Light Before Day by Christopher Rice Page B

don't want to talk about it, but I hope it was good."
    "Anyway, after three weeks, I felt like I needed some space." The dishonesty of this statement struck me the minute I voiced it. That afternoon I had wanted a lot more than space. I had wanted a total release from the nagging voices convincing me that I was not worthy of a man as strong, confident, and beautiful as Corey Howard. That, or I didn't want to admit that I was having trouble living with a guy who tucked in my shirts for me, cleared my coffee cups before they were empty, and responded to my every honest emotion with a grave and distant expression that suggested he would spend the rest of our lives trying to talk me out of feeling differently than he did.
    "As soon as Corey left my place to go to work that day, I went to my dealer's apartment. He didn't have anything for me, but he told me to come back in a few hours. When I left, I thought I saw Corey's truck outside, but I told myself I was just being paranoid." I had Wilton's full attention and I wasn't sure I wanted it. "When I came back, my dealer didn't answer his buzzer. I waited for someone to go through the entry door, and I went in behind them. The door to the apartment was unlocked and Sa— my dealer was lying facedown on the floor. He was covered in blood. At first I thought he had been stabbed. He hadn't been. Someone had beaten the shit out of him and spread his stash all over the apartment. Practically every drug you could think of. It was everywhere."
    "So you couldn't call the police," Jimmy said.
    I shook my head. Wilton hadn't touched his food and neither had I.
    "What did you do?" he asked.
    "I called an ambulance and left."
    "Did you clean up the drugs?"
    "No."
    He raised his eyebrows, but his stare was steady and unblinking. "I take it you didn't mind the thought of your dealer spending some time out of town. Maybe you thought it would help you on the road to recovery."
    "I knew Corey had done it. I also knew that he couldn't afford a brand-new pickup truck and a three-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood on a car wash attendant's salary. He was getting checks from somewhere and didn't tell me where. At the end of three weeks, I barely knew anything about him, but he knew almost everything about me."
    "Is that what you said to him?"
    "Yes," I answered. "Then I told him I knew what he had done, and if he didn't stay out of my life, I was going to call the police."
    Jimmy was visibly surprised by the story's ending. Maybe he thought that I had been
    dumped. I picked up my fork and knife and cut off a piece of veal I didn't have the stomach for.
    "Did he?" he finally asked. "Stay out of your life, I mean."
    I remembered the visit Corey had paid to Billy Hatfill, the warning he had given Billy about me and my dangerous addictions, a blatant attempt to deprive me of one of my more glamorous sources of free liquor. "Sort of," I answered.
    He gave me some time to recover, and the two of us started eating our lunch. He took big bites that required him to work his jaw. I ate pieces so small a strong wind could have blown them off my fork.
    "Where do you think Corey's checks were coming from?"
    "I don't know."
    "Guess."
    "I know he was a Scorpio because he always wore this gold chain around his neck that had a scorpion on the medallion." I remembered how the medallion would brush up against my bare chest. "I know he didn't come from a rich family. I know he could barely remember his father, and he didn't want to talk about his mother. At one point, he mentioned tule grass—"
    "Tule grass?" Jimmy asked.
    "You can find it all over the Central Valley," I said. "From Bakersfield to Redding. It looks like wheat in the summer, and the Yokut Indians used it to make huts. He told me that someplace where he used to play when he was a kid was covered in the stuff. When I asked him where this place was, he changed the subject.
    "There's no way a guy like Corey wasn't making money off his looks. Not in this city.