Scott Sherman - First You Fall

“Get over it.”

The screen went black. Ms. Steel pressed a button, and it disappeared back into the ceiling as the lights came back on.

“Wel,” said Alana, tapping the table with her perfectly manicured nails, “I guess he put the homosexual agenda ahead of his own family right until the end, didn’t he?”

Even her husband looked shocked by the bluntness of Alana’s comment.

The thinner woman (Lori? May?) from the gay youth group wrinkled her nose in disgust and rose from her chair. “Ms. Steel, thank you for arranging for us to come in today. Unfortunately,” she said, looking at Alana Harrington, “I’m afraid the air in here has gotten quite fetid.”

Her companion stood, too. She looked genuinely grief-stricken. “I’m s-s-s-sorry about your father,” she said shyly to the Harrington boys. “Your father-in-law, too,” she added to Alana. “I…” she began, and then dissolved into heavy sobs. Her companion led her from the room.

Alana watched the two women leave.

“Wel,” she said, “at least we don’t have to deal with any more dykes.”

Tamela Steel’s glare was withering. “Not. Quite.”

“Oh,” Alana said.

“What does ‘fetid’ mean?” Freddy asked.

I gave Ms. Steel credit-she managed to conclude the meeting without throwing Alana Harrington out the window. She explained that we would al be receiving notices through registered mail that explained how much we each stood to inherit, and that we would be issued checks when the estate passed through probate.

In as professional a manner as possible, she ushered us out of the office, only breaking character to slap Freddy on the ass once the Harringtons cleared the hal way. “You stick with that boy,” she said, motioning towards me. “Al en Harrington was a great man. Any companion of his is bound to be a good catch.”

“We’re just friends,” Freddy said.

Ms. Steel looked at us. “Oh, is that the story? Wel, I like a good story, too.”

I wasn’t quite sure I knew what she meant, but she was heading back into her office and I never got the chance to ask.

Freddy and I were anxious to talk, but when we reached the elevator, Paul and Alana Harrington were waiting there. Michael was nowhere to be seen.

“Wel, wel, wel,” Alana tril ed. “If it isn’t the boy toy and his dusky boyfriend.”

“‘Dusky?’” Freddy asked me. “What is this, Mandingo?”

Paul put a limp arm around his wife. “Just ignore them, darling. I would never have brought you if I had known you’d have to associate with whores.”

“Hey,” Freddy said, “I’m not a whore!”

I looked at Paul, then at Alana. He might be good looking, but there was no way he was man enough for a shark like her. Unless he had a twelve-inch dick, there was no way she married him for anything but his money. “Speaking of whores,” I said to her,

“what was it that brought you two crazy kids together?”

Alana’s eyes narrowed and her already thin lips curled under. The veins in her neck stretched taught as guitar strings. “You trash,” she hissed at me. “How dare you talk to me that way? Do you have any idea what I do to boys like you?”

I could tel that Alana was used to her imperial manner intimidating folk, but I’m a little gay guy who’s faced bul ies since junior high. This bitch had no idea who she was dealing with.

“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.