Clear Water (8 page)

He was hung like a frickin’ donkey, and uncut, and Patrick had noticed but pretended he hadn’t because it seemed rude, somehow, to make big goo-goo eyes at someone you’d fallen completely apart on.

So Patrick’s imagination was doing the undressing, peeling down the wet boxers and opening his mouth to take in that lovely cock.

Patrick started to squirm, both aroused and uncomfortable. He’d never really enjoyed giving blowjobs before.

He gave them—he sort of had to. You didn’t get a boyfriend without opening your mouth while on your knees. But he’d always hated the feeling of those hands on the back of his head, the expectation that he
could
take more down his throat, and the way he had to patiently explain that yes, they needed a condom if they were going to shoot in his mouth—and even before, if they hadn’t been cleared of herpes or gonorrhea and any other STDs. (Seriously—had he been the
only
one paying attention in health class?)

So he was surprised—more than surprised—when his first thought about Whiskey’s nude body was that he wanted to touch it with his mouth. But the thing was, he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to
devour
it. He closed his eyes then, Whiskey’s form assembling behind the closed lids, and imagined a prone Whiskey, a patient Whiskey, waiting for Patrick’s mouth, waiting for his touch.

Even in his imagination, his hands shook.

He fell asleep right when his mouth had moved from the hard muscles of Whiskey’s chest up the corded, taut neck, along that square jaw, and to a hot, accepting, open-mouthed kiss.

He woke up when his dream shifted, and dream water started to pour in through dream hatches, and dream Whiskey wasn’t there to bail him out.

I
T
WAS
still dark, and the air outside the quarters had turned cold, with a breeze coming off the river that cut right through the towel Patrick had dragged outside to the ship’s prow as a blanket. Whiskey was shaking his shoulder, and Patrick woke up quickly, knowing that his brain was still about half a block behind his open eyes.

“Kid—it’s three in the morning. What are you doing out here?”

“Are there frogs in stars?” he asked, and even
he
knew that didn’t make any sense. He started counting his fingers to see if he could get to ten and maybe make the connection between stars, frogs, and being out on the deck at three in the morning.

“Probably,” Whiskey answered. “Amphibians are one of the first forms of life in the evolutionary chain. It’s one of the reasons they’re so open to genetic anomaly. Is that really why you’re sleeping sitting up when I’ve got a perfectly good berth down below?”

“There was water coming in through the hatches,” Patrick garbled. He
knew
it had been a dream. Probably even a logical dream—something anyone would dream when he’d been pulled from a drowning car not much more than twenty-four hours earlier. But his words were still half a block behind, and they were winded with the sudden jerking from sleep-thought to awake-thought, and he couldn’t seem to make the word “dream” address anything that had led to his restive walk to the top quarters and the decision that he felt safer on deck.

Whiskey didn’t look surprised, though. He just nodded his head. “Yeah? Well, if there was water coming in through the hatches, maybe we should go see if it’s gone out again, what do you say?”

“Will the frogs be gone?” And… he had no idea where that had come from.

Whiskey shrugged. “Probably not. If you’re like Fly Bait and me, you’ll be dreaming about them for a couple of months. C’mon, kid, gimme your hand.”

Patrick did and found himself hauled up, stumbling into Whiskey’s solid, warm body.

Mmmm…. Patrick wrapped his arms around Whiskey’s waist and closed his eyes. “You smell like sweat and river,” he said, and it was true. No soap, no expensive cologne, just sweat and river. Good smells. Not smells he’d ever thought to seek out, but he started burrowing against Whiskey’s skin just to bring them closer.

“That’s because I’ve been sweating on the river,” Whiskey told him logically, and then, keeping Patrick tucked under his arm, he navigated the way across the deck and down the stairs, across the shadowed living quarters, and to the berth.

Patrick hesitated at the berth. “Water.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll be there with you to make sure the water stays out, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna have a woody in the morning, okay, kid? Don’t get any ideas—we’re not doing that.”

“Damn.” Well, that was disappointing. All of the sort-of-shitty boyfriends who had simply assumed Patrick would put out, and this one, who smelled like sweat and river, was telling him to give it up. But that was okay, because sweat and river were apparently going to lie down with him, and he liked that.

He barely remembered lying down, and then the smell of river and sweat engulfed him, and he fell back asleep.

W
HISKEY
was gone when he woke up. In fact, as he padded out to the kitchen, he saw that Fly Bait was too. There was a note, a list, and a set of keys on the counter.

1994 Celica, dark red w/primer spots.
Get gas at dock pump. We have an account.

Follow road up to levee. Go right. Walmart eventually.

Get following: milk (2%), yoghurt—you pick, pasta & sauce, hot dogs, mac & cheese, lunch meat, non-stale bread, three flats of bottled water, fruit that won’t die tomorrow, anything you feel like cooking, flip-flops and tennies to fit you (wear Whiskey’s flip-flops into town), socks, underwear, two pairs of cargo shorts, three T-shirts, Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, and anything you want with the change.

Be back by two o’clock, you can help us reorg the kitchen so you can sleep on the fold out.

Even if you fuck this up somehow, we won’t rip your head off. If you decide not to come back, leave the keys in the car and call us at this number so we can come get it.

W & FB

There was $160 in cash under the car keys.

Patrick looked at the cash for a while, just pondering. It wasn’t that he was thinking about grabbing the $160 and taking off for the hills; it was more like he couldn’t remember ever being given such a simple housekeeping task before. He’d done stuff like this when he was working his restaurant job all the time, but that had been self-motivated. He liked the job, so he did what the manager told him. He couldn’t remember a single time his mother had told him to buy milk or cook dinner or pick up something on his way home from school. His father had employed housekeepers—one to cook, one to clean—and shit had just sort of appeared. Patrick had gotten old enough to buy his own clothes, and the credit cards had appeared too.

And here he was, with $160 in cash and an injunction to buy stuff to make a household run. To be a part of something. Decide not to come back? God, he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to leave.

He took off immediately, which was a mistake. No breakfast, no yoga, no meds—fighting his way through his brain jungle was interminable. He must have consulted his list in Walmart about six-dozen times to make sure he got everything just right. He bought the clothes first, then the groceries and cleaning supplies so he could buy extra groceries right up to the limit, including tax. He shopped carefully—for one thing, he wanted to be trusted again, and for another, he didn’t want to live off of the yuck that was currently in their refrigerator anytime soon, and he knew that what he bought now could possibly be yuck later. He was pretty proud of himself, actually, and that feeling of good will lasted right up until he was pushing his cart past the electronics department to the register.

There, on at least forty televisions, half of them big screen, was his car getting pulled out of the river.

The sound was off, but the caption read “Business Owner’s Son Missing, Foul Play Suspected.”

Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. His father thought he was
dead?

A sub-zero ice floe settled beneath his skin, and his stomach cramped with anxiety. Oh, crap. He knew better. Here he had been, playing house, and he hadn’t taken care of his shit. He needed to call his
dad.

If you fuck up, we still won’t rip your face off.

Silly words, really, but for some reason they settled him. He could bring back the groceries to Fly Bait and Whiskey and then leave a message on his father’s machine. He didn’t need to face the world just yet. It would be okay.

That was his mantra, through checkout, through packing the groceries back into the tiny Celica, through the trip back down the levee to the quay. (He knew where he was now—about forty-five minutes down I-5 from Cal’s bar.
Jesus, Cal—where were you taking me?)
It would be okay. It would be fine. He would be fine. He’d tell his father that he was fine and that Shawn Cleary didn’t have to worry about Patrick ever again. Shawn would probably be relieved. It would be okay.

He didn’t stop to think about the future or that he couldn’t live with Whiskey and Fly Bait forever—but then, long-term planning had never been Patrick’s strongpoint. He just pulled the car up into the parking lot for the boat dock and grabbed his environmentally friendly blue Walmart bags and flip-flopped his way down to the quay.

As he neared the boat, he was startled to see Whiskey and Fly Bait on the deck, talking to a man standing on the dock whom Patrick didn’t recognize.

The man was wearing slacks, worn leather shoes, and a short-sleeved polyester button-up shirt with a cheap tie. He was talking to Fly Bait intently, taking notes on a little pad of paper, and he didn’t see Whiskey’s intent look at Patrick. Patrick did, and when Whiskey darted his eyes to the little fish/bait/gas shop at the other end of the quay, Patrick didn’t even hesitate to change his direction and walk straight for it.

He had enough change to buy a soda and some ice cream bars, and by the time he’d thrown his little bag in with the rest of the groceries, the guy had moved on down the docks. Patrick hurried over to them, his arms cording with the strain of $160 of Walmart food and groceries.

“Whowazzat?” he asked, taking the step from the dock to the boat so quickly he tripped. He would have gone sprawling, but Fly Bait steadied his shoulder and Whiskey caught him around the waist. He didn’t even acknowledge he’d almost gone over, and the two of them started taking the bags from him gently while he tried to talk to them with his hands.

“Whowazzat? Did my dad send him? Because I’m all over the fucking news! There was even a picture!” It had been his senior portrait. Six years ago he’d had a little bit of baby fat, and his hair had been
really
lame, but people might still recognize him. “I’m on the news and my dad thinks I’m dead and whothefuckwazzat?”

Whiskey and Fly Bait exchanged looks as Patrick started bouncing so hard on his toes that the boat began to rock.

“My dad thinks I’m dead! I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I… it’s just my dad thinks I’m dead and I probably have to pay for the guard rail and the salvage and I didn’t want to scare anyone I just wanted to fucking disappear. Oh Jesus…. It’s not like he gives a fuck anyway, why did he have to put me all over the fucking television?”

Whiskey was suddenly there—river and sweat (today was about ninety-eight and humid, so the emphasis was on sweat) and heat—and he clapped his hands on Patrick’s shoulders and held him there while he vibrated with the need to bounce some more.

“Patrick,” he asked, calmly, like he was talking about breakfast cereal, “did you by any chance forget your meds this morning? And your yoga? You’re back awfully early—did you, maybe, skip a little part of your morning routine?”

“I can’t take them without food—there was nothing to eat. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Who was that? I need to call my dad—who was that?”

Whiskey nodded. “Okay. Here. How about do this for a minute?” He extended his arm then, and cocked his hips, and Patrick was suddenly looking at his form. It sucked.

“Okay,” he said, taking his hands unselfconsciously and putting them on Whiskey’s hips. “You need to be like this. Move your hips
here
”—he adjusted them—“and fix your feet so they’re
here
”—and then he put out his hands to steady that surprisingly solid, muscular body. “Oh yeah—and look at your hand. No—move your neck so your chin is parallel with the ground, okay? Can you do that?”

Whiskey’s next words sounded like they were coming from gritted teeth. “This is harder than it looks, Patrick. Howzabout you do this one and show me how.”

Patrick stood up and placed his feet carefully, balancing his weight on his front foot. He extended his arms and leaned forward, keeping his chin parallel to the deck and his eyes on the ends of his fingers.

“Okay,” he said, his voice evening out. “Now, raise your hand above your head and follow it.”

Whiskey did so, and Patrick turned a little and gave him advice to adjust his form.

“Stop concentrating on me, kid—work on your own for a bit, okay?”

Patrick sighed. “I was going to be a teacher,” he said apologetically. “Maybe if I talk to them, they’ll keep the job open for me.”

“You could call them up,” Whiskey said, relaxing his arms and leaning back against the quarters. Patrick continued his pose, moving down to the triangle pose and feeling some of his agitation seep into the humid air as he moved.

“I will. First I’ve got to leave a message for my dad, though. He needs to know to stop looking.”

“We can do that too. Why didn’t you take the yoga job right away?”

Patrick snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“What? You too good for work?”

Patrick sighed, let out some more tension, and moved to the revolved triangle. “No,” he breathed, letting the sun sink into his skin, muscles, and bones. “That’s what my dad said when I told him I was going to get a job teaching yoga to help put me through school.”

Whiskey grunted. “Why’d he say that?”

Patrick shifted his weight, went into revolved triangle from the other side, caught his breath, and answered. “Because I’m a fuckup major. Why wouldn’t this be like anything else?”