Second You Sin - Sherman, Scott

by Scott Sherman

  Ansell looked terrible. His normally pale face was whiter than usual. Exhaustion ringed his red, wet eyes.

  Still not recovered from the party? Or had the reviews not gone his way?

  “Sorry to drop by like this. I’m Kevin. Rueben’s friend. We met at your party here the other night.”

  Ansell looked at me like he didn’t understand a word I said.

  “I had a date with Rueben tonight. Well, not a ‘date’ date. We’re just friends.”

  Ansell still didn’t get where I was going with this.

  “Anyway, I’m early, I got off work early, I suppose, and I thought I’d come over to see if he was around.”

  Nothing. Was he even hearing me?

  “So”—I figured if I was very direct maybe I’d cut through whatever haze surrounded him—“is Rueben home?”

  “Is Rueben home?” Ansell asked.

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Is Rueben home? Is Rueben home?”

  His flat voice and buggy stare made me think of Paula Prentiss inThe Stepford Wives,in which she plays the android neighbor of Katharine What-EverHappened-to-Her Ross.

  In a climactic scene, Katharine stabs Paula in the belly with a kitchen knife, and a short-circuited, braindead Paula paces the kitchen in circles, saying, “I thought we were friends . . . I thought we were friends . . . I thought we were friends. . . .”

  Ansell had that same zoned-out robotic glaze.

  It’s not a trick question,I wanted to say, but Ansell didn’t seem like someone up for a joke. So I just waited.

  “No,” Ansell finally said, bitterly. “Rueben isn’t home.Rueben isdead.”

  19

  Crying Time “Rueben’s dead.” I figured Ansell meant it metaphorically. Like, “Ruben’s dead wrong on this one;Buffywas clearly a better show thanSerenity,” or, “Ever since he had that affair with the Republican fund-raiser, Rueben’s been dead to me.”

  I mean, Rueben couldn’t be “dead” dead, right? “I’m sorry,” I said pleasantly, “what was that again?”

  “Oh, God,” Ansell said, gasping and putting a hand to his chest. “Rueben’s dead. He’s dead!”

  I took a step closer to Ansell where he stood in the doorway. “Ansell, I . . .”

  Ansell’s face crumpled before me. He gave one great, explosive sob, and the tears came. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Ansell cried. “Rueben’s dead and I killed him!”

  Ansell a murderer? He looked like he barely had enough energy to hold the door open, let alone kill someone.

  What he meant, I supposed, was that he’d killed hisrelationshipwith Rueben.

  What could he have done?

  “Ansell,” I said, “why don’t we go inside and . . .”

  Hysterical now, Ansell clasped one hand over his mouth. He pushed me to the side, ran to the street, and promptly threw up in the gutter.

  I had no idea what the hell was going on.

  Ten minutes later, I was sitting next to Ansell on a long, modern sofa in the cavernous lower level of his tony, chic loft.

  The only other time I had been there was the night of his big fashion show. Then, the space had been reconfigured for the party and was filled with hundreds of people. The dancehallsized living room seemed glamorous and enviable.

  Today, the furniture was back in what I assumed was its usual configuration. I was struck by how huge and bare the space was. With its high ceilings and minimalist furnishings, the room felt cold and empty. Out of scale for a place in which actual human beings lived. Like a mausoleum.

  I put my hand on Ansell’s back as he continued to cry. I looked around to see if Rueben was around. If so, I didn’t see him.

  I patted Ansell gently. “Shhh, shhh,” I said, hoping to calm him enough so he could talk.

  Ansell wiped his face with the sleeve of his silk shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know . . .”

  He stood up suddenly, throwing my arm off him. He regarded me blankly through bloodred eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”

  His voice was polite and apologetic, as if he’d just forgotten my name at a society fund-raiser. Was he on something?

  I reminded him of who I was and how we met at his party.

  “Right,” Ansell said, pacing the room. “I remember you now. You were here with your black friend, right? You two were a real hot number.”

  “That’s right,” I said, in the tone I usually reserved for the toddlers at Sunday school. “That was me.”

  “You were Rueben’s friend,” he continued.

  “Yes.”

  “Rueben didn’t have too many friends.”

  “What happened, Ansell?”

  Ansell’s legs started to buckle. I got up and quickly walked him back to the sofa. “Sit down,” I told him. “Do you need some water?”

  “I don’t know,” Ansell said.

  “Listen,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re clearly pretty upset. You shouldn’t be alone. Is there someone I can call?”

  Ansell gave a bitter little laugh. “I don’t have too many friends, either.”

  “Are you kidding me? I was here two nights ago and this place was filled with people. There has to be someone who could come sit with you.”

  “Those people? Half of them were there to see how much money I was going to make for them, and the other half were hoping to see me fall flat on my face.”

  Not knowing what to say, I said nothing.

  Ansell’s face changed from angry to sad. “Were you really Rueben’s friend?” His voice broke on the last word.

  I took his hands in mine and looked him directly in the eyes. “Yes, Ansell, I am.”

  “Well,you’rehere,” Ansell said, the tears falling again. “Can you stay a bit?”

  Ansell cried for a while longer, too upset to talk. I held and rocked him in my arms. I didn’t know Ansell, not even a little, but I was used to touching people I didn’t know. I’ve had clients who broke down like this, because of fear or relief or whatever. When he calmed down a little, I went to his high-tech kitchen and got a cool, wet cloth for him and glasses of water for both of us.

  I gave him the towel and he buried his face in it. I put the water on the table in front of us. “Do you want to tell me what happened, Ansell?”

  Ansell sat up straighter. “It was the night of the party. It was late, I don’t know, three or four in the morning. You know the party was like a runway show for me, right?”

  I nodded.

  “My brilliant idea. Or maybe Rueben’s. I don’t know. A new way to unveil my next line. A party. It’d be fun.

  “And it was. It was exciting and glamorous and . . . it was magic.” Ansell took a deep breath, willed himself to go on.

  “I wasn’t born Ansell Darling, you know. I mean, no one names their kid ‘Ansell Darling.’ I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, as Henry Cohen. A skinny, pale kid with a sketchpad under his arm and a kick-me sign permanently stuck to my backside. Might as well have been.”

  Ansell gave another bitter snort, and I thought, This is definitely a guy with anger issues.

  “All my life, this is what I wanted. This house in New York City, the riches, the fame, the glittering parties, all of it. This is what I wanted.

  “Fabulous, right? I wanted to be fabulous. And I am.

  “But fabulous takes money, and in the fashion business, you’re only worth as much as your next line. Oh, maybe not if you’re Michael Kors or Donna Karan, but for me, I’m only one season’s sales away from being on the first bus back to Cleveland.

  “OK, so back to the night of the party. Like I said, it’s late. I’m all hopped up. The energy of the evening was off the scale, the models looked great, everyone was having a brilliant time. Then my business manager comes over.

  “ ‘This is a disaster,’ he tells me. I ask him what he means. He says that he spoke to the buyers from the most important stores. He said they were all having a wonderful time, but they had no
idea what they were looking at. They said they couldn’t tell the difference between my designs and what anyone else was wearing that night. Worse, they certainly couldn’t place orders based on what they’d seen. ‘Maybe,’ one of them told him, ‘Ansell needs to spend a little more time at the design table and a little less time at the clubs.’

  “I thought he was exaggerating. I was about to tell him so when the buyer from Bergdorf’s comes over. ‘Sweetheart,’ she told me, ‘you really must think of changing professions. Forget design, Ansell, you should be planning parties for a living. This is marvelous!’

  “‘I’m glad you had a good time,’ I answered. ‘How do you think the line is going to do in your stores?’

  “ ‘Oh, who knows?’ she told me. ‘I’m just having such a good time. I didn’t really notice the clothing. But let’s get together soon.’

  “And she was gone.”

  Ansell wiped tears from his eyes. “You have to understand, I was out of my mind. I imagined everything I’d worked so hard on, everything I’d fought and scratched for, gone. I know it showed on my face, because even though he hadn’t been close enough to hear what happened, Rueben walked over and put his arm around me. ‘That’s OK,papi,’ he told me, ‘it’ll be fine.’

  “I just . . . blew up at him. I started screaming that this was all his fault, his stupid idea, and why had I listened to him, why had I trusted a stupid hustler like him in the first place, why had I let him into my home, my business, my life?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face as I remembered my conversation with Rueben from that night.Ansell is everything to me,he’d told me.

  “I called him stupid. I called him a stupid junkie whore who ruined me.” Ansell exploded into another shuddering series of sobs, his shoulders shaking violently as he buried his face in his hands. “Funny thing is, he was so tired of the sex trade, even if we broke up, I knew he’d never return to hustling. One day, we were watching TV, and some guy who hired him comes on the screen. ‘Biggest hypocrite ever,’ Rueben said to me. ‘I’m never going back to that again.’ ”

  I knew I should have said something comforting to him, but thinking about how much he must have hurt my friend, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “He left,” Ansell said once the flow of tears slowed to a trickle. “He went out the door with nothing in his pockets and I let him. I knew what I said was wrong, but I just let him go.”

  As I suspected, when Ansell said Rueben was dead, he meant “dead to him.”

  “Ansell,” I told him, “you have to pull yourself together. You can still make this work. Rueben has a heart as big as the world, and I know he really loves you. This doesn’t have to be the end.”

  Ansell looked at me gravely. “Kevin, the next day two policemen showed up at my door. They found Rueben in the alley half a block down. He overdosed on heroin, Kevin.

  “Rueben is dead.”

  It was my turn to cry.

  20

  Hands Off the Man “It’s just like when Farrah Fawcett’s character, Jill Munroe, left the Angels,” Freddy said, his voice soft and sad. “Only, she left to become a race car driver. Not because she was dead or anything.”

  I nodded. After spending another hour with Ansell Darling, I called Freddy and told him to meet me at our favorite restaurant, Foodboys. He assumed I’d be here with Rueben. When he arrived, I told him what happened.

  “Of course, when Jill left,” Freddy continued, “she was replaced by her sister, Kris, played by perky ingénue Cheryl Ladd. Because the producers knew there always had to bethreeAngels.” Freddy looked down at his uneaten plate of pasta, absently twirling it into abstract patterns, like those people who rake Zen sand gardens on their desks.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”

  “So my question to you is”—Freddy looked up from his plate, his deep brown eyes damp—“who’s going to beourthird Angel? Because I was all set for Rueben to join our little team, and now he’s, well, he’s not coming back, is he?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to say anything just then.

  “Fuck.” Freddy went back to spinning his spaghetti. “At least when Farrah left the show, she had a good reason. She had to get on with her movie career. OK, maybe that didn’t turn out so well, but that’s not the point. At least she was moving towardsomething. Something positive. But this . . .”

  He lifted a fork full of food halfway to his mouth, let it drop again, the silver banging noisily against the plate.

  “I thought you said he wasclean,Kevin.” Freddy’s voice was about twice as loud as anyone else’s in the place. “I thought you said he wasdonewith that shit.”

  By this time, a few other patrons were stealing glances at us. We were becoming The Angry Fighting Couple That Everyone Stares at in the Restaurant. Only we weren’t a couple and we weren’t angry. At least, not with each other.

  “I know,” I told him, pitching my voice low in an effort to quiet him down. Although I felt like screaming, too. “That’s what he told me. And Ansell, too. He had us all convinced.”

  “Then whathappened?” Freddy asked loudly, rendering moot my efforts to calm him.

  “I don’tknow,” I answered, a little overemphatically myself.

  Two guys at the next table looked at us and whispered. The older one was classic bear, full beard, fuller belly. He had the heavy build of a Colt model, as solid as a soldier from300.He looked angry.

  His younger, cuter, multiply pierced companion seemed to be laughing him off. The big guy, who reminded me of Smokey the Bear, only not as likable, shook his head. Congruent with his assigned role, he growled.

  “Goddamn it,” Freddy cried, hitting our table with his fist. Every glass, plate, and utensil lifted a few inches and noisily fell to its new place.

  “Hey, Salt and Pepper”—Smokey turned to us —“could you two keep it down a little? We’re trying to have dinner here.”

  I decided to ignore the racial slur in hope of avoiding a scene. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just a bad time . . . we lost a friend today.”

  Piercey Boy looked about to offer a sympathetic comment but he was beaten to the mike by Smokey. “Yeah, well, the way you two act, I’m surprised you didn’t loseallyour friends.” Smokey chortled.

  Freddy tensed his jaw. I could see he was holding himself back. Probably a good idea.

  Piercey Boy hit his companion on the arm. “Their friend isdead,man. Show some respect.”Hmm,I thought,take the metal out of Piercey’s eyebrows, ears, and whatever that area between your nostrils is called, and he’d be a real honey.

  “Like they showed us respect when they started their little show at the table next to ours? I didn’t come to this place to be insulted by twinks like Blondie and his pet monkey here.”

  I knew Freddy was thinking exactly what I was: that Smokey deserved to be taken down hard for his obnoxious attitude. But tonight was not the night for it.

  I think we would have stuck with that plan had Smokey not taken it to the next level.

  “And you,” Smokey said, grabbing Piercey Boy’s forearm in his beefy paws, “better learn not to hit me. Or correct me. Especially in public.”

  Piercey Boy tried to squirm out of Smokey’s grip. “I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Whatever trip these two were on didn’t look like a whole lot of fun. At least not to me. But who knows what they were into?

  Howdo you tell the difference between love and pain?

  Smokey glowered. “You’re just getting yourself into more trouble, boy. Shut up.”

  Piercey tried harder to pull his arm away. “Come on, man, you’re hurting me. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

  A vein in Freddy’s forehead throbbed steadily in a way I’d never noticed before.

  Smokey twisted Piercey’s arm a little. Piercey gasped in pain.

  “All right,” I said, “that’s enough. I’m sorry if we bothered you. Let’s just forget it.”

  “Fu
ck you,” Smokey barked at me. He gave another quarter turn to Piercey’s arm. Piercey moaned.

  I looked at Piercey. “Is this what you two do? I mean, I don’t want to get in the middle of—whatever it is you have going—but it looks like he’s really hurting you.”

  Piercey’s eyes were wide with alarm. “I . . .”

  Smokey let go of Piercey’s arm and stood up. He leaned over our table. His face was inches from mine. “You little shit. Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to my boy?”

  Freddy stood up, too, his chair falling back with a crash. I took a quick look around—yup, we had everyone’s attention now. Waiters whispered to each other with a what-do-we-donow urgency.

  “I got this,” I told Freddy. I stood up, too.

  Hey, let’s make it a standing party.

  My head was a few inches south of Smokey’s chest. Hard as it was to be intimidating at this angle, I figured I’d give it a try.

  “Listen, buddy,” I said, “I said we were sorry, OK? So, let’s just go back to our dinners and move on.”

  Smokey grabbed the front of my shirt in his huge hand. “Oh yeah, little man? Who’s gonna make me?”

  Freddy stepped forward but I put up my hand. “I said I got this.

  “All right, Kong,” I said, “your friend may think it’s fun being pushed around by you, but you have five seconds to get your grubby hand off of me.”

  “Or what?” Smokey snickered. “You gonna call your mommy on me?”

  Smokey may be a bad guy, but I didn’t hate him that much.

  “Or,” I said sweetly, “I’m going to break off your arm and beat you to death with it.”

  Smokey brought his hand up to smack me. “I am really going to enjoy slapping the smart out of you, boy.” He pulled me toward him.

  I was always a little guy. Blond, cute, boyish. The kind of kid who couldn’t put up a fight if you paid him to.

  A few years ago, I was in a near-empty subway except for some guys who decided I was a little gaylooking for their tastes. Two hours later, I was in the hospital with no wallet, multiple bruises, and a cracked rib.