Page 31 of Fish in a Barrel

Cody shook his head. “Swing both ways myself,” he admitted, surprising Jackson. “Not that I’d tell those fuckers on the force.”

Jackson grunted. “I’m bi too. I was only there for a couple of months, on the force, but I was so damned naïve. Joined the chapter of the union that repped the community, paid dues. Eleven years later it’s starting to dawn on me that some fuckers still have a problem with us.”

Cody gave him a tired, drugged glance. “You were on the force?” he asked.

“Not for long. You don’t want to hear that story.”

Cody gave a weak laugh. “Sure I do.”

At that moment, the bus took an exit for Hwy 299, bypassing Redding. Shit!

“Henry, we’re on 299 now, did you see?”

“Fuck!”

“Is there a place to turn around so you can take this exit with us?”

“It’s two miles up,” Henry muttered, and Jackson was glad he couldn’t see up ahead, because if he caught the minivan’s lights bobbing and weaving like a drunk butterfly, he might yell at Henry and add to the chaos.

“You get back to us, and I’ll keep you posted.”

“Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit—”

“You couldn’t have known,” Jackson muttered. “They didn’t even signal, and I doubt the bus behind us did either.”

“Shit. I’m gonna concentrate on my driving. You tell me what you see.”

“Same thing I’ve seen for the last two hours and forty-five minutes,” Jackson grumbled. “A lot of nothing in the rain at night.”

Cody laughed hoarsely, and Henry went “Gah!” in his ear.

“You’re funny,” Cody said, leaning his head against the window. “Too bad you’ve got a boyfriend and he’s not, you know, a junkie waste of skin. Hard to compete.”

“Not a waste of skin,” Jackson said softly. “And if you knew what Ellery was—what he’s done for me—you’d know it wasn’t you. I’m not a bargain. He got me straight from the broken boy collection and has been watching me try to fix myself for over a year. That’s a lot of patience.”

“Mm. Think there’s another one out there for me?”

“I’m sure there is,” Jackson said softly. “Half my friends are in recovery, Cody. Sometimes you just need people in your life who get what you’ve gone through. Shit.”

Freddy McMurphy—who had been visible mostly through the game he’d been playing on his phone for nearly three goddamned hours—had suddenly pocketed the phone and stood up. Jackson angled his body and leaned his head back, and Cody dropped his face against Jackson’s throat.

Jackson closed his eyes, and Cody evened his breathing, both of them giving their best impression of the drugged sleepers who had so eerily populated the rest of the bus.

Together they waited for Freddy to get back to their area.

He’s probably headed for the bathroom,Jackson thought, grateful that the engine noise had partially masked their quiet voices as he and Cody talked.

The old man sitting in the aisle had pulled himself against the back. Fortunately the door from the portajohn angled forward a bit, so when McMurphy clunked back to the bathroom, the old man was hidden. He’d eaten the fries, drunk the coffee, and had fallen into a restless sleep.

Jackson heard the clump of McMurphy’s footsteps as he entered and could see the sliver of light under his lids as he closed and locked the door. He shifted enough to let Cody know there’d been a change in circumstance, and Cody grunted, letting him know he was good.

Forever. That’s how long it took McMurphy to relieve his bladder. For-fucking-ever.

By the time he was coming out, zipping up without even a little hand sanitizer, if Jackson knew his sounds, the bus had finished a series of hairpin turns and the hydraulic brakes were screaming in protest. Jackson wanted desperately to talk to Henry, but he had to wait until McMurphy had gotten back down to the front.

Fucking. Finally.

“Henry?”