Layworth would probably react in horror and reject him. Marzoli had worked his entire life to compensate for his distortions, and now for the sake of the investigation as well as his own career, he was probably about to be humiliated in the worst possible way by the kind of successful, educated, prosperous, white man he'd worked his entire scrappy life to measure up to. To top it off, another man he'd only recently started to care for would be witnessing his humiliation from across the courtyard.
As I applied cover-up to his inner thigh, he started to giggle from the tickle. He interrupted by cupping my jaw in his hands and curling down to plant a kiss on my lips.
"Continue," he said, straightening back up.
I patted more of the makeup on a particularly spider-webbed portion of skin on this upper thigh, robbed of any hair. I hadn't yet drummed up the strength to tell him what I'd seen the night before and felt horrible. I could spare him this humiliation. I could, and possibly lose him in the process.
Does every good thing come with a sacrifice?
Layworth had spent the morning ushering his wife and kids out the door and participating in a conference call, adding the element of suspense as to whether or not we'd get round two with Layworth before the kids came back from school again.
When one o'clock rolled around, we saw the Couch Potato open his front door. Tall, smooth, sly, and steamy, Schlongzilla sauntered into his apartment carrying his off-white collapsible massage table. They shook hands. The Couch Potato was clearly frenetic with excitement, while Schlongzilla was so supremely confident he might as well have been folding laundry.
The Couch Potato approached the window and tried to close the curtains, but in his frantic nervousness he pulled too hard and the entire aluminum bar collapsed on his head. He comically became entangled in the curtain as he tried to undrape himself. There'd be no privacy for him.
Schlongzilla cocked the table open, secured the legs, inserted the headrest, and whipped open a crisp white sheet. It floated down to the padding like a sail and revealed the Couch Potato, quivering in his nakedness, now freed from the curtain. His white rotund belly flopped over his pubic area. He was sweating and flushed in the face. Schlongzilla pulled off his tight white tee and exposed his dark smooth washboard abs, then patted the table. If he did this with the intent of putting his client at ease, he failed. The Couch Potato's knees shook. Schlongzilla put his hand on his fleshy back and prodded him to the table, assisted him horizontally, and then covered his body with a plush white towel. The poor Potato quivered out of control. The masseur rested his hands on his chest and thigh and pressed, holding the pressure, until at last Couch Potato stopped shaking. Schlongzilla then dropped trou, suspended his anaconda in front of the Couch Potato's eyes, and pressed deeply into the top of his squishy chest.
After kneading his chest, his shoulders, and his arms, Schlongzilla bent down and whispered a question into his ear. The Couch Potato nodded, barely containing his wild enthusiasm.
Schlongzilla withdrew from his bag a bottle of oil.
Down to the right of that apartment, the Princess emerged from her bathroom in a pink silk bathrobe. She sat at her silver dressing table and looked into the mirror, holding her gaze there for a minute. Her wet mane hung straight down in front of her breasts. Her expression was white hot in anger … or sadness … or both. She withdrew a long pair of scissors.
Marzoli looked at me with amusement, although I was alarmed.
"What do you see that I'm not seeing?" I asked.
"The chain."
I looked on her dresser and spied a set of keys attached to a long thick metal chain which was meant to be clipped onto the belt loop of a pair of jeans. I'd never seen it on her person or her dresser. What did that mean to Marzoli?
The Princess gripped a hand full of hair. She began to saw through the clump with the scissors only an inch from her scalp. Long strands fell to the floor. Something was ending in her life. Or something was just beginning …
Suddenly the door opened in the Couch Potato's apartment.
Oh hell!
The other Potato had returned from his trip a lot earlier than his partner had anticipated. Schlongzilla stopped spreading the oil over his client's wide, white body, and looked up nonplussed. The Oiled Potato sprang up as quickly as his mass would allow, wrapping the towel around himself, hiding the hard little pink stinger sticking out underneath his belly. But the towel wasn't long enough to wrap around his waist, so he dropped it and frantically wrapped the fallen curtain around himself. The curtain rod, which was still braided through the curtain loops, swung around and slammed into Schlongzilla's knees, sending him down to the floor.
The New Potato fired his traveling wardrobe bag across the room toward his partner violently. It hit him, and the bag's hook snagged on the curtain. The enraged Potato retrieved the bag with a forceful yank, and ripped the curtain away, revealing how slathered in oil his crotch was. It seemed Schlongzilla had succeeded in oiling all of him …
Shouting commenced, mostly unintelligible, but punctured by vocabulary like betrayed, the minute I turn my back, and I'm leaving. The Oiled Potato whimpered at first, and then began defending himself more and more vehemently using phrases like we never touch, twenty years, and I deserve...
As the argument escalated, Schlongzilla silently collected his bag and towel and packed his bag. Suddenly the red-faced New Potato flipped the massage table upside down, and began to kick in the supports and the legs.
"Stop!" Schlongzilla yelled, his one word puncturing the courtyard.
Hearing this, the Princess, the Beached Whale, and Mr. Layworth paused.
The enraged New Potato pushed the approaching Black Brazilian against the wall with surprising force and picked up the table. He approached the window and flung it open.
"No!" Schlongzilla and the Oiled Potato simultaneously cried.
Marzoli and I watched the wooden padded table plummet down the side of the building in an arc, hit the brick wall at the bottom, and splinter with an echoing crack.
The neighbors all looked up to see the source of the disturbance, but most couldn't see the window from their apartments. They paused, waiting for another dramatic event to follow, or at the very least another piece of furniture to fall. But nothing fell. Schlongzilla exited the Potatoes' door naked, his bag, shirt, and sweatpants in his hands. Shortly after the New Potato unzipped his wardrobe bag, stuffed some underwear and a sky-blue tee into it, and headed out the door, slamming it behind him, leaving the Oiled Potato whimpering and pleading.
There was a bracing silence.
Seconds later, the neighbors resumed their activities, unfazed: Mr. Perfect to his phone call, the Princess to her scissors, and the Beached Whale to her television. The Oiled Potato picked up his cell phone, crying. He dialed. Received no answer. Hung up. Dialed. Waited. Hung up. And again. And again. And again.
Marzoli squeezed my hand.
I wondered exactly what Marzoli was saying through that squeeze. That he hoped in twenty years we never experience something like that? Did he even want to see me after the investigation, let alone twenty years? That he figured I idealized the Couch Potatoes for their tranquility, and this illusion was now punctured? Or that he was as surprised as I was at how deep the passions ran between these two seemingly docile partners, masked beneath the pasta and reality television?
"Look!" Marzoli whispered, pointing in the direction of the Little Old Man's apartment.
The only neighbor who was home and had not gotten up to investigate the drama in their courtyard was the Little Old Man. He remained still on his bed, staring ahead at the painting. He'd not even turned his head.
"Are you going to call it in?" I asked.
But I didn't need to even ask. Marzoli was already on his phone reporting that a man appeared dead in the rear basement apartment of that building. His tone was detached and matter-of-fact. This kind of reporting was as routine to him as flossing. However, as he spoke, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, picked up the pillow I used to block the view into the Little Old Man's apartment, and tossed it onto the couch. I would no longer need to be irritated by that view. Apparently, Marzoli knew this whole time exactly why I'd placed it there.
Rather than feeling in any way relieved of any irritation The Little Old Man might have caused, I felt a pang of sadness. I'd grown invested in his life in the last couple days. In his habits, his oddities, and his mystery. He'd wanted this gold-framed painting his whole life. He'd sacrificed his life savings to finally get it, spent a day absorbed in it, and then died. I couldn't help but wonder …
"Drop!" Marzoli blurted, pulling on a pair of tight blue workout shorts with white vertical stripes on the sides.