There was pure joy on his face. Love in his eyes. It practically radiated off the matte paper upon which the photograph was printed.
And he was healthy—glowing with vitality. This had to have been before the drug invaded their lives.
“He looks so happy.”
“He was.”
I put the picture down. “How can you do this to him? Don’t you see? He can’t rest.”
Tommy covered his face with his hands. “Why did you have to come along?”
I pulled his hands away from his face to reveal anguish. Karl’s eyes were rimmed in red; his breath came heavier. “I didn’t come along. Don’t you see, Karl? It’s not me; it’s Tommy who’s come along.” I paused. “It’s Tommy who wants peace. And I don’t think he can find it when his death is a secret.”
I didn’t know if there was a lot more I could say. I stood up and stared out the window. Sleety rain, like needles, had begun to pelt the glass, smearing it and obscuring the view of Damen Avenue below and the lines of traffic going north and south, their headlights glowing like insect eyes.
I was beginning to think Karl was waiting for me to leave. He had lain back down on the bed and closed his eyes, which I thought could reasonably be interpreted as a gesture of dismissal. But then he spoke.
“Tommy once told me that he never wanted to be alone. He was an extrovert, you know? He fed off other people—not in a bad way, like a parasite. He just got energy, he got happiness, from other people.”
I got what Karl was saying. “He’s alone now, Karl. That’s maybe the most tragic thing.” I sat down on the bed next to him. “Listen, I don’t really want to have to go to the cops with this; I’m not even sure I can. But I think you know what’s right.”
Karl sniffled a couple times and sat up. “Yeah, I do.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know.”
An idea had been brewing in the back of my mind. It was far from perfect and not entirely free from risk, but maybe it could work. And if it achieved the result of Tommy’s loved ones finally getting some closure, and Tommy himself some peace, maybe it would be worth it.
I took Karl’s hand in my own. “How about this? What if I went out there, found a pay phone, and made an anonymous call to the police?” Just the thought of actually doing this gave me a chill and made me want to forget the whole thing, but then, as I’ve said, I was being pushed to do something. “You tell me, as best you can, where Tommy is buried, and I’ll relay that information to the proper authorities. They can take it from there.”
“But, but—”
I held up a hand to stop him. I knew what he was going to say. “I know there’s a risk you could be caught. You lived with him, you have a big connection to him. They’re going to look at you first. There may be some tough questions.” I sighed, my heart sinking. Maybe this wasn’t going to work after all. “And who knows what evidence you might have left behind in that grave? Fibers. A bit of skin.” I’d read enough true crime to know how damning the smallest piece of evidence could be. I squeezed Karl’s hand. “But it’s a chance we have to take. It’s the only way your man is going to find peace. Are you willing to take that risk?”
“If I’m not, then what happens?”
The answer came to me without deliberation. “Then I will go to the police and I will tell them everything I know. Your word against mine, I know, but I think just what you told me here today is enough of a red flag to raise some serious investigation.”
“I just wondered what you would do.” Karl blew out a big sigh. “I had already made up my mind. Let’s go with Plan A—the anonymous call. It’s the right thing to do…for Tommy.” He grabbed me and hugged me then, which stunned me. When he pulled away, renewed tears glistened in his eyes. “Thank you. You don’t know how long this has been weighing on me. No matter what happens now, this feels like some kind of relief.”
I stood. I felt all sorts of things all at once—relief, sadness, a peculiar kind of joy. All of this was married to a weird sense of the surreal. Last week, I hadn’t even known Karl, or Paula, or, especially, Tommy. Yet here I was at the center of all their lives.
Tommy? I called to him in my mind. Tommy? Can you hear me? This is for you. “I should go make that call. Do you want to give me some guidance on where Tommy is? Some landmarks? I think there’s a pay phone at the Western el station; if not, I’ll keep looking.”
Karl stood then, too. “No. You shouldn’t have to make that call. I’ll make it. I can make sure they know where he is. And then it will be over.” He turned away, and his shoulders heaved with sudden tears.
I squeezed his shoulder. I could feel him wiping at his eyes and heard him sniffle, pulling himself together. He turned to me. “You know what’s weird?”
“What?”
“I think part of the reason—and I just realized this—I was afraid to tell was that it kept me, and me alone, connected to Tommy. Isn’t that terrible? It was our little secret, something only he and I shared. That is, until he started ‘talking’ to you.” He shook his head. “You must think I’m an awful person.”
But I didn’t. I understood. Loving someone so much you can’t let them go? Hey, once you love deeply and completely, that’s something with which anyone can empathize.
“I don’t.” I went to the door and stopped, “Now, I’m leaving here believing that you’re going to make that call. That you’ll help Tommy and everyone else who loves him say a proper good-bye. I can count on you, right?” I didn’t want to threaten him, and the peace I felt inside, the first all this week, told me he wouldn’t let me down.
“I’m going to go do it right now.” His lip trembled a little, and in the dim light, I could see he had gone pale. “No matter what, I’ll do it. For Tommy.”
“Good. You take care.” I stared at him. We were strangers once more. I hurried out the door.
Chapter 10
It was only two days later when Paula showed up at my door. It was a Saturday morning, and Ernie had gone down to Ann Sather to take care of his craving for cinnamon rolls and coffee. He planned to bring a box home.
The knock startled me. I hurried to answer the door, and there was Paula, looking kind of shell-shocked. Her lower lip trembled a bit, and her hair was in disarray. She wore only a pink chenille bathrobe that made me think of my mother. We faced one another across the threshold, and it seemed as though Paula was struggling to speak.
Ernie knew very little of what had gone on. I thought it made more sense that way. I debated whether to ask her to come in or suggest we move to her place. In the end, I opted for the latter.
From the look on her face and that morning’s Chicago Tribune in her hand, I knew what was on her mind.
Once she closed her front door behind me, she held up the newspaper. “You know about this?” Her voice just barely held it together, skirting grief, barely avoiding sobs.
“Yeah. I saw it in the online edition this morning.”
She sat down at her messy kitchen table, littered with a half-drunk cup of coffee, a plate with a partially eaten Pop-Tart on it, and the other sections of the newspaper. Paula groped her way through the mess until she found her cigarettes. With a shaking hand, she lit one, blew out the smoke, and regarded me.
“I still can’t believe it. I mean, the practical part of me knew, deep down, that Tommy was dead. But as long as there was no proof, there was still that little smidgen of hope. I clung to that sucker.” She smiled, but it was one of the saddest smiles I’d ever seen.
“This makes it real, you know?” She shook her head, looking down at the news item, which told the story I now knew by heart. It told of the anonymous tip, the discovery of the body in a heavily wooded area of a Chicago area forest preserve, and the identification of that badly decomposed body as one Thomas Soldano, who had been reported missing more than a year ago. Identification was made using dental records. Foul play was suspected.
Only I—and Karl—knew just how foul. No
t very foul at all, not really. Just sad.
I wondered how much Paula knew.
“Yeah, I know. How you holdin’ up, hon?”
“I’m okay. In some ways better and some ways worse than before I knew, for the reasons I already gave you.” She eyed me. “Have you had any more dreams?”
I had not. Not since Karl and I came to our agreement and this morning’s reporting from the Chicago Tribune verified that Karl was a man of his word. My slumber had been calm, and as far as I could recall, the only dream I had had was Ernie and me in some dark room, with Ernie bending me over a table. Hardly what anyone would refer to as “haunting.”
“No.” I sat down at the table with her and put my hand on top of hers. “I think it was what he wanted. Tommy, I mean.”
“I think you’re right.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine who would have done such a thing to him. I’m still trying to get up my nerve to call Karl. That’s gonna be a tough call. He’s gonna be devastated.”
So she knew nothing. I certainly would never tell her what I knew. As Karl had wondered, what good would it do? I hoped Karl got away with it. “I’m sure. I can’t imagine. But I also think he probably feels a little better now that everything has been brought to light.”
“I don’t know. It’s a hard thing. Those boys loved each other like nobody’s business. Having Tommy found like this is going to just reopen all that pain for him.”
“But at least he’ll know and he can start to heal.” As can Tommy, I thought, but didn’t say.
“Yeah. We all can.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “I talked to Tommy’s sister, Amanda, and they’re planning a memorial service for him. Wanna come with me?”
I had done what I thought needed to be done, played my part. “That’s awfully nice of you to ask, Paula, but I’ll pass. I don’t really know those people, didn’t really know Tommy, although I think we had a connection.” My thoughts, like my words, trailed off. “I don’t really think I belong there.”
We were once again people who barely knew one another sitting across a messy kitchen table. What connected me to Paula had been broken, and I wondered what would happen now. Would we be friends? Hanging out like she used to with Tommy and Karl—cocktails at Big Chicks, in and out of each other’s apartments? Or would the memory of those two phantom men always haunt her with Ernie and me serving only as painful reminders? Or would we simply be cordial neighbors, making small talk when we passed in the hall?
I didn’t know. But I did know whatever we became, it would be something different from what she had with Tommy and Karl.
I stood up to go. “Ernie’s getting us Ann Sather cinnamon rolls and he’ll be back soon. I should get back.” I smiled, but she didn’t see because she was staring out the window, far, far away. “I could maybe bring you one later.”
“That would be nice,” she said softly, not looking at me.
“Take care, Paula. We’ll talk soon, okay?”
“Sure thing, hon.”
I turned and walked out the door, leaving Paula alone to do some long-overdue mourning.
* * * *
I awakened to darkness and the gentle tap of rain on our big window, the window that had attracted me to this strange and unique apartment. I lay still in the darkness, listening to Ernie’s even breathing beside me and thinking about when I had first noticed the place we now lived in.
Had it been around the time Tommy had passed away? Had he been leading me here from the start?
I turned away from Ernie and pulled the sheet up tight around my ears. I was just about to close my eyes when I noticed the other bed, just beside my own.
Tommy was on it. He was naked and his body looked pale in the darkness, skeletal. He was wrapping a belt around his arm, looping it and pulling it taut with his teeth. He tapped the skin, searching, I suppose, for a vein. I could see the hypodermic needle lying on the stained sheets next to him.
“Don’t do it,” I whispered, reaching out a hand toward him.
But he picked up the needle, worked it into a vein, and plunged it home. I cringed as he immediately began convulsing, only the whites of his eyes showing, his back arched.
His head flopped to one side, and a dribble of vomit bubbled out of his mouth.
And then Tommy was still.
I sucked in a breath and tried to swallow around a lump that had formed in my throat. So this was how it happened, then? No drama, just sad and pathetic.
But as I watched, another Tommy rose above the dead thing on the bed. This Tommy seemed to be crafted from otherworldly light. He was healthy, robust, his body lean and packed with muscle. His eyes sparkled, and when he turned to look at me, he smiled.
He was free.
Our front door opened, and an anguished voice that I recognized as Karl’s cried out, “Tommy! No!”
Even Ernie stirred at Karl’s cry. “Hmm? What was that?” His hand gripped my shoulder.
I turned to him. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Ernie complied, no arguments.
I rolled over so that he and I were spooning and pulled Ernie’s arm around me. In a few seconds, he was snoring. The bed and Tommy and Karl had all been swallowed up by the darkness. An el train rumbled by outside, its light confirming that there was no one here but Ernie and me.
I knew Tommy wouldn’t be back. As I said, he was free.
How I Met My Man
Chapter 1
I think one of the scariest things that can happen to a person is the realization that someone ‘has been inside your house.’ And from that notion, this story began to take form.
When I used to live in Chicago, I once had the pleasure of living in the Rogers Park neighborhood in an apartment building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The good memory of that time was marred by one significant night when a stranger came ‘inside our house.’ It was the middle of the night. I don’t know what time it was, but my then-lover and I were fast asleep when we were awakened by our boxer mix, Babs, hopping up on our bed and growling. Groggily, I opened my eyes and had the feeling something wasn’t right. In my underwear, I got up to check things out. Vulnerable, much? I noticed a couple of things—some CDs from our storage tower scattered on the hardwood floor and the kitchen window wide open when it was too cold for that. As I said, I was groggy and I thought Babs’s warning and the things being out of place were nothing. I went back to bed.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I discovered the one thing I hadn’t noticed the night before. We had a knife block in the kitchen, and it was then I noticed, along with the CDs and the open window, that someone had laid out the Butcher knife from the block. Chills. At that moment, I realized someone had been inside our house and that their intentions were far from honorable.
Thank God I scared them away! We had been robbed, but not harmed. We had the police in, but never knew who had crept inside through the kitchen window while we slept.
It was from that night, which still gives me chills for what might have been, that this story was born.
You never know when a stranger might mean you harm. And worse, you may never know, until it’s too late, who that stranger is.
It was one of those late days in September that almost, almost fools one into thinking that it’s still summer. The day had shimmered and shined its way into the lower eighties, the clouds had taken a vacation across Lake Michigan, where they relaxed above the nude beach on Saugatuck, and people in Chicago pulled out their shorts and tank tops one last time, crowding the lakefront to jog, bike, and rollerblade.
I witnessed all of this as I rode home on the #147 bus, the Outer Drive Express. I was half dozing, half reading (You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs), and half watching the people frolicking on the lakeshore.
It had been yet another dull day at work, composing copy for catalog pages to sell automotive parts. Exciting stuff, right? But the job was secure and I couldn’t beat the location of my Michigan Avenue office. And the #147 got me downtown from Rogers Park in about
a half hour.
And who could argue with the lakefront view most of the way?
Today, once the bus turned off Lake Shore Drive and headed up Sheridan Road, I grew even drowsier and closed my eyes. In minutes, I heard the street just before mine—Chase—being announced. I hoisted myself out of my seat, grabbed my messenger bag and prepared to get off the bus.
It was then I noticed the copy of the Chicago Tribune someone had left on the seat across from me. There was a headline about the third killing of a gay man in the Boystown neighborhood. Police were seeking a connection between the victims. Being a gay man myself, I wanted to linger, or snatch up the discarded paper, but just as I reached for it, a bleached blond skater boy distracted me.
“Dude, are you getting off or what?” Under his breath, he whispered, “Make up your fuckin’ mind, asshole.”
Ah, the joys of urban life and three million people crowded joyously together! The boy spurred me on, and I left the newspaper behind.
Once I got home to my one-bedroom on Sherwin (in a landmark, Frank Lloyd Wright building—eat your hearts out, bitches!), I headed straight for the mailbox.
The mailbox and I have a curious kind of love/hate relationship. Even though the days of getting letters is long past, what with e-mail and all, I still can’t help but approach my mailbox in my apartment building vestibule without a sense of anticipation.
Seldom does that anticipation lead to anything more than bills and flyers, but somehow, the thrill of the unknown, of pulling that little metal door open to see what’s inside for me today never wears thin.
I think it never gets old because every once in a while, like today, the mailbox does indeed hold something more than solicitations for money, in forms of either bills or advertising.
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