by Gregory Ashe
Jem glanced over. “God, you’re glowing. Spit out the part you’re excited about.”
“Those fatal ones are usually attributed to diamondback rattlesnakes.”
“I hate this place. I hate everything.”
“Think of it this way: you’re six times more likely to die from a lightning strike, eight times more likely to die from a heavy TV falling on you—”
“Jesus Christ, are we cartoon characters now?”
“—fourteen times more likely to die from falling out of a tree, and ninety-five times more likely to die falling off a ladder.”
“Ladders, the silent killer. Oh God, your face. Just tell me already.”
“No, it’s not important.”
“You’re literally going to explode if you don’t get to tell me.”
“It’s just that worldwide—”
Jem groaned as they headed toward the southern villa.
“—an estimated 138,000 people die each year from snake bites, and there are around three times that number of amputations and permanent disabilities, which, you know, just is another example of global inequity and the incredible privilege that Americans enjoy compared to many developing countries.”
“Do you feel better?”
“If anything, I feel worse.”
“But feeling worse makes you feel a little better, right?”
Tean was silent for another ten feet. Then he said, “I don’t know how to answer that without sounding tremendously screwed up.”
Laughing, Jem slung an arm around his shoulders, his body warm in contrast to the desert’s cooling air.
The southern villa’s windows were dark, but the blinds were raised and the curtains pulled back. The sun had slipped behind the tall red cliffs, but a haze of blue light still illuminated the desert. It was enough to see inside the shadowed rooms: a pair of high heels abandoned next to a plush sofa; cut-glass tumblers, one with a smudge of lipstick, on the wet bar; through the French doors that opened onto the back patio, Tean could see a matching set of roller bags next to the dining table. Pink. If he had to guess, the same color as the lipstick on the tumbler. He took a picture of the luggage tags.
“Keep an eye out for snakes,” Jem said quietly, squatting by the French doors. He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, passed a second pair to Tean, and drew a slim piece of metal from one pocket. He worked it between the doors. “Of both the two-legged and four-legged varieties, please.”
“There’s no variety of snake that has any number of legs. That’s part of what makes them snakes.”
“That’s a sophistical answer,” Jem said, and then he grunted and twisted, and one of the French doors popped open. “And you know I can’t stand sophisticals.” Then he grinned up at Tean. “I bought a word-of-the-day calendar, but I’m only on January 2nd.”
Tean waited.
“Ok, I stole it,” Jem said. “But only because the clerk was a dick and kept looking at me like I was going to steal something.”
“Not that it matters at this point, but you also used sophistical wrong.”
“You’re being very phenomenological.” He grinned. “January 1st.”
“Please stop talking,” Tean said, “before I have to turn us both in to the police.”
They moved quickly through the darkened villa. In the mini-kitchen and dining area at the back, they found a collection of high-end alcohol, mostly gin and vodka, and the remains of a charcuterie board in the fridge. Jem grabbed a cracker, scooped something that looked like pâté, and popped it in his mouth. When Tean looked at him, Jem’s face got angelically innocent.
“I’m hungry,” he whispered.
“You know what that was?”
“Salty crackery goodness with some other salty mushy goodness.”
“It was—”
“Don’t tell me.”
“—pâté, which is a forcemeat, which means it’s ground up and possibly pureed.”
“I said don’t tell me.”
“It definitely contains liver.” Tean brightened. “Kind of like Scipio’s treats.”
Jem made spitting noises and wiped his tongue against the back of his hand. “God damn it, Tean. It tasted good! Why’d you have to ruin it?”
“I just thought you should know.”
“Come here, I want to show you something. It’s at the top of a ladder.”
Aside from the abandoned heels, the living room was empty of anything interesting—the décor, which highlighted a knockoff Navajo blanket hanging on the wall and a plastic longhorn bull skull decoupaged with torn-up French postage stamps (some kind of irony? idiocy?), made Tean eager to move on to the next room.
The villa had three bedrooms, each with an attached bath. The first looked unused, and in the bathroom, the fixtures were spotless. The next bedroom had a leather duffel sitting on an armchair. A man’s button-down shirt was draped over the back of the chair, and oxblood brogues sat near the closet door.
They went to the third bedroom. It was empty of personal possessions, but more of the lipstick marked tissues in the bathroom wastebasket.
“Do you want this room or the other one?” Jem asked.
“You’re better at weaseling and ferreting and rooting around. Maybe you should take the room with all the stuff.”
“If you take this room, you also have to search the luggage in the kitchen.”
Tean made a face.
“You’ll have to pick through a lady’s unmentionables.”
“Jeez, um. I’ll search the guy’s room.”
Tean tried not to walk faster as he left.
“Bras,” Jem called after him.
“Shut up.”
“Panties!”
This time, Tean did walk faster. In the man’s bedroom, though, he slowed down. He searched the leather duffel first. Clean clothes—boutique t-shirts, preppy shorts, a pair of stretchy joggers. Dirty clothes, noticeably dressier, were wadded up at the bottom of the bag. After months of listening to Jem talk about clothes, getting dragged around stores by Jem, being forced to try on clothes by Jem, and having to look at pictures of clothes Jem wanted to buy (which often included fluorescent colors, asymmetrical geometric shapes, and acid washes), Tean knew he was looking at several hundred dollars’ worth of clothing. A dopp kit held even more toiletries than Jem used, and Tean took several pictures, mostly as ideas for gifts.
The bed, the nightstands, the dresser, and the closet offered nothing. The bathroom backed up to the third bedroom, and on the other side of the thin wall, Tean could hear Jem searching, which seemed to involve a lot of grunting—apparently moving heavy furniture was part of the protocol. Tean checked the shower, the vanity, and the mirrored medicine cabinet. Nothing.
He was reaching to turn off the light when he saw the dusting of paint flakes on the vanity’s backsplash. Tean hesitated. And then the part of himself that had woken up after meeting Jem Berger—the part that Jem had called, at various times, devious, a criminal mastermind, and a morally bankrupt homosexual—made him walk back to the mirrored medicine cabinet. He opened it, swung the door back and forth, and ran his fingers around it. At the bottom of the stainless steel unit, he touched a raw edge of wallboard.
Grabbing the mirrored cabinet, he drew a breath to steady himself. Then he pulled. The cabinet slid from the wall, exposing a hollow space in the framing. On the other side of the framing, a second piece of wallboard divided the bathroom from the third bedroom. Jem was still moving around, making those same noises of strained effort. Someone had opened a hole in the wall at about eye level—and, judging by how the paper had split and the gypsum dust had fallen, Tean thought the hole had been made from inside the third bedroom—and when Tean leaned forward, he could see easily into the room.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Jem lay spread-eagle on the bed. At the sound of Tean’s voice, he tried to sit up, pulling the mattress with him for a few inches. He was tied
down, Tean realized. The restraints ran under the mattress, which was why it moved when Jem tried to sit up.
“Don’t come in here,” Jem shouted.
“Jem, what the heck happened?”
“Don’t come in. I’m—I’m naked.”
“No, you’re not. I can see you.” As Tean settled the cabinet back into the wall, he shouted, “Hold on!”
“Fine, you can come in,” Jem was saying as Tean came down the hallway. “But you have to keep your eyes closed and not look at me.
When Tean stepped into the bedroom, he spotted the decorative wooden wall ornament that hid the peephole. Then he took in the rest of the scene. “Explain.”
“I said don’t look at me!”
“Why did you handcuff yourself to a bed? And more importantly, how? And even more importantly, just to make sure I understand, why?”
“First of all, they’re not regular handcuffs. They’re sex handcuffs. So the correct question is, how did I sex-handcuff myself to the bed?”
“Jem!”
“I didn’t mean to! I found the cuffs, and I tried one on. No big deal, I can pick the locks on these things with a paperclip. But I wanted to see how they were connected, so I reached across the bed and . . . got stuck.”
“You can’t accidentally put a handcuff on yourself.”
“Yes, you can. Probably. But in my defense, that’s not what happened.” He shook his left hand. The paracord that he wore as a bracelet had gotten caught in the handcuff’s chain. “I’m stuck.”
“This is like when Scipio tried to go behind the couch for a treat.”
“Never mind,” Jem said, lying back and closing his eyes. “Just let me die here. I’ll become a desert skeleton, that’s fine.”
“Not coincidentally,” Tean said as he sat on the mattress, taking Jem’s arm: warm, the ripple of veins, and by some great injustice in the universe, even his forearm had serious muscle development, “it was a liver-flavored treat. I’m starting to see a pattern. Also, if you’re lucky, you might end up being mummified instead of skeletonizing. You know, because of the dry heat.”
“Yeah,” Jem said, “if I’m lucky.”
After a few false starts, Tean found the tangle and worked it free. He squeezed Jem’s arm, and Jem rolled upright, grabbed a paperclip from one pocket, and began twisting it in the lock.
Then, at the front of the villa, a door opened, and footsteps moved inside.
18
“Shit,” Jem whispered.
“Hurry,” Tean whispered back.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
In the villa’s living room, a woman was speaking. “It has nothing to do with my ass.”
A man answered: “Keep telling yourself that. The fact that you can’t get one man in your bed suggests otherwise. You’ve got a blank scorecard after how many at-bats?”
“Please don’t embarrass yourself by using sports metaphors. Nobody’s interested in your ponytailed ass either, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Jesus, you are really being a bitch tonight.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, fuck me.”
Jem was still working on the cuff.
“I thought it was easy,” Tean whispered.
“It should have been,” Jem whispered. “These are the real deal. I’ve almost—there.” The cuff opened, and Jem carefully lowered the cuff and chain to the floor. “Window.”
But as Tean took his first step, the man’s voice said, “Someone’s been in here.”
“Of course someone’s been in here. The beds don’t make themselves.”
“The light’s on in my room.”
“It was probably the maid; she forgot to turn it off.”
Tean was trying to get the window open—it had all kinds of locks and safety measures, and he couldn’t seem to get them all disengaged at the same time. He shot a panicked look over his shoulder, and he was surprised to see Jem catch his attention. The blond man mouthed, Trust me. Then he called out, “We didn’t have any mints for the pillows.”
“What the fuck? Kalista, call the police.” The voice changed, directed down the hall. “Stay the fuck back there. Whoever you are, stay the fuck back there or I will fuck you up.”
“If you could hold off on calling the police,” Jem said, “we’re here to talk about Tanner Kimball. We’re about to save you a lot of pain, possibly your lives.”
Silence from the other room. Then the woman—Kalista, presumably—said, “No, I’m sorry, I hit the emergency contact on my phone by accident. Thank you. Yes, I’m very sorry.”
“Kalista,” the man said.
“I’m curious,” she said.
“Who are you?” the man called down the hall. Then, to Kalista, “This is stupid; call the police.”
“That would be even stupider.” Toward the bedroom at the end of the hall, she said, “What do you mean, you want to talk about Tanner?”
“That’s pretty much exactly what I mean,” Jem said. “We’ve got information about Tanner Kimball, Blake Bigney, and Antonio Hidalgo. We’ll be happy to share it with you. We’d also like to get some information in return.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” the man snapped. “So you can get the hell out of here and thank God that we didn’t have the police drag you off to jail.”
“Why don’t we sit down and talk about it?” Jem said. “My business partner’s here with me. He’s also my best friend. Why don’t we come out there and do this a little more reasonably?”
“Just, you know, for the record,” Tean said, “we’re not really best friends. And we’re definitely not business partners. We’re more like cousins, and he’s the one who gloms on to you at family reunions and won’t give you five minutes of peace and quiet.”
“Really?” Jem murmured. “Right now?”
“I honestly don’t know why I do anything anymore. You broke my brain.”
“What the actual hell?” the man said.
Sweat slid down Tean’s spine in the silence that followed.
Kalista laughed. Then she said, “Come out with your hands where we can see them. Nick’s a decent shot, and I’m better, so don’t do anything stupid.”
When Tean took a step toward the door, Jem actually groaned, caught his arm, and dragged him back. “Jesus, will you please get some common sense?”
Tean was trying to figure out what that meant as Jem took the lead and headed down the hall.
They kept their hands out and visible as they moved into the living room, and a tiny knot of tension loosened when Tean saw that neither the man nor the woman held a weapon. The man was slight and short, with long, dark hair gathered in a knot at his nape. He had exaggeratedly dark eyes and red lips; it took Tean a moment to realize he was wearing makeup, and it took Tean another moment to process the shirt with its stiff, standing collar of pink lace. The woman was taller, built solidly across the shoulders and hips, her hair barely long enough for the clip that held it back from her face. She was wearing a red dress that Tean, with the knowledge that had been imposed on him recently, guessed had cost a lot of money. Her makeup was less obvious than the man’s, but Tean thought that might just be gender bias.
“Hi,” Jem said. “Sorry about this. Sorry we had to meet like this. Jem,” he pointed to himself. “Tean.” More pointing. “And honestly, I’m sorry about the reverse housekeeping scenario.”
“Reverse housekeeping?” Nick waved the phone at them. “This is trespassing, breaking and entering, stealing.”
“Nope. Just plain old reverse housekeeping: we mess up the beds, we put the towels on the floor, we leave a tip for you on the nightstand.”
“What the actual hell?” Nick said.
“I don’t know,” Kalista said, “but for the first time in a solid month I’m not bored. Go get us something to drink.”
“Get it yourself, bitch.”
“Go.” Kalista shoved the smaller man.
&
nbsp; He flounced off, hips swishing so quickly in such tight pants that the friction looked like it could start a fire. At the opening to the kitchen, he stopped, glanced over his shoulder, and made a disgusted noise before flouncing away again. Both hands were flopping with all the exaggerated movement.
“Well,” Kalista said, smiling as she lowered herself into a chair. “Go on. Explain.”
Jem dropped onto the couch, pulling Tean down next to him.
“We’re—” Tean began.
“—representatives of an interested party,” Jem cut in. “Can we leave it at that for now?”
“For now,” Kalista said, her lips curving in something that should have been, but didn’t quite reach, a smile.
Nick sashayed back into the room. He tossed a cut-glass tumbler at Kalista without warning. She caught it, smirked, and leaned back in her seat.
“Tean was a professional catcher for the Utah nine-and-under Bumblebees,” Jem said, “but I forgot my mitt.”
“Does he always make jokes?” Nick asked Tean as he handed each of them a glass.
“It’s not his fault,” Tean said. “He got toxoplasmosis from eating cat litter.”
Jem shoved him so hard he almost fell off the couch.
Nick’s façade cracked, and a smile slipped out. He splashed gin over the ice in their glasses and then sat on the arm of Kalista’s chair and poured some for her as well. He didn’t have a glass, and when he noticed Tean’s gaze, he said, “Seventeen months sober.”
“Good for you,” Tean said. “That’s very impressive.”
“It was that or die,” Nick said. “It’s not as impressive when you think of it like that.”
Tean didn’t know how to answer that; he sipped the gin, realized gin was not one of the alcohols he liked, and set the glass on the coffee table.
“You still haven’t told us why you’re here,” Kalista said. “I think you’re running out of time.”
“Am I correct,” Jem said, “in understanding that you might have some sort of business arrangement worked out with Tanner?”
Kalista gave a one-shouldered shrug.
“Well, you might be interested to know that he’s wanted for at least two murders and is currently in hiding. He’s radioactive right now; if he gets anywhere close to you, you’re going to get burned.”