Razorblade Tears

When Buddy Lee arrives, he tells Ike about LaPlata’s visit. Ike doesn’t like a joke that Buddy Lee makes about LaPlata’s ethnicity. Buddy Lee says Ike is a hypocrite, given how Ike viewed their sons. Ike asks him about the Rare Breed biker club, and Buddy Lee tells him what he knows. They mainly run guns and drugs. They are sure that the bikers killed their sons, but they don’t understand how Tangerine is connected to it.

Ike wonders if her mysterious boyfriend hired them to kill her so that she couldn’t expose his infidelity. Ike recognizes the fury in Buddy Lee’s eyes as he realizes that their sons’ relationship with Tangerine might have led to their killings:

It was the rage coursing through his veins. A poison that killed off certain parts of yourself. The parts that made you weak. It was coursing through Ike’s veins, too. It was powerful, but deadly. It made you determined but reckless. It gave you an edge that could turn against you and slit your own throat (125).

Buddy Lee remembers when Derek had cut him out of his life: After he had told him about his relationship with Isiah, Buddy Lee had made a joke about which of them would be the wife. Mya comes home and meets Buddy Lee. She tells them not to do anything they can’t walk away from.

Grayson calls Tank, the president of the gang’s Hurricane chapter, to ask for help. Then he takes another call from the man who hired them to find Tangerine. The caller says that the fathers are working outside the police, which will help, since Ike and Buddy Lee won’t be able to go to law enforcement. He says he will send them Ike’s address, which should give them a chance to follow them to Tangerine.

Ike and Buddy Lee go to a club to look for Tangerine. They sit at the bar and a couple of men—Ralph and Jeff—toast them with a good-natured, “Cheers, queers!” (136). They realize that they are in a gay bar. They ask Tex, the bartender, about Derek and Isiah. He says the cops came by, but no one talked.

Tex says that a Black lawyer told him this:

[S]ome Black people hate gay people more than they hate racists. He told me growing up Black and gay in a small town out in the country was like being trapped between a lion and an alligator. Rednecks on one side and homophobic Black folk on the other (140).

Ike tells him that being gay isn’t the same as being Black. Ike argues that he can’t hide his Blackness, which is the main difference between him and Tex. Tex says he shouldn’t have to hide his sexual identity and quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (141).

Ike and Buddy split up to talk to the patrons at the bar. During their discussions, Ralph says Tangerine used to come by a technical school for at-risk gay youth. He thinks the boyfriend might be Mr. Get Down, a music producer named Tariq Matthews. Jeff’s cheek twitches, and Buddy Lee spots it as a tell.

Jeff says Mr. Get Down might know where Tangerine is. A man named Angelo hits on Ike, who slams him into the bar when he touches him. People start to film them with their phones. Three men pull him off, and Ike is ashamed of his behavior. He apologizes to Jeff, who just shakes his head as they leave.

At Ike’s house, Buddy Lee teases him about Angelo, and Ike shares the details he learned about Tangerine. On the way home, Buddy Lee doesn’t see the men in a car watching him: Dome and his crony Cheddar are following him. They call Grayson, who tells them to keep following.

Ike dreams about Isiah at a post-graduation cookout. Isiah is holding Derek’s hand and trying to speak to Ike. He flips over the grill and their heads explode.

Mya arrives in real life; she thinks a car is following her. Ike goes into the shed and grabs a bush axe after telling her to go inside. He hides in his shrubs. He jumps out and smashes the driver’s side window when the car passes. He recognizes two of the bikers inside. Then he hits the back window. Cheddar’s gun goes off into the ceiling when Dome accelerates. Ike’s neighbor, Randy, comes out and complains about the incident, and Ike tells him to get off the street. Ike goes inside and tells Mya to take Arianna to her sister’s.