“You seemed real broken up about Al en’s death,”
I said to her. “You, too, Paul. So let me ask you a question: Who do you think kil ed him?”
Alana blinked twice and Paul opened and closed his mouth like a guppy.
“My father’s suicide was tragic,” an impossibly deep voice came from behind us. Michael Harrington had returned. He walked over as tal and imposing as a god; his words booming like a pronouncement from the heavens.
“But it was the unavoidable result of a ‘lifestyle’ that he chose for himself. A lifestyle that can lead to nothing but despair and an early grave. A lifestyle that, perhaps, is more accurately cal ed a ‘deathstyle.’”
Freddy looked at him with a mixture of desire and disgust. If there was anything that made him angry, it was a good-looking man who was too horrible a person to be worth fucking. That was nature at its cruelest, and it was not to be borne. “You’re kidding with this shit, right?”
“I don’t know what your relationship with my father was,” Michael said to me, ignoring Freddy as a statue might ignore the pigeon that crapped on it.
“But I’m sure it was tawdry.”
He reached inside his jacket and, for a quick moment, I thought he’s going for his gun! But instead, he pul ed out a smal black leather envelope and handed me an expensively printed ivory card with raised lettering: Michael Harrington, founder, The Center for Creative Empowerment Therapy.
“Perhaps we can talk about it someday.” He looked at me as if he wanted to eat me up, but not in a good way, if you know what I mean. I was reminded of the Big Bad Wolf.
I slipped his card into my pocket and instinctively took a step backwards. “Maybe you can tel me what exactly you were doing that made him ‘especial y sad.’”
“I can assure you,” Michael said, “my father made me infinitely sadder than I ever made him.”
“He must be turning over in his grave to see you stil so bitter,” I said.
Michael’s mouth turned up a little. “There wil be no grave. He’s scheduled for cremation as soon as the coroner releases his body. There wil be no funeral, either. Ashes to ashes…”
“Dusk to dusky,” Freddy finished.
This time it was Alana who harrumphed and Paul chuckled at her discomfort. This did not look like a happy marriage.
Michael looked confused, the first time I saw him shaken. Good going, Freddy.
We al stood and stared for a moment before we were interrupted by a perky looking young woman.
“Oh, look!” she said excitedly, “you al forgot to push the elevator button. No wonder you’ve been waiting so long!” She quickly corrected our oversight.
A moment later the elevator door opened and the Harringtons stepped inside. I started to fol ow, but Freddy held me back.
“We’l wait for the next one,” he said. “The air in there is too fetid.”
“Fuck you,” Alana snapped as the door slowly closed.
“You got yourself a real class act,” Freddy shouted to Paul. But by then, they were gone.
“ I hated those people,” Freddy said once we got outside. We both took off our jackets in the oppressive summer heat. “I mean, I expected not to like them, but I hated them.”
“Yeah, wel, they were pretty easy to hate,” I answered.
“They al did it, you know. The creepy, fruity one, the sexy but crazy older brother, the hag from Hel, they al did it. It’s like Murder on the Orient Express.
But the old movie, not the shitty television remake with, God help me, Meredith Baxter Birney. The guys probably knocked Al en out, and that bitch threw him over the balcony.”
Freddy was being ridiculous, but something he said caught my interest. “You thought Paul was fruity?”
“Oh, please,” Freddy said. “Sister was a step away from wearing hot pants at Gay Pride. Definitely a closet case. I mean, Prada shoes? Hel o!”
“I’m sure some straight boys wear designer footwear,” I answered.
“Yeah, but he also couldn’t take his eyes off you, or didn’t you notice?”
“Wel, I caught him looking once, but I thought he was just giving me a dirty look.”
“Oh, they were ‘dirty’ al right.”
I’d have to think about that. “So what about Michael?”
“I don’t know. What was with al that crazy shit anyway? ‘Death-style?’I thought you told me he was running some kind of psychiatric treatment center.
He sounded more like a preacher than a doctor.”
“I thought so, too,” I answered. “But, you know, when people start mixing religion with therapy, they get pretty nutty.”
“I think we better visit that place of his, don’t you?”
I put my arm around him. “Why? Do you want his
‘help’?”
Freddy pul ed me closer. “He did say there was stil hope for us.”
“Amen,” I laughed.
“Speaking of ‘us,’” Freddy said, “what was Al en talking about when he said he thought we’d be spending a lot of time together?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You didn’t tel him we were a couple, did you?”
“No, why would I?”
“Because, that’s not what you want, right?”
I was suddenly aware of the size and strength of Freddy’s arm around me. Of his slightly sweaty, musky smel. Of the heat coming off his body on this already hot day.
“Of course not,” I said a little too quickly. “I mean, that’s not what either of us wants, right?”
“Of course not,” Freddy answered hastily. “I mean, why fuck up a good friendship, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Right,” Freddy said.
We were both quiet for a minute.
“Although,” Freddy continued, “now that Al en’s left you a fortune, maybe I should marry your ass.”
“I don’t think I’m rich,” I said. “But maybe I can go to graduate school earlier than I thought.”
“And maybe,” Freddy said, “you can stop being such a big whore.”
“Hey,” I said, “it worked for Alana Harrington!”
CHAPTER 7
I walked Freddy to his office and took a cab back to my apartment. I put the air conditioner on high and checked my messages. Just one. “Tony.
Cal me.”
One crisis at a time, I thought. When Tony visited the other night, I did a casual sweep of my porn. With my mother, Snoopy McSnoopy staying over, I had to real y hide it.
I also had to cal the only man who could save me.
I put on my headset and dialed. He answered on the first ring.
“Dad,” I began, “what the hel is going on?”
“Kevin, I have some rough news for you,” he said.
“Are you sitting down?”
“No.” I was, in fact, pul ing dirty magazines out of my dresser.
“Sit down.”
“Dad!”
“Al right, it’s your funeral. So. Your mother. I have to tel you: She’s nuts.”
“That’s your news?”
“She’s real y lost it this time, Kevin. She has it in her mind that I’m making the whoopee with Dottie Kubacki.”
“So I’ve heard.” As I listened to my dad, I piled four Honchos, an Advocate Men, and my Kristen Bjorn DVD col ection on the floor.
“I mean, Dottie Kubacki? How? Have you seen how large that woman is? Could a person even find her, excuse my French, vagina? Do I look like Jacques Cousteau to you?”
“Wel, why is she upset?” I was under the bed trying to reach an old issue of Freshmen.
“Why? Who knows where that woman gets her ideas from? Cal those people from that CSI show, they can solve a murder based on some toilet paper and a toenail. Maybe they can figure her out.”
“Al right, wel, you have to work this out with Mom.
She can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Dad!”
“Listen, you know how she gets. Give her a week, she’l find something else to be nutty about.”
“A week!” I found an old Playgirl in the back of my nightstand.
“Maybe two.”
It takes a lot of drama to be heard in my family.