One Life to Lose

by Kris Ripper

  “I still can’t believe that half the time. Philpott was Togg. Togg was Philpott.” Zane wrapped half her sandwich in a cloth she pulled out of her bag. “I’m off to do something with floral arrangements. Listen, you three take care of yourselves, got it?”

  “We will,” Keith said. “Thanks for showing us those places, Zane, though we still have kind of a lot of thinking to do about it.”

  “It’s my job, kiddo. And anyway, keep dropping me ideas, and I’ll keep my eyes open.” She stood. “Hey, do me a favor and go to Club Fred’s at some point this week. Tom wants to shake your hands, and Fredi will probably comp your drinks. And business has been a little slow for the holidays, she said, so hopefully all this will—you know. Get things back to normal.”

  Josh nodded. “Hopefully. Let me walk you out, Zane.”

  Josh went with Zane. Keith turned and propped his legs on mine.

  “I’m excited about tonight.” He held up a finger. “And don’t tell me we don’t have to do it. We want to. End of story.”

  “Merin said I could use ‘he’ and ‘him.’”

  “Oh, way to change the subject, Cam. So smooth.”

  “Also, are you two thinking about adopting him?”

  “We think about a lot of things. But yeah, just to give him something stable, though now that he’s eighteen he probably wouldn’t agree. It wouldn’t work now because we only have a one-bedroom. But if we had a house, maybe. And a locking closet or wardrobe or something in our bedroom. Wink, wink.”

  “Did you just . . . verbally emoticon at me?”

  He grinned. “Anyway, tonight’s going to be amazing. Mostly because you’re going to let your guard down and beg us to defile you.”

  “Keith.”

  “Hmm? Did you say something?”

  I blushed, even though no one else had heard him. “We have no idea if this will work.”

  “Listen up, handsome: we are spending the night at your apartment. If the nightmares get worse, for either of us, then at least we’ll be there for each other. Right?”

  “Yes, but we really don’t—”

  “Oh my god, stop talking.” He leaned forward and put his hand against my chest.

  The door opened. I jumped, but it was only Josh coming back inside.

  Keith did not move his hand. “I know the scariest thing is that it might not work and you can’t make the apartment okay again. I know that, Cam. But it hasn’t been long enough for us to know if that’s true, so tonight we’re trying this.”

  Josh slid in on my other side. I anticipated, and felt, his hand on my back. “He’s trying to get out of it again?”

  “Yeah. Make him stop.”

  “Only one way to do that. Let’s close early and go now.”

  “You can’t close early!” I said. “You have two hours left!”

  “It’s a Saturday night. I don’t think we’ve ever, in the history of QYP, had anyone come in on a Saturday this late. Plus, we have to adjust our hours. We’ve been talking about it for weeks. This schedule’s not sustainable.”

  “Truth.” Keith yawned.

  “But—but your signs—”

  “We’ll reprint the signs.” Josh’s hand moved up to my neck. “Cameron. Time to go home.”

  I shivered, maybe because of his hand, maybe because of the words. “Okay.”

  “This feels like cutting school,” Keith said, suddenly awake enough to spring out of his seat. “Let’s go, come on, we’re wasting time!”

  And just like that, we wrapped the rest of the sandwiches, put them in the fridge, and trooped out to the cars. Keith rode with me, and when I accused him of monitoring my movements to make sure I actually drove to the theater, he didn’t deny it.

  The new arrangement of furniture helped. The apartment no longer felt like the same space where all of it had happened. But it smelled the same, and at night, going to the bathroom, I still became unreasonably frightened.

  I left lights on now. I’d already told them, but I worried that it would still seem wrong, or weird. I worried that my eccentricities, now amped up by trauma, would be too much to take in real-time.

  “How did Cary Grant pick his name?” Keith asked, brushing his teeth after dinner.

  They had never stayed overnight at my apartment before. I’d bought toothbrushes and a comb I’d seen Keith use at their place, and presented all of it bashfully, worried they’d think I was taking this single night too seriously. But of course Keith immediately called “the red one” and tore into the toothbrushes, while Josh asked where I’d found the comb, because apparently it was a point of contention how specialized that particular model was.

  I’d gone to three stores looking for it. I didn’t mention that part. At least—I didn’t mention it right away. I mentioned it later, when Keith tried to claim it was a normal comb and that it could be found everywhere. It really couldn’t.

  “Archie Leach was an okay name for vaudeville, but once he got serious about performing in motion pictures, the studio suggested he change it. So he took the name ‘Cary’ from a character he’d played, and ‘Grant’ from a list of potential surnames supplied to him by the studio.”

  “It’d be weird to go by a different name all the time, I think.” Keith surrendered the sink to Josh. “Like, I don’t know, to choose your name as an adult? That’s such a trip to me.”

  “I think it’s kind of cool,” Josh said.

  “Yeah? What name would you choose?”

  He thought about it, spat, rinsed his mouth. “Joshua Benjamin Walker. I think. Off the top of my head.”

  Keith swatted him with a hand towel. “What about you, Cam? Would you change your name if you could?”

  I thought about the theater’s marquee, and the ways my name had been woven all through people’s memories. “I used to want to change Cameron to Charles, when I was a kid. I thought Charlie was a way better nickname than Cam.”

  “Seriously? I love Cam. Ha, see what I did there?”

  Josh sighed heavily. “Have to be blind not to—”

  “Hey! I’m pretty sure that was ableist, Josh.”

  “I take back my ableist language.” He tugged Keith in by the towel he was still holding. “What about you, babe?”

  “Not really. I don’t mind my name. But if I had to—like if we couldn’t be successful at the center unless I changed it—I would.”

  “Cary Grant took it really seriously.” I led the way to the bedroom with more confidence than I felt. Even at their apartment I hated this moment, this commitment to sleep that so frequently led to waking up in a cold sweat with my heart pounding.

  “You mean like playing Cary Grant was his most important role?”

  “I think it kind of was, in a way. I’m not sure he did it dishonestly, or anything. But it meant something to him that he’d crafted this image, and that he lived and died by it. He ended his career without really telling anyone because the roles kept coming, but he felt he was too old to play the leading man pursuing the young ingénue. So he just . . . stopped.”

  “He dropped the mic,” Josh said, pulling back the covers on my bed. “Damn. That’s actually really cool. There are some actors now who I kind of wish would do that, you know?”

  “It might have been easier for him because ‘Cary Grant’ was such a deliberate construction that he could make business decisions that were based around what was good for ‘Cary Grant’ the brand, more than the person.”

  “Like you make decisions for the Rhein that are different than the ones you’d make for yourself.” Keith slid into the sheets and patted the bed. In the middle.

  “Kind of. Though I never actually think I’m the Rhein.”

  “But in a sense, you are. You’re the living embodiment of everything the Rhein is, was, or ever will be. No pressure.” He patted the bed more insistently.

  I hesitated. “What if I can’t do this?”

  Josh’s arms came around me. He held me close, a move he’d only been doing in the last few da
ys. A move I used to long for when he did it with Keith. “Can’t spend the night here? Or can’t be the Rhein?”

  I didn’t know how to explain that, in a way, they felt like the same thing. Insurmountable goals. “The Rhein’s not in that much danger. But five years from now? Ten years from now? I don’t know.”

  “All you can do is adapt. You’ll adapt your business. You’ll adapt your lifestyle. It might be harder to do the things you used to do, so you’ll do different things.”

  “Like us,” Keith added. “You’ll do us. A lot. Over and over.”

  But that was the worst, most terrifying of my fears. “And what if I can’t?”

  Josh kissed my neck. “You already are.”

  “It takes a while to stop worrying about it all the time.” Keith, apparently sick of waiting for us, got back out of bed so he could kiss me. “At least, for me, I thought it was all going to disappear for a long time, that I’d wake up and Josh would be a stranger. But it’s never happened yet, and eventually you just kind of . . . get used to it. Get used to the idea that maybe you get to have this thing that is good, that makes you feel good.”

  Josh’s hands caressed my stomach, my sides. When he spoke, his voice was lower. “Get used to the idea it won’t be stolen from you in a night.”

  “Every time I let myself hope for a second, I think about it,” I admitted.

  “Come to bed.” Keith tugged and I followed, and Josh followed, and then we were lying there: Josh on his back, me on my back, Keith on his side facing us.

  “Do any Cary Grant movies end in bed?” Josh asked.

  I ran through movie endings. “I guess That Touch of Mink sort of does. It ends—sorry, spoilers—with him in a hotel room having an allergic reaction to love.”

  “Is that as . . . dumb as it seems like it is?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much. I kind of don’t like that role they kept casting him in where he’s the shallow playboy redeemed by the love of a good woman.”

  “But—” Keith laid his hand on my chest. “Isn’t that sort of what An Affair to Remember is?”

  “No. No, the transformation in that, for both of them, is that love’s not enough to make everything work out. You have to change, and change is hard, and there are no guarantees. I mean, that’s what makes it so good, so believable. Because we want to believe that change is possible, and that hard work pays off.”

  He kissed my cheek and snuggled closer. I put my arm around him, feeling impossibly intimate, nestled on both sides by men for whom I cared deeply.

  Josh turned, propping himself on one arm. “I believe all that. I believe we transform ourselves, and that no matter how hard it is, it pays off in the end.”

  “Me too,” Keith said.

  I wanted to say, I do too and let it rest, but I couldn’t lie to them. Or to myself. “I’d like to believe that. I’m trying to believe that. I don’t think I do, yet.”

  Josh slid his hand over Keith’s until I could feel both of them. “I admire that about you. It’s easier to work at it every day when you’re convinced it will all be good in the end. But you work at it every day on the strength of your hope, Cam. And that’s pretty damn amazing.” He kissed me.

  Keith kissed me.

  “Thank you for coming over tonight,” I whispered, when really I meant, Thank you for materializing in my life and making everything before you seem like monochrome.

  “Anytime,” Keith said. “Literally. I love your stove. I’d kill for a gas range. Can we have a gas range in our house you’re gonna buy us, Josh?”

  “We’re buying it, and hell yeah. And maybe one of those barbecues that’s hooked up to the propane line so we don’t have to keep exchanging tanks.”

  “Ohhh, and can we have heated floors in the master bath? I’ve always wanted heated floors!”

  “Yeah, as long as we find a contractor who accepts payment in tuna sandwiches.”

  The three of us settled in, still talking about their dream house (three bedrooms, two and a half baths, small fenced yard if possible, downtown would be ideal, but they’d probably have to look in the suburbs). We planned what we’d do the next day after Josh came home from church, and I almost asked if I could go with him, but the idea of staying in bed with Keith was a little too hard to pass up. We talked for what felt like hours, until my eyes were closed and it was increasingly hard to make the words assemble in my brain and force them out my mouth.

  The last thing I heard was Josh saying, “I think he’s asleep.”

  Fingers brushed my hair. “Yeah. Sweet Cam.”

  I let myself go, drifting, my breaths mingling with theirs like currents in deep water, flowing together, flowing apart, all eventually joining to move in the same direction, as inevitable as the tides.

  Explore more of the Queers of La Vista series: riptidepublishing.com/titles/universe/queers-la-vista

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for reading Kris Ripper’s One Life to Lose!

  We know your time is precious and you have many, many entertainment options, so it means a lot that you’ve chosen to spend your time reading. We really hope you enjoyed it.

  We’d be honored if you’d consider posting a review—good or bad—on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Goodreads, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and your blog or website. We’d also be honored if you told your friends and family about this book. Word of mouth is a book’s lifeblood!

  For more information on upcoming releases, author interviews, blog tours, contests, giveaways, and more, please sign up for our weekly, spam-free newsletter and visit us around the web:

  Newsletter: tinyurl.com/RiptideSignup

  Twitter: twitter.com/RiptideBooks

  Facebook: facebook.com/RiptidePublishing

  Goodreads: tinyurl.com/RiptideOnGoodreads

  Tumblr: riptidepublishing.tumblr.com

  Thank you so much for Reading the Rainbow!

  RiptidePublishing.com

  Oh, the toil of the writer, the endless research, the agonizing fact-checking . . .

  Full disclosure: my research for this book was watching many hours of Cary Grant movies. Other things as well, but that’s the only part I remember now.

  Cam gets a little emotional telling the story of the key in Notorious, stolen from the set by Cary Grant, passed on to Ingrid Bergman, and eventually to Alfred Hitchcock. I challenge you to watch the clip on YouTube and not get emotional yourself: youtu.be/74Mzt-DTHsk

  Whether or not there’s really an “original” ending to Suspicion is up for some debate. Was it written, but not shot? Was it shot, but not edited? Was it edited and complete, but rejected for the softer, less disturbing ending? We only know that the film differs from the book; who made those decisions, and whether they were challenged, is lost to time.

  For a little more about the great American juggler Bobby May, check out his page at the Juggling Hall of Fame: www.juggling.org/fame/may

  Sometimes inspiration arises in strange places. I learned about the existence of the tuna strainer from the marvelous Liz and Tracey Jacobs. TUNA STRAINER. You don’t know it’s necessary until you use it. Then you realize you can never live without it.

  For my fellow Goonies fans, there does (or at least did) exist a discontinued Goonies oven mitt on Ebay. I did not make that up. And now I kind of want to write a scene where Cam, Keith, and Josh watch the movie.

  Eagle-eyed readers may recognize the, ah, “murders at a fashion show” book. But I’m certainly not giving it away.

  And finally, a little bit about community.

  I’ve always been an uneasy player in queer spaces. Some of it is gender, some of it is my decided lack of allegiance to the rigid roles of “gay” and “lesbian” and “bisexual” as those terms were defined when I was coming up, and some of it is merely that I am uneasy, and awkward, in general.

  Queer folks have a lot of shifting loyalties. Our place in the world is constantly changing, and the lines between us seem to be perpetually erased and redrawn, facti
ons aligning and realigning, sometimes in deep disagreement, sometimes in tenuous accord.

  And sometimes, of course, we align as a family in which water is much thicker than blood, conflicts and all.

  Joey Rodriguez isn’t modeled on any one person; he’s a composite of a lot of different people I’ve known, and a lot of different people I’ve encountered through their written words. He’s not a random murderous gay, and he’s not really a madman, though that word is applied to him. He’s a guy who feels that part of his birthright—a certain role he was meant to play, a way he was meant to be seen by others—has been stolen from him by a rapidly changing world.

  People feel that way in all countries, in all walks of life. There is nothing very special about Joey, except that he takes matters into his own hands and tries to force the world to conform to the way he wishes it was. In his mind, he’s a damn hero.

  The most compelling villains are always the ones whose perspective you can kind of see, if you tilt your head to the side and squint. Or, as Hitchcock says, “[Audiences] want an ordinary human being with failings.” Joey’s a decent kid from a good family; he could be the boy next door, or the guy you went to school with. He could be pretty much anyone, and he’s probably not as much of a stranger as you wish he was.

  But the moral of this story isn’t Be afraid. Be very afraid. Cam’s story is all about what we do when fear finds us where we live and we can’t shake it off.

  Be brave. Be very brave. And let the people you love return the favor.

  Queers of La Vista

  Gays of Our Lives

  The Butch and the Beautiful

  The Queer and the Restless

  As La Vista Turns

  Scientific Method Universe

  Catalysts

  Unexpected Gifts

  Take Three Breaths

  Breaking Down

  Roller Coasters

  The Boyfriends Tie the Knot