Black John

by Amy Lane

  “I know,” John muttered. “So what do I do?”

  Dex made a considering sound. Then: “So what you need is someplace that sells work boots, the kind with the steel toes. And to visit the hospital for some hazmat containers. And Home Depot for a reacher/grabber thing that people use when they’re picking up trash in the park, and some Teflon gardening gloves.”

  “Teflon?” Really? Teflon?

  “People use them for rose bushes. They repel sticks, but don’t rely on them. They’re for just in case, okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay. So steel-toed boots, Teflon gloves, a grabby thing, some hazmat containers—”

  “Garbage bags, unless you want to keep the sheets—”

  “I want to burn the sheets,” John said from a place deep inside. He wanted to torch this entire apartment building where, apparently, the bright and young went to wither.

  “Okay, so big garbage bags. Then get rid of all the gross stuff first.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Yeah, but it’s important. Because under the gross stuff should be the traces of the person you remember, and you want to see him without all the stupid gross stuff in the way.”

  John stared at a fly trapped inside the sliding glass door to the tiny patio and thought about that neat little laptop in the sea of used drug paraphernalia. “Roger that. I can do this.”

  “Go shopping first. It’ll sort of gird up your loins for the shitty part.”

  John nodded. Wise. Dex was so very wise. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Don’t buy any razor blades on the way home.”

  John took a deep breath and remembered the guy they knew who had bought razor blades on the way home from cleaning up a scene like this. He’d lived, but it had been close.

  “Dex?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If I get through this without using, could you do me a favor and let that go? Tommy, Chase, they weren’t your fault.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts. Even if I die here in a puddle of blow, you gotta let us go. You got happy. You got love. You can only do so much.”

  The sound Dex made came out as bemusement. “Kane says the same thing.”

  Fuck. “Well, we all know I’ve never had an original thought.”

  “Coming to Sacramento to make porn wasn’t original?”

  John smiled tiredly. “That was just filling a need. God knows that town needs something to redeem it.”

  “That’s my boss. Go shopping. Stay away from dealers. Help your friend’s memory. You’ll be okay.”

  “Well, you’re the grown-up I learn from, sensei. Later.”

  John closed his eyes, put the key in his pocket, and went shopping.

  By the time he got back with all his stuff—which was all available at different places—it was an hour after he’d promised to be back for Galen anyway. He hauled the whole thing up to Tory’s apartment and left all the bags right inside the door, then went next door and let himself in.

  Galen was yawning and stretching gingerly as John looked inside the bedroom. He startled guiltily and flushed when they made eye contact.

  “I’ll go brush my teeth,” he murmured.

  “I’ll warm up the pizza,” John said, forcing some cheerfulness. There was a stack of paper plates in a little bag with the pizza box, so John used those to dish stuff out and put it in Galen’s microwave. He opened the refrigerator to see if there was some milk or juice and slammed the door shut in a hurry.

  “Yeah,” Galen said glumly, sauntering into the living room. “It’s been a while since I went shopping.”

  “Your milk is green in the bottle,” John said, feeling angry. “I could see mold in the orange juice.”

  “Man, don’t yell at me. I wasn’t exactly up for company—”

  “Well you’re gonna fucking get some,” John muttered, marching to his bag of shit for cleaning out Tory’s room. He pulled out the box of garbage bags and the Teflon gloves and marched back to the refrigerator, making the gloves snap menacingly as he put them on. “Jesus Christ, people. I mean, I get the drug thing. I’m an addict, for sweet fuck’s sake. I did blow until my brains ran out my nose. I sold my best friend’s ass for a key of coke to save my company. I know about drugs. But you know what? I was never so stoned I didn’t feed my goddamned fish. Never. I was never so fucking stoned I had shit growing in my refrigerator. Yeah, some of that was that I had the maid on retainer, but you know what? I kept paying the goddamned maid. I paid the maid before I paid my dealer. I did coke because I was hurt and sad and lonely and I get it, but you know what I don’t get?”

  “The term ‘inside voice’?” Galen asked, and John scowled at him, blowing off the forest-animal-eyes in the peaked face because he’d fucking had enough.

  “Bullshit inside voice.” John chucked the milk carton in the triple-reinforced garbage bag with all the force he had. It burst, and he shut the bag on the smell that was about to jump out and get him. “Bullshit wasting away.” And there went the orange juice with the mold forest. “Bullshit starving to death instead of going out to get groceries because you’d rather pop pills and sleep.” And the fungal pickles and the crusty mustard. “Bullshit throwing your life away on being hurt and fucking sad.” And shredded cheese in the bag—green—and some sort of slimy red-and-orange vegetable that had sacrificed its identity to the rotting compartment in the refrigerator. “Bullshit leaving your dirty needles in shitty sheets and asking your old boyfriend to come to your house and clean up your fucking mess. Bullshit on all of it!”

  And there went the horseradish, or something close, leaving the interior of the fridge blank and empty and mostly white.

  John threw open the freezer and found it just as empty. The only sign of life was the overflowing ice-cube tray. He slammed it shut again and glowered.

  “Your pizza is done,” he said, his voice breaking. It had been sitting in the microwave for the past five minutes, but the cheese was still melty, so he figured that was okay. “And I’ll take this outside and bring back some groceries.”

  “Wait—” Galen didn’t have his cane, and he limped hesitantly past the counter to the space in front of the refrigerator.

  “Wait for what? For you to starve to death? Did you not just hear me call ‘bullshit’? I’m tired of hiding in corners while people hurt themselves. Bullshit. You eat your fucking pizza and I’ll go get….”

  Galen took another step in toward him, and John had the presence of mind to wrap the tie sturdily around the bombproof bag of what was now toxic waste.

  “Milk would be nice,” Galen said, his voice rough. “But… God, John. C’mere.”

  John closed his eyes, wanting to say no. He was strong, right? He wasn’t a junkie anymore. He could deal with other people’s problems. He could take care of Galen and clean up after Tory’s mess. He wasn’t the kid lying in the hospital anymore, taking Nana’s offered hand to pull him out of hell.

  Galen twined his arms, thin and bony, tightly around his shoulders, some strength still present, still able to hold a man who could barely hold his own. John set the garbage bag down—gently—at their feet and took the hug for what it was: comfort from a man who knew what it felt like to need it.

  “It was bad?” Galen asked softly.

  “It’s going to be you if things don’t change,” John said frankly, thinking about Galen’s sheets and how they needed to be laundered.

  Galen shuddered, and John held him back. “Don’t tell me,” he begged. “Don’t tell me. Not right now.”

  John buried his face in the space between Galen’s head and shoulder, breathing hard, filling himself with Galen’s fading heat, taking all the support he could get for this terrible thing he had to do, because doing the thing that would have stopped it might have killed him. “I wanted better for him. I wanted so much more.”

  John’s shoulders shook, and he closed his eyes tight against the tears he didn’t want to shed. Not right now, not when he was trying to be strong. One d
eep breath. Then another. Then a third. John tightened the clench, then released and backed up.

  “Eat the pizza,” he said roughly. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes with some groceries.” He grabbed the trash bag and walked out, conscious that he still had Galen’s key floating around in his pocket along with Tory’s.

  Down the elevator and across the street, and he was at the neighborhood mom-and-pop. “Mom” was sixty years old, wearing a corset and a greasy wig, showing freckled shoulders covered with several tattoos that John was pretty sure she regretted. A cigarette trickled smoke from her lips in spite of the no-smoking laws, and she didn’t bat a fake eyelash when John bought an “A good man is hard to find and easy to peg” keychain, with an appropriate picture. He put both Galen’s and Tory’s keys on it and figured they’d come in handy over the next few weeks, and hoped the symbolism would stay right there.

  Of course, just thinking about the symbolism made it a real thing.

  By the time he got back, Galen was on his third slice of pizza.

  John poured him a glass of milk and laid out two Oreo cookies with the same grave efficiency Nana had had when she’d given him and Tory a snack. It had been such an odd time, really. Regular mealtimes, regular lessons with Crosby, and once a weekend John and Tory would escort Nana clothes shopping and to her beauty appointment. Tory told John he didn’t mind doing it because it was clear she was trying to give them a regular home life when both of them were floundering so badly.

  Of course, the time they hadn’t spent with Nana, they’d spent fucking each other’s brains out and studying pornography so John could start shooting his own stuff better, but besides the rampant sex thing?

  They’d sort of been normal that year, and there were some things—the taking care of the fish and the plants, setting out the Oreos, keeping his house clean when he was in the middle of a stunning substance-abuse problem—that his nana had given him that he hoped he’d cling to with gnarled fingers, even after death.

  And if those things were all he had to give Galen, well, go Nana.

  Galen smiled simply at the two cookies and then spent a few quiet minutes dipping them in milk and eating them one small bite at a time. By the time he was done, John’s pizza was out of the microwave, which was awesome because John was starving. He took his plate and sat down at the counter next to Galen, spent with any sort of conversation.

  “So tell me something about yourself,” Galen said, an ironic eyebrow raised.

  John took a full bite of pizza and sighed blissfully. “If I didn’t do cocaine, I’d be really fat by now,” he said, thinking happy thoughts about all that melted cheese. “What else do you need to know?”

  Galen shook his head and reached for another cookie. “I was born in Savannah and attended school in Atlanta. My parents died when I was in college,” he said evenly. “I was out before they died, they loved me just the same, and they met my first boyfriend in college. I had a few more boyfriends before I graduated, a few after, and had been with Taylor for about two years before the accident. I have no siblings, although my parents wanted them, and they loved each other until the day they died—together—on a weekend trip to Canada, so my mom could look at flowers. So, there. I have given you my personal brief and you are free to examine it. How about you?”

  John sighed and reached for another slice of pizza.

  “My grandmother,” he said, thinking carefully, “was a wonderful woman. But she was a single mother when it wasn’t such an awesome thing, and she was a lady in the South, which made it a double whammy. She slept her way up the social ladder, trying to give my mom a really good life, and my mom thought Nana was a controlling bitch and ran out and married the first guy she laid. My father. Who was a cop because he liked to beat up on people he thought were weaker than he was. It was a match made in heaven, and it produced a soulless redheaded hellspawn who liked to shoot dirty pictures.”

  He tried to crack a smile, get Galen to share the joke that was his childhood, but what he found was a pair of sober green eyes regarding him soberly.

  “Sounds sucktacular,” Galen said bluntly, and John’s smile grew a little stronger.

  “You have no idea,” he said. Nonchalance, Johnny—you can do it.

  “How’d you meet Tory?”

  John smiled, trying to find this memory. So much of the time, he and Tory had simply been. “Oh yeah! The picnic. We were at a church picnic—my parents were sort of board members until… until my last year in high school. Anyway, we were like in the third grade, and we’d been in the same class but hadn’t really… anyway, we saw….” He smiled at the absurdity of it. “Butterflies. We saw butterflies, and it was just right when you’re in science, right? So we ran into a grove of trees to see the butterflies. They were just coming out of their… what are they? Chrysalises? Anyway, coming out of their little pod things, and I remember….” Tory at eight, full mouth pursed, forehead puckered anxiously. “He was worried. ‘What if they’re not ready to come out? What if we make them come out too early? Won’t it hurt them? What if they want to go back?’”

  Next to him, Galen chuckled. “Sounds sweet,” he said.

  John met his eyes, still lost in nostalgia. “He could be that way. You didn’t expect it, because he put up a front a lot, but….” He remembered Tory’s arms around him the first time they’d tried smack. John had hated it, dreamt of hideous creatures trying to own his skin, and had cried the entire time. Tory just held him, rocked him and held him, telling him it was okay, John never had to do that again.

  He hadn’t said a thing about himself.

  “So, butterflies,” Galen prompted, pulling him out of the bad memory and back into the good one. “You bonded over them?”

  John nodded. “It was… we walked out of the woods holding hands, and like, our parents freaked out, right, because we were being little faggots in the woods.” His mother, auburn hair streaked and perfectly coiffed, halter top fitting close enough for everyone to know the boobs were new. “We….” Did they ever? Had there ever been a time, even in college, when everyone knew they were sleeping together, along with as many guys in the dorm they could convince to experiment? “We never held hands in public again,” he said, puzzled, “but… but you couldn’t have separated us with a crowbar either.”

  “What did separate you?” Galen asked.

  John took a deep, shuddering breath. “Smack,” he said harshly. Considering the conversation over, he stood up and grabbed the paper plates, heading for the trash.

  Galen stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “You did drugs—why would the smack stop you?”

  John dragged a breath through the sudden shattered glass in his lungs. “I….” He pulled away. He couldn’t talk about it. God. Too hard, too personal. “Well, you know, he did smack, I did coke—irreconcilable differences.” He took two steps and shoved the plates in the trash can under the sink. There was depressingly little in that plastic bin, and he had a random thought about the detritus humans left behind just by living. No detritus, no life. Galen was close to not leaving any trash at all.

  “So you’re saying you and I got nowhere to go ’cause I do prescription?” Galen asked challengingly.

  For a moment, just a moment, John could look at him, defiant, hurt, tangled hair dragged back from his overlarge eyes. John wanted to tunnel his fingers through that hair, comb it, now that it was clean, run his cheek next to Galen’s and feel the stubble rasp against his cheek.

  With a groan more than a sigh, he leaned his weight on the counter in front of the sink and gazed sightlessly into the matte surface of the stainless steel. He could see himself distorted—a fiery orange blaze above a pale blob of a face. Well, he knew he wasn’t pretty.

  “Three trips to rehab,” John said at last. “The third time….” He closed his eyes and blocked it out. He couldn’t do this, not now. “It was bad. I thought maybe I was the problem, right? ’Cause… ’cause I’d do anything for him. Anything. I’da stayed for another tr
ip to rehab—I’da stayed for all the trips to rehab—but… but if I left, maybe he’d find a way without me. Because staying wasn’t doing him any good.”

  John’s eyes burned. He’d chickened out. Saved Galen some of it because he couldn’t paint the picture himself. Felt like he owed some honesty for the part he kept hidden.

  “But… you know. A bump of coke at a party, or to stay up. And then….” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I was stupid. I mean, falling in love makes us stupid, right? And… and I fell for this porn kid, except—man, he was always meant for greater things. And… he didn’t love me back. Just wanted to be friends. Which was great, right? Best friend—real friend, not friend that I fucked eventually—that I ever had. But he… he fell in love with someone else, and that habit, just every now and then, it started to swallow my life. And it made me hate—so much. And the next thing I know, I’ve….”

  God. Reprehensible. He was reprehensible. He could put a gloss on it all he wanted, but face facts. John was the bad guy. The mustache-twirling villain in the cheesy church play.

  “I’m an asshole,” he said shortly. “If Tory wanted to save the world from a waste of skin, he should have shot me in my sleep.”

  “You’re the asshole who just fed me,” Galen said harshly. “I’m sort of glad he didn’t.”

  John shook his head. “I gotta… I should clean up Tory’s bedroom. That shit stayed long enough.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Galen said softly. “Did you get an extra pair of gloves?”

  John shook his head. “Naw, man, you don’t want to. This is my mess—”

  “This is Tory’s mess.” Galen firmed his mouth. “You know, you can talk about the bad shit you did all you want. Does that kid still talk to you?”

  John grunted. “He’s running my goddamned business until I get my shit together.” Their goddamned business. “Our goddamned business. He made me give him a chunk of it so I couldn’t shove it up my nose. Something about people depending on the work, which makes him double the nice guy and me double the douche bag. Why?”