Motel. Pool. (23 page)

“And then?”

Tag dragged the words from his throat. “And if that didn’t get my heart going, I was going to fuck up more grandly than I ever had before.”

“Shit.” Jack twisted his body so he could lean his face into the crook of Tag’s neck. “How were you going to do it?”

“Dunno. Not drowning—that one hadn’t occurred to me. But pills, maybe. Swan dive off the Stratosphere. Slit my wrists in the bathtub. Drive my car into something really solid. Find someone big as Buddy and make him really, really mad.”

Cataloged like that, his plan sounded silly, overly theatrical. And it couldn’t truly be classified as a plan anyway—his mistakes never were. It had been more of a niggling feeling in the corner of his brain, an itch he knew he’d eventually scratch.

But Jack didn’t tell him he was stupid. He continued to snuggle and play with Tag’s hair. He had sort of a thing for Tag’s curls, which was endearing as hell.

“You lost all your money last night,” Jack finally pointed out.

“Well, yeah. Because my heart
is
going—but not because of the gambling. I told you. It’s because of you.”

Jack sat up enough to look at Tag’s face. “You lost on purpose?”

“Sort of.” He smiled. “I gave my good luck away.”

Blinking, Jack said, “You what?”

“I didn’t just lose a bunch of money, Jacky. Money’s nothing. Not important. I lost my luck. No—I didn’t lose it. I… traded it. For this.” He stood and retrieved last night’s shirt from the floor. He slipped the card out of the pocket and handed it to Jack.

“The jack of hearts,” Jack said. “Nice, but I still don’t—”

“Dane—the dealer—he got the cash and my luck. I got cab fare and the jack of hearts.”

“Which means?”

“It means as long as you’re with me, I won’t mess up. Might be only today, but dammit, Jacky, however long it is, I’ll do right by you.”

When Jack handed back the card, Tag fetched his wallet and slipped it inside. He liked that. Better than a wallet full of greenbacks any day.

“You’re not making any sense, Tag. You can’t give away good luck like that. And a Vegas dealer can’t promise you won’t make more mistakes.”

“Why not?” Tag crossed his arms stubbornly.

“Because that’s not how—”

“You’re a
ghost
, babe. You’ve spent sixty years haunting an ex-motel. And we’ve been making love—I
am
in love. With you. A ghost. If we can accept that, aren’t other improbable things possible too?”

Jack chewed on that for a while before looking up with a small grin. “I guess I’m in no position to question the supernatural.”

“You’re really not,” Tag replied, smiling back.

“So now you’re broke and unlucky—”

“Or maybe just ordinarily fortunate.”

“—but you have me.”

“As long as I can keep you, I definitely got the better end of this trade.”

That called for another embrace, so they shared one in the middle of their motel room, complete with kisses and whispered endearments neither could bring himself to say any louder.

“So now,” Tag said when he could breathe again, “maybe you can help me with a plan. Some of us have to eat, and a real bed is nice, but forty dollars won’t get us far.”

Jack walked to the bathroom while Tag, curious, followed. Jack took Tag’s black toiletry bag off the hook, unzipped it, and dug around in the back pocket Tag never used. With a flourish, Jack produced a small stack of fifties, which he handed to Tag.

Tag thumbed through them. “What the hell?”

“After I saw you playing cards, I thought I better tuck some cash away for you. In case you lost the rest. I waited until you were asleep and I stole it from your stash. You had so much, I figured you wouldn’t miss a few hundred dollars.”

“Six hundred, and I didn’t. I’ve always sucked at math.”

“Well, good.” Jack gave Tag’s ass a friendly slap. “Now you can eat and we can have sex in a real bed, at least for a little while.” Unspoken between them was the last bit—
until Jack disappeared for good
.

Sobered by that thought, but grateful, Tag put the toiletry bag away. “I guess maybe I should go pay Buddy for another week and then pick up some groceries.”

Jack nodded. “All right. But also, you and I need to talk.”

Fuck. “About what?”

“About a ghost.”

T
AG
DIDN
’
T
go grocery shopping, nor did he pay for another week at the Baja. Instead he listened, grim-faced, to Jack’s ghost story. It wasn’t a detailed story. One of the other rooms at the Baja was haunted by a phantom so faint that Buddy could barely see it. But he could tell it was a child and it was afraid. When he tried to speak to it, the ghost hid from him. He was hoping Jack would have better luck, due to his undead status.

“What does he want you to do with this ghost, aside from a friendly chat?” Tag asked.

“See if I can help it find peace.”

Tag shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Why not? You don’t want to help?”

“It’s not that I don’t care. It’s only… I care more about you. And Jack, when you met those dam ghosts, you vanished. Poof. What if that happens again? And what if this time you don’t have the juice to come back?”

Judging by the wary look in Jack’s eyes, he had similar fears. But he gave Tag’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I need to do this, Tag.”

“Why?”

“Because I was alone all those years and… and it was really hard.” His voice cracked slightly and he cleared his throat. “And because I know what my unfinished business is.”

Tag didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know it. He wanted to keep Jack forever and be happy and…. Goddammit. “What’s your unfinished business?”

“I wanted to matter, Tag. That’s why I went to Hollywood to begin with. I didn’t want to be this nobody from Nebraska, a faggot who worked at a meatpacking plant and fucked strangers in alleys.”

“You
do
matter. You matter to me.”

Jack’s answering smile was sweet and sad, and it almost broke Tag’s recently revived heart. “I know. I’ve been feeling a little… frayed anyway. But when you told me you love me—and I could tell you meant it—and you said how you’ve decided you want to live—”

“Because of you.”

“I know. I felt this pull…. Tag, I could fade away right now. There’s this warm feeling, deep in here.” He placed his hand on the center of his chest. “And it’s so good. Like… like coming inside on a really cold day and standing by the fire. If I weren’t keeping those flames under control, I’d be gone already.”

Tag’s throat was unbearably tight. “Gone?”

“Yeah. But it’s good, Tag. It’s… oh jeez, I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s
good
. It’s more than I hoped for.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because you’re here, dummy.” Jack bonked him lightly on the arm. “’Cause I’m greedy and I want a little more time with you. But I don’t think I can last much longer. So let me see if I can help someone while I’m here.”

You have helped someone
, Tag wanted to say, but he knew he was being selfish. Yes, he wanted to hoard every second he had with Jack. But if there was some poor dead kid at the Baja and Jack could give the kid a hand….

“What if you run out of energy and get dragged off in the bad way? What if you don’t get an opportunity to go to the good place?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“You’re not James Dean. You don’t have to be a daredevil.”

“I’m not,” Jack said. “I’m just doing what feels right. Only took me eighty years to get here.”

Tag had learned some hard lessons from his parents. How to take care of himself at an early age. How to hide his secrets and pass for normal, no matter how fucked-up things really were. How to run when trouble came and start somewhere new until trouble tracked you down again. He wanted to run right now. He could get in his car with his six hundred dollars and go to California or Idaho or Utah. Find a job. Try to forget he’d ever met a ghost named Jack Dayton.

He could fuck up his last moments with the man he loved, just like he’d always fucked up everything before.

Tag twisted his body and gathered Jack into his arms. “I love you,” Tag said, because those were the only words left that mattered.

B
UDDY
WASN
’
T
at the front desk or in his apartment, which felt to Tag like a reprieve. “You can be a hero later, Jacky. How about a drive first?”

Jack smiled at him. “Yeah. Can we go back to California? Just a little way?”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

They drove the length of the Strip—tawdry in the bright daylight—and out of town. Tag stopped at the casino near the solar farm to fill the tank. “It’s stupid,” he announced to Jack when he got back in the car.

“What’s stupid?” Jack was smoking again, the little wisps of gray floating out the open passenger window.

“There are all kinds of energy sources around here. Sun, oil. Why can’t we use one of them to recharge you?”

“You want a solar-powered ghost?”

“Yes. That is exactly what I want.”

Jack chuckled. “I think I’d probably run on hydroelectric instead.”

“I don’t care if you run on AA batteries, Jacky.”

Jack’s hand felt nice on Tag’s thigh.

As they continued driving, there was nothing much to look at aside from long, wrinkled mountains that reminded Tag of sleeping dinosaurs. The highway was pretty much a straight shot, two long lines converging at the horizon. Even with a steady flow of traffic in both directions, the landscape had an abandoned quality.

And speaking of abandoned, not long after they crossed the state line, they came upon an old gas station. The tall sign was falling apart and the building was boarded up. A single palm tree and one crooked Joshua tree were the only signs of life, and across the parking lot were the ruins of a gift shop that once sold fossils, cold drinks, and souvenirs.

“I wonder if that place has a ghost,” Jack said softly.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.”

The highway took a couple twists around some mountains, but they were in another flat spot when Jack laughed. “Is that real?” he asked, pointing at a sign that read
Zzyzx Rd—1 Mile
.

“I guess so. Want to check it out?”

“Yeah.”

Tag took the exit and then the overpass across the highway. The pavement soon gave way to very bumpy gravel as the road curved around the edge of a hill. “I wish I had four-wheel drive,” he said after the Camry scraped over a particularly rough patch.

“We can turn back.”

Tag stopped the car and looked at him. “Do you want to see what’s there?”

After a brief pause, Jack grinned. “Yeah.”

“Then let’s go.”

The road didn’t look all that promising, being lined mostly with rocks and scrubby brush. Tag caught a glimpse of a dry lake bed off to the right. But then there was a line of palm trees and a white gate across the road. A sign pointed ahead to something called the Desert Studies Center and to the right for visitors. He turned right.

“It’s a ghost town,” said Jack. It was—or rather, according to a sign they passed, it was a ghost health resort.

“This place was in business when you were alive, Jack.”

“I never heard of it.”

“I guess it didn’t cater to the Hollywood crowd.”

Tag parked the car in front of a long, low building with no remaining roof or windows. He and Jack got out and walked around. A pond of green water was edged by some ranch houses, a few of which seemed to still be in use, but most of the buildings were uninhabitable.

They walked back toward the car and stood in the middle of the street. “Nothing here but desert and abandoned buildings,” said Jack. “Sorry I dragged you here.”

But Tag was looking across the pond past another row of palms, where the lake bed was flat and white and a mountain ridge lined the horizon. It
was
just desert. But there were a hundred shades of green and brown and yellow, and the sky was white-smeared blue. He opened and closed his hands, imagining the landscape’s textures: smooth, spiked, jagged, crumbly. Wet. He turned and gazed at the way the stucco flaked off the building, revealing layers of cream and gray that were smeared orange from water stains. An old metal windmill creaked in the breeze; a bird called; the odors of sulfurous water, salt, and sage drifted his way.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

Jack put his palm against Tag’s chest, where his heart beat a quick and steady rhythm. “It is.”

There was an old blanket in the trunk of the Camry. Tag fetched it; then he and Jack walked into the nearest building. Although the interior walls and all the furnishings were long gone, it was clear that this was once a motel room. Tag spread the blanket on the cracked concrete floor. “It doesn’t look like anyone else is around,” he said to Jack with a leer.

Jack grinned and made his clothing disappear. “Okay. But I can poof away. You’re the one’s gonna be caught bare-assed and humping the air if anyone comes by.”