Hey, Joe

by Ben Neihart

  Welk put his hand on Joe's mouth. "Point taken, sir. Back here."

  He led them down a narrow path beside the building. On the left was a fence overgrown with tall, scratchy stalks; on the right, black windows. At the end of the path there was a brick patio illuminated by bright spotlights, two yellow and one white. Once they rounded the back comer, Welk pointed his jaw at a wall of leaves interwoven with sugary strands of spider webs that topped off just beneath the crumbling white curve of an archway. Beyond the leaves was a dark opening in the facade of the building.

  "Through that shit?" Joe asked.

  "Shhh." Welk nodded before whispering, "It's the old slaves' quarters."

  ' 'Nasty.'' Joe held his breath and followed into the bristly wet growth. To his surprise, it wasn't as thick as he'd feared, and with no scratches or gooey swipes on his face or arms he was on the other side, in a tiny alcove before a barred door.

  "Okay," Welk whispered, and with his hand outstretched like Spiderman's, pressed the pads of his fingertips against one of the door's panes of glass and removed it from its frame. He handed the pane to Joe, touched Joe's earlobe, and then stuck his hand through the hole and unlocked the door.

  They entered on a black-and-white tile foyer. Even though a breeze fluttered by from somewhere within, the air in the foyer was heavy and wetly dusty. Welk closed and locked the door and replaced the pane, and then he led down a narrow corridor with fifteen-foot ceilings. After taking a series of abrupt turns, they came upon massive double doors covered with rusted hinges and buckles.

  "Let me think for a minute," Welk said, holding up his index finger.

  Joe nodded and looked around. The only light came from bare light bulbs that dangled from the ceiling on long wires. There were three bulbs; the middle one was dark. Joe exhaled loudly and leaped for it, his hand flattened into a paddle. He missed, and landed hard on his ankle.

  Welk gave a smart-ass twist of his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Joe crouched, pressing his butt to the wall, and then pushed off and leaped. His hand swiped the wire just above the metal collar of the bulb, and he thought he got a tiny shock. He slid down the wall, resting his haunches on the back of his sneakers, and looked up at the dark bulb reprovingly.

  Welk mouthed the word "watch," pointing to his chest, and in a graceful leap hit the bulb with his hand and set it in motion, as Joe had wanted to.

  The bulb swung at the end of its wire like a trapeze artist; the momentum of the swing gave it a little hop before it changed direction, as if it were about to somersault to the next wire. After two full swings, it had subtly changed its arc of movement so that it was headed directly for one of the lighted bulbs. Joe braced himself for an explosion, but it didn't happen; instead, the glowing bulb began to swing too, in time with the dark one.

  Welk leaned into the doors and pushed them open. "Okay, if I'm right, no one should be able to hear us," he said, stepping into the narrow courtyard. Taking up most of the space was a lap pool with one black racing stripe painted down the center. A couple of dozen potted palms bordered the pool. "This swankness is, of course, courtesy of the Shaw Foundation." Looking down at the water, he cleared his throat violently and spit.

  "Nice people."

  "I think I'll find out the verdict soon. Somebody should have left a note on my door. I don't hear any celebrating, though."

  Joe pulled the doors shut behind him. "Is it all boys that live here?"

  "Yep."

  "That's what I guess would be uncool. I like being around girls. I like the whole way they have about them. I like seeing 'em move."

  "And you don't like watching boys move?"

  "Um..."

  "What's the problem, man? You don't like to look at me?"

  "I do. Well, sometimes I get the feeling that I'm maybe like stepping into this whole world of guys who don't ever hang out with girls, like that's what I have to look forward to. And I don't look forward to that."

  Welk plucked at the bottom of his T-shirt so the neck stretched down. "Shut it down, man. You don't have to enter any world or anything. I mean, you might want to visit it or something if you want to meet people. But I mean, stop the bullshit talk. You are not right here with a girl. I'm not a girl, Joe. You're not coming up to some girl's bedroom. But you know what? I've been thinking about you since this afternoon with more like intensity than I bet any girl has ever thought about you. Okay? I haven't been able to eat tonight because every time I maybe wanted to I could only think about you and how sick to my stomach I was to get with you and kiss you and shit."

  "You put it that way," Joe said, putting his hands on his stomach and wiggling at the knees, "and I feel like I'm actually in a dream. I mean, I can't believe someone would think about me like that."

  "I do."

  Welk was a resident advisor, so he had a single room at the end of a wide green hall lit by electric candles. The wood-plank floor creaked as he rocked in place outside the door, eyes sparkling with tears. He held a piece of paper that had been thumbtacked to the door; in dark Magic Marker letters, it said: VICTORY, PART ONE. TWENTY-FIVE MILLION. COME DOWNSTAIRS IN THE MORNING, WE'LL TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT. DON'T WAKE US, BRO. WHERE ARE YOU? The note was signed KEVIN.

  "Do you want me to leave, man?" Joe asked. "Maybe you want to see if anyone's awake?"

  "I want to celebrate," Welk said, "but my boys are asleep." He gave Joe a fake look of befuddlement. "Hmmm, who could I like celebrate with?"

  "Who's Kevin? Is he one of the guys who was with you at So-So's this afternoon?"

  "Yeah."

  "Was he the blond guy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay."

  "Don't go there, dude. Nothing to say. He's my best friend. Him and me were both born in Jackson." With a shove of his shoulder, Welk opened the door to his room. "Enter, sir," he said reverently.

  Joe walked past him into the humid darkness, stopping after a couple of steps. Welk bumped against him, pushing him another few steps, and flicked a switch that made four or five table lamps come to life in a corner of the floor. The walls were painted white; the floor was the same wood plank as the hall, but mostly covered with a blue-and-red oriental carpet. There was a table against the big window in the back of the room; on it, a slick, hefty boom box and piles of tapes. In the center of the floor, two futons were side by side. Joe eyed them with a mix of zeal and alarm. And that was it for furnishings. An alcove off to the side looked like some sort of dressing room, and it led to the bathroom, whose whiteness Joe could see through the open door.

  Welk crossed the room and stood in front of the window, which looked out over the pool courtyard: lights reflected in water and shimmering in white arcs and bubbles on the courtyard's brick wall, the brushy tops of banana trees swaying in the wind, the peach and orange and blue starry sky.

  "People don't really wear tight jeans any more," Joe said, "but you totally get away with it."

  "Peckerman." Welk laughed. "Are these really tight?"

  "I don't think I'm imagining it, dude."

  "Maybe you're just concentrating too hard."

  "Hmmm."

  Welk punched a few buttons on the boom box. A silvery, thick rhythm line floated out of the speakers, and after a few seconds a man with a casual, deep voice began to sing a Hendrix cover.

  ' 'Who the fuck is this?'' Joe asked.

  "Give it a chance."

  "That's not likely."

  "Do you ever just chill?''

  Joe looked at the bed. "I'm nervous," he muttered.

  Welk turned to look out the window. "I know. Your hands have been shaking since we came in the room. It's, I don't know, I can say this, I think it's kind of a turn-on."

  "Right. My hands haven't been shaking."

  Welk didn't answer. Still looking out the window, he lifted one arm up over his shoulder and took a handful of the back of his T-shirt. The muscles in his arm shifted in a way that made Joe almost stagger backward a step or two. Then, with just
the one hand, Welk pulled the T-shirt off.

  "You're beautiful, man," Joe said quietly, almost to himself, looking at Welk's suntanned back. It had everything going for it: the cleft, the heft, the wing muscles, the V-ness. "Holy shit."

  "It's just the way I look —huh? It doesn't mean that much."

  "It means pretty much to me."

  "But that's 'cause I want to be with you so bad and I'd be the first person you're with."

  "You don't really know that you'd be the first person."

  "I'd bet on it."

  "So."

  Welk turned around now, showing all the amazingly whittled distortions of his chest and his stomach and his shoulders. "I have eyes.''

  "Welk," Joe said, "I have to piss."

  "Go," Welk said, gesturing to the dark alcove.

  Reluctantly pulling his eyes off him, Joe trudged into the bathroom. He shut the door behind him, found the light and flicked it on, and listened to his breath huffing in his ear. Hhuh, hhuh, hhuh. His heart clobbered his ribs at a rate of two or three hundred beats per minute. "Stupid fuck," he said to himself with a bark, and then he pulled off his T-shirt and looked in the medicine cabinet mirror at the stupid fucking body of his. About the same form and appeal as Gumby's hulking physique. And a blank, random Tater Tot face.

  Nice.

  Hot.

  A real deathly attraction.

  And what about those suave moves? he asked himself. They are showing some manliness to be sure, Joe Keith.

  He unfastened his shorts, pinched their waist and his boxers' waist and slid them down his legs and stepped out of them. He toed them against the wall, where they looked pitifully little boyish.

  Still wearing his Pumas, he stepped up to the toilet. He lifted up the lid, the seat. There were two curls of hair stuck to the rim. He took his dick in his hand.

  It had always seemed to be normal enough. It wasn't exactly big . . .

  He closed his eyes for a moment, getting comfortable; when he opened them, his piss started, an arc drilling noisily into the old bowl, which had the acoustics of an amphitheater. The water frothed and foamed clear bubbles.

  Knock knock knock.

  The door flew open.

  "Hey," Welk said, and suddenly he was beside Joe, pissing too. "I couldn't hold it in." His eyes met Joe's. "You look good naked. We're going to have a swell time." He dropped his voice to a whisper: "I know some tricks."

  "Like what?" Joe said, shaking off his dick even as it hardened in his hand. He looked down at it, just to make sure it was achieving a decent size.

  Welk's piss continued. He had two veins and curly dark hair running from his dick to his belly. "Well," he said, "when I get done, I'm gonna mash my lips all over you, and like hold your dick and my dick in my hand and like rub them and pick you up, dude, and haul you out there to my bed, and we'll"—his stream started to dwindle—"we'll talk, about cars, and we'll look at, um, family pictures, and arm wrestle, and I'll beat you, and I'll get to take my prize whichever way I want to. Okay"—he fiddled with it—"I'm done pissing."

  "Yeah," Joe said, watching Welk's dick turn red and get hard. "You've got a wicked left hook on that thing, huh?"

  Welk lay with his belly between Joe's legs, kissing his neck, biting down gently on the bony muscles. His fingers pressed into the spaces between Joe's ribs. His chest hugged on top of Joe's, holding him against the futon. And Joe let out small, delighted cries, squirming a little bit, barely lifting up his head and looking down on the top of Welk's head, along the back, down the straining hairy legs that fanned out with muscle, and at his own idiot feet, still trapped in fat sneakers that made his ankles look even skinnier than they were.

  Unsmacking his mouth from Joe's neck, Welk slid himself a half foot farther up and pressed his forehead to Joe's; with just the least bit of pressure, he pushed the back of Joe's head to the futon. "Hey," he huffed, "how much fun is this?"

  "Much," Joe laughed.

  "I don't think I have any rubbers."

  "Oh "

  "What can I do, man?"

  "Um ... it doesn't have to stick in a hole?"

  "You know what I like want to do?"

  "Yeah?"

  "So... ?" Welk propped his elbow tight against the side of Joe's face, and molded his forearm across Joe's forehead. "I really want to."

  "No way," Joe sighed. "Absolutely not. Improvise, man. Do whatever, except, you know, don't do that.''

  "Oh, fuck; you're right." He slid his forearm off Joe's forehead, and they resumed kissing.

  Joe's heart was fat with glee.

  1:05 a.m.

  On the radio, callers to the Ear of New Orleans show on WSOL-AM praised the jury for the righteous hugeness of its award to the orphanage. "Ripped out my heart, those kids," a woman sobbed. "If anyone thinks it was too much money, they're made of granite. I am so angry at that woman. I am so upsets The call-in host offered solace, shaded his voice so it matched the incoming wall of theme music, and then, when the music ended, read an advertisement for a personal-injury law firm. Seth clicked the radio off.

  He was parked against a boxy wall of shrubbery, just around the comer from Joe's house. He wasn't surprised by the neighborhood, which was modest but brimming with the best luxuries: quietness, darkness, stillness. It suited Joe. The boy hadn't come off as one of those wireless New Orleans millionaire boys whom you'd run into up at the capital or at the racetrack or at Commander's for Sunday brunch, and he wasn't tough like a Bywater yat. He was a Metairie kid.

  The houses around here probably topped out at $150,000, so it was unlikely that the residents paid for a private security force. Some of them probably had alarms, and perhaps an off-duty cop made freelance run-throughs twice or three times a night. Otherwise, Seth figured, he was on his own.

  He pulled his gun off the passenger seat, cupped it in his palm. Without any great intentions, this was the man he'd become. In the dark, looking for opportunity. Even now, working on what he guessed he could call the side of good, he was the same mean fucker; maybe that's what it would take to resolve this situation. The same stealth and readiness, the ability to keep his pulse in check.

  But in the back of his mind was the same little worry that had been there when he did jobs for the foundation; it was a mocking, slithery voice telling him that he was going to screw things up.

  You 're gonna spot your panties, Seth.

  You're not fooling anybody, baby.

  He popped the car door open and stepped onto the gravelly roadside. He slowly squatted out two deep-knee bends, clicked the door carefully shut, but left it unlocked in case he had to hurry on the return. Stepping around the shrub wall, he took a hard look at the boy's lawn, in which no alarm-system sign was spiked, and at Schipke's van, bathed in light from a driveway lamppost.

  Schipke wasn 't going anywhere.

  The thought struck him cold in the pit of his chest. He wished that he was wrong. If Rae had a plan, if she had an orderly agenda, then she'd know that her clock was ticking and she had only limited time to escape. But she shouldn't be in a house on this quiet street. She shouldn't have visited herself on this neighborhood. There was no telling what she would do. She could fall apart, give herself up, or she could shoot the mother and then herself. For all Seth knew, she had the boy with her, too, and was simply waiting.

  What room are you in, Rae? Where are you? What have you done?

  He drew back his shoulders and sucked in a breath, let it out, and then he set off, running across one lawn into the next, into the shadows beside the boy's house. Dew lifted off the grass, clinging to his ankles. His breath came easily. His thoughts were clear as he made his way into the backyard.

  His eyes adjusted and he took in the contours of a well-tended garden: benches and potted trees, flower beds, a stone pathway. He was reminded again that home and family were the sneakiest motherfuckers in any fight: come up on you, they would, hands all gripped tight on your heart, making you cry, give up. He didn't want to be here, wh
ere these people had lavished so much care. He'd already run away from one mom.

  He stepped backward, one slow step over the other, into the garden to get a wide-angle view of the back of the house. Windows and a set of French doors. Lights on in what was probably the largest bedroom, and in the kitchen. Between the lighted windows there was one dark: a small bathroom window, he guessed. He stepped up onto one of the stone benches for a moment so he could see into the kitchen window; then he dropped back to the grass. He didn't know what to make of the scene he saw: both women sat hunched at a table, heads together; they could have been old college friends. There was no gun in sight, no ropes, leather hoods, or scythes.

  You don't know how to do the dirty work, Rae. You always had someone else do it for you. Why don't you run, girl, just run on down to Brazil.

  There was a rustle of grass behind him, and before he could turn to see its source, a rabbit ran between his legs. It hopped twice and disappeared around the side of the house. Seth sucked in a laugh and then returned his attention to the house.

  He was choosing among the windows, deciding which one would be the easiest and quietest to open, when his eye settled on a dark stripe between the two French doors; they were slightly ajar. With two dozen steps, he was just outside the doors, looking through one clean pane sideways into the kitchen. The table was now empty. He shifted his sight straight ahead, into the dark dining room, making sure that Rae wasn't hidden in any of the shadows.

  He tapped his fingertips against the pane of glass beside the outer doorknob, and the door spilled slightly inward. With a second bump, it made a creak just loud enough for his gut to drop, but now it was open wide enough for him to step inside. Okay, he said to himself, pulling his second leg inside. Okay, okay, gun up, gun pointing ahead, you can guess exacdy where you are. Step-slide around the table, big mother; step, step, quiet, quiet now; okay, watch the chair legs, gun up, finger poised; steady, keep it together, okay.

  He ran his eyes over bags and boxes and piles and clothes draped on furniture in the dark living room. He stood motionless, listening to the blood thud along his jawline, in his temples. He made an inventory of the floor ahead of him, looking for a clear path. Go, he told himself. Go. He heard a hitch in his hipbone as he took a step forward, but the sound of his shoe breaking glass was the last thing he heard before the living room lights—lamps on tables at each end of the sofa, sparks snowing from the wires of a hanging fixture—blazed to life. He looked instinctively at his foot, and the twisted pair of eyeglasses beneath his shoe, and then he looked up at Rae Schipke. A bullet whizzed past his face and landed with a solid thud in the wall over his right shoulder. He cringed, and his gun slipped down his fingers as if a prop in a magic show. He watched it clatter to the floor.