well i suppose a friend is a friend

Holden can fit in his lap. So that’s that. There are tricks to visitation hours — Ed wouldn’t know, the last time anyone visited him in an institution who wasn’t there from the FBI was long before he’d ever touched a woman, long before he’d ever put a hand up past the hem of a skirt and spanned the soft part of a girl’s thigh. All the tricks involve sitting on laps, desperate groping through slats of metal, visiting girlfriends and wives with no panties under their short skirts. Guys like to talk about these things. Kemper likes to listen. He’s known about these methods for unorthodox intimacies back since back at the Jury Room, all those off-duty officers sitting around shooting the breeze at the bar. None of these tricks accommodate the fact that Holden Ford is wearing a suit.

Holden Ford has what some people would call a good body. Beneath his clothes he has good lines, there’s no soft shape of a paunch, no jutting collarbone. He could have a really good body if he tried. Kemper has never had any difficulty putting on muscle. The hem of his undershirt is warm. It slips loose between Ed’s fingers, warm like the slip of skin above Ford’s waistband, the soft mammalian patch of his lower back.

Kemper tugs his shirttail down to hug against the curve of his ass, the place where the soft muscle yields and deforms its shape to fit Ed’s lap. Holden makes a soft spontaneous sound against his mouth.

He could put his fingers inside him, just by finding the most vulnerable place in his body and working his way in. It would be tight.

“You know I had a kind of roommate for a while — well, more like neighbors. Herbert Mullin. I’m sure you’ve heard of him, in your line of work.”

Mullin was crazier than a shithouse rat, but he’s no Ed Kemper, is he. Nobody was gagging to interview him for the magazines. Holden grinds against his lap, but he doesn’t seem certain what to do with his hands. He doesn’t want to touch Kemper’s chest — won’t touch his shoulders. He could touch his throat, or bury his hands in Ed’s lap, but he won’t do either of these things. He needs a free hand to run the audio equipment.

“I have,” Ford says tremorously. He’s sweating a little, along the corners of his hairline. “He was active in and around Santa Cruz. He was sort of like a visionary type. He thought he could stop earthquakes.”

“It’s just like you said. Mullin was a visionary. What am I?”

Holden gasps and stiffens, the muscles in his legs jump, but his voice doesn’t change. “Power. Control. Possession-oriented.”

“So you think that I possessed those girls. Was I organized, or disorganized?” Grabbing his ass, palming at the full muscles at the very backs of his thighs. He can anatomize him with his hands, just out of curiosity. Holden’s face flickers, tremors.

“Yes. Yes, you were organized, not yes–”

Too rapid and pressured for their conversation on tape – Holden has to catch himself. Something Ed does must set him off, because he’s stiffening up now, the press of the head of his cock is unmistakable between them. Holden Ford gets off on hearing all the details, yes, of course. Even Ed does sometimes. When he thinks back–

What the fuck does Holden Ford know? He’s just listening in, he just sits down with these guys and picks their brains. He’s no more a killer than Ed’s a cop. Kemper shifts his legs apart a little, shifting Ford’s center of balance uncomfortably in a rattle of chain on tile.

“When they put me next to Herbert Mullin, he got on my nerves. I didn’t get along with him any more than you’d be guaranteed to get along with any person off the street. We didn’t have much in common, and he had those kinds of habits that get on your nerves. I had to train him out of them. I learned all about that kind of thing. Positive reinforcement.”

“Did you learn that when you were first institutionalized?”

“You could say that.” Ed learned from a master, after all – from her, who was always needling and picking away, who knew exactly the right tone, the right look to give her monster son. Who would dispute that now? No, but he’s not a monster, he’s organized. “Would you like to know why I slit my wrist?”

“You can tell me.” He’s looking at Ed’s face, but his pupils are moving back and forth like the rows of text on a Teletype. He’d write it all down if he could. He’s analyzing.

“I didn’t do it to get to you. It got to me – knowing that people who’d never met me were trying to understand me. I never had that before they took me in.”

Ford looks like he’s considering this. He wouldn’t know what to do if Ed were lying – like he’s one of those guys who thinks he can tell when he’s being lied to, every time. Ed pulls him in tighter against his lap, relishing the slide of fabric between them. Stroking nice polite lines against the inner seam of his thigh.

“You should know better than to be alone with me.”

He moves his hand over Holden’s throat. Holden is tensed, trembling, and the soft crease under his chin is tender.

Holden came back, so that’s something. Holden came back to him, twice. Let him write this one down. No one has ever really wanted Ed before, no one’s ever really wanted to keep him – and now this, where all things considered he’s doing quite well for himself, he has rights, he has hobbies, he has guests.

Holden Ford alludes to his mother when they talk, but not his father. Maybe he got pawned off too. Maybe he’s maneuvering.

Ed brings his thumb across and Holden Ford swallows. It makes a little wet clicking sound, and the cartilage in his throat drops. When Kemper takes his hand away Ford drops against him, just drops – pressing his face to his shoulder like all this is a tremendous relief, a real weight off.

Ed lifts him up a little and finds something to hold besides Ford’s throat, pulling him off through his pants until he’s gasping – little ghost noises, the mouth moves and the breath comes but there’s hardly any sound, just the clink of shackles again. No sudden movements necessary, just the slow steady shift – there are other ways this would be easier, but this is how it is, no oops, no apology, just strategy.

Whir, click. Holden finds what he wants to do with his hands, and returns the favor. He has soft hands – college girls must like that, that little bit of delicacy. Nobody else has ever touched Ed like this – not ever, never at all, no one has ever laid a hand on him.

It brings about a strange stillness, just the two of them swapping handjobs with Ford’s belt buckle clinking against the bolted-down metal leg of the table. He doesn’t need to tell him what he wants him to do, he just does it, and that’s a strange treat.

They’re cloven together now, disheveled and sticky in their respective uniforms. Holden’s head is bowed, brushing against Ed’s chest. There’s a lot of good stuff to be said for a well-shaped head.

“Is that enough for today?” Keeping it mellow, conversational, even as Ed wipes off his hand on a federal agent’s white cotton undershirt.

“I think I’ve run out of tape.” Be prepared, isn’t that what they tell the Boy Scouts? Holden Ford, overgrown Boy Scout. His face is pink when he raises his head, but not from crying. He’d looked so different in tears, it had almost spoiled it.

Holden Ford slides his legs over and puts out a hand to steady himself on the table. Kemper lets him. Kemper fumbles in his pocket for a crushed pack of Marlboros. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“They let me have cigarettes again, but I can’t get a light. Doesn’t that just kill you?”

Holden lights his cigarette for him dutifully. The reflection of the flame in the round black pupils of his eyes is like the shine on an apple – his grip on the lighter is just a little too tight, you can see the white ridge in the corner of his hand pressed up against the gold.

“There you go.”

“Hey, thanks.”