Dead on Your Feet

by Grant Michaels

  I spoke under my breath. “How do people live like this?”

  Rico overheard me and answered easily. “He owns it.”

  “He owns this?”

  “The hotel.”

  That tidbit challenged my New Jersey working-class values. To me an extravagant real estate holding is something along the lines of an old beach house or a musty lakeside cabin, not a bloody high-rise hotel. Oh well, someone had to own the grand hotels of the world. It certainly wasn’t going to be the likes of me, not outside a game of Monopoly.

  “It’s quite a view,” I said, determined to cover my awe that one person, any person could live with so much floor space so far above the surface of the earth.

  Rico showed me the balcony that faced west. It was torn up, as if under reconstruction, with pipes and broken slabs of marble scattered everywhere. I asked him why.

  “Mr. Zander is afraid of heights,” he explained. “He couldn’t go out there alone, so now he’s installing railings everywhere. That way he’ll always have something to hold onto when he gets dizzy.”

  It was another case of treasures and pleasures hoarded by someone who couldn’t really enjoy them.

  Rico continued, “He’s going to install bright lights too, but for now it’s still dark at night. Sometimes I go out there just to get away from him. He never follows me.”

  I recalled the classic condition where extremely high places could actually lure a person to throw his or her body over the edge.

  As if reading my mind Rico said, “That’s why the piano is blocking the sliding doors. I think Mr. Zander is afraid he’s going to run out there some night and just jump off.”

  I noticed that the doors that opened onto the west balcony were directly behind the long flat side of the piano. You had to go out of your way, literally underneath the piano, to get to the balcony through those doors.

  “Are you happy here?” I asked.

  “I’m happy to have the job, even if Mr. Zander isn’t paying me as much as Mr. Harkey did. The view is worth it.”

  "Did Max Harkey come here often?"

  "I don't know. I never went places with him."

  "Did Marshall ever visit Max's place?"

  He nodded. "Every few days," he said. Then he added, "I never noticed it before, but now that I work for him I do. He smells bad."

  "What do you mean?"

  “The worst is when he takes off his jacket. I think he gets nervous. In Brazil we have a saying, ‘Like two goats on a hot day.’ That’s what it’s like.”

  That partly explained the unpleasant odor around Marshall Zander at Snips earlier that day. What relief that I’d been spared the full olfactory assault. I cleansed my nasal memory with happy thoughts of Rafik and Lieutenant Branco, both hirsute men yet both always attended by appealing scents, as though their bodies were incapable of any form of grossness.

  Again Rico showed his psychic talent and remarked, “Mr. Harkey always smelled good too.”

  He led me to the main sitting area. As I followed him, I asked, “What part of Brazil are you from?”

  “Where do you think?” he said with a flirtatious smile. “Rio. I come from Rio de Janeiro.”

  That explained the built-in samba of his hips, that hypnotic archetypal swaying of the ocean and the palm trees. Rico’s body once again stirred up pleasant memories of my short-lived affair with a young Balinese. It had been a shallow kind of love based on mutual provocation as much as physical compatibility. Yet it had been so easy. Neither of us had had questions or expectations of the other. I had never analyzed a single moment I’d spent with that young man. I had simply enjoyed them all. And then followed the complex and often disturbing relationship I shared with Rafik. It was futile to resist the obvious: I knew that I wanted him in my life forever. Today’s separation was only temporary. Our connection was too strong for me to imagine living without him. Yet nothing was ever simple with him. Even the physical aspect of our love seemed too complicated these days, too full of meaning and consequence. And here was Rico now, the boy from Ipanema, offering me another chance for plain old ordinary pleasure.

  We sat facing each other on opposite ends of a long dove-gray leather sofa. He put his legs up on the plump squeaky cushions. I had the urge to do the same, but reminded myself I was there on business.

  “Rico, do you know what happened to the music that was on Max Harkey’s piano the night of the dinner party?”

  “Which one?” he asked guardedly. “There were so many.”

  “The big score with the hand-tinted cover. I remember seeing it that night, but it wasn’t there the next morning.”

  Again the young man stared at me as though trying to go beyond my words to some truer message on my face. “Is it a clue?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  His eyes wandered nervously, avoiding me and the room and the grand vista behind me. “It was there when I… went out… after the party.”

  “Didn’t you live with Max Harkey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why did you go out?”

  Silence. Then I realized my blunder.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s none of my business.”

  His eyes engaged mine with an instant and powerful magic.

  “But it is!” he said. “It is your business.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” he said.

  I shook my head no.

  “You Americans have no heart,” he said disdainfully. “Can’t you see?”

  “I’m sorry, Rico. I don’t—”

  “I wanted you! That night I wanted you and you went home and left me.”

  “But I was with Rafik.”

  “I know, but I didn’t want to marry you. It was just for one night. I was lonely. And you are a nice person.” He paused. We both caught our breath while the air settled from his surge of high energy. Then Rico said, “Besides, your lover was being rude to you. If you stayed with me he would appreciate you more. That’s how some men are.”

  Such labyrinths a PI must traverse just to verify a fact or two.

  “So that made you go out?” I said.

  “I told you,” he replied, almost pleading with me, “I was lonely. And you left me.” He stalled, then went on, “So I found someone else that night.”

  “And before you went out you saw that musical score still on the piano?”

  “Yes,” he said coolly. “It was there.”

  And since Branco had just told me that the police did not find the score, it had obviously vanished sometime that night. The simplest assumption was that Max Harkey’s killer had taken it.

  I went on. “Did you tell the police about this?”

  Rico answered, “They didn’t ask me.”

  Stonehearted Stanley continued, “What about your alibi?”

  The young man glowered. “It isn’t an alibi and I didn’t do anything wrong. Mr. Harkey was like my father, not my lover. He even left me some money and all the kitchen equipment.”

  “Has the will been released already?”

  “That’s what Mr. Zander said. He told me that Mr. Harkey left me fifty thousand dollars and all the kitchen things.”

  With morbid curiosity I wondered about the rest of the estate—the penthouse and all the art and sculpture and that magnificent piano within.

  Rico continued, “I’m going to send some of the money back to my family in Brazil, and the rest I’m saving for my marido.” He winked at me.

  “You’d better make a will for yourself, then,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked with eyes full of temerity and the youthful presumption of life everlasting.

  I told him the harsh truth. “In case anything happens to you, the stuff and money will go where you want it to.”

  He considered my sobering advice. “I’ll take care of it this afternoon,” he said. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Do you want some lunch?”

  No sooner had he said it than my
stomach growled and grumbled. Rico laughed at the raucous sounds.

  “I guess I do,” I said.

  “Let’s order from room service.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Mr. Zander owns the hotel. I’m sure they don’t send him a bill.” Rico laughed. “He’s so rich he probably doesn’t even know how much money he has.”

  There was a certain irony in that.

  And so, since lunch was being paid by some anonymous dime, we ordered lavishly: a bottle of gin for me; a bottle of rum for Rico, along with a liter of cola and some lime; and for eats, one each of the hotel chef s daily specials and one each of every dessert available. The meal arrived on two carts.

  After a few drinks and too much of the fine food—including some crunchy-crusted sourdough baguettes flown in fresh daily from San Francisco, one of which reminded me of an altar boy who had long ago initiated me into the high art of self-abuse—I found myself facing the very situation I’d been accusing Rafik of lately: easy sex with no strings. I wondered if having sex with this attractive young Brazilian would affect how I felt about Rafik. A part of me said, “Do it! It’s not a sin. It doesn’t matter. Release yourself from the confining spell of love.” But another part protested, “If you do this, then some aspect of your emotional connection with Rafik will be changed forever.” The answer came in a horrible pun, at the exact moment I was sliding Rico’s white cotton briefs over his ankles and hoisting his honey-brown limbs over my shoulders: My emotional connection to my lover was as magnetically potent and consuming as a cosmic black hole. I chuckled aloud, and Rico asked me what was funny.

  “I just thought of my lover,” I said without guile.

  My truthful remark had the odd effect of stoking Rico’s fires even more, much the way a married man’s appeal can be heightened by his loyalty to wife and children. Rico pulled me close to him and clutched me with his thighs. Much squirming and rolling and wrestling on the cool smooth leather sofa eventually caused our mutual release, achieved through the safety of external friction rather than unprotected penetration.

  Later, spent and nestled in my arms, Rico told me that on the morning of Max Harkey’s murder, there was a particular item he couldn’t find at the penthouse after the police had been there.

  “His diary was missing,” he said softly. “That was the only thing I wanted. I wanted to know how Mr. Harkey really felt. I wanted to know his secrets.”

  “Did you ever read it?”

  Rico looked at me with imploringly honest eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  Hearing this intimate confession, especially after coitus externalis, I felt like Mata Hari. I reminded myself to ask Lieutenant Branco about the diary.

  “Rico, do you still have the key to Max Harkey’s apartment?”

  “I gave it to Mr. Zander,” he said.

  Like Cary Grant asking the same dangerous favor of Ingrid Bergman, I said, “Do you think you can get that key for me?”

  “I’ll try, but why do you want it?”

  I said, “You never know what the killer may have forgotten.”

  We were lying quietly entwined when a shocking thought seized me: What if Marshall Zander should arrive home and find us reclining leg-over-leg on his leather sofa? Despite the urban panorama that served as our backdrop, it was not a pretty picture I saw. Panic ensued. I leaped from the sofa and dressed quickly. Rico watched me wide-eyed.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Will you come back again?”

  “I don’t know.” I gave him one last affectionate smooch.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Thank you, ” I replied.

  “Your lover is very lucky.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m really a subterranean monster, and you’ve let me come up for air.”

  “Maybe I can be your tesão.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your little stud,” he said with a devilish smile.

  “I’m not sure …”

  “No marriage. Just like this. Easy. For fun.”

  I weighed the proposition. “Maybe,” I said.

  I felt his eyes glued to me as I got up from the sofa and made my way across the long open space to the double doors. I turned back for a last good-bye. Rico’s small golden body was still folded cozily on the sofa. He waved to me and I let myself out.

  12

  Whose Lover Is She?

  ON THE WAY BACK TO SNIPS, I felt a renewed optimism and freedom within me, and as much as I denied it, I knew it was from the nooner with Rico. See, I’m atypical for a gay man. Before Rico I had never tricked while I was involved with someone else. Yet strangely I felt no guilt for doing it now, maybe because the pleasant episode hadn’t been aimed at getting back at Rafik and his infidelities. I did it because the opportunity arrived and I found Rico attractive and likeable and willing. And in my perverse psychology, having sex with him had actually galvanized my connection to Rafik. I knew I would love him forever. Or was that the guilt talking now? No, no, and again no. The sex with Rico had simply been a novel way to get off with a young Brazilian on a spring afternoon. It had been my long-overdue initiation into “real” manhood, into enjoying sex for its own sake, without emotion and without engaging the heart. Sure.

  I arrived at Snips and Nicole remarked, “You’re all pink and flushed. What happened?”

  “I guess I was walking fast, doll.”

  She gave me a suspicious look and said, “Then you’d better cool down before you get back to work.”

  “A customer?”

  “Another walk-in request.”

  “Two in one day, and me in semi-retirement. This must be my brief moment of fame.” I glanced toward the waiting lounge, where all the chairs were empty. “So where is she?”

  “Having a cocktail at the Ritz Bar. I’m to telephone there the moment you arrive.”

  “That really pushes the term ‘full service.’ Is she royalty?”

  “She seems to think so.”

  While Nicole made the telephone call, I went to my office and started some fresh coffee. Within minutes Nicole joined me back there.

  “How was your busy, busy day?” she said.

  “Branco sends his regards.”

  “You mean Lieutenant Branco. I suspected that you’d seen him, the way you came in all flushed.”

  “That flush, doll, was from something else entirely.”

  “Was there any message from the lieutenant?”

  “Yeah. He wants you to have his baby.”

  Nicole replied, “I don’t think medical science is up to the challenge.”

  Five minutes later my walk-in arrived. It was Toni di Natale, looking somewhat haggard from her recent detention. Or was it from more recent exertions in Rafik’s bed? Ah, now that I was an unfeeling sex device, what did any of that matter?

  “I’m so glad you’re able to see me,” she said. “My hair … I can’t get it clean. I think it’s because of the police.”

  Or the bloody guilt of Lady Macbeth. Most people don’t realize that emotional stress can cause havoc with their hair. As for blaming the police, didn’t she know that a certain cop was so hot for her he was dating my best friend just to relieve the pressure? Did she even care?

  “That Lieutenant Branco sure is something, eh?” I said, putting a litmus test to her.

  “He’s a fascist,” she replied curtly.

  Acid turns red.

  “Not to some,” I said with a glance toward Nicole.

  Hell hath no fury like Nikki’s eyes at that moment.

  “The issue is,” said Toni, “can you fix my hair?”

  Now, in my vernacular, hair care is not what I’d categorize as an “issue.” Issues, for me—at least the ones you’re not giving birth to or receiving in your mailbox as part of a subscription—comprise the larger, more difficult questions of life, complex debatable topics like world population or domestic labor policy or the separation of church and state. Yet every day
I hear people say things like, “I have issues about red meat,” or “I’m working through my obesity issues,” or “I have monogamy issues.” But if Toni di Natale had no conscience about abusing language, I could make bad verbiage too.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said examining and analyzing her hair with my knowing fingers. “But truth in the esthetic arts exists beyond the mundane. I own my limitations. I appeal to a higher power. I allow all the creative forces of the universe to flow through me. I give the hair permission to wave. I honor its integrity.”

  The trouble was, Toni di Natale seemed convinced by my peroration, or else she was humoring a New Age nutlet. And for all my invocations, I received not divine cosmetic assistance, but instead a dose of good old carnal jealousy. For as I shampooed Toni di Natale’s auburn tresses I realized that this was the very hair and head that my beloved Rafik had recently held in his hands. As I worked up the creamy lather I wondered, How had he held her? Tenderly? Or fiercely? Had he slid his long tapered fingers languorously through this hair and gently caressed these temples and this forehead? Had he kissed these eyes? Had he murmured lip-against-lip how smooth and soft her body felt next to his? Or had he grabbed great fistfuls of this vibrant mane and pulled on it like the reins on some untamed animal he could vanquish only through his howls of ecstasy? For a brief and insane moment I was tempted to botch her hair and do something tasteless with it, like a severe frizz. But my artist’s soul intervened, for Toni di Natale had my favorite type of hair for a woman: long, naturally wavy, and auburn with reddish highlights. I applied a dollop of conditioner to her wet hair. It was my own special formulation, an elixir that would coax the hidden highlights to blaze in all their mad Mars-red glory.