Sidecar (11 page)

Casey revised his hasty plan to kick her out as soon as he reached Foresthill proper, and tried to think like Joe. “How long have you been on the road?”

The sigh she gave was shuddery. “What is it, March?”

“Yeah. Almost April.”

“I ran away with my boyfriend in September. Shit… shit didn’t go well, you know?”

Casey sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” God. Since September? He’d been on the streets for two months, and he’d been ready to die.

She looked at him speculatively. “Well, you seem to be doing okay. Your guy a pervert? He keeping you around like a toy?”

Casey shook his head, taking a deep breath as they crossed the Foresthill bridge. It always freaked him out, no matter how many times he drove the old pickup over it. The damned thing felt vast around him anyway, and the wheel felt like it was wider than his shoulders. Putting it between the lane lines and pressing the accelerator was always an act of faith that the ancient land yacht really wasn’t as huge as it seemed.

“No,” he said shortly, clenching his hands on the wheel. “He’s a good guy. I’m not taking you with me if you keep bad-mouthing him. He doesn’t deserve that. And if you hurt him or try to take from him, I’ll kick your fucking ass.” Maybe it was the stress of crossing the bridge that put something hard in his voice, but she seemed to take the threat seriously.

“Okay, okay! I’m just wondering. I got into a car with a strange man, geez!”

Casey looked at her sideways and shook his head. He knew this was a bad idea.

Joe apparently knew it was a bad idea too. Casey had given her some sandwiches and the Kwell and the speech about a bath, and a spare set of scrubs, and he’d put her clothes in the washer while she’d been soaking in the tub—but he’d also taken all his valuables and stashed them in Joe’s room, and then made sure the bathroom door was locked from Joe’s side too. Joe kept a stash of cash
literally
in the ceramic cookie jar shaped like a curled-up cat, and Casey debated whether or not to move
that
too. Finally he just left it and figured if Stacia was going to steal the cash, maybe she’d leave all the other stuff, like the VCR, which Casey was just enjoying the holy hell out of.

But when Joe got home and saw Stacia sitting at the table, on her third bowl of soup, the look he shot Casey was hesitant. Casey shrugged. “This is Stacia. She offered to blow me for food.”

Joe gave a helpless, troubled laugh. “That
is
desperate. Yeah. Okay. So, Stacia?”

The girl looked up from her soup, and Casey tried to look at her face through Joe’s eyes. She had wide, peasant cheekbones and unremarkable hazel eyes—once she got older, she would no longer be pretty, and if she didn’t do something to ease the bitter lines around her mouth, she’d be pretty unappealing on a lot of levels. “Yeah?” she asked suspiciously.

“We can feed you and get you some clothes. How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” she said, her voice sort of desperate, and Joe rolled his eyes.

“In how many years?”

She deflated. “Three.”

“Good God. Okay. We can get you to social services in the morning, okay?”

Her mouth thinned and flattened. “I’m not going back home.”

Joe nodded. “Well, okay. They might not make you go back, but the fact is, you can’t stay here, okay?”

The girl looked sideways at Casey. “He does,” she said suggestively, and Joe shook his head and walked to the cupboard where he kept the Tylenol.

“Yeah, but he’s a special case,” Joe muttered. “Special head case is more like it. Kid, I’m gonna feed the outside cats. Can we talk for a second?”

Casey looked sideways at Stacia and wondered if she’d figured out the thing about the cookie jar yet, but he followed Joe because that seemed prudent.

“I’m sorry.” He winced when they got out to the garage. Joe gave a scoop of cat food to the feral cat and turned to him, leaning on the still cycling washer.

“Kid….” He shook his head again. “It’s not like your heart wasn’t in the right place, I get that. But… but….”

“It’s what you did for me!” Casey said defensively, and Joe grimaced.

“You were different,” Joe said flatly.

“How?”

“For one thing, you wouldn’t have slit my throat to make a buck!”

Casey had to concede that was true. “But how did you know that? For all you knew I was some sort of baby serial killer!”

The old white washer was unbalanced, and it gave a thump behind Joe that made him turn around and glare. “Look, did I mention the heart? Being in the right place? Wasn’t shitting about that. But Casey—you were special, and not just because you helped me after I got hurt, okay? She can’t stay.”

Casey nodded emphatically. “Oh thank God. I keep worrying about the cash in the kitchen, and I’m
not
going to sleep well tonight!”

Joe laughed. “The cash she can have. But next time you feel like bringing home strays, maybe stick with a dog?”

Casey brightened. “Can we get one? I’d really love a dog!” He’d been throwing sticks for Rufus over the fence. Now that the dog wasn’t hurting Joe, he seemed pretty decent. Casey was a fan.

Joe patted the old washer, which continued to thump away. “Yeah, we’ll see. Maybe if we live through the night, we’ll celebrate by getting a dog.”

They both grunted and straightened their shoulders. Yeah. But first they’d have to survive the night.

They ate and Joe went up to work on the upstairs some more. Normally Casey would have gone up to help him. The master bedroom needed everything from new carpet to drywall to new plumbing fixtures, and it had been their ongoing project since pretty much after Christmas. They’d put the drywall up in February, and Joe had been sanding drywall for a month to try to get the whole room to look seamless. Casey quite frankly wouldn’t have given a shit about seams from the drywall, but it seemed to be something Joe took pride in, so sand they did. Casey’s job lately had been pulling carpet staples out of the hardwood, and the two of them had been debating whether to replace the hardwood or just recarpet all over it, which seemed a shame, since the floor was original. (And didn’t match the first floor wood at all. Casey had spent long hours wondering at the mental deformities of the complete assholes who had built this house.)

But without even talking about it, Casey had stayed downstairs to keep an eye on Stacia. Now that the girl had eaten, she seemed less predatory and more sleepy, and sure enough, she dozed off on the chair. Casey woke her up and steered her toward his bedroom to put her to sleep. It had posters of George Michael in it now, and a new blue bedspread, because that was his favorite color, and blue-and-brown sheets, not hospital sheets anymore, that he’d gotten for Christmas. He hated letting her lie down there, but he felt like he had no choice. He took a spare blanket from the hall closet and the extra pillow and went to sleep on the couch.

Joe came back down cautiously about an hour after he usually went to bed. “She asleep?” he asked from the stairway, and Casey looked up from his spot on the couch.

“Yeah. It’s safe.”

Joe grunted and rubbed the back of his neck. “Speak for yourself. I think we’re going to
have
to get a dog if you plan on bringing any more humans home, kid. I’m not sleeping well tonight, that’s for certain.”

Casey refrained from pointing out that the most serious danger was from Stacia’s speculative, overtly sexual glances in Joe’s direction when they’d come in from the garage. If she was planning on a new sugar daddy, she had come to the wrong place—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make trouble before she figured that out.

Joe ate a sandwich standing up, then ruffled Casey’s hair and went off to his shower and to bed. That had been an hour ago. The hinges on Casey’s door squeaked—not loudly, but Casey had been lightly dozing when they’d made their telltale little alarm, and his eyes had popped open. He lay, still and motionless on the couch, half expecting the ceramic clink of the cookie jar next.

He didn’t hear anything for a moment, and then:

THUMP!

“Oh, ouch! You asshole!”

“Stay out of my bed! Jesus Christ, you fuckin’ kids, you’re gonna be the death of me!”

“But I was just gonna—”

“You were just gonna go back to your own goddamned bed! I’m calling social services right the fuck now!”

And to Casey’s surprise, as Stacia’s footsteps padded rapidly back to Casey’s room, sure enough, he heard Joe’s voice leaving a message for social services. Casey was mildly shocked—he hadn’t realized Joe had the number by the phone.

But that was okay. Joe had never used it for Casey. They were a team. He liked that. He could live with that. It was okay.

Mandolin Rain

~Joe

T
HEY
got a giant something dog. Joe had no idea what breed it was, but it was big and white with what looked like a black bandit’s mask across its eyes. Casey didn’t name it Bandit, though. He’d been watching lots and lots of movies with Joe, and
Raising Arizona
had been a favorite.

They named the dog Hi. Hi Huxtable, because Casey watched a lot of television too.

And Joe loved that dog almost as much as Casey did. It’d started out at about twenty pounds, and the damned dog could skid across the floor on his stomach and eat shoes like nobody’s business. Casey’s money, which Joe had been making him save for college and gas for the car, started paying for Frisbees, rubber toys, and replacement shoes as well. It was all right, though—Joe was glad Casey had found a calling. Apparently taking care of the dog gave him something that school and work did not, and Joe really liked that Casey wasn’t alone on the big spread when Joe was working late.

So Hi Huxtable the dog was a wonderful addition to their family, and right now, at—Joe squinted at the clock radio—2:13 in the morning, he was barking his fool head off. Fuck.

“Hi! Hi, goddammit, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” It was summer, which meant it got down to seventy degrees at night, so Joe left the windows open. The heater worked in the winter, but air-conditioning was not happening yet, so it was leave the windows open, turn on the fans, and dust like mad or everything would turn the rust color of the dirt on the ground outside.

The dog kept barking, so Joe hauled his body out of bed, pulled on some scrub bottoms, and looked out the window. Oh fuck.

Hi wasn’t the only one barking. Rufus was over there in the backyard barking too. The two of them were playing like long-denied friends—which they were, since they usually just licked each other’s ears across the fence line—but there was no reason for Rufus to be there unless Ira Kenby had left the gate open.

Fuck. Joe swore and pounded down the stairs, calling for Casey. He wasn’t in the living room, which surprised Joe, because Dev’s motorcycle was still outside, so if he’d thought about it, Joe
shouldn’t
have been surprised by what he saw when he opened Casey’s door and shot the light on, but he was.

Casey was naked, on his hands and knees, sideways to the door, and Dev was behind him, his cock fully sheathed in Casey’s ass. Casey was gasping—with pleasure, Joe was pretty sure, but also with surprise, because this was clearly something he didn’t have a lot of practice at, at least in the good way. The little jar of Vaseline from the medicine cabinet was next to them.

There wasn’t a rubber in sight.

Joe blinked hard twice, and Casey jerked his head sideways.

Dev said, “Oh shit!”, pulled out, and
literally
threw himself on the ground next to the bed and rolled over in the comforter, which was lying half on the floor.

Joe and Casey turned and looked after him in surprise, and then Joe’s sense of humor asserted itself and he choked back a giggle. “Rufus, uhm—”

“
Rufus?
” Casey repeated incredulously, still looking at Dev.

“He’s out, Casey. He’s playing with your retarded dog, and the two of them already dumped Dev’s motorcycle because they’re stupid. I’m worried about Ira—I need you to put Hi in the garage so I can take Rufus back.”

While Joe was talking, Casey had rolled off the bed and pulled on a pair of scrubs that had been lying on the chair by the end table, suddenly all responsible and on task. “Yeah, Joe, I got it.”

Joe nodded, pleased. He was the last person to tell the kid that he couldn’t get busy. He hadn’t been prepared—next time, he’d be damned sure to knock.

“I’m, uhm, sorry ’bout….” Casey jerked his chin in Dev’s direction.

Dev had pulled the comforter over his body and was huddling there, parallel to the base of the bed, his skinny shins and big feet sticking out at the end. He was pretending like they couldn’t see him.

Casey grimaced and,
finally
, blushed. “I… uhm….” He stood up and slid on some moccasins the puppy hadn’t chewed on. “I, well, you know….”

“Jesus, kid. You’ve been dating for months. I just didn’t realize you’d finally gotten your thing on. C’mon. Let’s leave so Dev can die in peace.”

“Thanks,” came Dev’s muffled voice, and Joe finally started to like the kid, and then they had better things to do.

Joe grabbed two leashes from the garage worktable on his way out. He called Rufus and Casey called Hi. They put Hi into the garage, and Joe took Rufus toward the small gate he’d cut into the fencing after the whole biting incident. Casey caught up with him as he neared Ira’s house, which was in even worse shape than Joe’s had been when Joe moved in.

“Where’s the dog?” Joe asked as Rufus started to whine and tug at his lead.

“I left him in the house with Dev.”

“Isn’t Dev afraid of him?”

“A little bit. Serves him right. I told him Vaseline would suck as lubricant.” Casey executed a weird little pelvic wiggle. “God, that shit’s gonna be in there for fucking ever.”

Joe fought the temptation to bash his head into a tree just to get the image of Dev and Casey out of it. God, some things you did
not
want to know about a roommate. “Kid, there’s a Raley’s in the
parking lot
of McDonald’s. Buy some fucking condoms and some fucking lube before you start fucking again, okay?”