by Owen Chance
He jumped up from the table and ran out of the bar, tearing through the lobby and turning a corner so fast he smacked hard into the double glass doors leading out to the pool. “What the hell are you doing here, Steven?” Thom yelled, his normal soft baritone both booming and half an octave higher in pitch. Steven looked up from his phone as Thom jumped into the pool. Jason had now joined them in the courtyard, and just as Steven looked to him with a what-the-hell-you-told-me-you-were-taking-him-out-for-a-drink raise of the eyebrows, Thom reached Steven on the opposite side of the pool. He pulled his husband’s ex-boyfriend, inexplicably here in the city where the couple was to bury Thom’s father, inexplicably with Jason in this dusty city in the Texas Panhandle, into the pool, wrestled him to the bottom, and pinned his shoulders against the concrete three feet below the water’s surface.
“Why are you hereeeee, mother fuckerrrrr?” Thom’s voice reverberated through the soft green glow of the heavily chlorinated pool water, glowing oddly in the dusty Texan dusk.
Jason kicked off his soft leather loafers and laid his cell phone, wallet, and keys on a white plastic lounge chair. For a split second, he moved to take off his watch, too, but remembered it was a diving model safe to 3,000 meters below the sea’s surface. (Jason was not a diver. He just liked the look of the watch, which his father bought him last Christmas.) Only then did Jason jump into the pool, paddle to the other side, and yank his husband off of his ex-boyfriend. Or his boyfriend. Jason hadn’t spent much time thinking about who Steven was to him now. When they had broken up the first time, it was true Jason had never quite gotten over Steven, even though he fell for Thom fast and hard. It was tough to not fall in love with Thom. He was funny, without trying too hard, successful, self-confident without being cocky, and beautiful. Even as he shook Steven beneath the water, Thom struck Jason as the most understatedly sexy man he’d ever known, or likely ever would, his swollen trap muscles pulsing underneath his wet t-shirt as he bounced in and out of the water. But even if he couldn’t admit it then, Jason knew things were over with Thom the second he asked Steven to breakfast just a couple of weeks ago.
And even more so when Thom’s father had died. Jason should have come to Amarillo alone to be with his husband, even if in name only, but instead he booked two rooms at the Hilton and asked Steven to come with him. Sure, he had asked Steven to stay out of sight until Jason and Thom could arrange the funeral and have the talk they needed to have. But that hadn’t happened, so here Jason was, grabbing Thom’s shoulders in a pool he’d normally never step foot in and pulling him off of Steven.
“Thom, Thom, get ahold of yourself!” Jason yelled, pulling his husband out of the water. Steven surfaced, too, gasping for air. “What the hell, Thom!” he yelled in between breaths. Thom shrugged off Jason’s hand lingering on his shoulder, “Why did you bring him here, Jason? I know things have been rough between us…”
Steven interrupted, “That’s an understatement,” but Jason shot him a look that made him shut up. Steven swam to the other end of the pool, got out, and perched on a chair so Thom and Jason could talk. Thom rolled his eyes, then continued, “I know things have been rough between us, that we were both thinking about ending it, but did you have to bring him here to Texas? To my goddamn father’s funeral?” Jason sighed, then shrugged, “I don’t know why I did it Thom. I’m sorry.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Thom coughed, then asked, “It’s over, isn’t it? Us, I mean.” Jason nodded. Neither of them cried.
Thom said, “I need to take care of things here, but when you get back to Washington tomorrow, just call the movers, give them my credit card, and have them put my stuff in storage. I’ll find a place to live when I get back.” He paused. “And I don’t know when I’ll be back,” Thom said, as much a realization as a statement of fact. “You don’t want me to stay and help with the funeral?” Jason asked. Thom shook his head, gave his husband a hug, turned, and lifted himself out of the pool.
2.
Thom’s shoes burped up a puddle of pool water with every step as he crossed the lobby of the Hilton. He took the elevator to the third floor where, naturally, his room was at the opposite end of the long hallway. He slid off his shoes and walked the length of the hotel, his bare feet leaving damp footprints on the gaudy carpet, deep red and patterned with creeping green ivy and gold ropes. When he reached room 347, Thom pulled the room card out of his front pocket and realized his phone, also in his pocket, was soaked. “Shit,” he muttered, letting himself into the room and tossing the phone onto the bed.
Thom stripped and stood naked in front of the room’s AC unit, staring out the window at the Amarillo airport. On the edge of a town like Amarillo, even from a third story you have pretty much an unobstructed view for miles and miles. Thom’s room faced east, and he watched an airplane take off, probably to Dallas or Denver, maybe Chicago. As he watched the jet climb, Thom had an idea. He pulled his laptop out of his backpack and connected to the hotel’s wi-fi. Opening Skype, he messaged Trey, Call me on here. No more than three minutes later, Skype lit up and suddenly Trey was on Thom’s computer screen, laughing, “Oh honey! Am I getting a show tonight, or what?” Thom blushed. He’d forgotten he was naked. “Sorry!” he yelled, holding the laptop up and lying down on the bed so just his face showed. “You know I don’t mind, cowboy,” Trey replied. It was good to see his old friend. It was exactly what Thom needed.
Thom told Trey about the last few hours, and when he finished, Trey reacted as expected. “Good riddance to that bitchy queen,” he told Thom, who knew Trey had never liked Jason, “Now I get you all to myself.” Thom laughed as Trey became distracted on his end of the Skype call. For a few minutes they sat in silence, which was fine. Trey was one of the most nimble C.I.A. digital analysts Thom knew, and he had no doubt Trey was designing some spyware virus that would ruin Jason’s social life in a matter of hours. “Okay,” Trey finally said, “I have to get out to Dulles now. I’ll catch the red-eye to Dallas and then the first connecting flight to Amarillo, landing at 7:45 in the morning. You better be there to pick up.”
“Trey!” Thom exclaimed, “You don’t have to come all the way out here. I’m fine, I promise.”
“Nonsense,” his old friend replied, “Your husband cheated on you, your father dropped dead, and I haven’t slept with a cowboy in far too long.”
3.
Petrov decided to walk back to his apartment. It was a long walk — probably 10 kilometers — but he needed the time to think. He’d been cooped up in the building for five days straight, too, and it felt good to walk underneath a bright, late April sun. Petrov left the building and headed north along the bike paths next to the river. Finally alone, he pulled out his phone. A few missed calls from various friends and a couple from his parents, who wanted to make plans for his summer visit, Petrov also had no fewer than 17 missed calls and 20 increasingly panicked text messages from Thom. His heart sank. Even though Petrov had told him he wanted to go back to Texas with him, Thom probably thought Petrov was ghosting him, that he wanted their fling to be a one-night stand and was avoiding him. Quite the contrary, and as he walked, Petrov hoped Thom had reasoned there was a G.R.U. emergency that took him off the grid, which he supposed was the truth, and the story Petrov would have to tell Thom. Given his own job in the C.I.A., Thom would understand, Petrov hoped, and not ask too many questions.
He came to a bend in the river where a mother watched two young boys splash in a small tidal pool. Petrov dialed Thom’s number, but the call went straight to voicemail. Or Thom had blocked his number. He wasn’t sure which.
“Darling, I’m so incredibly sorry,” Petrov said, “Please call me and I can explain everything to you.” Even though he knew he couldn’t.
4.
At 7:45 in the morning, after a night of a single Clonazepam and sleeping soundly in the hard-as-a-rock bed, Thom was idling in the Jeep Wrangler outside of the Amarillo Airport baggage claim. He felt better, even surprisingly so, now that he was, for all intents
and purposes, a single man. He’d gotten up early, ran five miles, then done as many pushups as he could before collapsing on the floor beside his bed. He showered, shaved, and dressed in dark denim jeans that hugged his thighs and ass perfectly, with a vintage Dallas Cowboys t-shirt Trey had given him years ago. “I hate football,” he’d told his friend, rejecting the national sport of his native Texas. “It doesn’t matter,” Trey had told him, “It’ll look hella cute on you.”
“Girl, you are ten years too early to be driving a mid-life crisis like this,” Thom heard from behind him. Trey dropped his small suitcase in the backseat of the Jeep, and Thom jumped out of the car to hug his friend. “Thank you for coming,” he held Trey tightly, “Really, it means the world to me.” Trey pushed him off, “I am not going to blow you, Thom, so don’t even ask.” They laughed, climbed into the car, and drove away from the airport.
“So this is Am-a-ril-lllll-o?” Trey asked, trilling the “L” in the city’s name like a cartoon songbird. “This is it,” Thom answered, “Welcome to the Wild West. I figured we’d get the stuff with my dad over with this morning, if that’s okay?” Trey looked at him, “Honey, I’m not dressed for a funeral. And neither are you. What time do we need to be there?”
Thom explained there would be no funeral. They just needed to pick up his father’s ashes at the crematory and meet the lawyer out at the ranch at 11:00. “Okay,” Trey said, unsure if this was actually okay, or just Thom’s typical evasion of the tragedy before him, “Okay, well take me out for a real Texas breakfast first then.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Thom said, turning up some country song neither of them knew. They drove to the other edge of the city out by the stockyards, where a small café, Circle S Feedlot, was perched between a slaughter house and a cotton field. “Well, it doesn’t get more Texas than this,” Trey laughed as they walked in, though he ate every bite of the giant meal they shared: sweet potato pancakes, eggs fried in bacon grease, a double serving of biscuits-n-gravy, cheddar cheese grits, and black coffee they made drinkable with heavy doses of cream and sugar. “This coffee reminds me of Petrov,” Thom suddenly said, “He likes it too sweet.”
“Oh yes! Show me a picture of this Ruskie. I can’t believe he doesn’t have Facebook and his official G.R.U. photo was blurry.”
“You looked him up?” Thom asked, laughing, though not at all surprised that Trey had looked into the man Thom was sleeping with. Then he remembered, “Shit, my phone is back in the room. Drying out in rice, remember?” Trey laughed, too. “To be honest, I’m mourning more the potential loss of your phone than the end of your marriage. Does that make me a bad friend?”
Thom had no idea that Petrov was the one now desperately trying to call him.
5.
“Mr. Ambassador,” Vice President Adams tried to speak cordially as he strode across the office to shake Anderson’s hand, but lying, “It’s good to see you. I wish it were under happier circumstances.”
Now it was Anderson’s turn to lie, “It’s very good to see you, too, Grant. Shall we?” He swept his arm to the seating area at one end of the room, a grouping of deep, mossy green leather couches with an antique gold-leaf coffee table between them. Adams didn’t care that Anderson always used his first name, but it irked him that the ambassador was so capable of making him feel like a child. The men sat, though neither spoke for a minute, maybe two. “So,” Anderson finally said, “You’re in town to help open the new children’s hospital? That’s wonderful. How can I help you?”
Adams knew Anderson thought the visit odd, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint why. “Actually,” the Vice President said, “That’s not why I came to see you.”
“Oh?” Anderson didn’t know where this was going, and he didn’t particularly care. Anderson thought of Grant Adams as an incapable hillbilly who had gotten high in the party based on his good looks and good luck alone, certainly not on his brains or pedigree. Anderson despised Adams, truth be told, and men like him.
“Yessir,” Adams said, “We were both close to Andrei, as you know.” Anderson had always found his friend’s affections for the American vice president odd, even frustrating, but he nodded, so Adams pushed forward. “Well, Mrs. Popov told me she had given you some information Andrei had been collecting, and that she wanted me to work with you on investigating what it was, and if it had possibly led to his murder.”
Anderson was shocked, though he knew better than to let it show. Why would Sylvia tell the vice president this? She knew they didn’t get along, and that he thought very lowly, if he thought anything at all, about Grant Adams. And now he was supposed to work with this military grunt on an intelligence issue? Anderson thought not.
“Oh Sylvia, she must be so upset. Andrei gave me some documents by mistake a few weeks ago. Not anything sensitive, just standard issue oil drilling reports from Russian researchers near Alaska. But I gave them back to him before he died. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Anderson would sooner vacation in Siberia than bring Adams in on his suspicions, suspicions which largely centered upon the vice president himself and possible treason.
“Yes,” Adams stared deadly at Anderson, “She must have been mistaken.” The vice president stood, straightened his suit pants with the palms of his hands, “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time. And I don’t want to be late to the hospital ceremony.”
“You certainly don’t,” Anderson stood, shaking Adams’ hand once more and ushering him to the door. Both men knew the other was lying.
Chapter Ten
1.
By the time Petrov walked for nearly two hours back to his apartment, he had called Thom five times. Each of these five times, the call went straight to voicemail. “This,” Petrov said aloud as he unlocked the door to his apartment, “is the clinical definition of insanity: repeating an action and then expecting different results.” After leaving a fifth message, a fifth apology and fifth plead for Thom to return his call as soon as he could, Petrov was deeply disgusted with himself. He paced around his apartment as his cat, an orange tabby named Jinx, purred in pursuit. Petrov leaned down and scratched Jinx between the ears. “I’m sorry, comrade,” he told the cat, and poured a large scoop of dry kitty kibble into the bowl on the kitchen counter. He hummed Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” Thom’s favorite song, and when he realized what he was doing, a tear came to his eye. Petrov watched the cat eat like he hadn’t eaten in days, which of course he hadn’t, and then, once full, pounce off the counter and pad off to the bathroom, where he would drink from the leaky faucet in the bathtub, a leak neither Petrov, nor his building’s superintendent, was ever able to keep fixed.
Petrov knew he would be useless at work today, and that the agents who took him had told his unit that Petrov had taken off to Samara for a cousin’s funeral. Even though he had just walked for hours, he was also restless, and didn’t know when he’d hear from Thom. Petrov changed out of his jeans and shirt, tossing them in the corner after smelling how badly they reeked from five days of wear. He slipped on a pair of bright blue Adidas compression shorts, a white tank top, and red shorts tight on his thighs. Petrov slipped out of his apartment, locking the door behind him, and began jogging as soon as he hit the building’s central stairwell.
Drago was surprised to see Petrov when he jogged into Drago’s Boxing Gym, at the corner of Runovskiy and Ulitsa Streets. Normally, Petrov trained with Drago every morning before work, showering in the gym’s tiny locker room before walking across the street and down the block to his own unmarked office. “I was worried you had died on me, kid! It’s good to see you,” Drago said, patting his favorite trainee on the back and leading him to an empty ring on the other side of the gym, “Is everything okay?” Petrov was glad his coach was only asking as a courtesy, “Ja, ja. My cousin died and my parents asked that I come home for a few days. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before skipping town.” Drago shrugged, “It’s fine, brother, I was just worried. Are you ready to sweat?” Petrov smiled, an
d nodded his head. His coach slapped his ass, “Grab a rope and let’s get to it.”
It was already hot in the ill-ventilated room, a room Moscow’s brightest young boxers had been sparring in since five in the morning so that it now smelled of musk and exhaustion. And even though Petrov had been off his training regimen for nearly a week, Drago took him through the ringer. Two minutes jumping rope, two minutes speed bag, two minutes jumping rope, two minutes speed bag, without a break for a solid half hour. Then Drago spotted Petrov on the bench press, working the boy up to 325 pounds, when Petrov thought his arms might give up. And though Petrov hoped they were done for the day, Drago put him in the ring with a sparring partner, yelling his young boxers around and around the ring for another 20 minutes. When Drago finally yelled, “That’s enough, boys!” Petrov collapsed against the ropes and laughed at his friend, “Christ, coach! You went full Soviet on me today, didn’t you?” Drago laughed, “You’d never survive in one of the camps, kiddo.”
2.
As Thom drove them to the crematory, Trey answered a few work emails on his phone and Thom listened to NPR. No major news from Russia, and the world seemed relatively quiet this morning. An earthquake in Argentina had damaged some buildings on the south side of Buenos Aires, but nobody was seriously injured. In Ethiopia, a new president was being sworn in, the country’s first female head of state, who had the backing of opposing factions and hoped to bring peace and economic stability to the region. Whitney Houston was being sworn in to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, a ceremony with a tribute performance of her hits sung by Beyoncé. Trey grunted, “Damn idiot,” and then dictated a reply email to his supervisor, whom no one on the cybersecurity team enjoyed working for. He turned to Thom, “You’re lucky to be on special assignment. Gerald’s been a real shit show these past few weeks.”