“Could be better,” I said. But I immediately regretted my candid reply. “How’s your love life?” I asked, trying to make buddy banter.
Branco didn’t reply, but instead jerked his head up and pushed his jaw forward. “I’ll find you later,” he said. Then he got into the Alfa coupe and drove off.
Shortly after that exchange came yet another surprise. Out the front door of the Appleton, completely unescorted, strolled Marshall Zander.
“I thought I saw you upstairs,” he said. “What brings you here?”
“I could ask the same of you,” I answered.
He smiled comfortably. “You could,” he said. “The difference is that I’ll tell you. Max called me this morning. Apparently someone had broken in and attacked him. He sounded pretty bad, so I called the police and came straight over myself.”
“Didn’t he call the police himself?”
“I don’t know,” said Marshall Zander. “Max needed help and he needed it fast. I didn’t ask questions. I took action.”
“Did Max tell you who attacked him?”
“He was already … gone … when I got here.”
“I mean when he phoned you. Did he give you any clue who had done it?”
“No,” he said. “I told you, he sounded awful. Scared. I didn’t think to ask him anything, only to get here as fast as I could. Now I wish I had. We’d probably have his killer now.”
I noticed then that Marshall Zander’s brown eyes were filling with tears. His composure was dissolving fast. I’d seen it happen before, the way some people can maintain a façade of strength in the face of horror and even for a long while afterward, and then lose it all at once as soon as their audience has departed, which in this case was the police. His chin quivered while he spoke.
“You know who else was up there?”
I shook my head no.
“Of course you do,” he said. “And I want to know what they were doing. Don’t you wonder what your lover and that woman were doing up there? They were already there when the police arrived, you know.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said coolly, but his words had set my imagination running wild with doubt.
“Who did this to him?” demanded Marshall Zander. “Max, Max!” he wailed and then broke down into grotesque, gasping sobs.
Once again I saw why I had failed as a therapist. I couldn’t tolerate the agony and the ugliness of anyone else’s pain, real or imagined. I’d wanted to fix everything immediately, at any cost, even if it meant taking the pain onto myself. And that attitude and behavior will destroy the helper fast. A good therapist needs a detached, clinical kind of compassion, but I was cursed with the tendency to sacrifice myself for others. The only way for me to survive was to quit the field altogether, to leave the analyst’s couch to the experts and work my miracle cures at the styling chair.
I stood there unmoved by Marshall Zander’s breakdown, wishing with all my cold heart that he would stop his crying and go away. I didn’t want to be involved with him or with Max Harkey’s death. I didn’t even want to be there. I only wanted to know that Rafik was all right, and so far I hadn’t found that out. Where was he?
After a few more minutes of histrionic wailing, Marshall Zander quieted down. He panted in shallow quick breaths like a blundering slow-witted animal that has miraculously escaped its pursuer. But once he regained his composure, his eyes became dark and mean, and the next words he spoke were full of venom.
“If your lover had anything to do with this, so help me, I’ll see him pay for it.”
But his threat rang hollow, as though he’d learned his emotions from a correspondence course in acting. There was nothing in him to fear, only to pity. He turned and walked away down Appleton Mews. From behind I watched his body in motion, his sloppy gait a random series of asynchronous lurches and lunges, the neurokinetic signals firing without order from his brain and giving no clear shape to his stride. Perhaps Marshall Zander’s generosity to the ballet was his way of compensating for the physical beauty and coordination he lacked. He stopped at a new German convertible and got inside. The sleek, low-slung, two-seater was completely incongruous with the man who owned it. It too must have been a kind of compensation for what he lacked in physical attributes. I was ready to bet that he’d had a horrible childhood, with his peers picking on him mercilessly, and I wondered with some pity about the person who lived inside that vague, gelatinous body.
Finally, as if to dispel all the unpleasantness that had transpired so far that morning, Rafik appeared under the arched entranceway to the Appleton. The misty air seemed to clear around him, but I’m sure I was imagining that. If anything, the air should have become murkier upon his arrival, since my doubts were waxing ever stronger about why he was there in the first place. I managed a worried little smile and a wave, and he returned the gestures with a wan look as he descended the steps and came to where I was standing with Big Red. Then I opened my arms to him and he threw himself into them. We stood in the rainy air like that for some time, embracing and rocking each other’s bodies, as though we were the star-crossed lovers in a British film from the 1940s.
“It was horrible,” he said, tickling my chilly ear with his warm lips as he spoke.
I replied, “What were you doing up there?”
“Max called me for help.”
“When?”
“I do not know what time. He was so weak I almost did not recognize him.”
“Rafik, did he say who attacked him?”
“No. He said that he was hurt, and he has called the police, and please for me to come right now.”
For a wounded man, Max Harkey had certainly made a lot of phone calls.
“Why did he call you, Rafik?”
He pulled away from me. His eyes were fiery now. “What are you thinking?” he asked. I felt my face get hot and I had to look away from his gaze. He shook me gently. “Stani, tell me what you are thinking.”
I kept my eyes lowered and said, “What was Toni di Natale doing here?” The meekness in my voice was disgusting. Rafik didn’t reply, so I looked into his eyes for an answer. I had a right to know, didn’t I? “Was she here already?” I said. “Or did she come with you?” I was trying to be direct and strong, yet I felt like a timid fawn in retreat— all because of the bewildering power of Rafik’s warm body next to mine.
Still he remained silent.
“It looks suspect,” I said.
“You are suspecting everything I do.”
“No …” I said, but his words had an unhappy truth in them.
Rafik turned and started walking away from me.
“Aren’t you going to take the bike?” I asked.
“It does not start,” he said, and kept on walking.
That explained why Big Red had spent the night on the sidewalk in front of Max Harkey’s apartment building. I caught up to Rafik and walked alongside him in silence. The cold wet air seemed to enhance the discord I had once again set off between us. At the head of Appleton Mews he turned in the direction of his apartment.
“Can you make me a cup of coffee?” I asked.
He looked at me, his whole face sad and angry at the same time, and his forehead appeared almost swollen, as though it could not contain the conflicting secrets that raged within.
“Yes,” he said with a defeated sigh and a small shrug.
We walked the wet sidewalks to his place without another word. Rafik kept a one-room apartment a few blocks from the ballet company. The old brick building sat in squalor, and Rafik’s personal domain within its walls resembled the lair of a untamed animal. It was overrun with the intriguing detritus of a bachelor artist, and was permeated with his wild exotic scents. The place was so small that the bathroom required a flawless Dior turn before you could close the door behind you. He kept it all clean enough, but it was hopelessly cluttered, and I sometimes wondered if Rafik wanted to live with me simply because I was the better housekeeper, which wasn’t saying much.
&
nbsp; Once inside, we shucked our jackets and I sat on his bed. He began the ritual of preparing Turkish coffee in the minuscule galley kitchen, measuring first the cold water and then the powdery coffee into a long-handled brass pot called an ibrik. I knew that J. S. Bach had written a “Coffee Cantata,” but how could any music compare to Rafik’s guileless improvisations at the stove? I was entranced by his natural grace, the supple moves of his arm and shoulder as he shifted the pot on and off the flame, the tilt of his head as he watched the brown elixir foam up and then subside from the rim of the pot, and the sway of his hips and body as he transferred his weight from one leg to the other. While Rafik transformed a household chore into a religious experience, I felt there was only one way to show him that I really cared for him and wanted him more than ever. I got up from my chair and went to where he stood at the tiny stove, his attention glued to the small pot. From behind I wrapped my arms around his slender waist and nestled myself against his strong back and his extra-firm butt. His clean masculine scent made me tremble slightly with pleasure and desire and with some uncertainty too.
“What … ?” he said while he continued with the coffee.
“Maybe we don’t need that now.”
Through the starchy cotton of his shirt I located his nipples and pulled gently at them. Usually that’s a clear signal to him about what I want. But Rafik proceeded with the coffee preparation as though he was alone and content in his little room. My furtive hands wandered lower down his taut belly and sneaked in through the small openings between the shirt buttons along the front placket. I popped two of them open and plunged my hands into the curly hair on his chest. I grabbed little bunches and yanked gently, then a little harder, then took handfuls of his furry flesh and massaged it in small circular movements.
Yet Rafik was intent on the art of Turkish coffee.
My left hand wandered down below his belt to the front of his slacks, where I discovered that a favorite part of him had already become stronger and was pressing insistently against the fabric. Mine was hard and moist too, but then it usually is when I am touching Rafik.
“I love you,” I murmured into his ear.
“And I love you,” he said. “So I will make coffee.”
“Let’s lie down.”
“We must talk.”
Huh? Hadn’t I already said everything that was important?
“Rafik, just turn the coffee off.”
“No. You sit. I will bring coffee.”
“I don’t want coffee now.”
He smiled slightly with that knowing smile that meant he was in control for the moment. He said, “But I do.”
That did it. My own love barometer deflated at once, and I went and sat down as he instructed me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that his refusal to have sex wasn’t due to the usual choreographic exhaustion that had been plaguing him recently. Rafik’s sturdy member never lied. He obviously liked the attention I was giving him. No, his reason for not wanting to have sex with me that morning was just plain and simple rejection.
In the next moment, unguarded, perhaps desperate, hoping to allay my worst fears, I asked, “Are you involved with Toni di Natale?”
He turned around from the stove and made a small exasperated chuckle. “You are very silly man,” he said.
“Then are you involved with what happened?”
Suddenly he banged the ibrik sharply against the stovetop, spilling some of the coffee and making the gas flame sputter and flare under the small pot.
“How can you think like that?” he yelled. “The police are treating me with more respect than my lover does.”
“I’m sorry, Rafik.”
“No, you are not. You think only of yourself. You come here and then you want sex. You do not try to comfort me. You do not see what trouble I have.”
“But I do, I do.”
“All you do is accuse me.”
“Only because I don’t know the facts. You keep things from me, and so I think you’re hiding stuff.”
“I tell you all that is important for you.”
“But I want to know everything.”
“You ask for too much.”
“Rafik, what are you hiding?”
He turned away from me and leaned against the stove. He stood like that, motionless, until I realized that he was crying silently. I went to him again, held him close from behind, rocked him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and kissed the back of his neck. “I’m a selfish ass.”
He mumbled his reply. “I think you should go now.”
“Are you putting me out?”
He turned to face me and nodded sadly. “Please go.”
“No coffee?”
He shook his head. “I want to be alone.”
Great work, Stanley. Your lover has just been through homicidal horrors, and instead of comforting him, you put him through another interrogation based on your pathetic notions of fidelity and unrequited love. Maybe I really didn’t deserve a lover, if that was the best I could do in a crisis. Back when I was alone, I was a model of stability and understanding. Now, in love, I was fretful and weak and dependent on the unconditional approval of my partner, no matter the circumstances. And worse, I imagined that anything he kept from me—a story, a phrase, a syllable—would later materialize as yet another reason for his leaving me. The intense attraction that initially bound us was unraveling, and no matter what I did to mend it, it only got worse.
I offered to make him dinner that night, figuring we could face this unpleasantness more objectively after we’d both cooled down. He agreed. Then I left him with his Turkish coffee while I walked back to my apartment under an opaque gray sky. At some point in my gloomy stroll homeward I felt an obscure and unexpected sense of hope, as though after tonight’s cozy dinner—I’d be sure to make all his favorite food—everything would turn out all right again. I would express my love for Rafik in a culinary way that would solve all the problems caused by misunderstanding and murder, just the way the sun always managed to burn through the darkest, most impenetrable clouds.
And today I would win the lottery too.
5
Whose Lover is He?
WHEN I GOT BACK HOME it was almost nine-thirty, which gave me just enough time to feed Sugar Baby, turn a quick triple S (that’s shit, shower, and shave), then head off to Snips. My official hours at the salon are ten to six, but I don’t think I’ve worked a normal day since I started. On the whole though, I do put in more hours than I’m paid for, which is one reason Nicole tolerates my many unscheduled comings and goings. She knows that my guilt-driven conscience will force me to work extra time to compensate. Another reason she puts up with me is that my work is exemplary, even if my work habits are not.
When I set out for the salon, the air had mostly cleared and the opaque cloud cover had become luminescent as pearl. The scene was already being set for a romantic resolution that night with Rafik. I arrived at Snips and found Nicole free, so I invited her into my office for coffee, where I planned to recount the recent troubling events. The first change I noticed was the presence of a new item—a dainty barrel chair executed in pink wicker and cushioned in seafoam green chintz. Nicole caught my appraising glance at it. Without a word I set about making the coffee.
“Well?” she inquired.
“I didn’t know Talbots sold furniture.”
Nicole plunked her ample hips into my leather throne and patted her palm on the cushions of the delicate newcomer. “It’s quite comfortable, darling. See for yourself.”
“Comfortable for a Nantucket dwarf. What happened to the other one?”
Nicole smiled brightly and fairly chirped. “I gave it to Ramon. Poor thing is having such a time setting up his new apartment.”
“He’s in over his head,” I replied. Ramon had recently moved into a huge two-bedroom place with a balcony and an unobstructed river view. It was far beyond his means, at least the ones he earned in traditional ways.
Nicole asked scorn
fully, “Haven’t you ever been in over your head?”
“Only with love, doll. Never with money.”
While the coffee brewed I told Nicole about all that had transpired, from last night’s party to this morning’s horrible discovery of Max Harkey’s body.
“Not again,” she said when I’d finished. “Don’t you dare get involved. You know it only leads to trouble.”
“Don’t worry, Nikki. I have enough to do keeping my ship of love afloat. That comes first now. As for this killing, I’ll cooperate with the police, but my Nancy Drew road show is closed forever.”
“Good. Now when is Rafik moving in?”
“Nikki, I told you that’s not the solution for us.”
“Then what do you intend to do? You can’t go on like this, Stanley, living apart and expecting him to accept that. He’s the kind of man who wants a home.”
“And a wife.”
“It could be worse.”
“Would you do it?”
Nicole paused before answering. “Why not, if the sex was good or he was threatening to leave me.”
“Well, doll, the sex is nil right now. And Rafik doesn’t threaten, he takes action.”
“Stanley, don’t lose him.”
“Is that mine to decide?”
“Yes, it is. You must stand by your man.”
“Do I hear a song coming on, doll? What about my man standing by me?”
“He needs you now. You’ve admitted as much. He’s under a lot of stress. Is it so much for you to be a source of comfort for him now, for someone who adores you?”
“It seems unfair somehow, that I have to nurture him but I don’t get any nurturing back.”
“Darling, you sound like those ridiculous people who negotiate every aspect of their lives. This is love. Love is simple. Here, just answer me yes or no. Don’t think now, just answer me. Do you want Rafik in your life?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to help him now?”
“Yes, of course.”
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