Page 34 of Lawless


Font Size:

“What? It’s just us and the goats.” He grinned at me in the faint light. “And everyone knows goats are filthy little buggers. They love dick stories.”

I was not going to tell Button John about jerking off for Dominic in my window.

“We haven’t done much,” I said. “Like, I guess I want to?—”

“You guess.”

Heat rose in my cheeks. “Okay, yeah. I really want to. But I kind of don’t know what to do?”

“Oh.” Button John let out a loud breath. “Okay, yeah. I get that. And you don’t want to, like, talk about it, because then he’d know just exactly how much of a virgin you are.”

“You said I had sex before.”

“Almost-sex,” Button John corrected. “When we get 4G, maybe you need to watch some porn?”

“I think that learning about how to have sex from porn is like learning how to parallel park from watching The Fast and the Furious.”

“Mmm. Probably. Hey! You know who you should ask?”

“Who?”

“Eddie!” Button John exclaimed. “Like there are two gay people on this island, apart from us, and one of them is Red Joe, and he’s known us since we were babies, so that’s right out.”

“Do you really think there are only two other gay people on the island?”

“There are probably more,” Button John said. “But they might be old, or ladies, so I don’t want to hear them talk about dicks.” He clapped me on the back. “We should go and talk to Eddie in the morning.”

“This sounds like a terrible and humiliating idea.”

Button John’s teeth gleamed in the faint light when he grinned. “It’s either Eddie, or your copper. Or I guess you can just not ask anyone, and never have the guts to touch your copper’s dick. Your choice, Natty.”

Except, when he put it like that, it was really no choice at all.

“Hi, Eddie,” Button John said the next morning when we knocked on his door. “The museum’s looking great.”

Eddie pushed his glasses up his nose. “Are you guys here for the historical society meeting, because that’s not until tomorrow.”

Button John shook his head. “No, but we are here to learn things.” He rattled around for a moment near the counter. “Are these postcards new? What happened to the ones with the cartoon parrot on it?”

“Nobody bought those,” Eddie said. He leaned his broom against the wall, and leaned down to scoop up Baby Joe. “They were awful.”

“Yeah, I think Short Clarry ordered them,” Button John said.

I crossed the small front room and looked into the gallery next door where the HMS Dauntless exhibit was. It had changed a lot since Eddie had taken over the museum. When John Coldwell had run the place, it had been dark and dusty and boring. Eddie had transformed the museum. The room was full of light now. The spar from the shipwreck was still front and centre, but the dusty ink portrait of Josiah Nesmith had been replaced with a glass sheet with his face etched into it. Underneath, it said, “Josiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Mutiny.” Henry Jessup’s diary—the one that Eddie had almost been killed for—was in a display case underneath it. There was interactive stuff in the exhibit as well: a video presentation, screens you could touch for more information, and even a big floor puzzle for children. And back in the small front room that served as a foyer, there were actual souvenirs people might want to buy: postcards without cartoon parrots, little cast iron cannons, felt pirate hats for kids, playing cards, glasses and mugs, and commemorative medallions that Eddie kept locked up in a glass case on the counter.

“So, what can I help you with?” Eddie asked. “Are you looking for information on the island?”

“No,” Button John said blithely, and I cringed in anticipation. “We’re looking for information about sex. Like, gay sex. How you have gay sex.”

Eddie blinked. “How I?—”

“The general you,” Button John said hastily. “Not you specifically. Like, me and Natty want to know how we would have sex.”

Eddie’s gaze darted between us several times. He blinked again, like he was trying to restart his brain. “You and....”

He looked at me again.

Oh no.