Scott Sherman - Third You Die

Wow. Remember that part about not wanting to step on any land mines? Tony just hit one or two with a hammer.

Boom-fucking-boom.

Only, the mine wasn’t filled with explosives. It was like one of those flash bombs that police use to incapacitate suspects with blinding light. And in that moment of searing clarity, a truth I’d buried under the darkness of denial was suddenly revealed.

Tony and I might not make it.

I knew we had our problems. We’d even separated over them. But I don’t think I ever believed they were insurmountable. A part of me was certain we belonged together. Like a couple that meets cute in a romantic comedy but has to endure all the genre obstacles before they finally reach their happy ending.

But, right now, I wasn’t feeling the love and I wasn’t having any laughs. Maybe we were less The Main Event and more The Way We Were.

We might not make it to the final reel.

It must have shown on my face.

“What?” Tony asked. He waited.

I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He looked at me being speechless. Another first.

“Kevvy, I didn’t mean it like that,” he began, assuming I was upset about his ongoing refusal to come out at work. “You know how it is. It’s the New York City Police Department, babe. All the ‘diversity training’ in the world isn’t going to-”

I stood up. “I’ve heard this before, Tony.”

Tony rose to meet me. “Babe.” He brushed my hair out of my eyes. “You know I…” He moved in for a kiss. Sure, now the do-me look was kicking in.

I pushed him away. “I’m just tired, Tone. And sad.”

“I know. You just found out that a friend of yours passed away, and I’m playing cop with you. That was a douchebag move on my part, Kevvy. You were right. We should have changed the topic half an hour ago. Come here.” He enveloped me in a non-sexual buddy hug.

I didn’t mean to and I wished I hadn’t, but I started to cry against his strong chest. He just held me, even when I knew he must be uncomfortable, his shirt soaked through with my tears.

“It’s okay,” he said, “let it out. It’s hard when you lose someone.” He rubbed my back in circular motions.

I liked Brent. I was sorry to hear what had happened to him. But I wasn’t crying for him.

It was the increasingly likely prospect that Tony and I could never be together that was breaking my heart.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially sorry for myself, I think in rhyme. Self-indulgent poetry sprung from too many readings of The Bell Jar in high school. Worse, with my ADHD, those couplets often stick in my head, repeating themselves in a torturous, self-inflicted loop.

So, as I shuddered and sobbed in Tony’s arms, I kept hearing myself think the words I couldn’t tell him.

It isn’t Brent’s passing that fills me with fears.

It isn’t his sad fate that brings me to tears.

It’s losing the man I thought I’d been born for.

It’s the loss of you, Tony, I weep and I mourn for.

Later, I thought, I’ll have to write that down. Then burn it.

As Bette Davis so memorably said in All About Eve, “I detest cheap sentiment.”

That didn’t mean I couldn’t wallow in it, though.

I sat in my office at work, looking at a long list of people whose calls I needed to return. Every few minutes, I’d pick up the handset, punch in two or three digits (in one notable accomplishment, I even made it past the area code), and then hang up. I was in no mood to talk with anyone.

A week had passed since I’d identified Brent for Tony. In that time, I’d grown increasingly distant. Not just toward him, toward everyone. I felt detached. Maybe a little depressed. I was irritable, distracted, and not at all my usual self. My best moment in the past seven days was the excitement I felt when I heard a radio commercial for a medicine that promised relief from the exact things that were bothering me: the crankiness, the mood swings, the sleeplessness.

Then I realized it was for a medication used to treat PMS.

There wasn’t any progress on Brent’s case. Tony had talked to everyone whose names I’d given him; nothing turned up.

He told me I was right about one thing, though. Brent’s parents really were hateful creeps.

Tony and his partner had gone to their house in Queens to break the news to them. Seconds after he got out the words “I’m afraid I have bad news for you,” the father interrupted him with “It was the AIDS, wasn’t it?”

Tony said that, no, it wasn’t “the AIDS,” and managed, barely, to explain about finding Brent’s body in the river. By then, the mother had run from the room.

“You’ve upset my wife,” the father said. “I think it best you leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, “but your son is dead and I’d think you’d want-”

Brent’s father interrupted him. “What I’d want is for you to leave. My son’s been dead to us for years now, detective. We didn’t need you dragging his corpse back into this home.”

Moments later, Tony and his partner were back in their car.

“So,” I asked Tony when he told me the story, “are you going to look into them?”

“For what?”

“To see if they had anything to do with Brent’s murder,” I said, as if it were obvious. “What kind of a parent reacts like that to their son’s death?”

“A very, very bad one,” Tony said. “But we have no physical evidence. No motive.”

“They hated him,” I snapped.

“If everyone murdered the people they hated, we’d have a lot more rental properties available in the city,” Tony observed. “People kill for money, for sexual jealousy, and, sometimes, for thrills. They don’t kill a kid they threw out of the house years ago who they’ve had no contact with. Besides, given the amount of drugs in Brent’s system, I think the ME is going to rule his death an accident, anyway.”

“That’s another thing,” I argued. “Brent’s boyfriend Charlie told me Brent never did drugs.”

“He said the same thing to us,” Tony said.

“See? So why did he have Valium and Ecstasy in his blood?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “Maybe because he was a porn star party boy on the same drugs that every other club kid is taking these days?”

“But Charlie said-”

“Maybe Charlie didn’t know Brent as well as he thinks he did,” Tony cut in. “He didn’t know about that other guy Brent was seeing on the side. Luka?”

“Lucas.”

“Right. People keep secrets. They lie. Those guys he made the movies with, the ones from SwordFight, said they weren’t surprised to hear Brent had been stoned at the time of his death. They said they’d heard rumors about his drug use. Of course, they said it would never be allowed on their set”-Tony rolled his eyes-“but it wasn’t uncommon for their ‘actors’ to get high before a shoot.”

The way Tony said “actors,” the way he disparaged the whole industry as if it was filled with nothing but the worst kind of scum, really pissed me off.

“And, Kevvy, I gotta tell you: I believe them a lot more than I believe Charlie. We know Brent was cheating on his supposed boyfriend, right? He was found with drugs in his system-drugs that apparently he had a reputation as abusing. He was a flaky, screwed-up kid who had a stupid accident. That kind of thing happens all the time to boys like him.”

Boys like him. Who were those exactly? Porn stars? Hookers? Pretty little blonds who could be had for the right price?

Boys like me, then.

You can see where I’d be feeling distant.

I waited until after knew Tony had contacted them, and then called Charlie and Lucas.