5. 2
That couch was not designed as a bed for a six-foot-three man with stiff hips. By six a.m. I was up and dressed, in the kitchen making coffee. Black gold, that every ranch ran on. A ban on coffee would bring the whole beef industry to its knees.
I didn’t hear anything from upstairs. Sylvester had been up once in the night, floorboards creaking faintly overhead. He didn’t text me, though, so I wasn’t going to hover. If he was sleeping now, I’d let him rest.
Cold November air hit me as I stepped out the kitchen door and I was glad of my warm jacket. Must’ve been right on the edge of freezing, but the water in the trough by the pasture gate didn’t have any ice yet. I ducked into the side of the barn for lead ropes and a bucket with a handful of grain. Ro was a sweetheart and an easy catch, but Donner would run me round the field for an hour if I didn’t lure him.
When I had the horses, I led them inside and put them into their stalls. Donner kicked his door, demanding his breakfast.
“It’s early, greedy-guts,” I told him. “Calm your tits.” Still, I gave them their grain a bit ahead of schedule and slipped in beside Ro, brushing her as she ate. Normally, Sylvester would groom her. He’d confessed once that he liked being around the horses even more than riding. But a bad back wouldn’t take to wielding a brush and curry comb with the effort a muddy horse needed.
After I had Ro all clean, feet picked out, burrs removed from that silver mane— and I tell you, she had more talent for finding burrs than any horse I knew— I turned her back out. Riding wouldn’t be in the cards for Sylvester today, either. I groomed and tacked up Donner, though, and led him into the yard. He did best with being worked regular. I swung up and headed him off toward the hilltop trail.
Our short fall days meant the sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky had lightened enough to show the way. Donner was fresh and he danced and jibbed at every fluttering dry leaf and creak of branches. “Jeeze,” I told him, reining him in yet again. “Maybe I should quit giving you grain, make you live on plain hay till you settle your ass. Whadda you think you are, some polo pony?”
He ignored my threat to snort at a pair of redwing blackbirds rising from a field as we passed. I tipped my head back and grinned at the first hints of pink and gold overhead. Nothing on Earth beat this. Well, maybe being in Sylvester’s bed, but given my man was probably creaking around like a rusty hinge this morning, I’d take my ride. The wind chilled the back of my neck and I should’ve worn gloves, but the fresh air above and the fine horse under me were all I needed.
When Donner quit spooking at everything, I turned for home. The sun peeped over the horizon, its mellow golden light throwing long shadows across the ground. As I jogged Donner through the field leading to the barn, I saw the first workman’s truck coming up the drive. I raised a hand to wave, but then he plowed to a skewed stop in front of the barn, spraying gravel, and sat there. I rode over, vaulted off, and led Donner up to the driver’s window. “Are you okay?”
He waved at the side of the barn. “Did you see that?”
I turned. Looked. “Well, fuck.”
In the night, someone had come by with black spray paint and decorated the weathered red boards with “NO FAG HOTEL” in big, fat letters.
The workman asked, “What are you gonna do?”
I took a breath, because my first reaction was “kill somebody” and the second was “hide this before Sylvester sees it” and both of them were wrong. “I’m going to take some pictures. Maybe a paint sample. See if there’s boot prints. Then I’m going to let Sylvester know, and then I’m going to get you guys to paint over it.”
“Cold for painting,” the man said. “Won’t dry right. Are you really going to tell Mr. Sylvester?”
“Of course.” I wanted to protect him, but I was only his… whatever we were. Future partner? In any case, I was not his mother.
“He’ll be really mad.”
I am too. But Sylvester had made a bit of an impression with his sharp tongue a few times. They worried about his anger, not mine. “He needs to know.”
“You don’t think he’ll stop building?” The anxiety in the man’s voice was no doubt for his paycheck and not concern.
I laughed, though nothing was funny. “Not a chance. Sylvester doesn’t bow down to anonymous bullies.”
Another truck came down the drive trailing a puff of dust and stopped behind us. Morales got out and came over. “Well, that’s a mess, isn’t it?”
“One word for it.” I asked him, “You think red paint will cover that, or should we go black?”
“In summer, I’d say you could just do enough coats. In this weather?” Morales made a face.
“Okay,” I told him. “You go get enough black to cover it, even if it’s a crappy job. We can scrape and repaint in the spring. I’ll go get Sylvester.”
“Are you going to call the cops?”
I thought about it. One chance in three that Morse would be the responding officer and fuck if I wanted to see his pleasure. “I’ll report it. But they don’t need to come on out here.”
“Well, it’s your barn. I mean, Mr. Sylvester’s.” Morales gave me a sideways look. “I’ll go get that paint.”
I unsaddled, checked Donner’s hooves, and turned him loose to go play with Ro. Then I washed my hands well in the tack room before heading to the house. Was I delaying? Hell, yeah, I was.
But Sylvester was a big boy and he didn’t need me to protect him. When I entered the kitchen door, he was standing at the counter, sipping a cup of coffee. “You made an early start. There’s fresh coffee if you want it.”
“You look better,” I noted, coming at the problem sideways. And slowly. “How’s your back?”
“Definitely better. I think this will be a short bout. Give me a couple of days and I’ll be back in service.” He grinned at me with a hint of his usual wickedness. “So to speak.”
Man, I hated to squash that light. “Good enough to walk over to the barn?”
“Right now?”
“There’s something I need to show you.”
He hesitated, then set his mug on the counter. “Not a good thing, I take it.”
“No.”
“Remodeling problem?”
“Not directly.” I turned away, back toward the mud room. “You want help with your boots and jacket?”
“Might be smart.”
Sylvester braced a hand on my shoulder when I knelt to hold his boots, and let me guide his arm into his sleeve without cranking around too much, but he walked okay as we left the house. Morales’ truck was gone, and the workman guy had pulled on down to the bunkhouse, so it took Sylvester a moment to notice the graffiti. When he did, he stopped short.
“Well, fuck.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“Not yet.” I held up my hand when he started to ask why. “We’ve got three deputies that patrol around this area and one of them is Morse. If he starts gloating about how that’s our fault for shoving our ‘lifestyle’ in someone’s face, I might punch him. Hitting a cop is a bad idea.” The only thing that had saved his fat nose from my fist a time or two.
“Got it. We should, though. Leave it to me. I can keep my temper.”
“I can too,” I said, a bit stung. “I was being, like, metaphorical. Or hypothetical or one of those.” Although, actually, I’d been telling the truth.
“I know. You put up with me.” Sylvester nudged my arm. “Still, we want a paper trail. In case.”
“In case it happens again?” The thought had occurred to me. “How badly is this likely to mess us up?”
“On the plus side, it’s early days yet. On the minus side, shit like this is rarely a one-time deal, even if it’s just some bored kid. But we can fight back.”
“How?” If he said, Kumbaya and community outreach, I might punch him . Staring at that word in four-foot-high letters, knowing Sylvester had to see it coming from someone in my community, was bringing out the worst in me.
“Cameras,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Security. I have a budget line item for that. We just jump on it sooner, and maybe a bit quieter.” He walked closer, paused a few feet from the barn. “There’s some boot prints in the dirt here. Might pay to take a picture of those if you haven't yet.”
“Could be anyone, anytime. We got a ton of workers going through.” But I went to one knee and tried to get some shots of the treadmarks of what looked like a medium-sized wide boot.
“True.” Sylvester pulled out his phone and dialed 9-1-1. I only heard his side of the conversation, but it sounded like the dispatcher would send someone along when they got to it.
Sylvester stepped back and looked up. “Eaves of the barn there. We can put some cameras tucked up under, unobtrusively.”
“Don’t you want cameras to warn people off?”
“Now that depends. If there’s just one vulnerable point, like a door, yes, visible cameras keep them from trying. But here, we’ve got a whole ranch they could make trouble on. So here, I want to catch them in the act.”
“You sound like you’ve thought about this already.” I wasn’t sure if that was smart, to be prepared, or sad, that he’d been sure trouble was coming.
“We went through something like this at the hotel fifteen years back. Someone began setting off the fire alarm every few days, disrupting the whole hotel by holding a cigarette up to the smoke detectors in empty rooms.”
“Shit. What did you do?”
“Same as this. Cameras. We couldn’t put them in all the rooms for privacy, but we upgraded the hallways with better imaging and made sure all the doorways were covered. I’d figured it was staff, someone who had a key, but it turned out to be the moocher nephew of one of the longtime residents. A kid who’d dropped out of college, or maybe got expelled, I don’t recall anymore. His parents sent him to stay with the uncle, he was bored. Turned out he stole a master key from one of the housekeeping staff and blackmailed her into not telling, by threatening her with deportation.”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah. She was legal but her husband wasn’t. He was sexually harassing her too. We got it all on camera, him going into the room at the time of the next alarm, and him grabbing her ass and her fighting him off. She wouldn’t testify, but we got her ten grand out of his parents.”
“That’s something.”
“He was a piece of work. I expect he’s in prison now, although his parents’ money might’ve bought him off again.”
“He didn’t go to jail?”
“For a ‘prank?’” Sylvester did air quotes. “Nice white boy like that? No. But he got some community service, and his parents helped him pay the hotel a big fine to cover our lost expenses and damaged reputation. They shipped him off somewhere to be someone else’s problem.”
I huffed, but that was how the world worked. “You figure this is a bored teen?”
“You know the local people. What do you think?”
The letters were big and bold and slashed across the boards at a slant. “Man height, at least.” I could reach a bit higher, but not a lot, and I was tall. “I don’t know. How would a teen know or care about us yet? None of them were at that planning meeting.” Sylvester had gotten the permits about as fast as I’d expected when he said Half a million dollars. Speaking of how things worked.
Sylvester touched the paint, then looked at his fingertip where a tiny fleck of black clung. “They heard their parents griping about it, maybe? Someone who thinks we might take some of their business?”
“You’re not going to cut into the profits of Annie’s diner or the Shadyside Motel.”
“Probably not.”
I took a few more pictures, then turned to Sylvester who was standing a bit crooked. “Why don’t you go lay down for a bit. Cops’ll get here when they get here, for something nonviolent. You should be rested to deal with that.”
“I can call the security firm.”
“Sure. On your cell phone, from your bed, flat on your back.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?”
“Pretty sure the only bossy shit in this relationship is standing there leaning ten degrees to the left.”
Sylvester laughed and turned toward the house. Which left me wondering what I could do to get that nasty word out of my head. I went into the barn and pulled up our planning notes on the phone. Sylvester would end up with eight bedrooms, so we were planning for twenty horses at full capacity. Starting smaller, though. I couldn’t wait to have an excuse to go round to the local breeders and auctions and try out different rides, wave money at them.
The smell of the barn soothed me. I picked clean the two stalls I’d used that morning, even though they were mostly fine. Ran the barrow out to the manure pile. Caught up Donner and gave him the post-ride brushing he deserved.
When a sheriff’s cruiser pulled up out front, I was settled and ready to handle Morse. Except it was Deputy Lancaster who got out, slapping her hat on her red curls, which meant the conversation was going to be a whole lot easier. She didn’t promise anything, just asked questions like, did I hear anything in the night? Which, fuck me, I was up and down off that danged couch and still, no, I didn’t. When her report was filled out, she asked to see the property owner. Which was Sylvester and that only made sense. Even if I’d rather run interference for him, it wasn’t actually my place.
I called as we came in the door, so he could get decent, or upright, if he wasn’t. “Hey, Mr. Georgiadis? Police to see you.”
He came out of the office walking okay, only stiff if you knew how he usually moved. “Officer?”
“Deputy Lancaster.” She nodded. “Just need to go through this information with you and get your signature on your statement.”
I stood back while they checked off the info on her tablet, and Sylvester added the little he could contribute. Then he signed his part and she headed out, the sound of her cruiser disappearing down the drive.
“Mr. Georgiadis?” Sylvester cocked an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t want to give the cops the wrong idea.”
“Or the right one? We haven’t been that discreet.”
True enough. Morales had said, Your barn , meaning me and while he’d corrected himself, we probably weren’t fooling anyone. Still, the cops were different.
I must’ve looked uncomfortable, because Sylvester set a gentle hand on my arm. “Either way. It’s fine, Joe.”
Wasn’t fine , that knee-jerk impulse I had to hide my truth around the law. But I’d work on it. I touched his hand for a moment and said, “Thanks.”
Sylvester’s shoulders relaxed. “Now what?”
I checked my phone for the weather. “We’re up to forty degrees outside, so paint might stick. I’ll have Morales start painting the barn, and I’m looking at some trail clearing.” That was slow work, but somewhat easier in winter when the leaves were gone, revealing trunks and vines to be clipped.
“It’s your day off. You don’t have to work .” He let that last word drawl suggestively.
“You got something better for me to do?” I waved him off before the interested look on his face could go anywhere. “Nah, I’ll wait till I can blow you without you screaming in pain.”
“I might be willing to take that chance.” But he was standing bent over again and I thought he might be relieved.
“You heal up. I’ll go earn some more of those shares you offered me.”
“Absolutely. Add today to your equity.” He didn’t admit that in real money, my fair salary wouldn’t make much of a dent. But it wasn’t all fiction. I was pulling my weight for him and would do so every day.
“Take some meds. You’re still crooked. And lay down. Save the effort for when we need it.”
“Security’s coming by tomorrow, a city firm no one here should know,” he told me. “And yeah, now I don’t have to get up in a hurry to deal with Morse, I’ll go sack out.”
I kissed him under the ear. “My hero. Time to make that my smart hero.”
Sylvester laughed. “You always have to have the last word, don’t you?” The light in his eyes as he looked at me warmed my insides.
“Nope,” I told him. “That’s you.” And slipped out before he could reply.