Ice Blues

A mile and a half down the highway no heather was in view in front of La Casa Heatherview, just a large wood sign that said LA CASA HEATHERVIEW-A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, and a snowy field bisected by a long drive leading up to two twisting configurations of stucco-and-stained-wood town houses that from the air must have looked like a set of Spanish question marks. I thought maybe it was a clue, but I doubted it. I parked the car and walked up to 2-C.
"You can leave your boots there on the rug," the irresistible Warren Slonski said, looking me over noncommittally. I gave him an equally noncommittal handshake and performed as instructed. In the age of AIDS I had been making it a practice to imagine a skull and crossbones on the forehead of every possibly available comely gay man I found myself alone with, but Slonski's kept fading in, fading out. I unlaced my scuffed Sears clodhoppers and placed them alongside Slonski's gleaming black Frye boots. In our stocking feet we moved into the living room, where I sank into the navy-blue velvet plush sofa while Slonski ambled on to the kitchen.
"What will you drink? Heineken? Beck's?"
"Beck's would be nice."
The white draperies covering the sliding glass doors were closed but fluttered in one corner where the wind leaked in. The magazines on the butcher-block coffee table were Newsweek, High Fidelity, and Opera News.
On one wall were hung plastic-encased posters from the Met; the other was taken up by polyurethaned pine record shelves filled with what looked like every opera ever composed, from Monteverdi to Einstein on the Beach, and a sound system which resembled the electronic paraphernalia that accompanied the Jacksons on their Victory tour.
"Nuts? Cheese? A sandwich?" Slonski said, delivering the beer along with a chilled pewter mug.
"No, thanks, I'm meeting some people for dinner later. The Beck's will hold me for now."
He went back to the kitchen and brought out his own bottle and mug.
I said, "Nice sound system. Nice couch. That's a nice vest you've got on too. Pucci?"
"Gucci. Gucci makes vests. Pucci makes underwear."
"Ahh." I sipped my beer.
Slonski was close to flawless in appearance. In form-fitting black slacks and a loose cotton off-white shirt, over which he wore the vest, he was neat and elegantly formed. A silky black stream curved up and out of his well-toned cleavage like a fine hair undershirt. A gift from nature, or hirsucci.
His clean-shaven face had the thickness of central Europe in it but with pleasing proportions and alert gray eyes under short blue-black hair with just a touch of punk in the styling. Slonski looked like an advertisement for himself. His only visible defect was a small wartlike discoloration, presumably not venereal, on the left side of his nose. And, of course, the skull and crossbones on his forehead.
He looked at me and said, "I know about you."
"What do you know?"
"That you were at Herb Brinkman's pool party last summer. With your lover.
You made a big impression on Jack."
I said, "I'm very sorry about Jack."
He gazed at me levelly for a few seconds, then said, "Yes. I am too." He sipped his beer.
"You never expect someone you've been close to to be killed."
Watching me steadily, he said, "What do you have to do with this?"
"I'm not sure. I'm trying to find that out myself. That's why I've come out here to talk with you. At first I thought Jack's body being left in my car was just possibly a coincidence. But I don't believe that anymore." I thought, should I show him the letter, tell him about the suitcases? I decided no, I would spare Slonski my guilty knowledge for the time being in order to protect him-or myself-from-I didn't yet know what.
"I didn't believe for a minute that Jack's dying in your car was a coincidence," Slonski said. "In July Jack told me you were a private detective. He seemed unusually interested in that-as if he might have occasion one day to employ your services."
"Did he say why?"
"He never actually said even that much. Now that he's been killed I can see that that's what he must have meant. That he was in some kind of trouble that a private detective might help him get out of. Trouble with-I can't imagine who, if it's not dope sellers, which I am certain it is not. But that's hindsight. Last summer I was sure Jack's interest in you must have been sexual." He watched me.
"No. Not that I was aware of. And I usually pick right up on that."
"Do you?"
"Oh, sure."
More beer. "Jack was the most important person in my life for almost two years. In many ways, the only important person in my life. I don't see my family anymore, and before I met Jack I had always been largely self-sufficient emotionally."
"Some people manage to pull that off."
He shook his head. "I regarded my self-sufficiency as a character flaw. I worked systematically to overcome it and I succeeded. That's the way I do things, logically and systematically. "
"I understand that you're a chemical engineer at GE. What kind of stuff do you work on?"
He kept studying me. He hadn't looked away once. The tension in the room was terrific and I wasn't sure where he was heading. He said, "It was very hard for me when Jack left."
"I'm sure it was."
Now he gazed down at the mug in his fist and said, "Were you sleeping with Jack?" No.
His face came up with a hard quizzical look. "Then what were you doing with him?"
"Nothing. Until Wednesday evening, when I discovered his body in my car at Faxon Towing and Storage, I hadn't seen Jack since the Fourth of July.
When I first saw his body I didn't even realize who he was. Was sexual jealousy the reason you and Jack split up?"
He sighed, shook his head, and looked perplexed but a little less tense. He swigged down more beer, which he was taking in a little faster than he might have. "No, that wasn't the problem," he said. "That's just an idea I came up with at the time. It was an explanation that made sense."
"Explanation for what?"
"Jack's behavior. His brooding, his quitting school, his shutting me out.
This is getting crazier and crazier. You don't know anything about this, do you? You really don't."
"Not much, no. I have my own reasons for gathering the facts about Jack's final months, some obvious, some not. You thought maybe there was another man who was affecting Jack's life?"
He took another drink and slung a shapely thigh over the arm of his chair.
"Jack was so irritable and hard to get along with. Naturally I thought it was guilt. I arrived at that naive conclusion because in my other past relationships-the few brief ones I'd had-that's the way I acted when I was feeling guilty about something. Men, usually. Except, Jack swore there were no other men. He said his sex life with me was everything any man could possibly ever desire."
He spoke these words as though they comprised a mere point of information. I said, "Uh-huh."
"And then I–I shouldn't have brought it up, but I asked him if he was dealing drugs again. I suppose you know, he used to."
"I know."
"Jack went right through the roof when I mentioned drugs, because he'd promised me when we moved in together that he wouldn't do that, and Jack's word was important to him. I think I can say that Jack valued honesty above all else. It's probably because of his grandfather's shady past, but he had what I would consider an almost neurotic need to be open and direct about the most important things in his life. And when I asked about drugs-and all I did was ask — Jack was terribly, terribly hurt."