Page 22
My boy hadn’t been my trainer; I’d been a detective before I came to Wahredua. But in the ways that counted, he’d trained me better than any other partner I’d had. And my boy had told me there was only one rule for interviews: keep them talking. If they stop talking, the interview is over.
“Twenty-eight.”
“God, to be twenty-eight again. Eat whatever you want. Drink whatever you want. Fuck whoever you want.”
The word, dropped so casually into the conversation, was like a slap.
I kept my voice steady as I asked, “Did you know Lola Wheeler?”
“No.”
“That’s a lie. You hired dancers from the Beaver Trap. She was one of them. Then you knocked her around and got off on it.”
“What does she look like?”
I frowned. “Forties. Blond—well, it’s a wig. Big chest.”
“Big chest,” he said with a little laugh, and for some reason, I blushed. “I remember her. I didn’t know her name. I certainly wouldn’t say I know her.”
“Did you become physical with her?”
“That can have so many meanings.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“Yes.”
The response left me flat-footed again, and again, I had the sense that some internal system was offline, that I had made a mistake, coming here, that I should come back—or that someone else should come back—and do this another time.
“Are you an only child?” Sunny asked. His tone was polite, interested. Like we were stuck together, and he was passing the time.
I had to fight that same urge to be stubborn. Finally I said, “Yes. So, you admit to injuring Lola Wheeler while she was working for you as a dancer?”
“I told you I hurt her. I wouldn’t say I injured her. I’m a sadist, but I wouldn’t have caused her any lasting harm. Cosmetic, mostly. Bruises. Sometimes, I cut.”
The image swam up to me of Tip, that night at the party: staggering out from between the cars, that little blue jock sliding down one hip, his face a bloody mess where bits of glass glittered like trapped starlight. The memory disoriented me, and when I came back to myself, I felt like it had been a long time, and I caught myself holding my breath.
“Are you all right?” Sunny asked.
I shook my head at the question. “Did you know Tip went to the Beaver Trap to find out who had hurt his mother?”
“No.” And then, “What’s your relationship like with your father?”
“The fuck?”
He burst out laughing. “Not an easy question to answer. All right. Tell me one good memory of your father.”
“My best memories of my dad were when he was so drunk he passed out in front of the TV. How’s that?”
“Trite. And predictable. And boring. A good memory, please.”
“What the fuck do you think this is?”
“What did you call it? An informal interview?”
“Answer the question: did you know Tip went to the Beaver Trap?”
“Answer mine.”
The room seemed impossibly quiet for a house full of people; I couldn’t hear anything but the hiss of white noise.
“He took me to a Chiefs game.”
“How old were you?”
I shook my head, but I said, “Six. Seven.”
Sunny watched me over his glass again.
Autumn had come early. The night had been cold. My dad had given me his satin Chiefs jacket, and it had smelled like him. Like his cigarettes. He had stopped to talk to a police officer. Talked too much, really, but on the drive over, he’d already gotten three beers deep. Kept talking and talking. Telling the police officer how important his job was. Thanking him for his service. Telling me, too. He’d been a young guy, fit, a hard body under a tight uniform. I’d been too young to understand why I was interested except that my dad thought police were so awesome.
Later, I realized how embarrassing the whole thing was—the fanboying, my dad throwing a bone for every cop who crossed his path. He’d wanted to become a police officer, he’d told me later, me with my hot dog, him with another beer. It just hadn’t worked out. I said I wanted to be one. You should have seen his face light up.
I went to take another drink and was surprised to find my glass empty. I cleared my throat and said, “Did you know?”
“No. I told you: I didn’t know that boy. Why would I know what he was doing?”
“The woman who owns that place, the one you hire dancers from, she didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That Tip showed up and caused an altercation.”
Sunny had straight, white teeth in a perfect smile. “No, Gray. I don’t have contact with her outside of our business arrangements. And just to be clear, I don’t hire dancers. I hire whores.”
My headache was back. Maybe it was the drink. My injured eye was starting to throb. I wanted to say, Say that again . I smiled.
“What’s it like,” Sunny asked, “being a gay cop in a place like this?”
“That question is trite. Predictable. Boring.”
He laughed. “All right. Do you like to fuck or get fucked?”
“Do I have to choose?”
He laughed again. Those intensely dark eyes were practically sparkling.
“What happened when Tip confronted you?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“At your party. See, that’s why he was here. I know what he told his friends, but that was the whole reason he came. He wanted to see you. He wanted to talk to you. To be frank, I think he wanted to beat the shit out of you for tuning up on his mom. So, what happened?”
The laughter had gone out of Sunny’s face. He was still watching me, trying to keep his expression neutral, but fresh wariness in his eyes suggested I’d gotten closer than he liked. But closer to what?
Once again, I played the waiting game.
This time, Sunny broke first. “I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know him. I didn’t even know his name until after. When the detectives showed me a picture and asked me if I knew what happened.”
I didn’t say anything. My eye was still throbbing, and the white hiss of silence had gotten louder.
“I didn’t hurt that boy. He came on to me. I don’t usually like them that young. I like them older. More experienced. More confident. The mindfuck, when they break, is so much more intense.”
My skin felt tight. My face felt hot. My hand ached, and I realized I was gripping the empty glass so hard my knuckles had turned white.I had the distant thought that the glass felt exceptionally thin. Fragile. Like it was about to shatter.
“Nothing happened,” Sunny finally said. “I didn’t touch him.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“No.”
“Did you ‘play’ with him?”
“I just told you I wasn’t interested.”
“What happened?”
“I told him no and went back to the party.”
“Bullshit.”
Some of the tension seemed to go out of him, and he shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, Gray. I didn’t know who he was. I had no reason to want to hurt him. I had a brief interaction with him. If you’re right, maybe he was hoping that he could convince me to go to another room. Maybe he did have some sort of plan to get his revenge, although that sounds melodramatic. But if he did, I inconvenienced him because I wasn’t interested in playing with a child. And I don’t know what happened to him after that.”
He might have been lying. He’d lied earlier, when he’d said he didn’t know Tip, even if that lie had only been a technicality. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d have any qualms about lying. But it didn’t feel like he was lying. And that was so fucking frustrating that I could feel myself losing control again.
“So, what?” I asked. “I’m supposed to take your word for it? Take the word of a guy who admits he gets off on hurting innocent women?”
“I wouldn’t call them innocent,” he said drily. “They’re well paid. And not only women, Gray.”
“That makes it better? That you pay them?”
“Shouldn’t it? They’re not doing anything they don’t want to do.”
“That must make you feel like a big man, having to pay women to let you beat their ass with a ping-pong paddle.”
“I enjoy hurting people. And I enjoy sex.” Sunny shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I pay for it?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was like being on the stairs again, that sense of blindness, like I’d stared at something too bright. My eye felt like it was going to pop out of my head. Instead of words, I made a scoffing noise.
“That’s so outrageous?” Sunny asked. “Why do you have sex, Gray?”
I looked out the window. The party spilled out over the patio onto the lawn, men and women in their expensive clothes, holding their expensive drinks, talking about expensive things. At this distance, the lake was still and calm and blue.
“Let’s see,” Sunny said. “You’re gay, so you don’t have sex to reproduce. That seems like a red flag, doesn’t it? Do you only have sex with people you love, Gray? Is that what makes it special?”
I didn’t answer.
“I saw you,” Sunny said. “That night. I saw you, when you let those three—those three children take you upstairs. Was that because you loved them?”
“I think we’re done here,” I said.
“Most people want to have sex. And most people want to have sex for a variety of reasons. Love and intimacy and all that, sure. And children, for some people. Some people do it for stress relief. Some people think it’s fun. For some people, it’s like breathing. There are revenge fucks and hate fucks and adrenaline-junky fucks. People use sex to dominate other people. Or they use it to be dominated. They use it to apologize. Some people do it because they’re curious. And some people, Gray, fuck everything that moves because they need attention, and approval, and validation.”
It started in the body; it wasn’t a thought, wasn’t even something I could put into words. The way it felt when you caught that first glance, when you knew someone was looking.
“Some people do it to hurt other people,” I said.
“Sure. But if you mean me, that’s really more about the mode than about the goal. The goal is pleasure. I enjoy it.” He paused, and it seemed like the silence was a space for me to step into, and that feeling was terrifying. After what felt like a long time, he said, “I’d like to hurt you. I’d enjoy that. Would you like that?”
I managed that scoffing noise again. Outside, a breeze rose, and it stirred the lake. It looked muddy now, and the ripples chased the reflection of the sun into long, shining splinters.
But he was still waiting, so I said, “I don’t get off on having guys step on my nuts, thanks.”
“It’s not always about getting off, though, is it?” Sunny took my glass and set it with his own on the desk. His was still mostly full. Then, putting a hand on my shoulder, he said, “I want to show you something.”
He steered me over to the window. The party swarmed beneath us, brightly colored bodies churning restlessly. The sun lit up everything with flattening intensity. It had to be a million degrees out there, but the breeze off the lake helped. The booze too.
“Look at all those people down there.” He was standing behind me, his voice low. “Do you know what they want?” He waited. Then he said, “They want someone to tell them what to do. They might not know that’s what they want. But that’s what they want. And do you know why?”
He waited again, this time until I shook my head.
“The same reasons you’re going to let me do whatever I want to you.” He was closer now. I could feel him, a fraction of an inch away from me. His breath was hot on my neck. “Some of them, because they don’t know what they want, and they’re grateful someone will tell them. Some of them because they like it. It feels good, even if they couldn’t ever admit it. And some of them, because they think they deserve it.” His hand settled on my nape and gripped me there. “But most of them because it means someone is paying attention to them. Do you have any idea how intense that connection is?” His fingers crept up into my hair, twisting until my eyes stung, pulling on me until my back arched. “When you know that you exist wholly and completely in someone else’s universe, that their full attention is centered on you?”
The blare of the television. My dad’s face blank, emptied out by work and beer and a life that he hated. My mom in whatever it was—a lace teddy, the red babydoll, that stupid thing she called her peignoir—talking and talking and talking. He gets mad. That’s what I’d understood as a child. He gets mad when you won’t stop talking. He just wants you to be quiet. But I hadn’t known, when I’d been a child, how to explain that to her, or why she hadn’t seemed to understand. But she had understood. I was the one who hadn’t figured it out until later.
Sunny pulled harder, and the pain in my scalp made me breathe out harshly. He pressed himself against me. His dick was hard.
“Tell me—” he whispered. The words were the texture of velvet against the shell of my ear. “—what you want.”
He was right. Even through the pain, even through the exhaustion and the mirage-haze of my earlier rage and hurt and panic, my body remembered what it felt like to be wanted. I knew I was supposed to think. I needed to think. But it was hard to think. And it hurt to think. And it was such a simple thing to be desired.
I fumbled with my belt. The buckle shivered in my hands as I undid it, but my fingers were wrapped around the metal, so it stayed silent. As soon as I undid the waistband, Sunny’s free hand was there, yanking down the zipper, forcing the trousers down. His hand cupped my dick, which was already hardening, and he laughed softly and said, “What a slut. I knew I should have taken you when I saw you that night.”
He forced the trousers down the rest of the way and nudged me forward, onto the bench seat built into the window. I spread my legs as wide as I could and stuck my ass out, but he pushed me forward again, until I wasflattened against the glass: my head turned to the side, the window cool against my cheek and the length of my chest. I thought I could feel my heartbeat vibrating through the thin pane.
The rustle of clothing came from behind me, and then the click of a bottle opening, the slick sound of wet flesh. Then his hands were on my hips, and he pressed himself into me. He’d lubed himself, but without any prep, he still had to force his way inside. I’d done plenty of bottoming in my life, and I knew how to breathe through the initial discomfort—the stretch and burn that were, because he was being rough, worse than usual. Some guys got off on it, but that had never been my thing. It was just part of the process. The price before you got to the good stuff.
Today, though, was different. More intense, yes, because I was so tight, and because my body was so tight, and because my heart was jackrabbiting in my chest. But even though the discomfort bordered on pain, there was something pleasurable about it. Fuck me, I thought. Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me. And then, he bottomed out. He shifted his weight, moving closer, pressing into me to gain every last possible inch. The movement forced me even more tightly against the glass. I tried to find the window frame. I had the half-formed idea that I needed to brace myself. A vision of the window shattering. My face. All that glass. He started to move again—long, hard, fast thrusts. The window breaking into a million pieces. My cheek pressed against the glass. Harder, I thought. Harder. Harder.
He kept to that frantic, furious pace. The voice in my head that never shut up said, Not bad for an old guy, bro. The air ripened with the smell of sex and sweat. And slowly, no matter how much he wanted it to hurt, it changed into something else. Something more. My jaw slackened. I heard the noises I was making, and my face heated, but I couldn’t stop.
Each thrust sent mydick sliding across the window. It wasn’t like anything I’d felt before—stimulation, yes, but because it was glass, it was so slick and smooth and cool that it wasn’t enough. I was on the edge, and it wasn’t enough. Even to myself, my moans sounded desperate.
Then Sunny was clutching my hair again, forcing my face against the window as he pounded harder. It took me a disoriented moment to realize he was turning my head so that I’d look out that window. There had to be a hundred people down there, laughing and talking and drinking, while twenty feet above them I was getting bred like a bitch.
“Fucking bitch,” Sunny grunted. “Fucking slut whore bitch.” His grip tightened until tears rushed to my eyes, and I blinked them away furiously—only for them to slide down the glass. “Look at all those people down there. That’s what you need. That’s what you want. You want everybodyto see you like this.”
He was still standing on the patio. Still smiling. Holding a plate in one hand. A Pepsi in the other. If he looks up, I thought. If he looks up right now.
I came. And even over the intense rush of nutting, I heard Sunny’s stupid little noises as he popped off. He slumped against me, still clutching my hair, supporting himself with one hand on the glass. And then he pulled out.
My knees were stiff, and they ached as I scooted backward and awkwardly stood. I pulled up the trousers. My load dripped down the window. Some of it had gotten on my shirt. I tucked the shirt in and did up my belt. Not too bad. A little damp spot showed above my waistband. The smell of dick and ass and overheated bodies made it hard to breathe.
When I turned around, Sunny’s face was red. His throat was mottled with the flush. His expression was smooth, but you couldn’t miss the satisfaction.
“All right,” I said.
“We didn’t go over the rules,” he said, still stuffing his shirt into his waistband, “but next time we play, I’ll expect you to address me as sir, and to only speak when spoken to.”
“You know what? I’ve always been fucking terrible with rules.”
And then I punched him in the face. It was a good punch, and he staggered backward. His hip checked the desk. When I hit him again, he fell onto the desk. He flung out his arms and legs—not trying to fight, but flailing. Maybe he was trying to find a weapon. Maybe he was trying to find something to hold on to.
I didn’t give him a chance. I grabbed his shirt and dragged him across the top of the desk. A decorative pen set went flying. His ass got caught on the blotter, so I dragged that along too. When we reached the end of the desk, he tumbled onto the floor. He started to get up, so I kicked him, and he flopped onto his back.
He lay there, groaning. The groans turned into squeals when I stepped on his nuts. He tried to close his knees, but it was too late, and I applied more pressure. The squeals threatened to tip into screams.
I said, “Be quiet, or I’m going to pop them like a pack of Gushers. Do you even know what Gushers are?”
He probably didn’t, but he must have gotten the idea because he bit back his next scream, so I eased up. A little. His nose was bleeding, and when he’d fallen, the blood had smeared across his mouth. He stared up at me, wide eyed. Shock. A touch of disbelief.
“What happened with Tip Wheeler that night?”
“I told you: nothing! Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what I’m going to do—”
This time, it was more of a stomp.
He didn’t scream. He made a choked, gurgling noise, and the color dropped from his face. He didn’t puke either, but I thought that was because he couldn’t, not because he didn’t want to.
When he was breathing again—short, harsh little rasps through his nose—I said, “I’m not going to ask you again.”
His eyes filled with tears. “I told you. I already told you. He came on to me.”
“Yeah. And then you fed me a line about how you aren’t interested in young guys, all that mindfuck bullshit. You want to see a mindfuck? When I cut your dick off with a letter opener. How’s that for a mindfuck?”
Sunny swallowed. The movement looked painful, and I wondered if maybe he wasn’t past the throwing-up point.
I turned toward the desk.
“I didn’t touch him! His friend was there! Ask his friend!”
“What friend?”
“A blond boy. Tip was—we were talking, and that blond boy came up and started shouting. Screaming. I left.”
The blond boy, I thought. Jordan. Who had told me that he and Tip hadn’t seen each other the whole party. They’d split up. Which meant, Jordan had lied.
And which meant Tip had lied too, since Tip had told me the same fucking story.
I headed for the door. Without looking back, I said, “This is a nice house. If you’re smart, you’ll sell it and start taking vacations somewhere else.”
I managed to get out of the house without seeing my boy. Then I hurried down the road toward where I’d left the car. I turned over in my head possible answers, explanations. It wasn’t hard to guess why Jordan had lied about the party—a fight with his on-again-off-again boyfriend sounded like an excellent motive for what had happened to Tip. But what I didn’t understand was why Tip had lied too. Why Tip had been lying, for that matter, since the beginning.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that when my phone buzzed, I took it out of my pocket and checked it on autopilot. Then I had to read the message again.
It was from Darnell.
And it said, Where are you? We’re waiting for you .