Free King Perry by Edmond Manning Page B

“Clearly, I worried about the wrong shit.”
    “I try not to talk about cars while I’m on vacation. I think about cars way too much. But not while I’m on vacation.”
    Perry grunts and says nothing.
    “I’m glad you’re here,” I say softly. “I will always remember this vacation with you.”
    He says nothing, but he chuckles into his chest, some joke he does not share, relaxes a measure further, and then pushes back. I think he’s trying, for this moment, to appreciate this.
    When we see the guard’s beam flash in our direction, Perry’s arms tense, but I rock him and we watch in silence. Soon the guard turns around and heads back north, which means it’s time to ascend. We stretch out our arms and legs.
    I kiss Perry again, this time with more sexual intensity, because while this might be scary, we really are attracted to each other, and during our seated rocking, his fear shifted so that more of his personality is present.
    I make the hand signal for “go forward,” though it’s completely unnecessary. We climb a dozen steps until I signal a stop and leave the stone staircase. With the moon glowing behind clouds, the hillside remains dark. No problem; I did not hide my tools far. But the rock they’re under is big enough I have to put a little muscle into moving it.
    I return to our stair a moment later and without words indicate he should take them.
    “What are these for? Metal file and—what is this exactly?”
    “It’s a combo screwdriver and wrench. It’s a custom made, specifically designed for oil pans on tricked-out Subarus, not the standard engine. I know a guy. He crafted this for me.”
    “It bends funny.”
    “You carry them.”
    “Why?”
    “Perry, just do it.”
    He takes the two tools without further argument.
    “One in each back pocket. Don’t want them to click together and make sound. How tight are those jeans on your ass?”
    “Tight enough.”
    “So they won’t fall out?”
    “No.”
    “I’ll have to check, Nevada.”
    I grope his ass, checking the firmness of each muscular cheek. “Yeah, I’d say the jeans are tight.”
    He chuckles. “Wow, that was classy. And subtle.”
    “You do work on your ass at the gym, right? Some machine for glutes?”
    Perry scoffs.
    “Is that a yes?”
    Perry says, “Yes.”
    “Awesome. Your ass is amazing. Let’s go.”
    As we climb the stone stairs, I’d like to ask Perry if he thinks the phrase stone stairs sounds like a right angle, but I’m going to respect his wishes and talk less about my word quirks. For now, at least.
    Climbing these stairs reminds me of ascending from Billy’s basement after the kitchen light had been extinguished—the crack under the door turning black at last. Or daylight broke through. Poker night ended for another month.
    I don’t know why it took me so long to learn that I could crouch midway up the stairs and kick the rats down when they climbed up to find me. I guess I wasn’t a bright kid. Of course, if Billy had opened the basement door one of those exact moments, he would have seen me huddled, ripe for the picking. Always a risk to hide right there, but after an hour or two, he would stop daring me to come up.
    Stop it.
    What’s with all the Billy stuff? Is it because I told Perry my big secret about the rat bites? Is that why he keeps coming up? Billy has no place here, no place on a King Weekend. It’s my turn to banish him to the basement of my thoughts; I’m upstairs now. But for some reason, it doesn’t seem to work; Billy’s still at the top of the stairs.
    Go. Away.
    Stone stairs, stone stairs, stone stairs.
    We pass a tangled mess of chain-link fence, stomping over complicated shadows, and continue to sneak upward, climbing the remaining distance. Perry huffs, and I do too, because I could stand to lose some extra pounds. But I’ve done these stone stairs enough times to pace myself and know when to pause and breathe.
    We reach the top and pass through a ruined archway,