Wearing Black to the White Party

by David Stukas

  Monette left, and Marc and I went in search of Michael, who was still nowhere to be found. I passed David McLeish, who barked that he hadn’t seen Michael all night. Then I passed Colorado. Oh, well, it was worth a try.

  “Colorado, have you seen Michael Stark?”

  “Robert, you’ve obviously confused me with someone who cares.”

  “Thanks, Colorado. You’re such a team player,” I fired back.

  I walked past Colorado and heard from over my shoulder: “Why don’t you look under a rock? That’s probably where you’ll find him.”

  Half of me wanted to turn around and force him to swallow several lighted cigarettes while the other half took Colorado’s advice and thought of looking where the Bitch Queen advised. I crept around a huge boulder lying in the landscape, and lo and behold, eureka!

  “Michael, if you can extract your wee-wee from your friend’s mouth, Vince and I are leaving now. We’re going back to Rex’s house, since he’s missing and it doesn’t look good no matter which angle you’re viewing the situation from. Meet you outside in ten minutes or you’ll have to find your own ride back to the compound.”

  I walked away with Marc. He seemed very apprehensive about my going back to Rex’s place, and I was genuinely touched by his concern.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be okay, Marc. There’s probably several policemen there right now, and I’m sure they’ll be hanging close to the compound if he comes back,” I said.

  Marc stared into my eyes and read my thoughts. “You said ‘if he comes back.’ You don’t think he’s going to come back, do you?”

  I tried to conceal my fatalism, but I couldn’t help it. My despair over Rex’s fate sat there on my face. Only the news ticker on Times Square was more easily read. “I don’t know, Marc. I just hope he does return.”

  “Why don’t you stay over at my place in Cathedral City with me tonight?” Marc blurted out. “I feel you’ll be a lot safer there with me.”

  “Why, Marc, that’s very nice, but I think Vince needs me tonight. God knows he’s not going to get any support from Michael.”

  “I want you to stay at my place, but I understand what you’re doing. It’s very thoughtful,” he said, planting a tender kiss on my lips. “Here’s my phone number. Now, if you need anything tonight—anything—call me. I mean it. You promise?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Okay, see you tomorrow. Sweet dreams,” Marc said, then turned and left.

  Vince and I headed to the car as well, neither of us saying a word but both of us hearing an incessant tink, tink, tink a short distance behind us. I turned to see Michael bringing up the rear, his unfastened belt buckle swaying back and forth as he walked, a frown on his face completing his wardrobe.

  “What the matter. Lose your shirt?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s somewhere in the backyard. It got trampled when everyone went over the wall. It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit about the shirt. But I do mind being disturbed when I’m in the middle of something,” he snarled.

  “Or someone,” I added.

  There wasn’t much conversation after that. We got back to the house, where the police were waiting inside the compound. They had searched the house and grounds and pronounced both safe.

  I went into Rex’s office and heard a phone ring in the house. Seconds later, I heard Vince call out to me that Marc was on the line. “He’s on line two, the one that’s blinking,” Vince instructed me. “Just press the button near the blinking light and pick up the phone.”

  “Thanks, Vince.” I did as instructed and soon heard Marc’s voice on the other end of the line. It didn’t sound good. In fact, he was crying.

  I tried to calm him down and get him to tell me what was the matter.

  “There’s ... in the pool ... with the floats ... him!”

  Marc didn’t have to say another word. I instinctively knew that among the floats in Marc’s pool was another float. One shaped exactly like Rex Gifford.

  6

  I’d Add a Little Chlorine to that Pool Water if I Were You

  Vince, Michael, and I sped over to Marc’s house in Cathedral City. According to Vince, Marc lived in the Cove, an area sandwiched in between the foothills of the Santa Rosa mountains. The Cove stood in stark contrast to the neat and tidy manicured gay neighborhoods of Palm Springs. It was far wilder, from its willy-nilly architecture and inexplicable zoning to the raw desert that came right to its border. And it was dark. Very, very dark. But for some reason, I liked it right away because it seemed so remote, so far away, so quiet. These were great qualities when it came to having a place to call your own, but they were not so great when you had a dead body on your hands.

  When we drove into Marc’s driveway, I liked his house immediately. The building was a modern white cube that sat anchored on the desert landscape, pure and uncluttered. It was the complete opposite of what you saw taking over the desert: bland, sand-colored ranch houses masquerading as Mediterranean villas, trumpeting names like River View or The Falls. (Why, I wonder, did these gated communities have to allude to water in their names, let alone squander it so wastefully?)

  The owner of this house was watching for our arrival from the safety of a window. As we walked up the sidewalk to Marc’s house, he came running out and latched on to me with a hug that would make an anaconda jealous.

  I didn’t say a word but just put my arms around Marc and held him. The tighter I held him, the more I could feel just how much he was trembling. Vince indicated that he wanted to go to Rex, but I mentioned to him that he shouldn’t touch anything.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” he reminded me. “I want whoever did this to pay for what they’ve done.”

  Michael, always one to be uncomfortable with raw, human emotions, did what he did best in situations like this: he acted like nothing was amiss.

  “Boy, Marc, you’ve got quite a view up here. It must be really something from the backyard!”

  The backyard, I surmised, was where the pool was—and, logically, Rex, the human flotation device.

  “How much did you pay for this place?” Michael asked further, inserting his foot deeper into his gaping mouth.

  “Michael,” I said helpfully, “this probably isn’t the best time to discuss real estate. Would you go inside and fix Marc something to drink—something with alcohol?”

  “Sure,” he said, and went into the house ahead of us, heading for the kitchen.

  I guided Marc into the living room—anywhere away from the windows that looked out onto the pool—and sat next to him, holding his hand. I heard Michael in the kitchen, opening drawers and banging metal against metal. From the noise he was making, it was clear that Michael intended to distill the alcohol himself and not just pour it from a bottle like other humans.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he emerged from the kitchen walking as carefully as a tightrope walker, being careful not to spill his concoction.

  He handed one to Marc and one to me, then sat back in a chair and sipped at one himself. Marc took one look at the drink and started sobbing loudly. I knew it wasn’t intended, but I was sure that the coffee bean floating in a glass of Sambuca hit a little too close to home for Marc.

  “Marc?”

  “Yes, Robert?” Sob, sob.

  “You called the police, didn’t you?”

  “Just as you drove up.”

  “Where is your phone? I think I need to place a call to Monette. She’s good at this sort of thing, and I think her input would help a lot right now.”

  “The phone is right in the kitchen. It’s a cordless. Just bring it out here and call.”

  I retrieved the phone and called a very sleepy Monette, telling her what had happened. She expressed her sympathies to convey to Marc and Vince but said that she wasn’t surprised at the turn of events.

  “Just do one thing for me before the cops arrive,” she requested.

  “I think that may be too late. I can hear their sirens now.”

>   “Act quickly and do me a favor.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “First, is Marc with you right now?”

  “Yes, he’s sitting right next to me. He’s pretty shook up.”

  Monette continued relentlessly onward. “Ask Marc if there was any sign that Rex entered the house before he ... er ... decided to take his last swan dive.”

  I conveyed the question to Marc—minus the last part—and got a definite answer, which I repeated back to Monette.

  “No. Marc said the security system was still on and hadn’t been tripped when he came home.”

  “Question two: Were the pool lights on when Marc found him?”

  I conveyed the question, got an answer, and repeated it back to Monette: “Yes, they were.”

  “Okay, good. I don’t know if any of this means much, but it’s a good start, because once the police get there, we might not have access to the facts. Okay, last question, Robert, and only you can answer it. Go outside and carefully check the entrances to the pool area and see if you can see any dragging marks. I want to know if Rex was killed elsewhere and dragged to the pool or if he was killed at the edge of the pool. And while you’re at it—and I know that this seems grisly—but check to see if there’s blood in the pool. Off you go—call me when you get the answers.”

  I told Marc that I had a quick mission to complete and that I’d be back in a few minutes. I went out to the pool and saw Rex floating peacefully with the pool floats, his body bumping up against them in the light breeze. Behind me, staring from the kitchen windows, was Vince. No wave, no sign of recognition, nothing. He just stared, probably wondering what the hell I was doing out there after I had advised him against disturbing anything from the crime scene. I didn’t have much time, since I could see the police enter the house and talk with Marc, so I walked around the edge of the pool, heading toward the only visible gate, and looked for any clue of blood swirling in the water as I circled. No blood.

  I opened the gate and looked for any sign of dragging: pieces of grass, dirt, stones, or marks on the white concrete sidewalk. Nothing that I could see. Because the police were coming out onto the pool deck, I decided to go around the front entrance to the house so they wouldn’t know I had been in the vicinity of the body.

  I came around and entered the house again from the front, explaining to the police that I had been outside getting something from the car. Marc was answering questions, so I decided to sit and see if I could learn anything more.

  Marc said that he had come home from the party, turned off the alarm system, and gone into the kitchen to get a glass of milk before bed. He noticed the lights on in the pool and a body floating in it. He ran to the front door, locked it, and turned the security system back on so it would sound if anyone tried to get into the house. He went into the front bedroom and locked the door. He called Vince’s house to report that he believed it was Rex in the pool, then called 911.

  The police asked a few questions. Did he notice any strange cars in the area as he came home? No. Did he see anyone in the area? No. Did he step outside near the pool? No, he was too scared that a murderer might be outside, but he could clearly see that it was a body in the pool. Was he sure he didn’t leave the pool lights on when he left for the party? Yes, he was one-hundred percent sure they were off. Last question: Why did he give the 911 dispatcher the wrong house number? Marc said he was too shook up. “I guess my mind went numb,” he said.

  The police asked if they could look outside around the pool now. Sure, Marc said.

  There was a knock on the door. I opened the door to find a man from the coroner’s office of Riverside County I let him in and showed him the way to the pool, where he studied the scene carefully before setting his toolboxes down. He looked at the body in the pool and then took a few photos of Rex from different directions. Then he stuck his finger into the water and withdrew it so quickly, you would have thought there was a pack of piranhas in the pool. He repeated his actions, then slowly put his hand in the water and left it there. I was fascinated with the coroner’s investigation, mystified at what he was doing. He asked the two policemen who were watching him to help him pull Rex from the pool. The coroner, using a flashlight to examine Rex, poked and prodded him, shining the flashlight in his face and doing enough things to annoy even a dead person.

  Eventually, the coroner’s assistants arrived with a gurney and lifted Rex into a body bag, and off he went, out of our lives forever.

  The police searched the grounds for over an hour and, to our knowledge, found only one clue—an extension cord—and asked Marc if it belonged to him. Yes, he said that it did. That was the only other question they asked. They taped off the pool deck and told Marc not to let anyone in the area, because they’d be back to search for more clues in the morning.

  When the police had gone, I looked at Marc, he looked at me, and Michael looked blank—what’s new?

  There was an awkward silence that permeated the room like the smell of a bad fart. Marc was the first one to break it—the silence, that is.

  “Am I thinking what you’re thinking?” he said to Michael and me.

  Michael looked as if he had discovered the Grand Unification Theory of Physics. “Yeah, it looks like someone used a power tool to snuff Rex,” he said.

  I shot a glance at Marc that telegraphed the message “Please don’t judge me by the people I hang out with.” I looked back at Michael and agreed that yes, someone had drilled Rex to death.

  Marc was much kinder to Michael, but then he hardly knew him. Spend a little time around Michael and you would inevitably be dumped in dance bars when a promising trick came along, and stiffed for restaurant checks because Michael rarely carried any money and ended up talking for hours about nothing but himself. Why did I put up with Michael, then? Simple. Down deep, I felt that he meant well, even if he didn’t always show it. Plus, I liked the excitement of being around him. He went to interesting restaurants and bars, had incredible parties, and had one of the best houses on Fire Island. Not reason enough? Okay, I saved his life from a bunch of fag-bashers in the Village one night long ago. Satisfied? Life is a contradiction, and I am not above being a paradox from time to time.

  But back to the story at hand.

  Marc, under considerable strain himself, answered Michael in the nicest way possible. “Michael, I think that it appears that someone threw the extension cord into the pool and Rex just happened to be in it.”

  “So you think he killed himself?” Michael asked incredulously.

  “Eh ... Michael, if you don’t mind, it’s getting late and I feel a headache coming on.”

  “Oh ... right,” Michael said, the light finally dawning on him. “I guess we should get going, right, Robert?”

  “Michael, if you don’t mind going back to Rex—Vince’s house without me, I think I should spend the night here with Marc. I think he’d feel better if someone were here with him.” Marc’s hand moved over and grasped mine, telling me that he approved of my idea.

  “Fine, I’ll take the car and head home. See you back at the casa tomorrow, Robert.”

  And just like that, Michael left and I was here alone with Marc. Not exactly the ideal setting for a night of wild lovemaking, but you take what you can get. We could just cuddle, I figured.

  Without another word, Marc led me back to his bedroom, where we disrobed and lay next to each other, him curling against me and turning out the light.

  7

  A Not-So-Dynamic Duo

  I woke the next morning with a ringing in my ears. At first I thought it was from the music at Leo’s party the night before, but it started and stopped. Then started again and stopped again.

  Up and up I swam, through layers and layers of dreams, until I saw Marc standing at the side of the bed, phone in hand, saying something into the phone. He handed it to me, which was a dangerous thing to do since I was still sleepy enough to eat the phone. Not until I had my first cup of coffee in the morning would the world
make sense.

  I held the phone close to my ear and heard a voice that went through my skull like Kiri Te Kanawa hitting a high note in Die Zauberflot. Only a gay man would describe a sound like that.

  “Get the fuck up!” came the voice that could crack a continent. “It’s ten-thirty. I’ve already been up to the top of some fuckin’ mountain and back by now.”

  “Monette?” I said weakly into the phone.

  “No, it’s Congresswoman Mary Bono and I desperately need your vote. The gays are taking over Palm Springs and they don’t like me.”

  “Monette,” I repeated. It had to be.

  “Yes, it’s Monette, dear. Up and at ’em; rise and shine; daylight in the swamp,” she continued.

  “Where are you?” I struggled, sitting up, trying to make sense of where I was.

  “I’m here over at Sadie’s house in Rancho Myass. The question is, where are you?”

  “Where the hell is Rancho Myass? It sounds like a dude ranch for Michael.”

  “Rancho Mirage, Robert. The only mirage here is the rancho part. If someone can show me a rancho amidst all this nouveau riche gated-community bullshit, I’ll eat it.”

  “I’m over here at Marc’s house, in Cathedral City,” I said, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings just to make sure that was where I was. “How did you know I was here?”

  “I called you over at Vince’s place, and they said you were at Marc’s place and that you didn’t come home.”

  “Who told you? Michael?”

  “No, Vince answered the phone. Michael didn’t come home last night.”

  I got a twinge of anxiety but figured that Michael was probably shacking up somewhere. He’d turn up ... I hoped.

  “So how is Marc doing this morning?”

  I looked around the bedroom, but no Marc. “I don’t know. We were still sleeping when you called. I think he went to make coffee. I wanted to wake up and find out that the whole Rex thing was just a bad dream, but something tells me that isn’t going to be so, is it?”