Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  “Dee,” Evie screamed as she ran past. “Robbie spank me!”

  “Bet you can’t spank me,” Robbie shouted, and then the chase moved on, with Evie squealing with delight as her chubby little legs carried her after her intended victim.

  “You ask them,” Darnell said, the quiet tone drawing Hazard’s attention.

  “No, you,” Dulac said.

  “You’re their friend.”

  “So are you.” Dulac grinned, shifting his constellations of freckles, and added, “And they like you better.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “Fine,” Dulac said, “but you owe me. Next time we’re—” Darnell got a hand over his mouth, muffling the words; when he pulled away, Dulac was still saying, “—and then I get to—” before Darnell got his hand back into place.

  “Never mind,” Darnell said, pecking Dulac on the cheek once. “I’ll ask them. Hi, um. Excuse me, everyone. Really quick.” The Vandal hordes had moved to the basement, and the adults turned toward Dulac and Darnell. If possible, Darnell got even redder, and he dry washed his hands once before continuing. “The thing is, the really great thing is, well, we’ve been talking a lot, and we’ve been, you know, building a relationship, and I think you’ve all seen how, if you think about it, Gray and I are really making important steps towards the future, and . . .” The words dried up; he wrung his hands again.

  “Uh, Gray,” Somers said. “What’s going on?”

  “You are not getting married,” Hazard said. “You can get married one year after us.”

  “What?” Dulac said. “Dude, no. Gross. We’re not getting married. We’re moving in together. We bought a house.” Then Dulac flushed, just a dusting of pink behind the freckles. “It’s just down the street, actually.”

  “No,” Hazard said.

  “That’s great,” Somers said. “Congratulations.”

  “Sell it,” Hazard said.

  Somers shot him a look.

  “Congratulations,” Noah said, lifting his beer in a toast.

  “Congratulations,” Rebeca echoed.

  “You’re talking about the Martinez’s house,” Hazard said. “It’s got termites. Sell it. Asbestos too. You can’t live there.”

  “Don’t worry, Emery,” Darnell said. “We had it inspected. Termites are taken care of, and the asbestos was actually really easy to remove. It’s totally safe.”

  “Property crime,” Hazard said. “You really have to think about the risk of property crime.”

  Somehow, Somers had worked his way over and now elbowed Hazard. “Enough,” he muttered. Then, to Dulac and Darnell, he said, “Congratulations, guys. That’s really exciting.”

  “And, since you’re all our friends,” Dulac said, slumping against Darnell now, his head on Darnell’s shoulder, “we expect you to show up and help us move.”

  “Please,” Darnell said. “We’d really appreciate it.”

  Hazard was already constructing a plan: somehow he had to make sure the moving truck—fully insured, of course—was destroyed along with all of Dulac and Darnell’s worldly possessions, thus ensuring they didn’t move onto the same street as Hazard and Somers. Maybe gasoline and a match, maybe just driving it into the river. But before he could volunteer to drive the moving truck, a voice broke through his thoughts.

  “This is just perfect.” It was Susan’s voice, and when Hazard glanced back, he saw the tall, plain-faced woman yank open the door. She stormed out, leaving Wesley behind. Wesley stood with his shoulders slumped, hands on his hips, staring at the ground. After a moment, he looked up; his face was almost as red as his ginger quiff.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope you all have a good night; Rebeca, Noah, thank you again.” He fumbled with the door, added another, “Sorry,” over his shoulder, and slunk out of the house.

  “What happened there?” Somers said.

  “Susan was upset and ran off. Wesley went after her.”

  “Oh, somehow I missed that. Thanks.”

  “Really, John? Because you were looking right at—oh. Don’t do that.”

  Somers smiled at him.

  “It’s not cute.”

  Somers shrugged.

  “Ask better questions.”

  Somers kissed him on the cheek.

  Scrubbing at his cheek, Hazard growled, “Specificity is the key to critical thinking.”

  “You just can’t help spewing poetry, can you?”

  “We’ll help,” Nico said. Mitchell whispered something to him, and both of them giggled. “Mitchell’s really strong,” Nico continued between bursts of giggles. “Look at these biceps.” And then more wrestling ensued, with Nico trying to show off Mitchell’s arms—in Hazard’s opinion, the kid looked like he needed to start with the ten-pound weights.

  “We can help too,” Somers said, squeezing Hazard’s hand.

  “No,” Hazard said, and then Somers squeezed again, and Hazard said, “I’ll drive the truck.”

  “Awesome, bro, awesome,” Dulac said. “But we’ve already got somebody to drive the truck. I’m putting you on appliance duty: washer, dryer, refrigerator.”

  “Pass,” Hazard said.

  “We’ll get you a dolly, dude.”

  “John,” Hazard said.

  “You shouldn’t spend so much time working out,” Somers said with a shrug. “Then people wouldn’t ask you to lift heavy things.”

  “Like Mitchell,” Nico put in, and then more wrestling ensued.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Hazard muttered. “Why can’t they just screw each other and get it over with?”

  “See, this is why I tell people you’re a born romantic,” Somers said.

  “Forget I said anything,” Hazard said.

  “It’s those rose-colored glasses; you can’t help seeing all the beauty in the world.”

  “If I have to watch those two get to second base, I need another beer.”

  “You’re like a modern-day Cupid,” Somers called after him. “Spreading love wherever you go.”

  Hazard gave him the finger without looking back, but two steps into the kitchen, he spotted Ricky, who spotted Hazard in turn. Ricky’s eight-year-old eyes got huge as they locked onto the middle finger.

  “Now let’s talk about this,” Hazard said, dropping his hand. “Are you amenable to bribes?”

  “Mom!” Ricky screamed, shooting off into the living room. “Mr. Hazard did something bad!”

  Groaning, Hazard got another beer from the fridge. He drank for a few minutes in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, listening to the hub of voices from the other room. He ran his hand along the edge of the counter. He made up a new guest list for the wedding, and then he ran through a series of mental checklists. They’d managed to secure a venue not far from Wahredua, and Hazard had already finished background checks on the employees. They had all passed with the exception of a young man with a few possession convictions. Hazard had spoken to the young man and explained, clearly, how he wanted this wedding to be the best day of his fiancé’s life. At some point, the young man had started crying, at which point Somers had gotten involved, which made Hazard feel the issue might not be fully resolved. He added another box to his mental checklist: find a few minutes to speak privately to that young man again. Just to make sure. But standing there, drinking a Guinness, running his hand along the counter, visualizing how he would corner that little delinquent and really impress upon him the gravity of this situation, the whole time listening to the voices from the living room, the thing Hazard did most was smile.

  A chorus of goodbyes came from the front room, and then a second round, and then Somers poked his head into the kitchen. “They’re gone.”

  “Who?”

  “Nico, Mitchell, Dulac and Darnell.”

  “Did Nico and Mitchell leave together?”

  Somers grinned, and one eyebrow shot up.

  “No,” Hazard said, jabbing the neck of the beer to
ward him. “I am not jealous.”

  “I know.”

  “I do not care if they’re together.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m asking because it’s important to keep track of romantic associations within a friend group.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Romantic relationships are potentially destabilizing. If things end badly, it could upset the social order.”

  “Ree. Sweetheart.”

  Hazard took a vicious drink of the Guinness and then said, “What?” He punctuated the question with another wild jab of the bottle.

  “Come watch a movie.”

  Somers waited for Hazard to join him, and then he squeezed Hazard’s hand as they went back into the living room.

  “Ok,” Noah said, scrolling through the cable TV menu; the channel preview in the corner showed a young woman working diligently at an office job while dollar signs and question marks danced over her head. Hazard predicted some sort of credit card or payday loan commercial. “Now, listen, we have to make a serious choice. Really serious. There’s a lot on the line.” He paused, remote still extended toward the TV, and looked at them: “Die Hard one or two?”

  “Goodnight, boys,” Rebeca said, moving toward the hall.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Hazard snapped, pointing at her with the beer.

  “Have a great time,” she said with huge smile.

  “Rebeca, don’t you dare leave me alone with these two.”

  She was already out of sight; from the hallway came a singsong, “Goodnight.”

  “Die Hard,” Somers said. “The original.”

  Hazard groaned.

  “It’s the best one,” Somers said. “Two is awesome, but you can’t beat the original.”

  “Thank God,” Noah said, dropping back onto the sofa, his goofy grin breaking out. “I thought we were going to have to fight.”

  “What about you, Ree?”

  “Abstain.”

  “You can’t abstain. What do you want to watch?”

  “The original.”

  “He’s just saying that,” Somers said. “For real, what do you want to watch?”

  “Hey, I thought we agreed we were going to watch one of the Die Hards. That was the whole point.”

  “Yeah, but I want to let Ree have a say.”

  “Die Hard is fine,” Hazard said.

  “Great,” Noah said.

  “Wait for it,” Somers said.

  “If,” Hazard said, “you enjoy poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed movies that are completely nonsensical and that are embarrassingly unrealistic.”

  “There it is,” Somers murmured.

  “But,” Noah said, glancing from Hazard to Somers and back to Hazard. “But . . . but it’s Die Hard.”

  “Have you seen it?” Somers asked Hazard.

  “I tried to watch it. Once. I got through about five minutes.”

  “Emery,” Noah said, squirming to the edge of the sofa cushion. “It’s one of the best action movies ever. It totally revolutionized the genre. It’s got Bruce Willis, and it’s got Alan Rickman. It’s got evil Germans. It’s got explosions and that kick-ass scene with the broken glass. You’ve got to give it a try.”

  “I already gave it a try. You guys go ahead; I think I’ll call it a night.”

  “Are you sure?” Somers said.

  “No,” Noah said, wriggling on the cushion so that he looked like he was in danger of falling off. “No way, this is a matter of principle now. This is one of the best action movies ever. Emery, everybody loves this movie.”

  “Not everybody,” Hazard said.

  “Pretty much everybody. I mean, look, you’ll be in really good company. Lots of smart people like Die Hard. Lots of really smart filmmakers and screenwriters and directors. Those are the kind of people who like this movie.”

  Dropping into an armchair, Somers kicked up his legs and said to no one in particular, “That was probably not tack I would have chosen, but I’m interested to see how this plays out.”

  “Don’t be smart,” Hazard said to him. Then, to Noah, “Judging by the commercial,” he pointed to the screen, “and the way TV marketing groups target advertisements to audiences based on statistically likely demographics, it would also put me in the same group as people who need yogurt to complete a bowel movement.”

  Noah’s jaw dropped.

  “More or less what I expected,” Somers said, “although the poop angle was a nice twist. I was anticipating something along the lines of ‘moral and intellectual degeneracy.’”

  “I told you not to be smart.”

  Somers beamed up at him.

  “Emery,” Noah said like a man who’d received a blow to the head. He turned to Somers and said, “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “Ree,” Somers said, “it really is a pretty good movie. Will you stay and watch it with us?”

  “No.”

  “You can appreciate it as a historical artifact.”

  “No. It has cheesy dialogue. ‘Yippee ki-yay.’ I mean, come on, John.”

  “You can acknowledge it as a cultural marker, a shift in a film genre’s trajectory.”

  “No. The lone hero trope is ridiculous bullshit, John. People need to recognize and value cooperative heroism, the teams of people like police who work together to keep us safe.” Hazard tried to stop there, but words spilled out of him. “And besides, it has an unnecessarily complicated plot. The bad guys have to pretend to be terrorists to get the power cut to get into a bank vault, so they’re really just thieves, but they draw all this unnecessary attention, when they could have completed most of the robbery without drawing any attention and then shut off the power independently. And John McClane makes bad decision after bad decision. I’m not just talking about walking on broken glass. I mean, all he had to do was sneak down to the garage and call for help, but instead, he fights a guy with a gun, barehanded, and somehow he wins. I mean, that’s really teaching people some terrible lessons about combat strategy and survival.”

  Somers’s eyes glittered, tropically blue.

  “I, uh,” Hazard said. “I mean, that’s what I’ve heard.”

  “You watched the whole thing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You read the Wikipedia summary.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  Somers leaned back in the armchair; the house settled with a creak, and kids’ laughter came from downstairs.

  “I might have read a few synopses,” Hazard said. “It was a long time ago. It’s hard to remember.”

  “This is a travesty,” Noah said.

  Hazard squared his shoulders, chin up. “I should probably get Evie home. It’s almost her bedtime.”

  “Dang it,” Somers said, checking the clock. He rolled out of the chair, clapped Noah on the shoulder, and said, “Another time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Thanks for having us over.”

  “You can stay, John,” Hazard said.

  But Somers just smiled and helped him collect Evie, and then a swarm of children was trying to hug Evie and hug Somers and hug Hazard, and Hazard decided the best policy was to do what you were supposed to do with most wild animals: stay still and wait for them to go away. The barrage of hugs finally ended, and Somers had a crazy-ass grin as he led Hazard out of the house.

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “I just love you sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” Hazard grumbled.

  They got Evie through her bath and into bed, and then Hazard read in bed while Somers played on his phone.

  “You could have stayed, John. If you wanted to watch the movie, I could have gotten Evie to bed.”

  “I know,” Somers said. And then he tossed the phone on the bed and rolled, straddling Hazard. He looked down. He carefully closed the book and lifted it from Hazard’s hands.

  “I w
as reading that.”

  “I noticed.”

  “If you want to watch those movies, I don’t care. I want you to watch what you want to watch.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” Somers said, shucking his shirt, exposing the hard lines of muscle and ink. “Besides, I think I liked your version better.”

  “Yeah?” Hazard said.

  Somers took his hands and moved them up to his chest, leaning into the touch. “Yeah,” Somers whispered.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JULY 1

  MONDAY

  8:07 AM

  SOMERS WAS AT HIS DESK, clicking through emails that had arrived overnight. The bullpen inside the Wahredua Police Department was busy; uniformed officers had just completed the morning briefing, and now they milled around, talking and drinking bad coffee and putting off patrol for a few minutes. The city’s four detectives were all at their desks: Carmichael and Moraes working all the drug-related cases in the city—despite their best efforts, central Missouri still produced and distributed a great deal of meth—and Somers and Dulac worked everything else.

  At the moment, thankfully, everything else made a pretty small pile: Somers was currently examining expert testimony in a case of destroyed mailboxes. The self-appointed expert, Mrs. Bruce Campbell, had been Somers’s 7th-grade science teacher, and she insisted that the mailboxes had been destroyed with what she continuously referred to as IED. For the sake of John-Henry Somerset, who had taken a B- in 7th-grade science (she included the grade when she reminded him of how they knew each other), she explained the acronym at the beginning of the email: improvised explosive device.

  Somers didn’t doubt her opinion. He made a note to arrange an interview. As he moved on to the next email, though, Chief Cravens opened the door to her office and called his name. When Somers looked up, she beckoned.

  Dulac silently held out his fist, and Somers bumped knuckles with him as he made his way out of the bullpen. He let himself into the office and found Cravens behind her desk; an older man with a crew cut and police blues stood to one side. On the desk, a cardboard box was folded shut, and the pictures of Cravens’s nieces and nephews were gone.