When I heard that thought, I decided to get back on Grindr.

  ELIEN (9)

  The next day, Muriel drove me to Dag’s house on her way to work.

  “I really don’t see,” she paused to touch up her lipstick at a red light, “why you have an open relationship.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I’m not having this conversation with the president of the Lady Baptists’ Temperance Union.”

  “You know perfectly well that it’s called the Bragg Baptist Church Ladies of Love.”

  “That’s even worse.”

  “We’re having a cake walk on Sunday.”

  “It sounds like a sex workers’ guild.”

  “Elien Martel, since when have sex workers ever had a cake walk?”

  “They can have a cake walk. Anybody can have a cake walk.”

  “Richard is a wonderful man.”

  Groaning, I mashed my face against the window.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “In the first place,” I said, “I am not talking to you about my relationship with Richard. Second, I am not going to a hookup at seven forty-five in the morning. Third, I am not the one who insisted on having an open relationship. And fourth, I am not talking to you about my relationship with Richard.”

  “Well,” she said, “I just don’t understand why it has to be an open relationship.”

  I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t scream.

  Dag’s parents owned a small house in Fogmile, probably half a mile from the library where I had spent much of the day before. That half mile made a difference: this part of the neighborhood was on the bottom rung of the middle class, with sagging fences and weed-choked lawns. The houses needed touching up with paint; old but well-maintained was about the best you could say for it. Muriel stopped parallel with the ancient Ford Escort that I’d seen Dag use to pick up Mason from the support group.

  “Could you wait and make sure they don’t shoot me or something, please?”

  Muriel was powdering her nose. “Why would your illicit homosexual lover shoot you?”

  “He’s not my—why does it matter that—Muriel, please.”

  “Well. I don’t know. I really don’t feel appreciated.”

  “I appreciate you.”

  “You think I’m Richard’s secretary.

  “No, I don’t. I’m very grateful that you’re willing to help me.”

  “You think of me as your personal driver. That’s why you call me Jeeves.”

  “No, no. You are an intelligent, educated professional. You have a nursing degree from the Abraham Lincoln Civil War Museum or something.”

  She shut the compact with a click.

  “Ok,” I said. “You’re a highly trained psychiatric nurse practitioner and you’ve got a million impressive letters after your name.” I hesitated. “LMNOP?”

  She tucked the compact into a tidy purse. “I think if you were really serious about Richard,” she began.

  “No,” I moaned.

  “You would tell him that you didn’t want an open relationship.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Ok. I will tell him that. Those exact words. Now, will you please wait and make sure they don’t shoot me?”

  She sniffed.

  “You’re a saint,” I said, and then I kissed her cheek, grabbed my bag, and hopped out of the car.

  When I knocked on the door, a woman answered. She had to be in her sixties, and she had iron-gray hair, which I guessed was where Dag had gotten his from. Her face was guarded, and she didn’t open the screen door.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Dag.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m here to see Dag. Is he home?” I glanced over my shoulder at Muriel and then back at the woman in the doorway. “Is this the right house?”

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  Quiet voices came through the screen door. A man said, “I heard you, Gloria, but I’m asking is he hot?” More quiet voices. “Well, I think it does matter if he’s coming to see Dagobert this early in the morning.”

  The October morning was cool, but sweat prickled under my arm.

  A man’s face floated into view, and I saw him just long enough that I noticed the beard and that he was probably the same age as the woman; Dag’s father, I guessed. He disappeared almost immediately.

  Footsteps came toward the door, and I heard Dag’s dad say something like, “He’s very handsome.”

  “Jesus, Dad,” Dag said.

  “He might even be better looking than Jackson.”

  “Go away,” Dag said. “Please. Can’t you do what decent parents do and just be ashamed of me and my abnormal life choices?”

  “I think he’s a twink,” the dad said.

  “Oh my God,” Dag said in a tone of absolute despair.

  When he came to the door, he was wearing pajamas: old man pajamas, a top and a bottom in matching, hunter-green plaid. He rubbed his head. Then he rubbed his eyes. Then he said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Good morning,” I said.

  Muriel honked, and I waved over my shoulder as she drove off.

  “Sorry it’s early. I don’t drive, and my only ride was coming into town right now.”

  “And you couldn’t have texted?”

  “Ok,” I said. “Sorry. I’ll just head over to the library for a few hours. You can text me when you’re ready to talk.”

  “I have work today.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Dag rolled his eyes. “Ok, I don’t. But what if I did?”

  “Point taken. I’m an entitled asshole.”

  He pushed open the screen door and smiled. “A privileged, entitled asshole.”

  When I stepped inside, Dag’s mom and dad were waiting.

  “This is my dad, Hubert,” Dag said, and Hubert and I shook. “He’s currently rating you on a ten-point scale.”

  “I think my main competition is someone called Jackson,” I said.

  Dag groaned. “And this is my mom, Gloria. She thinks I should run a train on you.”

  I choked on my spit.

  “Come on,” Dag said, grabbing my arm and steering me down a hallway. “Before they start talking.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Gloria called after us.

  “Remember to close your door, son,” Hubert said, “if you boys are going to pleasure each other.”

  “Are they for real?” I asked.

  “No, my mom doesn’t know what running a train means. She keeps using it like she thinks she does, though.”

  “No, I mean, um. Pleasure each other?”

  “Oh, yeah. Rule of the house: door closed.” Dag rolled his eyes. “They think they’re hippies or something.”

  “Were they hippies?”

  “God, no. They were barely alive for that. They just wish they had been.” Dag shut the door behind us. Then he frowned. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  I smirked and looked around. My first impression of his bedroom was that it was dirty: clothes stacked on the dresser, books on the floor, a tangle of charging cords on top of the nightstand. But after a moment, I realized the room wasn’t dirty; it was just . . . cluttered. The floor had recently been vacuumed. The furniture was dust free. The books on the floor were in neat stacks, and they’d obviously been placed on the floor because the two bookshelves were already full. A small LED was directed at the wall, projecting a rippling blue light that gave the room an underwater atmosphere, and on the back of the door, he’d hung a poster for the 2008 Braxton Bragg Memorial High School basketball team. A teenage Mason stood in the middle row.

  “Sorry,” Dag said, grabbing a stack of boxers and shoving them into a drawer that was already bursting. “I didn’t know you were—I mean, I don’t know what I mean. They gave me something at the urgent care last night, and it knocked me out when I got home.”

  “So you did go?”

  “Yeah, of course. I said I would.” A desk and a chair took up one corner of the crowded room, and he pulled out the chair. “You can sit here if you want. I’ll sit on the bed.”

  Instead, I moved to the bookshelf and began running my finger along the spines. A lot of books about whales. Books about marine life. Books about ocean exploration. Books about ships and sailing. Books about tide patterns. Books about silt and river deltas.

  “What’s your real name?” Dag asked as he sat on the bed.

  “Elien.”

  “No, it’s not. I checked you out. You have a few social media accounts, but there’s not much on them. And I hired a private investigator to look into you, and he couldn’t find anything.”

  “Why didn’t you look me up in the police databases?”

  “I’m on paid leave.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it anyway. It’s not right. This isn’t an official investigation; it would be an abuse of power.”

  “Why do you have so many books about whales?”

  Dag blew out a breath. “Fine. If you don’t want to tell me your real name, I guess it doesn’t matter. We should probably talk about last night.”

  “I’ll tell you my name. But I also want a little information. It’s like a trade. Why do you have so many books about whales?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Eli.”

  “Martel?”

  “Martins.”

  “Why’d you change it?”

  “That’s a new question,” I said.

  “I just think they’re interesting.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  A faint blush dusted his cheeks. “Ok, I think they’re really interesting,” he said. “They’re complicated animals. They’re smart and social and some of them can be incredibly dangerous. Why’d you change your name?”

  “Because Eli Martins sounds like I invented the cotton gin.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I am serious. I don’t know. Eli Martins is so basic.”

  “It’s a nice name.”

  “Where’s all the rest of it?” I asked.

  “Rest of what?”

  “You know: action movie posters and your gun collection and your football jersey.”

  He furrowed his forehead. “Huh?”

  “Come on. This is cute.” I tapped the spine of a whale book. “But where’s the rest of it?”

  “This is it. There isn’t anything else.” He frowned. “What happened between you and Mason?”

  “Oh, we’re getting serious,” I said, sprawling in the chair he’d pulled out for me. “Nothing happened. He didn’t like me. He never liked me. One day he tried to shoot me.” I worked to clear my throat. “Thank you, again, by the way. I guess I can’t say that enough.” Then I said, “Why do you hate being a cop?”

  “I don’t hate it.”

  I studied him until he dropped his gaze to the floor.

  “I just . . . don’t think it’s a good fit.” For a moment, it looked like he might not say anything else. Then he burst out, “It’s just not what I thought it’d be. You know what most of my callouts are? Domestics. I hate domestics. You get there, and these people are hurting each other the worst ways they know how. And they used to love each other. I don’t know. Or it’s kids smoking weed. Or it’s vandalism. Or . . . or it’s a wellness check.”

  “What’d you think it would be like?”

  Dag smiled and rubbed his head as he looked up. “Well, I’m famously not good about thinking ahead, so I don’t really have an answer for that. I just thought I’d be helping people.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “You’re good at your job. You handled me pretty well at Ray’s. And you handled that thing last night like a pro.”

  Dag shrugged again, and now he laid back on the bed, stretching out with one arm behind his head. “You know the first time I had a domestic, it was actually not that bad. I mean, we got there. The wife had barricaded herself in the bedroom. The husband was drunk and breaking things. They were screaming awful things at each other through the door. I was eighteen. Brand new deputy. I bet my eyes were the size of dinner plates. I’d never seen anybody fight like that. We took the husband in, mostly so he could sober up and cool down. Once we got him in the drunk tank, I went in the men’s room and cried.” His eyes were half closed. “Tell me again I’m good at my job.”

  “I think you’re being hard on yourself.”

  He probed at his shoulder where he’d been injured.

  “I think you’re upset because of what happened with Mason, and your whole world got thrown off-kilter last night, and you’re struggling right now.”

  “Sure,” Dag said, still testing the wound. “I’m just dog paddling.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “What? Oh. A little. I think I need to change the bandages.”

  “Sit up.”

  “No, it’s fine. My mom’ll help me.”

  “Dag, sit up, please. Or I’ll start moaning and pounding on the door and I’ll give your parents a show.”

  “Oh my God, they’d be thrilled.”

  “I’m very believable,” I said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Uhh,” I groaned. “Oh, Dag, your hands.”

  He sat up, his face bright red. “Ok, ok.”

  When I grinned, I was surprised that he grinned back.

  “Where’s the stuff?” I said.

  “Bathroom down the hall.”

  I found the bag of supplies, scrubbed my hands, and pulled on a pair of disposable gloves. When I got back to the room, Dag had removed the pajama top, and I decided he was most definitely not a six. He had a chiseled body and abs like you wouldn’t believe, but he wasn’t waifish, like a lot of guys. He was just muscle packed on top of muscle packed on top of muscle.

  “Were you a body builder in a past life?” I asked as I sat next to him.

  He just blushed and said, “I’ll take off the old bandages.”

  And he did. He did it the way he seemed to do everything: at his own pace, fully focused, as though he’d totally forgotten I was there.

  When he’d finished removing the bandages, I said, “Jesus.”

  “They just look worse today. They’re fine.”

  I applied the bandages and taped them in place. My fingers lingered. His skin was warm, his chest smooth where they had shaved him at the urgent care and covered by a thick layer of curly dark hair everywhere else. I watched as his skin pebbled under my touch. His breathing was slow and deep, and for some reason, I felt like he’d been taking care of me, instead of the other way around.

  “Richard is a psychiatrist,” I said, running the tip of my gloved index finger along the edge of the tape, riding it to his clavicle. “He helps people. He helps me. He came into my life when things were really bad, and I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  “I think you’re very lucky, then,” Dag said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you a nurse? Or a med student? You seem to know your way around this stuff pretty well.”

  I heard the question, but I just kept studying his clavicle, the little freckles on the skin there, the way the tape hugged the line of his shoulder.

  “And I know,” I said, “I know Richard is helping people. But sometimes I wonder if helping people is the same as caring about people. With me, I mean, sometimes I think he likes things this way. Prefers it, I guess.” I stopped and shook my head. “Did you know doctors are high on the list of sociopaths?”

  Dag frowned, and his hand closed around mine, stilling my touch. “Is he hurting you?”

  “No,” I said, and I thought of the shots when things got too wild, ketamine when I was out of control, Special K for what ails you. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Elien—”

  “That thing last night.” I forced myself to say, “The monster. What do you know about it?”

  “I’m a little worried. What are you trying to say about Richard?”

  “I think the monster is called a hashok. Someone called it that. She said it was ‘the thing in the grass.’”

  Dag hesitated. Then, he released my hand and stood. “I’m going to throw these away and wash up. You should too.”

  So he washed his hands, and I ditched the gloves and washed my hands, Dag’s mom asked if we wanted almond croissants and chicory coffee. I said no. Repeatedly. And somehow, I ended up back in Dag’s room with an almond croissant the size of my head and a huge mug of chicory coffee.

  “It was a bear,” Dag said.

  “What?”

  “Last night. I thought about it. It was some kind of albino bear.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Sure it was. It probably had some kind of disease. Maybe rabies. That’s why it attacked.”

  “Look me in the eyes,” I said, “and tell me it was a bear.”

  Dag picked at his croissant. “It’s the only logical—”

  “You saw the blue lights. You saw them. I know you did. You saw a dead man grab me. You saw Mason try to kill me, and you know Mason wasn’t . . . wasn’t himself when he did that. You saw that thing last night, and you know it wasn’t a bear. It looked like a man. But thinner. And the shape of the head was wrong. But it wasn’t a bear.”

  “We were both scared—”

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “The first time you pretended you hadn’t seen anything, I thought you were a coward. I know you’re not a coward, though. Last night, that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Dag said, “except get slashed up.”

  “I know you’re not a coward, so why are you pretending?”

  “I don’t know.” Dag took two huge bites and demolished his croissant. Then he licked crumbs from his fingers. “The other day, I had it all straight in my head. I had convinced myself something weird was happening. I thought maybe it was drugs. Or maybe . . . maybe something else. I thought you were connected to it. But last night—yeah, I am a coward. I am terrified, Elien. That thing could have killed us, and if it wasn’t a bear, then I have no idea what it was, and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know how to stop it, and I don’t know how to keep you safe.”