The Sound of Broken Ribs(23)

Belinda nodded that she did know.

“The next two were queers like me and Frank, too. We did a kind of double date, and Tony played fifth wheel. He was drunker than shit, like he was last night and the night he stabbed that dude outside of that bar, and we’d stopped up to Hunter’s Point to… well, to… you know. To do what straight people get to do in public without folks looking at them like they’re the devil’s own abomination.

“We were in one of the other guy’s cars. Frank and I were fooling with each other in the back seat. Them other two boys were around the back, one sucking on the other.” Carl blushed. Belinda would’ve sworn before a court of law that his dark brown skin turned a bright cherry pink as he stood before her, looking shy. The smile melted away as fast as it had come. “All of a sudden, I heard some screaming. Then I heard two gunshots. Frank and I hopped out of the car and—”

“Should you be telling her this?” asked Frank from where he now stood in the front door of the rundown cabin.

Carl shrugged. “Who she gonna tell, Frankie? I mean, she’s in as much shit as the rest of us, should she get caught.”

Frank waved Carl on, as if to say, “Go ahead and tell the rest.”

“Well, anyway, Tony shot both of them guys. Never told us why. But when we first come around the car, Tony threw this little shit of a gun at me, and me not knowing what it was, I caught it. ‘Cause, you know, when something’s thrown your way, your first instinct is to catch it. So I caught it and got my fuckin’ prints all over that shit before I realized what it was. Tony told me and Frank that if we ever told anyone, he would out the both of us. I didn’t much care about being outed. What kind of fuck a guy my size care about what people think? That’s right. None. But I had my fingerprints on that gun, and I was worried about how Frank would be treated if his parents found out… well, you know.

“The last guy he killed was already dead when we got here. Tony called and said he needed help lifting the tranny out of his truck. So we came. I guess we’re stupid fuckers for hanging around Tony, but having what he had on us, you can see why we didn’t want to upset him. If we’d gone from hanging out with him all the time and drinking and shit like that to ignoring him, that gun would’ve popped up somewhere where the police could find it and I’d be one strung up nigger.”

“Don’t call yourself that—please? For me?” asked Frank.

“Sorry, Frankie.”

Belinda said, “What happened to the last guy? The one before Paul?”

“First, I don’t think your brother knows he’s gay. I think he likes men, but he don’t like the idea of liking men. Ya get me?”

Belinda nodded.

“He’s always going out with us. He never picks any guys up, but that don’t mean anything. I knew a guy that used to sit outside of gay bars because he said that going inside was what would make him queer. Didn’t make any difference that he’d approach men who came out and ask them if they wanted to have some fun. At least he didn’t go inside the gay bar.” Carl waved his hands and made ghost sounds. “Anyway, I think your brother is like that. I also think that… that maybe… maybe Paul didn’t rape you.” Carl dropped his head and stared at his kneading hands.

After a moment of heavy silence, Belinda said, “You think Tony had a thing for Paul? Is that it?”

“Does a bull have balls?” Frank asked.

*

The residual anesthesia vanished just after nine that morning. A fog of pain and hysteria descended and Lei lost her way. Harry stroked her hair through the worst of it. She could see in his beleaguered, bewildered face the look of a man outside of his comfort zone. He loved her, she knew that, but he had no idea how to handle the squealing banshee his wife had become.

Because all she could do was squeal. Like a pig caught in a trap. The squealing only made things worse though. The pressure exuded on her throat and face as she sweated and whined caused her jaw to throb. A nurse with skin the white of Elmer’s glue and her blue hair pulled up in a ponytail came in to give Lei something for breakthrough pain—something the nurse called Percocet, which she had crushed and prepared for Lei’s NG tube before entering the room. It was a pill and should last longer than a shot, or so Nurse Elmer’s Glue said. Lei could understand why they called it breakthrough pain. She felt that, fueled by agony and given the chance, she could explode through a wall like the Kool-Aid man.

The shot in addition to the drip of her pain pump did little to dam the flood of waking nerves. Her tail bone throbbed, as did her hip. Her crotch beat like a war drum. Her face burned and ached, a deep, dark, crippling pain that felt like an infected tooth impacted with molten iron. Her shattered knee, which was still aimed at the television like a great white cannon, spoke in thuds, like Morse code. Its message was simple: Explosion imminent.

But, oh God, her ribs—her ribs hurt the worst. No. “Hurt” wasn’t a strong enough word. She felt as if she were a bellows with broken sides. With every inhale and exhale, things ground and rattled inside her. These sounds were followed by pain the color of blood. She saw her small view of the world, this private room at Mercy Medical, through a veil of blurry redness. Tears pooled and poured. She writhed—a woman laying on a bed of coals.

Through it all, Harry remained. He remained and worried and, at one point, cried with her. He tried to hide it, but she knew when her man had been brought to tears. Even if those tears never fell. At some point in history, men had been required to show no emotion lest they be labeled soft. Lest they be labeled less than a man. Lei thought this masculine mindset was bullshit. She loved that Harry could cry for her even if he couldn’t allow himself to show it. Programming was a motherfucker.