Left on St. Truth-Be-Well

by Amy Lane

  He pulled out his phone. “Dale, uhm, something really odd is going on here, okay?” He couldn’t see anything with all the damned birdcages in the way. He thought he caught some movement, but that could just be a bird that wasn’t asleep or was waking up early or something. Carson craned his neck and squinted, didn’t see anything, and stepped around two giant birdcages with six sleeping birds each. (Jesus, this was a lot of fucking birds!) Nothing. Nada. Nobody.

  But he couldn’t shake the feeling this was a bad idea.

  He approached the counter and squinted, because it looked like a spatter of something was dripping on the wall behind the register—oh geez, really? Was that blood? With a little hop, he looked down between the counter and the wall and gasped.

  Oh Jesus. That was Glen’s deputy, wasn’t it? The blond guy who sort of hung out in the background? The one who apparently had a little arrangement with Jarred the brothel-running maid. Oh hell, had Dale ever called his brother? Probably not, he’d been busy boffing Carson’s brains out, right?

  Carson fumbled for his phone and hit Dale’s number for a third time. “Dale?” he said into voice mail, backing up so his shoulder blades ground into the wall by the counter. The doorway sat to his left and the counter to his right, so he wasn’t safe, but at least he could see if someone was lurking among the damned creepy birdcages. “Dale, your brother’s deputy is here, and he worked with the brothel guy, and he’s got a dent in his skull, so I’m calling an ambulance next, okay?”

  He clicked End Call even though he really just wanted to stay on the phone and gibber, then dialed the obvious choice besides the guy he’d been sleeping with.

  911.

  “What’s your emergency?”

  “Sleeping parrots and a police officer with a dent in his head, can you send someone to the Bates Parrot Hotel, please—oh fuck!”

  He saw the flatiron coming out of the manager’s office first, but it was attached to a pudgy arm in a pale pink T-shirt, and he remembered who came next, so he didn’t stick around for the show. Instead, he started sprinting toward the entrance to the lobby, just as that iron swung in an arc and hit the wall where his head had been, hard enough to embed itself in the plaster.

  “Get back here, dammit!” screamed Beatrice the parrot proprietress, and Carson dodged around some sleeping budgies in a brass pagoda and turned around to see where she was. She was yanking on the iron, and Carson took a deep breath, backed up a few steps, and fell right over a big wrought iron affair with a scarlet macaw inside. He came up in a clatter of tiny parakeet cages and scrambled to get out, knocking over a rose-throated parrot and a couple of cockatoos.

  Who woke up with groggy squawks, adding to the general chaos in the lobby of the Bates Parrot Hotel.

  “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

  “I have got to get the fuck out of here!” Carson snapped over the girl on the phone. He waded through a jangle of cages, cutting his hand and his wrist on some sharp edges and broken spikes, and double-checked to see where Beatrice was.

  “Hyooyah!” With a groan and a heave, she finally managed to extricate the iron, and as Carson tripped over three more giant parrot cages, he heard the clatter of her behind him, simultaneously trying to wade through the frenzy like he had and reassure the waking birds. “Don’t worry none, oh sweetie, Mama’s gonna be back to fix you right up. Just hang in there, I just gotta go help the guest now. Just hold your horses, babies. Don’t worry, I’m going to fix you right up….”

  “Oh hell no!”

  Carson crashed into the front door, only to realize she must have locked it when he’d first come in—that had been the movement he’d seen behind the cages. The glass fractured under the force of his body but didn’t shatter, and he grunted, shoved his phone in his pocket, and grabbed a birdcage to start breaking through when she screamed, “Don’t hurt my babies!”

  Carson paused long enough to see a couple of unconscious parakeets in the cage, rolling around like marbles, and he felt a little sick.

  “Oookay,” he said quietly, still keeping the birdcage over his head. “I’ll tell you what, Beatrice. You come here and unlock the front door, and I’ll put down the birdcage and get out of your hair.”

  “I can’t do that!” she wailed. “You’ll go and tell everyone, and I’ll have to leave my babies alone!”

  Carson kept the parakeets over his head. “Why did you drug the birds, Beatrice?” Because when you were negotiating with a psycho, it helped to get the small details down.

  “So’s no one else would complain. Don’t you understand? He was calling the board of health and the cops and everything. The cops weren’t so bad, ’cause that one had somethin’ going in room 245, but the board of health! Do you know what they’d do?”

  “Uhm, take away the birds?”

  “No, they’d look in the rooms on the upper floor!”

  Well, that was unexpected.

  “And what would they find there, Beatrice?”

  Carson’s pocket babbled, and he could only hope it was on loud enough to catch some of this.

  “How do you think I keep this place going? All them old people, living here, right? Well, they’re old. They got to die sometime. But I needed their Social Security!”

  “Oh God.”

  “And I wasn’t going to get it if people knew they weren’t living here no more! I couldn’t even bury them!”

  “And that explains all the quicklime. Excellent. I’ve stumbled on Dorothea Puente By The Sea. Awesome. Holy shit. Jesus, did you assholes in my pocket hear that?”

  He heard a higher-pitched warble and felt the broken door at his back jiggle. Well, hell, he’d plied his ass with enough skill the night before, right? He wiggled some more, hitting the bar progressively harder, hoping it would give before the glass pane would.

  “And this cop says he can’t keep taking money now that he knows about the bodies upstairs! What am I supposed to do now?”

  “You’re supposed to put down the iron, you psycho bitch!”

  She swung around, iron still clutched in her hand, and faced the young deputy who had struggled to his feet. He was holding his gun, pointing it at her, but it was wobbly. Blood streamed into his eyes, and, hey, Carson was standing right behind her, so maybe firing it wasn’t the best choice the guy could make either.

  “Okay,” Carson said, trying to calm things down. “That’s all really good, but where’s Stassy? He’s the reason I came down here, he’s the reason I came over tonight. The unburied bodies, they’re all between you guys, I get that. The pandering, that’s your deal too. I just want to know where my boss’s nephew is. I swear to God, you get me Stassy, I’ll be out of everyone’s hair.”

  Beatrice stopped for a second, not lowering the iron even a little. Carson noticed it had the deputy’s blood on it, and some hair and bits and stuff, and he thought he might throw up when all this was done, just for good measure.

  The woman looked at him as if he was crazy. “The cute kid with the boyfriend? I just sent him down the hallway to the storage room on the second floor. All the stuff the cops didn’t confiscate went in there.”

  Oh Jesus. “Stassy’s still here?”

  His pocket started going crazy-jangly, and at that moment, there was a sudden shattering behind him and the glass door imploded. The metal frame screeched, and Carson fell backward into nothing, squealing like a girl.

  Dale caught him with one arm while wielding a crowbar with the other.

  For a moment, Carson stared at Dale in shock and Dale stared back at him the same way, and then Carson remembered what was going on. “Grab the crowbar and come on!” he snapped, taking off around the lobby, trying to get as far from the concussed police officer and the crazy lady with the drugged birds as he possibly could.

  “Awesome, where we going?” Dale asked as they broke into a quick run.

  “Around to the other side of the building to get Stassy before he walks into that nightmare. Did you call your brother?”

&nb
sp; “No!”

  Carson fumbled in his pocket and thrust the phone behind him until he felt Dale grab it as they ran. “Well, you do that, and do it now. In fact, you hide right here.” He turned around and shoved Dale into the bushes in the corner, which was shadowed from pretty much all the light around it, even the light of the Chevron station that sat in front of Carson’s motel. It may have been broad daylight, but that little nook could keep Dale well hidden.

  “Hey!” Dale protested, and Carson whirled to him, grabbed his collar, and planted a big, hard kiss on him before pulling back.

  “Stay safe, dammit. Get your brother here and lay low. She knows I’ll be heading to find Stassy, but she won’t look for you here. Just fucking hide, will you? The deputy who was taking pandering money is in there with a gun, and all I want to do is get Stassy so Ivan doesn’t kill us!”

  “Us?”

  “He’ll find a reason to get you, dammit. Now stay here and get the frickin’ cops!”

  “Bossy asshole,” Dale muttered, and that was enough to reassure Carson. He turned and sprinted around the short L of the hotel, very carefully not looking up at that second story, with the little wind chimes and the window decals and the plants in their little stands outside. He didn’t want to know how many of those rooms were inhabited by dead people. Ever. He didn’t want to know ever.

  He spotted the stairwell, and room 245, and saw the room next to it, open and with the light on. By the time he got up the stairs, he realized the safest place for Stassy to be when this whole thing went down was right there, where everything began.

  Goddammit, here he was, back in another broom closet.

  Carson slammed the door behind him as he entered and looked around.

  “Well, this is a little nicer than the last time we did this,” he said, and Stassy and the young man holding the duffel next to him looked up in shock. They were both a little messed and stubble burnt, and the place smelled like a quick hand job, so maybe Stassy had learned the value of a good broom closet after all, which could explain why they’d been so late. But that didn’t help any of them now, did it?

  “Carson, what the hell?”

  “Stassy, Toby.” Carson nodded congenially. Toby had dark hair like his brother, but his was cut short so it stuck up in front. The brown eyes were the same, but Toby’s features were rounder, less pointy, and he had a whole lot fewer tattoos.

  “Carson?” Toby asked, still holding on to Stassy’s duffel. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “Do you guys know how many dead bodies are in this fucking place?” Carson asked. He looked around—the space was around six-by-four, and the shelves were mostly full of cleaning supplies and quicklime. A stack of boxes sat near the boys’ end, but all things considered, his best bet to make himself comfortable was to cop a squat.

  “Sit down.” He gestured, sinking to his haunches. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll tell you all about it. Just don’t go outside until the cops come get us, okay?”

  His hand throbbed, and it was still bleeding, and Carson sighed. The plain blue T-shirt he wore fit his shoulders well and not much did. Oh hell. He hauled the shirt over his head and wrapped the fabric around his hand, hoping he didn’t go septic or something stupid before he even had a chance to wash it.

  While he was doing that, they all heard a sudden sound, muffled and distant but very distinctive.

  “Carson, was that a gunshot?”

  Oh please, let Dale be okay. Please let him do what I said this once, oh please oh please oh please.

  “Probably. Who wants to know where that came from?”

  Eyes huge and mouths open, they nodded, and he sat them down and had him a little story time. He told them about Beatrice and the dead bodies and the drugged parrots and the brothel on the side, and how the whole shebang was melting down in the lobby as they sat there and shot the shit.

  Stassy was a little mind-blown, but Toby was unsurprised.

  “Man, Beatrice has been off her cracker since her mama died. I always thought she pushed the ol’ bitch down the stairs herself. Mama Bates was not a nice person.”

  “There’s bodies on this floor?” Stassy asked, back about three steps behind Toby. Suddenly Carson was reassured. Toby was to Stassy what Dale was to Carson. Toby would take care of him, and Stassy needed that.

  “Yup.”

  Then they heard sirens, and for the first time in his life, that sound set Carson’s mind at ease. “And now there’s cops on the scene.”

  A horrible pause ensued and Carson wished like hell for his phone. But Dale had his phone, and Carson had to hope he was okay. This had been the right call, right? Keeping Stassy and Toby out of the fray, that was good, right? And Dale could talk to his brother and tell him to be careful, right?

  God, he hated being a grown-up. He wanted Dale to tell him it was okay, and that shoving your lover in a bush and telling him to hide was not the end of a beautiful relationship.

  He couldn’t even worry about it, because Stassy and Toby were looking paler and more wide-eyed by the second. Part of it was the space, he was sure. With him on his ass and those two on boxes, they were practically touching knees. He could smell Stassy’s aftershave—which he never particularly liked; it was why he’d waited until most of it was sweated off before he’d made his move—and Toby’s deodorant, which was actually a lot less irritating; and the musk of whatever had been going on before he burst in. He could also track the droplets of sweat sliding down their faces, when it really was more cold than hot in the stupid little closet. Whoa, shit, were they nervous!

  “We’re not gonna get in trouble, are we, Carson?” Toby was petting Stassy’s hand like he’d pet a skittish cat, probably for good reason.

  “Seriously, Stassy, what’d you do? I think your biggest crime at this point is escaping the crazy lady’s iron, and they can’t arrest you for that. No, I’m pretty sure once this blows over, you and me can go back to Chicago and leave Florida to the alligators and the fuckin’ lizards on the wall.”

  Toby laughed a little, but Stassy’s lower lip came out. “Yeah, I don’t think I could live here,” he said apologetically, and Toby shrugged.

  “I’d like to live somewhere else,” he said. “Carson wasn’t shitting around about the wildlife.”

  “It’s not the wildlife that scares me so much as the crazy bird lady with the iron,” Carson said, effectively stopping that conversation before he could dump on the two kids he came here to keep safe. It worked as a redirect too. Toby and Stassy were in the middle of asking him a buttload of questions he barely knew something about when the police came knocking on the door to the room, and they were saved.

  Dale was right behind the cops, shaking his head like he was pissed off, especially when he saw Carson without his shirt. But he got a good look at Carson coming out of the broom closet alone and Stassy coming out clinging to Toby’s hand, and he relaxed a little. He wiggled his way through a couple of state troopers who had apparently been called in to help sort the shit, and raised his eyebrows.

  In that minute, Carson didn’t give a shit who knew his sexual history. He was never going to get that T-shirt that said “This is the only guy I fucked in a bed instead of a broom closet” or “Normally, I like girls.”

  “I’m sorry I shoved you in the bushes,” he said as they got close enough to talk. Dale had some scratches on his bare arms and his knees, but then, Carson was still dripping blood through his T-shirt from the rip on his hand. “I didn’t want you to get shot, but I figured you could manage the cavalry, right?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the bushes. But next time you get locked in a broom closet, dammit, I want to be along for the ride!” Dale opened his arms then, and Carson went into them, and for a little while, they were an island in the chaos.

  Home and Shit

  WHEN all was said and done, he and Stassy had to stay for another two weeks. Stassy stayed at Toby’s place, Carson stayed at Dale’s, and they cleaned their shit out
of the little motel across from the Bates Parrot Hotel on the night Beatrice Bates made history as the Dorothea Puente By The Sea.

  Carson, Dale, Stassy, and even Toby were all questioned and deposed until Carson was pretty sure his tongue was going to fall out, but when that was over, they were told not to leave town for a little while and left the fuck alone.

  Carson got really good at surfing. He helped Dale strip and paint his house. He learned to shine the light beam in all the corners so the critters would never, ever scare him.

  But after two weeks of making love almost every day, he never did get a chance to top.

  So the day Glen drove to Dale’s, they had a dinner of grilled burgers and a few beers on the back porch, and he told Carson he could go home, that seemed to be the time to do it, right?

  Glen left—still a prick, but a little friendlier toward Carson, at any rate—and the two of them waved good-bye as the squad car rumbled off into the sunset. Carson leaned into Dale’s body a little, and Dale kissed his temple.

  “So, you’re leaving tomorrow, are you?”

  Carson made an affirmative sound. Ivan had been calling twice a day, asking when Carson was going to do his goddamned job and bring Stassy back. Carson had told him, repeatedly, that the cops wouldn’t let Stassy go until they were ready to let Carson go, and Ivan had to be content with that because he was not ready to have the cops nosing about his affairs.

  But Glen had just come and told them they’d probably be called in to testify on the state’s dime in a year or two, and until then, they had an obligation to let the DA in Florida know where they lived, but they did not need to stay in the state.

  It was time.

  Dale wrapped an arm around Carson’s waist and Carson leaned into it, thinking he’d never been so comfortable with another human being in his life, ever.

  “So, you ready to top, Chicago? Part of your last hurrah?”