“Is there anything to prevent it? I mean something real, like an ocean or a disability or money.”
I squirmed. “No.”
“Then you must do whatever it takes to help him.”
“But what if I get nothing back?”
“What is there to get back? Stanley, if your idea of love is to get something back, then you should give it all up and study financial planning.”
The coffee maker puffed out its last shot of hot water, which meant it was java time. I stirred the pot to mix the denser stuff on the bottom with the more dilute stuff on top, then poured us both a mugful. Nicole took out her cigarette case and opened it, displaying a row of pastel-colored and gold-tipped shafts, custom blended at a local tobacconist. With all my futile attempts at smoking, she knew enough not to offer me one, but she lit hers and inhaled that first deep lungful with a glazed look of pleasure. For my treat I chose a triangular slab of raspberry-filled shortbread from the box of pastry sent by my mom. Nicole waggled a finger at me.
“Calories, darling. Five hundred at least.”
“Love me, love my hips, doll.”
The telephone on my desk beeped. It was the front desk announcing someone for me, one Lieutenant Branco of the Boston Police Department. I told the receptionist I’d be right out.
“Gotta go, doll. Mr. Mediterraneo is here.”
Nicole looked at me quizzically.
“The cop, doll. Lieutenant Branco. Tall, dark, handsome, single. Remember him?”
Nicole replied with sudden animation. “Do I!” she said. Then, though she is not one to waste good tobacco, Nicole fastidiously rolled the small ember off the cigarette she’d just lit and tamped it out carefully. She never extinguished a cigarette by crushing it, which usually bent or broke the shaft and left a crumpled, charred stump. Even the debris in Nicole’s ashtray showed her artful approach to smoking.
She stood up and walked briskly to the office door. “Let’s go then, darling,” she said impatiently.
We went back out onto the shop floor together. I looked out above all the hustle-bustle, beyond the shampoo sinks and the styling chairs, the snips and the clips, and focused my gaze on the reception desk near the front entrance. Sure enough, Lieutenant Branco was waiting there in all his Italian-stallion glory. He looked almost bewildered by the activity in the salon, as though his beauty was so natural he couldn’t comprehend a place where it had to be created and applied to the lesser human forms. Did he realize how he’d been blessed by the architects and sculptors of bodily fate? How could he not?
Nicole was traveling fast, and I had some trouble keeping up with her without breaking into a trot.
“Got the old runway strut going again, eh doll?”
“I don’t like to keep the police waiting.”
“Uh, Nikki, I think he wants to question me, not you.”
“I’m just going to say hello.”
“Then what’s that leg-hold trap for?”
Nicole arrived in front of Lieutenant Branco a few seconds before I did, which was just enough time for her to greet him first.
“You’ve been a stranger, Lieutenant,” she said, and thrust out her hand.
“I’ve been pretty busy … Miss Albright, right?” Branco took Nicole’s hand and gave it a light shake.
“That’s right, Lieutenant. But please call me Nicole.”
“This is business,” replied the cop.
“Business with Stanley, yes. But surely I’m not involved?”
“Not at all, ma’am.”
“Then please, Lieutenant, call me Nicole.”
Branco’s eyes brightened. “Another time, certainly. I’d like to talk to Stan now.”
Hearing him say my name caused a little twist around my heart, just the way it had those other times. If Branco was using my first name, perhaps I was more to him than just another witness or suspect to help his case along. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have a closer connection to him, beyond the straight cop-gay hairdresser relationship, which had obvious limits. But today I was satisfied enough to hear him call me Stan again.
Nicole continued, “He’s all yours, Lieutenant. Don’t leave without saying good-bye.” Her inflection and the subdued girlish giggle that followed meant that Nicole was up to no good.
As she walked past me I muttered sotto voce, “Your skirt is in your face, doll.”
She moved off with sure-footed grace in every step, despite the four-inch heels. I noticed some extra oomph in the sway of her firm, ample hips too. Then I saw Branco watching her departure with keen interest, as though this renewed connection with Nicole was appealing to him in some unbusinesslike way.
“We can talk in my office, Lieutenant,” I said, breaking the spell.
“That’s fine.”
I led us back to my office, where I offered him some coffee. The freshly brewed stuff had filled the small room with a welcoming aroma, but Branco declined my offer. From the tired look on his face I suspected he wanted and needed a cup badly. But his accepting any small hospitality from me might have softened the serious nature of his visit, which was after all a police interrogation.
Branco suggested we sit, but he left no choice about our places. He settled himself on my desktop, with one long leg braced against the floor and the other one hanging freely over the edge. The knife-edge crease of his slacks could hardly conceal the fullness of his calves beneath the fabric. And his black loafers, buffed to a metallic sheen and warmed by his feet within, gave off an inviting leathery aroma. Branco’s stance blocked any use of my comfy desk chair, so I resigned myself to the new fragile wicker thing that posed as a seat. It squeaked and flexed to accommodate my healthy backside, and even after I had settled into it, it sagged and swayed unsteadily. I hoped it wouldn’t collapse. Our mutual positions put Branco above me, with my line of sight right around his belt level. The seat might have been tight, but the view couldn’t have been better.
“I assume you’ve talked to your friend,” he said.
“Which one, Lieutenant?”
“Your lover. The one who found the body this morning.”
“You mean Rafik? I talk to him often.”
“Then you know that he’s involved in this thing.”
“That’s not what he told me.”
Branco grunted, then said flatly, “Well, he is.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to tell me what you know about it.”
“Lieutenant, I know nothing.”
“Just talk then. Tell me a story. You’d be surprised what might come out.”
“Any story?”
“Start with this morning. How did you end up at the Harkey residence?”
“Rafik called me.”
“When was that?”
“Six-thirty.”
“So you weren’t together?”
I moved slightly and the chair squeaked. “No,” I said.
“Were you expecting the call?”
“No.”
“Does he often call you at that hour?”
“Never.”
“See?” Branco said with triumph. “Already you’ve told me things I didn’t know.”
I wondered what I’d said that was so important.
He went on. “Did you know Rafik was with Toni di Natale when he called?”
“He told me only that Max Harkey was dead and the police were there.”
“So you didn’t know he was with that woman, the conductor?”
“No.”
Branco paused as if to breathe in the aroma of the coffee. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you spend the night together?”
“Lieutenant, what does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer me. It’s a simple, direct question. Why didn’t you spend last night with Rafik Panossian?”
I didn’t see the relevance of it, but I also had nothing to hide. In fact, I almost wanted to tell Branco everything about my whole life, including my love trou
bles.
“Okay, Lieutenant. I’m sure you already know all this, but here goes. I was at a dinner party with Rafik last night. It was at Max Harkey’s place. Rafik was flirting with Toni di Natale. It got serious and I got jealous. Very jealous. I drank too much, and I kept on drinking. I made a fool of myself, which probably embarrassed or amused everybody else. Then I stumbled home and spent the rest of the night alone.”
Branco grunted again.
I said, “You might want to add that I cried myself to sleep too. I haven’t done that for a long time. It might have some bearing on the case.”
“I’ll make a note of it,” said the cop. Then he sniffed at the air again and said, “Maybe I will take a cup of that coffee if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all,” I said. But when I tried to get up from the chair, I found myself caught in its wicker grip. I had to push against the sides to spread them open. The flimsy strands of woven wood gave a slight groan, then made a crackling sound as they fought against the pressure I applied. Finally I was released. Once out of the nasty chair I gave it a sharp kick, just to show it who was boss. I caught a smile on Branco’s face. Gay clown performs for straight cop. Was his look ridicule or genuine amusement?
I poured him a mugful of coffee. Just as I was about to ask him how he liked it, he said, “Black is fine.” I handed him the mug, and then it happened: His fingers brushed against mine. It was nothing, completely unintentional, an accident. But what surprised me was how warm his fingers were, even during that briefest, lightest touch. And what else surprised me was the familiar little rush I felt, the tingling lively sensation that I had assumed was Rafik’s exclusive domain.
“Mind if I take my jacket off?” said the cop.
“It gets kind of warm in here sometimes,” I replied, then I pushed open one of the windows. Meanwhile Branco removed his sport coat and draped it over the big leather chair. The small office quickly filled with his scent, a heady blend of wild balsam and clean starched cotton. It went well with the coffee.
I sat myself on the desktop facing Branco—enough was enough with that ridiculous wicker chair—and I struck a pose parallel to his. He drank some of his coffee and nodded approvingly. I felt like a good boy. Then he went back to being a cop.
“Did you know your lover spent the night with Toni di Natale?”
I paused while my stomach knotted itself.
Branco said, “I can see from your face that you didn’t know. Sorry it came out this way.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said with the words of a rational mind and a lying heart.
“You admitted earlier that you were extremely jealous.”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“That was about love. I don’t see how any of this relates to Max Harkey’s death.”
“It may not. But you may have been lying about your jealousy, even though you’re convincing enough right now.”
“Excuse me for having feelings.”
“See, I think there’s nothing to be jealous about. I think that maybe Toni di Natale planned this killing and is using your lover as an alibi.”
“That’s absurd, Lieutenant.”
“I’m just trying to determine the extent of your involvement with the murder.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“But if your lover is an accessory, common sense tells me you’d be involved too.”
“Then why don’t you book us both?”
Branco sipped at his coffee. “Good stuff,” he said. Then he gazed directly into my eyes and spoke. “The reason I’m not booking you or your lover, Kraychik, is that I can’t find a shred of evidence on either of you.”
So I was Kraychik now, strictly man-to-man business.
“So what was Toni di Natale’s motive?”
“That’s not clear yet. We do know that Harkey had just broken off his relations with her.”
So they had been involved. I recalled the brief but nasty exchange between Toni di Natale and Alissa Kortland at Max Harkey’s table that night, and all the allusions to sex.
Branco went on. “But what doesn’t play for me is that she spent the entire night with your friend.”
“Thanks for repeating headline news, Lieutenant.” Did he enjoy tormenting me?
Branco continued, “See, it’s got to be a phony alibi. Why else would a sexy woman spend the night with a gay man? It sounds—I don’t know—fake. And you say you’re not jealous about it. I find that strange. You said you were jealous last night at the party. In fact you claim you put on a real show, a first-class performance. Even have witnesses to back it up. But it doesn’t make sense to be jealous at night and then not be jealous the next day. Do you get what I mean?”
My jealousy aside, Branco had no business assuming that women did not find Rafik attractive, no matter whether he was gay or not. Part of my dilemma was the very likelihood that Rafik and Toni di Natale had spent the night together, and in pleasure no less. Now Branco was trying to tell me the whole thing was planned as an alibi to protect them—and me!—from suspicion of Max Harkey’s murder. It was crazy. What was Branco trying to prove? What was he after? Then I realized with sudden and painful certainty what had been happening in my little office. Lieutenant Branco had been manipulating me, toying with me, the same way Rafik often did. I felt my face redden. Both men had the same power over me, the power to make me forget who I was and become something useful, like a pawn, or diversionary, like a plaything, but always obedient and disposable. I hated myself for being so weak. I recognized the game and it enraged me. I recalled the odd pleasure on Branco’s face when he arrested Toni that morning. It was time to tell him how I saw things, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Lieutenant, I think you might have the story wrong. But here’s a version you can think about. Maybe you booked Toni di Natale because it gave you a boner to do it. And now you’re afraid she may have slept with a gay man. And where would that put you?”
Branco’s face froze. For long silent moments nothing in the small room moved. Neither of us breathed. Neither one blinked. The distant sounds of traffic through the open window seemed to be roaring now. Then, as though marking a dramatic beat, the coffee maker released a final noisy puff of steam. It was Branco’s cue to speak.
“It’s never good news to learn that you’re not everything to the person you love.”
His remark made me regret what I’d said. I’d meant to return his insult, to defend myself against his attack. But he had seen through my juvenile ranting. He had perceived the real message behind my words, that the news of Rafik’s infidelity had hurt me to the core.
Branco finished his coffee then stood up. “I’ll be talking to you again,” he said. He put on his sport coat and opened the door. He turned back to me and said, “Good cup of coffee.” Then he walked out of my office and left the shop.
6
You Don’t Know What Love Is
ORIGINALLY I HAD PLANNED TO MAKE RAFIK one of his favorite dishes for dinner: chicken breasts braised in butter and olive oil with fresh rosemary and chopped tomato, topped with a thin slice of Montrachet cheese. Yes, I was resorting to food as a way to reconcile us. But I’d planned that meal before I had learned of Rafik’s nuit d’amour with Toni di Natale. Now it was easy to settle on frozen appetizers and a three-cheese calzone from the local pizzeria. The food would be good enough, but it paled in comparison to my first menu, the one inspired by love. And the prefab meal would be a drastic comedown from the culinary experience at Max Harkey’s place only twenty-four hours earlier. At one juncture I even considered serving everything at room temperature, especially after hearing my aunt Letta’s counsel in my mind.
“You don’t give a man a hot meal when he has been with another woman. Never!”
Who would have thought a gay man would be contending with that kind of conjugal logic? But my heart softened while I was puttering around the kitchen, laying out the frozen appetizers on a co
okie sheet and preparing my battle plan. It happened when I took a new look at my the refrigerator door. It’s covered with photos and postcards and magnets—some erotic, some silly, all little scraps of things that delight me. The collection had become invisible to me, as things on refrigerator doors tend to do, especially those little signs that say, “Are you really hungry?” or the more direct “NO!”
What got to me was the snapshot of Rafik and me during our first honeymoon vacation. We had spent a weekend in Maine, and the photo showed us both on the beach. A passing hunk had snapped it for us. As different as Rafik and I were physically, the photo could have been used as state’s evidence that we belonged together. There we were, embracing like young buddies in the sudsy white surf. We appeared so animated that I could almost hear the waves again, and feel the cold droplets of ocean water falling from Rafik onto me, and taste the sun and the salt on his forearm, the one he’d wrapped around my neck. It was a cliche, a snapshot of two men stupidly in love at the beach. Every person who’s ever had a lover must have some version of this photo. I almost resented the effect it had on me. But I also knew that I wanted that again. I wanted those joyous times again, when being together was so easy because we were enchanted with each other’s minds and bodies.
As I prepared the salad greens I wondered how life might be if things didn’t work out, if we ended up separating. With a sinking feeling I recalled my life before Rafik, how I’d made myself strong to withstand the loneliness. Sure, I had tried practical ways to fill the void—placing and answering personal ads, accepting blind dates arranged by “married” friends, taking up country-western dancing and joining bridge clubs and attending bingo parties—but they usually resulted in dire incompatibility or else outright rejection. The idea of creating a social life for myself had seemed a reasonable solution, but in practice it was as romantic as driving a dump truck. So, to handle the ever growing frustration, I had cultivated a peculiar vision, one that focused however narrowly on the bright side of life: Happy thoughts only, head up, move forward, he travels fastest who travels alone, cha-cha-cha. The only question then was, With all my speedy, independent, positive, forward-moving activity, where exactly was I going?
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