Safe Words 3.11

If he’d shown up to the job site with Gus’s truck all dinged up he would’ve been a dead man. Or had to call from a ditch? In Gus’s brand-new truck, laying on its side with the door pushed in, his dip shit employee dazed and sitting at the side of the road?

An awful feeling of guilt twisted him even though he’d got away with spinning Gus’s truck out. He nosed the brand-new pickup truck behind the other Gus Stevenson van parked by the house at the end of the customer’s long driveway. The place was a quiet country home surrounded by trees; nothing glitzy, but he knew the place was expensive just from the neighborhood. His timing was great, Gus and Tintin talking to the customer on the customer’s doorstep. He took his time getting out of the truck, opening the console and the glove box to make sure there was nothing in there spilled when he spun out on the 80. Gus was still talking to the homeowner, a guy in his sixties with thick black-framed glasses and combed back hair, but Tintin saw Brian coming, and headed out to intercept him on the snow-shoveled walk.

“What’s up?”

Tintin said, “We’re all done here, man. We left some tools out the back, just go through that yard gate and cut to the back door. You know the big wooden toolbox?”

“Gus’s?”

“Yeah. It’s just outside the back door. Go grab it, will you?”

Brian said he would, then got closer to Tintin. “Fucking spun Gus’s truck out. I was coming along the 80 and the back end just went fucking crazy on me.”

“Did you have it in four?”

“No.”

“It’s fucking rear-wheel drive, you dick. Did you crack it up?”

“Not a scratch on it.”

Tintin chuckled and elbowed him. “Gus would have me skin your ass so he could wear it like a hat.”

“Keep that bald head warm in winter,” Brian said and they both laughed again.

“Hey, what are you doing this weekend?”

“Nothing,” Brian said. “What are you doing?”

“After we hit the weights on Saturday you want to go to April’s place?”

“April Mitchell? Who’s going to be there?”

“What do you care?”

“Well, shit, just tell me who’s going to be there.”

“Listen, you don’t have to come.”

“Fine, I’ll go,” he said, shoving his bare hands into his work coat. “Where’s the fucking tool box?”

“At the back door, I already told you.” Tintin took a step along the path where Brian had come up from the driveway and pointed to the gate that led to a yard around the side and rear of the house.

Brian said, “Where’re we going after this?”

“You and me grab some lunch, then we gotta drive up to Norwood, house up there, we’re taking the van. Shit, should I ask Gus if we can take his truck, let you drive?”

“Fuck off,” he said, and waved Tintin away, heading to the gate. Tintin was two years older, a weightlifter and MMA fighter, and a guy who had some serious connections. Like outlaw biker connections. That was through his brother, Owen. Brian lifted weights at the gym with Tintin since he started working for Gus. He’d known Tintin’s little brother from high school, didn’t hang out with him, but enough he could strike up a friendship with Tintin when he started with the HVAC and found Tintin working there already.

He knocked the snow off the top of the gate, grabbed the wood slats to shake the thin shell of ice and snow from the thumb lock. Fucking great, Gus’s tool box weighed like a hundred pounds and now he’d have to lug it to the truck through all this snow? He opened the gate, and had this weird feeling wash over him just as he pulled it open. No one had been through here, why would the toolbox—

Two monstrous Rottweilers hurtled from the side of the house, snarling and barking and growling. Two glistening jet black dogs with muscle like he’d never seen on a dog before. They galloped fifty yards to the gate in seconds, fierce and deadly and looking to bite his balls and face off.

He hollered with a shriek of fear and yanked the gate closed—four frantic times before it latched. The dogs hurled their heavy bodies against the gate and it shook with the force. They growled from their bellies and barked with savage fury. Tintin laughed the whole time.

Brian fell against the gate, the Rottweilers prowling on the other side, snuffling and growling still. “What the fuck, Tintin— What if they got out?”

“No way they’re getting out before you got that gate closed. You should have seen your fucking face.”

“What if they knocked it down before I had it locked?”

“Such a pussy,” Tintin lamented, still clutching his stomach from laughing too hard.

“Sheezus Christ,” Brian said, limping away from the gate, his heart pounding in his chest hard enough to hurt. “What’s the deal here, anyway? I thought you guys installed the furnace already.”

“This fucking guy,” Tintin said, quiet in case the home owner overheard him. “Fucking eye-tie, doesn’t even hardly speak English. More money than he knows what to do with, and he’s griping about the smell of his furnace, telling Gus it’s faulty and we gotta replace it. It’s just fucking factory fumes. But Gus is going to do the thing, make the guy happy, guy wants some plumbing work done later in the summer, too.”

“Such bull shit,” Brian said.

“Right? Guy fucking owns that jeans store in the mall, and another one, I don’t know where, like it’s that big one, the outlet.”

“I know it.” That’s where he’d bought Angel a sweater for her birthday two years ago.

Gus was all done now, coming down the walkway as the homeowner closed the door. Gus’s face was red from repressed anger, all six-foot-five of his bulk sweating through his collared work shirt, even in the middle of winter. “You two assholes done kissing each other,” he said, mad at them for no reason, “get in the goddamn van and get down to Norwood.”

“Yeah, we’re just waiting to grab some tools you guys forgot.”

Gus stared at him. “What tools? There’s no fucking tools, this wasn’t a fucking service call, it was a face-to-face. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Brian said, grumbling, shaking his head, knowing Tintin was busting up inside right now at what a dip shit he was.

Gus held his hand out to Brian. “Where’s my keys?”

* * *

Brian ate Big Mac meals with Tintin, two each, Brian sitting in the van’s passenger seat, parked at the McDonald’s with the engine running, facing out onto Charleston, just off the highway in Norwood, the Cracker Barrel and the Phillips 66 across the street, traffic crisscrossing, the snow on the pavement here melted to wet. Brian shoveled fries in his mouth. “Seriously,” he said, chewing, waiting before continuing. “Who’s gonna be at this party?”

“My brother’s going to be there.”

Brian faced Tintin to see if he was serious. “No shit. What for?”

“He’s just back in town for a week.”

“What’s he doing?”

Tintin thought how he would answer. “Laying low.”

“Cool,” Brian muttered, nodding, turning back to look out the windshield. “What’d he do?”

Tintin scoffed and dropped his hands in his lap. “Never ask anyone what they did.”

“What?—who’m I gonna tell?”

Tintin shook his head. “You ask some stupid shit like that at the party on the weekend, somebody’ll take you out back and bust your teeth out.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Yeah, they will.”

Brian smiled and batted his lashes. “Not with you there.”

Tintin laughed, and slurped on his extra large Coke. “My brother says to, might be me the one takes you outside and busts your teeth out.”

“You wouldn’t fucking dare.”

“If duty fucking calls, Brian.”

Brian scoffed. “That’s if you could take me.”

Tintin laughed silently. There was no way Brian could take Tintin—not in a fair fight. “Somebody’s getting roid rage.”

“Uh, that would be you.”

“I can hold my dose. You’re a fucking noob.”

“Noob or not, might be a big mistake you take me out back, n’I bust your ass in front of your brother.”

“Fucking try me anytime, Bri. How many fights have you won—on the record?”

“What if I got a weapon?”

Tintin’s eyes narrowed, less humor in those beady blacks now. “What if I got a weapon?”

“Let’s see yours.”

Tintin said, “Let’s see yours.”

They stared at each other a moment, an unsure communication between them. Brian wanted to show Tintin he wouldn’t back down, but didn’t want to wreck all the good grace he’d built with him. Brian laughed then, settling back. “I don’t got a weapon.” He sipped on his drink to wash down a mealy mash of chomped up Big Mac.

“Hey,” Tintin said, subject changed.

“What?”

“April’s sister was asking if you’re going to be at the party.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“What am I doing, lying?”

“You’re pulling my chain or some shit.”

“That would be funny. I’m just telling you, April says her sister was asking about you.”

“I doubt it. How old is she, anyway?”

“Seventeen now.”

“What does she look like?”

“I don’t fucking know, Brian, I don’t go to her high school. April’s hot, I’m sure her sister is, too.”

“Well, I don’t fucking go to her high school, either, but you tell me she’s asking like I know who she is... Doesn’t matter, anyway”—he put more French fries in his mouth—“I got a girlfriend.”

Tintin sighed, and smashed an empty Big Mac clamshell into the McDonald’s bag. “This shit again.”

Brian’s eye twitched and his jaw muscles flexed. He swallowed the fries unchewed. This shit drove him crazy. “What’s your problem?”

“You’re wasting your time with that fucking dike.”

“Hey, fuck you, man.”

“You’re wasting your time, Brian, someone needs to talk sense into you, you’re all puppy dog for this weirdo—”

“She’s not a fucking weirdo—”

“I don’t know why you sniff around her panties like you do, but if I were you—“

“But you’re not fucking me, okay? So just fuck off.”

“Make me fuck off, Brian.”

Before he even knew he was going to do it, Brian hurled the half pack of fries into Tintin’s face, then punched his bulky shoulder, fries scattering all over the driver’s side and across the dash. “Just fuck off, just fucking leave me alone.”

But Tintin swiped his arm across the cab, caught Brian in the neck, and shoved him back into his side of the van, grabbing two big grease-stained handfuls of his work coat, climbing into his side and putting his knee on Brian’s stomach and balls. Brian couldn’t breathe—but rage went through his brain like a forest fire.

Tintin elbowed him in the neck twice, his eyes glowering. “Don’t fucking hit me, you fucking asshole.”

“Don’t call Angel a dike,” Brian said through clenched teeth. They glowered, both of them smelling like propane and McDonald’s and grease and unwashed work clothes; Tintin’s single dangling cross earring reflected the gray snowy light, his lips pulled back revealing his crooked teeth.

Tintin said nothing, just breathed heavy, still holding two wads of Brian’s cotton canvas jacket. Then he shoved himself off of Brian and sat back in the driver’s seat. He shook his head, threw the bag of McDonald’s over to Brian. “Put your trash in that, we gotta get to the fucking house.”

Brian’s temples pounded. His neck swelled with his thundering pulse. He wanted to fight. Wanted to argue. Wanted to vent and fume. The truth was Tintin could fuck him up 99 times out of a 100. He gritted his teeth, swearing under his breath, wiping tears out of his eyes before Tintin saw them.

Tintin clunked the drive tree into reverse, but before he backed out he stopped. He stared right at Brian. “Okay, whatever. I don’t know if she’s a dike or not, but I know she’s done with you, Brian. You say she’s not a weirdo, but you know she killed Lacey fucking Palmer, and you can’t deny that.”

Brian said nothing, and put his seatbelt on, staring out the window.