Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  Somers started to laugh again. “No,” he said, clapping Hazard on the shoulder. Hazard pulled away, and Somers fell again—this time, hitting the floor. From where he lay, Somers added, still laughing, “He didn’t bring a girlfriend.”

  Lender and Swinney exchanged an uncomfortable look; Hazard fought the urge to squirm in his seat. It was just a question, he told himself. And Somers was an ass. That’s all it was. “My boyfriend stayed in St. Louis.”

  With a nod, Upchurch said, “Long-distance, huh? That’s hard.”

  “I dated a guy long-distance,” Swinney said with an easy roll of her shoulders. “Worked out pretty well. I liked him better, it turned out, when I only saw him every few weeks. Made the sex intense, you know?”

  “Intense?” Lender grunted into his beer. “What’s that like? The closest my wife and I get to intense is if we both stay awake the whole time.”

  Everyone laughed, even Hazard, and the moment rolled past and they started talking about something else. Inwardly, though, Hazard marveled at what had just happened. No insults, no jibes, no awkward pauses. He took another sip of his beer and felt another knot of tension unwind. Maybe he’d been wrong about coming back.

  Somers finally got back to his feet, and he interrupted the conversation—they were talking about Lender’s various attempts to find legitimate tax breaks, and Hazard was grateful for the interruption—by lurching towards their table and announcing, loud enough to carry across the room, that he needed to take a piss. Then he stumbled off towards the bathroom.

  Upchurch rolled his eyes and took a long drink.

  “Don’t start,” Swinney warned him.

  “Me? You’re telling me? When that asshole can’t stay sober five minutes after he’s off the clock?”

  “Drop it,” Swinney said, her cheeks coloring.

  “Lender, back me up,” Upchurch said.

  Shaking his head, Lender stared into his glass.

  “Something I should know?” Hazard said.

  “Nothing,” Swinney said, setting her pint down with a clank.

  “Hell yes you need to know,” Upchurch said. Swinney opened her mouth, but Upchurch said, “If he’s going out there with Somers, he deserves to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That Somers is a drunk. That you can’t trust him to do his job.”

  “That’s not true,” Swinney said.

  “I’m the one he left without backup,” Upchurch said. “Damn near got stabbed at a public disturbance because the golden boy was throwing up in the bushes.”

  “He was sick,” Swinney said, but her voice had lost some of its edge, and she didn’t meet Hazard’s glance.

  “He was hungover. And the only reason I’m not shitting in a bag is because the knife hit my belt.” Upchurch shook his head. “Look, Hazard, Somers is a good guy. He is. But you better not put all your chips on him. You probably knew some guys like that, right? Back in St. Louis, you probably knew guys that pulled shit like that with their partners, right?”

  “Here’s what I know,” Hazard said, sliding his glass away and getting to his feet. “Somers is my partner. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s the only thing that matters. So you either write a report and make this official, or you stop talking shit about him. Otherwise, keep this up and I’ll break your jaw.”

  Swinney’s eyes were wide, and Lender had just about buried his nose in his glass, and Upchurch’s face had turned red.

  “Nice meeting you,” Hazard said, catching sight of Somers tossing back shots at the bar. He nodded to Somers, paid his tab, and left.

  As he emerged into the humid summer night, a hand caught his arm. “You pissed—” Somers paused, clearing his throat and obviously trying to steady his words. “You really pissed Upchurch off. What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, what’d you say?”

  “Whatever I said, it had nothing to do with you.”

  Somers studied him for a moment, his eyes bleary and his body wavering as though he were standing in a high wind. Then he nodded and said, “Yeah,” like they’d agreed on something. “I’m—I better go home.”

  He took a step, staggered, and knocked over a folding table and chairs that sat outside Saint Taffy’s. Tangled in the fallen chairs, Somers struggled to free himself, but he only managed to knock his chin and then collapse.

  “For God’s sake,” Hazard muttered, grabbing Somers by the belt and the jacket. “Get up.”

  Together they managed to get Somers on his feet, and then Hazard righted the table and the chairs while keeping a hold of Somers’s jacket. By that time, Swinney had come to the door and was watching them. She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she had nice eyes, and she just watched for a minute.

  “You want me to take him?”

  “I’m his damn partner, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah,” Somers said cheerily. “He’s my damn partner.”

  “Somers, you tell him what’s going on?” Swinney asked.

  Somers’s good mood evaporated, and his face settled into a morose pout. “I don’t have anything to tell anybody.”

  “You tell him, or somebody will tell him for you.” To Hazard, she added, “Sorry about all this.”

  Hazard shrugged; he didn’t know what to say, so he gave Somers a little shake and said, “Which way?”

  Somers, his face still fixed in a frown, pointed down Market Street.

  “Night,” Swinney called after them, and Hazard threw her a wave.

  They walked that way for a while. The sun lingered on the horizon, huge and red, and although the day had cooled and a breeze came off the river, Hazard’s clothes still stuck to him like they’d been glued on. The river smell grew stronger as they followed Market Street, although it was still punctuated by city smells: the dry dustiness of the street, the whirls of exhaust, and the baked-garbage stink from the Dumpsters. Apartments filled the spaces between storefronts and restaurants, in renovated walk-ups and hotels and warehouses.

  It was to one of these latter that Somers directed them. His shoulders had slumped, and his face had lost its usual cheer. Finally, as they approached the building—the Crofter’s Mark—Somers said, “What’d Upchurch tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m drunk,” Somers said angrily, the words slurred, “I’m not stupid. He said something. What?”

  “What the fuck does it matter? Where are your keys?”

  “I don’t know.” Somers patted himself down.

  “Jesus.”

  “Did you say something to him?”

  “Yeah, I said I don’t like dragging drunks home.”

  Somers paused, his eyes coming up to Hazard’s face, his confusion obvious as he tried to figure out if Hazard had made a joke.

  “Keys,” Hazard said. “Come on.”

  But Somers was frozen. “You have a boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, who cares? Am I going to have to go through goddamn pockets myself?”

  Somers took a step backward and clapped both hands protectively over his pockets. “What’s his name?”

  With a growl, Hazard took a step forwards, but Somers retreated again. “It doesn’t matter. Just open the damn door so I can get you in your apartment and go home.”

  “You don’t have a home. You’re staying in a motel.”

  “So I can go to my motel, then. Keys, Somers. Right now.”

  “No.” Hazard took another step, and Somers held up a warning finger. “Not until you tell me his name.”

  “His name?”

  “Your boyfriend’s name.”

  Hazard studied his partner. Somers’s perfect features were flushed with a mixture of stubbornness and drink, but there was something surprisingly needy too, as though the question meant something to Somers.

  “Billy. It’s Billy, all right? Now, will you find your damn keys?”

  “You love him?”

  “All right, I’m done. You get yourself home.” Hazard turned to go.

&n
bsp; Somers caught him and tried to turn him around, but instead, he fell into Hazard, and his weight sent the two men careening into the bricks. For a moment, Somers lay against Hazard, his breath hot on Hazard’s neck.

  “Did he tell you about my wife?” Somers mumbled.

  Wrinkling his nose against the reek of alcohol, Hazard reached down, fished in Somers pocket, and produced the keys. He grabbed Somers elbow and shoved him towards the door. With quick, economical motions, Hazard unlocked the front door, crossed the lobby, and jabbed the elevator call button. The bell dinged, the doors opened, and Hazard guided Somers onto the elevator.

  “4F,” Somers said. He slumped against Hazard, his head on Hazard’s shoulder, and the mirrored doors gave back their image: Hazard, dark and wide and muscled, and Somers, blond and lean and curved around him. The image was disorienting to Hazard, like a funhouse reflection: not true, but not true in a terribly painful way.

  “She kicked me out,” Somers said, his voice slurred almost into incomprehensibility. “Can’t see Evie, can’t even see her.”

  “Come on,” was all Hazard could say as the doors opened. He half-dragged, half-carried Somers to the door of 4F. He worked the key in the lock and shoved the door open with his heel. It was a small, stark two-bedroom: no decorations, a stack of plates in the sink, and two overflowing black trash bags near the door. Hazard maneuvered Somers across the empty apartment and into the closest bedroom. The only furnishing was a twin mattress on the floor—not even a box spring underneath.

  As carefully as he could, Hazard lowered Somers onto the bed. Somers grabbed Hazard’s collar with both hands, and for a moment they stared at each other, with Somers’s drunken gaze wandering over Hazard’s face.

  “You ever think about that?” Somers whispered, and the fingers of his right hand uncurled to tease the line of Hazard’s jaw. Hazard trembled, ready to bolt and yet somehow unable to pull free. “About that time—about the locker room. I think about it.”

  The mention of the past was enough to jolt Hazard out of his trance. He yanked Somers’s hands from his collar and stood.

  “Get some sleep,” Hazard said, and he wished his voice didn’t sound like it had been scraped down to bone.

  “Do you hate me?” Somers asked.

  Hazard shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Jesus, I really hate myself sometimes.”

  And then, because the words just popped out, and not because they meant anything at all, not because he cared one damn bit, Hazard heard himself saying, “Things’ll look better in the morning.”

  He wasn’t sure if Somers heard him; the blond man’s eyes were closed, and his breathing had evened out. Hazard shook himself, as though trying to throw off Somers’s touch or his breath or some other, invisible mark, and then let himself out of the apartment. He took the two overflowing trash bags to the Dumpster, and then he heard himself making a sound, deep in his throat, and he didn’t know what it meant, he just knew that it hurt and that it was some old hurt that went all the way down. He punched the brick wall, just once, and then he was back under control. Then he went back to the motel, taped up his knuckles, and went to bed.

  THE CELL PHONE WOKE Hazard, and the first thing he noticed was that his hand hurt. Then all the rest of it came rushing in: drinks with the detectives, Upchurch, and taking Somers back to his apartment. Hazard let out a frustrated breath and shoved all that mental chaos to the back of his mind. He had tried calling Billy before going to bed, but there had been no answer. Maybe this was Billy calling back. He punched the cell phone’s screen and said, “Yeah?”

  “We caught something.” It was Somers’s voice, and he sounded like shit. He rattled off an address and said, “See you there.”

  Hazard hadn’t undressed except to remove his shoes and jacket and tie; he settled for shoes and jacket, got in his car, and drove across town. An orange ember in the distance marked his destination.

  At night, the changes to Wahredua were visible in a different way. The lights, for example. Hazard remembered, as a boy, the deep black nights of Wahredua. Once, after escaping from his house, he had walked the MP lines at night, and it had been so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front his face. Then there had been a single light in the distance, and the rumble under his feet, and Hazard had leaped clear of the tracks just before the train rushed past. As soon as the light was gone, the blackness returned, broken only by the sparking wheels along the rails. That was the night he had known he was alone in the universe, and he’d known that he, Emery Hazard, was the only one responsible for himself. He was the only one who could keep him from getting run down by a train, for example.

  Now, though, Wahredua seemed bathed in a perpetual half-light, the combined sodium glow of hundreds of streetlights and security lights and traffic lights and porch lights, pushing the darkness back around a gray bubble. Wroxall College, barely visible by day, now glowed like a Disney castle in the distance. Even the old Tegula factory shone three white points of light in the sky. Everything was brighter, more vivid, more alive. Even that burning spark in the distance.

  Hazard followed the wandering, disordered streets of Wahredua towards the neighborhood known as Smithfield. Smithfield, in Hazard’s childhood, had been a no-man's land, a Wild West that crouched at the edge of the MP lines. Men and women drifted through Smithfield, taking up residence in abandoned buildings, turning tricks, dealing drugs. When Hazard had been fourteen, Hollace Walker—a boy with a black father and a white mother, almost as much an outcast as Emery Hazard, town faggot—had dared Hazard to steal something from the Smithfield house known as the Bordello. It was an old Victorian building on the edge of Smithfield, and every boy in town knew its reputation of having once served as the town’s only operating brothel.

  Hollace had waited on the safe side of the street while Hazard crossed and approached the crumbling Victorian structure. As Hazard had approached, an older woman—he knew now that she had probably been no older than thirty, maybe thirty-five, but hard living had made her look older, and to a boy of fourteen, thirty seemed ancient—had emerged from the Bordello. She had been wearing purple tights and a purple bra and nothing else. Her breasts had seemed enormous and pendulous, and the cleft between her legs had been obscenely visible. She had been carrying two pizza boxes and a broken lamp, and she had paused on the steps and offered to blow Hazard for twenty cents. When Hazard had mutely shaken his head, she had shrugged, dumped the pizza boxes and the lamp at the curb, and sauntered back into the house. As soon as she disappeared from sight, Hazard had sprinted back across the street and almost gotten himself hit by a plumber’s van.

  Now, seeing Smithfield through an experienced detective’s eyes, Hazard was shocked at what he saw. If the rest of Wahredua had prospered and grown during his absence, Smithfield had only gotten worse. He drove past the Bordello, which now leaned towards the street as though in a grotesque, sexual thrust, and saw a handful of sex-workers—men and women—running the corner. Fires burned in weed-choked yards, or their reflected light glimmered inside abandoned buildings. A man in ragged clothing limped along one side of the street, while on the other, two boys perched on a flight of weathered concrete stairs. Hazard couldn’t spot their stash, but he would have laid money that the boys were working for a dealer.

  As he drew closer to the address Somers had given him, the orange light became more pronounced. Firelight, Hazard realized, flickering and stretching against the night sky. He could smell it now, too: a greasy, foul smoke that smelled of rubber and burnt hair and meat. Mixed in with that smell, so faint that Hazard only caught whiffs of it, was a chemical smell. When he reached the next block, he saw the police cordon, with a handful of cars—patrol and unmarked—parked across the street. A fire truck had pulled in front of the blaze and men were uncoiling a hose and attaching it to a hydrant.

  Swinney and Lender stood together past the cordon. When the uniformed officer waved Hazard past, he approached the two detectives. Lender
nodded in greeting. Swinney said nothing, but her eyes were appraising.

  “What do we have?”

  “Fire,” Lender said, poking a finger at the blaze.

  It had been a single-wide trailer, Hazard realized—this street held a mixture of freestanding buildings and trailers. The trailer was burning with huge, roaring flames, and the heat pressed against Hazard and made his eyes tear. The fire had eaten through the roof and windows, and it licked happily at the night air.

  “Anybody inside?”

  Lender shrugged. “Fire department can’t get in there. It’s too damn hot.”

  “Arson.”

  The two detectives shrugged. The fire volunteers had finished attaching the hose, and now a steady spray of water was being directed at the blaze.

  “This goes to me and Somers?”

  Swinney shrugged. “If this is a meth lab that blew, we catch it. Or if we tie it to something drug-related. Maybe one dealer kills another, that kind of thing. Otherwise, it goes to you.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “Nobody; technically, it’s owned by some out of town investment firm, but those pieces of shit—”

  “Detectives.” Cravens’s voice cut through Swinney’s response. The chief stepped up to join them, and Hazard got his first real look at the woman since coming back to Wahredua. He had seen her before, of course—he had grown up knowing who Martha Cravens was, the only woman on the police force—but he had been so disoriented by seeing Somers again that Hazard had barely been able to pay attention to the police chief.

  She was a solidly built woman: full in the bust and hips, with an hourglass shape but without seeming fat. Her hair was longer than Hazard had expected, a stylish gray that made no attempt to hide her age, although her face was still unlined. She didn’t look like a woman who smiled often, but she looked like a woman you could trust; it was easy to see why the mayor had named her chief.

  “You were saying something about InnovateMidwest, Detective Swinney?”

  “No, sir.” Swinney’s face might have been red, but it might not; it was hard to tell in the fire.