Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  “I could hand-feed you. And you could pretend I’m your slave boy giving you the grapes he’s peeled for you, which your royal fingers are too sacred to touch.” Jimmy had never in his life played a sex game, but he was willing to try if it would distract Shane.

  And Shane’s eyes sparkled. “What other tasks could I give my slave boy?”

  “Whatever you want. You’re the emperor.”

  “Hmm. Emperor Shane. Doesn’t really have a good ring to it. Anyway, I thought it was cowboys that floated your boat.”

  Jimmy winked. “I’m flexible.”

  After Jimmy cleared away the dishes, he was called to the bar to help Sam and one of Shane’s cousins handle a minor flood in the gents’ room. When he returned to the apartment with some ice cream, Shane’s mood had grown somber. He waited for Jimmy to join him on the couch. “Can I ask you another favor?”

  “You can just order me. Slave boy, remember?”

  Shane lightly tweaked Jimmy’s ear. “Take me to the hospital tomorrow.”

  “I thought your parents—”

  “Yeah. But they already missed a half-day’s work at the ranch yesterday, and it’s a really busy time of year.” He started to lift his right hand, winced, and lifted the left instead. He rubbed the back of his neck. “And… you know, they spent months sitting around hospitals because of me. I don’t like to think about those times. And I’d rather have you there—if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind. But—”

  “I called Mom while you were gone. She didn’t even argue too much. And she says she and Dad’ll drop off her SUV in front of the Snake tonight so it’s there for us in the morning.”

  “She’s going to trust me with her son and her car?”

  Shane’s smile returned. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Bring a book. It’ll be dead boring.”

  “Yes, master.”

  Shane somehow managed to rearrange them so he was sitting upright with Jimmy’s head in his lap. Shane rhythmically brushed his fingers through Jimmy’s short hair, as if he were petting a cat. Jimmy kind of wanted to purr. But Shane felt tense beneath him.

  “When my mama was in the hospital dying, nobody would drive me to see her,” Jimmy began.

  Shane’s gaze sharpened. “Who was the nobody?”

  “My brothers,” Jimmy sighed. “Derek might’ve been locked up. I don’t remember. But the others could’ve and didn’t. And neither did the son of a bitch she’d married the year earlier. Robert.”

  “You had a stepfather?”

  “No,” Jimmy responded without further explanation. He wouldn’t grace Robert with that title. “He said he didn’t have time to go driving me around. And the hospital was way across town. So I started skipping school and taking the bus to get there. I had to transfer twice each way.” And when he was there, his mother had little to say to him. Even without the pain or being zonked out on meds, she’d never been very demonstrative or loving.

  “It was important to you,” Shane said softly, still stroking Jimmy’s hair. “How old were you?”

  “Not quite fourteen.” Nobody had bothered to explain to him what was happening to his mother, but he’d figured it out. He was fucking terrified. So he sat there for hours, hoping he could somehow keep her alive by force of will alone. And everyone knows what comes of hoping.

  Jimmy rubbed his fingers lightly over Shane’s wrist. “One day the school called and told Robert I’d been missing. When I got home that day he”—beat the shit out of me—“punished me. And he called the hospital and told them I wasn’t allowed to visit anymore.”

  “Didn’t she ask to see you?”

  “Guess not. Anyway, she died not long after that.” He never got to say good-bye. Worse, he’d spent years with the irrational conviction that her death was his fault because he hadn’t been there to wish her alive.

  “Shit, Jimmy. I’m sorry I asked you. My mom can—”

  “No, no. It’s good this way. I mean, you’re just getting taped together, no big deal. But it’ll be nice for me to be waiting for someone in the hospital knowing he wants me there, and nobody’s going to keep me away.”

  LATER THAT night—but not too late, because Shane needed sleep—Jimmy gave him a tub bath that was two parts scrubbing and one part erotic. Then he laid Shane down on the mattress and gave him a leisurely blowjob. Shane was pretty relaxed by the time they turned off the lights.

  They had to wake up early, and Jimmy helped Shane get ready. Shane looked oddly naked without his wool shirt, but he made Jimmy wear his instead. “For good luck,” Shane said, giving him a quick kiss.

  Since Shane couldn’t eat or drink anything, Jimmy skipped breakfast in the spirit of solidarity. “I’ll make sure we have Mae’s tomorrow,” Jimmy promised. He grabbed his book, and they walked out to the lobby. Belinda was busy giving some guests directions to Big Trees State Park, but she paused long enough to wave at them.

  Val’s SUV ran a whole lot better than anything Jimmy had ever driven, but he took care to stay within a reasonable range of the speed limit. He followed Shane’s directions down into the valley, through a town declaring itself the Cowboy Capital, and into the outskirts of Modesto, where a good-sized hospital stood among strip malls and squat office buildings. Jimmy parked not too far from the main entrance. He and Shane didn’t touch as they walked across the lot, but they remained close.

  When it came time to check Shane in, Jimmy was perversely glad about the broken right arm. It gave him an excuse to fill out the paperwork without Shane having to admit that deciphering the forms was too much for him. Jimmy, on the other hand, had to squint to read the tiny print. Fuck. One of these days soon he was going to have to give in and get reading glasses.

  The hospital staff didn’t bat an eye when Shane gave Jimmy a kiss before being whisked away. “You can wait over there,” said the receptionist, pointing down the hall. “Somebody will let you know when he’s awake again. It will be several hours, so if you need to leave, you can give us your cell number and we’ll call when he’s brought to recovery.”

  Jimmy had Shane’s phone in his pocket, and with Val’s SUV at his disposal, he could have gone anywhere. But irrational as it was, he wanted to stay close to Shane. He didn’t want to leave the hospital without him. “I’ll wait here,” Jimmy told her.

  The room was much larger than the one at Rattlesnake’s little hospital, and the chairs were more comfortable. But it was still a hospital—the air smelled like disinfectant, the décor was depressingly generic, and the atmosphere was somber and tense. Jimmy tried to read his book, but when his stomach growled, he went in search of food. The cafeteria had decent coffee and passable sandwiches, which kept him occupied for a little while. Then, because he knew he still had a long wait and because he was feeling claustrophobic, he went outside to pace the parking lot.

  He didn’t understand why he was so unsettled. The surgery wasn’t life-threatening. And dammit, he’d known Shane for just fifteen days. Never mind that he was closer to him than he’d been to anyone since…. They were just friends. Okay, friends with benefits. And as soon as Shane was healed, Jimmy would be back on the road and just a fading memory. Maybe Shane would print that one photo he’d taken of Jimmy and put it in one of his albums, but Jimmy doubted it. Jimmy wasn’t Jesse—not by a long shot.

  Parking lots were such featureless places compared to, say, a cattle ranch in the foothills. A few boring shrubs and trees, some sparrows hopping around, and row after row of cars and trucks and SUVs. The sun was too bright. He wished he could lounge under the spreading branches of an oak tree and imagine all the people who had touched its bark over the past half a millennium. He wished he could walk along a creek between two steep little hills, listening to water burble over stones. Hell, he wished he could sit in an old saloon, admiring the mural of a snake and trading stories with the handsome bartender.

  God damn it! He knew better than to wish for anything.

 
There was a bus stop at the corner. He walked there and looked at the schedule—the next bus would arrive in ten minutes, heading downtown. From there, he could get on a Greyhound and go… anywhere he wanted. North, maybe, now that warm weather was coming. Or maybe east. He hadn’t spent time in the Rockies for a while. Or he could look for a gig in some tourist town somewhere, maybe on the coast. He liked the sound of the ocean. There was the desert too. He’d once spent a week in a squatters’ town along the Salton Sea. Or maybe he’d head to a place that made even Rattlesnake look like a metropolis. Years ago he’d passed through a ghost town on the high plains of Oregon; it had once been a bustling center for sheep and cattle production, but only a few dozen people and a bunch of old buildings remained.

  He saw the bus at the traffic light, waiting to turn toward him. But when he felt in his pocket for bus fare, he found Shane’s cell phone and Val’s keys. He wasn’t a thief. He left the bus stop and walked back to the hospital.

  It was late afternoon by the time a woman led him into the large recovery room where each patient lay in a curtained cubicle. Someone was moaning loudly, which disconcerted him, but Shane met him with a woozy smile. “Wasn’t so bad,” Shane announced, slurring his words slightly. The bruise on his forehead looked worse than ever, but his arm was neatly wrapped in a splint. He was finishing a can of 7-Up and a packet of saltines.

  Between the arm and the drugs, it took some time for Jimmy to get Shane dressed. At least Shane didn’t appear to be in pain. In fact, he tried to tug Jimmy close for a kiss, then laughed when they both nearly toppled. When the nurse came by shortly afterward with detailed recovery instructions, Shane was in no condition to follow what she was saying, so Jimmy listened carefully. He even took a few notes on the papers the nurse handed him.

  Once he got Shane settled into the passenger seat, Jimmy remembered to do one more thing. With Shane’s not entirely helpful instructions, Jimmy used the cell phone to call Val.

  “He’s doing fine,” he assured her right away. “We’re on our way home.”

  “Does he want me to come by this evening?”

  Jimmy looked over at Shane, who shook his head firmly. “Ma’am, I think he’s probably just going to go to sleep. But I bet he’d appreciate a little company tomorrow afternoon when I have to work.”

  He could hear her sigh. “All right. I won’t pick up the car until then. Feel free to use it in the meantime if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jimmy put the phone back in his pocket and stuck the key in the ignition. But before he could start the engine, Shane grabbed his wrist. “We have wheels. We could run away together.” His normally sharp eyes were fuzzy and vague.

  “Where do you want to go?” Jimmy asked gently.

  “Dunno. Doesn’t matter. Wherever you’re going.”

  “Wouldn’t you miss Rattlesnake? Your family?”

  Shane sighed. “Yeah.” He leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  BELINDA WAS right—Shane was back to work by the end of the week. And he was cheerful despite the annoyance of his splinted arm. “I think I like having a slave boy,” he admitted Sunday morning as Jimmy gave him a bath that involved more naughty touching than was strictly necessary. “When this arm heals, I might break the other one just to keep you near.”

  Jimmy chose to ignore the sadness underlying that comment. “You just want that group discount from the surgeon.”

  “Actually… I’ve been thinking. If you were willing to stick around a little longer after my arm’s healed, I maybe could do something about my leg.”

  A part of Jimmy—a damned annoying part—celebrated. But the rest of him squirmed, feeling trapped. The longer he stayed, the harder his leaving would be on both of them. “That’s a thought,” he responded noncommittally, pleasing neither Shane nor Jimmy’s two selves.

  TWO WEEKS later Shane was healing well. The Snake was busy now that the weather was uniformly fine. Within another month or so, Belinda said, they’d see an increasing number of guests from outside California and even from outside the US. Tourists from Asia and Europe loved an authentic Old West experience, as exotic to them as Istanbul or the Great Wall would be to Jimmy. The city council had been considering stagecoach rides down Main Street on weekends, maybe even with faux bandits, but the residents were not uniformly enthusiastic about the idea. Naturally the shopkeepers loved it, but the ranchers, farmers, and vintners had given a collective thumbs-down. Because Shane’s family members lived in both camps, a minor civil war had erupted. It was a topic of lively debate at the Snake and at the ranch.

  “It’s hokey, but it might be kinda fun,” Shane said. It was late Monday night and the bar was almost empty. Pretty soon Jimmy would help him put up the chairs and sweep the floor, but for now they sat on stools, each with a cup of coffee. A bowl of popcorn lay on the counter within reach, and at a table in the far corner, a pair of expensively dressed men in their fifties nodded their heads to the music drifting from the speakers. They were friends of the anniversary couple from a few weeks back.

  “Won’t it interfere with traffic?”

  “Only for a few blocks, and only a few times a day, and only on weekends. Besides, how many people are going to complain about being delayed by a stagecoach robbery?”

  “What about the horse shit?”

  Shane laughed. “It’s been a few years since downtown Rattlesnake has carried that particular scent. Anyway, Lisa and Craig Delgado have a pair of draft horses just standing in their pasture with nothing to do, plus a teenage daughter who wouldn’t mind earning a few dollars shoveling horse shit. They can hire some more kids to be the desperadoes and the sheriff’s posse, and that’s good. We can always use more jobs around here.”

  “Where will they get the stagecoach?”

  “There’s a company in South Dakota that makes ’em. But Aunt Belinda’s been scouring her contacts ’cause she figures someone nearby’s probably got one rotting away in a shed or a barn. She thinks she can get a deal on one, and Hank’s already said he’ll restore it cheap.”

  “Aunt Belinda has an entrepreneurial spirit,” Jimmy said, smiling.

  “And when she wants something, she generally gets it. It’s a family trait.”

  Jimmy paused before replying. “What do you suppose old George would think of the stagecoach plan?”

  “Oh, he’d find a way to make money off it. You know, he’s the one who started charging folks to see Chuku Cave. Back then the steps only went a little way down. You had to be lowered the rest of the way in a big bucket. Legend has it he’d charge people two bits to go down—and five dollars to come back up again.” Shane was so handsome when he grinned that Jimmy couldn’t resist leaning forward to steal a kiss. One of the men in the corner wolf whistled.

  “So what’s Aunt Belinda got planned for you tomorrow?” Shane asked a few moments later.

  “The tile’s supposed to come in for 105. We got the fixtures today—except they delivered the wrong sink, but they’ll fix that later this week. Belinda wants the bathroom done by the weekend.”

  “Because it’s live music on Saturday. Did I tell you we booked Betty Diamond again?”

  “Good. I liked her.” Jimmy looked into his cooling coffee, considering whether to warm it with a refill. He wanted a little more energy after they closed up, but didn’t want to be up all night. He decided a little more caffeine wouldn’t hurt, so he stood and walked around the bar, then poured the rest of the pot into his mug. He knew Shane was already at his limit—too much caffeine could trigger a seizure. When Jimmy rinsed the pot, he smiled at one of the lists Charlie had made for Shane, this one detailing all the chores to be done at closing each evening.

  When the pot was clean, he dumped a little sugar into his mug, stirred, and reclaimed his stool. He was tired, but he liked this time of night when everything was sleepy and quiet. No cars rolled down Main Street, the phones didn’t ring, and the inn creaked and gr
oaned around them like an old man settling into his chair. Shane gave him sweet, dirty little smiles that promised things to come.

  The men in the corner eventually paid their tab—leaving a generous tip—and wandered to their room, hand in hand. Shane closed out the cash register and put away the cleaned glasses while Jimmy upended the chairs and swept. “Night, George,” Shane said to the snake in the mural before shutting off the lights.

  Frank’s nose was in a magazine, but he looked up as they passed by. “Burned out bulb in 203, but they said they don’t want to be disturbed tonight.”

  “Okay. Make a note for Belinda to let me know when they’ve checked out.”

  “’Kay.”

  As usual, the apartment was in disarray. Jimmy tried to keep things neat, but Shane had an uncanny ability to mess things up almost immediately. Jimmy teased that it was Shane’s superpower. But honestly, he didn’t mind cleaning up. It was like a fond little dance they did. And speaking of dancing, maybe he and Shane would get another chance at it this weekend. Jimmy would like that.

  They squeezed together in front of the bathroom sink to brush their teeth. Shane rinsed first. “Will you have time for Mae’s tomorrow, or do you want me to bring something over while you work? She might have the early strawberries in.”

  Jimmy considered as he spat. “You better bring me something. The tile’s going to be a big job, and I can’t start the rest until it’s done.”

  “Aunt Belinda is a slave driver.”

  “I thought I was your slave boy,” Jimmy replied, palming Shane’s boxer-clad ass.

  “You are. I’d better have a talk with her.”

  They finished stripping and got into bed. But Shane knew Jimmy liked to look at him when they made love, so he left the bedside light on. He lay facing Jimmy, left hand cradling the back of Jimmy’s head. “Your hair’s getting a little long.”