On the Other Hand, Death

"You seem resigned, Mrs. Wilson."
"Kay. Crane calls me Kay. Yeah, I know we're screwed. Hell with it anyway. Old Dot Fisher, she's not gonna give in. She's one tough old cookie, Dot is."
"She says you used to visit her sometimes."
"Yeah, I know Dot. We got no water pressure here sometimes, so I go down and draw from Dot's spring. She's real nice. I always liked talking to her. I damn near shit a brick—pardon my French, Bob—when I saw on the TV last year Dot was one of those women goes for her own. She never laid a hand on me, I'll say that much for her. Knew she hadn't better try, I s'pose, with Bill around. I ain't been down to her place for a time. Bill's mad at her, so why start trouble when you got enough already." She gulped from the Pabst can and fanned her face with the Enquirer.
"I guess," I said, "you don't know about what's been going on at Dot's place in the past twenty-four hours." I explained about the graffiti and the threats. She listened with big eyes and an open mouth.
"Now that stinks!" she said when I'd finished. "That just makes me want to puke. Now who on God's green
earth would want to go ahead and pull a stunt like that?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm a private investigator. "
"A cop?" She looked startled. "You said you worked for Crane."
"I do. I'm a private detective on assignment for . . . Crane. He asked me, as a matter of fact, to drop by here, Kay, and convey his warmest personal regards to both you and Mr. Wilson. And to ask you and your husband if you had any idea who might be harassing Dot and Mrs. Stout. Crane is disgusted by what happened, and he wants to put a stop to it." I nearly added, "He's paying me ten," but didn't.
"That Crane, he's quite a guy," she said, nodding and wistfully remembering. "Tell him we'll have him over again real soon, soon as ol' Kay gets herself organized. I'm on the two-shift at Annie Lee till Labor Day and when I get home I'm just too pooped to pop. But after Labor Day I can draw unemployment again, and then I'm gonna just lay back and take it easy for a time—shoot, I've earned it—and then Bill and I'll start having people in again."
"I'll pass the word. I take it, Kay, there's no one you know who might be mad enough at Dot Fisher to threaten her in any way to try to force her our of the neighborhood. Or is there?"
"Oh, boy," she said, making a face. "Oh, boy. Oh, boy." She nodded at her beer as she considered the possibilities. "Well," she said with a snort, "there's Wilson. Or he was mad, anyways. A month ago Bill was so P.O.'ed with Dot Fisher I was afraid he was gonna march right down there and just slug her one. A couple of times, as a matter of fact, he'd had a few drinks and was really gonna go down there and do it. Just pop her one, show her who's boss. He'd've done it too—used to try the rough stuff on me thirty years ago until my brother Moose
hadda set Wilson straight one night. Hasn't laid a finger on me since then, and knows he hadn't better try.
"Anyways, Wilson says he's gonna go down there and pop Dot, he says. Well, I just put a stop to that right then and there. I said, Bill, I'll call the cops on you, you dumb son of a bitch. And I meant it! Even if she deserved it, Dot's an old lady and it wouldn't've been right. Anyways, Bill got over it after a while—finally got it through his thick skull that the old lez wasn't gonna give in, and he just said the hell with it.
"Coulda used the dough, though. I mean, could we ever! But then Bill went off on some other tangent of his a week or so back. Some hotshot idea of his that's gonna make us rich, so he says. So then he forgot all about Dot and Millpond. Bob, I wish I had a nickel for every time Bill Wilson was gonna make me a rich woman."
"Where does Bill work?" I asked. "What does he do?"
"Presently," she said, popping the tab on the second Pabst she'd brought out, "Bill is employed at the Drexon plant. He's a forklift operator. Bill's the restless type, though, so who knows where he'll be next week. Wilson wants so awful much to get ahead. He asked Crane if Millpond had anything, and Crane said he'd keep an eye open for the right spot for Bill. Crane didn't mention anything about that to you, did he?"
"I'm sorry. He didn't."
She laughed, but not with amusement. "Sure. Well . . . Bill means well. He's got all that Wilson energy. If he could just learn to apply himself ..." She looked away wistfully, then back at me. "Know what I mean, Bob?"
I nodded knowingly. She watched me, then grunted, knowing I knew that we both knew that Bill Wilson was not, at his age—mid-fifties, I now guessed his wife to be—going to get into the habit of "applying himself." Though I did wonder what Wilson had applied himself to
lately that might make the Wilsons rich. And if Crane Trefusis had, in fact, found a "spot" for him that he hadn't mentioned to Kay.
I said, "Were you at home last night, Kay?"
"Sure. Why do you ask that?"
"I thought you or your husband might have heard some unusual traffic after midnight sometime. I don't suppose you get a lot of cars going back and forth on Moon Road. Was Bill here too?"
She cocked a moist yellow drawing of an eyebrow. "Course, Bill was here. Nah, we didn't hear nothin'. Hey—where'd you think Bill was? He's my husband, iznee? Think he was out foolin' around with some woman who's younger and better-lookin'?"
"I thought maybe he'd worked late."
"I'll bet you did, ha-ha." She gave me a significant look. "The fact is, Bob," she said in a confidential tone, "my husband don't play around no more. And neither do I. At least . . . not a whole lot." She eyed me ap-praisingly, the pink tip of her tongue protruding from between lightly clamped teeth. Her leg shifted, and the National Enquirer slid to the floor. She said, "Every wunst in a while, Bob, I do meet a man who finds me quite sexy for an older woman. Somethin' like that Joan Collins on Dynasty. And if that man is someone I myself consider to be attractive . . . we-l-l-l-l ..."
I said, "I'm gay."
"Huh?"
"I'm a homophile."
"What kinda file?
"I go for men. Like Dot Fisher goes for women. I'm a homosexual. 'Gay,' we call it. Even if The New York Times won't. Kay, I'm a fruit."
After a confused couple of seconds, it hit her, and she threw her head back and whooped with laughter. "Oh,
shoot, ha! ha! Oh, that's a good one kid, ha! ha! Oh, fer— that's the first time any man ever dropped that one on me!"
She laughed and coughed uproariously for a good minute, then gradually settled down and gave me a sweet, understanding look.
"You don't have to say a thing like that about yourself, Bob. Truly. Shoot, I know I'm not as attractive as I used to be." She tried to smile again.
"None of us is," I said, knowing that some people did age beautifully—Timmy would, I could tell already—and that others, like Kay Wilson, peaked in physical allure at the age of thirty, or twenty, or fourteen.
We spent a not entirely relaxed couple of minutes exchanging cliches on aging, and then I took out from my wallet a photo of Timmy and me, arms entwined, at the 1978 gay-pride parade in New York City. She studied it with lips pursed and kept looking up at me to see if I was really the man in the picture. Finally, satisfied that I was, she relaxed suddenly, grinned, and said, "Ho-boy. You're somethin', Bob. Hyo-boy. Wait'll the girls out at the home hear about this one."