It Takes Two (35 page)

I mentioned the broken arms, fingers and ribs reported by Ralph Nype. Bud looked delighted. “Traction, huh? Gonna have to find somebody to wipe his butt after he shits, that right? That right?”

“Gentlemens,” Carmen cooed, setting down two iced Regals and leaning close to Bud’s ear. “Don’t let me interrupt nothing.” He stepped back, covering his ruined mouth, as if casually, with his hand. “But can I just say only that I express my appreciation,
mucho mucho
, for you catching those bastards who smudged my lipstick so bad.”

Looking up, Bud muttered something about the line of duty and no trouble at all, adding that “You was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mr. Ca— ah, Carmen.”

Carmen waved this away. “Was my fault, truly, Mr. Policeman. I should know better than to run in high heels.”

Bud’s jaw dropped half an inch. Carmen continued, this time speaking directly to me. “This is one very good cowboy you got here, boss. A real gentleman, like they say. He treated me with such respect when he interview me in the hospital bed. No make fun of me, all strictly business. We don’t none of us think you ought to let him off the ranch again.”

I heard Bud whisper, “Fuck,” under his breath. He didn’t look up.

Carmen shifted on his heels and made a joke. “So now tell me, you two big, strong gentlemens, wasn’t I right when Carter was first here and tipsy-face and insulting with his hands? When I say he deserve a Mickey Finn and a night on the loading dock with his pants missing?”

“If we can send him to Raiford on aggravated assault-and-battery,” Bud answered, finally glancing up, “he might get a dose of that yet.”

Carmen tittered and touched his sarong. “Maybe that’s what he’s wanting when he pinch me in first place.”

Bud smiled back. “Could send the bastard up wearing his Klan dress, and get him assigned to a Negro cell block.”

Carmen and I both laughed.

“Look,” Bud said, rising to his feet. “I owe you an apology”—Carmen’s expression turned quizzically neutral at this—“and a debt, I guess, for showing me that even a freak can be brave and ballsy.”

Carmen took a step back. Bud caught himself and raised a hand. Carmen spoke first. “No, no,” he said, his voice low, his mouth stumbling over the hurt places. “I been called worse since I was in short pants. It doesn’t bother me no more. I’m a sissy, a fruitcake. But you know what? Some men like freaks like me. Only it took me a couple of tours of duty to find that out. Also it took, you pardon the expression, gentlemens, it took balls for us sissies and fruitcakes to wear skirts and wigs in our soldier shows. I guess we was brave to try to dance and sing in high heels in front of five or six hundred horny GI’s day after day, night after night. So maybe”—he brightened—“you are right. Brave and ballsy freaks.”

Bud worked his mouth, clearly discarded a couple of retorts, then said haltingly, “Like I said. And you have a roommate? That you live with? Tommy over there?”

Carmen answered with a wink, “He plays more than the piano,
sí
.”

“Carmen and Tommy attend church together,” I said.

Carmen giggled. “Plays that organ too.”

“Tommy leads the youth group, the one involved in the voting campaign.”

“Jesus,” Bud answered, clearly shocked, but also impressed, and listening.

Carmen daintily pulled the hem of his sarong higher, revealing a shaved, shapely knee and thigh. “Jesus had balls,” he said, “under those blue and white skirts.”

Carmen picked up his tray, hefted it over his head and sashayed back to the bar, swinging to the lilting beat of Tommy’s “Once in Love With Amy.”

Bud and I sat back down. He clasped his fists together and began tensing and relaxing the muscles of his arms. At first he wouldn’t look at me.

“Offer’s still open,” I said. “Admiral Asdeck’s impressed as hell with you. The details—the private room, you and me in some kind of partnership—those are negotiable.”

“You got balls, too,” Bud said, looking up, half smiling. “Because what you call details, that’s what needs the big discussion. And I guess it’s my balls that’s in question, maybe. Do I have the balls to quit my county job when I just been promoted? And when the boss might decide to run for higher office in a year or two? Do I have the balls to work in a racy place like this? Do I have the balls to…negotiate, is that the word? Mixing it up with you one day and asking you for the afternoon off the next?”

I laughed. “How about we keep our clothes on when we’re working?”

“Naw. Here’s what I mean, Dan. Do I have the balls to do what we’re talking about, and then go to church in LaBelle with my aunt or shop for shoes in the men’s store or eat lunch at the Arcade and put up a good enough front so’s not to worry about what people might be thinking and saying?”

I thought before I answered. “You know, I’m dead sure the admiral took out an insurance policy before he opened this place.”

Bud looked at me funny. “Why you changing the subject on me?”

I shook my head. “I’m not. He took out a local policy. And you’d be covered, just like I am, and Carmen and Brian and Lou. I buy shoes where I want to. The Klan can kiss my ass. That little misunderstanding is over.”

He cocked his head and threw me a narrow look.

“But you’re right,” I continued. “The card games, the whiskey, you and me mixing it up, most of that’s technically against the law. Nobody’s forcing you. You have to be sure you want to go with us.”

He leaned close to me. “One thing I’m dead sure about now. I’d rather mix it up with Coach Dan than with Miss Slim Nichols. And I figure you’d rather have a steady thing with your fishing buddy than break in some fucking Yankee snowbird every weekend. That right?”

“That’s right,” I whispered.

He wiped his mouth with his hand, then removed the shades and peered directly into my eyes. “Thought I’d had the corners knocked off, Dan. You know: been around, seen the world, served in the Corps and walked some rough patrols. Kinda the same as you. Shook the sand out of my shoes and tried things.” Then he blinked and looked down. “Maybe I’d even tried a few things with a buddy or two before I met you. More than just grab-assing.” His voice was strained and tight. “But if it’s only bumping around in the dark or mixing it up in a shower room, and you can’t chat and make it mean more than two bulls pawing up a paddock, what’s the use?”

“There isn’t any use,” I answered. “But when it does mean something, then…that’s different. When it hits right.”

“That’s what you made me think about.” He took a deep breath. “Only it took a while to penetrate my thick skull.”

“Mixing it up isn’t a relationship, Sarge. But two people who get together and plan to stay together, however they can do it, and who say they care about each other a lot, maybe even, you know, love each other, that’s a relationship. And it takes two—the two of us working at it.”

Bud’s hands gripped the chair arm. “Working together all the time. Except, like I said, that’s the thing that worries me. We got to be careful how we act. Because, see, I spent a bunch of time chewin’ over what happened last Sunday night. And what I got to finally admit is my red-eyed jealousy.”

“Because I went to bed with Father Bridge?”

“Right. Yes. Some priest he is. But I guess I owe him one too. Because you and him getting together made me remember how I felt when Coach Andy quit treating me special. And how this felt the same way.”

“The jealousy, you mean?”

“And the lust—just the pure, blue-balled, shoved-aside lust. And something else too—caring about somebody, like you say. So you and me, we got to check that out. Because I’m not ready to let you go pogie hunting every weekend and take a chance on you gettin’ away from me. I been too lonely for too long.”

“Me too,” I said.

“See, I never caught on to the right language, how to talk to a man about this. And growing up, I didn’t have a word to say to women.” He laughed softly. “Lot of ’em talked to me, though. But it wasn’t any good. And when I got back to La Belle after the war, well, lonely doesn’t cover it.”

“And you heard about the Lee County job?”

“Sure. Country goes to town. The work was good. And I met Slim, and we started going out.” His hands made fists again. “And that helped some.”

My own voice wasn’t entirely steady. “You’re a damn brave man.” I tapped his near fist, nudged it open. “Goddamn life-saver.” He turned the hand up and I tapped it again, suppressing the temptation to clasp it in mine.

“I still got a lot to learn, Dan.”

“Doing fine.” My hand withdrew across the now narrowing gulf. “We both do.”

His temporarily orphaned hand slapped the chair arm once more. “You made me see something I couldn’t of imagined. Those things you told me—about losing your buddy Mike. About what it meant. How you felt when he turned up missing. Well, I just played that alongside what I felt about Coach Andy and, well, about you going off. Mixed it up, flipped it over, added in Slim and then subtracted her. May get to be a tight little situation, with her working here and all. Not that she isn’t a real nice lady. We’ll see.”

Rising to my feet, I held out my arms. “You want to dance with me, Buddy?”

He looked up, startled, and shook his head. “You kidding? Here? Anyhow, I don’t know how to dance with another man.”

“You’re gonna learn,” I said, pulling him upright.

He half embraced me, then turned to face the room. “No, I ain’t quite ready for that. Not with so many people around.”

After resetting the sunglasses on his nose, he slapped me gently on the butt. “You got a party to attend to. So why don’t you go dance with one of your girlfriends. Say we continue this discussion later on, Coach? You want to do that?”

“Yeah, I do,” I answered. I was about to ask why we needed to wait. But just then Emma Mae and the admiral began to stroll back across the room in our direction. Slim was right behind them, laughing and hefting a tray of boiled shrimp and cocktail sauce.

Bud moved an inch or two away from me, stood a little taller and, when the trio arrived, asked Emma Mae what was up.

Emma Mae punched his chest with her forefinger, a Raggedy Ann grin on her face. “You boys think you’re so smart. But didn’t nobody say a word to me about those prick-tease movies the admiral brought over from Miami couple weeks ago. ’Scuse my French, Slim. So we got to have another peep show. Just for laughs. You all with me?”

Slim cocked her eye and said, “Count me in, boys, as long as it’s after I get off shift. And didn’t somebody say Admiral Bruce ought to be in pictures too? Quite a man, I heard, once he gets his steam up.”

Slim and I needed to have a talk, I realized. Personal remarks like that amounted to insubordination. Firing the woman on the spot ran through my mind. I was about to say something sharp when Asdeck caught my eye, raised a glass and toasted gallantly that all present should bow to proven superiority in the stud-horse department, “because Lieutenant Dan Ewing was voted the number one swordsman in the Pacific Theater of Operations.”

Hooting, Slim jabbed Bud in the ribs. “Is that why you punched your buddy out last weekend down by the river? He hardly got hold of your belt. Is he too much for you to handle? I was kind of looking forward to seeing you two boys going at each other, really mixing it up! And I was thinking, maybe”— she shrugged delicately and dropped her voice—“if the three of us?”

My buddy looked confused and embarrassed. Firing seemed too good for the bitch now. Only strangulation would do. Once she was dead we’d take the fishing boat out to the Gulf and throw her body to the sharks.

Bud recovered quicker than I did. “Only three?”

Asdeck cocked an eyebrow, Emma Mae nodded happily and Slim barked a brassy laugh. When Tommy bridged from “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” to the romantic ballad “So In Love,” people got up to dance. Slim, Emma Mae and the admiral drifted away.

Bud’s foot nudged mine. “We don’t need no stag films, do we, Coach? Shower bath’s good enough for us, huh?”

When he increased the pressure, I pushed back.

But I didn’t want to start like this again. “I’m not Coach Andy,” I said finally. “I’m Dan Ewing. And you’re not my little jerk-off buddy.”

“Huh?” he answered. And then, “Oh, you mean, we’re getting serious about this.”

“You’re not Mike Rizzo either,” I said. “He’s dead. We’re us two.”

“Right. Yes,” Bud said as his leg gently pressed against mine. “And it’s gonna take a lot of discussion. Fact is, I guess you could say we’ve already started.”

“It’s kind of loud here,” I said. “For serious talk. You figure we ought to go somewhere else?” My heart pounded. This was it.

Bud turned to me. “Your place”—he was smiling broadly now—“or mine?”

“Upstairs is closer,” I said. “And quicker.”

Bud threw me a sideways wink. “You got a radio up there? So we could dance a little…first?”

Elliott Mackle’s
first novel,
It Takes Two
(2003)
,
was compared to the work of Christopher Bram and Carl Hiaasen.  The “why-dunit” crime story was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Mackle served four years in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam era, achieving the rank of captain. He was stationed in California, Italy and Libya, the latter the setting for
Captain Harding and His Friends
(2012
),
a sequel to the multiple-award-winning
Captain Harding’s Six-Day War
(2011). 
Hot off the Presses
(2010), a romantic exposé of the racial and sexual politics surrounding the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, is based in part on Mackle’s adventures as a staff writer for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
. The newspaper’s dining critic for a decade, he also reported on military affairs, travel and the national restaurant scene.  He has written for
Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, Los Angeles Times, Florida Historical Quarterly, Atlanta
and
Charleston
magazines and was a longtime columnist at
Creative Loafing
, the South’s leading alternative newsweekly. Mackle wrote and produced segments for Nathalie Dupree’s popular television series,
New Southern Cooking
, and authored a drama about gay bashing for Georgia Public Television. Along the way, he managed a horse farm, served as a child nutrition advocate for the State of Georgia, volunteered at an AIDS shelter, was founding co-chair of Emory University’s GLBT alumni association and taught critical and editorial writing at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta with his partner of 40 years.