Page 16 of Torch Songs

His phone made the quiet bloop sound that indicated a text.

I’m not running off with anybody else between now and next week. You’ve got a real job. No worries. Keep texting. “Glycerine.”

Tad had to read the word three times before he remembered their game, where they tried to find the love song Guthrie would use to replace “Long, Long Time.”

Nobody knows if that’s supposed to be a girl’s name or a bomb. Why?

Because Gavin Rossdale in concert is hot enough to blow your balls off from the nosebleed section. Does there need to be another reason?

Tad chuckled.The Cure—“Friday I’m in Love.”

Well I was, but somebody had to cancel. Chat later!

D’oh!But it was too late. Guthrie was already on the run at his job. That’s okay. He’d gotten a dirty joke, a little bit of back and forth on their game, and a smart retort. He was going to call it a win and concentrate on the coked-out failed businessman in his mistress’s crappy apartment.

“So,” Chris asked in seeming idleness, “is he running?”

“Nope. He did suggest I should see Gavin Rossdale in concert.”

Chris snorted. “Oh I bet!”

Tad, who was busy scanning his own side of the street, sent him a look. “What does that mean?”

“It means my wife and I have seen him in concert—about six, seven years ago. He’s got this shirt that’s all… holey, like, with holes in it. At one point in the concert he puts his shirt on,and he’s soaking wet and sweating and oozing sex appeal, and he goes running through the crowd, urging people to reach out and touch him, and you know what?”

“You reached out and touched a rock star?” Tad was laughing, trying to imagine it.

“You’re goddamned right I did. I got some of his sexy sweat on my fingers, and I’m telling you, that man almost converted me. Wife and I had somerockin’alone time when we got home that night.”

Tad was still chuckling when he saw a girl—oh God, it was a girl, right? Nineteen? Twenty at the most?—cross the street in front of them, coming from a side alley that wrapped around the apartment and heading for a small entrance into the common area that needed a key to get into.

“Shit, Chris, that’s her. Fitton’s girl.”

“Oh my God, she’s a baby,” Chris said, horrified. “Okay, you big brother or me daddy. What’s it gonna be?”

“You, papi,” Tad said, indicating the girl’s Latina features. “She’s had enough grungy White boys at this point.”

“I hear ya. Let’s go.”

They quietly exited the SUV, both of them wearing jeans, sport coats, and sneakers. Not standard department dress code, but apparently Chris got away with a lot because he’d been there for twenty, and Tad enjoyed riding in the wake of his practical shoes.

“Heya,” Chris said. “Claudia? Claudia Romero? Can we have a word with you?”

The girl took one look at them and went sprinting for the door, key in hand.

“Uh-oh,” Tad muttered.

And then someone shot at them from a second-floor apartment, the bullet whizzing by like a steroidal hummingbird and thunking the concrete five feet behind where Tad stood.

“Shit,” Chris said. “Get her or he’ll kill us all!”

And the chase was on.

TWELVE HOURSlater, after a chase through the apartment maze and a body tackle to keep Ms. Romero from bringing more drugs to her boyfriend, Tad and Chris finally emerged from the tiny alcove of the apartment patio where they’d hidden with her during the standoff.

Tad’s knees were bruised, and his elbows and his shoulder hurt from breaking through the little wooden patio fence so they’d have a place to hide.

For that matter, his bladder was killing him, and he’d crossed over from thirsty to parched to the dry, dusty husk of a skeleton hours ago.

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