Infected

by Andrea Speed

  Holden shrugged casually, aware of where Kevin was going with this.

  “There are a couple of unsolved murders around the time we expected he would strike again. Funny that.”

  “Maybe he’s locked up for something else. That happens a lot.”

  The look Kevin gave him would have stripped paint off the walls. This was the dance, the “I know you did something but I can’t prove it” dance. Maybe if Holden were nonwhite, it would have been enough, but he was white, so it wasn’t. Gay would cut into that, if Kevin weren’t also gay himself and not that type of cop. “Suspicious timing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not really. You know what Roan used to say? Entropy rules us all. It’s a smarty pants way of saying shit happens. And it really does.”

  Poor Kevin. If only he could glare Holden into submission. But he couldn’t. To be fair, no one could. You had to have shame to feel it.

  Once he got his coffee, Kevin left, shooting Holden warning glances all the while. Holden simply smiled at him, unconcerned. Kevin was asking him to do what he did. He knew what that entailed.

  Holden collected his tea, bought one of the frightening pastries under the glass counter, and headed off to the seedier parts of downtown. They weren’t far from the morgue, which only made sense. Holden didn’t need to look long before he found Hel, chilling at one of her usual spots.

  Hel was the androgynously dressed street girl who put the lie to the truism that only men fought. Hel was as hard as they came and was resolutely butch, but so what? Of course, it almost got her killed by that violent transphobe, but Holden put him in the ground, so who ultimately won that conflict? Holden figured the KO went to the one who was still alive.

  He gave her the pastry, which she scarfed down like she hadn’t eaten all day (possible). As he thought, she knew some of the people in the Jungle and had heard the rumors that Burn was dead. She gave him curious side eye and asked why Holden wanted to know, and he told her the truth: Burn was murdered, and he wanted to know by whom and why. As Holden had intended, Hel put it together herself that he might be interested in a little revenge and simply nodded. His function out here was well known. She told him she’d call as soon as she heard anything worth passing on. Holden gave her his tea. She looked like she could use it more than he could.

  Due to all these shenanigans, he was a couple of minutes late for Chai’s moving-in thing, but almost no one noticed since they were still in the shooting-the-shit portion of the proceedings. Admittedly, it was weird to go from street kamikaze to regular dude—well, regular dude who was once a high-class rent boy—especially after a visit to the morgue, but he faked it until he made it. No one said leading a double life was easy.

  Bear still lived up to his nickname and had changed the least out of all of them. He was still six four, two twenty at least (probably more like two forty now, but Holden wasn’t saying that to his face), barrel chested, and packing a monster dick. He now sported a kind of hipster scruff, a close-cropped beard, but Holden wasn’t about to call him on that either. His now husband, Hotshot, had probably changed the most. He used to be this kind of frat-boy/dude-bro stereotype—which was encouraged, really, because stereotypes worked in the escort game—with a very vague resemblance to Tom Cruise, only not quite so plasticky and creepy. No longer in the escort game, he’d stopped doing such an intense lifting and workout regimen, and hell, he was married too, so all his former hard edges were soft, and his once-ripped abs were now a squishy belly like a normal human being. He also wore his hair supershort now, not quite military, but close. Seeing him without a blond-highlighted mop of hair was the weirdest thing. He no longer resembled Tom Cruise in any way, shape, or form either. His face had filled out a little, becoming rounder with age, sinking his chiseled cheekbones beneath the skin.

  Trix was exactly what you’d expect a macrobiotic yoga teacher to look like. He had long brown hair—currently up in a man bun, for fuck’s sake—and a mustache and beard combo that had slight echoes of a white Jesus painting you might see in a suburban church. He was really skinny too, almost gaunt (white Jesus came to mind again), and Holden had a terrible urge to make him a sandwich. But he had no idea what macrobiotic people ate. Sprouts and more sprouts, with some sprouts for garnish? He wore a T-shirt advertising his yoga studio, and loose black pants that were probably also his workout gear. Holden had to really suppress an urge to punch him, especially because he was afraid he might crack him in half.

  E was still very much E. Oh sure, he was twenty pounds heavier and looked about ten years older despite the calendar insisting it had only been five years since E was on the job, but he had the slightly glazed eyes of someone on some good shit and was his giggly, flighty self. As it turned out, he was indeed a DJ now, so chalk one up for Holden’s guesswork. He invited them all to a “spin sesh” he was having at a nightclub called Inferno a week from tomorrow. Holden told him he’d see if he could drop by, which he felt was a kind way of saying “never in a million years, motherfucker.” He knew E wouldn’t give a shit if he turned up or not. He might not even remember inviting him.

  Hugs and back slapping ensued, and a lot of the guys squeezed Holden’s biceps, which were a little bigger because of all the fight training he’d been doing recently with Esteban. He almost found it offensive. He’d always had some muscles. They were acting like he’d never had any.

  But to Holden’s relief, they finally got the pleasantries over with and got down to business. Technically Chai didn’t have a lot of stuff, as he had originally come back to Seattle to kill himself, and Chai was courteous enough to have minimal physical baggage. (Mental and emotional baggage was a different story.)

  But having his own apartment meant having such things as furniture, so Bear and Hotshot had pitched in by busting out their truck and helping him load up furniture from the Habitat store, which refurbished and sold stuff to benefit Habitat for Humanity and similar local charitable organizations. Chai was nothing if not conscientious.

  Their job now was to unload the truck and get the furniture into the apartment. Chai supervised and helped out occasionally. He wasn’t completely helpless and didn’t want to be treated as such, but he was starting to use the cane Holden gave him more and more. He said it did genuinely help a little with the stump pain, but Holden knew for a fact it was probably that he knew he looked cool with a cane. He totally did. And the fact that it had a weighted top shaped like a panther gave it an elegant edge. But the reason Holden bought it for him was because if Chai flipped this cane, it was a fucking weapon. You could break someone’s jaw with a swing. That metal cat was lethal, and considering the shit Holden got up to, it made him feel better to know Chai was somewhat armed, even if he wasn’t completely aware of it.

  Despite the fact that he looked like a guy still in the midst of a month-long hunger strike, Trix could actually lift some weight and not fall apart like a toothpick sculpture, so good for him.

  Holden and Bear ended up doing most of the heavy lifting, which was both obvious and a little unfair. Not that anything was ever fair.

  Once they got everything into Chai’s apartment, which was the same exact size as Holden’s and yet still seemed slightly bigger, they ordered pizzas. Except Trix was abstaining and brought his own lunch. It looked like it was mostly made of brown rice and tofu and was as thrilling as a beige room. No wonder he was rocking heroin chic.

  But the food signaled the worst part of this whole thing—the talking portion of the day. Holden didn’t like sharing under most circumstances, but he hated it even more now that he had this life he couldn’t really discuss with anyone. When Roan was around, Holden had a partner in crime, someone he could discuss things with, and he hadn’t realized how hard it was to have no one to confide in. Maybe he needed to write an anonymous blog or something. Something that couldn’t be traced back to him. And then there was the terrible thing he wasn’t ready to admit to himself: that he desperately missed getting high with Scott and letting everything melt awa
y in a haze of drugs and sex and mindless TV. But Scott had fucked that up.

  As they sat around catching their breath and enjoying water or beer—or, in Holden’s case, a glass of water that was really half vodka, half soda—all pretending they weren’t feeling the aches and pain of being older, Holden was too well aware that Hotshot was looking at him kind of funny. Before he could challenge him on that, Hotshot asked, “Is it true what I’ve heard about you?”

  That was never a promising opening. “I dunno. What have you heard?”

  “That you sidekicked for that cat guy, which is how you got into the whole private detective thing in the first place.”

  Holden nodded, taking a swallow of his secret vodka tonic.

  “How the hell did that happen?”

  “That cat guy?” Trix repeated. “I saw him once, chasing a transformed cat downtown. That was… weird. I mean… he jumped on top of a parked car, and he was crouched down, showing some good core strength… and he roared.”

  Bear snorted, clearly amused. “What?”

  “I know how it sounds,” Trix said. The funny thing? He looked kind of drawn and even paler, as if this random close encounter with Roan had scared him. Which proved that hippy dippy or not, Trix had some brains in that fuzzy Jesus head of his. “But it was a roar. It wasn’t a human noise. It was a big lion noise. I didn’t know a person could make a noise like that.”

  “They can’t,” Hotshot said, but he looked doubtful. “I don’t think. Could he?”

  Holden pondered whether or not to tell them the truth. Did it matter? Roan wasn’t even in the States anymore, and as far as he knew, he might not even be living—

  No. He refused to go down that road, even as speculation. “Roan could—can—do a lot of things. He’s extraordinary.”

  “So you were his sidekick? How did that happen?”

  “Some psycho was beating boulevard boys half to death. He needed someone who could talk to them since he was an ex-cop and not exactly a comforting figure, so he recruited me. We caught the bastard, but we worked together well, so we kept doing it. We took down more than a few bad guys together.”

  This got a tiny chuckle out of E. “Bad guys? What, you get all Law and Order on us?”

  “Roan didn’t always color inside the lines. Neither did I.”

  Bear’s eyebrows scrunched together as he considered that. “What does that mean?”

  “See, if I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” Holden gulped down the rest of his drink, and the guys chuckled, like it was a joke. In a sense, it was, but they also had no idea how close to true it was.

  “But weren’t you worried?” Hotshot asked.

  “Worried about what?”

  “About… you know. If he bled on you or anything.”

  Holden glared at him. He needed no reminders that gay people could be just as horrible as straight people, but he hated even vaguely knowing one that was. “He bled on me a lot. I never got infected. Nor did I ever worry about it, and I wouldn’t have even if I did get infected. I never saw him as a disease.”

  Something like alarm seemed to dawn in Hotshot’s eyes. “Um, I didn’t mean—”

  “Didn’t mean what, to sound like a jackass?”

  “Holden,” Chai said, levering himself up from the sofa. “I forgot something in my car. Will you help me go get it?”

  Holden sighed, knowing Chai was just playing peacemaker, but hey, it was his apartment. Who was he to say no? So he got up and followed him out.

  Holden thought he was going to stop outside the door, but he actually headed to the parking lot and his car, and Holden followed, feeling like he had no choice. Chai finally stopped near his car and turned to face him. “What the hell’s wrong?”

  “Besides Hotshot sounding like an ignorant asshole?”

  Chai scowled and shook his head. “There was something eating at you before Hotshot said anything. Something happened between the time I saw you this morning and when you showed up. What?”

  Holden pondered that. Should he just say he got back from identifying the body of a murdered man? Except, if Holden was being honest with himself—which he utterly loathed to do—seeing Burn’s corpse hadn’t bothered him. He’d made a couple of corpse IDs in his life, and those had been more disturbing than Burn, a guy he barely knew at all. No, the problem started before then. For once in his life, he decided to be honest. “Roan’s in the hospital.” It was only when he said it that he realized it was genuinely bothering him quite a bit. Yes, Burn being dead wasn’t great, but Roan being taken down was a million times worse.

  Chai raised a hand to his mouth and looked pained, even though Roan was nothing but images on a web page to him. The world hadn’t burned out Chai’s empathy yet. “Oh God. It’s not serious, is it?”

  Holden shrugged. “From what I understand, Dylan has no idea. But it sounds like Roan may have had one of his aneurysms again, even if the doctors can’t quite identify it.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? You could have sat this one out.”

  “You’re crazy, right? What the hell was I gonna do? Sit home and wallow?”

  “If you needed to, yes. There’s no shame in that. Why don’t you go? I’ll tell them you got called away on an emergency.”

  Holden snorted, looking back at the apartment. Truth be told, being given an out was a relief. “It’s gonna sound phony as hell.”

  “Let me worry about that. Besides, isn’t it almost time for you to meet that lady with the sexy husband?” Chai grabbed Holden’s arm and pushed back the sleeve to uncover his watch. “Holy shit, I wondered why you were one of the only guys still wearing a watch. Is this a Rolex?”

  Holden shrugged. “I don’t think so. But it is a pretty fancyass watch.” It had a silver band and a watch face that showed gears within gears, which was kind of steampunk in an upper-class sort of way. And despite you having to figure out how to read it, it kept time with nuclear precision. “It was a gift from a client who was feeling extravagant after a divorce.”

  Chai shook his head in disbelief. “The best I ever got out of a client was an economy ticket and a ludicrously expensive dinner.”

  Holden found that hard to believe, but okay. He wasn’t in the business of showing anyone up or showing off. Well, sometimes. He certainly didn’t feel like it today. “There was something about my persona that made most of my clients feel like they wanted to save me somehow. That’s a magic pony you ride until the end of the line, because it gets you a whole bunch of good shit.”

  Unexpectedly, Chai pulled him into a hug, which was weird. Okay, Chai had always been more of a huggy person than him, but it didn’t stop it being weird. “It’s okay, you know.”

  “What’s okay?”

  “You don’t always have to be the strong guy all the time. You’re human.”

  “Sadly.” Holden gave him one of those manly back slaps, the kind to let everyone know this was a total “no homo” moment and also to get the other person to let go of you. Chai did, but he gave Holden a concerned look that felt deeply unwarranted. Who came back to Seattle planning to die? It wasn’t Holden.

  But he internally winced at the unkind thought. He’d had too much caffeine today or something. He needed to go to Esteban’s gym and punch out some of this anger, because he wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but he knew if it sat in his gut too long it’d come out in some ugly ways.

  As soon as he made his escape from Chai, Holden went back to his apartment and stared at his phone for several seconds, wondering if he should call Dylan. But if there was any news worth sharing, he’d have already called, so all Holden could do was bug the shit out of him. And he wasn’t about to subject the guy to more aggravation.

  Holden made a pit stop in the bathroom, and after washing his hands, he opened his medicine cabinet to see what he had.

  It was his habit, one he’d developed as a hustler, to store meds in bottles that weren’t theirs. Prescription painkiller bottles usually had Viagra o
r penicillin in them, while he put painkillers and similar drugs in penicillin bottles or other things entirely. For instance, he had an old Band-Aid tin on the lowest shelf that did have a couple of Band-Aids in it but also a random sprinkling of other pills at the bottom. Holden fished out a Valium, broke it in half, and swallowed a piece of it down with water from the sink. He put the other half of the pill back in the tin.

  He wasn’t going to become a pill addict like Roan. But since he had no other options right now, chemical calming didn’t seem half-bad.

  6—Future Child Embarrassment Matrix

  BY THE time he hit Grounds For Divorce, Holden felt vaguely numb, which was what he was aiming for. He’d learned in his time as a street hustler that mother’s little helper was good for that, and sometimes you needed numb to power through a day. Of course, he heard some antidepressants could do the same thing, without the tired feeling, but those usually had to build up in the blood, and he didn’t have the time or inclination to do that. Besides, if you had to abuse drugs, it should be the fun ones.

  Holden took one of the wrought iron tables outside, where a parasol shaded him from the setting sun. It was surprisingly warm for late May, summer temperatures really, but that was global warming for you. They hadn’t had any snow this winter either. Holden wondered how the yuppies were going to feel when rising sea levels put most of Seattle underwater. Starbucks would probably have a coffee dinghy by then.

  Holden got his Arnold Palmer just as Dahlia arrived. She didn’t look much different than she had the last time he’s seen her. She was a petite woman, slender, and probably nobody’s idea of an overwhelming beauty as her nose was a bit too big, her hair a kinky mass of uneven curls, and her jaw a bit too angular. Holden thought she was mixed race but never asked, because who gave a shit?

  Despite her not being anyone’s idea of a beauty queen, she had a certain nobility about her, carried herself like she was the Queen of the Universe, although her dark eyes were always kind. And there was no getting around the fact that she was so whip smart she could make you bleed without even trying. She had a PhD and at least one more title under her belt—she was a scientist of some sort, but Holden was damned if he could remember in what field—although she’d given up the professional life for her art. Alexei was such a pretty boy, the disparity between the two could be shocking visually, but once you were around them a while, you totally got it. They were perfect for each other. They were both too smart for their own good, too restless, probably a little too pure for the world as it existed. Not that they were naïve. Hell no. They were polyamorous all right and had been before any other het person knew that was a thing. Alexei and Dahlia had been together since they were seventeen, and they were the only couple Holden knew that had been together so long, and happily so. They really did love each other. But they were both restless and bi and never stopped hungering for something else. It was one of those things that was a blessing as well as a curse, but he was sure Roan would have traded for it in a heartbeat.