The Rare Event

by P D Singer

  “You can’t throw me out; I’m on the lease and have keys. Legally, I have every right to be here.” Edgar twitched his jowls, and Ricky’s stomach dropped all the way to the basement gym. “While I haven’t taken advantage of it before, it’s become necessary.”

  Ricky had had no rental history at age twenty-nine, raising eyebrows in the leasing office in this expensive building, and had accepted Edgar’s co-signature as the price of his own place. Four years ago his boss’s guarantee had been a necessary evil, two years ago an aggravating oversight. Now, disaster—Edgar had legal, though not moral, right to be here, as if that had ever made a difference to the man. Ricky shut the door. “What happened?” And how could he fix it enough to get this pezzo di merda out?

  “My wife received some information she had no real need for, and took offense, shall we say?” Edgar crossed one leg over the other and put down the magazine. “I need a place to live until we get this worked out. There’s no reason to spring for a hotel when I hold a lease in a perfectly nice apartment in a building that’s swarming with lovely young people such as yourself.”

  “How long will she need to sort you out?” Anything not measured in milliseconds was too long—Ricky’s breath widened his nostrils.

  “Who knows?” Edgar huffed. “It better be before the lawyers get everything.”

  There was no reason to make it easy on this stronzo—the less happy he was, the faster he’d leave. Ricky sharpened the knife. “What’s got her panties in a twist? Did she just come out of a decades-long coma and discover she was married to you?”

  “If we’re going to get along, you can stop with that sort of remark.” Edgar shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  “Like I want to get along with you. If you’re going to be here, you owe me a thousand bucks for the rest of this month, and you can pay every cent for next.” Ricky crossed his arms defiantly.

  “I think not.” Edgar reached to the coffee table for another sketchbook. “The landlord doesn’t care who pays as long he gets it all.”

  Now, that was unfortunately true. “Did she get a list of ‘people who’ve sucked your husband’s cock’, complete with phone numbers?” Ricky dove after the stack, slapping Edgar’s hand away. “She will, if you don’t get your checkbook out.” Vengeance could be his yet.

  “Good luck with that.” Edgar picked up the magazine that had been hidden under the stack of sketchbooks. It had nude pictures, though not Jon’s.

  Ricky tucked the sketchbooks protectively under one arm. “Vaffanculo, stronzo. Someone got a message to her.” No matter how compartmentalized Edgar’s life had been, there had been a breach. “I could take out an ad in the New York Times—full page.” He wrote in the air. “‘Mrs. Edgar Wolfe, call these people to learn something to your advantage.’”

  Hah! That snapped the old figlio de puttana around! “You will do no such thing.”

  “You think? Start writing checks.” Ricky’d find him the pen.

  Reluctantly unzipping a front pocket on the suitcase, Edgar acknowledged the defeat and pulled his checkbook out. “I get the bed.”

  “Fuck no, you don’t get my bed.” Worse and worse—the practical details of an unexpected roommate reared before Ricky’s eyes, although he’d be damned sure to hog the bathroom, blast music, and maybe even take up cigar smoking.

  “It’s big enough for two.” Edgar held out the check. “King-size, and it isn’t as if you haven’t—”

  “No!” Ricky snatched the check out of Edgar’s fingers. He’d use the money for a full-page ad in the Times after all, unless someone in the office had information. Or sympathy and a spare bed. Or all three.

  “The couch does have its consolations.” Edgar heaved himself to his feet and turned around. “Nice work—I wouldn’t have guessed that Jon stripped that well. That shadow on his navel—or is it a treasure trail?”

  “The bed! You get the bed tonight!” Ricky ran completely out of profanities, Italian or English, at the thought of Edgar lying below Jon’s gaze, reaching…. His gorge rose. “Only tonight. Without me.” He watched Edgar wheel the case into the bedroom.

  “I’ll have to admire properly tomorrow.” Edgar observed the mural one last appreciative moment and shut the door.

  Even Jon’s image should never have to see a roused Edgar. Ricky didn’t wait for the elevator, pounding down the stairs to the street. A giant chain hardware store lay a few short blocks to the south—he pelted over the sidewalk, watching all the headlights come at him, spaced, but not widely, even this close to midnight.

  The hardware store, in the old Mattel building on Twenty-Third, was dim, locked. “Che cazzo!” Ricky struck the glass a resounding smack with the flat of his hand and then froze, listening. He needed what lay beyond that door, but he didn’t need the cops showing. No alarm sounded, but he wasn’t sure something hadn’t triggered elsewhere. In this sleepless city, he had to be able to buy what he needed before dawn.

  But where? Cabbie roulette didn’t pay off this time—Ricky got to the south side of Twenty-Third without getting hit and hoped his vague recollection and some luck would get him where he needed to go. He raised his hand to the traffic. “Third Avenue,” he dredged out of his memory, and added, “hardware store,” willing the driver to speak enough English to make sense of the request.

  The driver nodded twice and pulled out into traffic fast enough to throw Ricky against the seat. One turn later, they sped up Third Avenue toward some place Ricky could only hope the driver knew, preferably not up around the City University. “Nuthouse” was all the man said, and it could have been a comment on Ricky’s errand, a suggestion for his most proper destination, or something else entirely, but a quick detour around the block put them at the only brightly lit storefront in a dim sea of ethnic restaurants and hair salons. “Open 24 hours,” said one sign, and “Tools,” said another. Ricky thrust a bill at the driver and bolted through those swinging doors.

  White, he only needed white, and a brush, okay, a drop cloth. Ricky was shaking badly enough to mix the paint just by holding it, but he let the clerk put his choice through the agitator before trudging back out to the street. With a start, he realized he was a mere two long blocks from where he and Jon had eaten dinner only a week ago.

  He grieved all the way back, cursing whoever had set Edgar in motion toward his door, and cradling the bucket that would keep those lascivious eyes away from Jon. Two hours of hard work would hide everything Edgar had no right to see. Somewhere around two in the morning, Ricky looked up into the face that he had waited until last to paint over, promising to recreate it somewhere else, soon, more skillfully, and to silently beg for understanding from the model, who might think this portrait had never been. Ricky choked back a sob and covered the last of his art.

  He sat back against the couch, pushed away from the wall to create enough room to work, and looked over the patchy wetness where his lover’s likeness had been. Ricky watched the paint dry, knowing how wrong he’d been. He’d give anything now to be watching baseball with Jon instead.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  JUGGLING an armload of sketchbooks and his laptop, trying not to squash the mermaid’s purse he’d tucked into the computer bag next to the mouse, Ricky pushed through the door the next morning, his back against the etched glass. He’d locked the strongbox containing his financial information and brought everything else Edgar’s prying eyes had no business seeing. He wouldn’t be going home for much beyond clean clothing. Just knowing the old goat lay on his Egyptian cotton sheets while Ricky ran through the shower turned his stomach. He’d never locked the bathroom door in all the years he’d lived there, but he did this morning.

  Hit the clubs late to take the taste of baseball out of your mouth? Jon’s eyes said, following Ricky across the trading floor. He could supply all the tart comments Jon might be thinking, and Ricky was aware already that he looked like hell. Sleep hadn’t come easily once he’d finished covering his mural; grief and the reek of the pa
int had kept him awake. Edgar at least was in for an unpleasant surprise.

  “Jon, can I talk to you?” Ricky wouldn’t let those silent accusations linger even the moment it would take to stow his armload in his office. “Something horrible’s happened.”

  Cynicism turned to concern in Jon’s face, and he ushered Ricky into his office. “What?”

  Ricky nearly collapsed into the guest chair, dropping his stack of sketchbooks on the desk. “Edgar turned up on my doorstep last night. His wife threw him out, and he remembered he’d cosigned my lease. The old pezzo de merda moved in, and I can’t get rid of him. Not legally.”

  “You were up all night fighting with him?” Jon cocked his head sympathetically, all traces of accusation gone.

  “Partly. I was up the rest of the night painting.” And thinking of where he could live and how he was going to find another apartment. And looking at the picture on his phone that was the last trace of all the hours he’d spent with a stick of charcoal. He’d taken a few as he’d worked, too, a late thought that might convince Jon of something he’d never seen. “Maybe he’s died of the latex fumes.” Ricky fumbled the hardware store’s receipt from his wallet as proof for Jon.

  “What required emergency painting?” Jon glanced at the scrap of paper, which bore a timestamp near midnight, and crumpled it in his fist.

  “Something I’d drawn on the wall that I’d never intended for anyone but you to see.” Ricky’s picture could have remained for years. “Edgar saw it last night, but I wouldn’t let him wake up to it.”

  “What kind of ‘it’ could that possibly be?” Jon asked.

  “You. You weren’t exposed, but you weren’t clothed, either. It was just for me.” Ricky swallowed hard. “And you. So you’d know what I’d been doing and who I was thinking about.”

  Jon’s lips thinned out, and he crushed the receipt into a smaller ball. “What about the stream of strangers?”

  “There’s been no stream of strangers. No one’s seen that except me, until last night, and I painted it over rather than let him see it again. Jon—” Ricky stopped, not knowing what to say next. “You got mad every time I mentioned not doing what I used to do, so I stopped talking about it and figured I’d have something concrete to show you, and now I don’t even have that. But I do have Edgar, and now I need to find somewhere else to live.”

  Jon rolled the balled receipt through his fingers. “Your lease is up soon, isn’t it?”

  “End of next month.” Which couldn’t come soon enough. “I can’t renew in that apartment, or Edgar can probably get himself added in again; there’s a history. Maybe there’s another unit in the building, but I’m going to need time to find out, or look elsewhere.”

  “And you probably don’t want to even be there, do you?”

  “No.” Ricky wouldn’t ask Jon for shelter. “I’m making him crazy every way I can think of, but I really don’t want to go to sleep where I might wake up with him next to me.” He shuddered in spite of himself; the lock on the bedroom could be picked with a paper clip. He should have bought a different lock when he got the paint; that would be an errand for tonight.

  Jon shuddered too. “It’s baseball and more baseball at my place, but you can come hang out. And if you need to go look at apartments, you can leave early for a couple days.”

  Gathering up his sketchbooks, Ricky flashed Jon his brilliant smile. “Thanks. Who could have predicted this?” He shook his head at the fickle ways of the universe. “And do you know how to reach Edgar’s wife? I have a list for her.”

  Jon tensed. “Um, see Dwight. And I don’t even want to know.”

  Ricky could feel his face going feral. “You can guess. I’ve been networking like mad these last few weeks.”

  “Out. And don’t tell me.” Jon picked up a fallen sketchbook and placed it on top of Ricky’s stack, very gently. “I’ve made a few assurances—don’t compromise me. But,” and here Jon turned as predatory as Ricky, “do have fun.”

  Dwight knew, hmm. Ricky planned to have a lot of fun, in several directions.

  DAVIS was not having any fun. That suited Ricky just fine. His talk of closet doors and light fixtures got waved away in the excitement of the ball game, and the big guy got the floor in the middle of the couch this time, possibly spatially closer to Jon but no nearer romantically. Ricky curled his feet up into the center of the couch, in case Davis thought he’d hoist his butt into snuggling range when Ricky couldn’t object, and that would be any minute now.

  Last night had taken a toll on him, and now Ricky’s head was bobbing. There was no way he’d make it through nine innings, and he couldn’t have repeated the score from minute to minute without looking at the screen. A sketchpad was out of the question.

  Groaning and a small shake brought Ricky back to semiconsciousness, enough to register that Davis was having even less fun than before.

  “No, leave him.” Jon’s voice. Ricky didn’t open his eyes. “I’ll throw a blanket over him—he’s probably out for the entire night.”

  “You’d let him stay here?” Disbelief tinged Davis’s voice. “I thought you and he had broken up.”

  Braced to hear Jon agree, he didn’t expect the next words. “He’s got a problem, and that hasn’t stopped mattering. He’s fine where he is. Good night, Davis.” The swoosh of the door and the snick of the locks followed, but no sounds of an affectionate good-night at the threshold. Small noises marked Jon’s movements, and then he tucked a blanket around Ricky, who stayed relaxed and still. Through closed eyelids, Ricky knew when the lights went out, but the smallest kiss against his hair kept him from falling back to a full sleep for a long time.

  JON woke him with a glass of protein glop rather than a kiss the next morning, and shooed him out to get ready for the day. Ricky ran the few long blocks back to his apartment, where he entertained himself by slamming doors and drawers, and singing, very loudly and in no known key, in the shower and out. Edgar glared through eyes so bloodshot that Ricky took an extra joy in clacking the wine bottles together while shoving them into Edgar’s hands. “This isn’t a frat house,” he interrupted his particularly tuneless and garbled rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to inform the dirty cazzone. “Don’t trash the place.” Ricky stepped on something that crunched underfoot. “And vacuum before I get home,” he took vengeful delight in saying. “No one’s cleaning up after you around here.” He drank the last of the coffee before Edgar could even find a cup, and sailed out the door. He’d talk to the leasing office about renegotiating later today.

  “NO JOY there.” Ricky had spent a miserable hour at the leasing office and was recounting it to Jon and Davis in the seventh inning. “Edgar got there first, and all I can do is have my name on there or not—he’s got the place sewed up either way, and without a major rent increase.”

  “No wonder he’s in no hurry to leave.” Jon put out a bowl of popcorn. “Is there another unit in the building?”

  “No. Now it’s hunt the hard way.” Morosely, Ricky gnawed his handful of kernels. “And I can’t stay here forever.” Much as he wanted to. He’d managed to park the mermaid’s purse on the shelf where the little pile of shells had been, unseen by Jon, who’d stepped out of the room sometime in the second inning. He wondered how long it would take Jon to notice.

  “No, you can’t,” Davis said, and if he had no right to an opinion on Jon’s guests, that didn’t keep him silent. Ricky gave him a sideways glare that Davis returned with a vengeance unseen by their host, who had gone back to the kitchen for more soda.

  “Too bad you missed some really incredible plays, Davis.” Ricky’d made a point of recalling a few once he’d heard that Davis had to work late and wouldn’t join them until the game was nearly over. “Weaver bunted two runners, the pitcher committed an error, and the Cards scored two runs off it. In the fourth.” Ricky was pretty sure he’d spouted the relevant gibberish, which must have had meaning to Davis, who winced. “Is your handsome façade all tweaked?”

>   “The project,” Davis corrected what Ricky’d meant, “looks fantastic, and we have buildable plans now, which the client will get tomorrow.” He draped his far arm over the back of the couch, where Jon could lean into him if he was so inclined. Davis had all but sat on Ricky’s feet when he’d taken over the center cushion. Jon didn’t seem inclined to lean. The last innings dragged on forever, between half the company and the fact that this was baseball. Ricky was relieved when St. Louis was declared the new champion, even though his official reason for spending every evening at Jon’s was now over.

  “World Series don’t usually end on a strikeout.” Davis pitched another remark that Ricky couldn’t field. “I took my Opera ladies up and down the Alban Building last Saturday. Hard hats and everything.” Ricky wondered what this had to do with anything at all. “They are all now terrified of elevators.”

  “In New York City? That’s awful.” Jon laughed. “What did you do? Make them ride on the outside?”

  “I took the ceiling off and let them watch the mechanicals.” Davis retrieved his arm. “So when are we going to Allegra? I’m ready for good food and randomness.” His smile pointedly excluded Ricky.

  “I’ll see when we can get a table.” Jon’s voice was neutral, but he might as well have slobbered over the menu. Ricky couldn’t listen to them plan the night out without him. He rose to his feet.

  “Have fun with the terrible roommate.” Davis got just enough sympathy into his voice to qualify as gloating.

  “You don’t have to go, Ricky.” Jon jumped up too.

  “Yeah, I think I do.” Ricky paused at the door. “See you tomorrow, Jon. Too bad your team lost, Davis.” He dripped insincere sympathy back and closed the door on a situation that could devolve into a fistfight with no trouble at all. Not that he wasn’t happy to punch that smug face, but he wanted to do it when Jon wasn’t there to see or interfere. He snarled to himself all the way back to the apartment, where he discovered the problem roommate already sacked out.