Going Down For The Count

by David Stukas

  “Or Pat Buchanan?” Monette volunteered. “And Charlton Heston?”

  “Yes, thank you, Monette. Why doesn’t someone bump him off? I mean, am I that horrible? Look, I’ve never stolen someone else’s cab, I’ve never taken two trips to the salad bar when there was a one-trip limit, and I’ve never given anyone the crabs. I ought to get a lifetime achievement award for being so nice to others.”

  “Like I said,” Monette continued, “stay out of the house whenever Siegfreid isn’t around. And go have fun.”

  “But Siegfreid’s always gone. Plus, listen to this. Heino, his business manager came to see him today for an appointment and Siegfreid was out. The count made no mention of being here to see Heino.”

  “So what’s your point?” Monette inquired.

  “The point is, the count is supposed to be with Heino on business and he’s not. Heino was looking for him.”

  Monette’s voice began to take on a motherly tone. “Did you ever think he could be out on business somewhere else? He doesn’t have to be with Heino.”

  “Yes, but I never know where he is. And neither does anyone else. Everyone’s remarking that he’s been very secretive lately. He’s never here at the house and none of his friends have seen much of him lately. I’m beginning to think he’s having an affair with some other guy during the day.”

  Monette jumped to cross-examine my theory. “But why go all the way to America to get you as a boyfriend, then drag you back to Germany and have affairs on you? It doesn’t make any sense. He could probably have any guy he wants right there. Why bring you in to complicate matters?”

  “Good point, Monette. I just wish I knew where he was during the day.” I sighed.

  “I know this is going to seem very radical, but why don’t you just ask him?”

  “You’re right! I will. As soon as he comes home, I’m going to confront him. In fact, I think his car is pulling into the driveway right now.”

  “Well, go to him. Call me back tomorrow and let me know what you’ve found out.”

  “I don’t know if I can. We’re leaving for Monte Carlo tomorrow,” I said.

  “Then leave a message on my machine. OK?”

  “It’s a deal, Monette. And if I don’t talk to you before I leave, I’ll see you here in Berlin the day of Ludwig’s ball. Did you get the tickets and itinerary? I sent them FedEx.”

  “I got everything.”

  “I gotta go now, Monette. I’ll leave you a message.”

  “Auf wiedersehen, Robert.”

  I hung up the phone and ran downstairs to meet Siegfreid as he came in the door. I threw my arms around him and planted a very wet kiss on his lips.

  “Well, well, I must go out on business more often if I come home and get a reception like this!” he exclaimed.

  “I just missed you, Siegfreid. Don’t leave me again . . .” so that Karl doesn’t kill me, I was going to say, but left it as I did. OK, it was time for the confrontation. Easy now. No guilt. Go!

  “Siegfreid?”

  “Yes, Robert?”

  “I never know where you are when you go.”

  “Does that bother you?” he asked with genuine concern.

  “A little. But it’s ... inconvenient. Mad Queen Ludwig and Heino stopped by today, and I couldn’t tell them where you were. Heino thought he was supposed to meet you here. They both had something urgent to discuss with you.”

  Siegfreid looked like he was debating whether to tell me something earthshaking, fell silent, then picked up his briefcase and pulled out a small, beautifully wrapped package and handed it to me.

  “I was going to save this to give you in Monte Carlo, but I think you need it now, yes? Go ahead, open it!”

  I was flabbergasted and a little bit ashamed. This must have been what Siegfreid was up to. I opened the gift and inside was a jewelry box, small enough to contain a ring. I opened the box and sure enough, there was a ring. Simple, tasteful, and unimaginably expensive, I would assume, judging from the exquisite box and packaging.

  “Oh, Siegfreid, I don’t know what to say!” I gushed.

  “Just put it on ... and it will match the one I have on,” he commanded, showing me the identical ring on his finger.

  OK, so I wouldn’t ask him where he had been. Maybe never. The ring quieted me down for now. He had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to get two rings custom made for us. I’m sure that took time.

  We had dinner that night, with Helmut getting in a few quick sleight of hands, such as letting his hand slide over Siegfreid’s while spooning an entrée onto his dish, or my favorite: After pouring wine for the count, Helmut would walk around behind Siegfreid and drag a finger seductively across the count’s upper back. But I, like the count, had learned to treat Helmut’s advances the way the count did. I ignored them.

  After dinner, we packed for Monte Carlo. Then Siegfreid excused himself for a few moments to make a phone call.

  As I was packing tuxedos from the count’s closet, I discovered Siegfreid had at least a dozen different styles. I walked down the hall to Siegfreid’s makeshift office and knocked lightly on the door.

  “No, no ... in English, Ludwig. You need to learn better English. No, no more money,” came Siegfreid’s angry voice from the other side of the door. “No, no, you’ve spent enough already. No, I can’t give you my entire fortune because you’ve made some bad mistakes. No. That is the end. I must go. Make do with what I gave you. I am going to Monte Carlo tomorrow. No more. Auf wiedersehen.”

  I tapped a little louder on the door. “Yes?” Siegfreid called exasperatedly.

  “Siegfreid, it’s me ... Robert,” I answered as I timidly pushed the door open. The count’s face had lost its youthful color and now looked red and irritated.

  “Robert, Robert. What is it?” he said without acknowledging his little conversation a minute ago.

  “I was wondering which tuxedo you wanted to bring. You have so many!”

  “We must go back to find one that looks closest to the one you just bought. Let us go.”

  His talk with Ludwig was dropped and never mentioned.

  He helped me finish packing, then initiated a little hanky-panky before bed. The count went right to sleep, but I stayed awake for a while, thinking. What would Monte Carlo be like? Would I look like Sean Connery sitting around a baccarat table placing one hundred thousand dollar bets? Were there really surveillance cameras on every street corner?

  More importantly, why was Ludwig asking the count for more money when he was supposed to be a wealthy man himself? As I pondered these questions in my head, another thought occurred to me that I felt I had to act on immediately. I got up out of bed and locked the door to the bedroom... just in case Karl decided to slip in during the night and strangle me with the cord to my electric razor. And just to make sure, I pushed a chair back up under the doorknob and wedged it there. I’d think of something to explain to Siegfreid about the chair in the morning.

  8

  What’s Good Enough for Princess Grace Is Good Enough for You

  The next morning, we had breakfast, showered and shaved, and gathered up our things for the flight to Monte Carlo. As we were standing at the door of the palace and heading toward the car, Siegfreid summoned Karl and Helmut and announced he would give them a few days off while we were gone. He peeled off a generous amount of cash from the wad of bills in his pocket and told them to have a good time.

  The flight itself to Monte Carlo was uneventful, except for the sex we had in the bathroom of the count’s chartered jet. Twice. Sex was becoming such a regular part of my life that I was now taking it for granted. In all my life, I never thought such a situation would occur.

  We stayed in a villa in the hills overlooking the casinos because the count said it would be more private there. I couldn’t argue, since it was stunning and the views were breathtaking. We had sex throughout the day and went into the casinos one night to gamble. The count taught me to play baccarat, and I did, with opening bids start
ing at one thousand dollars. I actually finished the evening fourteen thousand dollars ahead. For the first time in my life, I was a winner—and I had proof.

  The next day, the count and I decided to take a drive up in the winding mountainous roads above Monte Carlo. The count was flying down the roads a little too fast for me when the car sputtered, coughed, and died, coming to rest on a stretch of road with few houses.

  I thought of sticking my leg out like Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night to stop a car, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. With my luck, someone would run over it.

  We stood at the edge of the road waiting for someone to stop when I spotted a cloud of dust racing toward us. It approached us, then flew past in a whirlwind of dirt, sticks, and rocks. Just then, I heard a squeal of brakes as the vintage sports car skidded gracefully to a stop a few hundred feet down the road. I saw the passenger excitedly tapping the driver on the shoulder and motioning for her to back up. The driver did and produced another cloud of dust, screaming back toward us until the car stopped abruptly just feet away. In the car were none other than Michael Stark and his covertly vicious mother, Julia.

  Normally I would have been elated to not only meet a friend in a foreign land and get roadside assistance to boot, but Julia and I had a brief but homicidal run-in the one and only time I stayed at Michael’s ancestral family estate in Newport, Rhode Island.

  Julia, who had a past as checkered as an Italian restaurant tablecloth, was the unfortunate victim of circumstances that repeatedly put her in the close vicinity of several accidental deaths on her estate. Unfortunate, I say—it’s unfortunate Julia wasn’t better at covering her tracks. But, as they say, money talks, and when you practically poop it, little things like messy and dubious deaths get brushed under priceless Persian rugs. So despite the fact Michael had been sexually entangled with each of the victims and Julia wanted no part of her son to be gay, I will lay the facts at the feet of you, the jury, and let you make up your own mind. I won’t even mention the fact that during my one-night stay at End House (the Stark residence) in Newport, Rhode Island, I was pushed down a flight of stairs and almost clobbered by a huge painting (of Julia, ironically) that would have made my brain come out of my ears like watery guacamole. So it was not without some trepidation that I stood here face to face with Julia, once again within striking distance.

  “Robin, so glad to see you again.” Julia beamed at me as if she had been pounding down sidecars since breakfast. When I looked at the unfinished highball glass wedged in between the seats, I knew I might not be far from the truth. The woman hated me, but liquor seemed to make her unusually sociable.

  “Robert,” I corrected her. “So nice to see you again, Mrs. Stark.”

  “Julia, please. You can call me by my first name, Robin. Do either of you know where to find an Episcopalian church in this blasted country? There don’t seem to be anything but Catholic churches here.”

  The count and I shrugged our shoulders.

  While Julia prided herself on possessing wealth that could crush a third-world country, her social position, and unbreakable alibis, one of her greatest achievements was that she was also an Episcopalian—one of God’s frozen people.

  “So lucky us meeting you here!” Michael remarked.

  “The coincidence is amazing. Truly amazing!” the count added.

  “Oops, I’m sorry, Siegfreid, I haven’t introduced you. You know Michael, and this,” I said, motioning to Mrs. Stark, “is Mrs. Stabb. This, Julia, is Count Siegfreid von Schmidt.”

  “Robert!” Michael chastised me. “You just called my mother Mrs. Stabb. What would make you think that?”

  I have no idea, Michael, I thought to myself, but I’m sure Dr. Freud would have plenty to say.

  Julia extended her limp and jewel-encrusted hand for the count to shake, but the count gently lifted the murderous appendage and kissed it in the Continental style.

  “It is a pleasure meeting you, Julia,” the count said so seductively that her gay-hating nature seemed somewhat subdued. Somewhat, I said.

  “Well, it looks like you two could use a lift,” Julia said. “There’s not a lot of room, but jump in. This is the exact same car Grace Kelley drove in To Catch A Thief. Oh, poor Grace! Right over that cliff! What a loss! She was the closest thing to royalty the United States will ever have.”

  I wasn’t about to let this one slip by. “Whatever happened to Camelot? I thought Jackie Kennedy was quite regal,” I replied, defending the holy name of Jackie O. After all, I am a faggot who realizes her enormous contribution to the world: the pillbox hat and elbow-length gloves.

  “My dear Robin . . .”

  “Robert, Mrs. Stark. Robert,” I said, correcting the winner of the 2001 Passive Aggressive Bitch Award again.

  “Robert, as you probably know, Jackie lived for some time in Newport, and if I told you what I really knew about her and those awful Kennedys, you’d never vote Democrat again. Her behavior was neither queenlike nor royal.”

  I was going to reply with something nonconfrontational, such as, “Fat chance, you rapacious, hateful harpy,” but decided it wasn’t a good idea to upset her, as she was about to have our lives in her desiccated and pampered hands. So I said nothing, letting her think she had won yet another battle.

  As Julia looked misty-eyed at the principality of Monte Carlo thousands of feet below us, we climbed into the tiny jump seat in the back of the car and the auto roared to life, Julia’s spectator shoes pressing down on the gas pedal as if a welfare mother’s head was beneath it.

  Michael babbled on and on about nothing in particular while the count politely half listened and half raised his head up into the breeze that whistled through his hair. Me, I sat white-knuckled and gripped with terror, sensing Julia could plunge the car off the side of a cliff and accomplish two things at once: one, to die in the same manner as the exalted Ice Queen, Princess Grace, and, two, to take three faggots with her at the same time—an all-time record. After all, why bother snuffing them out one by one and arousing suspicion in Newport when you can make it all look like a tragic accident and get some newspaper coverage at the same time?

  Miraculously, we made it back to Monte Carlo and our hotel without a scratch. The count, gracious as always, invited Julia and Michael into our hotel lobby for some drinks and they accepted.

  We were sitting around chatting when Michael asked me to go to the bathroom with him.

  “Michael,” I said, turning aside to him and speaking in a lower tone of voice so Julia wouldn’t hear me, “you need help adjusting your tampon? I’ll get some pliers and meet you in the third stall.”

  “No, I just need to ask you something. Let’s move!” Michael said, excusing us and leaving the count and Julia alone.

  Michael was so excited that the moment we were out of sight of the lobby, he blurted out what was on his mind—a frightening thought.

  “You have to get me an invitation to Mad Queen Ludwig’s party! A little birdie told me you two received one. It’s the hottest party in the universe! Oh God, please get me an invite, danke?”

  “Michael, danke means thank you. Bitte means please. I’ll mention it to the count. I’m sure it will be no problem.”

  “And I have something else to ask you.”

  “What is it, Michael?”

  “Please take me with you ... like right now. My mother is driving me nuts! We went gambling last night and she won fifty-seven thousand dollars. I lost forty-two thousand dollars, so that was kind of fun. But the rest of it I can’t stand. She watches me all the time and she’s always dragging me to some art museum or something cultural!”

  “Well ...” I said, not wanting to let Michael crowd in on my honeymoon. I figured as soon as I left the door open to Michael, a condom wouldn’t be the only thing between myself and the count. As much as the thought of a familiar face in a strange country would be nice, it would be better if it weren’t Michael’s.

  “Michael, this is a personal matter, s
o I need to talk to the count about it first,” I said, lying through my teeth. I had no intention of asking the count in private. I would just tell Michael the count said nein.

  “Fine,” Michael replied. “Let’s go back.”

  “But don’t you have to pee, Michael?”

  “There aren’t any cute guys in the loo right now, so why bother?”

  “Well, I for one have to be a freak and use this room for the purpose for which it was designed. I’ll meet you back in the lobby,” I said.

  I finished my business and rejoined the others. Michael was in the middle of a conversation. Once I gathered what he was saying, I realized I had just been duped.

  “. . . so I’d love to continue to travel with you, Mom, but Robert has insisted I join him and the count on the rest of their tour and accompany them back to Germany so I can attend the arts festival there.”

  Before I could say a word about Michael’s dubious dubbing of Mad Queen Ludwig’s party as an arts festival, the count stepped in and sealed the deal with the devil.

  “Whatever Robert wants, Robert gets!” the count announced, with Julia looking at me with those another-piece-of-trailer-trash-makes-good eyes. “You can join us tomorrow, Michael. We’re returning to Germany tomorrow and you can fly with us on our plane. There, Robert! Happy?” the count asked.

  “Deliriously,” was my answer.

  9

  I Haven’t Got a Thing to Wear

  The flight back to Germany was uneventful. Uneventful because Michael’s presence put a certain damper on things. Much to my chagrin, the bathroom was used only as a bathroom. I began to wonder if it was a bad idea to open the door to the plane at twenty-nine thousand feet and ask Michael to take a walk.

  When we got to the count’s palace in Berlin, Michael stared up at the hulking façade and acted like he was staring at a one-bedroom co-op on Twenty-third Street. There was not one shred of envy on his chemical-peeled face. And why should there be? His childhood house in Newport, Rhode Island, was monstrous.