North and Shaw Out of Office - Gregory Ashe Page 0,3

not cool, the tranny thing, you’re not even supposed to say that anymore. But I don’t think you realize how much you’re upsetting the people here, and I know you wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t try to make them upset, if you knew that. I just wanted to talk to you about that. Maybe I could buy you guys some drinks, just kind of talk it out, and then you can go.”

“Oh my God, oh my God,” the Romney boy said. “You’re not even a tranny, are you? You guys are here, like some kind of—Buck, what’s the word?”

Buck. North wanted to roll his eyes, but all he could feel was the smile stretching his cheeks and the taut skin over his knuckles.

“Solidarity,” Buck said and then belched.

“Yeah. Fuck yeah, Buck. You guys are here in some kind of solidarity, right? You guys are like, what? Fags? And these are your hags?” Another round of laughing and clinking glasses and bumping fists. “Dude, no homo, but you are definitely not my fucking type.”

For a moment, the punch was crystal clear in North’s head: the force of the impact rippling through this Romney boy’s jowls, then the follow-up, the glass crunching under North’s hand as he smashed it against the bro’s face.

But he didn’t throw the punch. And he didn’t grab the glass.

“You guys need to go.”

“Fuck off, faggots,” Romney boy said, his voice turning hard and menacing. “Or do you need us to make you fuck off?”

Still bouncing on his toes, Shaw said, “I just think if I could talk—”

North grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the bar.

“Hey,” Romney called, “you, yeah, the blond one. You can do better than him. You know that, right?”

North had reversed course without even realizing it; he didn’t notice until he couldn’t move, until he saw that Shaw had double handfuls of the work shirt and was straining to hold him in place.

“Not worth it,” Shaw said. “Drop it.”

Howls of laughter chased them back to the bar.

“They just need to know how badly they’re hurting people,” North muttered as he flagged Bud and motioned for another Schlafly.

“Ok,” Shaw said. “I was wrong about that. But I thought it was very impressive how you channeled the Incredible Hulk and tried to smash him.”

North tilted the fresh beer and drank heavily.

“No, really,” Shaw said. “Forget about professionalism, forget about the client, forget about the job we have to do. When your macho pride activates, nothing else matters.”

Still drinking, North gave him the finger.

“Thank you for defending my honor.”

With a sigh, North set down the beer, still flipping the bird, and met Shaw’s eyes. “Done?”

Shaw mimed zipping his lips. Then he grinned.

At two, the bros left, piling into a series of Ubers and vanishing off to Clayton high-rises, Central West End lofts, Washington Avenue condos. Shaw and North watched them go and jotted down license plate numbers.

4

THE FIRST UBER driver’s name was Karl. With a K. He emphasized that. As he drove them toward the Planetarium, he told them a long, involved story about his mother, his great aunt, and a man who bred German shepherds. It was obviously meant to be some sort of explanation for his name, but North had no idea what that explanation was. When he pulled up to the curb on the south side of Forest Park, however, he shook his head emphatically.

“No way, man. No way. I could lose my job.”

Shaw dragged North out of the car before he could argue.

It was chilly in the early October evening; they had waited almost a full day, operating under the assumption that the same drivers who had driven the bros the night before wouldn’t start work again until the next evening. The sky hardened into a purple crust at the horizon, cracked to the west by a thunderstorm.

It took two more tries before they got another of the drivers whose plates they had marked down the night before. Rasheed wouldn’t talk to them at all. When North tried, he turned up the music louder—Britney, bitch. Outside McConnell’s, North held the door open, arguing with Rasheed about whether or not Rasheed could tell them the names of the people who drove home—or at least the address. It wasn’t much of an argument, really. Rasheed just stared ahead, unmoving, until he dropped his foot on the gas and lurched away, the rear passenger door flapping like a broken wing.

“Asshole,” North shouted after him. Then, to Shaw, “He could have run over my foot.”

“Let’s get something