“It’s never too late.”
“Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’m from New Jersey, where the ex-governor recently did all the coming out the state will be needing for the next several decades.”
“Yeah, I read about that.”
“How could you not have?”
Treece asked, “When did you come out, Donald?”
“At Rutgers. It was more of a semi-coming-out. Then I found myself in an official capacity in Saigon – that’s a large city in Southeast Asia that’s since been re-named.”
“Yeah, I’ve read about that, too,” Treece said.
“And I went pretty far back into the closet again. Army Intelligence is not the best place to raise the rainbow banner. I sneaked around a little, formed no real attachments, survived the war, got out of the Army, soon fell in love with a fine woman in the anti-war movement, was married for a while, then figured out who I really was, and started getting it right fast.”
“And became a grown-up.”
“Often a bumbling one, but a grown-up.”
“Have you got a honey?” Treece asked.
“You bet. Timothy Callahan and I have been together for a thousand years, though it doesn’t feel like more than a hundred and fifty. We’re as comfy and nuts about each other as Al and Tipper Gore. Of course, we have had our Bill and Hillary moments. I will say, he never hit me over the head with a lamp, even when I had it coming. Those early conflicts were over differing sexual mores, as is often the case with both homosexuals and heterosexuals, pertaining mainly to monogamy versus a little variety. Over the years we’ve hit a happy medium in that department. Now we both go to Paris twice a year and join the over-forty grope at the Odessa Baths, and that pretty much takes care of that biological imperative. There are annoyances and roll-your-eyes or even clutch-your-head differences, of course, but all within the normal range. We’re a really interesting many-celled organism, the two of us. And terribly lucky to have found each other. We’ve got exactly the kind of marriage the anti-gay religious right says is needed for social stability, proving that they are full of slit. We’re both proud of that.”
Treece said, “Jeez, it sounds just like Greg and me. Except we haven’t been together for a thousand years. Just five.”
“Mazel tov. Together may you live to be a hundred.”
“Are you Jewish?” Treece said.
“No, I was raised Presbyterian. So maybe I should just say, ‘Oh, go ahead and have a second lump of sugar with your Earl Grey tea, boys.’”
“Yeah, well, I was raised Baptist,” Treece said, “and what the Baptists have in mind for me is a big lump of hellfire. Greg and I attend the Church of Christ in Lenox, which is open and affirming. That’s where we had our union. You know, I saw in the Eagle that Jim’s funeral will be in a Catholic church in Pittsfield. But Steven wasn’t mentioned at all. It looks like Jim’s family snatched him back from his world of sin and corruption. That must be terrible for Steven. Do you think that’s why he’s calling in the loans? Maybe being around Berkshire County is now so painful for Steven that he’s cutting his ties and just running away.”
I said, “Possibly. If so, I should ask him what his plans are.”
“So, you don’t think Barry Fields shot Jim?”
“No, I doubt it.”
“I’m glad to hear that. He’s tense, but a good guy, I’ve always thought. So, who the hell would want to shoot Jim? He was obnoxious but basically harmless. Steven’s saying it was Barry. But if it wasn’t, I wonder if Steven knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”
“Me too.”
I drove down to Sheffield, and there it was: a Realtor’s For Sale sign on Gaudios’s lawn. It felt precipitous and strange. Sturdivant had been dead for less than forty-eight hours, and Gaudios was not just cutting his ties, but erasing his past, remaking his life.
The crime-scene tape was gone now, as well as the cop cars and reporters, and in the soft late-summer sunlight the big house looked serene, even inviting. The Beemer convertible was parked in the driveway, and I pulled in behind it. A light breeze rattled a few leaves off the maples, which were already starting to turn. The lawn had been freshly mowed, probably at the suggestion of the real estate agent, who would surely want all the cosmetics to be just right to help compensate for any remaining bloodstains.
Knocking on the front door, where Sturdivant had been gunned down, would have felt not just disrespectful but creepy, so I walked around back. The pool and hot tub were deserted. I walked noisily up the back porch wooden steps – I didn’t want to startle anybody – and rapped energetically on the screen door. I could see into the kitchen, with its gleaming appliances and a fruit basket with a ribbon around it resting on a granite counter.
Gaudios soon appeared, in crisp slacks and a beige polo shirt bearing its manufacturer’s insignia, a small creature that might have been a toad but probably wasn’t. Gaudios did not look glad to see me.
“Oh, Donald, why do you keep tormenting me? What do you want this time? Haven’t you caused me enough heartache already? Really!”
“I’m here with condolences, Steven. I saw that you weren’t mentioned in Jim’s obituary. That stinks.”
He made no move to open the screen door, and said glumly, “Oh, that’s no problem, no problem at all.” He seemed about to add something and then thought better of it.
“So the funeral’s Monday?” I asked.
Gaudios’s face tightened. “Yes. It is. Now, thank you for your condolences, Donald, but I have a lot on my mind and a ton of stuff to do, none of it the least bit pleasant.”
“Will you be going to the funeral?”
At that, Gaudios suddenly trembled, burst into tears, and turned quickly away.
I opened the door, and when Gaudios did not object, I followed him to the kitchen table, where he slumped in a chair, still crying. I took a seat across from him and waited while he uncapped a prescription container, extracted a small white pill with a shaky hand, and popped it into his mouth.
“Would you like some water?” I said.
He shook his head no and gulped the pill down. He seemed well practiced at this.
I said, “So it looks like you’ve been shut out. That’s really rotten.”
He snuffled some more and said, “We buried What-Not today. Nell Craigy and two of the girls in the bridge club dug a hole ourselves and put him in it out behind the rhubarb.”
“Ah.” I wondered about the next owner’s cobbler. “Is his grave marked?”
“No.”
“But you seem to be planning to move.”
Gaudios nodded. “The house is on the market. I can’t live here without Jim. I just walk around the house all day looking for him. I can’t go near the front door, because I’m afraid I’ll find him there on the floor all over again, covered with blood. I can’t sleep because I keep waiting for him to come home, hoping he’s all right. I have to get out of here as soon as possible. I’ll go to our place in Palm Springs for now, for the time being…”
“So, you have a house in Palm Springs. That’s nice. Any others?”
“We have pieds-à-terre in New York and Paris. I’m selling them all, though. I may pick up something in Fort Lauderdale until I decide what to do.”
I said, “You and Jim did well financially, it seems. Are you retired, too?”
“Yes, for some years.”
“What did you do, Steven?”
Gaudios wiped his eyes with a cloth napkin. He said, “Consulting, for the most part.”
“What did you consult about?”
“Ha! You name it.”
“Like what? Mineral extraction? Dandruff control? Past-life regression therapy?”
Now he was looking impatient. “Mostly financial services,” Gaudios said and looked at his watch. “Oh, God, where has the day gone?”