Ronnie, I remembered something… oh, God…He’d whispered over and over as I whisked him out of the club and raced him home, Ronnie cradling him in the backseat. What he’d remembered, he hadn’t said, but it had been something bad. I figured he'd tell me when he was ready.
It wasn’t fair. Things were going well for Danny now and the assholes had reached beyond the corporeal, ruining the small amount of happiness he’d found again. Balling my fists until my nails cut into my skin, I stood over him, unsure of what to do. I needed to fix this somehow, some way. Falling to my knees, I kissed his cheek.
He stirred. “Jere?”
“I’m here,” I said, hearing the ragged misery in my own voice. “You need some more meds?”
He nodded, winced, and rubbed at his temple. And of course, the stress of the panic attack had set off another headache. I got some pills into his system and obsessively tucked him in, not wanting the chills to penetrate his warm cocoon.
“Be all right,” he murmured, his lashes pressed tight to his cheeks. “Just need a little time. Feel bad about…ruining my own party.”
“It’s your party and you can ruin it if you want to.”
He breathed out a little smile. “Okay, Leslie Gore.”
I didn’t want to disturb him by being overbearing, so I got dressed and made my way into the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee. Ronnie was ahead of me, as she stood at the gurgling coffeepot, looking as ragged as I felt, her dress hanging off one shoulder while her hair was a rat's nest.
“Oh, hey,” she said, offering me a weak smile. “How’s he doing?”
“Just gave him some more meds. He’s resting okay,” I said.
“That’s good, that’s—”
“You need to talk to him,” I cut in, not wanting to get distracted.
She frowned at me, her makeup running everywhere.
“He needs to know what happened.”
“He knows—”
It wasn’t lost on me this was hard on her too, but Danny came first. “No, you need to tell him. None of this second hand, condensed to the basic facts bullshit.Talkto him.”
Her eyes were ready to pop out of their sockets as I hit her with the truth. She nodded, looking at her chipped nails as if they could save her from what she had to do. “You’re right. I suppose I’ve been avoiding the topic because I don’t want to relive it either.”
“He loves you. You’re dear to him. Whatever is holding you back he will understand. Do it for him.”
“Gosh, Jere. You’re amazing,” she said, tears pooling in her eyes.
A smile ticked at my lips. I was finding it was easy to be honest about my thoughts and feelings lately, especially when it came to Danny. “So I’ve been told. I’m going to hit the gym because I really need a punching bag right now. Are you sticking around for a bit?”
“I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying right here,” she said and poured some of the coffee into a cup and offered it to me.
I accepted, dumped a bunch of cream and sugar into it, then hopped in my car. I wasn’t much of a boxer but it turned out pounding my fists into a punching bag repeatedly, did not in fact, relieve stress like I’d been told. Instead, it stoked the fire inside, my darkness slipping through the bars of its cage. I didn’t stop beating the bag until sweat covered my body and my fists started to tingle, the scrapes on my knuckles bleeding through the tape. The occasional gawk and whisper from the gym rats let me know it was time to retire. By the time I showered and walked out of the gym, it was almost noon. How the hell was I going to get through the rest of the day? I was still humming, my body begging to be of use.
As I stood in the gym’s entrance, blocking the way, I came to a conclusion—you couldn’t move past something if had its sticky hands all over you, holding you back. Danny wouldn’t be able to move on with his life, knowing those assholes were still out there. He had a panic attack remembering a snippet of the assault. What would happen if he saw their faces on the television, or bumped into them on the street? What if he had to testify against them and be forced to relive it all over again?
An idea trickled into my mind, and I jumped in my car. I found the nearest public library and sat down at one of the computers. The last time I’d been in a library was with Danny when we were teens. While he studied, I wandered off and found the sex-education section. We’d nearly gotten tossed out for giggling over the illustrations. I wanted to make new happy memories with Danny like that. I should be here researching something silly like the history of dildos, but no, I had to dig up information on the assholes that had hurt him.
I managed to pull up a few news articles using their names. Most of the articles were from the e-zine,Real Queer Voices. They talked about the lack of transparency and urgency bringing bigots to justice and the lasting impact on victim’s lives. Most of it was over my head talking about politics and social justice and queer rights. I navigated to the most recent article, published yesterday morning. It identified Danny’s attackers, complained about the police taking so long to find them, then went on a tangent about how the media ignored queer problems becauseReal Queer Voiceswas the only outlet covering the case. All good points, honestly.
Focusing on the image of the assholes, I wanted to ram my fist into the computer screen. I closed my eyes, focused on my breathing, and forced the darkness back into its cage. When I was ready, I continued on. Something twisted arose within me as the article divulged the company they’d worked for—Windy City Maintenance, a conglomerate for Hess Services. A quick search on Google told me the company’s headquarters wasn’t far.
The problem was, I knew I should leave this alone. The little part of my brain that ruled over common sense and logic was screaming I needed to let the justice system handle it, commanding me to go home to take care of Danny and work on making him new memories,happymemories. I couldn’t let it go because Danny deserved an answer to why they’d done what they had, as did I. It shouldn’t have taken a tragedy to bring us back to each other. I thought about what Danny had said—his innocence had been stolen from him.
I closed out the browser and left, a surety in my step as I drove over to the address listed for Windy City Maintenance. Their headquarters was an office building in the back of an industrial park. I pulled into a parking space and sat at the wheel, staring ahead at the place of business. The whole damn thing needed to be shut down and the building bulldozed to the ground.
But, what would I do now? Whenever I was faced with a conundrum, I’d ask myself, what would Danny do? The answer was a resoundinghe wouldn’t fucking be there in the first place.
