Bobby Green

by Amy Lane

  “Augh!” Reg was suddenly so contrite he almost couldn’t stand it. “I just mauled you all over your body, and Dex is gonna kill me, and—”

  “Sh….” Bobby kissed his forehead, and Reg took a deep breath. “Good. Like that,” Bobby urged. “Ain’t nothin’ bad gonna happen tonight.”

  REG WENT in to talk to Dex while Bobby was working on his phone with Kelsey. He asked for John at first, because he was used to John being in charge, but Dex gave a tired smile.

  “John’s got sort of a family thing going now. He’ll be back in a month or two. Right now I’m what you got.”

  Reg shrugged. John had been looking pretty strung out the last time Reg had seen him—greasy hair, bad complexion. Reg knew the signs—a lot of his friends from high school had made themselves crazy on drugs. If John was doing rehab, good for him.

  “You’re good,” he decided. “I, uh… well, I’ve got a shoot in two days, and I sort of….” The blush caught him by surprise. “Uh, need another day.”

  Dex’s eyebrows shot up. “Do I want to know why?”

  “So I can test with the window?” Reg thought that would be obvious.

  “I figured that,” Dex said impatiently. “Why would you blow your abstinence? I mean, what’s it been—ten years? If you didn’t think with that thing when you were a kid, I don’t know why you’d let it do the talking now.”

  Reg scowled. “Sometimes it’s the smartest part of my body, you ever think of that? I’ve never had anything mine before, and… well, I wanted something—someone—mine.”

  Dex’s obvious frustration eased, and he took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Yeah. Yeah, Reg. Believe it or not, I’m getting that right now. Like, personally. It’s… it’s a different way of thinking, right?”

  Reg nodded soberly. Dex once asked him if he’d do a gig just for business. Reg and Dex had gone into a hotel room full of horny businessmen and fucked them into a coma. Twelve hours later they walked gingerly out with nothing more than a signature on a paper and a shit-ton of hickeys. Dex had upped the percentage on Reg’s royalties since that week, which had more than paid for Reg’s time, but Reg wondered. Would either of them do that again?

  Reg thought about Dex and Kane, touching each other casually at the Christmas party, looking at each other with diamonds in their eyes.

  No. They wouldn’t.

  “We’re… we’re changing,” he said, feeling stupid.

  But Dex shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah—growing up, maybe. It’s about time.”

  Growing up. Would that mean doing something besides fucking his way through life?

  “God,” Reg moaned, burying his face in his hands. “I am so unprepared.”

  Dex let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, join the club. I’ll push you guys back a day. Lance won’t mind.”

  Reg wanted to brighten—he liked Lance. But then he remembered: he liked Lance.

  Was that bad? To like the guy he was going to fuck for money?

  He wanted badly to ask Dex, but he couldn’t figure out how.

  Dex picked up on something, though. His weary expression softened. “It gets harder as we get older,” he said softly. “It should. I mean, sex should mean something. We don’t think that when we’re nineteen and we can fuck anything.”

  “I like Lance,” Reg said. “He’s not who I want to be with. Is that bad?”

  “No,” Dex responded immediately. “His heart’s not gonna be involved. He knows yours isn’t. You like working with the guy. As far as porn goes, it’s perfect.”

  “Perfect?” Reg admitted it—he was reaching for straws. He didn’t expect Dex’s expression to turn bleak.

  “You don’t want to… to have a scene with someone you really care for,” Dex said. “I mean, it’s complicated enough as it is. But this way, you know sex is sex and loving someone—that’s different. It’s more important.” Dex’s full mouth twisted wryly. “So, like, you know—apparently more important than your abstinence window?”

  Reg had the grace to look away, embarrassed. “Yeah. Like more important than my abstinence window,” he admitted.

  “Well, it happens. Ready to tell anybody who the lucky girl is?”

  Reg squinted at him, confused. But then, he’d been telling people for years—years—that he was mostly straight. Why wouldn’t Dex think it was a girl?

  He fought the urge to look out of Dex’s window, where Kelsey was sitting with Bobby, helping him set up his bank account so he could pay his mom.

  “No,” Reg said, wishing he could put a cold cloth on his forehead and have somebody bring him ice cream. V used to do that, he remembered plaintively. Before their lives became a constant battle over whether or not she should take her meds and what the people on TV were saying, he used to come home from a scene and tell his sister he’d had a bad day at work. She’d bring him dessert and put a cloth on his forehead and let him have the television.

  But he didn’t have her to do that anymore, and he couldn’t explain to Bobby why he was confused—not yet—and pretty much, Dex was making things better and worse.

  “Well, I’d be glad to meet her when you are,” Dex said kindly. He looked out at Kelsey and grimaced. “’Cause, seriously. This place needs more women, you think?”

  Reg grinned at him—it was a funny joke, right? Gay porn place, needing more women. But he liked Kelsey—he liked women in general—and he had to agree.

  “I thought you guys were gonna keep working on the het, right?”

  Dex rolled his eyes. “It’s doing some money,” he admitted. “I just need to get better at directing it.”

  Reg stood up, because he had to do one more thing before he could collect Bobby and go home. “You will,” he said with confidence. “You know what makes porn good. It’s not always the sex or the putting the thing in the place.”

  “What is it?” Dex said, but like he had his own answer and just wanted to see what Reg’s would be.

  “It’s the people like each other,” Reg said thoughtfully. “You were right—it’s the perfect working situation. Your job is to like who you’re with and make that person happy. I’m a fan.”

  Dex grinned then. “Glad to hear it.” He shook Reg’s hand, like they were grown-ups and not just talking about being grown-ups, and Reg walked into the back to take his blood test for his window. And then he went up front to collect the guy nobody knew he was sleeping with and everybody thought was a girl.

  They went to the big hardware store afterward—they’d brought the truck, and Bobby was going to fix the leak under Reg’s kitchen sink, of all things. Reg hadn’t even known there’d been one, but Bobby said he could smell it. He bought wood and stuff too, because Bobby said there was rot down there. On the way back, Bobby asked how his talk with Dex went.

  Reg grunted—a habit he was getting from Bobby.

  “He wasn’t too mad. Said he’d set it up with Lance to put off the shoot for a day—I got my blood test before I got you.”

  “You told me that,” Bobby said mildly. “I’m glad he’s not too mad. So, Lance?”

  “He’s a friend,” Reg said with dignity. “You’re not going to tell me I can’t have sex at work with friends, are you?”

  Bobby snickered.

  “That didn’t sound good, did it? I just mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said gently. Because they were in the truck, maybe, he reached over and patted Reg’s knee. “You get along with all the people you work with. And that’s just how we’ll deal, okay? It’s work. That’s what we’ll call it to my mom, that’s what we’ll call it to ourselves. Someday we’ll find another job, that’s all.”

  Reg could breathe again. Bobby managed to not freak out like Reg had—which on the one hand was totally unfair, but on the other hand, Bobby had done his freak-out way earlier, so maybe it was kind of even. Either way—they had a way to look at work and talk about work that wasn’t going to break them.

  That’s all Reg wanted.

  Well, De
x’s kindness helped.

  “So,” Bobby asked, “do you want me to stay tonight? Or would it be better if I left?”

  Reg took a deep breath. He knew what he wanted, but that meant he was going to have to be a grown-up.

  “Stay,” he said. “Please.”

  Bobby squeezed his knee before putting both hands on the wheel.

  “Course.”

  THEY WENT to bed around ten o’clock, Bobby wrapping those long arms around him and kissing the back of his neck softly. His hands stroked the bare skin of Reg’s hard stomach absently, and Reg held his breath, waiting to see if it would get sexual.

  It didn’t, and Reg had just settled down, thinking he could sleep like this, protected, cared for, when his phone rang.

  It was Ethan. Kelsey’s ex-boyfriend—and Dex’s too—had trashed Kelsey’s place, and could Reg please come help with the cleanup?

  Bobby was half-dressed with boots and his jacket and work gloves before Reg even got off the phone.

  Yeah. He got it now. The guys at work were their friends. Reg and Bobby would go to their rescue in the dark of a cold winter night—but the bed they got called out of to do that was theirs, and theirs alone.

  Cautionary Tales

  THE ONE thing Bobby learned from cleaning up Kelsey’s place was that relationships could get ugly—but then, he already knew that.

  He and Reg got back to Reg’s place at the small hours of the night after putting the plywood up in the windows. Bobby remembered the name of a glazier—one of the guys he’d worked with back in Dogpatch who lived in Sacramento now. He gave the guy’s name to Ethan so Dex could make the arrangements to fix Kelsey’s house—

  But Bobby didn’t think she’d be back.

  He looked around the place, after they’d picked up the broken glass from the windows her ex had smashed in, and wondered if she’d had any investment in living there. The warm, funny girl who’d spent the entire day trying to catch Bobby up to the twenty-first century seemed to be missing.

  After the police had gone, and Dex had bolted out of there in a panic for yet another emergency, Ethan took Kelsey home, and Bobby showed Reg how to tack the plywood in place so it wouldn’t rip out a chunk of drywall when the window guy got there.

  “This is a nice house,” Reg said wistfully, and Bobby thought maybe any place that wasn’t falling apart was nice for Reg.

  “Your house has more books,” he said. He was getting used to Reg’s quiet smiles, the ones that told him he’d touched Reg somehow, made him feel special.

  Riding that high of helping Reg feel special was not getting old or tarnished in any way.

  The next day, after they got to be muscle for even more Johnnies drama, Bobby went back to Reg’s house and flopped exhaustedly on the couch.

  “No housework today?” Reg asked, yawning.

  Bobby looked over at V, who was doing her usual spacing-out-at-the-television thing. God, he wished he could hold Reg, just in the privacy of Reg’s home. “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “In fact, I think I’m going to use your room and call my mom.”

  “I’ll go get us some dinner,” Reg said. It was already eight o’clock, because they’d gone back to Kelsey’s house and closed it up, then helped her get out of her rental agreement. Bobby thought wistfully that it would be a good place to bring his mom, but he figured he should stick to the plan of the cheap apartment that let him save more money and get her input.

  “You have a mom?” Veronica asked unexpectedly, glancing up.

  “I do,” Bobby said, keeping his voice pleasant. He’d wondered often how it must feel for someone so small to constantly be surrounded by her brother’s big, bulky friends, so he tried to tone his whole… body down.

  “Does she scream at you?” V asked, darting a glance at him.

  “No!” Bobby answered, startled. “She misses me. I left her to find a job so I could help her with rent.”

  “Did she give you presents?” V asked, sounding wistful. “Our mom didn’t.”

  “Yes,” Bobby said, voice soft. “That’s how I knew to leave presents for you and Reg.”

  She swallowed and looked away. “Somebody wrecked Reg’s books. That’s too bad.”

  Bobby gaped at her. Somebody? Somebody? But then, this was the most contrition he’d seen from her—about anything—since they’d been introduced and he realized she’d stabbed her own brother because he’d been trying to give her the meds that kept her from going off the rails.

  “Wasn’t one of our better days, no,” he said, hoping understatement would defuse things. “Hurt Reg real bad.”

  V tugged at her cuticle. “Reg takes things too seriously,” she said after a minute. “Always did.”

  Bobby squinted at her, unsure of her motivation. “It’s a good thing he does. He’s kept a roof over your head, food in your cupboards, gotten you to your doctor’s appointments—”

  “No one asked him to,” she snarled, putting her finger in her mouth and ripping the cuticle off completely until it bled. “Meddling. I’m a grown-up—why’s he need to get in my face about shit? Everybody, trying to keep me in this shitty little house—who the hell are you anyway, you faggot?”

  Bobby knew his eyes got big.

  “Excuse me,” he said and walked into the kitchen. “Your sister’s off her meds again,” he told Reg.

  Reg had been with Bobby over the last two days, picking up broken glass and helping other people manage their messy lives. He was exhausted, and it showed in the droop of his jaw, the quiver of his lower lip.

  “I… I got nothing,” he said. He closed his eyes and then opened them again. “Wait! I got something! She’s got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow! They texted me this morning when we were on Kane’s lawn.” His entire body shuddered. “Wait… I don’t have a scene tomorrow, right?”

  Bobby frowned. “No—you would have if you’d done your regular schedule, but not now.”

  “But… but she has them every two months.” Reg started counting on his fingers. “And then we go get medication. I put it out for her from the bottles, but she should have needed a refill by now.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Bobby was intimately aware of V’s medication rituals by now—he’d had to give her the pills on occasion when Reg had been at work.

  “No,” Reg muttered. He frowned at Bobby. “You don’t understand. Usually I know there’s an appointment coming because the pill bottle levels go down. But we went to the appointment last time, and they told me her prescription would last as long as it needed to, and she’s got another appointment tomorrow and we have full levels in the bottles and….”

  Reg clapped his hand over his face and then went to root through the cupboards. He came out with three full bottles of pills.

  When he opened them up and shook one into his hand, it disintegrated. “They been doing that,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t understand.” Bobby knew he should be getting this, but it seemed so simple. A child’s gambit, but Reg, trying desperately to keep his sister normal, had missed it.

  “She put them in her mouth,” Reg muttered. “And pretended to swallow.”

  “But that episode—right after Christmas—wouldn’t there have been more?”

  Reg shook his head. “Not if she was trying to hide—”

  The sound of the back door slamming was like a shot in the night.

  “Oh shit!”

  The two of them tore through the house, through the hallway, and through Reg’s bedroom, where the only back entrance sat.

  Reg’s backyard was mostly mud and weeds, surrounded by a rickety fence that Bobby had put on his list of things to do when the weather got a little better. They heard Veronica swearing as she disappeared over that rickety fence, and Bobby hurried to vault over it while Reg ran through the side yard to intercept her coming out of the neighbor’s gate.

  It was a good plan, and probably would have worked, but the fence—which could hold V’s weight just fine—crumbled under Bobby�
��s heavier bulk, and he slammed through three rotting boards and support struts, landing on the ground with a fuck-ton of familiar pain.

  “Oh Christ!” he moaned, rolling over. “Oh Jesus. Fucking Jesus!” In the light from the neighbor’s yard he could see the nail sticking through the back of his hand. With a wrench, he grabbed the board at his palm and yanked, growling pain through the frosting night.

  Reg was there in an instant. “Oh my God! Bobby! Are you okay!”

  “Where’d she go?” Bobby looked around wildly and realized he had a pain in his shoulder too.

  Reg shouted, “Hold still!” and a curiously queasy sensation rolled over him as Reg pulled a giant six-inch sliver out of the meat of his shoulder.

  “Gah! Oh fuck! Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck! Jesus!”

  “I’m sorry, Bobby!” Reg cried, staring at the bloody splinter in his hand. “I’m sorry. Man, I’m sorry. We need to get you to the ER—that’s a mess. You need a tetanus shot and some antibiotics and—”

  “Reg, where’s your sister?” Bobby almost sobbed. “We’ve got to find her, man—she attacks people with knives!”

  Reg wiped his bloody hand over his eyes. “Okay,” he said, nodding, like that all made sense. “Okay. Go get in the truck. I’ll take you to the ER and call the mental health people. They… they’ve dealt with this before.”

  “Your sister has just up and taken off before?”

  “Her medication wears off!” Reg shouted defensively. “I’m sorry! I don’t got a handbook! I got ‘V’s okay’ and ‘V’s batshit crazy’! Right now she’s batshit crazy, and you need a doctor, and having them come get her is all I got!” A sob tore loose from his chest. “And I’m sorry. Man, I’m fuckin’ sorry. You—you shouldn’t be getting this bullshit. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

  Bobby was going to throw up, or scream, or cry.

  He reached out and grabbed Reg’s shoulder with his good hand instead. “It’s a plan,” he panted. “It’s a good plan. Don’t be sorry. Let’s get in the truck so you can call the doctors on your sister. But first, I gotta puke.”