by Rafe Haze
The New Potato fired his traveling wardrobe bag across the room toward his partner violently. It hit him, and the bag’s hook snagged on the curtain. The enraged Potato retrieved the bag with a forceful yank, and ripped the curtain away, revealing how slathered in oil his crotch was. It seemed Schlongzilla had succeeded in oiling all of him…
Shouting commenced, mostly unintelligible, but punctured by vocabulary like betrayed, the minute I turn my back, and I’m leaving. The Oiled Potato whimpered at first, and then began defending himself more and more vehemently using phrases like we never touch, twenty years, and I deserve...
As the argument escalated, Schlongzilla silently collected his bag and towel and packed his bag. Suddenly the red-faced New Potato flipped the massage table upside down, and began to kick in the supports and the legs.
“Stop!” Schlongzilla yelled, his one word puncturing the courtyard.
Hearing this, the Princess, the Beached Whale, and Mr. Layworth paused.
The enraged New Potato pushed the approaching Black Brazilian against the wall with surprising force and picked up the table. He approached the window and flung it open.
“No!” Schlongzilla and the Oiled Potato simultaneously cried.
Marzoli and I watched the wooden padded table plummet down the side of the building in an arc, hit the brick wall at the bottom, and splinter with an echoing crack.
The neighbors all looked up to see the source of the disturbance, but most couldn’t see the window from their apartments. They paused, waiting for another dramatic event to follow, or at the very least another piece of furniture to fall. But nothing fell. Schlongzilla exited the Potatoes’ door naked, his bag, shirt, and sweatpants in his hands. Shortly after the New Potato unzipped his wardrobe bag, stuffed some underwear and a sky-blue tee into it, and headed out the door, slamming it behind him, leaving the Oiled Potato whimpering and pleading.
There was a bracing silence.
Seconds later, the neighbors resumed their activities, unfazed: Mr. Perfect to his phone call, the Princess to her scissors, and the Beached Whale to her television. The Oiled Potato picked up his cell phone, crying. He dialed. Received no answer. Hung up. Dialed. Waited. Hung up. And again. And again. And again.
Marzoli squeezed my hand.
I wondered exactly what Marzoli was saying through that squeeze. That he hoped in twenty years we never experience something like that? Did he even want to see me after the investigation, let alone twenty years? That he figured I idealized the Couch Potatoes for their tranquility, and this illusion was now punctured? Or that he was as surprised as I was at how deep the passions ran between these two seemingly docile partners, masked beneath the pasta and reality television?
“Look!” Marzoli whispered, pointing in the direction of the Little Old Man’s apartment.
The only neighbor who was home and had not gotten up to investigate the drama in their courtyard was the Little Old Man. He remained still on his bed, staring ahead at the painting. He’d not even turned his head.
“Are you going to call it in?” I asked.
But I didn’t need to even ask. Marzoli was already on his phone reporting that a man appeared dead in the rear basement apartment of that building. His tone was detached and matter-of-fact. This kind of reporting was as routine to him as flossing. However, as he spoke, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, picked up the pillow I used to block the view into the Little Old Man’s apartment, and tossed it onto the couch. I would no longer need to be irritated by that view. Apparently, Marzoli knew this whole time exactly why I’d placed it there.
Rather than feeling in any way relieved of any irritation The Little Old Man might have caused, I felt a pang of sadness. I’d grown invested in his life in the last couple days. In his habits, his oddities, and his mystery. He’d wanted this gold-framed painting his whole life. He’d sacrificed his life savings to finally get it, spent a day absorbed in it, and then died. I couldn’t help but wonder…
“Drop!” Marzoli blurted, pulling on a pair of tight blue workout shorts with white vertical stripes on the sides.
I ducked and grabbed my Macbook.
Mr. Layworth was scanning the courtyard slowly, scoping the landscape for obstacles before attacking his prey. And his prey was Marzoli. His gaze landed on my window and held fast.
Marzoli opened the curtain all the way and stepped into full frame, clad only in the tight blue and white shorts. Layworth retreated to the bathroom and returned seconds later without clothing, wrapped in a white towel, looking spectacularly Greek with chiseled muscular definition in the bright daylight. His guns bulged as thick as an average man’s thighs. His shoulders bulged. His chest bulged. Everything bulged. Layworth once again put his arms above his head against the window, and stared into our apartment with supreme confidence.
Marzoli matched if not exceeded Layworth’s physical perfection muscle to muscle, but had none of that overt master-of-all-I-survey attitude. The sulfuric fumes of an over-inflated ego did not fuel Marzoli. Marzoli was cocky, to be sure, but aware of his affectation, inviting strangers to participate in a sexy and lively game. Marzoli pretended to be the shit just to amuse himself as well as others. As a result, he came across as charmingly badass and irresistibly loveable. Layworth, on the other hand, believed to his core he was a better breed of human being than the rest, and he came across as an asshole. As with yesterday, somehow this pose with his hands above his head against the window epitomized this assholishness.
Marzoli rested his hand underneath his dick and clutched the length.
Layworth wasted no time. He flicked his pelvis to the side and the towel fell down to the floor. So smooth, all too slimy.
Marzoli muttered out of the side his mouth to me, “Okee dokee smokee, let’s do this.”
Marzoli pulled his gym shorts down his knees, and let his touched-up organ dangle in the cold air. Layworth licked his lips. Our theory was correct. Layworth had dammed up testosterone from having been cockblocked from Ruben three days ago and then from Marzoli yesterday, leaving his cock raging. Layworth put his middle finger in his mouth, moistened it with saliva, and then reached around his fleshy firm lobes. He inserted, and parted his mouth in ecstasy.
I could virtually hear his long low groan.
“What a fucking creep,” Marzoli muttered.
“You’d better show him you’re game,” I said.
“Put the song on.”
I played it, and Max Angel’s breathy voice crooned “Slow Slide Down From Me,” filling every inch of the apartment with sensuality. Marzoli’s eyes quickly went from bemused to salacious. Marzoli reached his hand to his mouth as Layworth had, slobbered saliva onto it, then reached down to pump his penis until it plumped with blood. The irony hit me—an entire career of songwriting was having its greatest success right at this very moment, with this very dance, with this very libidinous yet noble purpose.
“Take yours out,” Marzoli ordered me over the singing.
I complied. I was already good to go, and Marzoli feasted his eyes on it until his man muscle started twitching. I was so fucking rigid I had to touch lightly so as not to shoot all over my keyboard and fuck up Apple’s fucking no-liquid repair policy. Marzoli gripped even tighter and slid his fist from the base all the way to his scarred head. Precum had already started dripping from his hole, streaking down his shaft. He was going to need more cover-up.
I glanced briefly at the computer. Layworth started rocking his hips to and fro, digging his finger deeper. Suddenly he stopped and extracted it.
Then he did it.
Through the falling snow, he motioned for Marzoli to come over.
This was it.
Marzoli, however, shook his head and mouthed “No.”
I immediately registered Marzoli’s psychological manipulation. Convincing Layworth that Marzoli needed to be cajoled into crossing the courtyard indicated that Marzoli wouldn’t ordinarily be such a slut. It flattered Layworth, making Marzoli all the
more desirable.
Layworth signaled again for him to come over more insistently.
Marzoli paused, looked down at his feet, and then looked up and nodded bashfully. Layworth winked in satisfaction. Marzoli quickly stepped out of the frame and put his back against the wall, breathing hard. In spite of his pretense of bashfulness, he was nervous as fuck.
“I want you to know,” he said to me, his voice quavering, “that what you’re about to see isn’t me.”
“You’re going to have sex with him. You can’t fake that. You’re going to have to get into him in order to fuck him.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s got a hell of a body.”
Marzoli couldn’t look me in the eye.
He began to reapply makeup to his plump penis.
When he finished, I handed him his clothes and said, “It’s cold out there.”
He pulled on his jeans, his polo shirt, and his socks.
I held his shoes out for him. My heart was pounding, as was his. But mine was beating from an entirely different line of thought. As he reached out, I withdrew the shoes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The body isn’t there.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Layworth kids played in the closet last night. They saw nothing.”
Marzoli grabbed his shoes and kneeled to put them on.
“Ruben is there.”
“He’s not in the closet.”
“He has to be.”
“But I saw…”
“When were you going to tell me what you saw?” he demanded, dead cool.
He stood up, eye-to-eye, and once again probed my brain, skillfully following my thoughts even more closely than ever. I swallowed the painful dryness in my throat. I couldn’t speak. With each new second a lathe sheered my vocal chords one pass at a time. My eyes filled with tears. He displayed no sympathy. I knew he knew I’d withheld the information for fear of losing him. He crossed his arms. His face was stern. The suspense of how he would react was killing me. Would he be too angry to want to deal with me again, or would he instantly forgive me and overlook my goddamn weakness?
Being a natural son-of-bitch, Marzoli did neither.
He placed his gun on my desk with a solid thud.
“I can’t take this with me if I’m going to be naked,” he stated flatly. “You’re going to have to watch closely and text me if you see anything I need to be aware of. Anything.”
And he stepped speedily out the window into the snow, leaving me uncertain what he was feeling about my fuckup, and to what extent he was feeling it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marzoli left black footprints on the snow-covered metal steps as he carefully padded his way down the fire escape, circled the second floor platform, then descended the next flight to the brick wall.
Mr. Perfect kept his eye on the prize. No turning back now.
A four-inch pad of untouched white snow now covered the foot-wide wall. He placed one foot tentatively on the wall, then, after assessing the feasibility, alighted from the fire escape onto the wall completely. He extended his thick arms to secure more balance, and negotiated the distance of the wall, foot after foot, kicking sheets of snow off to either side.
The image of this beautiful specimen performing this high wire act for only two sets of eyes was exquisite. His broad shoulders narrowed to his hips and down to his delicately placed feet, balancing as laced flakes of snow dropped down in white streaks from the sky to the courtyard ground. I was mesmerized by his performance—competent but dangerous, illicit but noble, delicate but strong, determined but conflicted, heated but icy. In an odd way, Mr. Perfect and I were now linked by watching the slow real-time progression of this walker on the wall.
He finally reached the fire escape on the opposite wall.
Marzoli was now on the enemy’s side of the war zone. He was about to encounter a hairy, chiseled, pumped physique of unquestionable allure. Any illusion I might have had that I somehow offered something that appealed to Marzoli was about to be pitted against Mr. Perfect’s many somethings. If Mr. Perfect was, in fact, not guilty of murder, as I was now beginning to suspect, then I was sending the best thing I’d encountered in decades across the courtyard and up Mount Olympus to diddle Zeus. After Zeus, why would he care to return to this lump of clay?
The dark descending whirlpool in my brain was starting to rotate again.
One way or another, he’s going to leave me.
Marzoli’s ascent up the opposite fire escape was swift, for there was less snow directly falling on that side of the courtyard due to the direction of the wind. The Princess was no longer in her bedroom, having disappeared into her bathroom to finish cutting her hair, so Marzoli bypassed her window without risk. This time, however, I wished the Princess had been there to prevent his progress.
Mr. Layworth hovered at the bedroom window until Marzoli arrived. He swung the window open. Marzoli slid over the windowsill and stood upright in the bedroom. Marzoli had now become one of the puppets I observed across the courtyard. The moment was stunning and surreal, twisting the distant and the intimate, the personal and the impersonal.
My heart fluttered as fast as a hummingbird’s.
Marzoli stuck his hand out formally. Mr. Layworth shook it, grinning.
Layworth gripped the handshake tighter and pulled Marzoli in. Their lips crushed together. Their chests crushed together. Then their crotches crushed together. I saw their tongues enter each other’s mouths forcefully. Marzoli ground his pelvis into Layworth’s, who returned the favor. Marzoli grabbed Layworth’s muscular back and pulled him in closer, then padded down to the rock solid lobes of his ass and squeezed tight. Layworth groaned and lifted his head to the ceiling. Marzoli opened his jaw and wrapped his mouth around Layworth’s throat. He darted his tongue out and lapped up the salt as his teeth lightly cut through the stubble.
Layworth’s dick pushed forward. Marzoli sank to his knees and engulfed the thickness in his mouth. Layworth shoved in and out, his hips wildly angling to feel the sensation of Marzoli’s mouth from all directions.
I couldn’t fucking stand it. I stood up, clenched my fists, sat back down, then repeated this perfectly useless act. On one hand, watching the man I cared so much for suck face and blow the man he believed to be a killer was ethically grotesque. On the other hand, one couldn’t ask for two actors more suited for a porn flick.
How the fuck could I compete with that?
Layworth finally dug his dick all the way in, holding the back of Marzoli’s head tightly, gagging him. Marzoli clamped tightly, choking, and then finally strained his bulbous triceps as he pushed it out of his mouth. Marzoli’s stomach appeared to lurch as he spit up clear bile onto the bottom of Layworth’s testicles. He proceeded to smear the bile deep underneath onto the lips of Layworth’s hole, lubing it. Layworth groaned in pleasure, gasping for air.
Marzoli returned to his feet and pushed Layworth to the bed face down.
This act relieved me somewhat. Marzoli knew his disfigurement limited any further contact to only one possible position—with Layworth facing away. Marzoli had to leave no question as to who would top. I felt better knowing Marzoli’s brain was still fixed on the investigation.
Marzoli gripped Layworth’s dick and bent him over the bed, forcing Layworth to prop himself on the mattress with his arms locked straight down, holding his torso horizontally and his legs vertically, leaving his hole at the absolute perfect height for Marzoli to grind into his white, muscular naked plump cheeks, just as Ruben had only a couple nights before.
Marzoli unbuttoned his fly completely. His plumpness sprung out of his underwear. Layworth tried to look behind, but Marzoli gripped his pelvis on either side tightly with his massive forearms to prevent any view of his acid-scarring. Marzoli’s soldier hovered at the entrance of Layworths hole and prodded gently. It put its foot in the door, then wedged it open all the way. With a thrust, Marzoli entered.
I heard a raspy “Oh, Fuck!” echo across the courtyard.
This exclamation triggered the flash of watching Ruben fuck the shit out of Layworth…so eerily the same….but no…something was different. Something was subtly different.
What was it?
Layworth’s striated beefy back was perfectly perpendicular to Marzoli’s upright torso and glistened as he rocked to and fro. The pocket in the small of his back pooled with sweat, which Marzoli used to smear around his body and then slide his fist down over Layworth’s full engorgement. Layworth’s eyes were shut tight in ecstasy, panting like an overheated dog.
Suddenly I saw what was different. All at once I knew the purpose of the wire cutters. All at once I knew how the Layworths intended to remove Ruben’s body. All at once I knew why the children entered and exited the closet without seeing any body, although it most definitely was there…
With Ruben, Layworth laid his stomach flat on the mattress with his ass at the perfect height for being plunged into. With Marzoli, Layworth’s torso was still perfectly horizontal and his ass was still at the perfect height, but he had to hold his torso up on locked arms straight down to the mattress.
I picked up my phone and typed:
Ruben is INSIDE the box spring, which was moved to the closet!
With my fingers shaking, I sent the text. If Marzoli’s phone was on vibrate, as I knew it would be, he’d feel the vibration and reach into his pocket.
He did not.
The fucking was too frenetic to feel any vibration.
Suddenly movement underneath them caught my eye.
The Princess had emerged from the bathroom with her hair fully cropped to answer the doorbell. She opened the door.
Through the door stepped Mrs. Layworth!
Mrs. Layworth looked tired from a fucked day at work, yet dazzled in a bright white fur-lined open trench coat over a bright white A-Dress. The Princess greeted her with compliments, then withdrew four dresses from her closet and handed them to Mrs. Layworth. But of course! That’s how the Princess could afford to wear all that designer couture; they were free from the fashion designer neighbor upstairs! And now she was returning them.