The forbidden images of the dream lingered the next morning as I drank coffee. Voice Teacher’s face and clean, manicured hands flashed in my head. And I knew what had gotten under my skin about him all along. He was one of them. And he was after my son.
Linehan’s uniform was already drenched with sweat when he came in for his early coffee. “How’s the old man today?” he laughed, slapping me on the shoulder.
“Fair to middling.” No point reminding him that I’d lost my hair but not too much else.
“Man, we got number four last night. This guy is bad news. I can’t believe homicide hasn’t found him.”
“Where was this one?”
“At least it wasn’t in Montrose. It was downtown near Allen’s Landing. That place Love Street Light Circus. Used to be an old warehouse. The freaks pay to go in there, flop on cushions, and listen to music. I’d kill my daughter myself if she ever set foot in there.”
“The weapon?”
“Baseball bat to the back of the head. Even left the bat, it’s a good ’un.”
“Any chance they’ll find who did it?”
“Naw. There’s no prints on any of the weapons he’s left behind. With all the front-page ruckus in the papers, the whole department is catching grief because we haven’t found the killer.” He lowered his voice, “I’d like to find him myself,” and I could see his large hand on the butt of his revolver. “All of night shift is itching to put him away.”
Sure enough, Voice Teacher came into the store that afternoon. But he didn’t come to buy a baseball bat. When I looked up from a repair, he was staring at the needle-nose pliers in my right hand. His posture was erect and the creases in his pale blue dress shirt were impeccable.
“I’m hoping you can repair this toaster,” he said, removing the early-’50s stainless beauty from under his elbow.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The slide won’t stay down. Can’t toast the toast.”
“Show me exactly what you do with it.”
He gently rested a strong pink hand on the curving body of the toaster. Then he placed a powerful thumb from his other hand on the slide and pushed it down.
“You always do it like that?”
“Yes. I guess my thumb is too strong.”
“No problem. I can replace the catch. Real simple, if you can spare it for a few days.”
“Sure can.”
I nodded and reached for the Sunbeam and placed it on a shelf behind me. When I turned back around, he was still standing at the counter.
“Do I need a claim ticket?”
“Nope. I’ll remember you. I don’t get too many vintage toasters in.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, but changed his mind. He flipped out a card from a breast pocket and wrote something on it. “Here’s my phone. Call me when it’s done.”
“Yessir. Be glad to.”
That night Monty ate dinner with me, so I scrambled more eggs and set out two plates.
“What you do today, son?”
“Nothing much.”
“Where’d you do nothing much?”
“I went to tell Mr. Nichols I had to stop lessons.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing much.” He darted his eyes back and forth across the faded green linoleum Rosalie was always too tired to mop.
“What else you do today?”
“I helped him run some errands. Just to sorta say goodbye.”
“That was nice, son. I’m proud of you.”
His eyes flashed upward to my face, and I saw something hard in them. Something that reminded me of the D.I.s in boot camp in the early ’40s. The look of not giving a damn, not caring one measly iota. I got up from the table and walked to the refrigerator behind him to get the catsup.
“He took me to lunch afterward at one of those new restaurants in the 400 block of Westheimer. After that I helped him carry everything upstairs.”
I sat back down and shook the catsup bottle, then poured. “He’s a grown man, isn’t he? Why didn’t he carry them himself?”
Monty stared at the red layers on my eggs, then looked away.
“He’s coaching the intramural program this year. He had to replace some equipment. You know, basketballs, baseballs, mitts, volleyballs.”
I passed the bottle to Monty. “I bet it was hard carrying those long packages with the heavy baseball bats.”
He shook his head before answering. “I was careful with them. He doesn’t like his paint scratched.”
I forked the hot eggs into my mouth before asking the last thing I needed to know. “I bet you were, son. Wasn’t there anyone else to help y’all carry the stuff into his house?”
“Nope. He lives alone.”
Working on Voice Teacher’s toaster was easy-like I’d told him. I replaced the bimetallic catch, reconnected the wires, switched out the original plastic push-down knob with a metal replica I’d painted the same glossy black. I also disconnected the ground to the stainless housing. Everything would go smoothly. He would plug it in, insert the bread, adjust the small dial for darkness, place his left hand on the elegant metal body, then push the knob down and his heart would know what it was like to burn in hell. I put on my work gloves and wiped it real good with a rag. Put it in a box and set them on the counter ready for him. His influence over Rosalie and my son would evaporate as quickly as it had come-like a rainstorm through the Panhandle. Then the dreams of soft lips and caressing fingers would be washed away too. We could go back to the way things were before, all of us.
When he came for the toaster, I took his cash payment and didn’t write out a receipt. He took it out of the box and left with it cradled under his pale pink starched shirtsleeve.
About five days later, I saw the obituary in the Houston Post. Brilliant voice teacher, beloved professor of music. Graduate of the University of Indiana at Bloomington.
Monty looked paler than I’d ever seen him. He stomped into his bedroom without speaking to me as he came through the front screen porch that evening.
I went into Rosalie’s room after my dinner alone. I could hear the sounds of opera coming through the walls from Monty’s room. He’d been playing the same record over and over for hours.
“Montgomery is devastated,” she said.
“I noticed he looked peaked.”
“His friend is dead.”
“I saw the obituary.”
“He was in the prime of his life. What a terrible accident.”
“Monty’ll get over it. He starts college in a couple more weeks.”
“I don’t know that he’ll ever get over it.”
“That guy was just his voice teacher. There’s plenty more teachers around.”
She looked at me all of a sudden, dark eyes focused and hard with emotion. “You don’t have the slightest clue, do you? They were in love. Do you understand me? They had a passionate, wonderfully exciting life together, and now it’s all over.”
“Your son is a queer?”
“He’s your son too.”
“No, he’s not. He’s yours by your first husband, not by me. I haven’t been able to touch you for years because of the illness. Besides, how much of a so-called life together could they have in a weekly voice lesson?”
She laughed, keeping her lips tight. “You sleep real heavy-remember? I let Montgomery meet Dave at night all the time. I wanted him to be happy and in love the way I was with his dad. His handsome, handsome dad.” Her mouth settled into a thin, hard line. “They were made for each other.”
I rose and walked out of the house into the August earlyevening heat to get away from her gaunt face and accusing eyes. I walked for hours through the neighborhood, darkness finally coming around eight p.m. and sleep barely coming at all.