Read Online How Long Has This Been Going On by Ethan Mordden - Free Book Online

without knowing where to take it. That isn't what?
    Larken rose and tried to take Frank's arm, but Frank pushed him away and called out, "No!," to someone behind him. "He didn't bite!"
    "Screw that," said Jack, shoving Larken against the bench to pat him down. "How long are we supposed to stand around and— hands on the bench, cocksucker! So what are you looking at?" Then, to Frank: "You put him under arrest yet?"
    "He's not under arrest," said Frank.
    Jack was cuffing Larken.
    "Jack, he didn't bite."
    "He bit, you stood, so I say he's made."
    Larken was staring at Frank.
    "He didn't bite, Jack!"
    "He bit. I heard him, pretty much. Yeah, he said, 'I want to blow you, big boy.'" To Larken: "You said that, didn't you, sweetie-pie?"
    Larken wouldn't take his eyes off Frank.
    "We can't bring him in, Jack."
    Jack was hustling Larken down the path to the unit.
    "Jack!"
    Jack stopped and turned to Frank. "What are you, anyway, Hubbard?" he said. "Are you a cocksucker or are you a cop?"
     
    I'm not a cocksucker, thought Frank later that night, lying fully dressed on his bed in the house he grew up in, his parents' house. But I'm probably something close to it. Some kind of reluctant homo, right? Don't want to do it, wouldn't know how to do it, yet I think about it all the time. Think about Lieutenant Peterson and his wife, or about Skip Deroyan and the date he told me he had with the twin redheads where they divided him up at the navel and one worked his top half and the other his bottom. Now I'm being honest, right? Now I'm saying who I am and I still don't know what it means: because, if I'm not a cocksucker, what kind of homo am I?
    Frank's bedroom hadn't changed since he'd been fifteen— Hardy Boys books and minor sporting trophies on the shelves, world globe on the desk, hiking boots at the foot of the bed. The Great American California Teenager's Lair. Normal room, normal guy. Right? And there's Frank beating off, night after night, to a dream of Lieutenant Peterson walking in on Skip Deroyan's little trio and trying one of the twins, then the other, and then Skip Deroyan himself. It is as if Frank were directing a movie and got stuck on one scene and is running it over and over till they get it right.
    Christ, next thing you know I'll be in that movie, too.
    They booked that guy in the park. Larken Young, of 2030 Abigail, in Burbank. And that's wrong. That's a dirty case. In the unit going back to the station, Jack, driving, kept telling Frank to cool off, meaning Shut up. Frank tried to visualize telling the Sergeant that they have a bad arrest on their hands. Sure: Jack's hauling the crook in and Frank's going to pipe up and announce to all and sundry, This is a bad arrest and Jack Cleery is a bad cop.
    That just isn't the way it works, especially when you're a rookie and your partner's logged eight years on the force. Frank was as trapped as Larken was.
    Technically, Larken had not been trapped but entrapped, meaning he never said anything incriminating and therefore shouldn't have been taken in and shouldn't have been booked. The whole time, the whole ride back and all through the booking process, Larken never said anything except in answer to the Sergeant's questions. And he never took his eyes off Frank.
    There was a soft knock at Frank's door, and Frank said, "Come in, Dad."
    "I saw your light on," said Frank's father, coming in and pulling up a chair. "Anything wrong?"
    Frank shook his head.
    "Your mother's having a difficult time. She's always like this before one of her visits, I guess."
    There are three ways to die of cancer: the quick way, whereby one day you feel a little odd and three weeks later you're gone; the slow and steady way, whereby the pain gradually outwits the anodynes until, instead of the illness becoming part of the body, the body has become part of the illness; and the slow, mysterious way, whereby medicine is unable even to prescribe an effective anodyne from the onset. Frank's mother was dying