Olive Juice

The police believed him. They didn’t even use words like person of interest about him.

Sex offenders in the immediate area were checked out.

Nothing. None of them.

They interviewed David. And Phillip. They understood why, that it was just protocol, but a great and terrible rage had filled David when the detective had asked if he and Alice had had any fights lately, if she had done drugs or was prone to leaving without telling anyone. Did she have a boyfriend? You know, anyone she was seeing?

“No,” he’d said to those questions, all the while thinking, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered.

She was just gone.

And late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come, David would stare at the ceiling and think about those two days it’d taken for the police to get their asses in gear. Two days it’d taken when even a layperson knew that the more time that passed, the less of a chance there would be to find them.

No witnesses.

No evidence.

Digger’s fingerprints were on her purse. But then so were David’s and Phillip’s and Alice’s herself. No one else.

She was pretty, and maybe that’s why they were able to get her on the news, because he’d find out later about the missing-white-woman syndrome. A black woman at the group meetings would tell him all about it, saying that her sister had gone missing, and no one had given two shits about her. “You lucky,” she’d said. “Latonya wasn’t—she had some johns, right? So, to them, to everyone else, she was just this prostitute. Just this whore who probably got picked up by the wrong person. You know what I’ve heard? That she probably deserved it. That she shouldn’t have been doin’ what she was doin’. They didn’t put her on the news. She didn’t have friends that handed out flyers. Her name wasn’t Dakota or Julie or Britney, so she ain’t gettin’ coverage. I got her kid now, right? She’s only three. She asks where Momma’s at. What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Sorry, kiddo, but Momma’s gone and people didn’t give a fuck about her because of what she done to make sure you had food in your belly. You lucky, David. Maybe not as lucky as you woulda been had your Alice been a white girl, but you lucky. I hope you find her. I hope we find them all.”

“David?” Phillip pressed.

“I don’t know,” David said finally. He didn’t look up at Phillip. “I just don’t know.”

Phillip sighed. “I know you don’t.”

“I am sorry, though.”

“I know that too.”

“Maybe I should—”

“I don’t think you should leave.”

Because of course Phillip would know what he was thinking. “Why?”

“Because,” Phillip said, “I haven’t gotten my fill of you.”

Fuck, that hurt. How long had it been since he’d heard those words? Before, to be sure. Maybe on one of their staycations when David had been above him, both of them panting, skin slick with sweat, muscles quivering in that way that showed they weren’t as young as they used to be. He’d probably said it jokingly, a saucy little smile on his face, chest and stomach covered in spunk, legs still wrapped around David’s waist.

And the first time, right? The first time he’d said that, David remembered very well. It’d been in September of 1992, and they’d been together for three days straight, and David was nervous that maybe he’d outstayed his welcome, that he was annoying Phillip. And when he’d fumbled through that, when he’d said, hey, if you want me to go, just tell me and I will, Phillip had squinted at him, that funny little smile on his face and said, “But I haven’t gotten my fill of you,” and David had maybe fallen a little bit in love right then. They hadn’t kissed yet. Hell, they’d only known each other for a few days, but it hadn’t mattered, not in the long run. Because Phillip hadn’t gotten his fill of David yet, and it became this thing between them. This mantra, this secret little code, and even when Alice had come crashing into their lives less than three years later, it still remained their thing. Like the staycations, it was there.

Here it was again, now. Like Phillip saying please, David

was next to powerless to resist it. And maybe he hated Phillip a little bit right then, because he knew. He knew what that did to David, and it was unfair. Yes, everything David had done to Phillip in the last six years probably more than made up for it (or that’s what he thought; if he were being honest with himself, he would know that he had a long, long ways to go), but here they were, sitting across from each other like Phillip hadn’t shown up on the arm of another man last summer, practically daring David to say something about it.

Yeah, he deserved it. Sure.

But that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Goddammit,” he said hoarsely. “Goddammit.”

“Gentlemen,” Melissa said, apparently unable to read a fucking room. If so, she would have seen David’s posture screaming that right now probably wasn’t the best time. “How are we?”

“Fine,” Phillip said, never taking his eyes off David. “We’re fine.”