Vieux Carré Voodoo (31 page)

“And the theft really brought down the theocracy?”

He nodded again. “The underground used their religion
against them. It worked, the theocracy fell, and democracy found its way to
Pleshiwar. The priests, of course, never took kindly to being out of power—and
they recently hired the Wolf to track down the thieves and find the Eye.”

I took a deep breath. “So, when you first came here all
those years ago, you had a lot of work in New Orleans, didn’t you? Looking for
the Napoleon death mask, keeping tabs on my uncles, and of course, Doc.”

“It’s almost like our paths were meant to cross, isn’t it?”
He smiled at me. “Seriously, Scotty, it’s like fate brought the three of us
together. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know, Colin.” I wasn’t just saying it. It would be
so easy just to fall back into his arms, let him back into our lives. “I mean,
we need to talk to Frank.”

“Of course,” he said, and we fell silent as we walked. “I
can’t stay here permanently, anyway,” he said as we turned at the corner at
Barracks. “My work takes me all over the globe. I mean, I can get back here
whenever I can…”

“Colin—” I stopped walking. “I can’t speak for Frank, but I
can speak for myself.” I took a deep breath. “Neither one of us ever stopped
loving you. That’s obvious. Even though we were hurt when we thought—” I inhaled
sharply. “Well, you know what we thought. But we never stopped caring about you,
or missing you. But what you’re asking…” I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can
live like that—knowing your life is always at risk, that you could be killed and
we’d never know.” I wiped at my eyes angrily. Stupid tears, anyway. “That was
really the worst part of the last three years—wondering if you were dead
somewhere, and not knowing.”

“Hey.” He put his arms around me. I resisted at first, but
finally let him hold me. “I wish I could give it up, but I can’t. I love what I
do.”

“I know.” I pulled away from him. “And you wouldn’t be happy
if you gave it up. And if you weren’t Superspy Colin, you wouldn’t be Colin.” I
smiled a little ruefully. “You would have never stayed in the first place if it
weren’t for my uncles and the Russian mob, right?”

“Well, Doc was here.” He kissed my cheek. “You have to know
that leaving you and Frank was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he added.
“I do love you both.” He hesitated. “All the stuff I told you—about what
happened to my family, why I left the Mossad—that was all true.” His eyes shone
with tears. “Scotty, I never thought I’d be able to love another human being
again as long as I lived. I thought that part of me died with my family. You and
Frank—you made me feel alive—
human—
again.” He wiped at his eyes. “I
love you both.”

“I know you do.” I laughed a little. “You let Frank beat you
up yesterday, didn’t you? You could have killed him with your bare hands if
you’d wanted to, right?”

“I don’t kill unless I have to—self-defense, or to protect
someone else.” He started walking again. I fell into step beside him. “So, where
do we go from here?” he finally asked when we reached my gate.

“One last question.” I held up my hand. “You killed Levi,
didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

“He was working for the Pleshiwarians,” I went on. “They had
no reason to kill him—he was working for them. You did it, didn’t you?”

“Don’t hate me,” he whispered. “He was going to kill you.
He’d been hiding on the roof. I saw him climb down—and he had his bag of torture
tools with him. He was going to torture you and kill you. I tried to stop him,
but it was kill or be killed. I didn’t have a choice.”

“And how did he end up on my balcony?”

“I lugged his body back up to the roof. I hid his bag of
tools in the shed in the courtyard.” He gave me a wry smile. “I was going to get
rid of the body later. They’ll never admit it, but I think the Ninja Lesbians
rolled him off.” He couldn’t look me in the eyes. “Just to fuck with me.”

“Nice friends,” I replied.

“They really liked you.” He still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“They thought you and Frank were great—especially during Operation Rescue Mom
and Dad.”

“Oddly enough, I liked them.” I shook my head.

“So, what do we do now?”

This was the moment I’d been dreading.

I had to say good-bye.

“I will love you as long as I live,” I said, my voice
quivering a little. I stopped and took a deep breath to steady myself to say the
words I didn’t want to say. “But I can’t do this. I just can’t. Your work is who
you are, Colin. You wouldn’t be Colin otherwise. I can’t ask you to give up your
work, it’s not fair to you. But I can’t—Frank and I can’t—live on, wondering if
this is the time you aren’t going to come home.”

“Maybe,” Frank said from behind me, “we can.” He put his arm
around me. “What is it you always say, Scotty?
Life doesn’t give you
anything you can’t handle, it’s how you handle it that matters.
” He put his
other arm around Colin. “We love him. He’s in our blood, whether we like it or
not.”

Colin’s eyes got wet.

“And life is about grabbing brass rings, right?” Frank went
on. “Well, I’d rather have this brass ring for whatever time we can steal with
him then never see him again. If he gets killed, well, we’ll deal with that when
the time comes. But when that time does come, I’d rather have memories to
cherish than wish we hadn’t made him leave.”

My own eyes were getting wet. “Do you mean that?”

Frank kissed the top of my head, and kissed Colin on the
cheek. “I mean it.”

“In that case,” I gave them both a sly look, “we’ve got some
lost time to make up for.”

The gate slammed shut behind us as we ran for the stairs.

The entire auditorium was dark. The crowd was restless and
murmuring amongst themselves.

Suddenly a spotlight shone on a curtain. Over the
loudspeaker announced, “Our next contest is one fall, twenty-minute time limit!
Introducing first—at six feet four, two hundred and thirty pounds, FRANK
SAVAGE!”

The entire crowd started booing, and Mom whispered to me,
“What is wrong with these people? Why are they booing Frank?”

Before I could answer, he leaped through the curtain and our
little group started cheering. Of course, we were drowned out by all the boos,
but we were all jumping up and down and clapping and screaming.

He looked incredible. His head was completely shaved down,
as were his torso and legs. He was more tan than I’d ever seen him, and he wore
it well. His every muscle rippled as he struck poses, which made the crowd boo
him even louder. He was crammed into a pair of skimpy black tights with two
silver lightning bolts coming from either side, meeting over his crotch to form
an arrow pointing down. It made his bulge look enormous. His oiled skin
glistened in the light. He was wearing black kneepads, black elbow pads, and
black leather boots that stopped just below his knees. Every muscle was crisply
defined. He ignored the boos at first as he started walking down the ramp toward
the ring, where his opponent—a lean young man with long hair and wearing all
white—was waiting for him. He started flipping off the crowd and acting like he
was going to punch certain people who leaned over the rail to get in his face.

“Jesus,” Colin whispered from my other side, “he looks
amazing. I want him to fuck me right here and now.”

“That’s later,” I whispered back, watching as Frank climbed
up on the side of the ring and vaulted over the top rope.

I was so proud I was ready to explode.

It had been four weeks since I’d found the Eye. Abhwesar had
been extradited back to Pleshiwar to be tried, and the Eye had been returned to
Kali. Frank and I hadn’t wanted to keep the fifty grand Blackledge had paid us,
so we wrote a check to the NO/AIDS Task Force so the money would do some good
for some people. And for two glorious weeks, the three of us had a blast—until
the training school reopened and Frank had to go back.

And now he was grabbing that brass ring, experiencing the
dream he’d had since he was a little boy.

The referee was patting him down, and Frank was yelling at
his opponent. He was doing a great job—the audience absolutely
hated
him.

The bell rang, and Frank started beating on the kid—whose
name I couldn’t remember. Kid Kharisma, or something like that. He was good—he
and Frank worked really well together. Frank had told me that the Kid—despite
only being twenty-two—was an old pro and had been working the wrestling circuits
since he was seventeen. Kid Kharisma was a lot shorter and smaller than Frank,
but he had a great body, too—it just looked like nothing next to Frank’s.

Of course, I was just a wee bit prejudiced.

As the match went on, it became more and more apparent that
the Kid was just a punching bag for Frank. What was really funny was the way Mom
and Dad were getting into it. They were yelling and hollering, screaming at
Frank to kill the Kid.

They are so cool.

And like Colin, I was getting more than a little turned on.

At one point, as Frank hoisted the Kid into a torture rack
over his shoulders, Colin whispered, “Damn! You think he’ll do that to me?”

I smothered a laugh. “Maybe if you ask nicely.”

“I’ll beg!”

After fifteen minutes of nonstop abuse (the Kid really was a
pro) Frank finally pinned him to jeers and catcalls from the audience. They were
throwing empty cups and things at him as he climbed the ropes, flexing his arms
and swearing back at them. I had to stop Mom from going after a woman in the row
behind us when she called him a “cheating dirty son of a bitch.”

“It’s part of the game, Mom,” I whispered as I forced her
back into her seat. “They’re supposed to hate him.”

“I guess.” She scowled and looked back over her shoulder.
“But that bitch better hope she doesn’t see me in the parking lot!”

Frank thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard
afterward, when we all went out for a celebratory dinner. “Oh, Mom, I wish I
could have seen that,” he said, wiping at his eyes.

“I’d have snatched her bald-headed.” Mom winked at Frank and
hoisted her wineglass. “To Frank.”

We all clinked glasses, and I whispered to him, “I’m so
proud of you.”

“Thanks, I love you,” he whispered back, and added, “Was
Colin serious when he said he wanted me to put him in a torture rack?”

I nodded and tried not to laugh. “I think the three of us
are going to have a lot of fun when we get back to the suite.”

And we did.

They finally fell asleep, our sweat-soaked bodies entwined,
around about two in the morning.

But I couldn’t sleep, because I knew what the morning was
going to bring.

Colin had another job and had to catch a flight to Paris in
the morning. He was supposed to have already left, but he told Angela flat-out
he wasn’t going to miss Frank’s ring debut. We knew nothing, of course, about
the job or where he was going, or how long he was going to be gone. Angela had
promised to keep us posted, to let us know he was okay—or if he wasn’t.

It was going to be hard. But the people who loved cops,
soldiers, and firemen had gotten through it all for centuries, and found a way
to live with it. Frank and I also had each other—and my family. I knew my heart
would sink every time the phone rang when he was out on a job. I knew my sleep
would never be as deep as it would be when he was home with us and safe.

Life never gives you anything you can’t handle—it’s how
you handle it that matters.

Life had given me this incredible life, so who was I to
complain about it?

I had two wonderful men I loved, and who loved me back. I
had a great family. I lived in an awesome apartment in the most fun and crazy
city in North America. I had lived through one of the worst natural disasters in
the history of this country.

If New Orleans could survive that with her head held high, I
knew I could survive anything.

The alarm went off at six, and Colin got up and into the
shower.

Frank’s hand crept into mine underneath the covers, and
squeezed it hard.

Tears welled up, but I bit my lip and forced them back down.

“We can’t cry,” Frank whispered. “Not until he’s gone, okay?
He can’t be worried about us or he won’t be able to do his job.”

I nodded. And if he wasn’t focused, he could make a
mistake—and be killed.

So we made small talk—light idle chatter while Colin got
dressed. We joked about Frank’s future with the WWE, and how maybe we all three
could go through the training—we would make a hot three man tag-team, and become
household names…and the room phone rang. Colin picked it up, said “Thanks,” and
hung it up. “My cab’s waiting,” he said, hoisting his bag over his shoulder.

He hugged us both at the door, and I couldn’t help it. I
whispered, “Be safe, please.”

Colin didn’t say anything, he just nodded and broke free of
us and gave us that grin we loved so much. “See you soon,” he said, his voice
breaking for just a moment.

And the door shut behind him.

I took a deep breath and my eyes filled with tears. Frank
and I hugged each other, and we put our heads down on each other’s shoulders and
cried.

Finally, I wiped at my eyes. “Okay, enough sniveling!”

“Right,” Frank said, wiping at his own face.

“We’ll see him again, and sooner than we think.” I hopped
back into the bed. “Come on back to bed, Hot Daddy.”

Frank lay down beside me, and we put our arms around each
other.

He would come back to us.

I knew it.

Greg Herren is a New Orleans–based author and editor.
Former editor of
Lambda Book Report,
he is also a co-founder of the
Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, which takes place in New Orleans every
May. He is the author of ten novels, including the Lambda Literary Award–winning
Murder in the Rue Chartres,
called by the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“the most honest depiction of life in post- Katrina New Orleans published thus
far.” He co-edited
Love, Bourbon Street: Reflections on New Orleans,
which also won the Lambda Literary Award. He has published over fifty short
stories in markets as varied as
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
to the
critically acclaimed anthology
New Orleans Noir
to various Web sites,
literary magazines, and anthologies. His erotica anthology
FRATSEX
is
the all-time bestselling title for Insightoutbooks. Under his pseudonym Todd
Gregory, he published the bestselling erotic novel
Every Frat Boy Wants It
and the erotic anthologies vHis Underwear and
Rough Trade
(released by
Bold Strokes Books in 2009).