Page 62 of Shades of Henry
“I’ve got to saysomething!” Henry protested, gaping at him. “What in the hell!”
“This wasn’t my idea,” Curtis told him matter-of-factly, but Henry looked at Curtis’s hands and saw the black goopy seaweedy evidence all over them.
“You’re still complicit,” Henry snapped. “Zeppelin, Fisher, you too!”
“I tried to talk him out of it!” Fisher complained, holding up his pristine hands.
Zeppelin guffawed and tried to pick the stuff, which was apparently some sort of body—face?—mask off his hands. “Oh, ouch! Randy, this shit rips out your hair, did you know that?”
“Oh God.” Randy’s horror was absolute—as it should have been. His entire body, from his ankles to his face, was covered with whatever had been in the five or six big tubes of grooming goop swinging from the plastic bag on the doorknob. “God. Is it going to take out my hair?”
“I don’t know! Does it wash off?”
Billy opened the door, sending the trash bag swinging. “Here,” he said, holding out a soapy washcloth. “Hi, Henry. How was your funeral?”
“Uneventful,” Henry said, still horrified. “Unlike my home life. Give me that.” He snatched the washcloth from Billy and started to scrub the back of Randy’s covered hand, only to find the stuff had dried with the consistency of polyurethane.
“Oh dear God.” The horror wasn’t going away. “Randy, can you even breathe?”
“Yeah, Henry,” Randy said, sounding disconsolate. “It’s supposed to be a face mask. I guess it’s a hair remover too.”
“What’s it doing covering everything from your toes to your balls, man?” Henry gave up on the washcloth, noting that as the stuff dried it was peeling up in places, like it was supposed to. Great. Ripping it off would be easy for all ofthem,but hell on Randy.
“I was breaking out from the heat,” Randy said tearfully. “I thought if maybe I put this all over myself, I could stop getting zits on my ass!”
“Oh, honey.” Henry felt for the kid, he really did. Randy’s complexion was that delicate ginger-and-cream kind that reacted badly to sun, soap, and a stiff wind. The thickest skin on his body seemed to be on his cock, and even that was exquisitely sensitive. “Did you think maybe you should test it on your face first? So you’d know if your ass and your abs could take it?”
“Whoa!” Zeppelin looked at him like he had solved climate change in one easy step. “Dude, that’s brilliant! Where were you?”
“At a funeral!”
“You don’t need to yell!” Now Fisher was almost in tears, so Henry held up his hands placatingly.
“Look,” he said, racking his brains. “We need to give him at least four ibuprofen before we start to peel this shit off, because this is gonna smart, okay?”
“I’ll be right back,” Billy said. “And for the record, he was halfway covered when I got home from working out. This isn’t my fault.”
Henry just looked at him, and Billy held up his hands and backed out gracefully. Then he looked at Fisher, who was the most obviously distraught. “You run down to the drugstore. There’s this stuff down there with lidocaine and aloe. We’re going to rub it on his skin after we rip this shit off. We need it stat, so don’t dawdle, okay?”
“Got it, Henry!” Fisher took off, his flip-flops sounding loudly on the stairs, the keys to his car jangling in his pocket as he went. That kid still did not pay rent. Henry didn’t even know where he wassupposedto live.
Without his shadow, Zeppelin was left standing helplessly with his goop-covered mitts in front of him.
“You,” Henry ordered sternly, “go wash that shit off. And try to listen to your boyfriend now and then. He’s obviously the brains of your particular operation.”
Zep stared at him. “My boyfriend?” he said blankly.
Henry stared back. “You didn’t know?”
“We’re only fooling around!” Zep laughed, but not very convincingly. “You know, guys fooling around?”
Henry tried to wash the red out of his gaze. Zep wasnotMalachi, and no amount of Henry’s past damage could make him that way. But still. “It’s not fooling around when he’s here six nights a week, Zep. It’s not fooling around when 90 percent of the time, it’s just the two of you. I don’t even know where that kid lives anymore. Do you? Hell, I don’t even know what clothes are his and which ones are yours!”
Zep opened his mouth and closed it, his goofy surfer grin deserting him for once. “But why would he want to be my boyfriend? The dude’s rich and only has two years to go before he graduates!”
“Then what’s he doing working at Johnnies?” Curtis asked.
“I dunno. One day we were on the schedule together, and we just never split up after that,” Zep said, like that made perfect sense. His face fell. “I… you know. Assumed that’s why we were only fooling around. He’s got better dudes to do than me.”
