Текст книги "The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

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“He was talking about ghosts today,” Foster said.

“Ghosts! I’ve heard that from him too. I think he gets it from David. Mr. Center. You know he – Mr. Center – claims he only moved here because the place is haunted.”

“Haunted by who?”

“I don’t know. Some Indian princess or a colonial milkmaid or something.”

“A milkmaid?”

“I don’t remember the details. The place was originally a farm or something, wasn’t it?”

“Tiny said the ghost wore yellow socks, like the man in my bathtub.”

“I never saw a milkmaid with yellow socks.”

“I never saw a milkmaid.”

MacQueen’s door opened abruptly, catching Nick off guard.

“You again!” she accused around a cigarette. “Can’t I have a minute’s peace?”

Nick regrouped fast. “Why didn’t you mention Tiny’s keys were stolen?”

If he’d thought to catch her off guard, he was disappointed. “They weren’t stolen! They were lost. For a day. You know how many times that damn retard has lost his keys?” She was giving herself a home permanent, and the place reeked like sulfur – and she, an imp from hell in that lime green pantsuit.

“The security of every apartment in this building has been compromised. You don’t think you have a responsibility to change the locks on your tenants’ doors?”

She screeched, “Change the locks! You know how much money that would take? More than I’ve got, unless you all want a big fat rent hike.”

Don’t get mad, Nick warned himself. If everything goes right in L.A., you’ll be bailing in a couple of weeks anyway.

“I’m calling a locksmith now,” he told her, “And I expect to be reimbursed.”

“Sailor, you’ve got a hell of a nerve!”

Something that resembled a fringed throw pillow bolted out the door. MacQueen shrieked, “Catch it! Don’t let it get away!”

“Get it yourself!” Nick snapped, all out of whatever good manners he might have had at the weekend’s start.

Foster sneezed violently as the dog veered in. It was left to Jane to scoop it up and hand it over to MacQueen, who snatched it without a word of thanks, withdrawing and slamming shut her door all in one choreographed move.

“Let’s call the locksmith,” Nick told Foster. “We’ll have him do both rooms while he’s here.”

Foster sneezed again and rubbed his nose.

“I’ll split the cost with you,” Jane jumped in. “We’ll make it a threesome.” She gave Nick a sly smile.

* * * * *

“Maybe we should call the police,” Foster said, accompanying Nick back upstairs. He had that breathy voice again, a voice that was like fingernails on a blackboard to Nick.

“Why’s that?” he asked shortly.

“Maybe they’ll believe me now about the dead man and about people getting in my rooms.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t think so?”

“It’s not like you have the body for evidence.”

Foster fell silent, considering that.

On the second-floor landing, he stopped and said, “Well, I guess I’ll see you when you get back.”

Not if I see you first, Nick thought. He said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Good luck in L.A. with everything.”

“Thanks.”

Foster had a very straight nose, a sensitive mouth, and long eyelashes. The childlike lashes threw tender shadows across his cheekbones. They swept up and he studied Nick gravely.

Neither moved, and then Nick shocked himself by saying, “Take care of yourself.”

Perry’s mouth curved. “I will.”

“Okay.” Still Nick hesitated, but there really wasn’t anything left to say.

He continued up the stairs, hearing the door to the Watson apartment close quietly behind Foster.

Chapter Five

The day was fading to dusk as Perry watched Nick’s white pickup drive away.

It was dumb to feel so…let down. He barely knew Nick, after all. And what he did know was enough to warn him that he was probably maxing out the other man’s patience.

The house seemed too quiet after the sound of the truck’s engine died out. From the second-story window of Watson’s apartment, Perry stared out at the orchard of trees, flame bright against the slate sky. Mist rose from the damp ground and slithered like a ghost snake through the woods.

Anyway, it wasn’t like there was any actual danger. The house was kind of spooky, kind of creepy, but it had always been so.

He spotted someone moving through the overgrown garden below. The small figure looked like a child, but Perry recognized the pink parka and polka-dot ski cap.

Miss Dembecki?

Something in the elderly woman’s furtive movements caught his attention, roused his suspicion, and because he had nothing else to do – because he needed something to take his mind off his troubles – Perry grabbed his jacket and hurried downstairs.

Jane and Mr. Teagle were hanging bedraggled garland on the staircase banister. Mr. Teagle was complaining about the Democrats Who Stole Christmas, and Jane, in a rare, indulgent mood, was egging him on.

“What was the best Christmas gift you ever got, Mr. Teagle?”

“Well, when I was a boy we didn’t have a lot of money. Not like these kids today…”

Neither of them paid Perry any mind as he slipped out the back entrance leading onto the abandoned garden. The wind yanked the door from his grasp, and it banged back against the house. He waited to see if the sound alarmed his quarry, but Miss Dembecki rustled on through the overgrown ferns and weeds like a pink mole. She seemed to know her way through the muddy grounds pretty well, but then, as far as he could tell she had lived on the Alston Estate for pretty much forever.

As Perry followed Miss Dembecki, it occurred to him that he was behaving more suspiciously than she was. What did he think he was doing, spying on an old lady? What did he think he was going to find out? What dark secrets could she have? Maybe she had planted a secret tomato garden or was visiting the grave of her dead parakeet.

Still…there was something in the secretive, furtive way she was moving through the trees – and things were so weird right now. Perry automatically sped up, trying to move quietly through the wet bushes without getting too close to his quarry.

Pausing behind a stand of sugar maples, he peered into a shadowy darkness that smelled of wet earth and mold. He could hear Miss Dembecki, the sinister senior citizen, several yards ahead, crunching through the dead leaves.

Not far off, he could hear the rush of the river. The gazebo, he thought suddenly. She was heading for the gazebo. Why? Was she meeting someone? A twig cracked under his foot. He crouched down behind a dead tree stump.

Cautiously he peered around the stump.

Miss Dembecki had stopped and was looking around apprehensively. Perry ducked back, waiting, covering his mouth with his hand in case the smoke of his breath in the frosty air gave him away.

Long moments passed. Perry waited while the knees of his Levi’s grew soaked. A few inches from his nose, ants crawled sluggishly in and out of the dead bark.

There came the squawk of rusty hinges and the bang of a wooden door. Peeking out, he saw that Miss Dembecki had vanished inside the gazebo.

Great. Now what? It would be difficult to cross the clearing to the gazebo without being seen from one or another of the windows. His gaze fell on a nearby birch tree, yellow branches spreading over the octagonal building.

Keeping to the cover of wild rose bushes, Perry sneaked over to the tree and climbed up into the branches, shoes slipping on the pale bark, then finding purchase.

From his perch he had an unobstructed line of vision through the grimy gazebo windows. A dull beam of light played slowly over the gently angled room.

More than this it was impossible to see in the gloom. What the heck could she be doing in there? Perry strained to hear, but that was also impossible over the distant rush of the river, the leaves whipping in the chilly breeze.

Minutes crawled by.

Was she hiding something? It would hardly take this long. And if she was looking for something…well, same argument, really. After all, she had lived on the estate for years. For what could she be searching for twenty minutes that she hadn’t had plenty of time to find in the past decade or so?

Perry’s hands grew numb with cold. His leg was falling asleep. He was trying to think if he had ever been more miserable in his life when the rain started again, trickling down the back of his neck. He began to worry about the cold and damp aggravating his asthma – not something Sam Spade ever had to put up with.

He massaged his leg absently, watching the wan light traveling listlessly around the room once more. Maybe he should risk climbing down and try peering through a window on the ground level. Or maybe he could just walk in and pretend to be surprised to find Miss Dembecki there – see how she reacted?

The door below him banged open, and Miss Dembecki exited the building, startling Perry – almost literally – out of his tree.

He steadied himself. Through the lattice of leaves he watched the gnomelike figure of Miss Dembecki hurrying away. He could see that she held something in one hand, but he was pretty sure it was her flashlight.

Perry let several minutes elapse. No one else left the gazebo, so he had guessed right. Not a meeting; Miss Dembecki had been looking for something.

What?

Who would use an abandoned building as a hiding place? Why?

Letting himself down gingerly through the tangle of twigs and branches, Perry dropped to the wet ground. He went into the gazebo.

It was small. The eight windows were brown with years of dirt, the wooden floor layered with dust and evidence of bird and squirrels. Perry pulled out a clean handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose.

Circling the room, he had to admit there was a conspicuous lack of hiding places – some old rattan furniture, the faded cushions ripped open long ago. That was about it.

No loose plank squeaked beneath his foot. He knocked on the walls, but they felt and sounded solid enough.

After ten minutes or so, Perry gave up and returned to the house.

* * * * *

The house was listening.

Waiting.

Perry could feel it in the silence beyond the cheerful canned laughter of Scooby-Doo. He sat on the late Mr. Watson’s long black leather sofa eating a bowl of cereal and watching Watson’s television.

Every now and then, he reassured himself with a glance over at the shiny new locks on the doors. Serious locks. Heavy-duty locks. No one was coming in through that door – unless they broke the door down. He held the only keys; he had instructed the locksmith to cut a dummy key, and he’d handed that over to Mrs. MacQueen.

So he was perfectly safe. Perfectly secure. And yet he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he was not alone.

That he was being watched.

The house was quiet. Too quiet. Up in the isolated tower rooms that hush was normal; here on the second floor Perry expected signs of life. Where was the homey scent of dinners cooking? Where was the comfortable rattle and bang of activity from any of the surrounding rooms? From the sound of things, he could be the only person on this floor or in the whole house.

Finishing a second bowl of cereal, he dumped his dish in the sink and made another nervous circuit of Watson’s rooms. He almost wished he were back with his own belongings in his own familiar surroundings – except he’d never be able to use the bathroom in his apartment again.

He checked the wine rack next to Watson’s stereo: lots of merlots and cabernets. Familiar brands, mostly from California. Nothing imported or priceless as far as he could tell. Not that he was any expert; he wasn’t much of a drinker. Red wine usually gave him a headache, and white wine – according to his pop – was for sissies. His own cupboards were bare even if he felt like braving the deserted third floor. So why not? Watson wouldn’t care, and the unknown relatives surely wouldn’t miss one bottle of wine? He could leave money for the bottle on the counter.

He went into the bathroom, scrubbed down Watson’s tub, then uncorked a bottle of cabernet while the bath water ran.

Two glasses of Salmon Creek and a long, hot soak went a long way toward relaxing him, and by the time Perry heaved himself out of the tub, he felt pleasantly limp and woozy.

Pulling back the covers of the freshly made bed, he crawled between the sheets. Watson had an electric blanket. Perry turned the heat up.

He thumbed through one of the comic books stacked beside the bed. More scantily clad ladies, this time fighting space aliens. He checked the date on the magazine cover. September 1950. Watson must have collected comic books.

You could never tell about people. The few times Perry had talked to Watson, he had stuck strictly to sports and the stock market – neither topics of great interest to Perry. Whereas he’d have been fascinated to hear about these comics and graphic novels. He loved the artwork, even if half-naked ladies were not really his thing.

Curiously he turned back to the intergalactic warfare.

After a time the breasts and word balloons all blurred together. He reached up and snapped off the light.

* * * * *

What woke him? He wasn’t sure. For a minute, Perry lay there in the unfamiliar darkness trying to reorient.

From next to the bed he heard the soft click of luminous numbers turning over. From the living room came the tick-tock of the clock. Closer was the scratch of tree branches against the window. Identified, he could dismiss these sounds. But there was still something….

Then he heard it. A strange sound, like…brushing. No, more like someone dragging a heavy weight down the hallway.

Throwing back the covers, he stumbled through the dark to the front door and peered out the peephole. He had a bird’s-eye view of discolored carpet, somber paneling, light that had a bleached, aged quality. Even the dust motes looked old.

The hall was empty.

He listened tensely. The sound seemed to have stopped.

Perry stood shivering a few minutes longer, then gave it up and returned to his still-warm sheets.

Slowly the adrenaline drained and he sank into a velvety darkness – only to start awake as something bumped against the wall of the bedroom.

“Who’s there?” he called.

Silence. That listening silence he was coming to recognize.

Perry turned on the bedside lamp.

The room seemed all deep corners and dark shadows.

His glance fell on the detective novels he had brought down from his room. A snarling man in a fedora faced down a trio of goons. The man in the fedora looked vaguely like Nick. Don’t be a dweeb, Perry told himself. What would Nick do in this situation?

Nick would go check it out.

Perry considered this glumly. He cheered up when it occurred to him that more likely Nick would tell him the noise was all in his imagination and to go back to sleep.

He turned off the lamp and listened.

Nothing.

Maybe he had dreamed it.

He turned on his side. Slowly he drifted out on the tide.

When the dragging noises began again, Perry was too deeply asleep to hear.

* * * * *

Monday afternoon found Perry sitting in a small room at the Fox Run Gazette studying the projected images from pages of back issues as they appeared and disappeared on the dingy walls.

Negro Students Sit At Woolworth Lunch Counter read the headline for the February 2, 1960 issue of the Gazette.

Perry sighed. He clicked the projector. He had nothing else to do. He was officially on vacation with nowhere to go. The dream he had centered his life around for the past months was over. The memory of those imagined Sunday brunches and walks along the beach, the anticipated trips to museums and art galleries…recalling those treasured fantasies was even more painful than the humiliating reality.

Which was saying something.

In fact, he had never felt less like a holiday. He couldn’t even work up enthusiasm for painting – the one refuge that had never before failed him. He was too anxious to work. Too uneasy. Between Marcel and his overstrained finances…he needed something to occupy his mind, and in a weird way, the eerie occurrences at the estate provided a useful distraction.

Jane had dropped by his room for breakfast that morning. Ostensibly, she was there to borrow a cup of milk, but he suspected she thought he needed cheering up. Actually, maybe Jane was the one who needed cheering up, because once settled on his sofa she had seemed to have nothing to say, restlessly surfing the TV channels with the remote control.

“Aren’t you going to work today?” he asked, surprised. He’d never known Jane to call in sick to the realtor’s office where she worked.

She lifted a negligent shoulder. “They can do without me for a day or two. I don’t like the look of those clouds. I’d hate to get stranded on the other side of the bridge. In fact, if I were you, I’d think twice about going into town if you don’t have to.”

She did have a point. The bridge occasionally flooded out, but the idea of sitting around in Watson’s rooms all day…no thanks. He’d prefer sleeping in his car.

Watching Jane impatiently clicking buttons on the remote, he asked on impulse, “Did you ever hear of the ghost of Witch Hollow?”

Jane tore her gaze away from truTV. “Ghosts before lunchtime? Oh, sweetie!”

“But didn’t you tell me something about this place being haunted?”

“How irresponsible of me,” Jane murmured. “You don’t believe everything I tell you, do you?”

“About a third.”

Jane laughed. “Smart kid.” She pressed the remote control again, and a channel blasted Christmas gift ideas as it flashed by. She glanced at Perry. “I seem to recall reading something in the newspaper last year. One of those local color articles,” she admitted.

“It specifically mentioned the Alston Estate?”

Jane squinted as though she were looking into the distant past. Or perhaps she had a hangover. She didn’t look well, now that he noticed. Maybe she was ill but just couldn’t admit to needing a sick day. There were people like that; tiresome people who made a crusade out of never calling in sick and then infecting all their coworkers with the plague. Perry was sensitive to this, being one of those people who always caught whatever plague was circulating.

“I want to say yes,” Jane mused. “It was back in the twenties. Or maybe it was the forties. There was a murder or something. But it’s an old house; naturally, there’s history.”

“I never heard about any murder,” Perry said doubtfully.

“MacQueen’s hush-hush about it. Afraid it will scare prospective tenants, I guess. You know the older generation.”

If Mrs. Mac was anything to go by, the older generation was capable of licking the younger generation blindfolded and with one arm tied behind its back.

“It’s different for people of her generation,” Jane clarified. “Murder was a big scandal then.”

“Right,” said Perry, puzzling over the idea that murder was no longer a big scandal. “And so this ghost was the victim of a murder?”

Jane pressed the remote control again. “You’d have to check that out, sweetie. My memory’s a little vague.”

So that’s what Perry had decided to do. Check it out. After all, he’d read enough detective novels to know nobody ever solved a mystery sitting on his butt watching the rain strip the leaves off the trees.

He pressed the projector button and another slightly fuzzy page flashed on the wall. It could take hours or even days to find what he was looking for; if it even existed. Jane’s memory was notoriously faulty. He scanned the enlarged image for any mention of the Alston Estate, or any other historical homes in the area, and then squeezed the button once more.

This was dull work, but it gave him something to do. Something to think about besides Marcel.

He wondered how Nick was doing in Los Angeles. He wondered if he’d had his interview yet. He wondered if Nick would get the job and move to California.

Reaching the end of the reel, Perry rose, threaded the next strip of microfilm into the projector. Sitting down, he refocused the print on the wall and scowled at it. Detective work was a lot more interesting in the pages of authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Granted, he was just as glad that he didn’t have to deal with lantern-jawed tough guys beating him to a pulp, or sloe-eyed dames trying to slip him Mickey Finns.

He pressed the button.

It was starting to look like the last event of real interest at Fox Run had been the Revolutionary War. He clicked again.

And then, just as he was getting fed up, Perry came across an article concerning the local Preservation Society’s efforts to renovate homes in the area. In the same issue was a story about yuppies moving into the valley and purchasing older homes. The newspaper was about five years old.

Perry leaned forward on his elbows, reading eagerly.

Vermont’s long and colorful history can be found in the microcosm of Fox Run located in the Northeast Kingdom. Some of the area’s oldest buildings are preserved for posterity on the property formerly known as the Hennesey Farm. Now part of the Alston Estate, the 18th-century farmhouse boasts an icehouse, a dovecote, and a sun porch.

Bingo, thought Perry. He began to jot down notes.

The house was built in 1780 by Colonel Geoffrey Hennesey as a wedding present for his new bride. Hennesey, a commander in the Continental Army, died a month after the house was completed. His widow lived there alone until her own death in 1800. The lonely spirit of the lovely young widow is said to confine her nocturnal ramblings to the original structure.

Which part of the house is the original structure? wondered Perry.

During Prohibition the house sold to the investment banker Henry Alston, who extensively renovated the structure. The house was the setting for many gala society gatherings. In 1923, Alston married one of Ziegfeld’s Glorified Girls, silver-screen legend Verity Lane, and old money met new in a clash of Titans. Typically, most evenings’ amusements included hot jazz, bootlegged alcohol, and illegal gambling for the Alston’s wealthy and famous friends. The house gained notoriety during the winter of 1932, when the notorious gangster Shane Moran and his gang descended on a private party, stealing over a million dollars worth of jewels and valuables from the wealthy partygoers.

Perry whistled soundlessly. Hard to believe the dusty, dark halls of the old house had ever been alive with laughter and music.

Moran was killed by G-men in a shoot-out less than a week following the robbery. The whereabouts of the loot remains a mystery to this day.

Perry thought of Miss Dembecki prowling around in the gazebo. Surely not? Moran had escaped with his loot and had not met his violent fate till a few days later. And yet…? She had surely been searching for something – and searching in such a way that seemed to indicate she didn’t want anyone to know she was hunting.

Unsurprisingly, the ghost of Shane Moran has also been said to prowl the dusty corridors of the Alston Estate. For information on these and other ghosts, check out New England’s High Spirits and Gay Ghosts.

Perry jotted down the dates in his notebook and read the article again.

So…the house was supposedly haunted? But regardless of what David Center thought, that had been no ectoplasmic manifestation in Perry’s bathtub. Center. Perry gave a little shiver as he thought of the other man’s clammy, cold hands reaching for his.

Leaving the stuffy little room, he went out for cocoa and a quick bite at a coffee shop down the street.

He was finishing up a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries at the counter, when he noticed a big man in a blue jacket showing a photo to the waitress. The woman shook her head, and Perry glanced at the photo with casual interest. He was too far away to see anything.

The man in the blue sports coat stared idly around the diner and noticed Perry’s interested gaze. His eyes narrowed, his expression hardening.

You got a problem?

He didn’t need to say the words aloud. His look said it all. Perry’s gaze dropped to his plate. He carefully selected a French fry as though planning to award a prize to the perfect potato wedge.

Was he a cop? Perry considered this possibility and then dismissed it. The man didn’t look like a cop. He looked like an ex-football player. Nobody’s nose started out in that mashed shape, and his narrow-set eyes had a mean does-not-play-well-with-others cast to them. Never mind football player, he looked like a thug – a thug with a severely underdeveloped fashion sense. His coat was as ugly as the one worn by the dead man in Perry’s tub.

A light bulb went on. Maybe he was a P.I.

Then again, perhaps that was just a short in Perry’s thought process. Though the man looked like the down-on-their-luck private eyes in the pulp novels that he loved, it was doubtful that real P.I.s looked so stereotypical. All the same, could there be a connection between the men in the ugly sports coats? Could this guy maybe be looking for the dead man who had disappeared out of Perry’s bathtub?

Somebody must be looking for him.

Or was this all getting a little too Walter Mitty? There was no reason to believe the dead guy was either a cop or a crook. And as for the bruiser in the blue sports coat, the most likely explanation was he was a prospective buyer looking for a particular house in the area.

Anything else was pretty farfetched, right? Not everyone with criminally bad taste was a career crook. Perry turned the idea of a possible connection over in his mind while he continued to stare at his plate as though counting the remaining French fries.

At last the bruiser in the blue sports coat finished paying for his meal and let himself out the glass door with a jangle of bells. Perry turned to look through the window at the back of the out-of-towner disappearing down the tree-lined street.

“He’s a long way from home,” the waitress remarked to no one in particular.

“Where’s he from?” Perry asked.

She shrugged. “Sounded like New York to me. Buffalo maybe?”

“What was he looking for?”

“Who,” the waitress corrected. “Some girl who ran out on her husband. No one from around here, that’s for sure.”

Chapter Six

Returning to the newspaper office, Perry requested microfilm dating from 1930 from the bored Asian youth behind the desk.

The kid said, as though Perry should have known this before he wasted time asking, “He’s already using it.”

“He who?”

With a sigh, the kid shoved the clipboard Perry’s way. He read the tall, sloping letters: R. Stein.

The day was getting weirder and weirder. Mr. Stein had never struck Perry as a history buff – let alone a believer in the supernatural. The fact that he was checking out microfilm from the 1930s had to be more than a coincidence.

So maybe Perry’s line of inquiry wasn’t so far off?

He asked the kid, who had returned to his Game Boy, “Do you know if the hard copies of this stuff still exist?”

“You mean the old newspapers?”

“Yeah.”

The kid shrugged. “Not here they don’t.” With a weary patience he pointed out, “That’s the point of the microfilm.”

“Do you know if the original copies were donated to the library? Or maybe one of the colleges?”

“Nope. No idea.”

Perry thought it over. “Could you ask someone?”

“There’s no one here to ask. Everyone is busy.” Shaking his head at the insensitivity of some people, he returned to the rescue of the heroes of Golden Sun.

Perry muttered thanks and departed. Walking across the half-empty parking lot, he tried to make sense of what he had learned. Rudy Stein was an ex-cop, so maybe there would be reason for him to check out a crime-related story, but surely the time frame put his inquiry in the more-than-suspicious-coincidence category.

But more-than-suspicious how exactly? Maybe Stein was a history buff. Maybe he was writing a book about the history of Fox Run. The truth was, Perry knew very little about his fellow tenants. Since he’d arrived at the Alston Estate a little over a year ago, his life had revolved around his painting and then his Internet romance with Marcel.

Stein could be writing a book about the colorful history of the area. Miss Dembecki could have been searching for a lost earring. Or perhaps they were both hunting for Shane Moran’s missing loot.

Or maybe Perry had read too many detective novels. Maybe Stein was taking a night school course. Maybe he was curious about the ghost stories too? Maybe, being an ex-cop, his instincts were aroused? Because sure as anything, something screwy was going on at the Alston Estate.

He stopped in his tracks as he realized that Stein would have seen Perry’s name on the clipboard when he went to sign out the microfilm.

Not that there was any logical reason for Perry hiding his interest in the history of the house. After his own experience he had every reason to be curious about any ghost stories concerning his current home.

All the same, Perry sort of wished no one at the estate knew he was checking into the house’s past.

Since Stein’s presence stymied his own investigation for the moment, he climbed back into his car and drove around the block to the library.

As he was supposed to be enjoying his preciously hoarded vacation time in San Francisco, his sudden appearance was met with universal surprise. Perry felt obliged to make up a story about sudden illness in his friend’s family, and his coworkers were suitably sympathetic for a couple of minutes before being distracted by the demands of the workday. Perry was glad he hadn’t confided the true romantic purpose of his trip. It was painful enough without everyone knowing he’d been dumped.

He declined the offer of rescheduling vacation for a later date and went into the back office to check his e-mail. He logged onto the staff computer with a feeling of nervous nausea.

Sure enough, there was an e-mail from Marcel.

Perry read it on the computer monitor, heart pounding, cold sweat breaking out all over his body like he was coming down with flu.

I’m sorry, Marcel had written. I don’t know what else to say. I thought it was over between Gerry and me – maybe it is, but I have to give it one last chance. I hope we can still be friends. You are a special person in my life, and I know you will soon find someone as special as you.

Perry sat there breathing slowly and quietly, oblivious to the quiet business conducted around him.

It was over. He already knew that, but somehow seeing it in black-and-white ten-point Times New Roman made it more real. He had hoped that once they recovered from the make-up sex, Marcel and Gerry would quickly see how very wrong for each other they were. But clearly this was not the case. Even now they were probably having brunch before going for a long walk on the beach and then heading over to SFMOMA.