by Greg Herren
“Thank you, but I don’t have the kind of build that someone would need to wear this costume,” I replied with a little laugh. “I mean, look at his body, Carson. There’s no fat on him anywhere. And that muscle tone!” I shook my head. “No, I’m soft and have no muscles. People would laugh at me if I dared wear something like that.”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself, sir,” he said slowly, conviction in his tone. “You’re very slender, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, and there’s still almost six full weeks before the ball. There’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get yourself into that kind of shape by then. Perhaps not this kind of shape,” he touched the clipping, “but you just need to put on a little bit of muscle and perhaps some definition, and you would be the sensation of the ball, sir.” He tapped his fingers against his chin. “In fact, there’s a wonderful trainer you could hire—he’s done wonders with his clients. He worked with Mr. Timothy whenever he had a photo shoot coming up—and I’m sure you’ve seen the results! His name is Brad Collins. You could work with him several times a week, and of course, he would work with Delia to come up with an eating plan for you, to maximize the effects of the exercise.” He snapped his fingers. “And all you’d need is to get a little sun—you could use the tanning bed in the exercise room; I can call them to come make sure it’s working properly—it hasn’t been used in over a year. Yes, you would definitely be the hit of the ball if you wore that costume.”
“Do you think so?” I asked dubiously. “I’d hate to have the costume made and then not look good enough to wear it.”
“You look good enough to wear it now, sir,” he insisted. “I really don’t think it would be an issue. This is your debut, sir, and you really want to make a splash, don’t you?”
I stared down at the picture and bit my lip. I remember the long board shorts I’d bought in Miami to wear on the beach to hide my body from everyone else. I remembered the shame and embarrassment of changing in the locker room for gym class in high school. I pictured myself coming down the grand staircase in that costume, with my halo draped over my hair, the enormous feathered wings attached to my back with a harness. I pictured the faces of everyone turning up to me as I paused for effect on the landing. I imagined the look of pride on Carlo’s face as he introduced me to his friends as his spouse.
My excitement began growing. “Thank you, Carson. Can you get me the trainer’s phone number so I can make an appointment?”
“I’ll take care of it for you, sir.” He smiled, gathering up all the other clippings and shoving them back into the folder, leaving the angel image on my desk. “Leave it all to me.”
The door shut behind him, and I grabbed Minette’s leash, which sent her into paroxysms of joy. “Did you hear that, Minette? I’m going to be the belle of the ball!”
I floated on a cloud of excitement and happiness the rest of the day. Even the fact that Carlo was leaving for a week the following morning wasn’t enough to bring me down from it. There was no sign of Nell and her dogs next door, even though Minette and I stayed out for over an hour in the yard. The storm had done some damage—branches were down, and a lot of leaves had been stripped from the hedges. The pool was filled with debris and dirt and sand. I even took Minette out on the pier all the way to the end where the boathouse sat.
It was a glorious afternoon.
Joyce and Frank came over for dinner that evening, and I was very pleased to tell them I’d finally solved my costume dilemma.
“Oh, WHAT are you going to BE?” Joyce asked, her face alight with her curiosity, “Tell me, Mouse! I’m DYING here!”
“I’m not going to tell—you’re just going to have to wait like everyone else,” I replied with a laugh. “It’s a surprise—but I think everyone is going to love it.” I glanced over at Carlo, who winked at me.
“Oh, COME on!” she pleaded. “I can’t WAIT until the ball to FIND out! I shall simply die of curiosity!”
“Now, now, Joyce, don’t press him.” Carlo gave me an indulgent smile and a bit of a wink. “Isn’t the whole point of a costume that it’s a surprise? And if Mouse wants to surprise us, we should let him, don’t you think?”
“Oh, all right,” Joyce said begrudgingly. She gave me a sly look. “But if you need some help with it—”
“Joyce!” Frank warned her, and she rolled her eyes.
And that apparently closed the subject.
The next morning I kissed Carlo good-bye just before he drove off for the airport. I stood on the front gallery and watched until the gate closed. “I won’t be sad, I won’t be sad,” I said to myself as I went back inside to have breakfast.
“Brad will be here at eleven, sir,” Carson said as I sat down with another cup of coffee in the dining room. “And I’ve taken the liberty of making an appointment for you in the city with the costume designer, for two o’clock tomorrow. I also,” he bowed his head, “took the liberty of arranging tickets for you to see that new musical everyone is talking about, Roberts can drive you in and drive you back the following morning. Is that all right with you, sir?”
“Why, thank you, Carson, that was very kind of you.” I smiled at him, genuinely touched. He was clearly trying to make up for his behavior. He gave me a smile, and bowed before walking out of the room.
I walked Minette after my coffee—the landscaping team was cleaning up the yard from the aftermath of the storm, and I wanted to make sure she was walked and back inside before they started running the mowers. She was absolutely terrified of the mowers—and after the days of thunderstorms I didn’t want to traumatize her any further. I checked next door from the beach but there was no sign of Nell. I considered walking up and knocking on her back door, but finally decided it was better to not bother her. Obviously, her comment about Timothy being murdered had just been meant to rattle me—she wanted to see how I reacted—and so there was no point in bringing it up ever again. I hesitated when we walked past the studio—but decided ultimately to forget about it. Maybe when Carlo came back I’d talk to him about clearing out Timothy’s things from there, so the little building could be put to some kind of use.
Of course, it was much easier to think about discussing Timothy with Carlo when he was out of town.
Brad Collins arrived promptly at eleven, and he looked vaguely familiar to me. He was wearing a string tank top that exposed enormous muscles, and his legs were like tree trunks. He was fair-skinned with curly auburn hair and startlingly light blue eyes, and he had more freckles than anyone I’d ever seen. He gripped my hand tightly when I introduced myself, and veins popped out in his forearms as he shook my hand.
“Thank you for squeezing me into your schedule,” I said as we walked down the hallway to the workout room. “I need to get in better shape for the Independence Ball—my costume is going to be a little bit daring. But you need to know I am terribly uncoordinated, and I’ve never lifted a weight in my life.”
He grinned, showing big strong even white teeth, and two dimples sank into his cheeks. His smile was exceptional—his entire face lit up when he smiled. “Not to worry—it’s much easier to put on weight than it is to lose it in six weeks.”
I opened the door to the exercise room, which I’d only peeked my head inside of once. Like all the other rooms in the main section of the house, there were enormous windows with an extraordinary view of the ocean and the backyard. The room was a fully equipped gym—we’d done a photo shoot for Street Talk at one of the most popular gyms in Manhattan once, and there wasn’t anything that health club had that wasn’t in the Spindrift exercise room. There were a couple of treadmills, elliptical machines, and stationary bicycles lined up against one wall. Every wall was covered with mirrors, and there were full sets of weights and dumbbells. There was every conceivable kind of bench, as well as squat racks.
“The most important thing,” he said once I’d closed the door behind us, “is for you to build muscle and burn fat in the most efficient and healthy way possible. You sai
d you’ve never lifted weights before—have you ever done any kind of physical activity?”
“Outside of walking the dog before you got here—never,” I replied, embarrassed. “I mean, I always used to walk to school when I was growing up, and even to college, Mr. Collins, but—”
“Just call me Brad.” He smiled. “And it’s not a big deal—I actually prefer my clients to have no preconceived notions about exercise—people always think they know more than I do, and there’s nothing I hate more than arguing with people about proper diet and technique. Just from looking at you, and what you’ve told me—and what Carson said on the phone about your goals, I don’t really think it’s going to be that difficult to get you ripped in six weeks. It is six weeks, right?” When I nodded, he nodded. “Okay, let’s get your shirt off so I can assess your body.”
I hesitated for a moment, and flashed back to high school gym class my freshman year. It was the first time I’d ever had to change clothes in front of anyone other than my doctor, and I remember one of the football players laughing at me. After that, I always hid somewhere when I had to change.
Brad smiled. “You have a bad experience in school? Yeah, me too.” He shrugged, the muscles in his massive shoulders rippling underneath the skin. “I used to get picked on something fierce, man. I started bodybuilding when I was a junior because, you know, I got sick of getting picked on and never looked back.” He flexed one of his arms, and the biceps muscle peaked. “Nobody fucks with you when you have guns, you know. So, go on, I’m not going to make fun of you. It’s just an assessment, so I know what kind of program we need to put together to get the results you want.”
“I don’t want to get really big,” I replied, slipping my shirt over my head. I stood there, holding my right elbow with my left hand, shifting from one foot to the other.
He walked around me, viewing me critically. “Well, you’ve got a pretty decent frame—small, so no, you don’t want to put on a lot of muscle, it wouldn’t look proportional…” He reached out and pinched the skin at my waist. “You’re a bit soft, and you don’t have a lot of fat, so with eating properly and exercising with weights, a full body workout, and two days of cardio a week, in six weeks you’ll be amazed at the difference in your body. Do you drink a lot of soda?” When I nodded, he shook his head. “You need to cut that out—not entirely, but try not to have more than one a day, and drink a lot of water. Remember when I pinched your skin? A lot of that is water retention—there’s a lot of sodium in soft drinks—so you get thirstier the more you drink so you’ll drink more. And that sodium makes you retain water, which makes your skin puffy.”
He took me through the entire workout, beginning with a thorough body stretch, using light weights “so you won’t get sore, this way your body gets used to the movement and then when you start lifting heavier, you’ll be able to get out of bed the next day,” and we finished with several different variations of crunches.
When we finished, he sprang up to his feet and offered me his hand. I took it and he pulled me up to my feet like I didn’t weigh anything at all. “You can do crunches every day,” he said. “Your abs are the only muscles you can safely work out every day. You don’t have to, but it’ll help you with getting your heart rate up—so try to do your abs every day. Now, when do you want to see me again?”
“I’m going into the city for a costume fitting tomorrow morning, and I should be back the following afternoon—do you have anything available?”
He dug out a cell phone from his bag and started searching through it. “What is your costume?”
“It’s a secret.”
He looked up and winked. “How about three that afternoon?”
I nodded, and he entered the information into his phone. As I watched him, I realized where I’d seen him before.
He was one of the models for Timothy’s prints.
“Carson said you used to train Timothy whenever he had a photo shoot coming up,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual. “Did you know him well?”
He put the phone back into his bag. He looked at me suspiciously. “Well enough, why do you ask?”
“I was in his studio the other day—I was curious, and was going through some of his prints—and there were some where you were the model.” I felt myself turning red as he stared at me.
“Oh, those.” He shook his head. “I’d forgotten about those.” He rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t want any trouble, okay?”
“Trouble?” I gaped at him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to come clean with you, okay?” He took a deep breath. “I’m probably crazy for saying anything, but Timothy—Timothy was an asshole.” His lips tightened. “Yeah, I used to train him. Sometimes whenever he had to do a shoot, yeah, or whenever he thought he’d gained an inch or two in the waist and freaked out about it.” He laughed bitterly. “Almost from the very first time I came here, he was trying to get in my pants, okay? I wouldn’t—it’s really poor form for a trainer to fuck one of his clients—the word gets out, you know. He wasn’t used to being turned down.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I can believe that.”
“So it became like a thing with him. He pursued me.” He sighed. “Look, I’m a gay guy, and he was gorgeous. It’s not like I wasn’t tempted, you know? Finally, he just gave up. That was that—I figured he got the message. Then after about a year, he starts scheduling appointments with me again. He tells me he’s thinking about taking the marketing for his company in a different direction.”
“The underwear?”
He laughed harshly. “Yeah—he was thinking of doing something different. Every underwear company uses lean, ripped models, so he was thinking using a big muscle guy would make a splash, would make his ads stand out.”
“And he thought you could do it.”
He nodded. “I was perfect, he said. It would be a quarter of a million dollar per year contract—who can say no to money like that? I was an idiot. So, yeah, I posed for him. And I let him seduce me, like an idiot. It lasted for maybe two weeks…and then he tells me they’re going to go in a different direction with the new ad campaign.”
“So, he just—”
“Used it to get me into bed? Yeah.” Brad threw the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “I wasn’t sorry when he drowned, let me tell you. Good riddance to bad rubbish, you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“All right, man,” he said, his face still flushed from anger, “I’ll see you in a couple of days—and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about that little lapse on my part.”
I walked him to the front door and watched him drive off in his Jeep.
As I went back into the house, I said to myself, Nell said Chris Thoresson slept with Timothy—and now I know Brad did as well, and wasn’t happy about it.
Maybe he was murdered after all.
Chapter Ten
I was so tired I almost fell asleep at the dinner table and could barely make it up the stairs to my room.
It was early, so I tried to stay up, but I could barely focus on the book I was reading. Somehow, I managed to make it until ten, at which point I surrendered to the inevitable, undressed and turned off the lights.
I was asleep almost the moment my head hit the pillow.
I had a very strange dream that night, which wasn’t surprising.
In the dream, I was standing underneath the grand staircase, staring out the back door to the beach. Minette ran out between my legs and started barking excitedly by the pool—which I couldn’t see from where I was standing. I called to her, but she ignored me and continued barking. Annoyed at her disobedience, I walked out the back doors to the gallery, calling and whistling. My voice died in my throat as soon as I could see the swimming pool. Minette was barking and wagging her tail at a man with his back to me, wearing nothing more than a skimpy bright yellow bikini that barely covered his ample buttocks. The yellow made his deeply tanned skin look even darker, and there were beads of water
on his back. His muscular legs were perfectly smooth—no sign of body hair anywhere. His bluish-black hair was wet and plastered to the sides of his head. But he’s dead was all I could think as he raised his hands over straight over his head, the muscles in his back rippling, bent at the knees, and dove into the pool. He surfaced, shaking his head so drops of water flew in every direction from his curly hair. He smiled and waved me over as he held on to the side of the pool. Hesitantly, my heart in my throat, I walked down the gallery stairs and across the lawn toward the pool. He was even more beautiful in person than he’d been in the magazine ads and the underwear boxes, but I couldn’t understand or wrap my mind around the notion that he was somehow still alive. He was smiling at me, but as I got closer I realized it wasn’t a nice smile at all—it was more of a nasty smirk.
Did you really think I’d let someone like you take my place? As master of Spindrift? Did you honestly think someone like you could ever replace me in Carlo’s bed? In his life? At his side? He mocked me, throwing his head back as he started laughing.
I stopped, my heart ripping in half, unable to even get the words out to beg him to stop.
But as he laughed and I struggled to say something, anything, two hands came out of the water from behind him and shoved his head under. He cried out in surprise but the cry was cut short as he submerged. I moved closer to the side of the pool, horrified, and screamed for help. My voice echoed, and I knew I had to get into the water to help him, else he would drown, but I was frozen in place, unable to move, as air bubbles rose to the surface and I could see Timothy struggling under the water…and when I finally could move again his struggles ceased, his body floating back up to the surface, face-down and limp, his arms floating up at the sides but his legs dangling toward the bottom. I opened my mouth to scream as the man who’d held him under, who’d killed him, rose up from the water and smiled at me. I couldn’t make out his face—he was wearing some kind of mask over it so I couldn’t make out his features. He was also wearing a bikini, only his was white, and like Timothy’s had left very little to the imagination. He held a finger up to his lips and whispered, “shhhh.” I tried desperately to make out his features through the gauze or whatever it was he had over his face, but couldn’t. I couldn’t move at all, couldn’t do a damned thing as he leaned back over the water and grabbed one of Timothy’s limp arms. The man dragged his body through the water over to the side of the pool, and pulled Timothy out of the water like he didn’t weigh an ounce. He hoisted the limp, dripping body into his arms and walked toward me. I could tell he was smiling underneath whatever it was that masked his features.