I rinsed Toni’s hair and wrapped it in a towel. Then I led her to my station, where I would dry that hair lovingly under warm air while I charmed her with my version of a Perry Mason cross-examination.
I began, “Are you enjoying your time with Rafik?”
Her eyes shot toward my reflection in the mirror. Then her full mouth turned upward in a generous smile.
“I hope you understand it’s all platonic,” she said.
“I’m sure.”
“Honest,” she said, adding more conviction to her voice. “I just like to play with men.”
“ ‘Play’ has a lot of meanings,” I said.
“I’m not having sex with him, or anything like that.”
What else, I thought, is anything like sex?
“Were you having sex with Max Harkey?” I said.
She gasped. “You are blunt.”
I shrugged and applied slightly more pressure to her scalp with my clever left hand. Then I sifted her hair through my fingers, lifting it and fanning it outward from her head into the warm stream of air coming from the dryer. My reflection in the mirror resembled a conjurer beckoning secrets from the depths of my client’s dark heart.
Toni di Natale closed her eyes and spoke with a confessional tone. “At first I was just toying with Max. He was in Europe looking for a conductor, and rumor had it he was offering an obscenely lucrative contract for the spring ballet season here in Boston. I wanted that contract and I was willing to use sex to get it.” Then her shoulders bounced slightly as she chuckled.
“The trouble is,” she continued, “my flirtation backfired and I fell in love with him.”
“Did he know?”
“I’m sure I was just another statistic for him.”
“What about Jason Sears?” I asked. “Were you engaged to him then?”
She answered, “Jason is a dear friend, but I’m afraid I set him up as a smoke screen. We were never engaged. I wanted to make Max jealous, but it didn’t work.”
I recalled that night, and Max Harkey hadn’t even been in the room when Toni announced the engagement. Perhaps she had told him earlier. Or perhaps it was all lies, even now.
“How did Jason feel about the hoax?” I said.
Toni snickered. “He was already in love with me. Isn’t that typical? He wanted me exactly the same way I wanted Max. Sometimes I think love is pure accident. You start out so simply, as friends or colleagues, and the next thing you know you’re hoping for something from the other person—some favor or special consideration or even sex. But the other person is oblivious or else unwilling to give you what you want. And then you start making demands, politely at first, but when that doesn’t work you get hurt and then you get angry, and it all escalates until finally you’ve become a hateful monster.”
“Is that what happened to you?” I ventured.
Her eyes flashed brightly at me. “I don’t let it get that far out of hand any more. It’s naive to think that desire and pressure will get me what I want.”
“That’s one theory,” I said. “Where is Jason now?”
“Still on tour. His career always comes first. Even as a friend, Jason is never around when I need him most.”
Sure, doll. We all just sit here on the face of the earth waiting on the whim of some principessa. I made a mental note to check with Lieutenant Branco on the whereabouts of Jason Sears. That and Max Harkey’s diary.
“That’s why I flirt with Rafik, too,” she added, bringing me out of my thoughts. “That man is yours and yours alone.”
“Everyone seems to know it except me.”
“I confess that I did use him as a further test of Max’s affection for me, but I didn’t mean anything by it. I hope you don’t hate me for it. It’s all harmless. No one gets hurt.”
Only dead.
She went on, “But as you saw that night, Max had absolutely no interest in me as a woman.”
“Just professional respect.”
“Oh, plenty of that,” she said. “But it’s still humiliating to hear the man you love respond to your desire so frankly. I can still hear him say it in that arrogant, erudite manner of his. ‘But my dear, we are friends,’ as though that precluded any sexual attraction. And to think I used to get wet just thinking about him.”
That comment put Toni di Natale in the finals for the Snips Award for Unrequited Candor. But Max Harkey’s collegial affection and admiration notwithstanding, I wondered if his rejection was motive enough for her to kill him. And beyond the other discards in her deck of usables, whom was Toni exploiting now? Me? Was she here at Snips solely to build a strong case against her own criminal guilt, so that I, along with Rafik, would perceive her as the divine and innocent angel of music? Was that her present use of Rafik as well? Or did it extend to his extension?
“Toni,” I said, “do you remember that night when I was leaving I saw a musical score on the piano? I asked you about it.”
“The score to The Phoenix, ” she said. “Of course I remember. It’s extremely valuable—a hand-tinted cover.*’
“I know. But the next morning the score was gone. It wasn’t on the music rack where it had been the night before.”
“So?”
“So, when did it go away?”
An annoyed frown appeared on her face. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
I shrugged casually. “I thought you might.”
“No,” she said flatly. “Maybe you should ask the police about it.”
“I already did.”
As I removed the protective cape from her shoulders, I put one last question to her.
“Did you know Max kept a diary?”
“No,” she said with a blank look, and then with sudden brightness added, “But now that you’ve told me, I’d love to get my hands on it.” She ran her fingers through her hair and gave me a satisfied smile. “You’re very good,” she said.
I gave her the “family discount” for the shampoo and blow-dry, which meant it was free. Maybe someday I’d get to collect it in personal service from my erstwhile lover.
Right after Toni left the salon, Nicole hauled me back to my office for what I assumed would be a down-home friendly chaw and a talk. Instead I heard, “Just what did you think you were doing?”
“Huh?”
“Talking about the lieutenant like that? His personal life is nobody’s business, especially not hers—a suspect. And she dares to call him names!”
“What names?”
“You heard what she said.”
“Nikki, we talked about everything but Branco.”
“Lieutenant Branco!”
“Doll, are you jealous? I can’t believe—”
“Don’t be vulgar!”
“She said from her high horse.”
“Stanley, you can ruin your own domestic life if you want, but please leave Lieutenant Branco out of it.”
“So now it’s domestic life and Branco in the same sentence.”
“He is not Branco! Show more respect for the man.”
“I need a pill.”
“You need a spanking.”
She walked out of my office and slammed the door.
There was no doubt now: Nicole and Branco had made it. The once cool and worldly Ms. Albright was about to become a silly young deb, a love thrall to a cop. Was such a thing possible? Was the ultimate driving force of the universe really male ejaculate? And contrary to satellite photos, was the earth’s axis truly a cosmic-sized erection?
After work, I left the salon by the back door and headed home. Once safely in my apartment, I fed Miss Sugar and then poured myself a double shot of bourbon. Thus began the toboggan slide into self-imposed despair.
Later that night Rafik telephoned to thank me for doing Toni’s hair. He even complimented my work, to which I responded, “Jesh shampoo.”
“Are you drinking?” he asked.
“Little.”
“What is wrong, Stani?”
“Nuthin’.”
> “I am sorry for our disagreement today.”
Embarrassed by my own slurred speech, I didn’t dare answer him. I wanted to maintain a light tone, as though our misunderstanding and separation earlier that day had never happened. I was just spending a relaxed night at home, just me and Jack Daniel’s. In my sodden state of mind, if I tried to explain anything I’d lose all control and just blubber and wail in a torrent of tears. And that would only irritate the hypercontrolled man who was once my lover.
“Shall I come to you?” he said humbly.
But even through the fog I knew that he must have been feeling guilty too, especially with Toni di Natale as a house guest in his one-room apartment. What good would be his coming to me now? What kind of resolution could two guilt-laden people achieve, especially with one of them verging on the sloppy boo-hoos? I struggled to gather what was left of my wits and then pronounced my verdict.
“I have to wash the cat,” I said with perfect elocution. I sounded like a Junior Leaguer snubbing the town’s most desirable bachelor.
Rafik responded the only way he could after hearing such a brazen lie.
“Is somebody there?”
How could I explain that I had already been as unfaithful as I suspected him of being?
“Stani?” he said.
I couldn’t speak, suffocated by bathos.
“Why are you drinking?” he said.
Was the concern in his voice real?
Lunga pausa.
“Rafik,” I managed to say. “We are all the same.” And then I hung up before he could hear my sobbing.
13
Dancing in the Dark
I WAS LYING FACE DOWN on my bed watering the pillows when I heard the familiar pulse of a motorcycle pulling into the back alley. Rafik! He must have fixed Big Red. Ashamed of my condition, I ran to the kitchen and filled both hands with crushed ice and pressed it to my face and my tear-reddened eyes. I would not be seen like this.
He let himself into the apartment and I heard him go directly to the bedroom. He called from in there.
“Stani? Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.”
Rafik entered, resplendent in high leather. A sullen gray cloud hovered over his brow, an accoutrement to his dark costume. From his shoulder hung a weighty hank of braided leather rope. I knew what that rope implied, and I wasn’t in the mood for it, as if anyone is ever truly in the mood for ritualized discipline.
“Not tonight,” I said.
Rafik replied, “You can do it to me.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“But I do! I deserve it. You can do what you want.”
So he wanted to be punished. Just as with any naughty boy who’s never caught, guilt ultimately forces a surrender. But who was I to inflict a blow when, as Nicole had observed, I deserved a spanking myself?
Rafik held the hank of leather rope out to me.
“Please,” he said. His eyes were pleading. “For me.”
If I accepted his offer, I knew we’d have a heavy session, nothing like the playful time I’d spent with Rico that afternoon.
I took the leather and said, “For me too, then.”
It was the Golden Rule of Sex: I’ll do unto you what should be done to me.
Half an hour later he was lying belly-down on the bed, spread-eagle, each limb bound to a corner of the bed. The room was filled with the scent of his skin and the leather ropes that constrained him. I envisioned the harem boys of ages past. Had they begged for such formalized punishment too? In the flicker of candlelight I saw a moment of delicious fear in Rafik’s eyes as I opened a straight razor and honed the edge on the leather chaps I’d peeled from his legs. I crouched close to him and ran the flat side of the razor lightly over the muscular terrain of his strong back. His skin bristled in a thousand bumps of fear and pleasure. I nibbled his butt and he clenched the muscles hard. I kneaded the cheeks with my free hand, worked the flesh like sculptor’s clay, then began my work. I would mark my lover. I would shave the coarse short hair on his butt, selectively exposing the skin in the form of one large initial on each half, so that Rafik’s meaty behind would show Toni di Natale and the rest of the world that Stan Kraychik had a claim to it, his chattel. The “S” was particularly difficult, but I maneuvered the razor with the precision of an eye surgeon. When I’d completed both letters, I went back and added serifs to them using the point of the blade. There was a momentary temptation to cut into the flesh and scar my lover, perhaps even drink his blood. But this delusion of power passed quickly. Rafik flinched when I slapped alcohol onto the freshly shaved areas. I wondered how I could have been so playful with Rico, and then so serious with Rafik. If sex was only biology, then why was the same basic act—engorgement and release—expressed so differently depending on the partners and the circumstances? Had Rafik only sought punishment for his misbehavior? Or did this submission mean something else? What was he trying to say to me? And what was I saying to him? Why couldn’t we simply be tender with each other? Why did our sex always have to mean something?
After the slap-filled alcohol rub, I unbraided one end of a piece of leather cord and lashed lightly at Rafik’s backside. As I increased the intensity of my strokes, his skin reddened in the soft light, and for a brief instant I thought I saw not Rafik but Max Harkey lying on my bed. I recognized my own subconscious attraction to the dead man—though it was more to his power than to his body. The feeling of that power got me hot. I scooped my arm under Rafik’s hips and grabbed onto his member from behind. Then I thrust myself against the deep crevice of his butt. I saw myself as a muscular young dancer. I was Scott Molloy. Was this how sex felt to him? As Rafik released himself into my hand, I splattered his strong back with glistening droplets. At the final instant of climax, when the insides of my eyelids blazed like a fabulous kaleidoscope, I was visited by a host of uninvited images. If Rafik was Max Harkey, could I at that moment be any of the people who had desired the man? Toni di Natale? Alissa Kortland? Scott Molloy? And even the weak-willed Marshall Zander? The grotesque visions at first revulsed me, then intrigued me.
“Who was it?” I said aloud, as the last sticky drops fell into the furrow of his hard-muscled ass.
“Eh?” said Rafik below me. “What did you say?”
I collapsed on top of him. “Nothing.”
I woke up a few hours later slightly chilled. Rafik was sound asleep under me, enjoying the sleep of the innocent, I guess. As I pulled the blankets over us, he stirred.
“Don’t go,” he said.
“I’m right here.”
“Do you love me?”
“If there was a better word, Rafik, I’d still say yes.”
He rolled over onto his back and faced me. Even in the darkness his eyes glittered with fire.
“No more jealousy?” he said.
“Now you’re asking for the moon.”
“What can I tell you, then? What secret do you want to know from me? I will confess everything.”
“Okay, love. Did you ever see Max Harkey’s diary?”
“Why do you care about that? Do you think I had a liaison with him?”
“No. I just wondered …”
“Everyone thinks that I am a sex machine,” protested Rafik the sex machine. “Do they think I have no heart? I cannot help it how I look. Everyone thinks I am having sex with somebody else, even you. So then, tie me to your bed and let me die here. Then maybe you will believe that I love only you.”
That was certainly one answer to my doubt-plagued heart. But what to do with the corpse? Did I dare tell Rafik what I was thinking at that moment? That whatever he had done before tonight or whatever he wanted to do tomorrow with anybody else didn’t matter to me anymore, as long as he still wanted to do it with me sometimes. It was the primary compromise of a desperate lonely heart.
He pulled me down onto him again, then reached behind me to gather the blankets and cover us.
Then he whispered into my ear, “Let’s go to
sleep, eh?”
14
Corps de Ballet
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, with my front side docked snugly against Rafik’s back, we woke with the sun and with Sugar Baby’s raspy tongue alternately scrubbing my cheek, then his. Rafik got up first, and while he showered I shuffled into the kitchen and performed the daily ritual with some Bourbon Santos coffee beans I’d picked up yesterday afternoon. Life was resuming an ordinary course, or so it seemed. I had just finished setting the breakfast table when Rafik appeared in the kitchen freshly showered and completely dressed, with his dance bag slung over one shoulder. He was ready to face the outside world.
“No coffee?” I asked.
“I have an important meeting at the studio.”
A brief and urgent embrace followed, and he was gone, leaving me to breakfast with Sugar Baby. I poured myself a mugful of the rich Brazilian brew, then went to the bedroom to pick up after last night’s party games. Rafik’s leather duds lay on the floor, randomly strewn around the bed where they’d been dropped during the course of the night. I picked up one piece, a half-harness, and held it in my free hand. It comprised a strap of black leather about an inch wide, the two ends joined by a heavy chrome ring that was itself connected to the main belt by a second, narrower strap. When worn, the half-harness embraced the hips along the pelvic crest, the ring was a portal for the obvious, and the connecting strap ran deep within the body’s main crevice. The cross-tensions among the parts caused a synergy of ecstasy in the loins. The half-harness was my favorite item in Rafik’s collection, partly because of its functional simplicity and partly because of the sexy, flattering line it gave the hips, even mine. I sniffed at the leather and wondered again about its strange appeal. I caught Sugar Baby watching me.
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