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"Tell ya what, ladies. You two go pick out a decent song on the jukebox, and maybe we'll dance with you."
The pair of girls departed, giggling expectantly. One of them left her bag on the bar-top. Rookie mistake. Before they'd fully disappeared into the smoky haze of the barroom, Adrian had snatched the bag and was rummaging around like a chipmunk.
"Cut that out Adie." Roddy put his hand up to massage his temple, praying that nobody was looking at them right now.
"Relax!" Adrian pulled the poor girl's lipstick out and hastily swiped it on where he stood, not even bothering to find a mirror.
Smacking his lips together, Adrian quipped, "Ever since the bleach job, I have to fight 'em off with a broom. Y'know, they were right...blondes do have more fun." He swirled a lopsided circle on the apple of each cheek for good measure.
Roddy pointedly ignored him, practically burying his face in his drink. He knew where this was going.
Their hopeful prospective dance partners returned just as the track changed over. Adrian greeted them with a toothy grin. "All right baby, ready to dance?"
The girls rolled their eyes at each other and stalked off to another part of the bar.
"Pfft, some people!" Adrian turned back to face his array of empty pint glasses, tittering to himself as he casually unfastened another button on his shirt. He was never quite comfortable in anything but a ratty gym tee. He nudged his elbow into Roddy's arm.
"Well, whaddaya think? Am I a picture or what?"
Piper cast an appraising eye over his friend, who stood with one hand resting on the soft swell of flesh over his jutted-out hip. The other hand trailed over his chest suggestively. Adonis tilted his chin up toward to the dingy bar lamp, bathing his face in its light, doing that—that thing he did when he wanted to remind you he came by the name honestly.
Roddy cocked an eyebrow. "You're looking more like Mamie Van Doren by the day."
Adrian's aloof, statuesque expression cracked into a goofy smile. Roddy had to crack up right along with him. There was a blotch of lipstick on one of Adie's front teeth—a perfect complement to the smear of red around his lips. Roddy could see why those girls turned tail and ran.
"C'mon, get that shit off your face. And do up your damn shirt, would ya?"
"What are you, my mother?"
"Sure feels like it, some days..."
"Aw, shaddup and dance with me, stud." Adrian sidled up beside Roddy and rested his chin on the back of his hand.
Roddy cast his eye about the bar, uneasy. No telling how these hicks would react to Adrian on the best of days. He loved doing this schtick when he was drunk, and he didn't seem too worried about keeping his voice down, ever.
"Adie c'mon, we should head back to the room and get some shut-eye."
"How forward! At least buy me a drink to loosen me up a bit." Adrian arched his spine, sticking his ass out shamelessly. It was the kind of joke that went over great in a crowd of drunk wrestlers, but right now it was just the two of them. Roddy could feel the target widening on their backs.
Roddy made a show of laughing along, clapping a hand on his companion's back. "I'd say you're plenty loose already... now get your ass out to the car, Miss Van Doren." He gripped Adrian's elbow hard.
"Whatever you say, daddy." Adrian slithered off the bar-top and started weaving toward the exit, Roddy at his back the whole way.
---
The overhead lights flicked on in the motel room. A few fly corpses rattled around in the fixture as Adrian dropped his bags heavily on the floor. He shrugged off his leather jacket, knocking into Roddy as he struggled to stay on his feet. Adrian dumped his jacket onto the floor, then dumped himself face-first on the bed nearest the entrance.
"Fuck sake Adie, couldn't you take it easy for once in your life?"
"—mmmmno"
Roddy shook his head and carried his bag across the room to the bathroom door. He pulled out his trunks and tossed them into the sink, this 3AM wash-up routine practically embedded in his DNA. Piper stared into the basin for a moment before he was roused by a nagging realization. He doubled back to fetch Adrian's trunks from his bag. Somebody had to do it, if only for the sake of whichever guy had to wrestle him tomorrow.
"Man, what the hell are you gonna do when I'm not around?" Piper snapped.
There was no response from Adrian's utterly inert form. That was just as well. The movie deal was still months away, and Rod wouldn't be leaving for a little while yet. They had tacitly agreed that it simply wasn't something they were going to acknowledge or discuss.
Back in the bathroom, as he ran hot water over their gear, Roddy wet down a washcloth and swiped at his face. In the mirror, he looked past his shoulder out the bathroom door. From this angle, he could only see a set of legs - still in jeans - sticking out past the door jamb. They hadn't moved an inch.
Roddy poked his head out the door. "You good, Adie?"
He listened for that characteristic rasp of air blowing through his friend's hopelessly smashed nasal passages - familiar and comforting after so many years on the road. Hearing nothing, he dropped the cloth and scrambled across both beds.
Leaning over Adonis's prone form, Roddy pried his shoulder up and blew on his face. Adrian sucked in a snoring gasp of air and, crinkling his nose, reflexively rubbed his face on the pillow. He left a bright trail of lipstick on the pillowcase, smudging it over his mouth and all across his cheek.
Roddy laughed—a half-crazed, desperate cackle. As the giggles subsided, he licked his thumb and swiped at Adrian's cheek.
"Miss Van Doren... You're a goddamn mess." The lipstick didn't really come off; it just left a greasy pinkish film on both of them.
"Now now, sweetheart, don't you know you'll ruin your complexion like that?" Amusing himself, Roddy flipped Adrian onto his back and hopped over to the bathroom. He snapped off the tap stream just as it was threatening to overflow the basin. His hand reached into the trunk-water. "Here we go my dear, oh this won't do, no no..."
The washcloth landed with a wet slap on Adrian's face. A vague groan of protest escaped the reclining would-be bombshell.
Roddy chided, "Well if you didn't cake it on so thick, we wouldn't have to start with the 80-grit, now would we?" None too gently in his inebriated state, Roddy ignored his friend's plaintive mewling and scrubbed at Adrian's face until it looked like it had come mostly clean.
Pulling the blankets across from the other side of the bed, he tucked them tight around Adrian's torso and turned him on his side, wrapping him up like a particularly meaty burrito.
With a sardonic flourish, he fluffed the pillow. "Y'know Adie, for a mean tough son of a bitch you can be a damn big baby."
Through heavy, still-wet eyelashes, Adrian made a sour face at him. "Will ya stop cuttin a promo and shut off those lights already? Some of us are tryna nod off over here."
"Well, I know one of us could really use the beauty sleep." Roddy turned on the bedside lamp and flipped off the room lights, glad for a break from the harsh buzz of those old bulbs.
"What, didn't that shade suit me?"
Roddy chuckled at the joke and stretched out on his side. Still bundled tightly, Adrian rolled over like a sausage in a pan so that they were facing one another.
"Well? Did it look okay or not?"
"You looked exquisite, Miss Van Doren. Simply adorable... Now shut your trap and go to sleep."
Adrian rolled back over with a grunt of annoyance.
Roddy shifted around, and then shifted some more. He was bone-tired, but he could never get comfortable, could never settle his thoughts. Every night, he did this song and dance for what felt like hours.
Eventually, the bed became intolerable.
With the stealth of an alley cat, Rod slipped out of bed, traversed the room, and grabbed Adrian's leather jacket off the floor. Adie always had a roach or two tucked in the seam of his left cuff. He eased the jacket on and stole out to the stoop.
The wind had really picked up. Roddy held the jacket tight against his body. The liner was all worn and the inner leather had become soft from years of contact with skin and sweat. It seemed to radiate a pleasant warmth of its own.
Unfortunately, that did nothing for his bare feet—the cement pad was like an ice block. He alternated rubbing his toes against his pant legs as he daintily pried open a split in the sleeve's hem. Roddy found he was in luck. He extracted a pitiful little nub of a joint and wedged it between his lips.
"Okay, c'mon, c'mon..."
Roddy patted over the jacket's many pockets, feeling around for a lighter. He started reaching into one then another. Receipts, change, gum, a comb—wait. His fingertips brushed over a slender plastic item tucked away in the gun pocket. He pulled it out and instinctively held it up to his mouth.
"Whuh—"
Roddy stared at the lighter, wondering why there was no flint to press. It took his brain a few seconds to catch up with his eyes.
Piper was no cosmetician, but he knew a lipstick tube when he saw one. He popped the cap. A garish shade of red greeted him. He sighed.
Grumbling to no one in particular, Roddy tucked the roach back into his cuff and turned to go in. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of himself in the motel room window.
The jacket sat a bit funny on him; the leather had curved and stretched in ways that made it clear that it belonged to another man's body. It felt a bit unsettling, almost as if he was wearing Adrian himself around his shoulders. But there was something about it... Roddy tugged at the lapels a bit, passed a hand through his hair.
"Y'know, this thing don't look too bad on me."
Back in the room, Roddy laid the jacket gently across Adrian's gym bag and padded over between the two beds.
It looked like Adrian had rolled over again, his sleeping face awash in lamplight. Roddy just stood there and studied him for a second.
Not many guys appreciated it when you kept the lights on all night. When Roddy was breaking into the business, the old-timers ribbed him about it - they thought he was afraid of the dark. He had envied them their naivete.
But Adrian understood why Roddy preferred to know exactly where he was—and who was nearby—when he jolted awake in the middle of the night. The first time they roomed together, Rod could have just about wept with relief when the other man left his lamp on without asking. Even now, when he was drunk as hell, Adie knew to let him have the bed against the wall.
Once in a while, Rod would wake up in the morning from a rare deep slumber, only to find that they'd curled up back-to-back at some point in the night. They never said a word about it.
Sinking to his knees at the bedside, Rod rested his hand on the crown of Adrian's head. "Man, what the hell am I gonna do when you're not around..."
He ran a forelock between his fingers, noting the abrupt change in texture where glossy dark roots transitioned into a frazzled blonde.
"Dammit Adie...God gives you a great head of hair and this is what you do with it?"
Roddy smoothed the brassy tangle away from Adrian's sleeping face.
"There." A deep weariness crept into his voice. "Beautiful."
His thumb traced the patch of tight, shining scar tissue running from Adrian's hairline down to his brow bone. His long hair usually covered it. Feeling mawkish, Roddy planted a somber, fretful kiss on his friend's forehead.
Piper's eyes started burning. He let out a rueful chuckle as he started to stand up. "You're lucky I don't shave that ugly-ass dye job off your head right now."
"Over my dead body, Pipes."
Roddy nearly fell flat on his back. From the cocoon of bedding, Adrian cracked a sleepy eye at him, grinning wickedly.
"I swear to god Adie..."
"Don't stop now, I ain't cryin into my pillow yet."
Roddy snorted as he threw himself under his sheets. "Well if I find a big mascara puddle in the morning, I'll know you're a liar."
A wheeze of laughter made its way over from the other bed.
"And where the hell's your lighter anyhow?"
"Gave it to a bum a couple days ago."
"Of course you did. All those goddamn pockets I gotta go through...and you gave it away."
Their voices started slowing down, coming in faint, mumbled bursts.
"Man... where d'you even get a jacket like that?"
"Don't 'member... Why?"
"No reason... I dunno... Buncha pockets might be nice."
"Gotta hold...gotta hold all that Hollywood money."
"Heh. Yeah..."
Piper's eyes drifted shut as a sleepy lull came over them both. Adrian let out a long sigh. It wasn't long before he was snoring in earnest.
---
When the wake-up call rang, Roddy's arm shot out for the phone. His eyes hadn't quite cleared the night's accumulation of sleep, but through the bleariness he could see that he was reaching the wrong way entirely, pawing around at the air. But wait—shouldn't he—
He heard a low moan of complaint, accompanied by a rumbling against his ribcage. The warm wall pressed against his back was suddenly pulled away, the moaning muffled.
Roddy sat up to find himself on the wrong side of the bed. Stretching his arm, he reached over Adrian, who had turned onto his stomach and shoved his head under the pillow.
Fumbling the receiver, Rod mumbled, "H'lo...yah...okay. Bye."
Piper pulled the pillow off Adrian's head and smacked him with it. "Thanks for getting that, Sleeping Beauty."
Adonis scoffed and turned onto his back, grabbing the pillow and hugging it tight to his chest. "Hey, I don't see no prince around. Unless you wanna wake me up." He made a couple of air-kisses in Rod's direction.
"I don't feel like tasting last night's beer again, thanks anyway sweetheart."
Adrian made a mock-scandalized face and shoved Roddy over onto his own side of the bed. "I can't believe I woke up next to such a pig!"
Piper's laughter caught him by surprise, gripping him until he had tears in his eyes. Adie buried his own giggling in the pillow, watching Rod out of the corner of his eye.
Their little bout of silliness over with, they both stared up at the ceiling for a bit.
"Hey Pipes..."
"Whaaaat."
"Before you—before you leave... can I go on your show one last time?"
"On the Pit?"
"Yeah. I got... I got somethin I wanna do."
Even in his giddy half-awake state, Roddy's rib radar pinged in the back of his mind. He squinted over at Adrian's upturned profile. "...What kinda somethin?"
His friend squeezed the pillow tighter. "You'll find out."
Roddy contemplated for a moment. His back still felt warm. "Anything for my favorite blonde."