Passing In the Night
Epilogue
Goin' Courtin'
It was the day after young Paul Richmond's funeral, and two days after Christopher Gill was killed at the theater named for his mother and the case wrapped up.
Gill, on a self-imposed crusade against the gay men of the City, had strangled Paul Richmond, as well as Randy Beautiful, the man who had once kept me before I got out of the business and became a security guard for Simon Banks.
Blair Sandburg – my lover – was the detective on the case, and he had taken the murder of the teen, who hadn't had the chance to discover if he was gay or not, personally. In defending his own life, he'd driven the fountain pen I had given him into Gill's thigh, puncturing his femoral artery. When Gill, for reasons known only to himself, had pulled the pen free, he had bled to death.
I left Taggart and Brown, the detectives who worked with Blair, to make sure Blair would be okay. I wanted to get my hands on Gill, to beat him to a pulp for daring to hurt my lover. When I found him, he was already dead.
I had gone home with Blair. I couldn't stay in my own studio apartment on East 14th Street, not after that maniac had pawed through my things. I'd known he had, had been able to see that clothes hadn't been put back in the drawers in the same way, even though no one else might have been able to tell.
The next day, Blair had insisted on going to the funeral, and who should be there but a friend from his childhood, his first boyfriend, who looked as if he'd have liked nothing better than to take up with Blair where he'd left off.
Not on your life, sunshine, I'd growled under my breath. He'd left Blair broken-hearted, and he wasn't getting another chance.
Once back at Blair's apartment on East 53rd Street, I'd stripped off my clothes, carefully removed Blair's dress uniform, and made love to him for the rest of the day.
But that night, my sleep was tormented by nightmares – my father sending me away because I'd been caught kissing the box boy behind the local grocery store, my brother Steven turning his back on me, his lip curled in disgust, Jack Pendergrast cradling me in bed, whispering in my ear, "I love you, Jimmy," but then fading into the Peruvian rainforest…
And worst of all, Randy Beautiful, his beautiful face twisted into a disdainful sneer. 'Whatever made you think that anyone could love you? You're a hustler – no matter what you do with your life, no matter how much time passes, you'll always be a hustler!'
"NO!" I woke with a start, Randy's words echoing in my ear. No, that wasn't true! I reached for the man who had somehow gotten within my defenses and caused me to fall in love with him. I needed to hold him, to reassure myself that he…
I was alone in bed.
I glanced at the clock. Blair should have been sleeping in – it was a Sunday, after all, but instead he was up, and I could hear him humming something as he puttered around in the kitchen, in spite of the fact that the kitchen was on the other side of the apartment.
Blair said I was a sentinel, that my enhanced senses were a genetic throwback to when tribes needed the advantage of having someone with the ability to track game, weather patterns, the movement of enemies. I'd thought I'd been losing my mind, and it was a relief knowing there was an actual physical reason for what was happening to me. He'd come up with a way that helped me control my senses, and I was grateful.
But I couldn't help recalling what had happened when I'd moved in with Randy Beautiful. Was I ready to take the step to move in with Blair?
I knew Blair liked me well enough, but once the novelty of my enhanced senses wore off, would his attraction for me wear off as well? I'd worked as a hustler for years, enough years to know that nothing lasted for long.
The bedroom door was bumped open, and Blair came through the doorway, holding a tray. On it was a carafe of coffee and two cups, a plate piled high with pancakes, two small pitchers, one of milk and the other of syrup, and a saucer holding neat pats of butter. In one corner of the tray was a bud vase with a yellow flower from the other night, when he'd had me over for dinner, and in the other was a tall glass of orange juice.
I could tell all this from scent alone, and I wasn't overwhelmed by the odors.
"Room service!" he sang out, his grin jaunty. "Good morning, Jim."
"Good morning, Chief."
"Naomi is spending the day with Gus, so we have the place to ourselves, but I thought it would be fun to have breakfast in bed."
"You didn't have to make all that. I'll never be able to finish it."
"It's for me too. I hope you don't mind sharing?"
"I don't mind." Not food, at any rate. There had been too many years where I'd had no one, and now that I had him, I didn't want to let anyone else near him. I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to keep him.
"I don't have bacon. Sorry."
"That's okay, Chief. Should you be up though?" He'd taken a nasty blow to the face a couple of days ago, courtesy of Gill and a sandbag at the theater, and his nose, while not broken, was still swollen. As for his eyes, they gave the appearance that raccoons ran in the Sandburg family.
"Yeah. I'm fine. Besides, if I don't make breakfast, who will?"
"I would have, Chief." I turned to fuss with the pillows so he wouldn't see how that hurt. I was nowhere the cook he was, but I hadn't given myself food poisoning yet.
"Jim?" He put the tray down on the night table.
"I… I feel like a guest in your house."
"You are a guest."
A guest. That implied impermanence. It was like taking a blow to my chest. I'd known it wouldn't last, but to be over already… It was a good thing I hadn't moved all my clothes here. It would save having to pack them all up and move back. I was pretty sure Richie Delvecchio, the manager of 852 East 14th, might have an apartment I could use.
I reined in my senses, dialed them down to what would be normal for people not cursed with my ability. I had grown used to the sound of Blair's skin against his trousers as he shifted to ease the constriction as his cock swelled. I'd come to ground myself in the scent of his arousal. If that was no longer there, I didn't want to know.
I forced a smile to my lips. "It all smells great, Chief."
Blair gave me a puzzled look but didn't say anything. He poured coffee for me and added the exact amount of milk I took with it.
My throat burned and ached with unshed tears. He was so perfect for me. Why wasn't I good enough for him?
He kept stealing glances at me, but he wasn't the one with sentinel senses, so there was no way for him to know the cheerful front I was putting up was phony from the getgo.
I cleared my throat. "So what did you plan on doing today?"
"I know this small movie house in SoHo."
"What's playing?"
"This weekend?" His expression was innocent. "They're showing Plan Nine From Outer Space and Reefer Madness."
"That sounds good."
"Jim! I was kidding!"
"You were? Oh. So, what's playing?"
He sighed. "In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.''
"That still sounds good. What time is the show?"
"It starts at 6:00. It's such a beautiful day, I was thinking I could show you around the city, we'd have some lunch, find a way to pass the afternoon."
We could stay in this bedroom to pass the afternoon, but obviously he didn't want to do that. I'd been living in the city for a long time. If he wanted to show me the sights… "That's fine with me, Chief."
"And maybe after the show, we could have dinner in Chinatown. There's this little restaurant where they make the best sub gum beef chow mein. And their egg foo young is pretty fantastic too."
"Sure. I'll just take a shower and get dressed," I said as I finished the last of my coffee.
"Give me a minute to bring this into the kitchen, and I'll join you."
"That's okay, Chief. I won't be long." It would be better if I started distancing myself from him now.
"Well… well, okay."
A week and a day. That was how long it had lasted, taking into consideration the worst 24 hours I'd ever lived through when I thought he'd cheated on me and it was already over.
~~~~
Blair came to me for consolation after he'd found Paul Richmond's body, but I didn't know that. All I could smell was another man all over him, see the way this other man had marked him, and I reacted without thinking, lashing out and hitting him, giving him his first black eye of the week.
I was miserable the next day. Pat, the man who worked bank security with me, noticed it.
"Girl trouble, Jim?" he asked. I gave a weak grin and shrugged.
I hadn't been home long when Richie barreled up the stairs and pounded on my apartment door. "You gotta see this!" He dragged me down to his apartment.
The little black and white television in his living room was on. The police commissioner, the chief of police, and the captain of the 15th Precinct, Blair's precinct, stood facing the cameras, one face grimmer than the next.
"… and in light of these new circumstances, Detective Blair Sandburg has been relieved of his duties and taken off this case," the commissioner was saying. "His unfortunate lapse yesterday is indicative of how he has allowed this to become personal, and while we feel that Detective Sandburg is generally a capable detective…"
Talk about damning with faint praise. I wanted to kill him for denigrating my… And then I realized that Blair was no longer my lover.
"… we also feel that it is in the Department's best interest to remove him from this case. Lieutenant Dawson will be taking over. Now, if there are any questions, Captain Haines will be happy to answer them."
The Captain didn't look pleased to hear that he would be answering questions, but he stepped up to the microphone.
I felt myself turn cold. Blair loved his job, and to be so publicly humiliated… I shut out the rest of the news conference.
"Thanks, Richie. I have to go." All I could think was that Blair had needed me, and I'd responded by punching him in the face. I had to see him, had to try to make amends.
I didn't know what to expect when he opened the door. It certainly wasn't the bruised, discolored eye. Oh, god, I'd hit him so hard.
"I'm sorry I hit you. I didn't mean to, but you have to understand… when you turned up outside my door, just when I'd been thinking about you, wondering how you'd feel if I turned up outside your door … This was the first time I've ever been in a… a… "
"Relationship? I told you that was what I wanted with you. Was I too subtle?"
"I just… I couldn't believe… "
"I wouldn't cheat on you – I'm a one-man man."
Blair hadn't cheated. A former client – Blair had worked as an escort at one time during college to finance a trip to Peru – had hugged Blair enthusiastically enough to leave his scent all over my lover.
We made up, the case was solved…
~~~~
… and now here I was in the shower, wondering how much longer I'd have with him.
It was beautiful outside, although there was still a chill in the air. I wore jeans and a turtleneck sweater under my leather jacket. Blair was dressed pretty much the same way.
We took the ferry to Liberty Island and climbed up inside the Statue of Liberty.
"I was here with my fifth grade class," he said. "We planned on sneaking up the stairs to the torch, but Mrs. Wilson had eagle eyes and stopped us."
"I've never been here." Johns didn't want to go sight-seeing, and I'd never thought to go on my own time.
"Then I'm glad I'm the first one to take you." He rubbed my arm. Why was he acting like this? It was only a matter of time until he broke up with me; why make me suffer like this? "I'm glad Simon was able to get you the day off too."
I'd been working security at the Museum of Modern Art on Sundays. "Rafe owed me for working his shift at Macy's during the holidays when his wife had the baby." I shrugged.
"When are you going to tell Simon you'll be quitting?"
"I'm quitting?"
"You did say something about joining the Force to keep an eye on me." He batted his lashes at me.
"Oh. Yeah, I did." After I'd found him in Gill's office on Friday, with blood all over his face. I felt him give me another look.
"You'll have to go to the Police Academy, but I don't think you'll have a problem with any of the classes."
"If you say so, Chief."
He was silent until we were back at the pier. "Jim, I'm not a wealthy man. I can't give you a mansion and a yacht."
"I don't need that, Chief." I'd had that with Randy Beautiful, and it had been like sawdust in my mouth.
"Come on. I want to show you my limousine."
"Huh?"
"My limousine."
I followed him to the curb. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. A yellow taxi pulled up.
"Get in."
I got in. "I hate to tell you this, Chief, but if someone's told you this is a limo, you've been rooked."
"I never get rooked, Jim." He settled himself beside me. "59th and 5th. The Plaza," he told the driver.
He was taking me to a hotel? Maybe things weren't as bad as I'd thought.
"Chief," I kept my voice low, "the Plaza doesn't like their guests to only stay an hour or so. Believe me, I know."
"So do I. When I was working as a… working boy... " He winked at me.
The cab let us off in front of the hotel. I reached for my wallet, but Blair put his hand on my arm.
"I've got it." He paid the fare and tipped the driver. As soon as we had a green light, he grabbed my sleeve, and we crossed the street.
So. No hotel.
Along the curb a long line of hansom cabs waited for tourists or lovers who wanted an old fashioned carriage ride.
"Wait a minute! This is your limo?"
He grinned at me. "You bet. Hold on a sec." Near the corner was a pushcart selling popcorn. He bought a bag, and offered it to me. I took a handful and followed him down the row of black cabs.
"Hi, Leo."
"Well, hi, there, Detective Blair." The driver, a grizzled black man who looked to be about a hundred years old, smiled down at Blair and touched his hat with his whip. "Want to go for a ride?"
"Yeah."
Leo got down, removed his horse's blanket and folded it, then climbed back up to his seat and placed the blanket by his feet.
Blair walked up to the horse. She was brown with irregular patches of white on her back, sides, and neck. "Hello, Peony." He rubbed her nose and chin, and a long, pink tongue swept out to lick his palm.
"'Peony,' Chief?"
"Leo names all his horses 'Peony'. Come on and climb in. Once around, Leo, and take the scenic route. We've got plenty of time this afternoon."
Leo waited until we were settled, with a coach blanket over our laps. "Get up, Peony!" He snapped his whip in the air.
The horse nodded her head and stepped out at a leisurely walk.
Under the blanket, Blair's hand found mine.
"Chief… "
"Shhh. Enjoy the ride, Jim." He held the popcorn toward me. "Help yourself. My hand's kind of occupied."
He was making it so difficult to distance myself. Well, there was time after the ride. I fed him and fed myself.
And the whole ride around the park, his fingers made love to my palm.
****
We walked through the Central Park Zoo, watched the hardcore skaters at Rockefeller Center, stopped in at St. Patrick's, had hotdogs from a corner stand.
When we got to SoHo, it was to find the movie house shut down. Apparently it was closed for renovation, and had been for a number of weeks. How could Blair not have known?
"Well, there's another movie house just down the street. We'll go there, okay, Jim?"
"Okay."
"You don't mind that it's a musical, do you?"
I looked up at the marquee. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. "No, that's okay." My fingers were starting to get cold, even tucked into my pockets, and my nose felt as if it was about to freeze off. I just wanted to get someplace warm.
It was warm inside, and I unzipped my jacket. Blair went to the concession stand and bought a tub of buttered popcorn and two large Cokes.
He looked around and spotted a staircase. "Let's go up to the balcony, okay?"
"I haven't been in the balcony of a movie theater since I was in school. We snuck out one Friday night after Taps to see The African Queen. Man, did we get in trouble!"
"Was it worth it?"
"Oh, yeah. I loved it when Bogie asked the German officer to marry him and Katherine Hepburn because it would mean so much to her. You could see it would mean just as much to him."
"Why, Jim! You old romantic, you!"
I cleared my throat, and he rubbed my arm.
"I love that you're romantic, babe. Let's go. It shouldn't be too crowded."
"On a Sunday night in March? With Ed Sullivan coming on in a couple of hours? Take a peek inside. This place is practically empty!"
"Wait a second! I'll bet you've counted the heartbeats!"
I had. "There are seven people in the orchestra, and the balcony is empty."
"All right! Let's go!"
We sat in the last row of the balcony.
"Oh, good, the coming attractions are just starting."
A woman's voice began to wail about the heat of the night.
"That's interesting," I said. "This theater is going to show In the Heat of the Night next week."
"How about that!" Blair started laughing. "We'll come back, okay? It'll be fun watching something where the murder gets solved in a couple of hours."
Coming attractions were shown for The Bandwagon, The Professionals, and The Sound of Music.
And then the MGM logo filled the screen, and music started.
"Oh, shit, is this too loud for you, Jim?"
I couldn't help myself. I leaned over and kissed him. "I've got the dials turned down."
"Phew. I should have thought of that." He put his Coke on the floor, took mine and put it down as well, then took my hand.
I was sitting in a movie theater, holding hands with the man I loved. How could I give him up?
Well, hell. I wasn't going to! I was going to fight for him! I tightened my grip on his hand.
"Want to ease up a bit, big guy? You're cutting off the circulation."
"Sorry." What had I been thinking? I started to release him.
"Hey, I just said ease up, not let me go." He held onto my hand and ran his thumb over my knuckles.
Howard Keel – Adam – rode into town looking for a bride. Enter Jane Powell – Milly, a pretty, feisty young woman, who caught his eye. We in the audience knew what was going on, but Milly thought he'd fallen in love with her at first sight, just as she had with him.
"Would you go with him, Chief?"
"Maybe. He's a big guy. I like big guys." In the light cast by the movie, I could see his smile. "I'd have to show him who the boss is though."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. Bend him over that buckboard and ride him hard."
Hearing his words caused my dick to twitch. They turned him on too. I could smell his arousal.
I licked my lips and forced my attention back to the movie.
Adam and Milly married, to the displeasure of the townsfolk, and he took her back to his spread on the other side of the pass.
She found out he'd deceived her, that it wasn't going to be just the two of them. He had six brothers living with him as well, and it would be her responsibility to feed them, wash their clothes, and keep the cabin clean.
"That has to be a disappointment, thinking you're getting this gorgeous hunk to yourself, then learning you'll have to share him."
"That's true. I wouldn't like sharing you." I freed my hand and had some popcorn, then offered it to Blair. He frowned but took some. I took his hand again, licked the salt from his palm, then wound my fingers in his. His smile came back in full bloom.
While Adam went off to do mountain man things – huntin' and trappin' and such, Milly laid down the law to his brothers. She made them wash and shave, put on clean clothes, and show some manners at the table.
And when it was time for a barn-raising in town, where they would see the girls they'd been dreaming of, she told them how to go about winning those girls. Goin' courtin', goin' courtin'. Oh, it sets your senses in a whirl.
I recognized the song that Blair had been humming in the kitchen that morning.
Goin' courtin', goin' courtin'. Dudin' up to go and see your girl…
Blair cleared his throat. "Actually, to see my guy."
"Tell me something, Blair." I leaned over and whispered, mindful of the people below. "Would it bother you if we didn't see each other again?"
"What? We've just… You're not serious!"
"I am serious. How would you feel if we never saw each other again?"
He was breathing heavily, and his voice was so low no one else could have heard him. "I'd hate it like hell."
"Okay. That's all I wanted to know."
"What?"
The people in the orchestra turned around. "SHHHHH!"
"Jim!" His voice was sentinel-soft. "What's going on? You've been acting strange all day."
"I was afraid I was going to lose you."
"Baby, I've just found you. I'm never letting you go!"
"No, you're not." I went back to watching the movie.
"Jim."
I smiled but didn't say anything. He took the popcorn from my hand and put it on the seat on my other side.
It was a good thing the balcony was empty.
He turned my face toward him and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back.
It had occurred to me what Blair had been doing all day.
He'd been courting me.
~End~
