by Hal Bodner
“Coroner,” Becky had corrected.
Chris remembered being amused by her struggles to balance her purse in one hand, tear the soggy waxed paper from the remainder of the cinnamon bun, lick the honey icing from the wrapping, and cram the few remaining precious morsels of pastry into her mouth all at the same time. He also remembered Becky’s outraged surprise when he’d thrown back his head and burst into laughter.
“What’s so damned funny?” Becky had demanded indignantly. “Why shouldn’t I be a coroner? Chicago’s had a lady coroner on staff for years!”
“Oh, it’s not your sex,” Chris had chuckled, dismissing Becky’s concerns.
“I sure hope not!” Chris could see that she was only slightly mollified, still suspicious that this young man, so recently her champion, might have subtly insulted her. “I’ll have you know,” she continued, indignant, “That I happen to like dead people!”
Chris saw the realization of what she’d just said register in her face and he felt a slow grin start to spread across his own. She was obviously attracted to him and on the verge of being mortified at having chased him away forever with her bizarre remark. Then suddenly, the humor of the situation struck her and Chris saw the beginnings of a severe case of the giggles starting. Of course, once she started laughing, it was contagious and the two of them stood there, cackling their fool heads off, while the rest of the class shuffled past them and out the door, giving the hysterical pair some strange looks and a wide berth.
“It’s, well, a private thing,” Chris had told her once the giggles had finally died out. “Maybe if we get to know each other better...” His voice trailed off as his mood suddenly changed and he became lost in thought. Obviously, he had to do something about that damned professor. Otherwise the semester was going to be insufferable.
Becky stood by his side, watching him stare off into nowhere as the rest of the classroom emptied. A few minutes after the last student had departed, Chris suddenly came to himself with a start. “Well, it seems there’s only one thing left to do. I hope I can catch him. Wait here,” he’d ordered.
Chris darted back down the aisle and disappeared through the door, hoping that it lead to Greunfeld’s office. Becky was left to stand in the aisle, completely confused and dropping crumbs on the carpet. Scarcely five minutes later, having accomplished what he’d set out to do, Chris was back with a self-satisfied, almost smug, smile on his face.
“That’s done it,” he announced, triumphantly.
“Done what?” Becky asked.
“Oh, I just had a little chat with Professor Gruenfeld,” Chris told her and, with the absentmindedness of habit, gallantly opened the door and bowed, allowing Becky to proceed in front of him out of the classroom.
“What’d you say?”
“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” Chris grinned. In the years that followed, Becky had often teased Chris on his diplomatic skills. Whatever he had said to Gruenfeld, she’d said, time and time again—and he had always been careful not to tell her what it had been— had certainly done the trick. For the rest of the term, the entire medical school, to varying degrees of astonishment, was inflamed by curiosity as to how the notorious Professor Gruenfeld had gone from being Mr. Hyde to the leading contender for the title role in a remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
The two of them left the building together. Outside on the pavement, Becky stopped and turned shyly to Chris. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he’d asked, genuinely puzzled.
“For taking me seriously,” she’d replied. “Most people don’t realize...What I mean is, just because I’m...well...you know.” She shrugged and waved a hand, indicating her ample girth.
“Forget it, I enjoy being a control queen. Now then, how about some coffee to wash that thing down?”
Becky brightened instantly. “There’s a fabulous old fashioned diner on Spruce Street. I’d like to buy you a milkshake or something. They’re divine,” she added coyly.
Chris chuckled. “I’ll go with you but no milkshakes for me—lactose intolerance.”
“Oh,” she said. “Listen, I feel kind of silly. I mean, I know all this personal stuff about you already, lactose intolerance, and...well...the other thing. But I don’t know your name.”
“Christopher Driscoll,” he said holding out his hand in mock formality.
“Pleased to meet you,” she grinned, and they turned to walk side by side down the street. “Uh, about what you said back there in class...?” she began shyly.
“About your command of the material?” Chris asked, pretending to misunderstand her.
“Oh, that,” Becky waved the question away. “I’ve got one of those memories. It’s not photographic or anything but if I read something once, and understand it, it stays with me for years. No. I meant, you know, the other thing.”
As she waited for his answer, Chris could see the mental wheels turning in her head. Although the odd Ms. O’Brien would undoubtedly someday make a brilliant doctor, he half suspected that, somewhere, in the deep recesses of her mind, she’d also considered the prospect of getting the letters MRS in front of her name equally as desireable as obtaining the letters MD to put behind it. He could have turned the conversation, he supposed, and avoided both her and her questions but for some reason he’d taken a liking to her quirkiness.
“His name is Troy,” Chris told her. “We’ve been together a long time. And, yes, I love him very much.”
“Oh well. I guess you win some, you lose some,” Becky smiled, seemingly unconcerned at having her hopes nipped in the bud. “How long?”
“Very long.”
“My God, you make it sound like forever! You can’t be that old!”
“Appearances can be deceiving.” Chris took her arm and gently guided her around a large puddle she was about to step in.
Momentarily losing her train of thought, Becky said, “Thanks. What’s he like?”
Chris grinned. “He’s certainly unique. What they call ‘an original.’ He’s little and blond and cute, and he has a passion for old movies. I guess the best way to describe him would be to say he’s not the most masculine woman in the world when he’s drunk—which can be frequently. Oh,” he added with a smile, “I almost forgot. He’s from South Carolina. Sometimes it’s very much like living with Scarlet O’Hara.”
“I see,” said Becky.
“No.” Chris wryly reflected that Troy really had to be experienced to be believed. “I’m afraid you don’t.”
He took Becky’s arm firmly and guided her down the stairs of the High Speed Line entrance. By the time they had gotten off the train and arrived at the diner ten minutes later the seeds of their friendship had taken root.
Chris predictably grew bored with medical school by the beginning of the third year. By the time he left he and Becky had become best friends. They talked on the phone almost every night and went on outings together at least two weekends a month.
Troy had never really warmed up to her, Chris knew. Perhaps it was because Troy sensed that, disguised by the warm affection between Becky and Chris, she secretly nourished the spark of hope that one day, she might be able to introduce herself as Mrs. Christopher Driscoll. Chris had long ago decided that his homosexuality would have to serve as his main excuse for thwarting her attempts at romance. Even though Becky had become his dearest friend, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell her all the reasons why her hopes would be impossible to achieve.
Now, many years after she had moved to California, Becky and Chris still kept in close contact. In fact, for the past two or three years, Becky had been gently urging him to make the move to the West Coast. However since they hadn’t spoken face to face in more than a decade, Chris was reluctant to let her see him in person again.
As Chris rewound the tape yet again, a bewitching elfin blond boy, tightly muscled and clad only in a pair of electric green spandex shorts, entered from the next room and paused in the doorway, posing dramatically with the back of
his hand raised against his forehead.
“Play that again and I shall go mad! Mad, I tell you! Mad!” he said in a feeble attempt at a British accent.
“Huh?” Chris looked up, his concentration broken. “Troy?” he asked, a little confused. “When did you get home?”
“Long ago enough to change clothes and listen to you play that back about a dozen times. Surely,” he said seductively, coming over to rub his bare torso against Chris’s paint-spattered arm, “You can think of better things to play with?”
Chris ruffled the shorter boy’s hair affectionately and prepared to give him a chaste little kiss on the forehead. Troy tilted his head back and, unexpectedly, met Chris’s lips with an open mouth. With a shock of delight, Chris absorbed himself in teasing Troy’s tongue with his own as Becky’s message played, once again, in the background.
Finally, Troy broke the clinch. “One of us still has to breathe, darling,” he said coquettishly. He twitched his tight little fanny as he walked across to a small pile of brown paper-wrapped boxes stacked on the couch.
“You know,” Troy said, a glint of mischief in his eyes, “if I made little messes like that, you’d yell at me for days.”
“I’m painting,” Chris replied, distracted.
“You’re also stuck to the floor,” Troy told him, tossing the comment over his shoulder as he rummaged through the boxes.
Chris looked down and noticed with chagrin that the paint, dripping from the forgotten brush, had unerringly aimed for his left shoe. Now, almost twenty minutes after he’d first begun to play Becky’s message, it had gotten tacky. Another quarter hour and he’d have been glued to the living room floor.
“Shit,” he said, and moved his foot. It came loose with only a minimum of tugging. Chris took a step farther into the living room where the can of paint thinner, on a table fifteen feet away, awaited the rapidly drying brush. As soon as he did, he realized that, with one foot entirely covered in paint, he’d be leaving half a trail of pale blue footprints across the living room floor, and right now he was too preoccupied with the telephone call to waste time cleaning it up.
He paused for a second, a look of helplessness on his face as he hopped up and down on one foot, trying to maintain his balance. He hopped twice more and managed to travel another three feet toward the can of thinner but, so focused was his attention on his goal, that he completely forgot about the dozen or so opened cans of paint which he’d left scattered around the living room. As he prepared for a third hop, the handle of one of the paint cans reached out and snatched the toe of his paint-covered left sneaker. With a grunt, Chris realized that, instead of being any closer to his goal, he’d managed to complicate the situation with a half empty can of paint dangling precariously from his foot.
He shook his foot once, gently, but the paint can stubbornly refused to relinquish its hold. He shook his foot again and blue paint sloshed over the side and onto the floor. Exasperated, he bent almost double, trying with his free hand to reach the tenacious paint can. His arms weren’t quite long enough and when he felt his balance begin to go he straightened abruptly.
“Troy,” he said, quietly.
“Yes, dear,” Troy had been watching silently from his spot next to the couch, fascinated by his lover’s antics.
“Would you please take this from me?” Chris held out the paintbrush.
Troy’s face wrinkled with distaste. “It’s all icky!” he protested.
“Bloody Damnation, Troy!” Chris shouted, finally out of patience and, quite frankly, embarrassed as hell at his own clumsiness.
“Oh, all right,” Troy scooted past him and grabbed up a handful of newspaper. Gingerly, with newspaper-protected hands, he took the damp brush from Chris.
“Yuck,” he said as he held the paint brush as far away from his body as possible and waited to see what Chris would do next.
The two of them stood for a moment, Chris poised on one leg like some over-sized flamingo with the paint can dangling from the other foot, and Troy holding the newspaper-wrapped brush at arm’s length as if it would instantly attack him should he be so foolish as to let it go.
“Troy,” Chris said, patiently, after a moment.
“Yes?”
“Put the brush down on the table and get rid of this infernal can.”
“OK,” Troy replied brightly and scurried to comply. “How’s that?”
With a sigh, Chris reflected that destiny had, indeed, perfectly matched him up with his lover. While his own preoccupations sometimes caused him not to think ahead, Troy simply never thought at all.
Chris focused his attention back to the problem at hand. “Now take the sneaker off,” he instructed Troy.
Troy did, with a running commentary consisting primarily of the words “gross” and “ick”, and Chris, relieved, turned to go back to the answering machine. Unfortunately, as he finally lowered his left foot, it landed right in the middle of the pool of spilled paint. Before he had time to even cry out, his legs skidded out from under him and he found himself lying flat on his back, looking up at Troy’s concerned face.
“Are you all right?” Troy asked. “The floor’s wood, you know.”
“I know,” Chris replied, as soon as he managed to draw breath for speech. “I felt it.”
“Well, be careful next time, OK?” Troy said, as sternly as he could. Suddenly his face brightened into an irresistible smile. “Now! You just drag your tired old ass up off that floor and come over and see what we got today!” His childlike enthusiasm made it hard for Chris to keep himself from smiling.
Troy rushed across the room to the couch and brought back a half dozen of the brown paper-wrapped parcels, dumping them onto the floor at Chris’s side. He squatted and ripped open the cover of one of the boxes and began to ooh and ahh over a series of antique brass doorknobs and other fittings, holding each of them up to the light, admiring.
“Aren’t these delish?” Troy glanced at the address on one of the still wrapped packages. “I think these are the molding samples from London.” He began tearing off the paper, flinging strips of it over his shoulder where it lazily drifted to the floor, most of it coming to rest in puddles of paint.
“Can it wait?” Chris asked, dragging himself to his feet, still blushing furiously. As Troy made ready to pout, he added, “I think we might have a problem. Listen to this.” He marched lopsidedly over to the machine, his single shoeless foot causing him to list slightly to port, and played the tape again.
“So?” asked Troy, pulling out several samples of crown moldings and looking at them critically. “I think these are the wrong period. Too early. Again.” He turned to Chris, impatiently. “I still don’t understand why you won’t let me get that cute lil decorator from that shop on Spruce Street in here to do something creative.” He rocked back on his heels and stared dreamily into space. “Dotted Swiss,” he said to the room in general. “I see something fabulous in dotted Swiss. And satin drapes. Green would be nice.”
“She’s making connections I don’t like,” said Chris, shuddering at Troy’s decorating notions, which would probably get them blackballed from House Beautiful forever, and turned his mind back to Becky’s message.
“My dear,” said Troy, haughtily tossing the moldings aside, “If she hasn’t figured it out by now...” One of the molding samples landed in a can of opened paint, adding to the mélange on the floor.
“Perhaps,” Chris paused, thinking. “Oh well, I’ll talk to her tomorrow and find out what’s on her mind,” he said with false nonchalance.
“There’s a dear,” said Troy, rising and coming over to wrap his arms around him. “Now, will you help me choose the stuff for the other rooms? Shall we start with the bedroom?” He began tugging playfully at the buttons on Chris’ shirt.
“Hey, hey,” Chris laughed, “Take it easy.”
In less than a minute, Chris was as bare-chested as his lover. Troy pressed forward and, without thinking, Chris took a step backward. Once again, his foo
t skidded in the paint. Only this time, when he crashed to the floor, knocking one of the cans over entirely, his bare back landing in a pool of partially congealed semi-gloss, Troy was right on top.
“This could be kinda kinky,” Troy said with a grin and, before Chris could stop him, he’d dunked a hand into the spilled paint and started to trace a pale blue line from the hollow of Chris’s throat down his chest to his bellybutton. Troy’s head darted forward and, after nuzzling for a minute or two, he plastered his paint-smeared mouth to Chris’s lips, twisting his body around and hauling Chris up on top so that, now, both their bare backs were an attractive shade of powder blue.
This time, when they kissed, although Chris found it no less delightful than he ever did—even with the paint—he couldn’t keep a small part of his mind, a still almost silent voice, from wondering just what the hell was going on out in California to cause Becky to bring up a subject that, at the very least, could become extremely uncomfortable.
CHAPTER SIX
The next day, back at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station, things were heating up. The third body had been discovered late that morning, stuffed in a Dumpster in the alley behind the Gold Coast bar, a notorious cruising spot. The sanitation engineer who’d found the corpse had gone into a fit of hysterics the moment he opened the top of the Dumpster, prepared to tip it into the garbage truck, and had come face to face with the pale, glassy stare of one Lance Blowman.
In life, Blowman, a.k.a. Harold Lefkowitz, had been a video star of no little renown – the phrase “no little” being the operative reason for his fame. Well known in certain circles for an uncanny limberness which allowed him to do things to his own anatomy that were not the subject of discussion in polite society, his films had included such intellectually stimulating titles as Nine Inches Naked, Do Me Right, Bottoms Up, Boy Slave From Planet Prostate, and the ever popular classic Lusty Lads and Lassie. Blowman’s dead body was found shirtless and with trousers wrapped around its ankles—a condition with which it was not altogether unfamiliar in life. This time, however, its throat had been cut almost all the way through, and once again the corpse was practically bloodless.