by Wendy Qualls
“Ready?” Standing in the parking lot was a really inconvenient time to remember that he hated public speaking, but the realization usually hit right…about…now. Crap.
“Ready,” Lito answered. He passed Lumpy and Woozy’s leashes to Dave, but gave Dave’s hand a quick squeeze on the way.
The nervous quiver in Dave’s stomach lessened a bit.
They got about ten feet into the school before the dogs drew a giant cluster of students in the hallway. The rush cleared out quickly once the class bell rang, but they still drew more than a few curious glances as they got their VISITOR stickers from the front office and made their way toward the back door of the auditorium. Junior’s teacher lit up when he saw them.
“You were by far the students’ most popular choice,” the man said, beaming. He was tall and thin, his hipster glasses and neatly-shaped beard not quite balancing out how much his receding hairline aged him. “We don’t have a microphone hooked up for you, I’m afraid, but if there’s anything else you need…”
“I don’t think there is, but thanks.” Dave braced himself against the wall so Lumpy could nuzzle against his thigh. “We’re just doing a bit of talking and then a practical demonstration—those always get the kids’ attention. And I don’t mind being loud.”
“Excellent.” The teacher gestured for them to follow him through a cramped green room and down a short flight of stairs to the wing of the stage. The sounds of excited middle schoolers already echoed around the room as the students filed in. “It’s called NALSAR, right? North Alabama Search and Rescue? You’re Dave Schmidt and…”
“Lito Apaza,” Lito filled in for him. “Thanks.”
The teacher—Dave couldn’t remember more of a name than the “Mr. S” Junior had called him—calmed the students down and gave a long-winded introduction. Junior waved enthusiastically from the second row. Dave had probably done hundreds of these educational talks over the years, to varying age groups, but actually being on a stage was unusual. A stage in a giant auditorium full of middle schoolers, whom he was expected to educate. Yeah, the venue really wasn’t helping with his dislike of speaking in front of large groups. Lito flashed him a questioning look—What’s wrong?—so Dave tried his best to focus on the dogs instead. He dropped Lumpy and Woozy’s leashes and snapped his fingers, the command that said you can wander but be ready to come back to me immediately when I call you. Woozy walked in a tight circle, looked up at him, and flopped herself down on his foot. The kids tittered.
Lito smiled too, though, and followed suit. He took a seat on the edge of the stage next to Woozy, dangling his legs down in the orchestra pit, so Dave sat on Woozy’s other side. Eventually Mr. S conceded the fact that his students weren’t listening to a word he was saying and turned the whole thing over to Dave and Lito.
This part—the actual spiel—came almost automatically by now. “Who here owns a dog?” About half the hands went up. “Who knows the correct way to pet one?” Nearly everyone. So far the students were chatty and excitable, not rude but not paying attention to the humans on stage either. Dave singled out a cocky-looking boy in the front row. “You, then—come on up and show us.”
The boy strutted up onto the stage and gave Lumpy a few head pats, grinning at his buddies. Lumpy practically rolled her eyes. The gesture was exactly what Dave had expected, though, so he used the boy’s mistake to explain the difference in reaction time between reaching in overhand (slower and appears more of a threat) versus underhand (easy to pull away and gives the dog plenty of chance to telegraph its intentions). Lumpy made an excellent visual aid. Lito fit himself into the talk perfectly too, helping wrangle volunteers up and down from the stage and stopping the dogs from wandering off into the audience with a subtle throat clear on the few times they looked like they might want to explore. He was surprisingly attentive to Dave’s speech too, which was both flattering and a bit distracting.
“We’ve got time for some questions,” Dave concluded, “and then Mr. Apaza and Spot will do a bit of a practical demonstration for you.”
“Seriously?” Lito murmured, just loud enough for Dave to hear. “A little warning would have been nice.”
“You’ll do fine,” Dave whispered back. “Trust your dog.” Spot was behaving very well. Incredibly well considering it was her first time in this kind of situation. Lito running the find meant Dave could narrate. It also meant Lumpy and Woozy could continue to lie on either side of him on the stage like big black-and-brown slugs, watching the audience and letting their tongues loll out.
The students had quite a few questions, unsurprisingly, ranging from insightful to absurd. Dave tossed a few of the more obvious ones to Lito: no, their dogs weren’t trained to attack people. Yes, the dogs lived with them as pets. No, they didn’t get paid. The dogs didn’t either. Yes, it took a long time to learn search and rescue.
“Spot and I have been doing this about three months,” Lito elaborated for a girl with frizzy hair and braces who’d asked how long they’d each been on the team. “She and I probably won’t get certified until sometime next year, and then learning cadaver finds takes, what, a year after that?”
Dave nodded.
“So we’re newbies. Da—err, Mr. Schmidt here was the one who started the team and has been doing this a lot longer than me.”
Another boy raised his hand. “What’s a cadaver?”
Ha! Dave sat back and raised an eyebrow at Lito. He usually avoided that term for a reason, but sixth graders were old enough to not be traumatized by the concept. Probably. “Go on,” he urged. “You’re the one who brought it up…”
Lito shot him a look that promised retribution later. The students thought it was hilarious. “A cadaver is another word for a dead body,” he explained. “I’ve only been on two or three call-outs so far—all without Spot, since she’s not experienced enough—but I, personally, haven’t done a cadaver search yet. NALSAR sometimes gets asked to look for people who have been missing for a long time, and when that happens our dogs need extra training because we don’t always know whether the person we’re looking for is alive or not. Sometimes we’re pretty sure they’re not. When that happens, our dogs help the police find out where they died and where their body is.”
It was a calm, age-appropriate response. Way better than Dave usually did when faced with a question he wasn’t expecting. Christ, he’s amazing.
Junior was grinning like mad—his coolness quotient had probably just doubled in the last thirty seconds. The excitement in the room rose dramatically as several students started whispering to each other. The cocky boy in the front row didn’t even bother raising his hand this time. “Have you ever—”
Oh, this was going to get out of control fast. Damn.
“Right. So.” Even though it was fun and a bit hot watching Lito deal with rabidly curious sixth graders so handily, letting this particular topic of conversation continue would probably be a mistake. “Who wants to see an example of what our dogs do?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Lito grumbled quietly as he got Spot’s attention and took her leash off. His back was temporarily to their audience, blocking them from seeing his lips move. “Running Spot on a no-warning search is preferable to giving a no-warning talk about dead people to children. Also, screw you very much for that.”
“They’re not going to forget this talk.”
Lito glared at him, but the corners of his mouth kept twitching upward into a hint of a smile. “I’d like to elaborate on my previous statement,” he whispered, “but it wouldn’t be appropriate for school.”
Any students who weren’t already engrossed in the presentation were definitely interested now that Spot was loose. Several started trying to attract her attention, but Spot stayed cheerfully at Lito’s side and ignored them all. Not that Dave blamed her—he had to crane his neck to look up at Lito, now standing a few feet away while Dave was still seated at th
e edge of the stage. The disparity in their relative positions sent a hot spark through his entire body. Lito looked gorgeous and confident and charismatic and Dave was extremely aware of the fact that he was currently at eye level with Lito’s thighs. Lito cocked one eyebrow at him in a clear now what? gesture.
“Okay.” Dave had to clear his throat, but climbed to his feet as well. “I’m going to need a volunteer to be ‘lost’ up here—you with the pink shirt. Perfect, come on up. Lito, you and Spot start out over there near the side aisle. Make sure she’s not peeking.”
A wave of laughter from their audience.
Dave beckoned their volunteer victim closer. “What’s your name, hon?”
The stage wasn’t an ideal search venue—outdoors was usually better—but Dave got the demonstration search set up fairly quickly. The girl “hid” behind a stray cardboard box toward the back of the stage. She was in view of the left half of the audience but not visible from where Lito and Spot waited. Lito had to keep turning Spot’s head toward himself so she wouldn’t look over her shoulder at the kids, but the students in the nearest seats found that so hilarious Dave doubted Spot would have noticed the search target anyway.
“Okay,” Dave called, loud enough to be heard over the growing buzz of students whispering to each other and craning for a better view. “We’ve got a young woman lost in the woods back here. Her name is Lanisha. You ready?”
“What’s her description?” Lito called back. They often skipped the preliminaries in practice, but this was good.
“Eleven years old, African-American, long hair in several braids. She also giggles a lot.”
Laughter from the audience and the girl.
“When and where was she last seen, and what are my search parameters?”
“Last seen at school about ten seconds ago, wearing pink. Your boundaries are the edges of the stage. Go when you’re ready.”
Lito did an excellent job of ramping up Spot’s excitement—”Ready, girl? Ready? Ready? Go find!”—and Spot took off like a shot. She skipped the stairs entirely, jumping straight from the floor to the stage. Several kids shouted encouragement. Her first lap took her straight across the front of the stage and down the opposite stairs to where the students were now all standing and cheering her on, but she came straight back to Lito and made her second pass further back up the stage. She was still running for the fun of it at this point. Lito angled his body perfectly, though, delineating the boundary of the search area (and the fact that the audience wasn’t in it). Spot shrank her excited circles accordingly.
Dave had a sudden mental image of Lito using that same take-charge stance in a different situation. He didn’t even have to talk, just stand there, and now Dave had the beginnings of a hard-on. Christ. Lumpy and Woozy both sat up to watch Spot run, but they stayed put at Dave’s side.
Even after several months of practicing, Spot still overreacted when she actually found someone. This time, she woofed in full voice and then bounced around the girl for a good ten seconds before remembering what she was supposed to do. The rest of the students were all craning their necks to see, but it would have been hard to miss how frantically Spot’s tail was wagging. She returned to Lito, sat just like they’d practiced dozens of times, then took Lito directly in and sat on the girl’s feet looking immensely pleased with herself.
“Nicely done,” Dave murmured when Lito and Spot rejoined him at the front of the stage and both Spot and their “victim” had been given suitable applause. “It’s harder in front of an audience, I know, but you both did well.”
“Not much of a challenge, search-wise,” Lito murmured back. “I was expecting you’d hide her out in the audience or something. Possibly on the catwalk overhead.”
Dave looked up—yes, there was a catwalk up above where the spotlights hung. “I thought you didn’t like heights.”
The glint in Lito’s eyes turned a bit wicked, then he leaned in to speak directly in Dave’s ear. “I’ve found I don’t mind if you’re there to catch me.”
Dave had been vaguely turning around some tease in his head, something about enjoying the view as Lito climbed the ladder to get up there, but some things weren’t appropriate to say out loud at a middle school. Including ninety percent of his current thoughts. Well fuck.
Instead of doing something that would get them thrown out, he motioned for the students to settle down again. “It looks like we have ten minutes left,” he announced in his public speaking voice. “Those of you who would like to practice greeting and petting a dog, Mr. Apaza and I will bring Heffalump, Woozle, and Spot to the edges of the stage. Make a line, one person petting at a time, and remember to use proper hand positioning—underhand, palm up, fingers together. And always ask the owner for permission first.”
There would be time for ogling, and all the rest, later. If they hadn’t had the dogs along, Dave would have suggested they go back and put Lito’s executive suite to use. As it was, they’d just have to wait until they got back to Black Lake. By then, he’d have had time to come up with a challenge Lito might like better than searching for barely hidden middle schoolers.
Chapter 12
The rest of Lito’s December was a whirlwind of work, holiday preparations, and all the issues that popped up when those two things crossed. Christmas meant decorations, which meant that wonderful tightrope of secular versus religious and “holiday” versus “winter.” It also meant a sharp increase in idiocy which became his problem: some teenage vandals in Ardmore trashed the hotel lobby when the overnight manager was away from the desk, a drunk man in Huntsville urinated on the breakfast buffet decorations, two boxes of seasonal items went missing in Montgomery. Lito still had his whole “local flavor” project to do, but the steady stream of stupid emergencies was an incredible time sink.
NALSAR’s practices were getting shorter too, now that sunset was coming at four o’clock and temperatures dropped to what even Midwesterners would consider chilly. Spot spent less time in the backyard and more time in the house sprawled next to wherever Lito happened to be. Usually trying to look as cold and pathetic as possible, presumably in hopes he’d change the weather. She did enjoy the playdates when he brought her to Dave’s house—and let her sleep in the living room with Lumpy and Woozy while Dave’s bed was otherwise occupied—but the shorter days were depressing. Even though they would have been a lot more depressing alone.
Dave offered to let Lito tag along for his family Christmas get-together. Lito gave it some serious consideration. Thanksgiving dinner could be excused as “my poor platonic friend has no family nearby for the holiday,” though; actually showing up again to a second Schmidt family gathering felt more formal. Like they were going public with their relationship. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if it was a relationship. They fucked in the bedroom and talked about other things when outside it and other than occasional innuendo or flirting comments, the two spheres stayed almost entirely separate.
Ultimately Lito decided to spend Christmas in Atlanta with his friends-turned-family. Ian and some cousin of Chris’s had taken over the lease on Lito’s old apartment, and they offered crash space for him and Spot both. The new roommate turned out to be a skinny older guy named Clarence who kept evangelizing about the spiritual yoga class he taught on weekends. It sounded terrible and Lito could tell Ian was already sick of the spiel. Living out of state made Lito exempt from the hard sell, luckily.
Paul and Brandon invited everyone to their house in the suburbs for Christmas morning. Clarence declined to come along—Ian didn’t look sad about that either—so Lito, Ian, and Chris all piled in Lito’s car for the drive. It should have felt like old times, but something was missing. Something beyond the obvious “Jericho’s still in Haiti, Geoffrey moved to San Francisco, Adam’s spending the holiday in Buffalo with his family, and Tony and Enrique broke up so neither of them keep in touch anymore.”
Maybe it was just that the ol
d gang was getting older. Lito hadn’t joined their group until after most of the rest of them graduated college, but Brandon and Ian and a few of the others all went back nearly a decade. Hell, I was still in middle school back then. Seeing the actual literal white picket fence around Brandon and Paul’s house made Lito’s stomach lurch.
Halfway up Paul and Brandon’s walkway, Ian gasped dramatically and put his hand to his chest. “Holy shit, they’ve taken up gardening.” He said it softly enough that only Lito could hear him, but Chris did shoot them a funny look. And there was, indeed, a neat little flower bed bordering the porch. It probably looked gorgeous in the summer. “Shoot me if I ever go all Stepford like this, okay?” Ian murmured.
Fat chance of that happening. “Deal.” The likelihood of Ian ever living somewhere with a white picket fence and a garden was somewhere below the chances of Lito’s parents spontaneously becoming hippies. Lito would have said the same of himself, but his current house did have a fence (albeit a half-rusted chain-link dog run) so he wasn’t really one to talk.
Conversation flowed comfortably, though, helped by the fact that brunch was freaking amazing. Paul was a good cook and it was clear Brandon was proud as hell of his partner. The two of them spent the whole meal playing footsie under the table where they thought no one could see. No one else could, probably, but Lito had a prime viewing angle thanks to the mirrored cabinets on the sideboard. Somehow he found himself more jealous than nauseated.
“Feels weird to not all be crammed in someone’s too-small apartment,” Chris commented as the meal wound down. “You two are kind of creepily domestic now, you know that?”
Brandon laughed and bent down to plant a kiss on the top of Paul’s head on his way to return their empty plates to the kitchen. “Realized I’m ready for it, I guess,” he answered back over his shoulder. “And I found a guy I love who makes the domesticity worth it.”