by Cameron Lowe
“Me too. Damn, man, I was beginning to think you were a no-show,” Nic said as Malcolm slipped out of his car and stood upright, stretching.
“Ah, it’s all right, sweetheart, Daddy’s here now.”
Nic winced. “Don’t do that. Please, God, don’t ever call yourself that.” He shambled down the steps and grabbed Malcolm in a back-thumping hug. Nic had packed on a few pounds since Minneapolis, but he’d given up the long shaggy hair for a short crew cut that left him approaching handsome. Or at least respectable. “Good trip?”
“Uneventful. Lazy. So yeah, fantastic.”
“Let’s get you unloaded and I’ll grab my keys.”
“Where we going?”
Nic gestured at the Grand National. “You’re not parking that here.”
“What? Why not?”
“Shit, dude, that’d last ten minutes in the Flats before someone either keyed it or stole it. Take your pick.”
Malcolm laughed uneasily, but Nic was serious. “You told me this was a decent place.”
“I said decent for Rankin Flats. This is the crime capital of the United States, man. You know that.”
“I thought… you know, it being the suburbs…”
Nic shuffled towards Malcolm’s car. “Dude, you’re gonna learn a lot about how hard this city kicks everybody in the teeth.” Down the block from the house where the cop car was parked, a pair of uniformed officers stepped outside. Nic hissed, “You aren’t holding, are you?”
“Holding?” Malcolm asked dumbly.
“My sweet, virgin roomie.”
The two cops turned their way, took in Malcolm’s car, and ambled over, one of them talking quietly into a radio. As Nic dug around in the backseat, muttering to himself, Malcolm stepped around the front of the car.
“Hey there,” he said cheerfully. His hand rose up to shake theirs and one of the cops reached for the butt of his gun instinctually. “Whoa, sorry. Just saying hi. Didn’t mean to startle anyone.”
The two cops stared at each other, then him, disbelief etched across their faces. One of them, a guy nearly as tall as Malcolm, nodded at the Grand National. “This your car?”
“It is, yeah. Restored it with my dad back in high school and he gave it to me as an early graduation present.”
“Uh huh,” the other one, emaciated and short with a thick porn star mustache, said flatly.
Nic poked his head out. “Don’t be a dick, Tim. He’s telling the truth.”
“Because I’d take your word at it.”
“All right, easy. It’s a nice car, that’s all we’re saying,” the tall cop said peaceably. He held out his own hand finally, and Malcolm shook it. The cop took the opportunity to step in closer and sniff the air. “You friends with Nic?”
“Since grade school,” Malcolm said, now a little uneasy. Wait, did they think he’d been smoking a joint or something? The first time he tried weed he wound up sitting in a corner, hyperventilating because he thought his parents were going to kill him and he’d go to prison for the rest of his life. The memory was so unpleasant he soured on it. “Gonna be living here a while until I get a job and find a place of my own.”
As his partner walked around to the back of the Grand National, the tall one grinned easily, but there was a definite bite to it. “Yeah?” He glanced at Nic. “That about right?”
“That’s about right,” Nic muttered.
The cop at the back of the car took his time and called in Malcolm’s license plate. “Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Did I?”
“Did you?” the tall cop asked.
“Stop with the crap, Hunter,” Nic snapped. “He’s a good guy.”
“All right, Nicky, calm down,” the short cop said. He sidled back around and nodded at his partner. “He’s good.”
“Keep your noses clean, boys,” the tall cop said, and they started back to their car.
When they’d gone, Malcolm turned back to Nic, who looked anywhere but him. “Do I want to know?”
“You really don’t. Hunter’s okay. Tim’s a dick.”
“They come around often?”
Nic shrugged uncomfortably. “Like I say, man, you don’t want to know.”
* * *
Gwen threw a marker at her younger brother Hugh as he lay on the old, ratty armchair, his legs dangling off the armrest. “Help out, butthead.”
“I am helping. I’m helping decide if we should burn this chair or let the rats have it for a second home.”
His voice dripped his languidness, as though he were a cat sunning himself. His long legs swayed side to side, and if she watched him for much longer, Gwen was going to want to take a nap. Instead, she walked over and smacked his chest with the back of her hand.
“Hush up. That chair is awesome.”
“Don’t be crazy. This chair was never awesome.”
“Mom used to read to us in that thing!” she protested.
He turned his head to glance at her. His grin was so much like hers. A little lopsided, the teeth barely showing. It suited him more, Gwen thought, but maybe that was just because Hugh had such a naturally serious face that when he brought out the smile, it seemed to warm everything around him.
“And tell me how that’s an awesome thing?”
“Just because you can’t read…”
He held up his hands towards the ceiling in a lazy peace gesture. “Fine, fine, I’ll help. But this is definitely going in the garage sale pile.”
The garage sale “pile” was a collection of randomly stacked objects threatening to teeter over at any moment. Hugh kicked up off the chair and helped her shove it towards a floor lamp and a box of VHS tapes she wanted to get rid of. Sorting through her stuff was a chore they’d started that morning, but it felt like they had barely scratched the surface of splitting everything up into stuff to be moved, sold, or thrown away. Gwen wasn’t too frustrated yet – she’d known Hugh would probably be as much a hindrance as a helper – but the clock was ticking on when she wanted to have all this ready for the truck Calvin would be renting.
“What do you think for a price? Twenty bucks?” Gwen asked.
Hugh snapped out a single, sharp, “Hah!” and grabbed the pricing dots from her. On one of them, he wrote out a single, simple one, and slapped it on the chair. “You’ll be lucky to get that.” She didn’t argue, and they moved on to the magazine rack next to it. He leaned down next to it, frowning. “Can’t believe you saved this,” he said flatly.
“You made it. Of course I saved it.”
School had never come easy for Hugh. His was a sensitive soul and he didn’t like feeling half a step behind every other kid in school. It had led to a lot of problems, few of which graduation had solved, but one class had always been sort of a release for him – woodshop. He was good with his hands, good at making things, and in the loud, whining power tools, he didn’t have to hear anybody’s taunts or the perceived snobbery of his teachers, real or imagined. Instead, Hugh could just be Hugh. He’d made the magazine rack as one of a pair of final projects, and gave it to his older sister as a present. She adored it, but the thing seemed to rankle Hugh. She thought maybe it reminded him of those not-so-long ago days spent trying to escape the world, and in that regard, she couldn’t blame him.
“Trash pile,” Hugh grunted.
“No. It goes into the keep pile.”
“Probably get another buck for that piece of crap.”
“No. Absolutely not. Wouldn’t sell it for a million.”
He tired of arguing and handed it over. “Speaking of millions, how’s the playboy?”
Gwen grinned at the nickname. Despite the crassness, Hugh and Calvin got on like brothers. Once her boyfriend learned her brother wasn’t much into small talk or idle chit-chat with people he wasn’t familiar with, he easily adapted to Hugh’s mindset. They’d once drove together from the Flats to a country music festival in Cheyenne, and Hugh told Gwen later they didn’t speak more than ten words to one another on the wa
y home. She thought that meant they were pissed or hated each other, but he assured her with awed reverence that was definitely not the case. For his part, Calvin endured Hugh with the same sort of amused tenacity as he treated all her family.
“He’s good. He’s really enthusiastic about this move.”
“’He,’” Hugh said, glancing aside at her and smirking.
“What?”
“Nothing. You just said he’s really enthusiastic.”
“So what?”
Hugh gestured at her coffee table, and she jerked her thumb at the garage sale pile. “So…” he said, “you’re not?”
“What? No, of course I am!” Even to Gwen, her voice sounded too shrill.
“Yeah. You sure seem like it.”
“Stop it, okay? I’m happy. I’m really happy. Calvin’s a great guy. I’m happy to have him. And… his parents. And… their money.”
Hugh gave another bark of a laugh. “Ah, there it is.”
“What?”
“You’re pissed off because Calvin wants to take care of you.”
“I know what I sound like, okay?”
“Hey,” he said, turning around to face her. “Your happiness is not his happiness.” He crossed the room and gave her an all-too-brief hug. Those were growing rarer from Hugh these days. “You owe him nothing. What is it you want? Long term, short term, what?”
“To be a vet,” Gwen said immediately. “I want my own little clinic, I want to be out on the ranches, taking care of livestock. You know that.”
“Good. What else?”
“A family. Someday. Maybe when I’m like… thirty. A couple kids, a nice, cozy house. Somewhere near a little babbling stream.”
Hugh laughed. “That’s specific.”
“Shut up, you asked. And… I want to laugh. I want to have adventures with someone. I want to feel like equals, not like I’m always tagging along.”
“I like that. What about the short term?” She was a long time answering, and Hugh set to work again. “You don’t have to answer.”
“No, it’s okay. I want to pay my own way. The house thing, it still makes me uncomfortable, his parents throwing money at us like that. I’m just… sorta worried I’m gonna wind up relying on him the rest of my life. I know he’s a great guy, Hugh. But we’re moving so fast.”
“Then tell him,” Hugh said fondly. “Talk to the guy. Ask him to slow down. He’s human, Gwen. If you think you’re going to insult him, welcome to the next eighty years of your life. If you can’t talk now, when can you talk?”
The words rang through her veins down to the very core of her back, and Gwen shivered. “Shit,” she whispered, tearing up. “You’re right. I’m kind of being awful.”
“Eh, you can’t help it. You were born that way.”
“Shut up.”
He grinned. “Gonna go use your bathroom. Got some deliveries I need to fire off.”
“Oh for the love of… go.”
“Brown wrapped packages. Big ones.”
“Gross.”
“Don’t even know if they’ll fit through the door.”
As he padded down the hallway, Gwen shouted after him, “And turn on the fan.”
“Nope!” he called back.
She sighed and returned to work marking prices on everything. Most of her belongings were hand-me-downs from their older brother Charlie, their parents, or bought from garage sales. Most everything that came from her family or Calvin went into the “keep” pile without question. Charlie was the exception, as he’d given her most of his furniture and didn’t mind her selling off his old things. He had a different life now. After 9/11, he’d been one of the many to sign up for the military, and when he wasn’t serving tours abroad, he was stationed wherever the Air Force needed him. He wanted to settle down eventually but not for a long while, he hoped, and he had no desire to hold onto any of his old furniture or possessions. Gwen had his permission to do with his old stuff whatever she wanted, so long as she added all the other junk left over in his storage unit to her garage sale and used the profits to buy herself a bottle of wine or two.
Pretty good deal, she thought.
The bathroom fan hadn’t kicked on. “Damn it, Hugh,” Gwen muttered. She thought about storming down there and walking in on him to flick it on, but the urge dissolved when she thought about the last time she’d stormed in on Hugh in the bathroom a couple years back. He was shirtless, one arm raised towards the ceiling, a broken razor blade she’d never seen before clutched between two fingers as he sliced into the soft, sensitive flesh of his armpit. She’d shouted then, a surprised, frightened, wordless thing that slapped him like a hand.
Hugh wasn’t one of those cutters who did it for attention. He did it, he explained later to her, his voice dull and nasal from crying, because the pain was a way to release emotions he didn’t entirely understand. Was he angry? she asked. No. Depressed? No. Not exactly. It was like he was always anxious, always worried on some low level. And cutting himself, even just the minute scratches in his armpit or along his thighs, helped focus those emotions and make them easier to bear.
That had scared Gwen. Scared her a lot. Enough that she talked to her parents, then a trusted teacher of his, and together, all of them, along with Charlie’s long-distance support, managed to get Hugh into therapy. It had been going well for him, and he’d responded well to anti-anxiety medications, but the memory haunted her and she always feared a setback.
Gwen couldn’t help herself in the present. She snuck down the hallway, her slippered feet making no noise. From the bathroom, she heard the sink running, and… spitting. “Hugh?” she asked hesitantly. He opened the door, and the smell that wafted out walloped her like a mallet to her nostrils. “Oh God,” she grunted, and backed away hastily.
“What?” Hugh asked around a toothbrush. Her toothbrush.
“You were just pooping! Get that out of your mouth!”
“Gwen, I hate to break it to you, but we’re inhaling shit particles twenty-four seven. This is just… brown icing on the cake.”
“I’m gonna hurl.”
“What did you want?”
She pinched her nose shut to help with the agony. “You were in here a while and I thought…”
“Oh.” He understood, and lifted his shirt to show her his armpits. No new scratches, only old scar tissue. Thank God. “No. Thanks for checking, though.”
The last comment wasn’t sarcasm. Hugh knew he had a problem, and once he’d gotten over the embarrassment and his self-perceived shame, he’d relied on her from time to time when he thought about cutting himself again.
“I love you, Hugh,” she said.
“Weird thing to say when I just carpet-bombed your bathroom, but I love you too, numbskull.”
Chapter 4
“Oh, he’s cute,” a woman gasped near the front door, and Nic hushed her.
One eye flicking open, Malcolm fluttered back towards consciousness, stamping one foot down on the ground to stop the world from juking and jiving. Still drunk, he marveled to himself. How many beers did I drink last night? His other eye strained to join its partner and his head fell sideways. Judging from the tin army set out before him, he had the answer to his question – a bunch.
“You woke him up,” Nic grumbled.
“Hey, you’re the one that called me.”
“And I’m regretting it every minute.”
A wet smack of lips, and a light giggle. “No you’re not.”
“No, I’m not,” Nic admitted.
Malcolm struggled to sit upright, still not quite used to the overly bright light buried in the living room’s ceiling. A hand grasped his. “Let me help.” Nic. God bless him.
When he was upright and the world stopped threatening to send him crashing to the floor again, Malcolm took in the lovely young creature in front of him. Tall, with shoulder length red hair that reminded him of sunsets. Other details were still too fuzzy to concentrate on. He worked his lips, and miraculously, they mad
e sounds approaching human. “Hey. Hi.”
“It speaks,” the woman said. She took a seat on the loveseat perpendicular to the couch and patted the cushion next to her. Nic dropped into it and wrapped his arm around her, pinching her side boob. She yelped and smacked his chest, but he ignored her.
“Sorry,” he said. “We really didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Malcolm searched for the glass of water his friend had left for him, feeling a bit like Indiana Jones feeling his way through some dusty old tomb for a bit of treasure. “Yeah. No. Good.” He found the water, drained half of it, and added more clearly, “You are, I mean. Good.”
“Still drunk?” Nic asked sympathetically. Malcolm raised his hand and made a pinching gesture, then rethought it, set the glass down beside the couch he’d been sleeping on, and spread his hands wide. Nic had a good laugh. A kind laugh. “We did go at the beer awfully hard.”
The woman nudged an empty beer can on the coffee table with one of her toes peeking out from a sandal. “I’ll say.”
“Sorry, I, uh, let me just go splash some water on my face and I’ll be more human,” Malcolm said, his voice a near grumble. There had been shouting last night, a lot of shouting. Wrestling and baseball and… whose mom made the best hot dish. “God, did we fight about hot dish last night?” he asked, rubbing his eyelids.
“Afraid so, and you’re still wrong, asshole. Mushroom soup sucks.”
“Celery soup doesn’t have the…” Malcolm heaved a sigh and stood up. His knees almost buckled and Nic shot to his own feet, but Malcolm shook his head. “I’m fine. Just a little… woozy.”
It was the morning after their first few days living together. The conditions were a little cramped, but if Nic minded, he hadn’t said anything. Malcolm was, at least for the moment, sleeping on the couch until they could get a futon. The expense didn’t worry him too much, but along with the hotel in Bismarck, beer, takeout, and the twenty bucks he would now be paying to store the Grand National every month, he was burning through his savings pretty fast.
He stumbled towards the bathroom, unleashed his bladder’s full fury with a pleased little sigh, and washed his hands before he cupped them under the faucet and splashed his face. After a little deodorant and mouthwash, he ambled back out into the living room, where the redhead was tamping down a glass pipe while Nic searched for the remote among the beer cans. The woman glanced up at Malcolm questioningly.