by Kris Ripper
“Okay. Shoot.”
He took a breath. “Joe Rodriguez—senior, not junior—wants to go to the wake.”
It took me a few seconds to put the pieces together. “You mean . . . the guy’s dad?”
“Yeah.”
We looked at each other for a long minute. I had no idea how I felt about that. “Why?”
“I talked to him for a really long time last night. I think— Hell, Zane, I don’t know. He’s so broken right now. They were . . . shocked doesn’t even come close. Devastated. They had no idea Joey could have ever been capable of the things he did. Maybe even more than that, the things he thought.” He put the burrito down, with only a single bite out of it, and took a sip of his water. “They raised him right, you know? Going to church, getting good grades. Joe said they were so careful to raise him to be respectful of people, to know that even though he was light-skinned some people would never see past his last name, that he’d have to work harder than a white kid named Jones, but it’d be worth it. That hard work pays off.”
I put my burrito down, too. “Oh god. Ed.”
“I know.”
“Not that I didn’t think that it must be hard on the parents, but you always think—or you kind of hope—that maybe monsters like him come from bad experiences. That there’s a reason they do horrible things.”
“I tried to figure that out, at first. I was talking to Joe, and he’s—” Ed swallowed. “He’s my friend, you know? But at first I was treating him like the father of a killer. I wanted— I guess I kind of wanted him to tell me how he screwed it up. Then he started crying; this big, strong man, crying into his burger because his son . . .” He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine it. And he said his wife is just numb. She doesn’t smile, or laugh, and hardly talks. They were good parents. They tried to do everything right. And their son killed six people and almost killed three more.”
“Is he— I mean, is he schizophrenic or something? Not that—obviously not that that would mean schizophrenic people are murderers—but maybe there’s a—a brain chemistry thing—”
“He’s a serial killer who thought he had to purify the gay community. They’re trying to find a specialist who can diagnose him, get him help, but everyone they talk to—” He broke off. “Well, anyway, he probably wasn’t supposed to tell me all that, and I definitely shouldn’t be talking about it in public. But no, I don’t think this is like he had a psychotic break and lost it.” He glanced around, but we were the only ones on the sunny side of the building. “He hunted them, Zane. Like prey. And then he killed them.”
I shivered despite the warmth of the sun. “So why does his dad want to go to the wake?”
“To grieve, I think. We lost friends. In a way, he lost his son, the son he thought he had. And he’ll never get that back, no matter how long Joey lives.”
“But—” It was our space. Wasn’t it? Jokes aside, most of the time straight people didn’t come to Club Fred’s. Or if they did, they were fluid straight people. Not middle-aged men whose sons had terrorized us for months.
Or a middle-aged man with a gay son who’d hung out at Club Fred’s for years. What had Dred said when I first proposed the wake? That we were just trying to feel better about partying with a murderer. How much harder was it for Mr. Rodriguez to feel better about raising one?
“The event is open,” I temporized.
“He won’t come unless it’s okay. He doesn’t want to intrude.”
I bit off saying, Well, it’s pretty fucking intrusive, and sat with it for a minute. All I’d wanted the whole time was to reinvent a safe space. Either we could do it or we couldn’t; the presence of Mr. Rodriguez wasn’t likely to tip the scales, I didn’t think.
Still. I had to think about it.
“I can’t give you my answer on it until I talk to Cam, Josh, and Keith. If they’re comfortable with it, then I’m comfortable with it. But I’m not putting them in the position of facing the guy whose boy tried to kill them.”
Ed nodded. “I would have talked to them before going back to him anyway, but it’d be better coming from you. Cam—you know. He’d say yes to me because Joe’s my friend.”
I picked up my burrito. “How’s Mr. Rodriguez doing, really? I guess I hadn’t really thought about going through your day wondering who’s side-eyeing you thinking about how your kid grew up to be a murderer.”
“He’s coming to work. But he looks exhausted all the time, and whenever I knock on his office door he spooks, like he thinks someone’s gonna—I don’t even know. No one’s said anything about it to him that I know of. I think he feels really guilty. And I can’t even decide if I think maybe he should, like how do you raise this kid who kills people and not be at least partially responsible? Except I think maybe he’s not. Which, hell, Zane, that might be worse. What if there’s a certain kind of person who will always end up doing terrible things no matter how good their upbringing?”
“Stop it. Trying to get pregnant here. Do not want to talk about Future Kid being Future Killer.”
“Sorry. Shit. But you know what I mean. I’m so into the power of will, but there’s so much that I don’t control. Which I should know better than anyone, but still.”
I nodded. “Anyway, let me think about this. I’ll get back to you, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks. And . . . sorry. I feel like I put you in a crummy position, but you’re the only person who I could ask.”
“Yeah, it was my idea. Well, Hannah’s, but my job to put it into action. Speaking of Hannah, and Jaq, listen to this crazy idea they had the other night.”
I told him about college-for-jobs. He told me about how things were going at the paper, and the newish half promotion he’d gotten to start updating the online version of the Times-Record more than once a day.
Joey Rodriguez, aka the La Vista Killer, had a dad, and his dad wanted to go to the wake I was planning for his victims and survivors. I could barely wrap my head around all the ways that could go wrong. But for some reason I really wanted to say yes. He might not even show up. But I didn’t want be the one who closed the door on him.
I wasn’t sure if I was still welcome at breakfast on Saturday, but I decided to show up and see what happened. I was armed with a couple of topics I could bring up as fake reasons for why I was there, if I needed them, but they were obviously fake and wouldn’t fool anyone.
No one asked. Of course.
It was so weird. On one level it was just like it usually was: I walked in, joined in the making of breakfast, messed with James’s baby curls. Emerson shot me a look, but Dred waved hello, and Obie kissed my cheek.
“Here.” The cutting board landed on the table in front of me. Dred pushed a produce bag across the counter. “Green onions.”
“Got it.”
Like that. That could have happened last week, or the week before. No big deal. Except there was some . . . distance between us. As if there used to be a bridge, and the bridge was gone, but the rest of the landscape was identical.
Everything seemed the same. Nothing had changed. And yet I knew there was no way back to how it had been between us. I could feel that as sure as I felt the knife graze too close to my knuckle because I wasn’t paying attention.
“Ouch! Damn. I cut myself.” I sucked on the cut.
Emerson swept the cutting board away. “Do not bleed on my green onions!”
“Your concern is noted. Jerk.”
“No need for you to contaminate the food. You didn’t bleed on the board, did you?”
“No, Emerson, I didn’t bleed on the cutting board.”
Obie leaned over from his seat across from me, where he was shoving food in James’s mouth. “He’s pissed at you on Dred’s behalf. Isn’t that sweet?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not so much, no.”
“I don’t need anyone to be pissed at anyone on my anything.” Dred punched Emerson in the arm. “Especially your sorry ass.”
“Fuck you. I’ve been meditating. I could
choose not to be pissed at Zane, but I’m choosing to indulge myself.”
“How’s that different than you before you were meditating?”
“Before it didn’t feel like a choice.” Emerson shot me a smirk. “Now I’m pissed at Zane for fun.”
“Thanks a lot.” But it was hard not to smile at him. “So you’re liking the meditation thing?”
“I’m not sure I’d say—”
“Yes,” Obie interrupted.
“I was going to say—”
“You like it. I know you like it. You feel better after doing it. So wouldn’t it be more, like, mindful if you admitted that you kind of like being mindful?”
Emerson turned away. “I’m so fucking Zen right now I’m ignoring everything you just said.”
Obie grinned. “Whatever you say, dear.”
“I know where you sleep.”
“You better.”
Dred cleared her throat. “Enough foreplay. Can we make omelets now?”
Breakfast was delicious as usual. The boys were taking James off to the fabric store after, still searching for the right material for Josh and Keith, who’d apparently commissioned a tie for Cam.
I nodded. “It’s been weeks, hasn’t it?” The first time he’d sent them fabric swatches had been the day after Carlos and Tom’s wedding.
“Yeah,” Obie said. “I think we’re close. They’d let me make it already, but I can tell I haven’t found the perfect thing yet, so I’m still looking.”
“They’re so cute, the three of them.”
“And they’re making a poly triad work, which is awesome.” He scooped James up. “Let’s go, papi. You too, Emerson.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Bossy.”
I stood on the porch, clutching my coffee like it was a hand stamp to get back in the house. They loaded James into the car and drove away, talking, looking like . . . a family.
“People always think they adopted him when the three of them go out.”
I didn’t jump a foot or anything. Coffee didn’t slosh out of my cup and burn my hand because Dred scared the hell out of me. That would be a waste of coffee. Plus, that kind of thing only happened to jumpy people. Not me.
“Does that bother you?” I surreptitiously switched hands so the burning, dripping one could dangle at my side and someday cool off. Or possibly go numb.
“Hell no. I like that people see him as being part of a family. When it’s just me and him, people think I’m a welfare queen. When one of the boys is with us, then we look like straight people with a kid.” She shrugged.
I missed her shoulders. We’d only had sex once, and I missed the way her skin smelled up close. “You’re not a welfare queen, Dred.”
“Nope. I almost make enough to get us off food stamps.” Sour smile. “I guess that’s when I’ll know we’re hugely successful, right? When we hit the food stamps cap. I told Aunt Florence I was going to try to find a real job, and do you know what she said to me?”
“No.”
“She told me it’s almost wedding season and I’d be better off making quilts with Obie’s scraps to sell in the online store. Or knitting hats and scarves. It’s ridiculous. The worst plan I’ve ever heard. He’s in daycare for five hours a day. I should be spending all of those hours doing something that gets us a steady paycheck.”
“Okay.” I sipped my coffee, watching her over the rim. “But what do you want to do?”
“I never want to go back to a normal job. Ever. My chest gets tight and I can’t breathe when I even think about walking into the sign shop, and that wasn’t a bad place to work. They’d take me back part-time. But it sounds like a nightmare, going back there again. Starting all over.”
“Then I’m with Aunt Florence. Don’t do it.”
“Z, you make more in a month than I do in three months. Probably in six.”
“So what? I like going to my office. I like my job. If I didn’t, I’d find something else to do.”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to afford sperm.”
“Hey, I’ve got it on tap now. Tom’s gonna help me out.”
She nodded, forehead smoothing out. “I’m really glad you decided to do it.”
“We’ll see how it goes.” Now. Now was the moment. Now was the moment I could find a way back to where we’d been. “Dred, listen, just hear me out. I know I was an ass, but I swear, if we could try again—”
“When you figure out what you want—what you really want—I’ll be here. But I’m not waiting for you. And I’m not holding my breath.” She leaned against the doorframe. “You’re all up in the air right now, and that makes sense to me. But, Zane, I can’t be up in the air with you. If I’m gonna have someone in my life, they need to be in it for real, not for pretend. Not only when it’s convenient for them.”
I wanted to tell her that was me, that I was so fucking for real right now, that I’d never been pretending, not since the first.
Except.
I couldn’t. Because when I looked into the future, I had no idea what was there anymore. My lists weren’t working, nothing was the way I thought it’d be. How could I make any kind of commitment when I had no idea how I’d feel in a month? Let alone two, or six, or . . .
And what if there was a kid involved? Or what if there . . . wasn’t?
“Sometimes I feel like everything in my life is on hold until I get pregnant. And then I think, you know, if I find out I need to do fertility treatments, then I’ll do that. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll start the adoption process. And it’s all this endless moving belt that I’m on and can’t get off.”
She looked at me for a long moment. I thought she’d say something—she’d tell me to leave her alone until I knew what I wanted, or she’d tell me never mind, she wasn’t interested—but what she actually said was, “Sounds like you should be doing Emerson’s meditations. Anyway, come in. Let’s work on your quilt some more.”
“What about yours?”
“I’ll get you set up and start playing with another block, if it’ll make you happy.”
Kissing you would make me happy. But that was off-limits, so I didn’t say it.
I lingered longer than I should have, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from her. We worked in silence, except when I had a question. The unsteady stitching of the sewing machine in my inconsistent hands seemed to draw time out, extending it.
My stacks of squares had almost turned into columns, with quarter-inch seam allowances. After that, I’d have to learn how to piece the columns together, which seemed alternately like it’d be easy and like it was impossible.
Upside: I’d have to ask Dred for help. Real help. And she’d stand close, and show me things. I’d probably have to force myself to concentrate because I’d be thinking about what she said, about being in it for real. I wanted to be in it for real, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t pretending, but how did I know, really? Maybe I still was. Or always was. Or never was.
Dred was sitting on the love seat, trying to plan another block for her quilt, laying out scraps, swapping them, playing them off against each other. I couldn’t watch her because she’d know I wasn’t working if the machine stopped running, but I liked that both of us could be in the same room, not talking, doing separate things.
Was this what being in love was? I could do the same thing with Jaq, or Carlos. But I wouldn’t get the same electric charge from having them close by. I wouldn’t anticipate the next time they glanced in my direction, or the next time I needed help so they’d come closer.
The day we met, Dred taught me how to knit. She sat close to me, touching my hands, changing the positions of my fingers until I was holding the needles so I could more freely move them. Ever since that moment I’d wanted her to teach me things.
Obie, Emerson, and James came back when I was nearly done with the final column of squares.
“Obadiah!” Dred called when the door opened.
“Mildred?” He pushed the accordion doors
open with the hand not holding James. “What’s up?”
“I need something from you. When’s the last time you wore your bell-bottoms?”
He blinked. “Jeez. Years ago. Why?”
Dred reached over to adjust the lamp so it shone more fully on her lain-out pattern. “I need them. But I’d have to cut some off.”
“Oh.” He handed off James to Emerson and went to look at her design. “Right here, huh? They would be seriously perfect.”
“And if you were okay with me cutting them up more than that, I kind of want the right knee for a different block.”
“The right knee is more hole than denim.”
“I know. I have an idea, to put something behind it so it’d flash through when you moved the quilt just right.”
“Well. I guess . . . I’m not saving them for anything. I’ll be right back.”
“You don’t have to—” Dred began.
“No, that’s not why I’m doing it. I think it sounds kind of bitchin’. Plus, it’d be better for them to be on your quilt than gathering dust on my clothes rack.”
“Wait, how dusty are we talking?”
He laughed and bounded up the stairs.
I turned my chair and quit pretending I was working. “So you’re gonna use a pair of Obie’s bell-bottoms in your quilt?”
“They’re the first thing he ever made, back when we were teenagers. Hand sewn, because Aunt Florence hadn’t shown us how to use the machine yet.”
Emerson deposited James in his walker. “Wait. He’s gonna let you cut those up? Oh damn.”
“I think I’ll use them three times, actually. I have an idea. And I want to get his careful little stitches in, too.”
Footsteps on the stairs again.
“Don’t talk about my stitches!” Obie, with ceremony, presented Dred with a very well-worn pair of jeans, cuffs belled-out with triangles of pink paisley fabric sewn in to widen them.
“Your stitches are adorable, look at them.” The two of them bent their heads to study teenage-Obie’s hard work. “So cute. These pants are the reason we became friends.”