Going Down For The Count

by David Stukas

  “We’ve been over that, Robert. You’re about as useful in a stressful situation as Joan Rivers is on a camping trip. I didn’t know what Hans was going to do. Well, I guess it’s back to the perfume counter at Black’s for you,” she said, quoting a line from my favorite movie of all time, The Women.

  “I guess you’re right, Monette,” I said, trying to salvage one of the most fucked-up adventures I have ever had in my life. “Well, at least I still have my crummy apartment to come home to—and this beautiful Rolex watch and a gorgeous car. It wasn’t a complete loss!”

  I started to leave the room, but Monette grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. “Uh, Robert, I hate to tell you this, but Herr Taucher wants you to return anything Manfred bought you with the count’s money. They can’t expect you to make amends for everything spent, but you’re going to have to hand over the watch and the car as evidence.”

  “Can’t anything good ever happen to me?” I cried, realizing that, once again, life had dealt me an entire hand of jokers. “You know, I try to do unto others as I’d have them do unto me, I’m kind and respectful—and this is the thanks I get! Shit!” I said, begrudgingly peeling the watch from my resistant arm and handing it to Herr Taucher.

  I don’t know whether I was in shock or lost in thought, but Monette turned to me and asked me what was wrong.

  “Oh, nothing—if you don’t count the fact that for months, I was sleeping with not only a murderer, but a complete stranger!”

  Michael who was silent until now, looked at me and said, “I know it feels weird, Robert, but in time you’ll get used to it. I ought to know!”

  17

  Click Your Heels Together Three Times and Those Big Shing Boots Will Take You Home

  The next day, we found ourselves packing to take a noon flight back to New York. Julia, the woman who had falsely accused me in front of a dozen people, was leaving two hours earlier to take a flight into Boston.

  “I can’t believe that fucking Julia,” I complained to Monette. “She never apologized to me for accusing me of murder. I wonder if I can sue her for libel? I could use a few hundred thousand dollars,” I said, slipping a few towels into my suitcase, compliments of the count. If I couldn’t have my Rolex or my car, at least I’d have something that would fit in my tiny apartment.

  “Forget it, Robert. You’d never win because she’d have better lawyers.”

  “I guess you’re right. I just wish there was some way to get back at her.”

  “I can’t believe you’re admitting defeat. You’ve played some of the most devious pranks on me, Monette Mastermind, and you’re letting that self-centered Marie Antoinette get the best of you? For shame, Robert, for shame!”

  I was stuffing more towels into my suitcase when Michael passed by the door, bearing two suitcases.

  “Michael, where were you last night? I saw you drag in at six A.M.,” I reported.

  “Oh, out . . . taking care of a few things,” he answered evasively.

  “What were their names?” Monette asked.

  “I said I was just out taking care of some unfinished business,” Michael explained.

  “You didn’t take Robert’s Mercedes last night, did you?” Monette inquired of Michael. “Herr Taucher sent a tow truck over this morning to retrieve the car, and it’s not in the front drive anymore. Plus someone left the gate in the front of the house open.”

  “Don’t look at me, I haven’t seen the car. I took a cab last night. Someone must have stolen it.”

  “Maybe it’s better that someone probably took it. That way I don’t have to sit and watch the Berlin police department tow away everything I ever got from the count.” I tried to change gears. “So where are you going so soon?” I asked Michael. “The flight isn’t until noon, so we’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Oh, these aren’t my suitcases. These are my mother’s. She asked me to put her coat from the front hall closet into her suitcase, lock it, and take it out front for the cab driver to load. Her cab’s supposed to be here any minute.”

  Monette and I looked at each other, reading each other’s twisted minds. It was at times like these that I realized how much Monette and I thought alike.

  “Michael,” Julia’s voice called from the other end of the hall, “could you come here a minute? I need some help closing this carry-on bag.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Michael said and scurried off to the Evil Queen of Newport.

  It only took a minute to accomplish our task, so when Michael returned and grabbed the suitcases, Monette and I were quite happy we had proved that while justice may be exceedingly blind and unbiased, it can also be vengeful.

  Julia stopped by to bid a perfunctory farewell and told us it was a pleasure knowing us. I was about to shake the cadaverous hand she extended to me, but I doubled over with laughter and couldn’t stop. I could see Monette was trying to keep herself from laughing also, her face turning red in the effort.

  “Well, good-bye,” Julia said and was gone.

  Monette and I were still laughing when the limousine came to fetch us and take us to the airport.

  We continued to laugh for at least the first hour of the flight back to New York.

  “I wish I was there when Julia opened her suitcase at the Berlin airport and found that three-foot dildo!” I said, gasping for breath. “Oh God, I bet she was surprised!”

  “Your idea was brilliant, Robert!” she said, the laughter finally ebbing to a chuckle. “I couldn’t have done it better myself. Plus, there’s a certain elegance in the way the dildo has traveled full circle.”

  “Monette, you deserve some of the credit. Putting all that metal in her suitcase meant she would have to open it at check in!”

  While the laughing calmed considerably as the in-flight movie began, every once in a while we would look at each other and burst into laughter all over again. Michael, who was sitting across the aisle from us in first class (which, incidentally, he paid for), couldn’t figure out what we were laughing about and decided to tune us out with his movie headphones.

  As the plane crossed over England and headed out over the Atlantic, the only thought I had was that I hoped Mrs. Stark would make good use of her souvenir from Germany.

  Once I was ensconced back in my roach-infested apartment and had secured my old job again (no one wanted it), I thought about going back to Germany and actually seeing the country. But not right away. Things had to cool down a bit.

  It’s not that I was afraid of being implicated in the count’s murder. Herr Taucher said I could completely forget about it—which I tried, but I had to admit I felt a certain amount of guilt. This guilt rose up in me every time I drove the Mercedes Michael had spirited out of Germany and shipped to the U.S. for me, using his endless sexual and financial connections.

  Michael got an even bigger kick that he had shipped the contraband car on one of Siegfreid’s boats. But even a do-gooder like Monette told me that in time I would feel better. But in the meantime, she wisely counseled me to keep the car in a garage far out in the rolling hills of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I would drive it on weekends.

  As I roared down the winding country roads, I had to admit that despite the fact my situation in Germany looked a little bleak at one point, there was a lot of good that came out of the entire affair. Ludwig personally invited me to his party next year, and I had to admit the sex I had with Manfred was pretty great. But besides the car, I did manage to hold on to one other memento from my adventure in Germany: the ring Manfred gave me. I held on to that—just because.

  Please turn the page for an

  exciting sneak peek of

  Wearing Black to the White Party

  coming next month from

  Kensington Publishing!

  1

  All First-Class Passengers Receive Complimentary Warm Nats

  Everyone has a nightmare so terrifying that the mere thought of it sends chills running through the blood. A nightmare so hideous, it reaches i
nto the furthest crevices of your mind and scars your very psyche. For some people, it’s female bodybuilders (that hair, those outfits, those shoes). For others, it’s visiting a place like Oklahoma City with less than five stiff drinks in you.

  My worst nightmare involves me sitting on a plane high over the mountains of Colorado. I’m sitting in seat 12A, knowing that the luggage sitting in the belly of the plane is filled with ten pairs of red tank tops, four pairs of indecently brief red spandex shorts, and one pair of red leather shorts and a red leather chest harness—yes, I’m going to the Palm Springs Red Party.

  By now you’re assuming that I’ve made a mistake and meant to say the Palm Springs White Party. No, I mean the Red Party, but the explanation requires more time that I have here.

  Anyhow. If the scenario of me in red spandex isn’t scary enough (don’t worry, readers; I won’t get the chance to wear spandex shorts anywhere in this book), there will be far more frightening things to come. By the time my story is done, there will be two people dead, one injured, one terribly bungled burglary, and I will have been accosted by the emperor to the empress dowager of the Most Imperial and Hierarchical Order of Almost-Vestal Virgins.

  But let’s begin at the beginning. I am on the aforementioned airplane. Michael is sitting next to me in seat 12B—first class. I would not be sitting in first class with Michael if it weren’t for him paying my way. Don’t get me wrong. I am no gigolo—no one would pay good money to sleep with me. It usually works the other way around.

  “So let me get this thing about the Red Party and the White Party straight,” I started, trying to get a better understanding of the dynamics of the White Party and its effect on my life, but I was rudely interrupted by Michael, covering his ears with his hands.

  “Robert, please don’t use that word in front of me! You know how that word upsets me.”

  “I’m sorry that I uttered the dreaded hetero-word. But I would be a little more open-minded about straights. After all, they did bring you into this world.”

  Michael put down his copy of Details magazine and looked at me with “oh, please” eyes. “I have a sneaking suspicion that my mother is gay.”

  “Michael, your mother may be a homicidal maniac who attended Heinrich Himmler’s Bavarian Charm School, but one thing she is not is gay. Why would you ever think that?”

  “Because she’s completely insecure, hates everybody, uses money to buy favors, and spews attitude like a stuck-up volcano.”

  “Not all gays are like that!” I reminded him.

  “All the ones I know are!”

  “Well, look at the people you associate with. They act like they were raised by wolves.”

  “It’s just that my friends have high standards, and other people don’t always measure up to those standards. What looks like snobbery, arrogance, and pretentiousness to you is just their way of being picky.”

  “Snobbery, arrogance, and pretension. So these are the pluses for being gay, huh? No wonder we’re having so much trouble in our recruiting department.”

  “Robert, there are tons of reasons why being gay is superior to going strai—you know. We have sex without guilt, great clothes, we start all the trends, and we don’t have to get stuck with some bawling babies to raise to adulthood. That’s why we’re called gay. That’s why heteros hate us—we have fun and they don’t. You know, I was thinking about this the other day: if one out of every ten people are gay—a number that I find far too low—then, it means that God has to make nine straight people before he gets it right and comes out with one of us.”

  “Why don’t you write a letter to Pat Buchanan and tell him your theory—I’m sure he’d love to hear it,” I responded. “Can we get back to my original question? The one about the Red Party?” I pleaded.

  “I told you before. Of all the circuit parties held around the country each year, the White Party Palm Springs is the biggie. There is the White Party in Miami, but it’s different than the Palm Springs version. The guy we’re staying with is Rex Gifford, and he’s starting another party that’s happening at the same time as the White Party.”

  “So,” I ventured, “he can suck off all the success of the White one, right?”

  “Don’t you dare say something like that in front of Rex! The Red Party is going to have synergy with the White Party.”

  “Michael, in my Dictionary of the Brutally Honest, that means Rex’s party is like a tick, hungrily sucking dollars off a very fat deer.”

  “From what Rex has told me, the Red Party is going to make the White Party look like a family barbecue in Paramus. The tickets are going for five hundred bucks. That’s higher than the VIP tickets for the White Party!”

  I was aghast. “Five hundred dollars to get into a fucking party!”

  “Not just a party, but the party!” Michael corrected me.

  “I don’t care if Cary Grant were there giving blow jobs. Five hundred dollars for a party?”

  “Why do you say five hundred dollars like it’s a lot of money, Robert?”

  “Because it is a lot of money.”

  “Not for me, it isn’t,” Michael added.

  “Yes, but not everyone is the heir apparent to a herpes ointment fortune.”

  “Yeah, but at least I spend the money I have. You, Robert, you squeeze those pennies so hard, I can hear Lincoln screaming.”

  “Michael, since when is being responsible with money a crime? I work hard for my paycheck, and I like to spend it wisely and still have some left in the bank when all is said and done.”

  “But don’t you see my point, Robert? There are thousands of gay men who make a lot less than you do, and they manage to go out and have a good time.”

  “I have a good time, too, Michael!” I said. “I just don’t like dodging bill collectors and standing in line to pay the overdue electric bill because Con Edison is about to turn the lights off.”

  “You worry too much, Robert. I pay my bills late all the time, and I’ve only had my electric turned off once or twice. So what? I’m out there having too much fun to think about stupid stuff like paying bills and obsessively checking the burners on the stove to see if I turned off the gas, like you do.”

  “Yes, and I’ve never had my apartment go up in smoke like yours did.”

  “It was just the kitchen,” Michael said defensively. “Anyway, I blamed it on the contractor who installed the Viking stove in my kitchen, and his insurance company paid for the repairs.”

  “Even though you left the burner on after making Jiffy Pop when you had a little too much to drink,” I reminded Michael.

  “So what? Insurance companies are awash in premiums. It’s only fair that the common man gets a little bit back now and then.”

  “You are hardly common, Michael.”

  “You can say that again. Anyway, to get back to what we were talking about, There’s nothing wrong with Rex taking someone else’s idea, changing it, and making it even better.”

  “Yes, Madonna’s been doing that her entire career.”

  “How dare you blaspheme the sacred name of Madonna!” Michael stated bluntly. “If that guy over in seat seven D heard what you just said, he’d come over and scratch your eyes out.”

  “How do you know he’s gay, Michael?”

  “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he took one of the glazed carrots from his lunch and gave it head.”

  “You’re joking!” I said.

  “I’m telling you, Robert, he gave that carrot a blow job while looking right at me!”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good indication. They were baby carrots, after all.”

  “I don’t care how big he is. It’s all about me. I have needs, Robert.”

  Michael wasn’t kidding. Being the heir apparent to a herpes ointment fortune gave Michael plenty of free time—time that he spent on two things: pampering his body, and sex.

  “For crying out loud, Michael, we’ve only been on the plane for three hours and you’re horny alread
y! What do you do on transatlantic flights?

  “I have sex several times. Or I use my Jellyfish.”

  “Your Jellyfish?”

  “You jack off in it. Works like a charm,” he said, lifting his carry-on bag onto his lap and producing a hot-pink gelatin sleeve eight inches long. “You should get one of these, Robert!” he stated, brandishing it around for everyone in first class to see, the tube jiggling as though it were alive. “I do wish they’d make it in another color than hot pink.”

  “Michael, please put that thing away!”

  “Why? It’s not illegal. Women carry vibrators, so why can’t men have Jellyfish with them? I only use it when I can’t get the real thing—which it looks like I’ve got with the guy in seven D. I’ll be right back. Here, you take this while I go freshen up,” he said as he unfastened his seat belt and stood up in the aisle, tossing the quivering instrument into my lap.

  I stared at the pink worm in horror. So did the woman sitting in 12C. I picked up Michael’s Love Tunnel with a napkin and shoved it back into Michael’s bag. I then reached for the moistened towelette on my folding tray and scrubbed my hands with it until they were red.

  Michael, after stretching lazily and making sure he had the attention of Mr. 7D, walked slowly up the aisle and threw him a cruise and nodded his head in the direction of the bathrooms. Michael entered one of the bathrooms and closed the door. Seconds later, Mr. 7D got up from his seat and walked toward the front of the cabin. He stood outside the bathroom where Michael was holed up. About a minute later, the door opened slightly and Mr. 7D slipped inside. I watched in amazement, half expecting the lavatory door to be blown off its hinges. Nothing. The incredible thing is, no one noticed a thing. Or at least, they pretended not to notice a thing. Michael would never have gotten away with this in tourist class.

  About five minutes later, Michael emerged. If it weren’t for the smile on his face, there was no indication of what had just happened as the captain announced that we were about to begin our descent into Phoenix. Mr. 7D then appeared, sporting the same smile as Michael’s.