A Persian Gem

by Jeff Isaacson

  A Persian Gem

  By Jeff Isaacson

  Text copyright © 2019 Jeff Isaacson

  Table of Contents

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  More Mysteries!

  About the Author

  1

  It began as an ordinary day in paradise.

  I had just come in from a run along the beach. My bare feet still tingled from the grains of beige sand and a few painful stabs from shards of some type of seashell. The faint scent of fresh linen mixed with a weak slurry of salt, the smell of the ocean, lingered. In my mind’s eye, I was still watching the circulating sea, almost like an escalator, depositing wave after sudsy wave so close to me that bathtub warm water sometimes filled one of my footprints.

  The sun was out and it was intense. It felt like a June or a July sun in Minneapolis, but it was the middle of January. The sky was a cloudless azure blue.

  I was at home. Or at least at my vacation home. More on that later.

  But what you need to know now is that I came home from my run, and I turned on the TV. For some reason news was almost always on.

  And if you watch the news in that beach community for at least fifteen minutes, you’ll have no doubt that you’re in Florida. The story that confirmed that I was, in fact, in Florida that time started with a question:

  “Is it time to regulate backyard gun ranges?”

  Apparently anyone in Florida with an acre of land and a gun can make their own backyard gun range. And the gun range that they showed on the news just then did not inspire confidence.

  The targets were attached to thin particle board that made them look almost more like an elementary school science fair project than anything that could ever stop a bullet. The targets themselves were crude, misshapen, and obviously hand drawn. Note to backyard gun range enthusiasts. It’s clearly worth it to spend the extra money on professionally made targets. You don’t want to be spending your time preparing to defend yourself by shooting at targets that look like something a mad scientist and Igor stitched together with scavenged graveyard parts into a nineteenth century monster with different sized arms, legs, and an asymmetrical torso only to suffer a meth fueled home invasion by a person with a normal human center of mass that you miss because you’ve been shooting at Quasimodo in your backyard.

  Also, not sure why you drew boobs on half of your handmade backyard gun range targets. I don’t think that boobs alter the way that a bullet impacts the body.

  Of course I guess there might be another reason for the boobs, well okay two other reasons. But the one that’s not absurdly juvenile is that, yeah, he (I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s a he) may be a backyard gun range enthusiast with abysmal safety precautions and hunchbacked, hand drawn targets. But he’s also a feminist. And half of those targets are going to be women. Women can be meth fueled home invaders too. You don’t hear about it much, but it’s true. It’s not the kind of glass ceiling that gets a lot of attention.

  But that’s all the more reason to highlight it in your chipboard, handmade, feminist backyard gun range.

  So I was reminded that I was in Florida.

  But the next story changed the course of my vacation. I remember it exactly. This is what the male newscaster with the slick chestnut hair said:

  “We have some breaking news. Multiple emergency vehicles from both Fort Myers and Sanibel are responding to a call that someone has jumped off of the Causeway. This is a rapidly developing story, and we’ll let you know as soon as we have more details.”

  I almost choked to death on a glass of water.

  The Causeway is the bridge that connects Sanibel and Captiva with the mainland of Florida. Thad and I had crossed over it on our way to Sanibel. It was a pretty high bridge. And it seemed like there was mostly shallow water underneath.

  I couldn’t be sure that the news report was correct. It was possible that it wasn’t. Sometimes networks are in too much of a hurry to break news. But if the report was right, that likely meant that there was a suicide on a bridge while I was on vacation just a couple of miles away!

  I had to learn everything that I could about this.

  I had planned to do my vacation usual. I had planned to go lay in the sun and loll around after my run on the beach. Maybe venture up to some resort/restaurant for a fish or seafood lunch and a drink. Then head back to the beach.

  Now, I knew that I would be tethered to this newscast all day. And during the commercials or the stories about backyard gun ranges, I’d be on my phone scouring newspapers, internet news services, local reporters’ social media feeds, everything. I had to know what happened.

  So I turned up the volume on the news and strapped in. It took several hours to get most of the story, but it was worth it.

  I had expected to learn that the person who had jumped off of the Causeway was a person with a deep, likely untreated, depression. That their act of jumping off of the Causeway was their swan song, their last act, their final statement to the world, and their final verdict on their own personal situation.

  It was none of that.

  A woman, described as Asian or Asian American of medium height and medium build had jumped off of the highest point on the Causeway as a BASE jump. She had a parachute. And that parachute had opened like a circle of a bright yellow and orange tail behind her. She then glided out and landed on a passing commercial ship. She landed on the deck of that ship quite a ways out into the distance. (Eyewitnesses estimated a quarter mile) She appeared unharmed upon landing and was spirited away by that boat.

  The whole thing got compared to something out of a Bond or a Bourne movie. And maybe there was some truth to that.

  I remembered Thad telling me on the way to Sanibel that all kinds of military people and former spies are rumored to live on the island. Thad told me that Porter Goss used to be one of the elected local leaders. Porter Goss used to run the CIA.

  I was beginning to believe that this was no ordinary jump. (I guess that there’s really no such thing as an ordinary jump off of a bridge, but you get what I mean.) And I was fascinated. Almost more fascinated than if it had been just another suicide. There was little involving jumping off of a bridge that I hadn’t heard of before, but BASE jumping off of a bridge onto a passing commercial ship was certainly something that I had never heard of.

  And buoyed by my last (eventually) successful investigation, I decided that maybe I would take a second crack at playing journalist and seeing what I could find out about this. I rubbed my hands with glee at the thought.

  But my tummy rumbled.

  Thad was almost done working for the day, and it was nearly time to go out to dinner with Thad and Morty and Ruby. The whole day had slipped away.

  Thad’s sweat equity was what was paying for my lodging. Thad’s ex-boyfriend owned the place that we were staying at. But to call it a place is to call Disneyworld an amusement park.

  Thad and I were staying in an ocean front mansion in Sanibel. There were at least forty rooms in the house. It was like a game of Clue. There was a conservatory, a library, a billiards parlor, a lounge with a bar and another billiards table, and not just one but two libraries (one for books in English and one for books in Farsi).

  The reason that there was a library for books in Farsi was because Thad’s ex-boyfriend, Farhad, was Iranian-American and had grown up in Iran.

  I have to say that I am totally jealous of Thad. He showed me a picture of Farhad, and the man was a total Iranian-American silver fox. Oh, and he als
o started his own billion dollar software company.

  I hate to admit it, but I looked at Thad’s pale, short, round, hairless little body and wondered what Farhad had ever seen in Thad. And it was almost as if Thad could read my mind. Because he pulled the phone that he had been showing me Farhad’s picture on back toward himself and began to swipe on it over and over again.

  “You’re probably looking at me and wondering how I ever landed a catch like that,” Thad said.

  I said nothing.

  “But here’s a picture of us together back when we were an item,” Thad showed me his phone again.

  I looked. If Thad hadn’t told me that he was showing me a picture of himself, I never would’ve guessed. He was thin and muscular in the photo. (He’s still muscular today, but that just makes him look even rounder.) He had a full head of hair. He almost looked like Twin Cities weatherman Sven Sundgaard, a cute, little buff dude.

  “You never know how time is going to treat you. Some of us end up looking like a fat adult baby. And some of us end up as ageless, Persian sex gods,” Thad declared.

  And we were there because of that ageless, Persian sex god. He had hired Thad to put a new floor in the ballroom. (Yes, there’s a full ballroom here too.) That new floor will host the dance for the wedding of Farhad and his fellow Iranian American groom at the end of our vacation in about a week and a half.

  Thad planned to, and was on pace to, easily have the floor finished by the end of the first week that we were down there. Jace and her wife and Dave and his wife would be joining us for the second week. Farhad had given Thad permission to invite us all down. Because I’m really not working, or at least not doing anything that I can’t easily do anywhere with an internet connection, I was the only one of our friends and bar trivia teammates who could get away for the full two weeks with Thad. Although I did have to ask MNDOT’s St. Paul bridge inspector to cover me if Minneapolis needed any emergency bridge inspections. (I cover for her in February.)

  Thad is obviously a good guy. And I would trust him if he told me that someone was good people, but I’m still surprised that Farhad invited all of us to his home and wedding. A wedding that I have to imagine will be as fabulous as his Sanibel beach home.

  But I also think that the wedding will be bittersweet for Thad. And why wouldn’t it be?

  What if I was going to the wedding of a gorgeous ex with a billion dollar company, several multimillion dollar homes, and the kindness to invite strangers into his mansion on my word that they were “good people”? It would be hard.

  Also, who knew that Thad could install a high end ballroom floor? He’s a jack of all trades.

  And Thad would be wrapping up soon for the day, and we would be joining a sweet old couple again for dinner. Thad met the two of them years ago, back when he was with Farhad and Farhad’s company was just beginning to be successful. Back then, Farhad owned a far more modest home on Sanibel over on a road named after a kind of seashell that I had never heard of. (More on seashells later.) The old couple, Morty and Ruby, that we’d be dining with again, were Farhad’s neighbors back then. And Thad and Farhad became friends with them. It was many years before Morty and Ruby learned that Farhad and Thad had been in a same sex relationship. But that hadn’t really seemed to bother them. They kept writing letters to both Farhad and Thad. It’s so cute. In this day of emails and automation, Farhad and Thad still have pen pals.

  So Morty and Ruby come over to pick us up. (Because we have no car.) And they bring us to dinner every night.

  It works great for Thad. I’ve found out that Thad usually only eats one meal a day. He eats an absolute gut bomb at the end of the day. At first I was tempted to say something. But he said it first.

  “Eating like this is probably the reason that there’s more of me to love,” he said.

  Yep.

  It’s hard for me. I usually eat all the time. Like at least five times a day. I always have like a granola bar, or some dried fruit, or some trail mix on me. My biggest meal is usually breakfast. I might just have half a sandwich or a bowl of soup for lunch. Maybe a salad or some steamed veggies and fruit and sometimes a little chocolate for dinner.

  Now that I’m on vacation, though, I’m moving towards Thad’s schedule. He’s not moving toward mine.

  Sure I could go shopping and buy snacks, but what a waste of beach time! So instead I hang out on the beach all day. I go somewhere and have a lunch that’s usually heavier than I would like, and then I have a dinner that’s heavier than I would like.

  Thad walked out into the living room. I was still in my jogging outfit in front of the TV.

  “You might want to change,” he suggested. “Morty and Ruby are going to be here soon.”

  I looked at him. This round, bald little man was covered in dust. It was caked on his face. It had soiled a literal blue collar work t-shirt. His pants and boots looked like they were covered in powdered sugar that had been baked until it had just started to caramelize.

  “You look ready though,” I joked.

  “I’m about to pick one of the five thousand showers in here,” Thad replied.

  There’s more to that joke than you probably realize. Because I guarantee you that Thad picks the same shower every single time.

  One thing that I’ve learned about Thad is that one of us is fat soluble and one of us is water soluble. That’s science talk for two things that are wildly opposite.

  I love Thad, and he has quickly become my best male friend. Well, really my only male friend…besides Dave, I guess. I love Thad, but I’ve learned something in the time that we’ve spent together in this beautiful, seaside mansion.

  Thad is tough to live with. And I barely see him.

  His shoes say it all.

  First of all, he brought more shoes than me. I brought a pair of flip flops, a pair of running shoes, and my sexiest heels. Just in case. Mostly for the wedding. Maybe Farhad has an equally gorgeous, straight, single brother with a billion dollar company who might be aching for a wedding of his own in one of his multimillion dollar mansions.

  You never know.

  So I brought three pairs of shoes. Thad brought seven.

  There are three separate pairs of dress shoes, and I’ve puzzled over why a man, even a gay man, would bring three pairs of dress shoes. Two potentially makes sense. It might be advisable to bring one brown pair and one black pair just in case. So the brown pair makes a small amount of sense to me. But there are two black pairs. And I challenge you to find the difference between the two of them. It’s like a “Where’s Waldo” challenge. And the correct answer is that the heel is reinforced in one of the pairs of black shoes and not in the other.

  Thad also brought a pair of boat shoes. Maybe that would make sense if Farhad had a boat. (He doesn’t.) Or maybe if you and your young, handsome friends were just kicking it on the deck in some commercial for khaki shorts, but we’re not going to do that.

  Thad also brought two different pairs of flip flops. The only difference between them is that the sole of one is orange and the sole of the other is blue.

  Finally, he brought the one pair that he really needs, and that he’s been using almost exclusively. He brought his trusty, dusty, beat up old pair of work boots.

  To my knowledge, Thad has only used his work boots and his flip flops with the blue soles since we’ve been here.

  And it’s not just the gluttonous excess of footwear that’s bizarre. It’s the way that he stores them.

  Thad puts every single shoe that he’s not currently wearing in a tight, single file line along a long rug in the foyer. The heels of each of these shoes are lined up exactly, like he’s the Rain Man or something.

  In fact, I pulled what I thought was an ingenious prank on our second day here. I walked up behind one of his black dress shoes and I moved it an inch. We were late getting out to Morty and Ruby that evening because Thad literally just stared at his row of shoes, with one slightly askew, like the world had suddenly stopped making sense t
o him.

  I laughed at first. But then I felt bad, because it seemed like I was really harming him. I didn’t expect to see him stare at his shoes for five full minutes like someone in a memory care ward, which he did.

  I haven’t messed with his shoes since.

  And Thad carries that kind of ethos into everything that he does. He wakes up at exactly the same time every day. He starts work at the exact same time every day even though he’s his own boss for this project and could sleep until noon or even install flooring during the graveyard shift if he wanted to. The house is big enough. I wouldn’t hear him. But no, he starts at the same time every day.

  He finishes at the same time every day too. In fact, he was probably silently hating me for still lounging around in my jogging outfit when he knows that I know what time he stops working and when we should expect Morty and Ruby.

  And we go to the same restaurant for dinner every day. It’s called The Island Cow. It is a good restaurant. (And as Thad will be the first to tell you, it’s “kitschy and fun”, with all the cow décor all over the place.) It has good seafood. Which is all I require when I’m by the coast. The prices are reasonable. The service is great. But I’m not like Thad. I haven’t been to Sanibel many times, and I would like to see more of the island than the beach and The Island Cow, as much as I love The Island Cow.

  I’d like some variety.

  Morty and Ruby are no help. They seem to be every bit as anal as Thad. We’re already testing their rigidity by eating so late. They’d like to pick us up at four and beat the rush, but they understand that Thad is working. So they’re willing to wait until six. Although Ruby said it just a little bit like a martyr. Just a little bit.

  So they’re no help.

  I think that they’re just as rigid as Thad. Maybe more so because they’ve been rigid longer.

  So I wasn’t looking forward to the trip as Thad and I piled into the plush, sagging almost to the springs, backseat of their old, lumbering Buick. But that changed fast.

  Morty and Ruby had the radio on. It was talk radio. The news was on.