Page 65 of Shades of Henry
“Ask me if I care if he’s going to be all right,” she snapped. “I dare you. Ask me.”
Lance sucked air in through his teeth. “I give, Auntie. Do you care that our friend is going to be fine?”
“No! Now, ask me if I care about half your junior college having sex in your apartment at all hours of the day!”
It was Henry’s turn. “Uhm, do you mind that our roommates seem to be having sex at all hours of the day?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “Yes, I very muchdomind. And I don’t care that you’re all young men. I don’t give adamnwho you’re screwing in there! Ask me what I care about!”
Well, they were in it now. “Uhm, ma’am?” Henry ventured. “Whatdoyou care about?”
“You assholes areloudasfuck! Now I tried to tell the super about it, but he got his head chopped off—”
“Throat slit,” Henry corrected before he could stop himself.
“Henry!” Lance growled.
“I was there—I saw it! He got his throat slit!”
“I don’t care if he got his spleen pulled out through his penis,” the tiny harridan snarled. “He didn’t do anything to stop the noise! Now we have a new super, and I tried to complain about the noise tohim,but all he said was he needed to get his books in order before he does anything about it. So I’m stuck with you people, screaming ‘Do me, do me!’ all night long, and now, apparently, you’re just screaming!”
Henry actually heard himself swallow. “We’re, uh, sorry about that, ma’am—”
“And what is this fuzzy stuff!”
“That’s our friend’s body hair,” Henry answered tersely, angry on Randy’s behalf. “And a very expensive seaweed exfoliant depilatory.”
“Go fuck in someone else’s building!” And with that, she slammed the door in their faces and left them on the echoing landing.
“Good answer, Henry,” Lance said.
“Shut up.”
“You can tell she was really impressed.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Are you going to want to talk about it to the super?” Lance asked, and they both winced.
“Sure,” Henry said, trying not to scratch all over his body. “I’ll just tell him that I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about. I mean, who’s actually on the lease?”
Lance blinked. “Uh… I have no idea. We go down and pay rent. I mean, it gets renewed every year, so it’s got to be someone….”
They squinted at each other, and Henry got a niggle of curiosity and a really great idea.
“Let’s go shower,” he said. “And calm the guys down. And then I may need to call my brother or maybe Galen.”
That seemed like a really awesome plan, but their day wasn’t over yet, and he didn’t get to that phone call for another week.
AFTER THEY’Dshowered—and of course by then, the water was freezing cold, but it was still hot outside so neither of them cared—Lance checked on Randy, who was lying on the inflatable bed because he said he felt bad about taking the whole couch. The aloe and lidocaine seemed to be working, as did the codeine Curtis had pulled out of his sock drawer that he’d saved when he’d gotten his wisdom teeth pulled the year before, and Randy was mostly comfortable and a little out of it, watching Pixar movies.
Curtis, Billy, and Cotton were all draped on one another on the couch, and Zeppelin and Fisher were having a quiet, intense conversation in their room.
Lance got out of the shower first, and as Henry scanned the room, he remembered that Cotton had come home early.
“Cotton?” he asked softly. “Is there anything wrong?”
Cotton’s eyes grew bright and shiny and vulnerable, and Henry wanted to cry himself. Wow. This day had started with a funeral and had just gotten worse.
