by Dorien Grey
*
An equally nice day Saturday. Not having to be concerned with laundry and dry cleaning and vacuuming and grocery shopping made it seem like a real vacation. Tom woke me around 7:30 in a most enjoyable way, and it occurred to me that if someone could just invent an alarm clock to do that, nobody in the world could object to waking up.
Tom loaned me a spare robe, and we sat barefoot in the kitchen having coffee and talking. The subject got around to Tom’s relationship with his dad. His mom had died when he was eleven, and it wasn’t easy for his dad taking over the family as well as trying to run his growing business. Luckily, Tom had always been independent, and his dad tended to give him free reign, which Tom recognized and appreciated. In exchange, Tom more or less took care of his younger sister, Maureen. He had a brother, Art, five years older than him and their dad’s favorite, though he never gave any overt recognition of it, and Tom understood. I gathered from what Tom said that the two brothers were a lot alike in many ways, but unlike Tom, Art had been fascinated by the family business, and their dad obviously had intended to turn the business over to him at some point.
I more or less just sat and listened as Tom talked. I’d known he’d had a brother, but this was the first time Tom ever talked about him at any length. Art had been killed in a head-on collision with a semi after the driver claimed to have fallen asleep and swerved into Art’s lane.
Tom was a junior in high school at the time, and was of course devastated by his brother’s death. But his father was, if possible, even more so. Tom didn’t fully understand it at the time, but his father was convinced that Art’s death was not an accident. It happened at the height of a set of bitter union contract negotiations, and the semi that hit Art was driven by a member of one of the unions involved—the Amalgamated Hotel Workers of America headed by one Joe Giacomino. Nothing could be proven of course, but the elder Brady, and later Tom, was absolutely certain that Giacomino was behind it. Giacomino was currently serving a non-related 20-year prison sentence for racketeering.
While Tom did his best to fill Art’s shoes when it came to the business, both he and his dad knew Tom’s heart wasn’t really in it. So when Tom decided, shortly after moving here, to join the force, his father reluctantly understood. Tom’s sister, Maureen, had recently graduated from college and had started to work at their father’s corporate headquarters. Maybe, Tom hoped, she could take his place, eventually.
One of the reasons Tom had been sent out to the Montero was because of the forthcoming labor negotiations; his dad wanted him to get experience in dealing directly with labor contracts, and all evidence was that the upcoming local contract talks were going to be rough in the extreme. The contracts of several unions were all coming up for renewal at the same time, and those unions with reputed ties to organized crime—notably the A.H.W.A.—apparently were planning to take advantage of the current upheaval within the police department to try to expand their influence. So Tom felt doubly guilty for letting his father down by not being there for him. His father was, in fact, coming out from the east coast the following week to begin preparations for the talks.
Coincidentally, the newly elected head of the Amalgamated Hotel Workers of America local was one Joe (“Joey”) Giacomino, Jr., not coincidentally the eldest son of Joe Giacomino, Sr.. This was to be little Joey’s first major contract negotiation, and he was understandably going to be taking a lot of heat not only from union headquarters, but also from dear old dad.
*
It’s kind of surprising how fast time can go by even when you’re not doing anything special, if you’re spending it with someone you enjoy. Tom had some home movies from college, and we watched them, laughing at triggered memories and wondering about now-lost friends who were once so close to us. We didn’t even get out of our robes all day. (Well, I take that back—we did, a couple of times, but we always put them back on afterwards.)
We were, in fact, lying in bed when I heard the grandmother clock in the living room strike five.
“Well, do you think we should try for dinner out tonight? I have to admit I’m plumb tuckered from all this exercise.”
Tom reached over and rolled me over to him, chest to chest.
“Sure,” he said, the tips of our noses about two inches apart. “Where should we go?”
I was lying on his left arm, but his free right hand, fingers splayed wide, was making large circles across my shoulders, then slowly spiraling downward. I reached down with my own left hand and grabbed his wrist, keeping him from moving further south.
“Now look, buddy,” I said, moving my nose forward until it was pressed against his, hard; “I’m the Scorpio here. Nobody’s allowed to be hornier than me, and even I admit I could use a little break.”
Tom grinned, moving his head back just far enough to be able to look into my eyes. “Hey, I’ve been out there in the desert a long time. You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Who’s blaming? Give me a couple hours to recharge my batteries and we can start all over again. Fair?”
He gave the facial-expression equivalent of a shrug. “Fair.”
I rolled back off his arm and onto the pillow.
“So where for dinner?”
I thought a moment. “Well, let’s see; there’s Calypso’s, or Napoleon, or…”
“You pick. The place you took us to the other night was nice.”
“Rasputin’s. Sure, we could go back there if you’d like. But I think you might like Napoleon. There are a lot of nice places around; you might as well sample them all.”
“You lead, I’ll follow.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
*
We got up, took a communal shower, jostled around each other for use of the mirror while shaving, causing Tom to nick himself to the point of drawing blood. At that point, after tearing a small piece of toilet paper off the roll and sticking it to the cut, he put his razor down and said “Okay, I’ll go and make us a drink while you finish up here. Let me know when it’s safe to come back in.” And with that he wrapped a towel around himself and padded off toward the kitchen.
Of course I felt guilty, but not very, so took my time getting my hair into some semblance of order, stealing some of Tom’s after-shave and, though I normally never use the stuff, applied some underarm deodorant from a stick I’d had lying, unopened, in my dopp kit for a couple years or more. As I was leaving the bathroom, I met Tom coming in, a drink in each hand. I took one, nodded a thanks, and we did a classic shoulder-turn pass as I left and he entered through the door at the same time. I stopped just long enough to make a quick turn and yank his towel off. Teenage stuff, but fun.
*
We took our time finishing our drinks and getting dressed, talking all the while. I think we were probably both rather surprised that we never seemed to run out of things to talk about, but we didn’t. We shared a lot of the same interests. Tom had an endless string of stories to tell about his adventures working at his dad’s various hotels, and while his chances for any long term relationships were limited by circumstances, he never wanted for willing bed partners. Hey, when you look like Tom…! He’d get hit on constantly by women, too, of course, but all he had to do was mention Lisa and they’d usually get the picture.
I gathered the Lisa-and-Tom thing just sort of evolved. Straights seem to find it almost impossible to imagine that a boy and a girl can really be best friends, without sex having to enter into it. And of course, both Tom and Lisa had always known the other was gay. So rather than try to go it on their own in the “Oh, Tom, you’ve got to meet my niece; you’d love her,” or “When are you going to find the right man and settle down, Lisa?” world, since it was always assumed that they were a “couple,” they just went along. The vast majority of straights, Tom and I agreed, tend to be dumbfoundingly, infuriatingly smug when it comes to assuming that their way of life is the only way of life.
I called Napoleon and got reservations for seven thirty. As we were gett
ing ready to leave the apartment, Tom seemed mildly distracted.
“Problem?”
“Sort of,” he said, going over to the credenza to take out his gun case. “What am I going to do about my gun? There’s no place to put it dressed like this, and I’d stand out like a sore thumb if I tried to wear my shoulder holster under a jacket.”
“Do you have to have it on you? Maybe if you put it under the front seat of the car…we’ll park as close to the restaurant as we can.”
Tom shrugged. “Sure; I guess that’ll be okay.”
Since Lisa and Carol had taken Tom’s car to drive to the wedding, Tom and I walked back to my place to pick up mine. As we were walking over, Tom was apparently more than a little self-conscious about carrying the small case.
“This is damned awkward,” he said. “Maybe I should have ordered two new holsters. But who’d ever expect a leather strap to break?”
Despite having to walk to my place for the car, we arrived at Napoleon…thanks largely to my magic ability for always being early…at 7:15. Tom didn’t seem to mind, and we’d pretty much managed to ignore the clock all day anyway. I’d been telling Tom—at his insistence—about some of the more interesting cases I’d worked on, and about my friends and how some of them got to be my friends. I kind of avoided getting back to Tom’s earlier question of why, if I thought I’d like to have a lover, I didn’t have one. Actually, I knew, the answer was simple: It’s a lot easier to want something than to get it.
And I realized again, as I talked, that whatever professional doldrums I might be in at the moment, they wouldn’t last forever.
Dinner was nice, and relaxing, and comfortable—much like the past twenty-four-hours-plus had been. As we were leaving Napoleon, Tom suggested we stop at a couple bars before heading back to his place. I realized he was really enjoying what was probably his first completely free weekend since he’d arrived in town, but I was mildly concerned about going to the bars—for his sake, certainly not for mine.
“Sure, if you want to, but what about…uh….” I didn’t know exactly how to say it.
Tom looked at me and grinned. “You mean what if somebody from the department sees me?”
I gave a cursory shrug.
“Well,” he said as we reached my car and I unlocked the passenger’s side door for him, “if I run into a fellow cop in the bars, chances are he’s there for the same reason I am, so I don’t think he’s going to be telling anyone who can cause any trouble, do you? And as far as anything else is concerned…I told you, I’m not going to lock myself in a closet and turn my life off. If something happens, I’ll deal with it then, not before.”
He was right, of course, and I admired his attitude. I was still a little concerned. He’d just started a career he really loved; I didn’t want to see him jeopardize it, but I realized it was his life and his choice as to what he wanted to do with it.
“So, where would you like to go?”
Tom got in the car and I moved around to the driver’s side, which he leaned across the seat to unlock. I got in, hoisted my rear off the seat to reach into my pocket for the keys, and turned on the ignition.
“I dunno,” Tom said, picking up the conversation where we’d left it. “You know the bars here a lot better than I do. Where would you suggest?”
“Well,” I said, checking for traffic and then pulling out into the street, “depends on the mood you’re in. There’s Glitter, if you don’t mind ten thousand guys on the dance floor at once, or risking having your ears bleed from the sound system—but it can be fun if you’re up to it. Or the Male Call, if you want to go back home and change into your leather, or…”
Tom reached over and laid his hand on my leg. “How about just someplace kind of laid back? I’m not out for cruising—I just feel like being around some of my own people for a change.”
“I think I know just the place.” I took a right on Parker, headed for Griff’s. I remembered that Tom had one characteristic that was a dead giveaway that he was gay: he loved Broadway musicals, and Griff’s was a really nice, comfortable piano bar.
We found a place to park just across the street from Ruthie’s, a quiet lesbian bar my friend Mollie Marino and her lover Barb had taken me to once. Ruthie’s and Griff’s were only about five doors apart on the same side of the street, separated by an alley that sided Ruthie’s.
For whatever reason, lesbian bars were seldom hassled, either by the police or by gay bashers, but about a month before, two women had been attacked, dragged into the alley, and raped after coming out of Ruthie’s, apparently by gang members. There had understandably been quite a furor at the time, but since the area wasn’t noted for gang activity and there had been no incidents before or since, things had sort of gotten back to normal.
*
As I’d hoped, Guy Prentice was holding sway at the piano, belting out “The Boston Beguine” from New Faces of 1952 (Guy knew every song from every musical that had run on or off Broadway from 1922 to the present, and I’d never seen him fail to remember one).
Griff’s never had to worry about exceeding occupancy limits, but it always had a nice crowd, both in number and in disposition. After getting a heads-up greeting from Guy, who didn’t miss a beat in his playing, Tom and I went to one of the small tables on a step-up platform that lined the front end of the bar. It was just high enough to allow an unobstructed view over the heads of those sitting at other tables between the platform and the piano. The waiter came over and took our order and went off to give it to the bartender.
“I like it,” Tom said, approvingly.
“Thought you would,” I said, grinning.
I exchanged wave-and-nod greetings with Jim Marsh and Cory Lockhart, sitting at the stools around the piano. Jim and Cory used to hang around with Chris and me before Chris went off to New York.
Our drinks arrived, and we settled back to enjoy the music.
During his break, Guy traditionally got up from the piano and moved around the room, exchanging greetings with the regulars and accepting compliments on his talent, which was considerably larger than the venue in which he was playing. I’d often wondered why he seemed happy to stay at one place so long, but was very glad he did.
He worked his way to the platform, and to our table.
“Good to see you, Dick,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s been a while.”
“Unfortunately,” I said, then introduced Tom. Guy gave him an appreciative once-over, then turned to me and said: “I’m glad you’re getting on with your life, Dick. Still in touch with Chris?”
“Sure. We write a couple times a month and talk on the phone regularly. He’s got a new lover, as I think I told you last time I was in. He’s doing well, and I’m glad for him.”
Guy nodded. “Well, give him my regards when you talk with him next.” Then, turning to Tom, he said: “Got any requests for the next set?”
“Do you know anything from Boy Meets Boy?”
Guy grinned and gave him a wide-eyed, raised-eyebrow look. “Do I know anything from Boy Meets Boy?” he asked incredulously. “Honey, I know everything from ‘Boy Meets Boy’! What would you like to hear?”
“‘Tell Me, Please’?” Tom said, then gave me a quick look and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he blushed.
“You got it. Well, time to get back. Good to see you, Dick; nice to meet you, Tom. Come back.”
“We will,” we echoed in unison.
Was that a blush? I wondered. And if so, why? Of course, I knew the lyrics by heart, and realized that maybe Tom might be afraid I’d think he meant them to apply to me. But that was hardly likely…even though the die-hard romantic in me gave it a wistful thought.
About ten minutes into his second set, Guy segued into almost the entire score from Boy Meets Boy, moving from the rousing ‘It’s a Boy’s Life!’ into the far more…out with it, Hardesty!…okay, romantic…‘Tell Me, Please.’
You’re a marshmallow, Hardesty, my mind said, derisive
ly and I immediately got a mental picture of my guardian angel, wings and halo highlighted, responding sweetly: Fuck thee!
I forced myself not to look at Tom, and to zero in on Guy and the words to the song:
“Tell me, please, does anybody love you?
Do you have a special love affair?
Someone who worries about you,
who’s always true and tender too
and waits for you somewhere?”
You’re hopeless, Hardesty, my mind sighed.
*
Guy finished his second set and remained at the piano, engrossed in conversation with a couple of the patrons sitting closest to him. Jim and Cory finished their drinks and got up to leave. We exchanged another wave and smile as they went out the door.
“I’m really glad we came here,” Tom said. “Just what I needed—like this whole weekend has been.”
I thought again of how tough it must be for Tom, really, being in a demanding, dangerous job surrounded by too many homophobes, being in a relationship which, no matter how close friends he and Lisa were, did not and could not supply him with the kind of emotional support he wanted and needed.
“Well, we’ve still got one more day to go,” I said.
Suddenly the front door burst open and Cory ran into the bar, shirt torn and face bloody.
“Call the police!” he yelled at the bartender. “Jim’s hurt!”
Everything started happening at once: the bartender reached for the phone; two guys closest to the door grabbed hold of Cory and led him to a stool. The rest of the bar got to its feet, including Tom and me, and moved toward the door, but Tom pulled out his wallet and flashed his badge. “Stay here!” he said in a voice which commanded attention. He turned to me. “Give me your keys!”
I fumbled for them and handed them to him as he went out into the street, with me at his heels. Ignoring me, Tom raced across the street to my car, and to the car’s passenger side door. I meanwhile ran instinctively toward the alley between Griff’s and Ruthie’s, where probably ten people were roiling around, fighting. I could see someone on the ground—Jim, I guessed—while several guys stood or bent over him, kicking and punching him. One had a pipe or club of some sort in his hand, using the end of it as a battering ram to punch Jim in the side. Jim had managed to curl himself into a fetal position to try to protect himself. I managed to grab one of two guys who had a woman forced against the wall, punching her, while out of the corner of my eye I saw another woman kneeing a guy in the groin. Several other women were coming out of Ruthie’s, attracted by the noise, not knowing what was going on. A couple started toward the scuffle, but at that point, I heard Tom yelling: “Police! Knock it off! Now!” and saw him running toward the group, his wallet and badge in one hand, a gun in his other.