The Next(44)

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.