Combine cake mix, two large eggs, 1/4 cup of water, and 1/2 cup of oil.
No problem. I reached for the olive oil….
In the Dark
1
I don’t hate all of Jacob’s friends. Just the ones he’s slept with.
No, wait, that’s not true. As much as I fight off the urge to knock Crash over the nearest piece of low-lying furniture, I must enjoy spending time with him, because a couple times a week I look up and realize I’m at Sticks and Stones, and the two of us are eating some vegetarian takeout and maybe laughing about something together, or at least performing a synchronized eye-roll.
Maybe I just hate the ones Jacob’s slept with, but conveniently omitted mentioning that he’s slept with until I’ve met them for like the ninth or tenth time. And then later on he’ll throw in a thing like, “When we were dating.” Because Jacob’s not a liar—at least, not about things like that. He wouldn’t say, “No, I’ve never been with him,” if he actually had. But having a lie detector for a partner all those years has made him an old pro at skirting around any facts he doesn’t want to deal with at the moment.
I’m a realistic guy. It was pretty clear that neither of us were blushing virgins when we hooked up. Not him. Not me. At our age, it would be suspicious if we were. But I’d been in the dark this whole time, and what was nagging at me now was the way I’d accepted “Keith and Manny” as some unit who’d been a couple forever. That I’d invented this whole history between the two of them that spanned back a good twenty years when, in fact, they were together for two. And that it used to be “Keith and Jacob.”
Funny, I even used to have trouble telling Keith and Manny apart.
Not anymore.
Manny’s the nice one. Keith is the one who gives me “that look.” Now that I understand the reason behind that look, I can’t see how I ever mixed them up. Sure, they’re both shaved-headed and bulging with muscles. But given that one’s part Hispanic and one’s white—and the white one’s always giving me the hairy eyeball—the difference is suddenly crystal clear.
At first I’d been disappointed that this Halloween party of Keith and Manny’s (the one I promised I would attend) was a suit-and-tie thing rather than a costume thing. It’s easier to scare up a cheap costume than it is to arrange for one of the jackets that actually fits me to be clean. But since it was a non-costume event, I’d get to demonstrate my newfound grasp on the muscular bald guys’ identities by calling each of them by name when I greeted them.
No doubt that would earn me a “look” too.
Wearing a jacket reminds me of dressing for work, and dressing for work makes me feel like a sellout, so I dug out a nicer shirt than I was willing to waste on the Fifth Precinct in hopes of looking like more of a guy going somewhere fancy and less like a plainclothes cop. I think it worked. Maybe because it didn’t have that telltale permanent press finish. Maybe because I was unarmed, and my holster wasn’t making its usual bulge over my right hip. Plus my hair had some serious product going on. My cop-face was in place, though. A vague scowl. At least it was, until Jacob grabbed me on our way out the door, tipped my face toward the hall light and said, “You missed a few whiskers shaving…let’s see.” But there were no strays—it was just an excuse to maul my mouth with his for a few minutes. Once we came up for air, I imagine I wasn’t scowling very convincingly at all.
Not until I realized he had no intention of ditching the dumb party.
We headed down toward Logan Square, a trendier neighborhood where a couple of guys sporting liberal amounts of hair product wouldn’t look out of place, and scored a parking space a few blocks from a bar/restaurant with a “Closed - Private Party” sign in the window. When I got out of the car and buttoned my jacket, my hip felt naked without my sidearm. I reminded myself that it was unlikely I would need to shoot anyone in a room full of fancy gay guys. However much I might want to.
The days of stepping through the door into a haze of second-hand smoke are long gone. Bars feel cleaner now, although many, like this one, simply cranked the lights down a bit lower to compensate for the lack of ambience. From what I could see by the occasional tea light, it looked like a hip place. Classy. Disappointing, too. What’s the point of throwing a shindig on Halloween if you’re not going to have crappy plastic skeletons hanging everywhere and a cake shaped like a tombstone? Then I picked out a few guests and realized that the age demographic was skewed a good eight to ten years older than me. Which was probably why they were sipping wine instead of doing jello shots.
Once my eyes adjusted to the non-light, I could see the catering was definitely beyond my age demographic, too. Not to mention my socioeconomic bracket. Small, fussy food. Shrimp? Caviar? Of course, over by the seafood area. Not to be confused with the sushi area. That was parked by the wall of predictably low-key local art. Cheeses? Convenient to the wine. Fruit? Yes…but in shapes and colors you could only find in froufrou specialty stores. Pastries, almost too pretty to eat, near the coffee. I was starving, of course, having presumed we’d get some kind of sit-down dinner, and Jacob vague on the details. Mr. Perfectly Vague himself had begun his circuit of affable and completely confident hellos. I’d lagged behind to gaze off into the hors d’oeuvres and try to calculate how rapidly I could consume them without being too obvious and making some mortifying lapse of social etiquette.
“And look who’s here!” Someone exclaimed in my ear, because despite all the fanciness, a disco standard was blasting for all it was worth. Thankfully, I don’t visibly flinch anymore when a ginormous musclebound guy sneaks up on me. Desensitization in action.
Recognition kicked in quickly—this would be the nice one. Or at least the one Jacob had never dated. As far as I knew. “Manny.” I moved to shake hands, smooth as you please. But instead of a handshake, a glass of bubbly was thrust into my grasp.
Manny gave the rims a tiny clink. His movements were delicate for such a big guy, and he had a secret little smile he carried mostly in his eyes that held a certain appeal. I supposed he didn’t actually remind me of the orderlies at Camp Hell—I’d just been worried that he should. When he raised his glass, eyes locked with mine, I mirrored him in some autonomic attempt to fit in. Though I steeled myself to camouflage a shudder, the “ew, booze” reaction didn’t kick in when the champagne hit. Yeah, it tasted like alcohol. But mostly fizzy. Kind of like a really dry soda.
“Good, right?” Manny slipped an arm around me and turned me to face the far end of the bar, and pointed over my shoulder where a bunch of bottles protruded from a bed of ice. “There’s plenty where that came from. One of our clients paid us in champagne…not that I’m complaining.”
I tried to dredge up a nugget of small talk, but what I really wondered was what it would be like to get paid in champagne. Could they afford that? They seemed to be doing well enough for themselves, although when I scanned the crowd for Jacob and found him talking to a bunch of stuffed shirts, I realized that maybe they would rather have their invoice honored in a more conventional way. Maybe they didn’t have a cake shaped like a tombstone because the type of people who’d be into kitschy Halloween parties weren’t the type of people who’d hire a pair of private investigators. And hopefully pay them in real currency.
It was too loud in there to broach such a nuanced subject though, and anyway, it was none of my business. I didn’t know Manny well enough get so personal.
More guests arrived and Manny flitted off, which left me some space to work my way through the small, small food. I snagged a couple pieces here, a couple there, avoiding only the sushi. It wasn’t the raw fish I was worried about. It was the fear of biting into a surprise hunk of horseradish and having my sinuses drain all over the nearest well-dressed stranger.
Off to the side I spotted a table full of meat-and-pastry somethings, and I slotted myself in where I wasn’t too obvious and got to work on rearranging the platter, which was clearly overcrowded. If I ate approximately every third hors d’oeuvres, the pieces that we
re left fit the plate much better.
Flaky. Warm. And oh so meaty. They went down fast, which was good, because my champagne was gone, and it had left behind a pleasant buzz that made the idea of small talk seem entirely doable. No doubt the warm, meaty, flaky things would be awesome at soaking up the stray alcohol in my stomach before I actually needed to talk to—
“Say, you look like you’d have an interesting request.”
How about you go find someone else to bother? How’s that for an interesting request?
My peripheral vision is stunningly well-developed from years and years of not looking at people, so without even turning I could tell the DJ who’d inserted himself between me and the rest of the meat rolls was all decked out in too-big jewelry in an attempt to seem “urban.” Grudgingly, I looked in his direction. He was probably Caucasian, or maybe a mix, mid-twenties, with a shaved head and a pierced eyebrow. Gay, but butch. Like all the other men, he was wearing a suit, so thankfully he’d left his baseball cap at home. I had no doubt if he had been wearing one, it would have been tilted sideways.
He cocked his head toward the sound system and said, “Whatcha wanna hear? Thirty thousand tunes on my iPod—I’ll bet I got it.”
I stifled a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Something classic? Something new?”
“I really don’t have a preference.”
He crossed his arms and got big—like every other guy there, apparently he had a long-standing subscription to Biceps Monthly—but then he topped off the pose with an exasperated smile that wasn’t exactly threatening. “Aw…come on. What’s your favorite song?”
Cripes, none of your business.
“’Cos I’ll bet you anything I got it.”
“Um, I dunno.” Just think of a song, I told myself, any freakin’ song, and he’ll go play it…and then you can ditch him and get more of that champagne that tastes like boozy soda. A nasty three-chord punk ditty called I Hate People sprang to mind (and it was long-forgotten enough that I bet he didn’t have it) but as it hovered there on the tip of my tongue, I glanced up and spied Jacob across the bar. Yes, his suits were all immaculate, and yes, he had great hair and even better bone structure. But even if he hadn’t been gifted with a great wardrobe and stunning genetics, out of that whole sea of beefy middle-aged gay guys and their sparkly women-friends, he would be the one I’d stop and take another look at. Jacob didn’t just have a conversation. He owned it. Not by talking over everyone else, either. Even if he wasn’t the one who was speaking, Jacob could exude charisma simply by observing whoever was talking.
Posture. Facial expression. I wasn’t really sure exactly how he managed it. Some method way too subtle to imitate. Not that I’d ever have the balls to attempt it.
He did speak, then, and I watched the people around him watching him…and I realized why Jacob and I had been invited to a party among a bunch of potential clients. Not because Keith and Manny thought they needed to woo us into giving them a job—they were already the only ones we trusted when we needed to work around the police force—but because Jacob would put all of those would-be clients in a relaxed and trusting frame of mind.
And if I goaded the DJ into playing something stupid, I’d be totally undermining The Jacob Effect.
2
While the party wasn’t exactly my idea of a festive Halloween, the last thing I wanted to do was spoil the mood. I requested some Bronski Beat (hey, it was better than disco) and slipped away as smoothly as I could manage for a guy who’s way too tall to be invisible. The crowd wasn’t exactly thick—we all had our own elbow room—but it felt like everywhere I went, something was brushing against one of my thighs or rubbing up against my back. I scored another champagne, took a few sips, then ended up knocking it back in one smooth swallow. Fizzy and good—but I’d have to pace myself.
As soon as I thought that, the belligerent part of me that had just been thwarted from requesting something obnoxious from the pushy DJ thought, “Really?”
I gave the room a casual glance. People talking. People laughing. One or two people even singing along to Bronski Beat. No one was getting cut down by bullets or choking on a piece of ham. No one was standing half inside a wall or flickering in and out of existence. No one had a scary, rotted face or a transparent head.
In short, no one was dead.
I eased over to the champagne and helped myself to another glass. It went down as fizzy and cold as the first two.
As I lowered the glass, my arm jostled someone—yet another bald guy in a suit, though this one, I didn’t know. He had a soul patch facial hair thing going on, and a small earring. He got all apologetic and started brushing at my sleeve, even though I’d drained my glass dry enough that there was nothing left in it to actually slosh out. Once I disentangled myself from him, I snagged another champagne, then sought out a suitably dark corner of the room where I’d be able to keep from blundering into every Tom, Dick and Harry by standing perfectly still. Yeah, I had a buzz on, but nothing that should send me careening around like a pinball.
Someone had freshened up the meat rolls, so I quickly plotted a course that would take me past the overly earnest DJ while he was talking to someone else, allow me to scoop up a good handful of tasty meat-filled pastry, and then tuck me into a deliciously dark corner without any bald, suited, middle-aged gay man being any the wiser. Zipping my way through the crowd was so effortless it felt like ice skating, and before I knew it I had a napkin full of hot hors d’oeuvres in one hand and a full glass of champagne in the other, and was heading away from all the inexplicably close bodies, when a door emerged from the darkness in front of me.
Even better.
I flicked the handle with my elbow and let myself in, eager to stuff my face with meat rolls in peace…and maybe wash them down with a Valium, because clearly Valium and champagne were meant to go together. One pill, or two? That was the big question. I must have been fairly distracted by the decision of exactly how relaxed I wanted to feel, or else I had a pretty good momentum going, because the chill in the air only hit me once I’d taken several steps out into the alley and the door slammed shut behind me. I turned around. Yep. There was the back of the bar. Flat gray graffiti-cover paint and dumpsters, and a ring of cigarette butts on the blacktop.
Oh well. It was cold outside, but nothing I couldn’t handle. No sense in letting the meat rolls go to waste. I savored them one by one, flaky pastry and juicy spiced meat, until they were gone. And then, since I was all alone with nobody to impress, I licked my fingers. I had the impulse to chase the meat rolls with a swig of champagne, but since I was outside in my pleasant bubble of aloneness, I didn’t need to drown my awkwardness in carbonation. I could simply enjoy the savoriness melting away on my tongue at my leisure, tasting the spices I couldn’t name given infinite chances, and thinking that maybe the Halloween party I’d only attended because I thought it would make Jacob happy really wasn’t too bad after all.
Even when something moved out there at the edge of my well-developed peripheral vision, I was still hanging on to that thought. The idea that I wasn’t having too bad of a time. Because initially I took that movement for a plastic bag blowing in the wind, or maybe a bare tree branch bobbing in front of a lit window. But no. The thing that swooped past me looked nothing like a plastic bag or a branch-covered window. It looked like a woman. A semi-transparent blood spattered woman. A semi-transparent blood spattered woman running down the alley with her mouth gaping in a silent scream.
I steeled myself and swallowed my champagne.
Revenant or repeater? I can’t say I was particularly eager to see either species of deceased humanity. Repeaters are just plain old scary, stuck in a continual loop that replays the moment of their death. I’m not sure which part is worse—dying over and over for eternity, or having a piece of you carry on outside your conscious control. Or maybe it wasn’t important which aspect was worse than the other. It all sucked.
The ghosts who still had their per
sonalities intact weren’t any treat to be around, either. They tended to glom on to me and drive me nuts with their badgering and whining. And while they were actually capable of carrying on a conversation, they were also pretty tenacious about veering back toward whatever unfinished business was keeping them stuck in this plane.
So which type of ghost was I dealing with? A spectral film loop, or a sentient dead chick? I supposed I’d need to check it out, even though it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do (and, in fact, going back in and trying to think of more songs for the eager DJ was even starting to look pretty appealing.) Some people can’t go to bed without brushing their teeth. And some people can’t deal with letting their calls go to voicemail. Me, I can’t leave a spirit wandering around until I’ve determined if it’s suffering or not. I set my empty glass on the dumpster and reached for my sidearm, which of course wasn’t there. Not that I’d be able to shoot the ghost, anyway. I just felt more secure with my favorite hunk of matte black plastic in my hand.
To get the lay of the land, I tried the door I’d just exited. Locked. I’d figured as much from the sound of the click, but some details are best not left to chance. That settled it, then. My only way back to the party was through the alley. And the alley was where I’d seen the ghost. The champagne buzz didn’t feel nearly as welcome as it had mere moments before…but maybe having some booze in me was actually a good thing. Alcohol makes the spirit world shine even brighter to my inner eye, and alleys are creepy enough even without the knowledge that you’re not alone…and whatever else is in your proximity is dead.
PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1 Page 5