Frankie heads for the garage door, and I follow him across the room. “Thank you,” I murmur.
Frankie shakes his head. “Thank him,” he says, indicating Caesar. “But wait until we come back with the coffee.”
THE FRANKENSTEIN PROWLS through the side streets, now busier with lunchtime traffic. I sit in the passenger seat and glance at Frankie, feeling like we’re back in high school and at the same time realizing that’s not where we are at all. “You need a Starbucks?” I say. “I could find one on my phone.”
Frankie shakes his head, downshifting as we approach a light. “Caesar has this one coffee place,” he says. “It’s not far.”
We say nothing for a block or two, listening to the rumble of the car and the rush of the air conditioning and the passing traffic.
“So, you and Caesar,” I say. “You guys are, ah …”
“Together?” Frankie says. “Yeah.” He looks sideways at me, a short flick of the eyes, then back to the road. Except for the barest hint of tightening around his jaw, he looks unconcerned.
“Okay,” I say, and we don’t say anything else.
The coffee shop is called Gravy and has an industrial hipster vibe, flat caps and beards with iron machinery and butcher-block countertops. The barista, barrel-chested and bearded and dressed in denim and tweed, greets Frankie and starts making two lattes. I ask him to make a third and pay for all of them over Frankie’s protests. We sit in a scarred wooden booth to wait for our drinks.
“It’s a nice place,” Frankie says. “Jamie’s a good dude.” He means the barista.
“Kinda looks like he’s in Mumford and Sons,” I say.
Frankie turns to look at Jamie, who is making our lattes at an enormous espresso machine that’s straight out of a steampunk novel. Frankie chuckles. “Guess he does,” he says. “Hadn’t thought about it that way. Maybe he’s the bassist. Nobody ever remembers the bassist.”
“Paul McCartney,” I say. “John Paul Jones. Lemmy from Motörhead.”
Frankie raises his hands in mock surrender. “Point made.” He leans back and looks around, as if considering whether to invest in Gravy. “Always wondered what it takes to open up a place like this,” he says. “Do you think, ‘I wanna open a coffee bar’ and then go look for a location, or do you find the place first and—”
“So you and Caesar,” I say. The words just burst out of my mouth. Frankie is startled, his eyes wide for a moment, but then he settles back in his seat with a rueful little smile. He actually looks relieved, as if glad this can be dealt with.
“Okay,” he says evenly. “What about us?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” I say.
He frowns. “Like what?”
“I’m not a bigot, Frankie,” I say. “I’m not scared of gay people. My neighbors are gay.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And you have a Black friend, too, right?”
“Goddamn it, Frankie,” I say, because now he’s grinning at me. “I don’t care if you’re gay. Seriously. That’s not the issue.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“How come I didn’t know?” I say, and although I hate how my voice sounds, an adolescent whine with a dash of outrage, I can’t deny the pain behind my question.
He looks at me, the grin now gone, but his expression is more sad than angry. “You think I owe you an explanation? You’re upset because I didn’t tell you?”
“No to your first question,” I say. “Yes to your second.”
He nods, understanding. “You’d prefer a postcard from prison? ‘Dear Ethan, missed you the last couple of Thanksgivings, hope your sister’s okay, and by the way, I’m gay’? How would you have reacted to that?” He’s still sitting back, arm over the back of his bench, like we’re just two guys hanging out waiting for our coffee, talking about nothing important.
I think about his question for a moment. “I’d probably react the same way,” I say. “But you wouldn’t have seen me get upset. And when I would’ve seen you next, it wouldn’t have been a thing at all.” I lean forward. “Frankie, we grew up together, man. I had no idea, no sense at all. We talked about girls. Hell, you were as much in love with Sally as I was. So was all of that just … a lie?”
Frankie shakes his head, but whether in answer to my question or just as an overall reaction I don’t know, because Jamie appears just then to drop off our lattes, interrupting the thread of our conversation, and neither of us picks that thread back up as we go out to the car and drive back to Caesar and Frankie’s place.
CAESAR IS TAKING clean dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them into cabinets when we return with the coffee. He accepts his cup, sips from it, and gives a brief nod to indicate it’s acceptable.
I look at his laptop, which is closed. “No luck?” I ask, my hopes sinking.
Caesar takes another sip. “Jamie is an artist,” he says. He closes the dishwasher with his free hand. “Your girlfriend visited Fulton County Jail last week,” he adds.
It takes me a second to process what he’s saying to me. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a hint of one in his eyes. “You hacked into Fulton County?” I say, equally shocked and impressed. “That was fast.”
“No,” Caesar says, taking another sip. When he’s finished, he says, “I backed up the phone data before Mr. Lester smashed the phone with a hammer.”
Frankie gives Caesar a look that’s both amused and annoyed. “And you didn’t say anything earlier,” he says.
“Wanted my coffee first.”
“What was she doing at the jail?” I ask, not interested in Caesar’s passive-aggressive coffee game. “Did she go see someone? When did she go?”
Caesar walks over to the laptop, lifts the lid, and presses a key. The screen comes to life, showing multiple open windows. “The
