(Death in the Rockies
is a ten-chapter novella, the last chapter of which will be post by the end of the first week in October 2011
)
I was coming up from a fog; I could hear the buzzing, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was and was struggling with whether I should even care. Where was I and what was I doing when I drifted off? It was dark in the room, but the curtains weren't drawn over the window, so the blue and yellow alternating flashing of the neon sign across the canyon of the street was bathing the room in pulsing, if soft-focus, light, and the noise of not-yet-dead-of-the-night traffic was drifting up from several stories below. I forced my eyes open and saw the bullet head, with the buzz cut, the nose that probably had been broken several times and indifferently set, the scar running from lower eyelid and over the cheek toward the cauliflower ear. Much too close though, and the breath smelled like a beer hall on the morning after. Pulling my head back, I was now staring into a blue-and-black-ink tattoo of a grinning skull on the side of his neck.
Looking down along his body, I saw that he was virtually nude, had the musculature of a body builder, and was breathing deeply and snoring slightly in repose. My own body, stretched along his, was turned slightly toward him as we lay full out on the bed, and I could see that I had my forearm running across his belly and was holding his generous-sized genitals. He had black leather cuffs at his wrists and was wearing heavy hob-nail boots.
In bed. In my bed. Ah, I was remembering at least that much. The room did have a familiarity now that I thought of it. My own bedroom. I hadn't had the small apartment near the village in New York City for long, though, and I had no intention of making this a permanent, or even long-term residence, so I forgave myself the slow uptake.
My head was throbbing, and I was still in a half haze. I'd either drunk too much or not quite enough. I couldn't figure out which. I had the notion that I would have been better off going one way or the other.
I was, however, beginning to remember bits and pieces of the earlier hours of the evening. I was on my way somewhere, but I was out of sorts and stopped in at Benny's on my way for some fortification.
I wondered briefly why'd I'd been out of sorts. The buzzing had stopped but now had started again and I wondered about that. The guy lying next to me snorted in his sleep, and I pulled my hand way from his balls, but I didn't wonder about what he was doing here. I felt that was strange even as I wasn't wondering—I didn't recognize him as anyone I knew. But I felt the pressure to think of something else—and maybe more than one something else—as being more important to think about just then. Somehow I knew that figuring out who this guy was and what he was doing in my bed wasn't my highest priority. Fundamentally, I knew I was the champion of the one night stand. And I wasn't at all surprised this guy was in my bed. He had a monster cock and muscles—and tattoos. Those were almost always enough reason for me—all together or individually.
About all a guy had to do was unzip and pull out something that size and tell me he wanted me, and I was good to go. I had learned long ago that they call guys like me satyriacs, and the sound of that word still made me laugh. I didn't make excuses for it; it was what it was. So, for the most part, I just enjoyed it. Sometimes I concerned myself a bit about not being able to be steady with one guy—and I almost got there once, with Brad. But thinking about that made my head pound so I willed it away.
How had this motorcycle guy type gotten here, though, I wondered. And why did I feel pangs of guilt about that? It had been some time, years, since I'd felt guilty about bringing guys home and letting them fuck me. Even guys I didn't know—especially guys I didn't know. But somehow my mind was telling me I should be someplace else.
But en route to someplace else I'd stopped at Benny's, one of the rougher clientele bars near police headquarters. And I'd been in a deep funk. Yeah, right, now I remembered. It was that thought of not feeling guilty for some time. There was a time when I would have felt guilty, when life was more steady and I was monogamous—if only briefly.
This was Brad's birthday. Brad had been my partner—in more ways than one. This had been in the years when I'd cared enough to live someplace that wasn't a six-floor walkup bathed in blue and yellow pulsing neon lighting from the building across the street. Brad had been murdered two years ago, and I'd been on a downward spiral ever since. Cleaned up his murder, I had, but I was his partner and hadn't been on the ball in our case. If I had been, maybe we would have gotten the guy before he got Brad.
Today was Brad's birthday. I was supposed to go someplace where they were celebrating—not Brad's birthday, but something else I couldn't help being bitter about. And maybe if it wasn't supposed to be a happy time—a beginning—on Brad's birthday, I wouldn't have concentrated on it being an ending—or at least a "never can be again." Maybe I wouldn't have felt so sorry for myself. And maybe I wouldn't have stopped at Benny's for some fortitude.
