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It was a big gun, a Glock, what North would have called a doofus, baby-dick purchase, which Shaw knew was sexist and body-shaming but also, unfortunately, a little true. Under normal circumstances, Shaw would have suggested that the man undergo a thorough chakra cleansing, perhaps reach out to a sex surrogate, maybe even buy what North disparagingly—and unnecessarily—referred to as wang crystals. Citrine, maybe. Or carnelian.
Then North shifted his weight, and the man turned the gun on North, and a Sahara wind went through Shaw’s mind, scouring everything else away.
“Hands!” the man barked.
North lifted his hands. Shaw copied him.
The man studied them. His pupils were wide, his cheeks flushed, and now that Shaw knew what to look for, he could see the faint tremor in the man’s hand.
“You’re doing a very good job,” Shaw told him.
North made one of those quiet noises that was mostly in his throat.
“No talking,” the man said.
Shaw nodded. He even mimed zipping his lips. North made that noise again.
“If I could say something, though,” Shaw said.
There it was again. Like maybe North was practicing. Like maybe he was auditioning for a role inCats,only he hadn’t told Shaw because he wanted it to be a surprise and because he was desperate to be Grizabella, wait, no, Jellylorum, no, wait, probably Grizabella. And also on account of toxic masculinity.
“If I could say one tiny thing—” Shaw began.
“Shaw,” North muttered.
“—I’d say you’re doing an excellent job. Really excellent. The way you snuck up behind us. Oh, and the gun. And you even said ‘Hands!’ and it was really scary! But, you know, guns sometimes do the weirdest things, and so maybe, just possibly, as the tiniest note because you’re doing such a great job, maybe you want to, um, not point it at us. Or at least not with your finger on the trigger. Just in case.”
The man had one of those sour cream complexions that meant a lifetime of sunburned noses and cheeks and shoulders (like poor North with his delicate skin), and now a flush mottled his cheeks. But he lowered the gun. “Don’t move,” he told them. Then he fumbled in the pocket of the too-large blazer until he came up with a radio, and he said, “Uh, Pastor Jed, I’ve got kind of a situation.”
“Is that a tattoo?” Shaw asked. It was, of course, clearly a neck tattoo, but Shaw had found that asking obvious questions was a way of facilitating introspection and self-discovery and, well, general chattiness. For example, you could ask your boyfriend if he was strong enough to lift all those weights, but then you had to spend a hot, sweaty hour in the garage while he lifted weights and put more weights on the bar thingy and you couldn’t even look at your phone because he kept glancing over and he was so proud of himself. Other times it didn’t work so well, though, like if you asked if someone not to be named really needed all that cheese on one cracker.
The tattoo in question was an elaborately done cross, with what looked like flowers twined around it. The shape of the flowers was suggestive of something, but before Shaw could pin it down, the radio crackled with another voice.
“I’m coming,” a man said.
The front doors burst open, and a man stepped out. Shaw’s first thought was that the man was drunk, but then he reconsidered. High, maybe. Or just…off. He was technically white, although in the carriage house lights, his spray-on tan looked orange, and he had rockabilly hair. The tracksuit didn’t disguise the kind of build North would have called skinny fat: twiggy arms and legs, but a belly that hung over his waistband. A cross glinted at his neck, the gold catching the light; Shaw wasn’t sure if there were standardized sizes for crosses, but to his mind, this one looked roughly the same size as his phone.
“What’s going on?” the man shouted. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The guard—or whoever the man in the ill-fitting blazer was—sighed. “Gid, go back inside.”
Instead, though, the man in the tracksuit came down the front steps. If he saw the bloody shoe prints, he didn’t give any sign of it; he walked right over them, and Shaw felt more than saw North’s wince. Closer, the man—Gid—gave off the reek of booze and weed, but Shaw figured something else was responsible for the glazed look in the man’s eyes. This was beyond recreational, in Shaw’s opinion. It looked more in the realm of heavy self-medication.
“Gid—” the guard tried again.
“Who are you?” Gid asked; his volume hadn’t come down much, and his breath was a blast of alcohol-glazed halitosis. “I asked you a question. What are you doing here?”
“That’s two questions,” Shaw said in his most helpful tone. “And you actually asked us three questions because you also—” North shot him a sidelong look, and Shaw’s voice grew smaller as Gid turned his attention on him. “—asked, ‘What’s going on?’”
“I already got Pastor Jed—” the guard tried.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Gid asked. “I can handle a couple of intruders.”
“Are we intruders, North?” Shaw asked. “I thought we were more trespassers.”
“Only if we’re trapped in a fucking video game,” North muttered.
“Pastor Jed’s going to be right down—” the guard began.
