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North turned on him so fast that Shaw fell off the bed. Auggie pulled his shirt up to cover a grin, and Theo rolled his eyes.
As North knelt next to his duffel and began rifling it for clothes, he said, “I’m not dressing like a penis in a collared shirt like the two of you. In case you were wondering.”
Theo sighed. “No, North. I can honestly say nobody was wondering that.”
“So?” North said as he threw a pair of jeans on the bed. “How’d you convince him to see us? Who are we, all that shit? Knock that look off your face; I’m not going to leave you behind. We’ll get you all buckled into your car seat, and you can fall asleep on the nice long drive.”
“You know what?” Auggie said. “I’m starting to get it.”
North refused to ask what.
“This whole thing Shaw does. It makes more and more sense every day.”
This time, North gave him a dirty look. “Talk, or you aren’t going to get that pair of stilts for your birthday.”
“We’re ‘Watchdogs for Information,’” Auggie said. “We’re fighting the fake news media.”
North thought about that. “God, that’s a stupid name for a PAC.”
In the tone of someone at the edge of his rope, Theo said, “North.”
“What?” North said. “That’s a compliment. They’re all stupid.”
“That was a compliment,” Theo muttered.
Shaw, bare-assed and digging through his suitcase, suddenly straightened and looked over at them. “Oh my God, North, this is just like that dream I had. Except in that one, Theo was wearing those leather shorts.”
10
Eric Brey, according to the articles Shaw read on the drive, was thirty-eight, and he was in his second term serving in the Missouri House of Representatives. He was a veteran—the Marines—and he now made his living owning a large farm and tractor supply store, although that was a family business, and from what Shaw gathered, it didn’t sound like Brey had a passion for farm equipment. Although you never knew with people, which was one of Shaw’s guiding principles, and one of the reasons he was clearly more open-minded than North.
Brey’s political headquarters were located in a strip mall of muddy brick located on the north side of Auburn, sandwiched between a crab shack (not to be trusted, Shaw decided, this far from any ocean) and a place that, apparently, painted dogs’ nails.
“Oh, we could—”
“No,” North said.
The strip mall’s lot was undergoing some sort of construction, and they had to drive over a steel plate. The borrowed Ford Focus came down on the other side hard enough to make Shaw’s teeth click together.
“How the fuck does he drive this thing?” North said to himself. “It’s like a fucking Cracker Jack box on wheels.” He was silent for a moment as he steered them into a parking stall. “Maybe there was some kind of accident. He grew up on a farm, right? Maybe a thresher bit his dick off.”
“In the first place, I’m very proud of you for taking Jem’s feedback about the GTO and choosing a more sensible car.”
“I didn’t take his feedback. It was my idea, and the GTO is a sensible car—”
“And in the second place, it was very nice of Theo to let us use his car.”
“Auggie makes fucking bank. And he’d do anything to keep daddy happy. For fuck’s sake, all Theo has to do is hint that he’d like a decent car, and Auggie would probably die from spontaneous twink orgasm.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Shaw said. “I’m not even sure Auggie is a twink anymore.” He rolled down his window as Auggie and Theo pulled into the stall next to them, and Auggie buzzed his window down too. “Auggie, have you already experienced twink death?”
“Why did I roll my window down?” Auggie asked.
Theo said, “That was certainly a choice.”
“Did you know that North used to drive a minivan?” Shaw asked.
“Roll your window back up,” Theo said.
