Clear Water (13 page)

“You know that in two days we have to come back and pick them all up again, don’t you?” Whiskey asked, and Patrick nodded.

“How come two days?”

“Because the last quadrant numbers are really wonky. We’re leaving a set of probes there, and this spot is upriver. We want to see if the numbers are wonky here or if whatever is going on with the baking soda and the illegal pesticides is going on somewhere in the middle.” Whiskey grew sober for a minute. “You know what’s between this dock and the other one, don’t you, Patrick?”

“My dad’s factory, a paper factory, and an abandoned warehouse my dad owns but doesn’t use,” Patrick replied promptly, and Whiskey must have been startled, because he fumbled the probe in his hands and almost dropped it.

Patrick shrugged. “I know the area. Sue me. But you’re not going to find my dad’s recycling plant is doing anything wrong.”

Whiskey looked at him, and he seemed honestly interested. Patrick shrugged and looked around at the hip-high marsh grasses. They’d seen pheasants, frogs, rabbits, and, far off, a coyote, in this unoccupied strip of land by the Sacramento River. It was far from abandoned. He could see why Whiskey and Fly Bait and whomever they were working for would be upset that something was fucking with the frogs, and not just because whatever fucked with the frogs was going to start jacking up the humans. Poor frogs. Just sitting around eating and fucking, and suddenly their babies started coming out like Patrick—too freaky for words. But there were two things he knew, and one thing he was sure of.

“Two things,” he said. “Thing one: the pesticide thing. I heard you and Fly Bait talking—the major chemical you’re looking for… azhra-watsis? Yeah. You said that was a pesticide. Now my dad’s reclamation factory deals with a lot of bad shit—mercury, cadmium, lead, bromine, PVC, and other shit I forgot. All that shit will just lay waste to a place like this—I know that, you know that. If my dad wasn’t taking care of his shit like he’s supposed to, this would be a bad place. But none of it is the shit that’s making the frogs wonky—I listened. You’re afraid of pesticides, but that’s not the same shit that’s in the computer recycling place. So it’s probably not him.”

Whiskey nodded his head. “We’d thought about that. But it had occurred to us that maybe your dad—or maybe the paper plant—hasn’t been playing by the rules. Or, I don’t know, maybe something totally unprecedented happened, and we have no fucking idea. It was a thought. Those places don’t always run as clean as they say they do. What’s the other thing?”

Patrick didn’t even need to ask him—he could actually track their conversation, which, for him, was a big deal, and one of his favorite effects of the LBP. “My dad’s not a fuckup. He doesn’t cut corners. He doesn’t take this whole thing lightly. Maybe not even because he wants to save the planet, but because he just does shit right, and that’s the end of it.”

Whiskey blinked slowly and shook his head.

“I’m totally serious!” Patrick snapped, because he wanted to make it absolutely clear.

“I know you’re serious,” Whiskey snapped back. “And you may even be right, although I’m not ready to place bets. But even if you were right and he’s totally free and clear, that wouldn’t stop me from sort of wishing he was our big polluter, okay?”

Patrick felt like he’d been slugged in the chest. “Why would you even say a thing like that?”

“Because.” Whiskey looked away and then looked back. “Because. If you knew he lied about something like this, maybe it would prove to you that all that other shit he’s said is bullshit.”

Patrick took a breath, and it hurt, like holding your breath too long underwater hurt, or breathing through a glass storm would hurt. “What other shit?”

“The shit that makes you think that you’re a loser and a fuckup. The shit that makes you say you’re sorry when you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Patrick gaped at him, without words. Whiskey swung away and resumed tramping through the gray-brown-sorta-green grass and the soft baby-shit colored swamp dirt.

“Close your mouth, Patrick. You’re going to swallow a bug. What’s the next fucking probe we’re putting in?”

Patrick fumbled it out of the knapsack he was carrying because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Mercury.”

“Fucking peachy. Fly Bait, this one’s fucking mercury. I’ll try not to stab it through my phone when I plant it, okay?”

Patrick handed it to Whiskey tentatively, and Whiskey snatched it out of his hand and slammed it into the ground with unnecessary force. The brightly painted neon yellow head of the black tube was flat against the ground, and Whiskey didn’t even swear.

“Patrick, could you get me one of those orange flags? We’re gonna fucking need it.”

Patrick did, and they continued dropping probes in the quiet, deserted wetlands while the mosquitoes dined happily on brooding and blood.

Whiskey
Nail It Until It’s Flat

T
HE
three of them spent the late afternoon coordinating the data from the probes, and Patrick proved to be pretty useful. Whiskey wanted to praise him like he would an undergrad, but every time he tried to say “good job,” Patrick shrugged it off, like it was something a child could do competently and Whiskey was just humoring him. It made Whiskey want to break a clipboard over his head, and about the time he was flipping a mental coin between doing that or kissing the damned kid silly, Patrick’s medication wore off.

It was easy to tell when it happened too. One minute, Fly Bait was reading off data and Patrick was recording it, and everything was happy. The next minute, Patrick’s elbow shot out in the confined space of the quarters and knocked over a sensitive piece of equipment. Patrick dropped his clipboard and pen, bent over, and bumped his head on the table when he tried to pick it up, dropped the console again (and this time Whiskey was there to catch it), and then jerked back so quickly he fell on his ass and banged the back of his head on the cupboards when he jerked again.

Whiskey and Fly Bait looked at him as he glared at the clipboard at his feet and rubbed the back of his head.

Whiskey said, “Okay, then. Time for dinner and a swim. Patrick, you swim. I’ll do dinner.”

Patrick’s expression wrinkled into one of self-loathing, and Whiskey sighed and offered him a hand up.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Whiskey pulled him up sharply, and Patrick pitched forward into his arms. Whiskey shuddered and clasped him tight. For a minute Patrick resisted, but he must have felt something in Whiskey’s arms, something that meant it, because that slender, taut body relaxed fractionally, and Patrick’s head came to rest on his shoulder.

“Go swim, Patrick,” Whiskey said softly. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be sorry.”

Patrick took a deep breath and backed up. He ducked his head at Fly Bait and then ran up top, where there were towels and he could dump his shirt and flip-flops at will. Whiskey sighed and turned to Fly Bait.

“You wouldn’t want to make sure he….”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go put sunblock on his back. But it’s a real fucking waste of skin on skin, because it doesn’t make him any less gay man or me any less a lesbo.”

Whiskey found himself growling. “Which is why you’re the perfect candidate.”

Fly Bait rolled her eyes and left.

Whiskey set the equipment to rights and finished up the last few notations. They hadn’t been that far from quitting time—Patrick had helped to make quick work of it. He probably would have been helpful even after he’d had his moment of spaz, but he wouldn’t let himself live it down.
I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
He shouldn’t be. Patrick shouldn’t be sorry. But Whiskey was starting to really think that
somebody
should be.

He put everything back where Patrick had organized it.

Patrick looked so happy in the water, sort of like a big, pink otter. He was free there, and his arms and legs and head were absolutely not smacking into anything they shouldn’t be. He was, in fact, graceful and joyous, and Whiskey didn’t have the heart to call him in so they could go get mosquito repellent, of all things.

They spent another night at the deserted dock, swam in the (cold!) river in the gray morning, and puttered to the dock where their car was parked before ten in the morning.

Whiskey didn’t feel like he’d gotten much sleep at all.

Patrick had gone docilely to Whiskey’s berth and slid into bed in front, as he had before. It had cooled down in the evening, and the air through the open windows was chilly enough to make the blanket welcome. Whiskey wrapped an arm around Patrick’s shoulders and pulled him in against Whiskey’s chest. Again, Patrick went without protest.

They’d spent the morning hiking, the afternoon working, and the evening swimming—his taut body, with the muscles and bones that sometimes moved counter to each other, went limp very quickly, and Whiskey shuddered and pulled him tighter, rubbing his cheek on a bare shoulder that smelled of river water and, unaccountably, something sweet and floral and almost feminine.

Patrick’s voice, hoarse in the darkness, surprised him. “This is getting to be a habit.”

“It takes six weeks to make a habit,” Whiskey said roughly. “This is four days.”

Patrick laughed softly. “In six weeks, you’ll
pay
someone to take me off your hands.”

“I doubt it.”
In six weeks, the thought of you not being here will ache in ways I’ve never imagined.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be so nice to me all the time,” Patrick said practically. Even Whiskey could tell it hurt him to say.

“I’ve got no other way to be.”

“But—”

Whiskey didn’t want to hear it. “Patrick, one day a couple of frogs laid their eggs and a couple other frogs jerked off and came on them. Something was in the water that fucked with the baby frogs, and a bunch of people saw frogs like Cal and Catherine and started screaming about the apocalypse.

“A guy with a doctorate and a serious case of wanderlust wrote a grant so he could hang out on the river with his buddy and talk to two-headed frogs and maybe stop more of the poor fuckers from being made. This guy was out walking one night, because he realized he sort of loved it here, in spite of the shitty political climate and the fact that there’s not a fucking thing to do here and the fact that there are places in this river where I expect sturgeon to emerge as some sort of sentient being because the pollution has been dicking with their DNA.

“And there this poor researcher was, looking at the stars and wondering if he had enough saved to buy a really shitty houseboat so when he got back from his next expedition he could maybe have his first home since his parents died, and he hears this really fucking unbelievable noise. And you know the rest.”

Patrick let out a sound that was half amusement and half befuddlement. “That’s a really fucking awesome bedtime story, Whiskey. Why’d I get to hear it?”

“Because life is fucking weird. Four days ago, I thought that making fun of Fly Bait and looking at two-headed frogs would be the best part of my summer. But then I dragged you into my bed like some sort of half-dead albino frog, and I have to say, things are definitely looking up. Don’t question it, man. Just close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Patrick’s shoulders shook for a few moments after that, but Whiskey was pretty sure it was laughter. He closed his eyes and was getting ready to drift off when Patrick rolled over and placed a quick and dirty kiss on Whiskey’s mouth and then rolled back.

“Thanks for pulling me out of the river, Whiskey.”

“Thanks for being a decent human being and totally worth the trouble, Patrick.”

Again, his shoulders shook. “Believe me. It was the least I could do.”

“Naw, man. It’s everything in you.”

“Shut up, Whiskey. I’m happy right now. I don’t want to argue with you about what a fuckup I am.”

“A-the-hell-men.”

“Yeah, right.” But that was all. His body stayed limp, went even limper, and his breathing evened out, and Whiskey closed his eyes and dreamed that he’d been sleeping with Patrick in his arms for years.

T
HE
next morning they went into town together for mosquito repellent and some calamine lotion to treat the bites Patrick already had. Whiskey noticed that Patrick took off his “twink tank,” as Fly Bait called it, and put on a plain blue T-shirt, and wondered if it was that kind of subtle change that made Patrick’s father so damned sure that “gay” was a passing thing. Gods, couldn’t the man see that Patrick was like a really spastic chameleon? That he’d do anything to fit in?

They padded through Walmart, and Patrick went from thing to thing in the aisles—Otter Pops to Pop Tarts to colanders to house paint, and suddenly—

“What’s that doing in here?” Whiskey asked, a little confused. Ecru semi-gloss latex and painting supplies had
not
been on the list.

“You said to fix up the place. The walls are crap.”

“I meant cleaning up the deck and shit,” Whiskey said, bemused.

Patrick shrugged. “That’ll take me two days. Do you not want to?”

“Yeah, kid. Fine. Whatever. Here—here’s twenty bucks. Go buy us something at McD’s with lots of meat and grease. I want a shake too.”

“For Fly Bait too?”

“Yeah—get her a chicken sandwich, no mayo. I’ll get the paint.”

Patrick trotted off obediently, that unconscious grace that he found when he wasn’t paying attention making him look like he should be in a boutique and not freaking Walmart. Whiskey threw in a couple more cans of paint, and then some carpet tacks and a hammer, and then, pushing that cart like he was running some sort of Horny Bastards of Walmart race, he hauled ass for the pharmacy again, where he grabbed a jumbo pack of perfectly normal, average, latex-free condoms and a big thing of the expensive lubricant. He tucked them under the extra five-packs of T-shirts, underwear, and socks he’d bought, because Patrick had been giving him shit about wearing nothing that didn’t have holes in it.

He couldn’t explain the impulse—or didn’t want to
examine
the impulse—but something about Patrick puttering about the houseboat, making it into a home, had given him an enormous fucking hard-on, and even if the condoms got tucked into his one drawer and never saw the light of day, just the fact that he
had
them made being with Patrick feel like more of an option. Of course, the closer Patrick seemed to get, the less he tried to pick up
Whiskey,
but Whiskey wasn’t going to dwell on that for very long.