Page 39 of Body Count

We passed a Phillips 66; the pumps were bathed in harsh, white light, but the convenience store was dark.We passed a twenty-four-hour laundromat where, on the other side of a wall of windows, a middle-aged guy with a turkey neck was standing in nothing but a pair of briefs.At the Dairy Queen on the next corner, the line was three deep.The last car was a Caddy with its wheel wells rusted out and a bumper sticker that said IF YOU HAVE TO DRINK AND DRIVE, AT LEAST DRINK A SHAKE.

“You have tainted everything you’ve touched in this investigation,” Peterson said, and although his voice was calmer now, I could hear the fading echo of his anger.“God willing this ever comes to trial, what is a defense going to do with you?You were supposed to be a witness, Gray.You found him.You called it in.That’s all.But instead, your fingerprints are all over everything.Witness tampering is the start of it.Not to mention the fact that any defense lawyer worth his salt is going to put you on the stand and let the jury take a look at you and ask them how you could possibly be unbiased in a case like this.”

It had been a long time since I’d cried.Since I’d even felt the need.But my eyes stung now, and I blinked and looked away and fought to keep myself under control.

“And that’s not to mention,” Peterson continued more gently, “the fact that if someone is trying to make it look like you and Darnell were involved in this, you’re doing their job for them.”

I nodded, but I had to keep looking out the window.Dark strip malls.A shuttered QuikLube.A pancake house all the old queens liked to go to after karaoke night at the Pretty Pretty.

“So,” Peterson said.“I’d like you to take some personal leave.”

It was like a hand closing around my lungs, squeezing until there wasn’t room left for air.I tried to breathe slowly.I tried to count.But blackness flecked the corners of my vision, and a ringing sound started in my ears.

“Gray?”

I shook my head.

A hint of command entered his voice: “Gray?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

I shook my head again.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

The Bridal Veil Motor Court was old, with glass-block windows and a roadside sign that assured anybody driving by that this shit pile still had vacancies.Peterson stopped in front of the office.It had a sign that said AFTER HOURS, RING FOR SERVICE.

“If you’re not going to take personal leave,” Peterson said, “then you’re going on administrative leave.That’s your choice.”

It was strange how your brain worked sometimes.Everything inside me was shifting, sliding away from me.But I had this one clear thought of what John-Henry would do.

“Thank you for the ride,” I said and got out of the car.

Peterson sat there for a moment.And then he drove off.

I waited until his taillights blinked out before I started walking.

16

I started drinking at the Kum & Go.I remembered that much.And I remembered the Uber to the Pretty Pretty, and shots at the bar.The crowd was thin.The music was shit.The only people left were the ones who didn’t have to get up the next morning— college kids, an aging drag queen in a beehive wig, a guy who was clearly on the lam from his wife and kids.He’d forgotten to take off his wedding ring.I knew he’d forgotten because after my second flight of shots, he looked around, took it off, and put it in his pocket.

After enough drinks, I didn’t remember much except that it felt better.Or if not better…less awful.I danced for a while with a big, Village People type in jean cut-offs and boots.He got one hand under my shirt and twisted my nipples hard enough to hurt.Hard enough to make me hard, anyway.I remembered telling him I wanted to ride his mustache.

And there was a cute little kid who had to have been eighteen, nineteen.His friends pushed him into me, and they all burst out laughing.He kept looking at my face and then looking away, and after a few minutes of that, he sprinted off.They all laughed about that too, loud enough to carry over the music.

I ended up in a booth with the fugitive dad.He was stroking me through my trousers—chafing me, really, since apparently his idea of rubbing a dick was to mash it like he was trying to press out a wrinkle with a clothes iron.I’d had enough to drinkby that point that I kept trying to kiss him, and he kept pushing me away.

There were even a couple of sweethearts who wanted to buy me drinks.A pair of them.A little rougher than I normally liked them.Hard used.Jeans and T-shirts that hung on their wiry frames.They wanted to dance, the two of them pressed against me, and they smelled like body odor and a hint of something else, something that was hot in my nose.Like bleach, a little.Maybe it was come.When I asked their names, they just laughed.

At some point, I had to pee.I made it to the restroom.A guy was getting long-dicked in one of the stalls—he kept making these drawn-out moans punctuated by little yips.It got me half hard at the urinal, and then I had to stand there, bladder throbbing, playing with myself and trying to figure out if I really needed to piss.And then I wasn’t even half hard anymore.I wobbled and barely caught myself on the urinal.The cold metal under my head, and the near fall, triggered something like an alarm at the back of my head, and for a moment, I had clarity.I’m fucked up, I thought.I’m way too fucked up.

I wasn’t sure when they came into the bathroom.There were three of them now.The two who’d been buying me drinks.One of them had scruff and a Captain America T-shirt.One of them had wispy facial hair like a teenage boy’s that had never really come in; he was wearing a white PBR tee with yellow pit stains.The third man was different.He had bad eyes.I’d seen that kind of eyes before.A leather jacket in spite of the heat.Bare chest thick with graying hair.Jeans.Boots.

I stared at them, trying to stand up straight.It was like a high wind was blowing through my head.If I let go of the urinal, it would blow me over.The room seemed darker, and I’d lost track of the long-dicking in the stall.Lost track of the stalls.From a long way off, a part of me that was no longer in control realized my vision was tunneling.

“Fuck,” the one in the leather jacket said.“How much did you give him?”

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