Jeremy came by one afternoon, and surprisingly, we were able to settle things. He laid a stack of papers onto the dining table. I glanced at them. Across the top in capital letters, the title: Dissolution of Domestic Partnership. There were multiple copies. On top of the stack Jeremy placed a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.
“It’s the best I can do,” Jeremy said. “Honest.”
“Okay.” I didn’t have to think about it very long. It was hard to imagine Jeremy coming up with a better offer than this. “I’m not going to be able to get you off the mortgage right away. When I get a new job, I’ll refinance in just my name. Then I’ll ask you to sign a quitclaim.”
“Whatever,” he said.
“So, the whole thing about trying to buy my house. Was that you or was that Skye?”
“What difference does it make?” Jeremy asked.
“It makes a difference. It makes a big difference. You’ve done a lot of shitty things in the last year, and if it was Skye behind it all, then I’m not such a jerk for having loved you.”
He frowned. It wasn’t the kind of question Jeremy was comfortable with. “Not everyone’s like you, Matt. Why can’t that be enough?”
I looked down at the check he’d just given me. That was my answer. I was pretty sure Jeremy had spent all the money he took with him. In fact, I could mentally account for almost every penny. This was Skye’s money, and I seriously doubted it had been his idea to give it to me.
“Thank you, Jeremy,” I said simply.
As I walked him to the door, I felt sad. I wasn’t a perfect person, far from it, but I was a good person. I had the feeling that Skye wasn’t, and that Jeremy, for whatever reason, felt that was all he deserved; someone like Skye. Even after everything that had happened, I thought he deserved more.
When I still didn’t hear from Tripp, I spent the rest of that day sitting outside Hollywood Station waiting to see if he’d go in or out, even though I was sure they’d given him leave by that point. I tried to get his home address, but it wasn’t available anywhere online. That’s a good thing for a cop like Tripp, but it didn’t make my life any easier. I had a feeling I knew what was happening. A bad feeling.
Saturday afternoon, I decided to do something about it. I cut a photo of Tripp out of the newspaper and carefully folded it then put it into my wallet. I went online and found out where all the cop bars were in L.A. It was a toss up whether I’d find Tripp in a cop bar or a gay bar. If he was masochistic, he’d be in a cop bar; if he was just plain self-destructive, he’d be in one of the seedier gay bars.
I tried the cop bars first. I didn’t show the picture around, that would be too suspicious. Plus, having killed his partner, Tripp might not be too popular. I didn’t want to cause more trouble for him than he already had. I went to about six places, most of them in the Hollywood area. I just walked in and out of most of them. No sign of Tripp. I decided I’d start to check out gay bars.
The bars in West Hollywood seemed pretty unlikely. They were too trendy, too young and too expensive for someone drinking away his sorrows. Instead, I drove over to Silver Lake, where most of the low-end bars were. On the east side of town, I figured Tripp would be able to find the kind of place that matched his mood. I’d spent some time in those bars myself after Jeremy and I broke up.
I found him in a place called Skuffs on Silver Lake Boulevard near Effie. It was a tiny postage stamp of a place frequented by tweekers and their admirers. In the center of the small square bar was an even smaller bar. Tripp was leaning up against the bar, facing the door. I saw him the minute I walked in. He saw me, too.
He wore an expensive dress shirt and a nice pair of slacks. If they didn’t look slept-in and filthy, he would have seemed completely out of place. A bottle of beer sat in front of him and four shot glasses turned upside down on the bar. I wasn’t all that up on my bar symbolism, but that either meant people had been buying him drinks and he had four waiting or he’d had four shots. The way his eyes drooped seemed to indicate he’d already drunk the shots.
I walked over and stood next to him. Without really looking at me, he said, “Go ‘way,” then stood up and took a swing at me. Since he was dead drunk, he missed me by a good foot. Standing was a challenge; he fell into my arms. The sweetly sick smell of too much alcohol wafted off him. I half pulled, half dragged him out of the bar to my car.
On the drive home, he swore at me a few times, called me an asshole, and was nice enough not to throw up until he got out of the car. I reminded myself to hose down the driveway later. I also wondered what I was doing bringing this guy home with me, but then I remembered he’d killed someone to save me, someone he cared about. Maybe we wouldn’t fall in love and live happily ever after, but I could at least sober the
