Halfway Home (34 page)

Oh yes—piss on Jerry Curran please, and may he rot in Danbury Prison till the Irish give up whiskey.

We slept. Not very deep, no nightmares, though a certain amount of twitching and grappling, like dogs dreaming of chasing rabbits. I woke first, but what followed was all Gray's fault, for he was the one with the raging hard-on, throbbing against his zipper.

I had it out before he knew, my mouth already engulfing it as he came awake laughing.

"Wait—wait—" he protested, cradling my head and calling for time out.

But I had the ball as it were, and would not yield. Three deep swallows and I had him. He groaned, lifting his hips to meet me, his hands gripping my head like a basketball. I wanted it fast, picking up right where we left off in the cave. I needed the bond to be physical, to gorge on him, if that pinprick above my coccyx was ever going to stop feeling like the first kiss of dying. I growled and sucked, holding his ballsack tight in my fist. He loved it. But I also knew he was afraid to pump me back, to really fuck my head, because maybe my brain was tender.

"Wait—wait—" he pleaded, dragging me off him. We held each other's eyes. "I don't want to come in your mouth."

"I'll spit it out. I want it."

Not taking no for an answer. And no time please for one of those weird negotiations as to how safe safe was. I was already back on the case, consuming in the flesh what the heart so feared to lose, this pitch of being one. If Gray still had his reservations he kept them to himself. Besides, his dick had its own agenda now. I rode him hard, my throat wide open, pushing my face in the thick of his hair. He gripped my shoulders as he arched again, gasping a last wordless protest.

One thing I knew with every swallow: nobody sucked like this in the grave.

When he reached the top, I felt it a moment before, as his gasping broke to a low wail. The shot burst in my mouth with a soundless roar, tide from an inland sea. The first taste I'd had in years, so sweet I would've sobbed if my throat hadn't been so full. It kept on spilling, gout after gout, thick as a man's half his age. Then a moment of absolute stillness, my mouth consuming him whole, his back still arched like a pole vaulter. As if we'd agreed to freeze the moment and memorize it, even if there was no film in the camera.

Then he let go, his hips falling back on the mattress. I drew my mouth away, smiling up at him wickedly, my cheeks swollen with seawater. He shook his head on the pillow, irony warring with disbelief. Then sternly, jerking a thumb at the bathroom: "Now."

So WASP—they love to get things cleaned up. I rose from the bed and turned tail, sashaying across the room, Miss Jesus at her tawdriest. In the bathroom I leaned above the sink and let it go, not spitting so much as drooling, savoring like a smutty connoisseur. Then grinned at myself in the mirror:
Nasty boy.

Dutifully I ran the tap and took a belt of Scope, gargling and washing out. As I lifted the towel from the hook behind the door, I noticed the plastic bracelet on my wrist:
Shaheen,
509. Swiftly I rooted in my toilet bag for the tiny scissors I used to clip my nose hairs. In a trice I was free of the last shackle of Brentwood Pres, dropping it in the wastebasket with a sneer of distaste, like a used rubber.

I poked my head around the door and grinned at my man. He was all zipped up, arms behind his head and looking very lazy. I affected a Lana Turner smolder. "Can we play doctor every day? 'Cause I really like the medicine part."

His chin jutted out, prepared to reply in kind. Then Nigrelli's voice drifted up from below: "Excuse me—can I help you?" It sounded as if he was just under the balcony, right outside the dining room.

"I don't believe so," replied a reedy voice, even older than the Magna Charta. "After all, this is my house."

Foo. Gray leaped off the bed and dived for the balcony. I pattered after, vastly amused already. "Auntie, what're you doing out of bed?" her nephew called accusingly.

"It's Palm Sunday," came the answer, as haughty as it was non sequitur. And when I appeared at Gray's side, she turned on the chaise where she was lounging and clucked at Merle. "Now I ask you, does this boy look like he's in the hospital?"

Merle stood mute as a tree. Gray said, "Don't come in, we'll be right down."

"Good. We can all have a bullshot."

We pivoted and headed in. Gray hitched the front of his pants, readjusting his dick so it didn't bulge quite so postcoitally. "Like children, the two of them," he grumbled sourly. "Can't stand it that they might miss something." Not amused at all.

As we came out into the stair hall, we could hear Brian's litany droning on. "Thirty grand a month to the
state
highway commissioner, seventy grand to the fed."

"You're talking 'eighty-five through 'eighty-eight?" We were already coming down the stairs, but Potato-face was on too much of a roll to rein himself in. "Mr. Shaheen," he pounced triumphantly, "that office had three different commissioners in the time you're talkin'—two Republicans and a Democrat. You saying you had 'em
all
on the take?"

"Uh-huh," replied Brian, heavy with boredom. "I got a better idea. Why don't you find me one who isn't." He shot me and Gray an antic look, full of bloody Irish. This was more like the Brian I remembered from the ballfield—untouchable, utterly cocksure,
Get outa my way.

They stopped to let us pass, the agent's eyes following us, Nigrelli mauling through his briefcase. Gray trotted ahead of me, darting across the parlor and out to the terrace, so I heard Potato-face pick up the ball. "Brian, we got sixty million bucks unaccounted for, and you say it's kickbacks. You got allegations all over the friggin' map. What I want to know is, where's
your
stash?"

"Fuck you, turkey," retorted Brian, and then I was out the door and missed Nigrelli's next juridical move.

Gray was sitting at the foot of his aunt's chaise, the lady dressed in a Sunday purple suit, and a black hat with a veil that was getting a bit Miss Havisham around the edges. "No," Gray was saying, "you don't have time for a bullshot first. Tom's got to rest."

She threw out an arm to gather me in, and I crouched and gave her a careful hug, touching the rippled satin of her cheek with mine. "How's your head?" she asked, peering behind my ears as if I might have a chunk missing.

"It's fine, Foo. I'm fine."

"He just needs quiet," Gray persisted. "And no visitors. Next week you can come and have lunch."

She peered at him now, her goggle eyes brimming with self-possession. "And who was
that?"
she asked, one hand pointing vaguely toward the house. "Another artist in residence? A painter of the Picasso school, perhaps."

"No, he's just a lawyer. I'm sorry he was rude to you, Auntie. He's from Beverly Hills."

The old lady took this in with imperial indifference. On the table beside her were two cans of beef broth. Merle was nowhere to be seen, which was more nervewracking than usual. I had a vision of him skulking about like a Malibu shaman and getting blown away by one of the agents. Foo looked back and forth between us, very parental all of a sudden. "His
brothers
lawyer, you mean," she replied, with the deepest satisfaction.

So she knew. Gray passed a weary hand across his eyes, indicating it wasn't he who'd spilled my brother's hideout. Foo's goggle eyes were fixed on me, triumphant. I shrugged.

"Mona told me," she explained, "because I told
her
I'm an old dustrag nobody ever listens to, so who would I tell? I knew something was going on down here, because this one got very queer." She pointed at her nephew, then winked at me. "Something besides the two of you, I mean.
That's
been as plain as the Baldwin nose on his face since the day you moved in here."

"Okay, Miss Marple," drawled her nephew, "so you got it all figured. But this isn't the cocktail hour. The FBI's in there, and they don't like surprises."

"Exactly why I came," she declared, even if the logic was lost on us. "What if they tried to arrest you boys? I thought you might need me." When Gray looked at her blankly, almost stupefied, she added, "After all, Graham, I am the head of the family. And I believe the Baldwin name still has a certain influence, even in Washington."

"Yeah, with President Harding," came the retort. He patted her hand, which she must have found insufferably patronizing. "Foo honey, don't call us, we'll call you. Now where the hell did Merle go?" Abruptly he jumped to his feet and headed around the side of the house.

Foo turned her full attention to me, one hand cupping the back of my head, the way a healer might have touched it, except she was so secular and powerless. "I just wanted to see you."

"I'm fine."

"How was the hospital?" I squinched my face with distaste, the way Daniel had about Minneapolis. "I've never even been in one, except to visit." It was Foo's turn to squinch, as if there was something obscene about this bald fact. Still that ache of injustice, that she should be home free while the castles of pain were full to bursting.

"At least I fell in love," I said—then bit my tongue, in case she thought I meant to one-up her century of spinsterhood.

But she countered instantly: "Indeed! And what about him? Fifty years he walks around with that moony look on him, like he's lost his best friend. Wasn't my place. All I'd say every now and then was, 'Don't you ever get sick of art?'" The last word came out sharp as the crack of a rifle, and we both laughed. "Now he walks on air and forgets to tie his sneakers. First time he's ever been a little boy."

She beamed at me, the palimpsest of her face aglow with vicarious pleasure. I looked away, suddenly embarrassed. "Yes but—it's not going to last."

"Let me tell you something, Tom. Lasting's the least of it. Lasting is all I've done for fifteen years." She puffed out her lips with contempt, making a sound like
pish.
She looked out at the water, whose shifting sapphire had been hers longer than anybody's. "Not that I don't have nice
days,
mind you," she added judiciously. And I realized it was just what I'd said to Daniel, the same provisional wisdom. Happy was for birthdays.

Her eyes were on the horizon, dancing on the peaks of Catalina. "I've seen too much," said Foo, which coming from her just then seemed the opposite of a cliche. Then she looked at me again, exquisitely calm in her lounging posture, ancient but not old. "So, if you can walk on air and be boys for a while... well, that's the secret, isn't it?"

"Come on, Auntie, let's go," called Gray, and we turned to see him and Merle striding down the hill from the sycamore grove. "I'll follow you guys to the ranch and make you a nice cup of bouillon."

"Bullshot," replied the lady succinctly, in a tone that brooked no contradiction.

He grinned at her defiance and turned to me. "Everything falls apart when Gray's away. Merle says the furnace is acting ornery, and two of the horses are missing. Besides, I need clean clothes and—" He gave a helpless shrug, too many bases to cover.

"I'll be fine." I kissed him square on the mouth, right in front of his closest kin, and he didn't bat an eye. Merle had already stooped and gathered Foo in his arms. Gray and I walked behind as far as the pergola, lingering a moment. I called good-bye to Foo, who waved gallantly over the Indian's shoulder.

Gray poked a finger at my chest, touching it right above the heart. "But I mean it, you go rest. I'll be back tonight."

"Yessir." I didn't mind being left alone. I was glad he felt free to go take care of his stuff, and distinctly didn't wish to be constantly watched, in case I fell over in my soup. He trotted after the others, frisky as a boy, just like she said. And I had to admit, for all that I loved him, a little frisson of relief. We didn't need every minute together, no matter how loud the clock ticked.

I ducked through the french doors into the parlor, eager to get back to the brawl of my brother's testimony. Right off I saw the dining room was empty, but figured they must be getting coffee. Then, coming up to the table itself, I saw it was stripped bare—tape equipment gone, as well as the ponyskin briefcase. I reeled for a second, horrified they'd already barreled him out of there. No, he never would've let them—unless they tricked him. Maybe the only way to exile a man was to rip him away with no good-byes.

I raced for the stairs, and my head went into another hammer-lock, doubling me over. I held my skull and counted ten, but the jolt of pain only made me more frantic. I stumbled up, a step at a time, cursing the spinal. When I reached the top, my cranium still shooting stars like a planetarium on acid, I staggered around the stairwell. Reached for the door to Cora's room, prepared to scream if my brother was gone. Then I turned my head sharp, for the very wail that was struggling to break from me was coming out of the tower.

I lurched that way, fingers pressed to my temples as if I were moving by telepathy, through the doorway arch and up into light. Brian was perched on the narrow bed, hands hanging heavy between his knees, a broken player benched for the season. The sound he made was more of a moan than tears, a sort of toneless keening. But the moment he saw me, that all changed. It was like he'd been waiting.

"Tommy," he pleaded, and though he was drowning in anguish, I could hear the same relief in him that I'd felt a moment since, when Gray left. I went and sat beside him, just as the flood broke. He seized me to him the way he seized Daniel the day of the rain. His torso shook with the sobbing, quaking like I did as I crawled up out of the grave of my stroke. I thought with a certain dark pride how much better he was at crying than the first time.

But that was my last objective thought, for then the mirror of his grief broke in me, a thousand pieces. I'd lied out there on the terrace, over and over: I wasn't fine at all. Until I came to this solitary room with Brian, I couldn't begin to let it out. And so we fell apart, clinging to each other in that sunstruck place, weeping our different sorrows, though the passion was equally matched. He was a wrestler, and I was a diver.