The Trouble With Hairy, page 4
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
Her only concession to an insidious sweet tooth came with the realization that sweets made with sugar alone usually contained little fat. As a physician, Becky was well aware of the process by which the human body eventually converts sugars into fats. However, she reasoned, with a judicious increase in her exercise regimen, she could easily burn off the sugar as energy well before the disturbing metamorphosis into even chubbier thighs could occur. Unfortunately, although she had fully intended to renew her gym membership, purchased under duress the previous year, she soon found that the Road to Health Club was, indeed, paved with naught but good intentions.
As her diet progressed, she began to replace the tasteless dried fruit with jams and jellies, mounded onto whole wheat bread. She abandoned Lean Cuisine lunches, which contained as much as twenty-five grams of fat, in favor of slices of angel food cake soaked in Hershey’s chocolate syrup, which contained only two. Finally, she discovered the now ubiquitous designer peppermint sticks in a variety of flavors and colors and developed a mild addiction, making sure to have at least a half dozen of them with her at all times. They helped, but despite the slight assuaging of her insatiable sweet tooth, she still looked upon the Twinkies and crème-filled chocolate cupcakes of her recent past with sad longing and regret.
She finished dressing, and grimacing at the wrinkles, she shrugged into her lab coat, which she’d wadded into a ball and tossed onto the sofa the night before.
Yeah, she thought as she grabbed a handful of dietetic candy from the bowl on the coffee table to buck her up for the drive to the scene of her most recent patient’s demise. It’s been a hell of a year.
CHAPTER 2
“Honey…” Troy Raleigh ran his hands through his blond curls as he came out of the bedroom. “We have simply got to move.”
Christopher Driscoll looked up and removed the handle of the paint-covered brush from where he’d been holding it clenched between his teeth. “Please, monkey. Let’s not start that again.” Chris stood back and critically examined his work. He’d taken up oil painting a few weeks ago with the same enthusiasm he tackled each of his variegated hobbies.
To Troy’s great consternation, Chris rushed out to buy canvasses, paints, thinners and brushes en masse, setting up a makeshift studio on top of the huge wooden dining room table Troy had managed to cram into the dining nook of their small one-bedroom apartment. Through long experience, Troy recognized that the degree of enthusiasm with which his lover tackled a new project was inversely proportional to the time it would take for Chris, utterly bored, to abandon it in favor of new pursuits.
In the scant nine months since they’d arrived in West Hollywood, Troy had watched with affectionate tolerance as Chris had gone from one hobby to the next. He’d begun with the novel concept of creating lamps from household objects that, in most people’s wildest dreams, could not conceivably be wired for electricity. As a result, one end table sported a bright red plumber’s helper, graced by a red and white checkered lamp shade. Chris’ second attempt involved a rusted old fire extinguisher. The living room walls still bore the scars caused by flying metal resulting from the explosion of the canister when Chris had attacked it with a hammer and chisel to insert the electrical wire, completely forgetting to first empty out the pressurized gas. The flame-smothering foam had sprayed everywhere, staining the couch, and chunks of the exploded metal ripped through one of the upholstered chairs and sliced Chris’ favorite shirt, not to mention his upper body, into ribbons. Fortunately, Troy had escaped injury, having been in the shower at the time.
Chris preferred not to discuss the incident. He promptly purchased another fire extinguisher, emptying it first this time and, all in all, remained inordinately proud of the results of his electrical labors.
The lamp making had soon paled in favor of the intriguing possibilities inherent in a lump of raw clay. It was during Chris’ sculpting fixation that he had commandeered the top of the dining table. Since it was so large, and the nook in which it sat was so small, they had been unable to use it, as there was no space for chairs to be placed around it. But Troy had fallen in love with it at a local furniture shop and asked them to haul it home as a housewarming surprise for Chris; Chris hadn’t had the heart to demand the gift be returned. Shortly after the table’s arrival, Chris purchased a small potter’s wheel, having recently seen the movie Ghost, and became convinced that, somewhere deep inside, he possessed the artistic talent to create great works of sculpture. He’d spent two weeks happily covering himself and the table top with splotches of wet clay.
The potter’s wheel had gone the way of the 35 millimeter cameras and the various musical instruments Chris had sporadically tried to learn how to play; all were sitting in a jumbled heap at the bottom of the hall closet or shoved to the back of the kitchen cabinets. The only positive result of his clay creations had been a set of lopsided dinner plates that, since Chris had no use for them, Troy had quietly wrapped up and delivered to Pamela Burman’s office as a replacement for her wedding china, smashed in the altercation with Rex Castillian in October.
From his fascination with clay, Chris progressed to an obsession with geology. He’d stumbled upon an electric rock polisher during a trip to the Century City Mall. Passing The Nature Company, he saw a T-shirt emblazoned with silkscreened fruit bats hanging in the window. He intended to go in and purchase the shirt for Troy and instead emerged an hour later shirt in hand and carrying almost a thousand dollars worth of geology books, semi-precious stones and the infamous rock polisher. For the next week, he spent most evenings walking down the streets of West Hollywood, bent almost double in his search for interesting looking bits of rock and gravel. As a result of his labors, Chris and Troy were now the proud owners of the largest collection of polished concrete and broken asphalt in Southern California and, possibly, in the entirety of the United States.
Troy began to plot complicated forms of revenge on the shareholders of The Nature Company as Chris’ interest in rocks gave way to a fascination with fossils. Having purchased a reproduction skull of a saber-toothed tiger, Chris was determined to — somehow, somewhere — unearth his own authentic tiger skull. As the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum were located less than three miles from the apartment, he’d spent several nights sneaking onto the grounds and lurking about in the shrubbery next to the gift shop. The daytime gardeners suffered no end of consternation as they repaired the damage from Chris’ mad digging up of the rose bushes in the wee morning hours in search of the elusive skull. Fortunately, the interest faded even more quickly than usual and Chris relinquished his quest before the museum curator was able to organize a plan to catch the mysterious midnight destroyer of the county’s horticulture.
Paleontology was replaced with astronomy that, in turn, vanished in favor of butterfly collecting. This was followed by bird watching, which was quickly abandoned as an inappropriate hobby due to Chris’ limitations on functioning during the day. He finally left the sciences behind altogether, at least for a while, and turned to matchbook collecting, followed by Barbie dolls and baseball cards. Eventually Chris’ brief obsessions came full circle, and his interests returned to the world of fine art.
Chris was currently consumed by the bizarre notion that he had hitherto unrevealed hidden talents as a painter. His first work was a weird impressionistic piece that, with great difficulty and only after Chris had explained it to him, Troy realized represented a bowl of fruit next to a vase of flowers. Figuring that discretion was truly the better part of valor, and with great ceremony and endless squeals of appreciation, Troy had hung the wretchedly ugly thing between the Botticelli and the framed Dracula poster Chris had gotten for his last birthday.
Now, however, Chris was painstakingly working on what was supposed to be a portrait of Troy, even though to Troy, the painting resembled nothing so much as a scarecrow topped with a mound of lemon-yellow hair.
“I can’t get into the closet.” Troy pursed his pixie-like mouth into a not unattractive pout.
“Why would you want to go back in there after all these years?” Chris asked lightly as he daubed once again at the canvass, frowning at a smear of green paint that ended up where he’d never intended it to be.
“I’m serious!” Troy stamped his foot for emphasis. “I have to stand on the lid of your bed, and you’ll yell at me if I scratch the finish.”
The “bed” to which Troy was referring was a richly lacquered oak coffin, which Troy had given Chris for his hundred forty-something odd birthday in November. It had originally been made for the 1922 stage production of Dracula on Broadway, starring Bela Lugosi, and Troy borrowed the money to buy it from Chris’ friend Sylvia in New York. He had finally finished paying her back a month ago, overriding her objections that repayment was unnecessary. As far as Troy was concerned, if Sylvia absorbed the cost, the coffin would somehow not be a gift from Troy to Chris.
The coffin was narrow, constructed for a single person, and Chris was able to fit inside comfortably only because, in the modern world, he was slightly shorter than average. Troy’s feelings about it were somewhat conflicting. On the one hand, the coffin was too small to fit the both of them comfortably no matter how closely they snuggled. On the other hand, Chris much preferred to sleep in the Dracula coffin, which secretly pleased Troy to no end, knowing his gift was highly appreciated.
And so they compromised. Whenever Troy was going to be out during the daylight hours or whenever Chris was extremely tired — too tired for sex — he used the antique. When they slept together, they used what Troy referred to as the “guest bedroom,” a huge double-sided casket they’d had shipped from the town house in Philadelphia. Troy always made certain they used the guest bedroom at least three or four times a week.
“If you’d pick those bags of clothes up off the floor, maybe you could walk around the beds and get to the closet,” said Chris pointedly and turned back to his easel.
Troy was not to be dissuaded. “That closet is too small,” he announced petulantly. “And those bags are stuff I haven’t been able to wear yet.” He drew himself up to his full height of five-six-and-a-half. “Because…” He paused for dramatic effect. “There’s no more room in the closet. If I can’t see them, how can I decide whether or not I want to wear them?”
Chris sighed and put down his brushes in resignation. “Oh well, I can’t seem to get the eyebrows right anyhow.” He hopped nimbly down off the table and walked toward the bedroom. “Isn’t there something in there you can get rid of?”
Troy followed him dutifully. Weaving his way around the piles of bags from International Male, The Sporting Club and Nordstrom’s, past the stacks of vinyl records and eight-track tapes, compact discs, cassettes, video tapes, and DVDs, careful not to step on any of the various and sundry other toys his lover had purchased at one time or another during the past fifty years, Chris had to admit to himself that, indeed, they had just about outgrown the one bedroom apartment on Harper Avenue into which, it seemed to Chris, they’d moved only yesterday.
They’d come to California with nothing but the double coffin, a few essentials, like Troy’s collection of movies and show tunes, his signed autographs of long-defunct movie stars, and a dozen or so suitcases containing those pieces of Troy’s wardrobe with which he couldn’t bear to part. They’d left everything else in the almost totally refurbished and restored townhouse in Philly. However, since Troy’s second favorite sport, after sex, was driving Chris’ seemingly limitless charge cards far up beyond their limits, the number of their personal possessions had increased exponentially, and the apartment had grown more cramped with each passing month.
Troy had been begging Chris to consider moving to larger quarters since Christmas. But Chris allowed his stubborn streak to triumph. He loudly and repeatedly stated that since he’d been shanghaied by Troy and Becky into permanently relocating to California less than a year ago, he had no intention of packing everything up and moving again. But, Troy’s strong constitution when it came to shopping — assisted by the addition of the second coffin, the rapidly mounting piles of designer clothing worn once and then tossed aside, the multiplying stacks of music and movies and the plethora of framed classic film posters — finally won out and even Chris was forced to admit that, yes, perhaps, they could use some extra space.
Chris, however, had not yet informed Troy of his decision to move and instead decided to make one last try at convincing him to get rid of some of the junk, giving them more room to breathe, so to speak. He yanked open the closet door with difficulty.
“What about this?” he asked, pulling out a mass of bright blue velvet trimmed in white satin.
“That’s my bathrobe!” Troy was indignant, pressing one hand to his throat in a fair approximation of a blushing virgin’s outrage by a suitor while wearing nothing but her unmentionables.
Chris arched an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with taking a bath naked?”
Troy abandoned his posturing in a flash, put one arm around Chris’ waist and rested his head on his shoulder. “Oh, I love it when you talk dirty.”
Chris ruffled Troy’s curls affectionately and turned back to the closet. He pulled out another garment.
“I’ve never seen you wear this.”
“This,” announced Troy with great gravity, taking the heap of orange and yellow material from him, “is a caftan. They were very popular in the sixties. It’s just a matter of time before they come back in style… Wait! What’re you doing?”
Chris had buried his head and upper body in the closet and emerged bearing an oversized armload of T-shirts in every possible color of the rainbow, some of which seemed to be the results of some mad designer’s failed experiments in bringing colors from the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum to wash and wear clothing.
“Get rid of these?” he suggested.
“Over your dead body, Mary!” Troy grabbed at the pile, spilling cotton, silk and polyester shirts onto the top of the coffin.
“You hardly ever wear a shirt to begin with,” Chris protested, amused at Troy’s refusal to give up even one of his precious outfits. Even now Troy was, as usual, bare-chested, his tightly muscled little chest puffed up in outrage. “In fact,” Chris continued, “the only thing you do wear is those god-awful shorts.” He was referring to Troy’s favorite cut-off jeans. Troy had owned them since 1971 and they were the only item of clothing that he could be counted on to wear with any regularity. Chris was amazed they hadn’t rotted off of him years ago. “Maybe you could get rid of them?”
“But, someday,” Troy explained, as if the logic was self evident, “I might want to wear a shirt. Then where would I be?”
Chris grabbed him around the waist from behind and hoisted him into the air, swinging him around while clothing continued to spill from his arms. Troy giggled madly as Chris finally stopped playing airplane with him and hugged him close to his chest.
“All right, monkey,” Chris conceded, nuzzling his face into the nape of Troy’s neck and inhaling his scent. “You win. We’ll move.”
Troy twisted around and grabbed Chris around the neck, kissing him full on the mouth. As Troy’s tongue probed deeper and deeper, Chris lost his balance. Neither one willing to break the clinch, they wobbled for a few seconds, and still locked together, they toppled over onto the lid of the double-sided coffin with a muffled thump.
Finally, Troy had to come up for air. “While we’re in this position…” he hinted lasciviously. Chris smiled, and twisting around so that he and Troy were head to toe, he began nibbling gently at Troy’s bare feet. Ten seconds later, Troy was squirming with delight. Slowly he worked his way upwards until he reached the ragged edges of the cut-offs. He stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Troy asked between pants.
“You know,” Chris said lackadaisically, “I’ve never liked these shorts. I think I’ll skip that part.”
“Don’t you dare, Gladys!” Troy said with all the authority he could muster. He hoisted his hips and in one smooth, practiced motion, skinned out of the shorts, sending them sailing off to land in a far corner of the room.
“You just go right back to doing what you were doing. You hear me?” he said firmly.
With a smile, Chris figured he had no choice but to comply.
He’d met Troy back in 1953. Always more than a little on the flamboyant side, Troy had been totally ignorant of his homosexuality until he reached the age of twenty-six, when it had irrevocably popped up to hit him in the face. In front of the whole town, the sister of his recently deceased employer had confronted him with it and fired him on the spot. Bewildered by the woman’s allegations, Troy had returned home to his brother’s house only to discover how fast scandal travels; his bags had been packed for him and were waiting outside on the front porch.
With very little money, and at his wit’s end trying to think of somewhere he could go, he’d checked into one of the few hotels in town and begun the fruitless task of looking for a job. But Wetherby, South Carolina was a small town. The rumors of Troy’s depravity were grist for the rumor mill, and he was ostracized by the people he’d grown up with. As the weeks passed he grew desperately lonely, frightened, and finally, found himself mere days away from penury.
Chris, however, had been suffering from different problems. Having experienced the horrors of the American Civil War first hand, only to have them repeated to a greater degree in Nazi Germany, he’d been wearily wandering the American south, seeking the age-old answer to the question of why mankind was so inhumanly cruel to members of his own species. Disgusted and sickened by what he had witnessed during the Second World War, he had resolved that he could no longer continue living in such a violent, inhuman world, and for some time, had been contemplating trying to do away with himself.
Their first meeting had occurred one evening in the dining room of Troy’s hotel. Chris had been instantly smitten by Troy’s childlike fascination with ordinary life; it renewed his own desire to continue and provided him with a fresh outlook. Troy had simply been smitten. Three generations later, Chris still couldn’t fathom the reasons. What human being, he’d often thought, would be willing to give up the experiences of mortal life in return for becoming a companion to a creature such as he was? Nevertheless, every day, he thanked whatever gods there were that they had seen fit to bless him with someone like Troy as his lifetimes-long companion.
