by Kris Ripper
“I liked them.”
“They offered to buy his car from us and let him still use it, but neither of us felt comfortable with that.”
“I was a little comfortable with it,” Josh said.
“You were not. You just got to play the moderate one because I was so against it. If I’d said we should think about it, you totally would have said no.”
Josh laughed. “You’re so right. That’s exactly what it was. Anyway, I don’t have a car now, which is weird but also kind of nice.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. No insurance, no gas, no car trouble.”
“You still split all those things for my car!”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of like babysitting, you know? You can take care of a kid without having a kid. I like your car, but it’s not my responsibility, and that works for me.”
“Are you saying I baby my car?” Keith teased.
“When’s the last time you got the oil changed in that poor thing, anyway?”
Did they want kids? I could have asked, except it was such a prying question, and it didn’t seem like the right time. I could picture the two of them as parents. Good parents. Caring and firm at all the right moments, understanding, generous, principled, forgiving.
Suddenly I wanted them to have kids, for my own reasons, because if I remained friends with them I could benefit from the proximity of children without having them myself. Exactly as Josh had said.
I wondered if we would remain friends long enough for children to be relevant. It seemed foolish to proceed thinking we would, since I’d only known them for a few weeks, but in realistic terms every friendship begins with a few weeks. These could be the first few weeks of many, many years. Likewise, they could be the first few weeks of a scant couple of months, after which I’d see them when they went to the movies if we remained on good terms. At some point they’d adopt, or maybe find a surrogate, and then I’d see them every now and again at the family movies on Sundays, as their brood got older.
I’d remember all their names, of course. If Josh and Keith had children, no matter how far apart we drifted, I could never forget their kids’ names. Perhaps someday I would be taking their tickets in the booth and telling them that I’d met their fathers after a viewing of An Affair to Remember. Then again, that might be a bit on point, and it really wouldn’t do to blush while saying an affair to the children of men I’d had something of an affair with.
“Do you get the impression Cam is deep in thought right now?” Josh whispered loudly.
“Seriously. He’s thinking so hard that if we concentrate we might be able to hear what he’s thinking about.”
I really doubt it. I cleared my throat. “We’re here.”
“Saved by the parking lot, old boy.” Josh offered a companionable clap to my shoulder as I pulled us into a space near the break in the bushes that led to the pier.
“You can tell us all about it later,” Keith said. “Does everyone have a coat?”
Excellent fathers. They would bring their kids here, too. Everyone in La Vista brought their kids to the pier, or to toddle along the waterfront. The picture of them again overwhelmed me: Josh older, but still strong, still thick through the shoulders without seeming oversized; Keith older, with slightly longer hair and no tie, having aged out of the insecurity of youth. They’d adopted, I saw in this projected future summer day. Little mixed-race kids, probably a sibling set. Two boys and a girl.
I swallowed, banishing the vision for the inky black water and biting wind of the present.
We didn’t speak immediately. I was still considering many domino futures, each of which seemed to tip into the next, providing ever more images. When Keith spoke up, it was clear he was thinking of something else entirely.
“How is it possible that Philpott let himself be lured out here? He was so smart. And aware. It makes no sense to me. There’s no way he goes to the waterfront with a stranger when he probably knows more about this killer than the cops do.”
“It wouldn’t have been a stranger,” I said.
“That’s another thing. How hard is it to run all the credit card receipts for all the theme nights and cross-check who was there, you know? They can’t have that many solid suspects, and they still can’t figure out who’s doing this?”
“Ed says that Fredi has a lot of cash customers.” I paused. “Though I take your point. What’s the use of connecting all the murders if it doesn’t help stop them from happening?”
“It’s not just that,” Josh said. “Aside from the fact that some people pay cash, and even aside from the fact that this person doesn’t necessarily have to be drinking in order to be at—or around—Club Fred’s on theme nights, we were there on almost all those nights, Keith. I bet a lot of people were. They’ve been popular, you know? So it’s probably not that short a list anyway.”
“We weren’t there for the first one. Were we?”
Josh slipped his hand in Keith’s. “Babe. It was your birthday.”
“No way. The first murder was a few weeks later.”
“Drag Night, remember? We held your twenty-first at Drag Night. That’s when the first murder happened.”
Keith stopped walking. “Shit. Seriously?”
I was stuck on something else. “Keith, you’re twenty-one?”
“Um, yeah, guilty as charged.” He shot me a look that was partially bashful and partially defiant. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Oh.”
We stared at each other until Josh started laughing.
“Oh man, your faces right now. Damn, that’s funny. Don’t worry about it, Cam. I fell for him when he was eighteen and looked about fifteen, so I get it.”
“Josh is only twenty-four,” Keith mumbled.
“Yeah, but Cam couldn’t actually have fathered me, so I feel like it’s way less awkward.”
“Oh, shut up. Jerk.”
“I couldn’t have fathered you,” I said to Keith, offering him my arm. He took it, after a beat, like he’d never walked arm in arm with a gentleman before. (Kids today.) “For one, I was eleven when you were born, so it’s biologically unlikely. But more importantly, I didn’t have sex with anyone until I was sixteen, and I didn’t have sex with a girl until I was twenty, so I can say with absolute certainty that you are not my son.”
“Dodged a bullet there,” Josh said helpfully.
I glared at him.
He grinned and took Keith’s other arm.
Keith wasn’t as willing to surrender to levity. “It’s just—if it could happen to Philpott, who I would have said there’s no way, at all, that he could get killed by this person . . . If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.”
“Not us. We’re always together.”
“But Cam isn’t.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I said. “Please don’t worry about it.”
“I think we should worry. All of us should worry. Philpott sat with us, what, a month ago, and laid out exactly who’s most likely to be the killer. Which means they walked right up to him and, even though he should have known, he didn’t.”
“Babe, maybe he was wrong. He was laying out the statistical likelihood. This person may be an exception.”
“They’re already an exception for motive, aren’t they?” I gestured with the hand not locked around Keith’s. “Different genders, races, ages, backgrounds. Club Fred’s was the only thing they had in common.”
“And being queer. Except for that boy, though he probably wasn’t straight, since he was at Fred’s.”
“I bought him a drink,” I said. The wind picked up, sending chills rushing down my back. “Steven. Seemed like a nice kid.”
Josh looked over. “Oh shit, Cam. You knew him?”
“No, no. He sat down next to me because Zane was making a big deal of it being his birthday. So I bought him a happy birthday drink.” I thought about the boy, who’d apparently been Keith’s age, but where Keith
wore his years with a sense of gravity, Steven Costello had worn his with a sort of furtive wariness, as if he’d expected the world to hurt him.
I shivered again.
“You think he was a closet case?”
“Probably. Judging by the fact that his parents didn’t even tell the police that he was gay, or that he might be at Club Fred’s. I assume if they knew, it wasn’t an accepted thing.”
“He got killed on his birthday. And someone else got killed on mine. It’s like . . . it could have been the other way around, you know?”
Josh stepped in front of Keith and cupped his face. “No. It couldn’t have. Because you have me. Neither one of us is going to die, Keith, you hear me?”
“We don’t know. Maybe this guy, Steven, was an easier target than I am, but Philpott was way harder. You and I aren’t together every hour of every day. I go to classes and stuff. Plus, how do we know this killer hasn’t been to the center? We talk to strangers all day long, Josh. Both of us do.”
The wind picked up again, blowing spray over the pier, misting us. Suddenly I realized where we were. I had no idea where along the waterfront the bodies had been found, but I watched the darkness and small pools of yellow lights, strung just far enough apart to be less than helpful. What would I do if someone jumped out at us? Beat them with my borrowed Raiders jacket?
No one would be dumb enough to attack three of us, though. Even if they could take down Philpott. I flashed to Ed talking about how hard he’d fought back and said a silent prayer for his soul, hoping that whatever happened after death was either peaceful or nothing at all. Philpott certainly deserved peace.
“Let’s go back to the car,” I said, nudging them. “Come on.”
We started walking back. This time the two of them held hands and I walked off to the side.
Keith hunched a little in his coat, protecting himself from the wind. “It’s not like I’m super worried we’re the next victims, but we could be, and that’s fucking scary.”
“We take all the precautions we can take short of staying in the house all the time,” Josh said.
“I know we do. Sorry I’m such a downer.”
Josh kissed the side of his face. “You aren’t.”
We escaped the wind and closed our doors tightly against the outside.
I started the car and turned on the heat.
“They must have known Philpott enough to trick him.” Josh reached up and locked both of our doors, then both doors in the back. “That’s the only thing I can think of. I mean, he was a smart dude, but if I’d wanted to lure him to the waterfront, all I would have had to say is, ‘Hey, let’s go check it out, see if we can find any clues.’ If he trusted someone—or at least thought they couldn’t get the drop on him—he would have gone.”
“At 1 a.m.?”
“It wasn’t a theme night. He probably figured it was safe.”
“And he had an ego,” I added.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t have seen himself as a victim at all. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to him.”
I could see the pale reflection of Keith’s face in the windshield, brow furrowed, lips pursed.
He gave a quick, violent head shake. “It just makes me so angry that I’m afraid to hang out at Club Fred’s and that I’m afraid it’ll be someone I love next. There’s a next, you know? Unless they catch this person, whoever they are, someone else will get killed, probably someone we know, and that’s . . . It doesn’t make any sense to me that this is the world we live in.”
Josh leaned forward. “It’s the world we live in all the time. It’s just that you aren’t used to being so aware of it.”
“Is that supposed to make it better? Because it makes it worse.”
“No. I don’t think there’s much ‘better’ to work with here, babe.”
I glanced into the mirror and Josh looked back. He was right. There wasn’t a whole lot of good you could project onto this situation.
Enough.
“Will both of you stay after the movie on Saturday? I mean, if you’re coming to it. I could get something for dinner.”
“Sounds good to me,” Josh said.
“Me too. I really am sorry I’m being so morose.”
I wished I could reach out to him, but I didn’t know how. “I don’t mind morose. And if neither of you objects, I think I’ll make a casserole.”
“Keith loves a casserole.”
“I really do. There’s something so warm and comforting about them, you know?”
I knew. That was why I was thinking about casseroles. “Consider it a date.” Then, in embarrassment, I glanced at the mirror again.
Josh, of course, was smiling. “Oh hell yes, it’s a date. Keith, we gotta plan something to thank our host.”
“I’m good with that.”
I dropped them off at the center, with the Raiders jacket, and told them to keep the snacks.
“We’ll see you on Saturday!” Keith called.
I waved and pulled away, reflecting on how much emptier my car felt in the wake of their departure. I drove alone all the time, but it had never felt this hollow.
After a second of deliberation, and feeling quite ridiculous, I hit the automatic locks. Obviously the killer wasn’t walking around pulling victims out of their Volvos, but still.
What would they plan for Saturday? I gave in to the little edge of excitement and allowed myself to dream.
They waited throughout the reception in the lobby after Monkey Business, and I locked the doors and ignored the curious looks of my staff as I ushered Josh and Keith to the little step-down lounge.
“I hope you don’t mind waiting.”
“This is awesome,” Keith said. “I told you, I always wanted to work here.”
“Well, if your current job doesn’t work out, you can give me a call. It should only be a couple of minutes.”
“We’re good. We are totally good.”
The Rhein had always trained staff to prioritize customer service above all else—with a close-second emphasis on cleanliness. Film series nights had a slightly different rhythm than the rest of our closing shifts: the theater would be swept long before the lobby cleared out, and concessions would also be entirely ready for closing. I could hear both vacuums running, and I wiped down the refreshments table with a cloth from a clean sanitizer bucket. I double-checked the booth and let the ushers leave, finishing up the vacuuming myself.
I forgot, for a few minutes, that Keith and Josh were there. I suppose when I’d pictured it, they sat talking, or maybe looked at movie posters. I never imagined that they would sit there for twenty-five minutes . . . watching me.
Once the vacuum was safely stashed away and the platters dried and put up until next week, I let the last of the staff out and crossed the lobby toward Keith and Josh, trying to figure out what was so riveting about watching me close the movie theater.
“I apologize for the wait.”
“God, don’t. It was totally worthwhile. I like it when you walk, Cam.” Keith giggled. “That sounds really stupid, but it’s true.”
Josh nodded. “Seriously. You walk like you’re going somewhere important.”
“How do other people walk?”
They glanced at each other.
“Like they don’t know they’re doing it,” Josh said. “Like they’re not paying attention. You walk deliberately.”
“Oh.” Did I? Surely no more deliberately than most people.
“You move deliberately in general,” he added. “It’s one of the reasons we thought we could approach you. Because you value intention.”
I stood in my lobby, which smelled of popcorn and the powdered deodorizer we sprinkled on the carpets before vacuuming (with an undercurrent of dust I could never fully get rid of, no matter how deeply I cleaned), and realized that no one had ever paid attention to me the way the two men sitting on the sofa did. No one had ever found me interesting enough to consider me like this, or to trust me the way that they trusted me. It
was humbling.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
They got to their feet.
“I think we kind of embarrassed Cam,” Keith said.
“Yeah, but in a good-for-him way.”
I herded them to the alcove with the alarm in it and turned out the lights. “We’ll have a minute to get outside once I set this.”
Keith bounced a little on his feet. “Oh my god, we’re in the Rhein with the lights off right now. So freaking cool!”
“One minute. And if we don’t get out, then we have to stay here until the security people arrive so I can explain that it was an accident.”
He zipped his lips and assumed what must have been an “I’m ready to run for the door” expression. Josh nodded, studying the alarm panel.
“Here we go.”
I set the alarm, and it beeped at us as we went out through the left front door. I locked it quickly, then went to the other door to make sure it was locked as well.
My ears picked up the last of the alarm beeps. It was set.
“I feel so privileged, being inside the Rhein at closing. Like, seriously, that was sort of a dream come true. Thanks, Cam.”
“Of course. Don’t mention it.”
This time all three of us went upstairs at the same time, and I’d already set the table, but I wasn’t worried they’d find it absurd. Without the pressure of all of my projections about how the night would go, I could actually relax a little.
“I think it’ll take about thirty minutes for the casserole. It’s cooked, but the last time I made one, I didn’t reheat it long enough and ended up with a cold, mushy center.”
Josh flashed one of his toothy smiles. “You got impatient?”
“I did. Not tonight. I refuse to serve you guys cold and mushy.”
“Appreciated.” He finished lighting the candles (he hadn’t asked permission, which thrilled me a little, as if taking the liberty had meaning beyond convenience). “I know what I want to do with the next thirty minutes. Is there a timer?”
“It’s set.”
He nodded. “Keith.”
“Hmm? Wow, Cam, you have a crazy version of Lord of the Rings over here. In, like, a case.”