Pretty Pretty Boys

by Gregory Ashe

  “It was about me being a bigoted teenage asshole.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Mikey told me that they were going to do to me what they’d done to Jeff. He told me he had it all planned out.”

  Somers’s eyes dropped.

  Hazard forced himself to go on. “He told me he would have done it, too, except you shoved me down the stairs and convinced him that was enough.”

  “Enough.” The word was thick with disgust. “Yeah, it was enough. Enough to prove that I was a coward. What happened between us, when we were in the locker room, I should have done something, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t have shoved you down the stairs and—and—”

  “It’s ok.”

  “Like hell it’s ok.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped Mikey any other way.”

  “I could have done a million other things. I could have told him the truth.”

  Minutes passed without either man speaking. Hazard cleared his throat, and he managed to say, “Where’ve you been? You got something better to do?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”

  “I called.”

  “Right, but—” Something crossed Somers’s face, a flash of—

  —fear—

  —something that might have been shame. Or disappointment.

  “Look,” Hazard said, “I know I fucked up, I really fucked things up between us, but I want you to know—”

  Somers blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “At your place. Don’t tell me you don’t remember. I’m not an idiot. And then again, after I got shot. The only thing I can say is that I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

  Again there was that flash of emotion on Somers’s face. “So you didn’t mean what you were saying?”

  It took all of Hazard’s will to say what came next. “I meant it. And I understand if you hate me for saying it, and I understand if you need a new partner, or if you have to report me for sexual harassment, or if you just want me kicked off the force, but I needed to say it. I wanted to say it.” He managed to swallow the next words: I’ve been wanting to say it for twenty years.

  For a heartbeat, nothing showed in Somers’s face. Then he smiled. It was a genuine John-Henry smile, kind and soft and warm. That smile said the world was a happy place, easy to live in, and that things tended to work out just right. “You think I’m mad?”

  “Of course you’re mad.”

  The color in Somers’s face deepened; it was a strangely beautiful look, the red staining his tan cheeks. It made Somers look oddly innocent. “How could I be mad about someone telling me something like that? How could I be mad about you telling me something like that?” He paused, his flush deepening as he studied Hazard. “You don’t have any idea, do you? All the times I screwed around with college boys, all the times I got drunk enough to be brave enough to do it, all those times, it wasn’t about them, Hazard. It was about—” Somers cut off as his phone rang. “Hold on, I’m just going to send it to voicemail, I—” But he cut off again when he saw the phone’s screen. “It’s Cora.”

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “It’s Cora. I don’t—what do I—”

  Jealousy surged inside Hazard, but he managed to say, “Answer it.”

  Somers hesitated. Then his finger slid across the screen. “Cora? Jesus Christ, I didn’t—no, this is good, this is a real good time to talk—hold on, just a second.” Somers lowered the phone. His eyes were full of an emotion Hazard couldn’t read. Excitement and hope and—and something that looked like pain, strangely enough. “I’ve got to . . .”

  Hazard forced himself to swallow past the thickness in his throat and say, “Go talk to your wife, you big idiot.”

  “Ree?”

  It was the first time Hazard had ever heard Somers use that nickname. It was the first time anyone had ever used that nickname for him, and Hazard was surprised to find that he liked it.

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “Why do you have that look? What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Hazard said. “Talk to your wife.”

  “Right. Uh, Ree?”

  “What?”

  For a moment, the possibilities were endless. Somers could have said anything, a million different anythings, and Hazard clung to a thread of hope that it would be the one thing he wanted to hear.

  Somers seemed to understand this; the conflict in his face deepened, and he hesitated, and then what he said was simply, “Thanks.”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, Somers put the phone to his ear. “Sorry, sorry, I was just getting out of a meeting. Yeah. Yeah.” His voice grew more distant as he walked down the hall. “Yeah, I’d really like to talk. I’d really like that.”

  And good for him, Hazard thought. That’s good, that’s really good. Somers deserved to have his wife and daughter back in his life. Hazard got up, fumbling with his travel bag. Somers deserved someone who loved him, someone who took care of him, someone who fit into his life perfectly and easily, no fuss, no problems, no guilt. So it was good. It was great.

  But if it was so great, Hazard didn’t know why his breath was hitching. He didn’t know why he couldn’t zip the bag shut, why the zipper wouldn’t line up, why he couldn’t even see the damn zipper, and so he just gave tug after furious tug until, with a long ripping noise, the zipper came free in his hand. This was what Hazard wanted, after all, wasn’t it? This was what he’d made happen when he’d confronted Naomi. He wanted John-Henry to be happy, and the only way John-Henry was going to be happy was if he was back with his family. And that meant this was great. That meant Hazard should be happy. And Hazard was happy. He was very happy. He was so happy that on his way out of the room, he threw the zipper hard enough to crack the fucking window.

  THE DREW BARRYMORE / ADAM SANDLER movie had ended. Hazard had fallen asleep for the last third of it; the pain in his shoulder had gotten worse as his muscles stiffened, and after he dry-swallowed a pain pill, everything had gone dark. Now, lurching out into the night air, Hazard was surprised to find himself shivering.

  Overhead, the night sky was crystal clear, and the stars made a dense canopy that Wahredua’s lights couldn’t put out. A few clouds drifted above the river, and a chilly wind had picked up, carrying with it the dry, crisp scent of autumn. The smell, as much as the cold, raised goosebumps on Hazard’s arms. All of the sudden, summer was gone. It had lasted so long and so late into the year that Hazard had forgotten autumn. His breath didn’t frost, not quite, but the cold made Hazard shiver again.

  He didn’t mind when Nico put an arm around him.

  “Do you want to go home?” Nico said. “No funny business, promise. Besides, you look wrecked.”

  “Probably better. Sorry, I’m a lousy date.”

  Nico chuckled as he helped Hazard into the car. “So this was a date?”

  “That might have been the pain pills talking.”

  Laughing again, Nico eased the car forward and into the night. Hazard watched the city go by, thinking of his childhood. He thought about Mikey Grames, the knife cutting into his chest, the shiny scar that would fade but never go away. He thought about Somers, and the day they had come so close in the locker room, and he thought about the fall down the stairs. He thought about Jeff, who had died tortured and humiliated, and whose death had opened a great, yawning blackness inside Hazard. That darkness had healed at the edges, and over the years Hazard had learned to live with the wound, but in all those years it had never gone away.

  All of the sudden, Hazard wasn’t quite ready to go to the Bridal Veil Motor Court. “Do you mind if we go for a drive?”

  “No. The river’s nice this time of year—”

  “Up to the bluffs. If that’s ok, I mean.”

  Hazard gave directions, and Nico led the car out of Wahredua and onto a cramped gravel road. It had been sixteen years since Hazard had last seen this road. The gravel had a ghostly sheen in the moonlight, as though it were lit from within, and long wee
ds had grown along the stretch. The weeds hissed against the windows as Nico eased the car onto the gravel.

  “You’re sure about this? I don’t think this is the right—”

  “This is it.”

  A half mile later, they passed the old Bouche farm, now nothing more than a collapsing house and a silo that gaped at the sky, as though trying to gulp down the stars. They drove farther, following the gravel road up the bluffs, to its very end, where an old cottonwood clung to the cliffside with gnarled roots. Below, the Grand Rivere raced along its course. The water, dark slate speckled with moonlight, murmured as it ran, and when Hazard lowered his window, the sound filled the car. He breathed in the chalky dust from the gravel and the cold autumn starlight.

  It had been here that Jeff had put a shotgun in his mouth and taken his life—and taken, without meaning to, a part of Hazard’s life as well. He had taken it, and all these years, Hazard had hated Mikey Grames and Hugo Perry and John-Henry Somerset. Not until now, with the moonlight so bright in Hazard’s eyes that he tilted his head back, easing his vision into the darkness, did he realize that for all those years, he had—a little, only a little, God, let that be the truth—hated Jeff too. Hated Jeff for hurting him so much. Hated Jeff for leaving him alone.

  “What was it like?”

  Nico’s words, spoken in a hushed tone, seemed like a dangerous echo of Hazard’s thoughts. Hazard shifted in his seat, searching for words until he realized that Nico was staring down at Wahredua, spread out beneath them like glitter tossed on a string of glue.

  “Growing up here?”

  Nico nodded.

  “Hard. What about you? It couldn’t have been easy—”

  “I just don’t get it.” The words exploded out of Nico. His hands balled into fists. “I asked around. I’m not stupid. The things people did to you—the things he did to you—what the fuck? How can you look him in the eyes? How can you be his partner?”

  Hazard’s lid drifted closed. For a moment, for one long moment, he remembered that day in the locker room, and the steam wisping off Somers’s golden skin, and the dry, chapped heat of Somers’s lips. And Hazard thought about the hatred he had carried for all those years, neatly packaged and stored away, safe and ready to use whenever he needed it.

  “Things changed,” Hazard answered, his eyes opening. He was surprised to see tears on Nico’s face. “He’s changed. I’ve changed.”

  Nico shook his head, snuffled, and ran the heel of his hand across his cheek. “Don’t you wish he were dead? Don’t you wish they were all dead? But you’re here, you’re—you’re nice, well, as nice as you ever are. Don’t look at me like that, you know what I mean.”

  There might have been a way—some way—for Hazard to begin to explain. He could have talked about the day he had driven to Naomi’s house with Somers and had, for some reason he didn’t understand, shared his troubles about Billy. He could have talked about Somers’s patience and good humor and determination, in spite of Hazard’s best efforts, to make amends. He could have talked about the final minutes in Upchurch’s garage, when Hazard had looked into Somers’s eyes and known, without needing to be told, that he could trust John-Henry Somerset with his life. He could talk about how it had felt to see both joy and pain on Somers’s face when Cora called.

  But all of those things would have been skirting the edges of something subterranean, something tectonic that was shifting inside Hazard, something that even he himself didn’t understand. So instead, he ran a thumb down Nico’s tear-stained cheek and pulled him in for a kiss.

  Hazard didn’t have a whole lot of experience, but it felt like a damn good kiss, a kind of shoot-the-moon-with-neutron-bombs kiss, and it left a tremor running down his arm and into his chest that Hazard couldn’t quite stop. Voice sounding like he’d been drinking varnish, he managed to say, “I’m very nice.”

  Nico, for his part, looked kind of like he’d walked into a wall. “Huh?” he managed.

  “I’m very nice. You made it sound like I’m not that nice, but I’m very nice.”

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Let me just—” And then Nico grabbed a handful of Hazard’s long, dark hair and was pulling him in for another, harder kiss. This time, the tremor went on and on and ended somewhere in Hazard’s toes.

  “Now,” Nico said when he pulled back, his ragged breathing slicing the syllable short. “What were you saying?”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Hazard said, struggling to turn Nico out of his shirt, his hand slipping inside to caress young, firm muscle.

  Nico gasped at his touch, arching himself into Hazard’s hands as he shimmied out of his clothes. “Your shoulder,” he gasped. “Be careful—”

  Hazard answered by tugging on his own shirt so hard that the buttons ripped in one long series of pops.

  As Nico climbed across the seats to straddle Hazard, sliding his smooth cheek along Hazard’s stubble, he whispered, “I’m not calling you Detective Hazard, no matter how much you want me to.”

  Hazard’s hands slid down to Nico’s waist, his fingers tightening, and he was rewarded by another moan. “How about,” Hazard said, nipping at Nico’s ear, his voice so low it was mixed with the gravel beneath them, “you call me Emery?”

  MUCH, MUCH LATER NICO pulled the car into the Bridal Veil Motor Court, and Hazard led him upstairs by the hand. The wind had turned the chilly air to ice, and Hazard shivered as he fumbled with his keys.

  “Somebody left you something,” Nico said, tugging an envelope free from the doorframe. “It’s got your name on it.”

  Shoving the door open, Hazard followed Nico into the room. The heater whumped to life, and the smell of heating oil began to filter through the air, mixing with the odors of sweat and sex that clung to Hazard’s skin. He took the envelope from Nico, and Nico sprawled on the bed, his shirt riding up to expose the corded muscles of his abdomen. It was enough to make Hazard forget, for a moment, the envelope.

  “Well?” Nico said, eyes bright as he tugged at the hem of his shirt, his slender, artistic fingers playing over his bronze skin.

  “You’re a fucking tease.”

  “Open it.”

  Hazard ripped the envelope open because he was about half a minute from jumping Nico again. To his surprise, a key fell into his palm. He fished out a small piece of cardstock.

  This is getting ridiculous, the note read in Somers’s script. You’re done staying at that shitty motel. Bring your stuff over tomorrow, roommate. PS: Hope you’re having a very—the word was underlined three times—relaxing evening with your new boy-toy.

  Roommate? Hazard weighed the small key in his hand. If that didn’t sound like the worst idea in the universe, Hazard didn’t know what did. But—

  But the damn thing was, Hazard already knew he was going to accept.

  “What’s it say?” Nico asked. He had stripped off his shirt, and now his well-toned arms were behind his head as he studied Hazard.

  Hazard tossed the key and the note on the desk, kicking off his shoes and letting his trousers fall as he shuffled towards the bed. “Like I said earlier: who cares?”

  TRANS/POSITION

  KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF TRANS/POSITION, THE NEXT HAZARD AND SOMERSET MYSTERY.

  THE CALL ABOUT THE SHOOTING came when everyone else was packing up, and of course Somers volunteered to take it. Emery Hazard sat at his desk, glaring at his partner as the detective spoke quietly into the receiver. There were days, Hazard thought, when Somers made things harder than they needed to be. Most days, come to think of it.

  John-Henry Somerset, who went by Somers, ignored Hazard’s glares the way he seemed to be oblivious to everything unpleasant. Somers, with his short, messy blond hair and his perfect good looks, managed to make cheerfulness seem easy. It was one of the few things you could hate about the man. You couldn’t, Hazard decided, his gaze lingering a moment too long, hate that smile. You couldn’t hate eyes like that, eyes like tide pools, so blue you could almost see through them. Hazard had spen
t a lot of his life trying.

  As though sensing Hazard’s gaze, Somers glanced up and made a face. Hazard gave him the finger.

  Around them, the Wahredua Police Station was closing up shop. Instead of the normal smells of burnt coffee, toner, and Miranda Carmichael’s tomato-cucumber-and-onion sandwich, extra vinegar, the place smelled like floor wax as the custodial crew got an early start. Instead of the hub of voices and ringing phones and the fax machines intermittent screech, the station had fallen silent. Even Chief Cravens’s office was dark and empty the night before Thanksgiving. Only a handful of uniformed officers, most of them, young, single, and broke, would work Thanksgiving Day--and they’d do it for the extra pay.

  Them, and Detectives Emery Hazard and John-Henry Somerset. Another example of Somers’s unnecessary helpfulness.

  “All right, Mrs. Ferrell. All right. We’ll be out in a little bit. Yes, I understand. Yes, ma’am, right away. Yes.” Somers rolled his eyes for Hazard’s benefit. “I’ll tell her. Yes, ma’am. Goodbye. No, yes, no--goodbye.”

  “What were you thinking?” Hazard said as soon as the receiver rested in the cradle.

  “What?” Somers was all dewy innocence. He had thick, golden eyelashes, and he was practically batting them now.

  “We’re going out there?”

  “Hold on. Don’t get mad.”

  Hazard surged out of his chair, grabbing his heavy wool coat and jerking his head at Somers. His shoulder twinged from where he’d been shot only a few weeks before, but Hazard shook his head when Somers moved to help with the coat. “If we’re going out there, we’re going right now. Understand?”

  “We have to go. It’s a shooting.”

  Hazard had grown up in Wahredua, but he still had trouble adjusting to the importance--or lack thereof--that the local police gave to the different calls that came in. After leaving Wahredua for college, Hazard had never planned on coming back until he’d been booted from his job with the St. Louis City police. Upon coming back, he’d found himself partnered with his old high school bully: John-Henry Somerset. Their first case, solving the murder of a young man named Chendo Cervantes, had brought them together--to a degree. At that moment, staring at his partner who had so breezily volunteered to take the call, Hazard was forgetting what that solidarity felt like.