.”
Barbara put her face directly in her kid’s. “You are old enough to know when you’re repeating something that will hurt somebody’s feelings.”
“Barb.” Jacob sounded…I couldn’t quite place it. Maybe he sounded like I did when things went south—not like I’d been expecting anything better, but maybe I’d held out a glimmer of hope that it didn’t necessarily need to be all that bad. He sounded weary. “Clayton’s going to hear things. I’d rather he heard them from me.” He put his arm around Clayton, and what a relief, the kid didn’t flinch. I suspected he might not be at the point where he really got what sex was even about, not deep down in his balls.
I might’ve noticed other boys “that way” when I was his age, but come on. Back then Teen Beat was full of boy cheesecake, and I was assailed by images of smooth chests, long, feathered hair and limpid, dreamy-eyed smiles at the checkout line every time I grabbed a pack of gum. And maybe I was just ahead of the curve in that department—or maybe you’d have to be dead not to notice.
Jacob walked Clayton toward the snow cone stand while I jammed my hands in my pockets and wandered in a holding pattern, and Barbara dug around in her purse as if she might unearth the answer to all our problems there, if only she looked hard enough. Instead she found some clear lip gloss, the kind with the sponge tip applicator, which she applied with a vengeance.
“It’s not like it’s news to him that Jacob is gay,” she said. “We’ve always been upfront about it.”
My wet underwear clung to me like a trick who’d worn out his welcome. “Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know who this ‘Tyler at school’ person is.”
“Does it matter? I mean, if it’s not him, it’ll be someone else. Right?” Barbara spotted a bench covered in cartoon characters and sat down hard. I hovered behind her. Ten yards away, Jacob handed Clayton a green snow cone. The kid took it and gave it a lick, all the while looking daggers at us. At me. The snow cone vendor handed Jacob another one. Red. Jacob caught my eye and pointed at his blindingly red snow cone as if to ask me if I wanted one. I shook my head.
“It’s nice of you to sit out all the rides so that Clayton can be with Jacob. He idolizes my brother, you know. It probably doesn’t seem like it, what with that outburst.”
“No, I um…” I perched on the back of the bench and my wet underwear rode up my ass. “He’s probably, uh, y’know.” Damn it. Words were so useless sometimes. I did my best to figure out a way to say he was just being especially bratty because some fag was monopoliz-ing his uncle—without coming out and using those exact words. “He probably feels…things…more intensely. Because they’re so close.”
She gave me a sideways look, one of those zingers where I totally saw Jacob around the eyes, the type of look he’d give me when he knew I wasn’t being polygraph-level truthful with him. Then she sighed and re-settled her purse in her lap. “Yeah. Probably.”
“I’m not so big on rides anyway.”
Another Jacob-ish look, a notch or two more analytical. “Is there some medical reason…?”
“No, uh…not exactly.” Was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder medical?
No doubt. But I’d been diagnosed by my backstabbing ex, and not a real doctor—although Stephan
was
technically a health care professional nowadays. The whole thing made me want to break out in a cold sweat. “Maybe.”
“Huh.” She found a pair of sunglasses in her purse, blew the lint off the lenses, and put them on. “I always pictured Jacob with someone a little more athletic.”
What was that supposed to mean?
Jacob and Clayton had taken the long way around the food court, and they approached the bench, Clayton with green-tinged lips, Jacob with a wicked red mouth. Jacob stopped a couple of steps back and Clayton shuffled forward. I’d figured he was going to ask his mother for something, but then I realized he was aimed, more or less, at me.
Neither one of us cared to initiate eye contact.
“I’m sorry I said something rude about gay people,” he said. There was no inflection in the sentence, as if he’d read it, poorly, from a teleprompter.
“Yeah, uh…” what was I supposed to say? Apology accepted? You’re forgiven? How queer. “That’s okay.”
The tension was thick enough to cut with a spork, but then, as if nothing had just happened, Clayton suddenly brightened, turned to Jacob and said, “If we can’t go on King Chaos, can we ride the Scrambler again?”
“Always remember—your most effective tool is your mind. Safety and liability can go hand in hand, but it’s critical that you assess the situation and determine the correct amount of force.” I did my best not to roll my eyes at the trainer, a brick wall of a guy named Sando. I don’t know if the name was Greek, Hispanic, or what—or even if it was supposed to be his first or his last name. Or neither, or both. Like Cher.
Well, probably not much like Cher.
Evidently some meth head was suing the Sixteenth Precinct because he’d broken one of the small bones in his wrist by flailing around while he was cuffed—the fact that he’d been caught in the act of robbing a Stop ’n’ Go convenience store armed with a baseball bat wrapped in a rusty bike chain notwithstanding—and so now we all needed to learn how to use nylon restraints.
My neck was sore from too many log flumes the day before, but I resisted the urge to rub it. I’ve always found that staying very, very still tends to keep trainers’ focus off me.
“When you size up a situation, first thing, determine your tactical advantage. For instance…” Sando scanned the room.
I held my breath, but unfortunately, he spotted me. I glanced at my partner, Bob Zigler, who gave me a subtle shrug. Damn. I should’ve stood in front of a darker wall. Or maybe the unfortunate sunburn I’d scored at the amusement park was to blame. Nothing like a big, pink target.
“Detective?” Sando motioned me to the center of the room. I tried to pretend I didn’t see that smug jackass Raleigh from down the hall smirking at my discomfort.
I sighed and stepped forward. “Now, in your case, you take advantage of your reach.” Did he know I almost never arrested anyone? That I was there to wander through crime scenes after the fact? Really, I had more in common with the forensics techs than the beat cops. He took me by the wrist—I hate being touched—and furled my arm up toward my chest. “Defensive stance. Now. Say I take a swing at you.” He did a slow-mo swing. “Put your hand on my shoulder and push. I don’t connect. See?”
Right. Are we through yet?
“Grab the arm, twist, and pop the elbow.”
I fumbled with Sando’s arm. He was pretty muscular. Not like Jacob, but still. A beefy guy.
“Plant your foot next to the perp’s—make a fulcrum—throw him off-balance. Now twist the arm, pivot, and slide the loop.” I went through all the motions. The chance of me ever getting my foot in the right place at the right time in real life were slim to none, but the sooner I got the nylon cuffs on Sando, the sooner I could get back to standing against the wall and trying to be invisible. I pulled the tab, then tried to wrangle his other hand into the second nylon loop.
This time, he actually resisted me—which was a lot more like real life.
And I was so not up for real life at that particular moment.
“Use your reach. Pop and twist.”
I tried to figure out where to “pop” the elbow. His bulging biceps was distracting.
“Tactics. Think smart. Training wins out over size, so even if you’re at a disadvantage with upper-body strength—moving fast, knowing where to hit, that’ll be the difference that makes the apprehension.” Nice of him to point out my upper-body strength…or lack thereof.
Maybe he’d always pictured the Fifth Precinct with someone more
athletic
. I wrangled the second loop onto his other hand and pulled the tab, and turned back toward the place where I’d been standing, minding my own business.
Sando’s hand closed over my wrist. “Again.”
Oh, fuck me.
• • •
The only good thing about the nylon handcuff training was that we’d started at six and wrapped up at ten, so it was almost like having another day off. I went back home and changed out of my suit, then turned on the TV. It showed about two and a half commercials, and then the screen turned to snow when the cable went out—which it seemed to do every two days, and which left me with nothing to do but ruminate over the faggot remark. And the
athletic
remark. And the lack of upper-body strength remark.
Sticks and Stones opened at eleven. I found myself on the landing in front of the store at five ’til. I knocked.
There was movement behind the door, shuffling and footsteps, and then the door opened a couple of inches before a security chain stopped it. One of Crash’s eyes appeared in the space, and his single-eyed gaze raked me up and down. “Where’s your polyester suit?”
“I’m done for the day.”
He closed the door, undid the chain, and opened it again. “Good. I need a hand with this display. And you brought lunch. The day’s looking better and better. Set it on the counter for a sec.”
When I stepped into the store, the incense smell was mellow, like Crash hadn’t burned any copal since the night before. The store’s vibe, its island of calm in the static of life, sank in right away—and when I thought about it in that safe haven, the trip to the theme park felt more like some kind of life lesson than a reason to hate all children forever more.
I set the McDonald’s bag on the counter and had a look around, but I didn’t see Miss Mattie. I even lingered briefly, but she wasn’t there.
She could’ve been invisible, I suppose, but I had the feeling that she wasn’t exactly the type to stand around eavesdropping—and if she was, doing that with Crash around would probably result in a hell of an earful. What she did while she wasn’t there, I’d never been able to figure out. Did she have places to go, people to see? Could she appear anywhere she wanted, anytime? Did she have a job? No idea.
I hurried back to the front of the store since I didn’t want to seem too obvious. Crash gets annoyed when I’m more excited to see his dead neighbor than him.
I joined him beside the front door. We were both in jeans—his were rattier. Both in T-shirts—his cooler, with a mostly washed-off Black Flag logo and the sleeves cut off to showcase his ink. To top it off, he had on a pyramid-studded belt with a skull and crossbones belt buckle. He could pull it off. I couldn’t. Not anymore.
He looked me up and down again. He was chewing gum, and somehow he managed to do it critically. “Don’t tell me you tried a tanning bed.”
“No. I went outside.”
“Uh huh. You’ve got that milky white, blue-eyed Irish thing going on.
There is such a thing as sunscreen, you know.” Did I have Irish blood in me? I’d never given it any thought. “I was wearing sunscreen.” I snuck a quick glance at the counter to see if Miss Mattie was there yet. She wasn’t.
“How long did you stay out of your cave?”
“I dunno. All day.”
Crash blew a small bubble, then cracked it loudly. “Right. Live and learn. Here, hold this chair so I can reach the ceiling.” The chair in question was so rickety it would have made a better tripod. “Don’t you have a stepladder?”
“Yeah, I have a whole stepladder collection, I just dig standing on chairs ’cos I like to live dangerously. What do you think?” He probably didn’t want to know what I thought. I decided to cut my losses on that particular portion of the conversation and hold his damn chair for him. He climbed up and started sticking pushpins into the ceiling. I kept my eyes on his hands, because it was safer than letting on that I noticed his belt buckle in my face. Dollar bills—or drawings of dollar bills in his weird, cramped hand—were tethered to the pushpins on clear fishing line. A few well-placed pushpins, and suddenly it was raining money inside Sticks and Stones. Pretty cool.
“What’s the, uh…concept?”
“The fucking economy. People who’re trapped in a bad mortgage, who lost a job they thought was secure to outsourcing, all of ’em are desperate to patch up their wallets.”
“With occult supplies?”
“Sure.” Crash hopped down, put his hands on his hips and looked up at his handiwork. “My top three sellers, in order, used to be love spells, money charms, and revenge hexes. Now the love and money are flip-flopped.”
I glanced down at a few boxes of merchandise Crash had pulled.
Soaps, incenses and even aerosol sprays with names like Fast Luck Money Drawing, Horn of Plenty and Luck in a Hurry. I knew that if Crash sold it, it must have been legit in some sense of the word—and if I could exorcise ghosts with salt from the Stop ’n’ Go where they sold lottery tickets and Freezee drinks, someone could increase their cash flow with Nine Lucky Mixture bath and floor wash. I wasn’t sure who. But someone.
“What should I call it? I was thinking it might be amusing to make a poster that says Golden Shower of Wealth and see if anyone notices.”
“Serious?”
“Eh, maybe not. Most of my customers are either too old, too religious or too foreign to fully appreciate my sense of humor.” I wasn’t sure a pee joke was the best moneymaking idea, but Crash seemed to enjoy it. “It’s your store. Why be your own boss if you can’t please yourself?”