Chasing Death Metal Dreams (17 page)

“Why?” He couldn’t help asking, even as he followed orders. “What did I do?”

“You were twenty over the limit, and that car might be stolen.”

“Hell, yeah.” Carlos winced as the cuffs closed over his wrists. “’Cause if I was gonna steal a car, I’d take a thirty-five-year-old rusted-out Pinto.” He
heard
his accent thicken and felt the way his body centered differently, his tough-guy mode and he couldn’t control it. Not tonight. “Don’t you check the plates or something? That’s my car. The registration’s in the glove compartment.”

“I’m going to put you in the cruiser and search your car, sir.”

Carlos said as clearly and accent-free as he could, “You do not have permission to search my car.”

“Don’t need permission.”

“You do on any routine traffic stop.”

“Don’t need permission when you threaten me.”

Carlos swallowed back his protest. He wondered if the cruiser behind him had a dash cam. Then he wondered what might happen to the recording, if the cop didn’t like what it would show. He spoke louder and clearer, words Tía Lisa had taught him, holding still as stone. “I have not threatened you. I am cooperating. You do not have permission to search my car. Any search will be invalid under Washington State law.”

The cop shook his head, grabbed his arm, and tugged him back to the cruiser, supporting Carlos when he stumbled. He opened the rear door and pushed Carlos in. “Mind your head, sir.” Carlos almost expected to be smacked into the door frame as he said it, but it didn’t happen. He sat on the hard plastic seat uncomfortably, hands behind him, as the cop shut the door.

There was nothing he could do but watch, fuming, as the cop pulled on plastic gloves, opened the Pinto’s doors, and began going through the stuff on the rear floor. He pulled the floor mats out, dumping them on the gravel at the side of the road. Carlos muttered under his breath, “I hope you put your hand in a rotten hot dog.” For once, he regretted that he wasn’t the type of guy to toss really gross stuff back there. He’d pay to have a mega-slob car right now.

He realized he’d given Foster a ride more than once in the last few months. If something had dropped out of Foster’s pockets, Carlos could be up shit creek. Fear began to creep in, past his anger, and he sucked air between his teeth. His tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, dry as cotton. If he was arrested, went to jail, there was no Tío Ramón within a hundred miles to come charging to his rescue. He’d be locked in a cage, a freak among predators. If they strip searched him, would they put him in with the men, or the women?

Up ahead, the cop popped the trunk open. The hatch light came on, visible in the growing dusk. The cop bent, reaching around, head ducked down. Taking short panicked breaths, Carlos tried to remember what he had in there. He’d had camping gear stowed in the car once, with a buck knife in it, but he thought his pack was back home now. He was sure of it. Almost sure. Sweat slid down his neck and forehead, and he rubbed his cheek on his shoulder to stop the itchy trickle.

The cop shut the trunk and came back toward him. He opened the front door of the cruiser, reached in, and got something out. Straightening, he went back to stand in front of the cruiser. The strobe of red and blue flashed on his face, a sinister flicker over shaded eyes and wide jaw, as he wrote on the pad in his hand. Then he came back and opened the back door. “Come on out.”

Carefully, silently, Carlos eased out of the cruiser and stood up, hiding the shaking of his knees, forcing himself to look up boldly.

“Turn around and hold still.”

When he did so, he was surprised to feel the cop reach over and unlock his cuffs. As they came off Carlos tensed, tightening every muscle, not even letting himself rub at his irritated skin.

“Turn around.”

He pivoted slowly, raising his hands to shoulder height. The cop eyed him with a flat, unreadable stare. “Directions for paying your ticket are printed on it. If you wish to contest your ticket, you may do so in court. There’s a phone number and a link where you can find more information.” He frowned. “You were clocked by radar doing sixty-two in a forty zone, so I don’t advise contesting it.”

Carlos gritted his teeth and waited for the punchline.
What did you find in the car? What did you plant?
Except if there was any illegal substance involved, he wouldn’t be standing here with the cuffs off. He wondered if the cop was going to demand he take a breath test, or touch his nose or whatever, but the guy just separated off the ticket and held it out to him.

Carlos took one slow step, then another, reaching out. He waited for the gotcha, waited for the cop to lie for his camera, “
He’s going for me! Gotta take him down
.” But his fingers closed on the paper and the cop let it go. “You can get back in your car. Drive carefully now. Keep it under the limit. If I catch you going that fast again, I’ll run you in, and you can spend a night in the lockup.”

Carlos’s jaw ached with the effort of keeping his mouth shut. He made a wide circle around the cop, stepping down into the ditch rather than get too close. When he was well past, he folded the ticket into his pocket without looking at it. The contents of his back seat were strewn on the gravel, and he bent to scoop them back up unsorted. Among the jumbled debris was a crumpled scrub top with his name tag still pinned to it. “
Dr. Donner Dental; Carlos, receptionist.
”

Was that what made the cop back off? Who knew? Who cared?
Well, he cared if Carlos the receptionist with his name next to a cartoon of a tooth was that much more human than Carlos the random brown guy in a beat up car. But he couldn’t think about it. Not now.

He used an Arby’s bag to sack up some of the more trashy bits. Even though the cop had done the littering, Carlos couldn’t leave the roadside looking like a dump. He straightened as the cop car rolled slowly past. The officer met his eyes through the windshield. Carlos couldn’t soften the glare he could feel tightening his face, but the cop just stared through him as he pulled away. Carlos blew out a long breath and slumped against his car.

“
¡Dios, qué día!
”
This motherfucking day needed to just go fuck itself.

He leaned back on the metal, letting the air dry the sweat on his face. Slowly his heart returned to normal. He suddenly ached to go see Nate, to let Nate’s touch and voice and dick pound the sickness out of his body and the crazies out of his brain. He almost decided to, until he remembered he was mad at Nate. For a reason. A good reason.
Dammit.

He shoved the last bits of grot into his car and slammed the back door. The keys and his license were sitting on the dashboard next to his wallet. He leafed through the wallet in a panic, but there was nothing incriminating in the stupid receipts he’d stuck in there, nothing missing from his twenty-six bucks of cash, nothing gay on view. And nothing trans. He remembered the incredible rush of getting his gender changed on his driver’s license. He’d pulled it out a hundred times that first week to confirm that it really said “
sex: M
”. He picked the current one up, tilted it in the light. A dark-haired guy with a little mustache and scruff stared out of the picture from under shaggy brows. “
sex: M
”. He’d bet some girl pulled over for speeding wouldn’t be cuffed and stuck in the back of the patrol car. He tried to make that thought help him feel better.

When he got back on the road, he held it down to a safe three miles over the limit. His stomach churned acidly, but he didn’t feel the urge to tromp on the gas anymore.
Fucking ticket.
He wondered how much it would cost him and decided he didn’t want to know. The burn in his chest was indigestion. Maybe hunger. He realized he was hungry despite Nate’s having fed him. Not good food hungry, but empty carbs hungry.

He tried to be good with his diet. On the T implants, he’d built guy-type muscles, but it was still too easy to put on weight in his butt and thighs. He hadn’t worked like a fool on his body to wreck it with donuts. Then again, sometimes only frosting would do.

He headed back to town, and swung by the little bakery a few blocks from home. At this hour, they’d boxed up all the day’s leftovers for cheap and were about to close. He ducked in the door under the wire and came out with an assorted dozen, half of them Long Johns that were almost
churros
.

Sitting in his car, with the box on the passenger seat, he stared at them in the waning light. He could go home now, eat until he puked and then work out like a madman to work off the calories. Or… not. He could call Mia. If he told her he’d been outed to Serpentine she’d be wonderfully furious on his behalf. He could imagine her ranting about shitheaded old men who had no idea how to watch what they said. Or dumb boyfriends who told anyone and everyone Carlos’s private business. She’d be as angry for him as he needed her to be. And probably eat half the donuts.

He didn’t want that either.

He started the car and began driving, pretending he was wandering randomly, and knowing he wasn’t. It was twenty-five minutes back to Lacey, to a small country road and a long gravel driveway. It took him an hour, but he got there eventually.

The garage was dark and silent, when he rolled the Pinto to a stop beside the drive. The only other car there was Nate’s, but the apartment over the garage was dark too. Carlos glanced at his phone, wondering if he’d lost more time than he thought, but it was only a bit before ten. Through the trees ahead, he could see lights on inside Nate’s parents’ house. He wondered if Nate had gone there to hang out with his dad, and if he was there, whether he was talking about the problems with dating someone like Carlos. He hoped not, but at the same time he ached with envy that it might be possible.

He could imagine that conversation with his own father, talking about a gay boyfriend, or worse yet, a trans one. Papá would have gone ballistic. “
¿Qué te pasa? ¿Estás loco? ¡Vámonos con el Padre Alejo para que te haga entrar en razón!
”
In fact, crazy would have been the best thing he was called, and getting hauled off to see the Padre might’ve involved Papá’s thick fingers gripping his ear while Mamá wailed and begged him to see the light. Really, Papá had probably saved his life by sending him north to Tía Lisa’s care and Tío Ramón’s benign indifference. He’d have gnawed off his own arm to get out of that trap of religion and expectations.

He turned off the car and rolled down the window. The peace of the quiet evening gradually seeped into him. Traffic rumbled far off, rising and falling on some bigger road. A bird called sleepily from the trees and then was silent. Overhead, a sliver of a moon floated in the deep purple sky. The west was still slightly lighter than the east, a band of turquoise edging the star-studded dome.

He sat there, hearing the hot metal of the engine ping as it cooled. There was no sign of Nate, and Carlos couldn’t picture himself actually walking up to that distant house, looking Nate’s dad in the eyes, asking to come in.
No.
But maybe Nate had fallen asleep on his couch, or was watching YouTube and hadn’t noticed night had come.

Carlos made himself get out. The air was perfect summer-evening warm, as he walked around, and picked up the floppy bakery box off the passenger seat. He bumped the door shut with his hip, turned toward the garage apartment, and straightened his shoulders. No quitting.
Pa’ lante
. Onward.

****

Nate came out of some kind of fugue state at the sound of a car turning in the drive. He tensed and bit back a yelp of pain as every muscle told him he’d been sitting in one position far, far too long. He grabbed the branch he was straddling with a white-knuckled grip and whimpered. Below him, Carlos’s Pinto pulled over and stopped.

Nate sat breathing shallowly through his nose as the tingle of returning circulation burned through his thighs and ass. Carlos’s door opened and he got out, went around and pulled something big and white out of the passenger seat. Nate knew he should call down to him, but he just watched as Carlos carried the something over to the garage and headed out of sight up the stairs. The sound of his knock was clear in the still evening air.

Nate waited. He wasn’t sure for what— some sign, maybe, of what Carlos was thinking. The rap of the knock came again, then after a pause Carlos reappeared without the white thing, pausing at the foot of the stairs to glance back up. Whatever it was, he’d left it at the door. Peace offering? Something Nate had somehow left behind in his car? Time bomb? From up in the tree, the look on Carlos’s face was unreadable.

Nate worked his feet in small circles and massaged his thighs with his fists, as Carlos came slowly back down the driveway. Halfway to the car, he stopped and bent to the ground. Nate leaned forward, puzzled, until Carlos picked up a bit of paper, and then another and another.
Oh.

He watched as Carlos carefully gathered the scraps, stuffing them in his pockets. Whether he was hiding the evidence or keeping the environment clean was debatable. Then Nate saw him raise his head and look around at the big house once more, his face drawn and defeated, before slumping and turning to go. It was still surprisingly hard to say, “Hey. Mariachi man.”

Carlos jumped and whirled around. “Nate? Where?”

“In the tree.” He stayed put as Carlos came over, walking hesitantly at first and then faster as he clearly spotted Nate on his branch against the dark trunk. Carlos ducked through the hanging wands and came to the base of the tree, looking up. Nate peered down at him. “Um.”

“Half artist, half frickin’ squirrel?”

“Panther. Lying in wait— ouch.” He rolled his shoulder painfully.

Carlos stared up at him, his expression had to read in the dim light. Eventually he cleared his throat and said, “I’m sorry?”

It sounded more like a question than a statement. Nate wasn’t sure who owed apologies either by now. He pushed down a roiling mix of his own anger, hurt and guilt and asked, “For what?”

Carlos reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of shreds of paper, holding them up toward him.