“On the shoulder. Like, maybe he was thumbing out.”
Who the fuck hitch-hiked anymore? I literally grabbed Dingo by the lapel of his cut. That was wrong. You did not touch another man’s cut. But it was understandable, given the circumstances. “Is there any way you can track him?”
Dingo shrugged. “Not unless I’d previously put a tracker on him. But I had no reason to.”
That was true. There was no reason to suspect Deloy would go off his crumpet. He’d been an amazingly steady and true member of our society for years. Sure, he got overly excited when purchasing a new tablecloth. And he got more colorful by the minute when hearing news of a marathon of America’s Top Model. That was just Deloy, the gay society he’d never been actually a part of, since the rest of us in the house were straight.
I’d always assumed once he got out and about, maybe in dental school, he’d find like-minded young men. But what the fuck had he gone and done now? He’d poisoned the mayor at the Elks Lodge without telling anyone beforehand. Loathing and mistrust must run deeper in his soul than he let on. Maybe he hated the mayor more violently than anyone gave him credit for, and seeing the video of me having my cock sucked just set him off. Maybe I didn’t understand Deloy as well as I thought I did.
“We should go home,” said Oaklyn.
“Let’s check home.” We both spoke at almost the same time.
It was a dismal drive back. The glorious sandstone steeples and towers loomed overhead as though we were crossing into some unearthly science fiction world. Alienation gripped its tentacles around my heart too. I had the woman I loved on my pussy pad, but without Deloy, our family wasn’t complete. It was incredible how, in such a short amount of time, we’d really become one unit. Part of our unit was wandering around in the scary, lonely universe like a soldier gone AWOL.
We were supposed to go visit Nana, but when I got home I called her to beg off another day. I was honest that Deloy was missing. She’d met him twice and, as usual with little old ladies, absolutely adored him. She was getting used to her new surroundings in the assisted living place, but was still angry there was no shuffleboard. That always made me chuckle. As though Nana could even get around without a walker. She was still in denial about how much she’d deteriorated. I was sure I’d be that way eventually too. Demanding a polo field when I could barely get out of my Barcalounger.
There was no sign that Deloy had even come home. We’d sort of suspected that. Dingo followed us home, his pussy pad where Deloy usually sat now empty. Oaklyn immediately poured herself a glass of red wine, although I said I’d refrain in case we had to go somewhere.
“Is there any way you can track Deloy’s cell?” I asked.
“Already on it,” said Dingo, opening his trusty laptop. “Even if he’s seriously trying to avoid us by putting his phone in airplane mode or taking out the SIM card, I can find him. All I need to do is use my stingray, which mimics a cell tower, to send out a signal to his phone. It tricks the phone into replying with its location.”
“That’s a thing?” asked Oaklyn, her upper lip soaking in her wine glass.
“Oh, sure,” said Dingo cheerfully. “The FBI, the DEA, the NSA, they all use stingrays. Just give me a few minutes.”
I followed Oaklyn onto the back deck. I lightly played with the soft brunette hair at the back of her neck.
“I didn’t mean what I said. I’m obviously under a lot of strain.”
She instantly knew what I was referring to. “It’s okay. I said it first. And I lied too. I think I’ve finally met someone I could imagine marrying.” She finally looked at me, sly and sideways. “But I don’t think this is the time to discuss it.”
Then when would be the time? If we couldn’t discuss it when we were desperate and at the end of our rope, when would be a better time? “I’ve always wanted to marry, too,” I admitted. “Just never seemed like a possibility, living in Liberty Temple.”
“Well. Now Deloy’s our kid, so to speak. It’s up to us to find him. If anyone can find him, we can—”
“Got it!” Dingo called out.
We raced back indoors. Dingo pointed at a screen that looked alarmingly like Google maps. “See where he is?”
“That’s nothing but an empty field,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Oaklyn. “Isn’t that just a bean field?”
“We’ll go,” I said, grabbing Oaklyn’s leather jacket and holding it open for her to shrug into. “Dingo, you stay here in case he comes back.”
The chance of finding Deloy calmly walking along a desert highway with his bundle tied at the end of a stick was becoming dimmer and dimmer as we neared the bean field. I drove back and forth past where the pin had been stuck in Dingo’s map. This had to be it. Eventually I had to park, and we walked morosely around, shouting Deloy’s name. Finally we even gave up on that, and just kept out eyes glued to the ground, hoping to find his phone, tossed away.