Chapter Two（1）

“Silence equals death.” This was Rob’s favorite quote when I’d ask him not to come out (or on) to customers.

I’m running a business, not a political forum here, Rob.

You can’t separate being gay from the rest of your life, Adrien. Everything a gay man does makes a political statement. Everything matters: where you bank, where you shop, where you eat. When you hold your lover’s hand in public — oh, that’s right...

Go to hell, Rob.

And his smile. That wicked grin so at odds with his golden boy good looks.

Reminders of his presence were everywhere. A rude sketch on a note I’d left him. Sunday’s Times folded open to the half-finished crossword puzzle. A bag of pistachio nuts spilled on the counter.

I turned on the stereo in the stockroom, and music flooded the store aisles. Brahms’s Violin Concerto: sweet and melancholy and incongruous with the idea of Robert hacked to death in an alley.

Despite the music it was too quiet. And cold. I shivered. It was an old building, originally a tiny hotel called The Huntsman’s Lodge, built back in the ’30s. I’d first stepped through its doors on a foggy spring day not long after I’d inherited what my mother refers to as “my money.”

I remembered the echo of our footsteps as Mel and I wandered through the empty rooms with the real estate agent. We could have been in two different buildings.

Mel had seen the holes in the walls, the scarred wooden floors, the money pit. I’d looked past the peeling wallpaper, and the bare and flickering light bulbs in the watermarked ceiling to see the sagging staircase peopled by ghosts from the black and white movies of my childhood. Women in hats and gloves, men with cigarette holders clamped between jaunty smiles. I’d imagined them checking their valises and Gladstones at the mahogany lobby desk that now served as my sales counter. When the real estate agent casually mentioned there had been a murder here fifty years before, I was sold. Mel was resigned.

He must have seen the “S” for sucker stamped on your forehead.

Is that what that stands for? I thought it stood for something a bit more entertaining...

Followed by one of our brief wrestling matches, which ended unsurprisingly in Mel losing his temper.

Adrien, are you nuts? There’s mouse crap everywhere.

Those were the good old days before I knew how much it cost to rewire a two-story building, or how the concept of modern plumbing has changed since the ’30s. That was before I learned the hard way that you need more to compete with the low prices of Borders and Barnes and Noble let alone Amazon.com. Back before I learned there really is no such thing as Happily Ever After. But I did learn. I learned to stock backlist titles, to invest in variety and selection, to cater to the book groups, and reach out to the community. To put my heart and soul into my business. What I lacked in capital, I made up for in ambiance.

“Ambiance” meant placing comfortable old leather club chairs in strategic corners, “lighting” the fake fireplace on rainy days, and offering iced coffee during the summer. In our quest for ambiance, Mel and I raided local junk stores, lugging home an old gramophone, stacks of 78 records, kabuki theater masks, and a peacock fire screen. Ambiance earned us a write up in the Times Calendar Section, but it was hard work and long hours that kept me in business.

It was unusually quiet for a Monday morning. A couple of regulars browsed. A new face cleared the shop of all Joseph Hansen’s Brandstetter series. Mrs. Lupinski brought in another sack of Harlequin Intrigues and tried to convince me they were real mysteries. I tackled the stuff Rob had left undone, feeling guilty for the lick of irritation over an unopened crate of hardbacks I’d purchased at an estate sale the previous weekend and the untouched stack of search lists he was supposed to check against the computer inventory.

I gathered up his scattered belongings. His coffee mug, which read, “Drink your coffee — people in Africa are sleeping.” A couple of CDs. The razor and toothbrush he left in the washroom for those morning-afters. Most of it I packed in a box for his father, who lived now in a Huntington Beach nursing home.

I didn’t want to keep playing it over in my mind, imagining what Rob’s last moments must have been like. I bustled around facing books out, cutting strays out of the wrong shelves, pestering customers with offers of help and coffee. Over and over I asked myself the useless but inevitable Why? Why Robert? Why kill him? Robbery? Maybe some coked up junkie? The police said no. The police thought someone Robert knew had slain him. I heard again Detective Riordan’s sardonic, “prior acquaintance.” Did that mean Robert’s killer was someone I also knew? I remembered Claude’s anxious, “Did you tell them about me?” Was that the normal reaction of an innocent man?

It was hard to imagine stabbing a person fourteen times. I couldn’t believe anyone I knew would be capable of that. Easier to believe it of a stranger, a hustler. Easier to believe Rob was the victim of a hate crime or random violence.

The day dragged. A few friends called asking about Rob, offering condolences, expressions of horror and sympathy, speculation.

About two o’clock, the silence got to me. I closed the shop and drove over to Claude’s.

You can’t miss Café Noir. Outside it’s kitschy pink stucco, black grillwork and black shutters. Inside it’s too dark to tell what the hell the decor might be. The floors are like black ice and just about as dangerous; the feathery outline of potted trees was barely discernable in the gloom.

Claude made clucking sounds when I walked in. He ushered me to one of the high back booths, promised to fix me something special and vanished. It was Monday and the café was officially closed, but Claude never seemed to leave the place.

I tried to relax. Tilted my head back and closed my eyes. Overhead Piaf trilled, “Non, je ne regrette rien.” Easy for her to say.

After a time Claude reappeared and set a plate of linguine before me. The sharp-sweet scent of garlic and basil wafted from the tangle of pasta. He opened a bottle of wine, filled two glasses, and sat across from me.

“Have I ever told you, you look like Monty Clift?” he inquired in a deep, seductive voice.

“Before or after the accident?”

Claude tittered. Pushed my glass forward. “Red wine. Good for the heart.”

“Thanks.” I inhaled. “This smells heavenly.”

“You need someone to look after you, ma belle.” Claude wasn’t smiling. With his sad, brown-velvet eyes he watched me spear a soft-shell crab bathed in tomato and herb sauce.

I took a bite. “I’m a born bachelor.”

“Bah! You just need to meet Mr. Right.”

This is one of Claude’s favorite themes. In fact, it’s a favorite theme with a lot of my friends. Gay and straight. Certain things are universal.

“Are you proposing?” I batted my eyelashes.

“Be serious,” Claude insisted. “It’s been how long since What’s-His-Name walked? You’ve been alone so long you think it’s normal. It’s not normal. Everybody needs somebody —”

“Sometime?” I supplied helpfully. I twirled a forkful of linguine.

Claude sighed. Propped his chin on his gigantic paw. He watched me eat with an artist’s satisfaction.

“So what really happened between you and Rob?” I asked.

“Quelle est la question? Fireworks then fizzle.”

“So?” I took a sip of wine.

“So that was between me and Robert. Nobody else. I don’t want cops fucking around in my life.”

“That was — what? Six months ago? Why would the cops be more interested in you than anyone else?”

Claude’s eyes slid away from mine. “I wrote him ... letters, poems. Some of it was kind of ... dark.”

“No pun intended?”

Claude playfully slapped my hand. “I don’t expect The Man to understand the creative mind.”

“How dark were these poems and letters?”

“Pitch.”

“Swell. You think Robert kept that stuff?”

Claude gnawed on his lower lip. “He could be sentimental. In the French sense.”

What was the French sense? I rolled the wine over my tongue, savoring it, and considered Claude. “Who was Robert seeing after the two of you split up?”

“You should know.”

I shot him a quick look. “Rob and I were never lovers.”

Claude shrugged. One of those speaking Continental gestures. He didn’t appear to be convinced. If Claude didn’t believe me, did that mean other people suspected Rob and I were involved? And were they likely to share that suspicion with the cops? Watching me twist another forkful of pasta, he whispered hurriedly, “You could get those letters back, Adrien.”

The fork froze a few centimeters from my lips. “Say again?”

“You’ve got a key to his place.”

“Whoa, Nellie. Rob died in the alley behind that apartment building. It’s a crime scene. Or as good as. The cops could be watching.”

“Listen, petit, you’re his best friend. Were. You’re his boss. You could come up with a legitimate excuse for going over there.”

“No. No. No.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t —”

“Read my lips. Non.”

Claude fell silent, gazing at me reproachfully.

I lowered my fork. “Is that why you asked me over here?”

“Absolument pas! The idea!”

“Yeah, right.”

He bit his lip. I shook my head. His dimples showed.

* * * * *