Honi Soit Qui Mal's Tight Pants (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} executrix) wrote,@ 2007-05-13 20:12:00 |
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Firefly Fic: THE GAY LORDS (R)
And now....complete in this issue....my somewhat-awaited Gay Pulp Challenge fic. Minus the header info, it's about 6,500 words and I bet none of you h0rz could write it any...shorter.
Title: The Gay Lords (A Fantasia On Themes from Mr. Tennessee Williams)
Author: executrix
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: (Firefly avatars) Mike/Gina, Mike/Gouache, JB/Frannie, Mike-Timon
Rating: R
Gay Pulp Prompt: Prompt G The Gay Lords (Robert Saunders, 1966)
Barry Sterling, a would-be writer fresh from his family's Kentucky farm, is suddenly thrust into the bewildering new environment of Greenwich Village, "Pervert Capital of the World." He meets Johnny, the baby-faced boy with a girlish body who wants to be Barry's "wife." Then there's Nick, the hot-blooded Sicilian artist who paints scenes from the raw-edged life he leads, and Gene, the blond Viking giant who smokes reefer and plays very, very rough. This motley crew calls itself the Gay Lords and they're the Big Apple's swishiest gang!
Warnings: Mid-60s and pre-Stonewall vocabulary and attitudes
(Poems by the Haiku Generator)
CHAPTER ONE: He could fall asleep
Anywhere including on
Half a beer hell she
Mike Reynolds knotted the scarf tighter around his neck, and buttoned his fatigue jacket against the wind coming off the sea. Grevlage was a port town; that's why he picked it. He aimed to buy his own ship, nothing fancy, but enough to take to the Black and stay free. His mustering-out pay, a roll of bills he won during R&R leaves, and a few fast shuffles and deals that maybe wouldn't stand up to the closest scrutiny, should be enough to buy him a ship. Just as long as he counted his pennies and didn't go squandering them on luxuries.
A year In Country had accustomed him to danger and to living hard. He knew that his cammies drew some hostile stares, just a few years after the flag-waving parades. Well, frog-hump 'em if they couldn't take a joke.
As he walked along the sidewalk, lost in thought, his duffle bag (carrying a few pieces of clothing and a stack of precious pages) bumping his hip, he noticed a hand-lettered "Room for Rent" sign placed in a parlor window of one of the brownstone row houses. The sign hung behind a wrought-iron grille, and above a window box full of acrid geraniums and bright purple pansies.
He climbed the stairs and rang the doorbell. The landlady, plump, voluble, and evidently long- widowed (she wore a plain, thin gold wedding ring, but her black dress showed signs of hard wear), said, "Lucky you come now. Soon I gotta go to my place, serve the supper. Unpack your bag, wash your hands—the gabinetto is down the hall, you share with Mr. Rabinovich—and go down the block, turn left. Piccola Firenze, that is my restaurant."
The room was on the top floor ("You young, you strong, so stairs not bad, eh?"), sunny, clean, and plain. "I'll take it," he said, and gave her $25 for the first week's rent. He stowed his duffle bag under the brass bed, too tired to unpack. As soon as the landlady, Mrs. Washburno's, back was turned, he lifted the crucifix above the bed-head off the wall and stowed it in the top drawer of the dresser.
CHAPTER TWO: I Cover the Waterfront
"Sit," Mrs. Washburno said. "I bring you some supper." She lit the ancient, battered candle in a straw-wound wine bottle, and poured him a tumbler of rough red wine from the bottle that would hold the next generation of candles. The late-autumn sun was dipping in the sky, but it was already dark in the small storefront room, behind canvas shades pulled halfway down. Knotty-pine paneling was tacked to the wall, and the small round tables wobbled. Generations of cigarette smoke hung in the air. And not all the kind of cigarette that comes in a pack with a tax stamp, either. Mike conjured that plenty of sticks of Mary Sue had been smoked here.
What the hell kind of place was this, anyway?
The door to the john opened, and a skinny little fellow with a light-brown crewcut came out, zipping up his coveralls. Mike did a double-take: under the ribbed undershirt beneath the coveralls was a honey of a pair of tits. The boy—the girl—whatever—sat down at a table across from a pretty Negro girl in a light blue shirtwaist dress. Mike's eyes were riveted by the pink edge of her foot where she had kicked off one worn black pump.
"There you are, J.B. Look what I got at the market this morning."
"Awww, thanks, Miz Washburno!" J.B. said. She dipped her face and sniffed at the small white china bowl of strawberries, then, smilingly, dipped the biggest, sweetest berry into her tumbler of wine and fed it to the other girl. Mike's jaw dropped as he watched the ripe berry disappear between those soft, full lips. Then the Negro girl picked up the glass sugar canister, poured a stream of sugar into her palm, coated another berry with the white sweetness, and dangled it over J.B.'s open mouth.
Mike was starting to get some idea what the hell kind of place it was, and he was going to pack his bag again, leave the key on the hall table, and go find someplace to live that wasn't full of sideshow freaks. But just as he was about to push away from the table and storm out, Mrs. Washburno came back with a steaming plate of some kind of meat loaf all mixed up with wavy noodles and pungent red sauce.
When he looked up from the plate, he saw that a newcomer had entered the room: a huge, thick-muscled man in tight denim, motorcycle boots, and a brown leather jacket with a shearling collar. The outfit was topped off with a striped, knitted watch cap in yellow and orange. A pair of horns—Mike squinted and thought they were white plastic—stood out from the sides of the cap. "Colder'n a witch-tit out there!" the giant boomed, rubbing his hands. "Hey, Mama, got any heroes today?"
"Unhappy is the land that needs a hero," said the young man at the table nearest the pay phone. He had a stack of dimes on the table in front of him. He splashed something from a silver flask into his coffee cup. He looked up from the book he was reading, brushed his long dark hair away from his eyes, said, "The box-shovin' man-ape has favored us with his presence," and resumed reading. His Southern accent was so thick that Mike blinked and looked for subtitles to form in the air, like those movies he never went to unless they had Swedish blondes in them. Mike felt like yelling, "Hey! Get a haircut!" but didn't, because the aroma of the steaming platter reminded him that a meal was long overdue.
"Sure, Gina," Mrs. Washburno said. "I got what you like, Big Man." She wrestled out the cork, handed him a straw-swathed bottle of wine and passed through the slatted half-doors to the kitchen. Mrs. Washburno lifted a thick length of hot sausage onto the grill. As she waited for it to sizzle, she selected a baton of bread, sliced through the crispy crust, and prepared the tender crumb with a sprinkling of herbed oil. Then she enveloped the meat in the bread and laved it with tangy tomato sauce.
Mike's stomach was still growling, but the fork stayed poised in his hand as, fascinated, he watched the hot meat disappear into the man she called Gina's mouth, alternating with long pulls directly from the neck of the wine bottle.
"That is not a camp name," the reader informed him. "That truly is what it says on his birth certificate."
The giant nodded. "My Pop was a stevedore too. Used to work for this fella, Luigi was his name."
Mrs. Washburno beamed. "So my folks thought it would be a…what's the word?...to name me after him."
"Suck-up?" J.B. said; "Encomium?" the young man near the phone. "Tribute!" Gina said. 'Cept, when my birth certificate got writ, it didn't say "Gino." It said "Gina" instead. An' well, Pop sometimes got flusterated when he was 'round fancy folks, so he didn't try to get it changed back. 'Cause he thought it would be good for me—toughen me up—to not take any guff and have to let everybody know that I got man-parts."
"Which have now been seen by approximately as many people as 'Abie's Irish Rose,'" came a voice from the corner. "AND to as little aesthetic effect."
"Hell, folks loved that show," Gina said equably. "Mama, ya got any of that stripy ice-cream? Hey, you," he said. "What's your name? And didja get that flak jacket the hard way, or in an Army Surplus store?"
"Mike Reynolds," Mike said. "76th Air Cav," he said.
"Did you ever wonder if you were on the wrong side?" asked the young man near the payphone.
"Thing about wars, son," Mike said, "Is, when you're in 'em, you ain't got time to think about my side, your side, right side, wrong side."
"Next time you're in trouble, call a hippie. Well, Mike, this place is dead," Gina said, leaning in toward Mike (who ducked his head to get out of the way of the horns on his cap). "How's about comin' over to mine, have some fun? I like you soldier boys. Keep yourselves fit, don't whine over every little thing, and you know how to take orders."
"Sir! Yes sir!" Mike said, mesmerized.
CHAPTER THREE: And alliance had been
Cemented at first gently
Then with increasing…
"Huh, that's quite some buck," Mike said, nodding at the proud head of a magnificent 14-point stag. The head was mounted on a piece of wood the same color as the paneling on the walls, so it looked like the stag had poked his head through the wall, and presumably his ass was dangling in the next door apartment.
"That's what it's all about, baby," Gina said. "Stalk, mount, and shoot." He went to the small refrigerator, hip-checked it, and walked toward Mike with three bottles of beer dangling from each hand, like matched bunches of highly overripe bananas. He made use of one of the bottle openers nailed to the wall at intervals. (They, the stag's head, and a three-month-old calendar showing a basket of puppies, were the only décor.) "All that guinea red ink gives a man a thirst," he said with a belch, after dispatching the first of the beers. He unzipped his jacket, and leered, "Let's be bad guys!" He crooked a finger, and Mike went over to him.
"Damn!" Gina said approvingly, his hands possessive. "If that ain't an ass like a coupla bowling balls all lined up and ready to throw." Then he moved his hands to Mike's shoulders, and pushed down firmly.
Mike clutched at the bottom of Gina's t-shirt (tearing it further), and pulled himself up. "GINAAA!" he moaned.
CHAPTER FOUR: Mine Is An Evil Canvas
Mrs. Washburno wasn't home, so Mike dropped by Piccola Firenze to pay the week's rent. She wasn't at the restaurant either.
This time, instead of sitting near the payphone, the man in the corner was on the phone, occasionally dropping one of the dimes from his stack into the phone. "Yes, of course, darlin'. I wish we lived somewhere too. But I'm afraid that we have very most definitely lost Belle Reve, and my ability to construct an alternative is so far limited…Uh-huh. When I was your age, I was bored more than occasionally myself. Work on your differential equations, all right? And your Latin grammar. Love you madly too."
A young man, with a black beret covering his hair, and a small goatee clinging indecisively to his chin, sat on a barstool behind the counter. He looked up from the sports page. "Hi. Are you Mike? Mama said you were a 'big, handsome boy' and she was sure right. I guess that's where I get my artistic eye. She's over at St. Anthony's, so I'm holding down the fort. Want some eggs?"
"Mama?" Mike asked. "And, about them eggs, sure. Fried hard, and maybe some of that round bread with the hole in the middle if you got it and a little cup of that black rocket fuel of yours."
"Yeah, she does have this generally maternal vibe, but she is, in point of fact, my actual mother," he said. He extended a hand. "Gualtiero Washburno. AKA Gouache."
"Oh," Mike said. "So, you work here?"
"Not so much, just when Mama has some big-time confessing to do. I'm…well, I'm a man with a divided soul. I'm a pilot, and there isn't a crate you can show me that I can't fly as easy as you could juggle geese. But I'm an artist, too. So, I want to be out there in the Black. But I want to be where that cool North light is."
Gouache offered to pay five bucks for Mike to pose for him, but Mike figured his friend needed the money more than he did, so he shook his head as the artist pulled a crumpled stack of singles out of his pocket and started straightening them out. "I'm good, Gouache," he said. He looked around the studio. A half-remembered movie made him expect a platform and perhaps a stool to sit on, and a screen to duck behind and undress. There was nothing like that, nothing much at all in the big room that had once been a factory. The ancient cage elevator rumbled from time to time, and sometimes something would clank on one of the other floors.
"North light!" Gouache said, gesturing to the big bare windows in the cast-iron façade of the building. There was a long dark wooden table, scored with scratches and cigarette burns, heaped with tubes of paint, brushes, and jars of turpentine. Dozens of huge stretched canvases leaned against the wall. Mike craned his neck to see their subjects, but they were turned in so all he could see was the tense stapled rim and the reverse side of each picture. An iron bucket on the floor was full of melting ice cubes and green bottles of beer.
"Hey, where's the easel?" Mike asked, unbuttoning his shirt.
"That's…old! That's yesterday!" Gouache said, and pointed down at the floor, which was largely occupied by a huge stretched canvas. Because it rested on stretchers, it bounced a little, like a slice of trampoline, when Gouache prodded at it with his foot. He bent down, found a screwdriver on the floor, flipped the lid off a can of paint, and stalked through the loft, pouring a trail of vivid crimson along the fresh whiteness of the canvas. Then he took a pushbroom and shoved at the wet paint, feathering it here and there.
"Gouache, why do you need a model at all if you paint stuff that don't look like nothin'?"
"Strip!" the artist said. "And I'll show you! Bio-Action painting is what's happening now! It's the sunlight—no, it's the A-bomb explosion!—of the day that we seize!"
Mike pulled his shirt off, saw a coatrack in the far corner and hung it up there, and took off his shoes and pants as well. Gouache didn't specify, so he left on his socks and BVDs. He padded back to the center of the room. "Lie down!" the artist said, his voice muffled as he lifted the black turtleneck over his head, revealing smooth, milky skin and soft, reddish hair beneath his armpits.
The paint was cold against Mike's back and shoulders. Gouache prodded him with one foot, and he rolled over, twirling a scarlet candy stripe across his body. When he fetched up on his back again, he found the artist straddling his feet. Gouache knelt, and ran a large, soft brush caressingly over Mike's torso. Mike closed his eyes, then opened them and grunted as a line of thick, cold paint was laid down on his chest. The flat, bitter smell of the oil filled his nostrils. Gouache trailed the brush around in the paint. Then he pushed Mike over onto the canvas, and lay down next to him, adding more splashes of paint to the canvas from his own skin. The two men wrestled, flesh and pigment smacking against the taut whiteness, like a vast (and now sullied) sail.
"Who is that fella?" Mike asked, as they scrubbed off the last traces of paint. "Y'know, the one that's there all the time makin' phone calls. The one with the funny accent."
"Says his name—or his 'transparent alias' as he calls it—is Timon Samm. He's, or used to be a doctor, anyway. A big favorite with all the little old ladies around here. When it's Social Security day, Mama makes me schlep around to all their walk-up apartments, put their checks in the bank, you know? And then he goes around and does house calls and they give him, like, three tiny crumpled-up dollar bills. Some kind of story there. His kid sister lives with him, she's, I don't know, crazy or something. Definitely quaint."
CHAPTER FIVE: You meet the Buddha
On the road him he'd have no
Chance at even if
A softball team (with J.B. at second base) whooped it up over Cold Duck and eggplant parmigiana heroes. Gouache slow-danced with a besotted CPA named Roland.
"Hey," Mike said diffidently. "You're not readin' that book about germs any more."
Timon looked puzzled for a moment, then said, "Ah. Germinal" (It came out as something like "Zhairmnahl."). "No, I finished that one. It's not about germs, though. It's about…material and spiritual poverty." He folded down a corner of a page of "The Golden Bowl" and looked up at Mike.
Mike found he was having some difficulty in getting the conversation started. "That's too bad because, uh, not that I'm sure or anything but I might…well, germs…you got pills, right? Or shots, if you gotta."
Now Timon looked mildly amused. "So you've been hangin' back with the beasts, mmmm? I hate to think that the soldiers once under my aegis, prior to my dishonorable discharge, would have been…improvident enough to contract dishonorable discharges of their very own. Sure, I'll give you some pills. And some pro kits in the event of future misbehavior."
"You were in the Army?" Mike asked incredulously.
"The Navy, to be precise. And my…terms of engagement…there were somewhat brief. One would have thought that 'orderly' was a quality to be prized in a physician. But evidently only as an adjective, not as a noun…" Timon stood up and wrapped a very long scarf, in a plethora of colors and odd assemblages of stitches, around his neck, then put on a tweed overcoat. Mike didn't bother to button his jacket. "My family's attitude had always been, 'come back with your shield or on it,' and so in lieu of going home, I planned a valedictory visit to my younger sister Moon, who was away at boarding school. In our milieu, intellect in a young female is…not prized…so when she was offered a place at a very exclusive Academy, my parents and I were glad enough for her to go. For varying reasons. I'd received some rather disTURbing letters from her. Letters about the D'Arbanville's ball…and THIS from a girl who flatly reFUSED to make her debut despite invitations at a number of the finer cotillions. I discovered that all was not well with her and so we…fell in love with long distance."
He lived a few blocks from Piccola Firenze, in a large older building with echoing black-and-white marble tiles on the lobby floor. Mike was rather impressed to see that the building had an elevator, albeit an ancient and creaky one. "I'd best go in first," Timon said. "Let her know that you're all right, not to be afraid." He unlocked the door with three of a very large bunch of keys.
Mike sniffed. There was a kind of toasted atmosphere, but no smoke.
Timon went inside the apartment and gave the light bulbs and silk scarves a little breathing room. "Moon, darlin', told you before, puttin' the scarves over the lights like that, ain't safe."
"I don't want realism!" she said proudly. "I want magic!" She was thin and had tangled dark hair and a round face that, Mike thought, might have explained her name. But then it could have been whimsically self-bestowed or, Mike was beginning to think, could have been exactly the kind of thing that members of that family got named.
"Well, have a cold collation while I take care of Mike in the office. This is Sergeant Mike Reynolds, Moon." Timon spread two slices of bread with something sticky and orange, flipped the slices together, guillotined off the crusts, and cut four triangles with two precise slaps of the knife. To Mike's fascination, the sandwich filling spread precisely to the edge of the bread and stopped there.
"Smells like crotch!" Moon said, pushing at the plate with the glass of milk Timon had also handed her.
"Heresy!" he said. "We live and die by pimento cheese."
The apartment consisted of the kitchenette, a living room with a fireplace surrounded by well-filled bookshelves, and two white-sprayed wrought iron daybeds neatly made up with candlewick spreads and heaps of cushions. In the back, and past three more locks, was a room fitted up as a doctor's office, with an examination table and a small sink and cabinets with more locks. "Yeah," Timon said, with a wry smile. "Makes me feel like Bluebeard." He tipped a dozen pills into a pill bottle and gave Mike a couple of boxes of Trojans.
"I…well, I thought those were just for girls," Mike said. "Just for with girls. You know." He wondered why Timon would want to put himself out of business—there'd been cartons of the damn things inside the cupboard.
"Microbes are remarkably democratic," he said. There was a crash and a wail from the living room, or perhaps the kitchenette. "I'd best go see what's wrong this time," Timon said. "If only you'd known her, before," he said. "Before, whatever this thing is that…befellher. He was graceful, and gracious, and brilliant and lovely in every way and if you'd known, you would have been proud to be her chevalier."
Mike let himself out as Timon tweezed and swept. He liked a loyal man.
Frannie put a bookmark in "We Two Won't Last" (she respected books, even apart from the fact that it had cost thirty-five cents), put it back in her purse, and started doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper. J.B. and Gouache squabbled fraternally about the handling qualities of the Capissen-38 engine.
Mike picked up a corner of the curtain, and sunlight streamed in. "See!" he said. "It's a real pretty day out, and here we are again, lurkin' around as usual."
"Aww, it's real homey here," J.B. said. "Like we're all family."
"And let's just say that our presence is not…solicited…in many other venues," Timon said.
"It's early days yet," Frannie said. "Social structures can change."
"Anyways, just imagine a buncha fairies gettin' together to do anythin' 'cept maybe throw a drag ball," Gina said.
"You, of course, are merely here to read the gas meter," Timon said.
Gina shrugged. "So what? A man got needs. Hey, Mike, you play Calvinball? Some of the guys down the yard have a pickup game Sundays. You want some sunlight and fresh air, that'd do ya."
Mike nodded, slugged down the last of his espresso, and put on his cap.
"You been to their apartment?"
"Yeah. It's real…neat."
"Wouldn't bet my life both them beds get slept in, neither."
"Yeah? Maybe you're just jealous you can't have him for yourself," Mike said. They were pretty narrow beds anyway.
"What makes you think I ain't had him for myself?" For a moment, Gina looked nostalgic. "He can take a damn sight more than you'd think by those mimsy ways of his. But he's more trouble than he's worth. Him and his Baby Ruth sister—all drippin' caramel and peanuts--and their COMplicated CHALDhood. Mine weren't no walk in the park, what's he think?"
Mike stared at him. It had never occurred to him to think of Gina as anything other than six-feet-four and right there.
"You like Frannie? The colored girl? I hear she swings both ways." Gina said.
"Awww, I wouldn't want to beat J.B.'s time. J.B.'s all right. Did you know that she can rebuild a whole gravity wave amplifier in two hours, including windin' her own trackback coil? Ain't every girl can say that. How 'bout you?"
"If you mean windin' trackback coil, nope, wouldn't know where to start. 'Bout Frannie, nah, I don't hold with that race-mixin' stuff. The Lord made white and He made colored and he wants 'em to stay that way, not everybody get all taffy."
CHAPTER SIX: Sunday in the Park
The pay phone rang. Mama answered it and beckoned Timon over to the phone.
"Yes, this is he….how far along? Eight weeks? Then are you sure? No, no, the rabbit always dies, one way or the other, don't matter…yes…three hundred….why should I care if you'll have to hock her engagement ring? You could buy her a weddin' ring for fifty…all right. Tomorrow. Three o'clock. I'll meet you in front of the museum. I'll be drivin' a blue an' white Mercury." He went over to Frannie's table and handed her a ten-dollar bill for rental of her car.
"Those poor damn girls," she said. "Why can't they be smarter? Or look for themselves better?"
Timon sighed. "I'll feel better 'bout the whole thing once more of them can get those If You Can't Be Good Be Careful pills. Me, I'm sellin' all I can get my hands on."
"Hey!" Mike said. "Them pills—are they illegal?"
"Not here they aren't. Lots of planets, they are, though."
"Shiny!" Mike said thoughtfully.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Savage Rhythms
"She always did love to dance," Timon said. He picked up a couple of well-stuffed dance bags and pushed them under the bench so there would be somewhere for him and Mike to sit down during the class.
The dance studio was a big attic room, with sunshine pouring down from a skylight, reflected in the mirrored wall.
"Hey, what's he doin' here?" Mike asked
Gina tilted his hips forward enough so, apart from anything else, Mike could see that he was seated on a gigantic African drum. The objects in his lap proved to be a set of bongos, and he set up a savage tattoo. "I just like smackin' em," he said.
"This is Miss Sierra," Timon said, kissing her on the forehead. She kissed his cheek. "My Hodgeberry friend," she said. "Imogen, may I present Sergeant Mike Reynolds? Mike, Miss Sierra—nee Idabelle-- is certain to become the toast of the theatrical profession." She blushed a little, becomingly. "But in the meantime, you see, I teach a little…this and that…"
"Askin' her friends for fifty bucks for the powder room…" Gina said.
"Hey!" Mike said. "No need to be offensive to a lady."
Imogen smiled at him, and he felt his heart melt a little. She was tall and slim, her wavy dark hair captured in a chiffon scarf, with a larger scarf wrapped around her hips over a scoop-necked black leotard and footless black tights. She wore a necklace of large, barely polished turquoises. "We'll wait a little longer for Gualtiero," she said. "He is…not very punctual."
Moon and half a dozen other girls, in circle skirts and t-shirts or leotards and tights, sprawled on the floor in attitudes of competitive relaxation. One girl knitted away on a circular needle at a much-handled pair of pink tights.
Then the door opened, and Gouache came in, kicking off his shoes. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a paint-spattered t-shirt. "Sorry!" he said. "I got this idea for a cut-paper series…." He saw Mike and gave him a little salute. "The complete artist!" he said. "Gotta experience every way to make body art!"
Imogen dropped the needle onto the turntable, and as the "Missa Luba" pounded through the studio, augmented by Gina's flailing at the drums, Imogen led the class through stretches, extensions, and contractions, then gave them themes and allowed them to improvise.
Moon was the best, by far: her thin long legs flashing, crouching and hunching her body in then fluttering to the freedom of huge jumps.
It was too noisy to talk, but Mike felt content, sitting on the bench next to Timon. Timon passed him the silver flask (which, somewhat to Mike's surprise, contained brandy; he'd expected bourbon).
Mike handed back the flask, and realized it was the first time he'd ever really looked at Timon—whose hair he still thought was too long, but who, he noticed with a small shock, was remarkably handsome, with bluebell eyes and the mien of an overworked angel.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Pursuit
"Thank you, Gina, for looking after Moon," Timon said. "Did you have a nice day, sweetheart?"
"We went to the zoo," Moon said. "All those sad little lives. Had you chosen to pursue a vocation of advocacy rather than one of healin' betcha you could have gotten them let off with a warnin'."
"Hey, what are you, Doc, some kinda Commie?" Gina asked. "'Cause, I dunno, I always thought the two of ya got toys in the attic—like, your parents was cousins. If you was lucky. But turns out there really was somebody followin' Moon, ya didn't make it up just to sound important. Little fella, blue suit, glasses. And when I braced him, he said he was from the Federated Bureau of Investigation."
"What happened?" Timon asked. "Are you all right?"
"You should have been there," she said.
"Yes, I know, I'm sorry, I should have protected you, of all of my failures that is the very saddest…"
"Oh, stop caterwaulin'. No, I mean, you should have been there, it was amusin'," Moon said, twirling in a circle and then reaching up to touch Gina's collarbone (which was about as far as she could reach). "Gina picked him up by the neck and set him down some distance away, and then took my hand and we ran. I have always depended upon the kindest of stranglers."
CHAPTER NINE: I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair
J.B. yelped. It was so uncharacteristic that everyone's head turned. She waved a letter written on blue gingham stationery. "It's from my Mama," J.B. said. "She and my daddy are comin' to visit…next week."
A pall descended. "Is nice, to see your parents," Mrs. Washburno said.
"You don't understand, Mrs. Washburno, uh, there's things about our apartment…"
Mrs. Washburno brushed her objection away with the sweep of a barmop. "Some of my big strong boys, they go to your apartment and push apart the two little beds…"
Gina guffawed. "Yeah, an' put away your stash of girlie magazines."
"Hey!" J.B. said. "I just get it for the articles!"
"And the Dottore, he will lend you his sister to pretend to be your roommate, because they will see is una bianca and be happy, and the Dottore's friend the stuck-up actor lady will lend you a dress that is not too big like your girlfriend's. Even, if you wish, I send you a pot of gravy so you can pretend you know how to cook."
"You're a champ, Missus Dubya, but all that garlic…they wouldn't even chaw enough of it down to get heartburn."
A week later, J.B. looked into Imogen's hand mirror, and nearly burst into tears. "My hair!" she said.
"I am sorry, but you didn't give me a lot to work with," Imogen said. She had swapped the Brylcreem for hairspray and set a flurry of tiny pincurls, but the result was, frankly, grotesque. "Tell them that it's like Mary Martin's hairdo in South Pacific. She had to wash her hair right on stage, eight performances a week."
Imogen preferred the serious, experimental Drama to the musical indulgences of the tired businessman, but she would have given a lot for a long run. Even a bus and truck tour.
"And perhaps I can find you a darling little cocktail hat…All right, now," Imogen said. "Hold up your arms over your head." She held the cage crinoline over J.B.'s head and let it fall, until it belled out around her. Then she eased the starched cotton frock, printed with lavish bunches of violets, over her head and zipped it up to the sweetheart neck. "Walk a little bit…you should practice, so you don't flip your hoop."
"Jesus!" J.B. said, grimacing at her pinched toes and slithering heels. "How do girls walk in these things?"
"Oh, come on," Imogen said. "You used to do this all the time!"
"Me? Hell, no," J.B. said. "Right around when it was gonna stop lookin' cute that I was a tomboy an' all, the Army recruiters blew through town. One of 'em taught me a thing or three, and she said if I joined up they'd put me in the motor pool."
CHAPTER TEN: Chickens Come Home to Roost
"Oh, lord," Frannie said, putting down a wide, striped china bowl of potato salad. "Look at that big ol' fry-kettle. And two whole cans of Crisco."
"Well, I had them in the house anyway," Timon said, turning his back on Frannie's shocked expression and neglecting to explain it was for piecrust. (Although it was hardly his usual youthful pastime, he had a copy of "The Joy of Cooking" and a lot of time to kill in the evenings, and a vague idea of thrift involving saving money for wherever he and Moon eventually would wind up.)
"You gonna drown that poor chicken," Frannie said. "Pan-fry it, in not but a couple of inches of lard, that's the ticket."
Timon opened the icebox and took out a pan of neatly cloven chicken pieces. He put it down next to the dishtowel on which the tongs and pancake turner and wooden spoons were laid out. He lifted out chicken pieces and drained them. "Soaked in buttermilk," he said proudly.
"Chicken for frying should not be soaked in one thing," Frannie said. "Whoever told you you know how to do this?"
"My ma—that is, our housekeeper, Mrs.Jukes."
"Uh-huh. What're you gonna do now?"
"Put a cup of flour on a dish, roll the chicken in it, give it a minute to dry off, then set the grease to heatin'."
Frannie shook her head. "I can't tell you how wrong all this is."
"Just sit on that stool and keep me company, then," he said, lighting the burner and turning on the oven to keep the chicken warm. "I know you'd say we ain't even from the same planet, but I like havin' someone down-home around me. I….I just can't get used to it here. It's damp and it's cold and I'm grateful to have the smell of antiseptic in my nostrils all the time, because otherwise it would all smell wrong. How 'bout you, Government Girl? You like it here?"
"I don't relish spending all day, every day, in a little blue smock sortin' letters. I miss farmstand peaches. I miss folks in church knowin' you even though I came all this way for 'em not to know my business. I hate spending a week's wages on a coat, and still not bein' warm enough. But J.B.'s my home, so if she's here, I'll stick."
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Had been a haunted
House even before the dawn
He gulped down the
"Moon, honey, whyn'cha go into the kitchen and get my folks some iced tea while we're catchin' up?" J.B. asked, after having exclaimed over the Captures of the Frye's trip to Aberdeen Planetary Park.
Several minutes later, and to loud clashing and slamming noises evidently not limited to the kitchen, neither Moon nor iced tea was forthcoming (although she did manage to locate and hide the Pirelli calendar that had escaped notice earlier).
"Ha-ha," Mike said unconvincingly. "They been cleanin' up all week, Mrs. Frye. Wanted to make it look nice for you. No wonder they can't find a thing."
"I hope your intentions toward my daughter are honorable," Mr. Frye said. Mike couldn't figure out if he was joking or not.
"Well, uh, I sure wouldn't say we're engaged or nothin', if that's what you mean, but I swear to you on a stack of Bibles that I have behaved like a perfect gentlemen toward her. You ask J.B…." (he paused, desperately racking his brain for what J.B.'s actual name might be or if he had ever heard it) "or Moon if I ever stayed the night here, or ever didn't leave at a decent hour."
Moon made an entrance, her arms filled with everything vaguely liquid that had been in the refrigerator (having remembered that people keep food in refrigerators).
"So, Moon, did you have a nice summer vacation? Did you go away?" Mrs. Frye asked, righting the milk carton where Moon had dumped it on the coffee table
.
Moon swiveled her head around to look at Mrs. Frye. "I…I don't know," she said. "No, wait…" and then began to scream, keeping it up until Mike scooped her up, said, "I think I'd better take her home…uhh…to her brother's apartment, he's a doctor, he'll know what to do…" and ran down the stairs. J.B. opened the window and threw down the keys to Frannie's car, parked around the corner.
Moon was still screaming, in syncopation with the squeal of the tires, when Mike pulled up in front of her apartment just as Gina arrived, carrying a squashy butcher-wrapped package for hamburgers.
"Uh," Mike said. "We came back…a little sooner than we planned."
Timon put down the tongs, switched off the burner under the pot of chicken, and hugged Moon until the screams died down.
"Pills," Moon said. "They gave them, they gave us, pills. Last summer. And it made some people happy, and content, and they thought nobody had any right to complain or interfere in any way whatsoever, even though they knew what was awful was awful. But some of them…some of them, suddenly, like a flock of plucked birds came darting up to the barbed wire fence as if blown there by the wind, and they would play, on instruments of percussion! Rushing out through a wicket gate like an assault party in war! Do you know what I mean?"
Actually nobody did.
"White hot, a blazing white hot, hot blazing white, at five o'clock in the afternoon in the city of—Cabeza de Lobo. As if a huge white bone had caught on fire in the sky and turned the sky and everything under the sky white with it! And the oompa-oompa of the—following band—there was a flock of featherless little black sparrows—and they devoured parts of each other, torn or cut parts of them away with their hands or knives or maybe those jagged tin cans they made music with…until nothing was left but a big white-paper-wrapped bunch of red roses torn, thrown, crushed—against that blazing white wall."
"Hunh!" Gina said. "When'd that get fun? And that's what they do with our tax money? No wonder I never pay any."
"Well, if the G-men are chasing you, you can't stay here," Frannie said, once the injection had taken effect and Moon slept peaceably. Timon knelt by the daybed and cleaned her tear-stained face with a lace-edged pink washcloth.
"No," Mike said. "We can't stay here. I was gonna tell you later, save it for a surprise, but I bought a ship. OK, it needs some work, but J.B.'s been helpin' out with that. And Timmy—ah, that is, the Doc—he got some prescription pads and some stationery printed up, looks real official. And the companies that make the pills, either they think he's runnin' some kinda clinic or somethin' or they don't rightly care, long's he pays up and they got the paper. By the time anyone gets to analyzin' the legalities, we'll be long gone. Gouache will hop us from planet to planet—he says his time dirtside's about done anyway, his hands are gettin' itchy for the switches--and we'll get rich. And we'll be free, no one lookin' over our shoulders."
"So your point is, bunch of queers like us, we're gonna be God's gift to snatchhounds?" Gina asked.
Frannie shrugged. "The Lord moves in mysterious ways."
CHAPTER TWELVE: Suddenly, in Autumn
Despite J.B.'s best efforts, it took a little longer than planned. ("What good's a ship to you, if you got stuff fallin' off all the time?" she asked, not unreasonably.)
As soon as the paint was dry, where Gouache had painted "The Fugitive Kind" on the fuselage, they took off.
"Well, dip me in honey an' throw me to the lesbians—once they're done christenin' the ship, that is--if we ain't the swishiest gang in the 'Verse," Gina said.
THE END
And now....complete in this issue....my somewhat-awaited Gay Pulp Challenge fic. Minus the header info, it's about 6,500 words and I bet none of you h0rz could write it any...shorter.
Title: The Gay Lords (A Fantasia On Themes from Mr. Tennessee Williams)
Author: executrix
Fandom: Firefly
Pairing: (Firefly avatars) Mike/Gina, Mike/Gouache, JB/Frannie, Mike-Timon
Rating: R
Gay Pulp Prompt: Prompt G The Gay Lords (Robert Saunders, 1966)
Barry Sterling, a would-be writer fresh from his family's Kentucky farm, is suddenly thrust into the bewildering new environment of Greenwich Village, "Pervert Capital of the World." He meets Johnny, the baby-faced boy with a girlish body who wants to be Barry's "wife." Then there's Nick, the hot-blooded Sicilian artist who paints scenes from the raw-edged life he leads, and Gene, the blond Viking giant who smokes reefer and plays very, very rough. This motley crew calls itself the Gay Lords and they're the Big Apple's swishiest gang!
Warnings: Mid-60s and pre-Stonewall vocabulary and attitudes
(Poems by the Haiku Generator)
CHAPTER ONE: He could fall asleep
Anywhere including on
Half a beer hell she
Mike Reynolds knotted the scarf tighter around his neck, and buttoned his fatigue jacket against the wind coming off the sea. Grevlage was a port town; that's why he picked it. He aimed to buy his own ship, nothing fancy, but enough to take to the Black and stay free. His mustering-out pay, a roll of bills he won during R&R leaves, and a few fast shuffles and deals that maybe wouldn't stand up to the closest scrutiny, should be enough to buy him a ship. Just as long as he counted his pennies and didn't go squandering them on luxuries.
A year In Country had accustomed him to danger and to living hard. He knew that his cammies drew some hostile stares, just a few years after the flag-waving parades. Well, frog-hump 'em if they couldn't take a joke.
As he walked along the sidewalk, lost in thought, his duffle bag (carrying a few pieces of clothing and a stack of precious pages) bumping his hip, he noticed a hand-lettered "Room for Rent" sign placed in a parlor window of one of the brownstone row houses. The sign hung behind a wrought-iron grille, and above a window box full of acrid geraniums and bright purple pansies.
He climbed the stairs and rang the doorbell. The landlady, plump, voluble, and evidently long- widowed (she wore a plain, thin gold wedding ring, but her black dress showed signs of hard wear), said, "Lucky you come now. Soon I gotta go to my place, serve the supper. Unpack your bag, wash your hands—the gabinetto is down the hall, you share with Mr. Rabinovich—and go down the block, turn left. Piccola Firenze, that is my restaurant."
The room was on the top floor ("You young, you strong, so stairs not bad, eh?"), sunny, clean, and plain. "I'll take it," he said, and gave her $25 for the first week's rent. He stowed his duffle bag under the brass bed, too tired to unpack. As soon as the landlady, Mrs. Washburno's, back was turned, he lifted the crucifix above the bed-head off the wall and stowed it in the top drawer of the dresser.
CHAPTER TWO: I Cover the Waterfront
"Sit," Mrs. Washburno said. "I bring you some supper." She lit the ancient, battered candle in a straw-wound wine bottle, and poured him a tumbler of rough red wine from the bottle that would hold the next generation of candles. The late-autumn sun was dipping in the sky, but it was already dark in the small storefront room, behind canvas shades pulled halfway down. Knotty-pine paneling was tacked to the wall, and the small round tables wobbled. Generations of cigarette smoke hung in the air. And not all the kind of cigarette that comes in a pack with a tax stamp, either. Mike conjured that plenty of sticks of Mary Sue had been smoked here.
What the hell kind of place was this, anyway?
The door to the john opened, and a skinny little fellow with a light-brown crewcut came out, zipping up his coveralls. Mike did a double-take: under the ribbed undershirt beneath the coveralls was a honey of a pair of tits. The boy—the girl—whatever—sat down at a table across from a pretty Negro girl in a light blue shirtwaist dress. Mike's eyes were riveted by the pink edge of her foot where she had kicked off one worn black pump.
"There you are, J.B. Look what I got at the market this morning."
"Awww, thanks, Miz Washburno!" J.B. said. She dipped her face and sniffed at the small white china bowl of strawberries, then, smilingly, dipped the biggest, sweetest berry into her tumbler of wine and fed it to the other girl. Mike's jaw dropped as he watched the ripe berry disappear between those soft, full lips. Then the Negro girl picked up the glass sugar canister, poured a stream of sugar into her palm, coated another berry with the white sweetness, and dangled it over J.B.'s open mouth.
Mike was starting to get some idea what the hell kind of place it was, and he was going to pack his bag again, leave the key on the hall table, and go find someplace to live that wasn't full of sideshow freaks. But just as he was about to push away from the table and storm out, Mrs. Washburno came back with a steaming plate of some kind of meat loaf all mixed up with wavy noodles and pungent red sauce.
When he looked up from the plate, he saw that a newcomer had entered the room: a huge, thick-muscled man in tight denim, motorcycle boots, and a brown leather jacket with a shearling collar. The outfit was topped off with a striped, knitted watch cap in yellow and orange. A pair of horns—Mike squinted and thought they were white plastic—stood out from the sides of the cap. "Colder'n a witch-tit out there!" the giant boomed, rubbing his hands. "Hey, Mama, got any heroes today?"
"Unhappy is the land that needs a hero," said the young man at the table nearest the pay phone. He had a stack of dimes on the table in front of him. He splashed something from a silver flask into his coffee cup. He looked up from the book he was reading, brushed his long dark hair away from his eyes, said, "The box-shovin' man-ape has favored us with his presence," and resumed reading. His Southern accent was so thick that Mike blinked and looked for subtitles to form in the air, like those movies he never went to unless they had Swedish blondes in them. Mike felt like yelling, "Hey! Get a haircut!" but didn't, because the aroma of the steaming platter reminded him that a meal was long overdue.
"Sure, Gina," Mrs. Washburno said. "I got what you like, Big Man." She wrestled out the cork, handed him a straw-swathed bottle of wine and passed through the slatted half-doors to the kitchen. Mrs. Washburno lifted a thick length of hot sausage onto the grill. As she waited for it to sizzle, she selected a baton of bread, sliced through the crispy crust, and prepared the tender crumb with a sprinkling of herbed oil. Then she enveloped the meat in the bread and laved it with tangy tomato sauce.
Mike's stomach was still growling, but the fork stayed poised in his hand as, fascinated, he watched the hot meat disappear into the man she called Gina's mouth, alternating with long pulls directly from the neck of the wine bottle.
"That is not a camp name," the reader informed him. "That truly is what it says on his birth certificate."
The giant nodded. "My Pop was a stevedore too. Used to work for this fella, Luigi was his name."
Mrs. Washburno beamed. "So my folks thought it would be a…what's the word?...to name me after him."
"Suck-up?" J.B. said; "Encomium?" the young man near the phone. "Tribute!" Gina said. 'Cept, when my birth certificate got writ, it didn't say "Gino." It said "Gina" instead. An' well, Pop sometimes got flusterated when he was 'round fancy folks, so he didn't try to get it changed back. 'Cause he thought it would be good for me—toughen me up—to not take any guff and have to let everybody know that I got man-parts."
"Which have now been seen by approximately as many people as 'Abie's Irish Rose,'" came a voice from the corner. "AND to as little aesthetic effect."
"Hell, folks loved that show," Gina said equably. "Mama, ya got any of that stripy ice-cream? Hey, you," he said. "What's your name? And didja get that flak jacket the hard way, or in an Army Surplus store?"
"Mike Reynolds," Mike said. "76th Air Cav," he said.
"Did you ever wonder if you were on the wrong side?" asked the young man near the payphone.
"Thing about wars, son," Mike said, "Is, when you're in 'em, you ain't got time to think about my side, your side, right side, wrong side."
"Next time you're in trouble, call a hippie. Well, Mike, this place is dead," Gina said, leaning in toward Mike (who ducked his head to get out of the way of the horns on his cap). "How's about comin' over to mine, have some fun? I like you soldier boys. Keep yourselves fit, don't whine over every little thing, and you know how to take orders."
"Sir! Yes sir!" Mike said, mesmerized.
CHAPTER THREE: And alliance had been
Cemented at first gently
Then with increasing…
"Huh, that's quite some buck," Mike said, nodding at the proud head of a magnificent 14-point stag. The head was mounted on a piece of wood the same color as the paneling on the walls, so it looked like the stag had poked his head through the wall, and presumably his ass was dangling in the next door apartment.
"That's what it's all about, baby," Gina said. "Stalk, mount, and shoot." He went to the small refrigerator, hip-checked it, and walked toward Mike with three bottles of beer dangling from each hand, like matched bunches of highly overripe bananas. He made use of one of the bottle openers nailed to the wall at intervals. (They, the stag's head, and a three-month-old calendar showing a basket of puppies, were the only décor.) "All that guinea red ink gives a man a thirst," he said with a belch, after dispatching the first of the beers. He unzipped his jacket, and leered, "Let's be bad guys!" He crooked a finger, and Mike went over to him.
"Damn!" Gina said approvingly, his hands possessive. "If that ain't an ass like a coupla bowling balls all lined up and ready to throw." Then he moved his hands to Mike's shoulders, and pushed down firmly.
Mike clutched at the bottom of Gina's t-shirt (tearing it further), and pulled himself up. "GINAAA!" he moaned.
CHAPTER FOUR: Mine Is An Evil Canvas
Mrs. Washburno wasn't home, so Mike dropped by Piccola Firenze to pay the week's rent. She wasn't at the restaurant either.
This time, instead of sitting near the payphone, the man in the corner was on the phone, occasionally dropping one of the dimes from his stack into the phone. "Yes, of course, darlin'. I wish we lived somewhere too. But I'm afraid that we have very most definitely lost Belle Reve, and my ability to construct an alternative is so far limited…Uh-huh. When I was your age, I was bored more than occasionally myself. Work on your differential equations, all right? And your Latin grammar. Love you madly too."
A young man, with a black beret covering his hair, and a small goatee clinging indecisively to his chin, sat on a barstool behind the counter. He looked up from the sports page. "Hi. Are you Mike? Mama said you were a 'big, handsome boy' and she was sure right. I guess that's where I get my artistic eye. She's over at St. Anthony's, so I'm holding down the fort. Want some eggs?"
"Mama?" Mike asked. "And, about them eggs, sure. Fried hard, and maybe some of that round bread with the hole in the middle if you got it and a little cup of that black rocket fuel of yours."
"Yeah, she does have this generally maternal vibe, but she is, in point of fact, my actual mother," he said. He extended a hand. "Gualtiero Washburno. AKA Gouache."
"Oh," Mike said. "So, you work here?"
"Not so much, just when Mama has some big-time confessing to do. I'm…well, I'm a man with a divided soul. I'm a pilot, and there isn't a crate you can show me that I can't fly as easy as you could juggle geese. But I'm an artist, too. So, I want to be out there in the Black. But I want to be where that cool North light is."
Gouache offered to pay five bucks for Mike to pose for him, but Mike figured his friend needed the money more than he did, so he shook his head as the artist pulled a crumpled stack of singles out of his pocket and started straightening them out. "I'm good, Gouache," he said. He looked around the studio. A half-remembered movie made him expect a platform and perhaps a stool to sit on, and a screen to duck behind and undress. There was nothing like that, nothing much at all in the big room that had once been a factory. The ancient cage elevator rumbled from time to time, and sometimes something would clank on one of the other floors.
"North light!" Gouache said, gesturing to the big bare windows in the cast-iron façade of the building. There was a long dark wooden table, scored with scratches and cigarette burns, heaped with tubes of paint, brushes, and jars of turpentine. Dozens of huge stretched canvases leaned against the wall. Mike craned his neck to see their subjects, but they were turned in so all he could see was the tense stapled rim and the reverse side of each picture. An iron bucket on the floor was full of melting ice cubes and green bottles of beer.
"Hey, where's the easel?" Mike asked, unbuttoning his shirt.
"That's…old! That's yesterday!" Gouache said, and pointed down at the floor, which was largely occupied by a huge stretched canvas. Because it rested on stretchers, it bounced a little, like a slice of trampoline, when Gouache prodded at it with his foot. He bent down, found a screwdriver on the floor, flipped the lid off a can of paint, and stalked through the loft, pouring a trail of vivid crimson along the fresh whiteness of the canvas. Then he took a pushbroom and shoved at the wet paint, feathering it here and there.
"Gouache, why do you need a model at all if you paint stuff that don't look like nothin'?"
"Strip!" the artist said. "And I'll show you! Bio-Action painting is what's happening now! It's the sunlight—no, it's the A-bomb explosion!—of the day that we seize!"
Mike pulled his shirt off, saw a coatrack in the far corner and hung it up there, and took off his shoes and pants as well. Gouache didn't specify, so he left on his socks and BVDs. He padded back to the center of the room. "Lie down!" the artist said, his voice muffled as he lifted the black turtleneck over his head, revealing smooth, milky skin and soft, reddish hair beneath his armpits.
The paint was cold against Mike's back and shoulders. Gouache prodded him with one foot, and he rolled over, twirling a scarlet candy stripe across his body. When he fetched up on his back again, he found the artist straddling his feet. Gouache knelt, and ran a large, soft brush caressingly over Mike's torso. Mike closed his eyes, then opened them and grunted as a line of thick, cold paint was laid down on his chest. The flat, bitter smell of the oil filled his nostrils. Gouache trailed the brush around in the paint. Then he pushed Mike over onto the canvas, and lay down next to him, adding more splashes of paint to the canvas from his own skin. The two men wrestled, flesh and pigment smacking against the taut whiteness, like a vast (and now sullied) sail.
"Who is that fella?" Mike asked, as they scrubbed off the last traces of paint. "Y'know, the one that's there all the time makin' phone calls. The one with the funny accent."
"Says his name—or his 'transparent alias' as he calls it—is Timon Samm. He's, or used to be a doctor, anyway. A big favorite with all the little old ladies around here. When it's Social Security day, Mama makes me schlep around to all their walk-up apartments, put their checks in the bank, you know? And then he goes around and does house calls and they give him, like, three tiny crumpled-up dollar bills. Some kind of story there. His kid sister lives with him, she's, I don't know, crazy or something. Definitely quaint."
CHAPTER FIVE: You meet the Buddha
On the road him he'd have no
Chance at even if
A softball team (with J.B. at second base) whooped it up over Cold Duck and eggplant parmigiana heroes. Gouache slow-danced with a besotted CPA named Roland.
"Hey," Mike said diffidently. "You're not readin' that book about germs any more."
Timon looked puzzled for a moment, then said, "Ah. Germinal" (It came out as something like "Zhairmnahl."). "No, I finished that one. It's not about germs, though. It's about…material and spiritual poverty." He folded down a corner of a page of "The Golden Bowl" and looked up at Mike.
Mike found he was having some difficulty in getting the conversation started. "That's too bad because, uh, not that I'm sure or anything but I might…well, germs…you got pills, right? Or shots, if you gotta."
Now Timon looked mildly amused. "So you've been hangin' back with the beasts, mmmm? I hate to think that the soldiers once under my aegis, prior to my dishonorable discharge, would have been…improvident enough to contract dishonorable discharges of their very own. Sure, I'll give you some pills. And some pro kits in the event of future misbehavior."
"You were in the Army?" Mike asked incredulously.
"The Navy, to be precise. And my…terms of engagement…there were somewhat brief. One would have thought that 'orderly' was a quality to be prized in a physician. But evidently only as an adjective, not as a noun…" Timon stood up and wrapped a very long scarf, in a plethora of colors and odd assemblages of stitches, around his neck, then put on a tweed overcoat. Mike didn't bother to button his jacket. "My family's attitude had always been, 'come back with your shield or on it,' and so in lieu of going home, I planned a valedictory visit to my younger sister Moon, who was away at boarding school. In our milieu, intellect in a young female is…not prized…so when she was offered a place at a very exclusive Academy, my parents and I were glad enough for her to go. For varying reasons. I'd received some rather disTURbing letters from her. Letters about the D'Arbanville's ball…and THIS from a girl who flatly reFUSED to make her debut despite invitations at a number of the finer cotillions. I discovered that all was not well with her and so we…fell in love with long distance."
He lived a few blocks from Piccola Firenze, in a large older building with echoing black-and-white marble tiles on the lobby floor. Mike was rather impressed to see that the building had an elevator, albeit an ancient and creaky one. "I'd best go in first," Timon said. "Let her know that you're all right, not to be afraid." He unlocked the door with three of a very large bunch of keys.
Mike sniffed. There was a kind of toasted atmosphere, but no smoke.
Timon went inside the apartment and gave the light bulbs and silk scarves a little breathing room. "Moon, darlin', told you before, puttin' the scarves over the lights like that, ain't safe."
"I don't want realism!" she said proudly. "I want magic!" She was thin and had tangled dark hair and a round face that, Mike thought, might have explained her name. But then it could have been whimsically self-bestowed or, Mike was beginning to think, could have been exactly the kind of thing that members of that family got named.
"Well, have a cold collation while I take care of Mike in the office. This is Sergeant Mike Reynolds, Moon." Timon spread two slices of bread with something sticky and orange, flipped the slices together, guillotined off the crusts, and cut four triangles with two precise slaps of the knife. To Mike's fascination, the sandwich filling spread precisely to the edge of the bread and stopped there.
"Smells like crotch!" Moon said, pushing at the plate with the glass of milk Timon had also handed her.
"Heresy!" he said. "We live and die by pimento cheese."
The apartment consisted of the kitchenette, a living room with a fireplace surrounded by well-filled bookshelves, and two white-sprayed wrought iron daybeds neatly made up with candlewick spreads and heaps of cushions. In the back, and past three more locks, was a room fitted up as a doctor's office, with an examination table and a small sink and cabinets with more locks. "Yeah," Timon said, with a wry smile. "Makes me feel like Bluebeard." He tipped a dozen pills into a pill bottle and gave Mike a couple of boxes of Trojans.
"I…well, I thought those were just for girls," Mike said. "Just for with girls. You know." He wondered why Timon would want to put himself out of business—there'd been cartons of the damn things inside the cupboard.
"Microbes are remarkably democratic," he said. There was a crash and a wail from the living room, or perhaps the kitchenette. "I'd best go see what's wrong this time," Timon said. "If only you'd known her, before," he said. "Before, whatever this thing is that…befellher. He was graceful, and gracious, and brilliant and lovely in every way and if you'd known, you would have been proud to be her chevalier."
Mike let himself out as Timon tweezed and swept. He liked a loyal man.
Frannie put a bookmark in "We Two Won't Last" (she respected books, even apart from the fact that it had cost thirty-five cents), put it back in her purse, and started doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper. J.B. and Gouache squabbled fraternally about the handling qualities of the Capissen-38 engine.
Mike picked up a corner of the curtain, and sunlight streamed in. "See!" he said. "It's a real pretty day out, and here we are again, lurkin' around as usual."
"Aww, it's real homey here," J.B. said. "Like we're all family."
"And let's just say that our presence is not…solicited…in many other venues," Timon said.
"It's early days yet," Frannie said. "Social structures can change."
"Anyways, just imagine a buncha fairies gettin' together to do anythin' 'cept maybe throw a drag ball," Gina said.
"You, of course, are merely here to read the gas meter," Timon said.
Gina shrugged. "So what? A man got needs. Hey, Mike, you play Calvinball? Some of the guys down the yard have a pickup game Sundays. You want some sunlight and fresh air, that'd do ya."
Mike nodded, slugged down the last of his espresso, and put on his cap.
"You been to their apartment?"
"Yeah. It's real…neat."
"Wouldn't bet my life both them beds get slept in, neither."
"Yeah? Maybe you're just jealous you can't have him for yourself," Mike said. They were pretty narrow beds anyway.
"What makes you think I ain't had him for myself?" For a moment, Gina looked nostalgic. "He can take a damn sight more than you'd think by those mimsy ways of his. But he's more trouble than he's worth. Him and his Baby Ruth sister—all drippin' caramel and peanuts--and their COMplicated CHALDhood. Mine weren't no walk in the park, what's he think?"
Mike stared at him. It had never occurred to him to think of Gina as anything other than six-feet-four and right there.
"You like Frannie? The colored girl? I hear she swings both ways." Gina said.
"Awww, I wouldn't want to beat J.B.'s time. J.B.'s all right. Did you know that she can rebuild a whole gravity wave amplifier in two hours, including windin' her own trackback coil? Ain't every girl can say that. How 'bout you?"
"If you mean windin' trackback coil, nope, wouldn't know where to start. 'Bout Frannie, nah, I don't hold with that race-mixin' stuff. The Lord made white and He made colored and he wants 'em to stay that way, not everybody get all taffy."
CHAPTER SIX: Sunday in the Park
The pay phone rang. Mama answered it and beckoned Timon over to the phone.
"Yes, this is he….how far along? Eight weeks? Then are you sure? No, no, the rabbit always dies, one way or the other, don't matter…yes…three hundred….why should I care if you'll have to hock her engagement ring? You could buy her a weddin' ring for fifty…all right. Tomorrow. Three o'clock. I'll meet you in front of the museum. I'll be drivin' a blue an' white Mercury." He went over to Frannie's table and handed her a ten-dollar bill for rental of her car.
"Those poor damn girls," she said. "Why can't they be smarter? Or look for themselves better?"
Timon sighed. "I'll feel better 'bout the whole thing once more of them can get those If You Can't Be Good Be Careful pills. Me, I'm sellin' all I can get my hands on."
"Hey!" Mike said. "Them pills—are they illegal?"
"Not here they aren't. Lots of planets, they are, though."
"Shiny!" Mike said thoughtfully.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Savage Rhythms
"She always did love to dance," Timon said. He picked up a couple of well-stuffed dance bags and pushed them under the bench so there would be somewhere for him and Mike to sit down during the class.
The dance studio was a big attic room, with sunshine pouring down from a skylight, reflected in the mirrored wall.
"Hey, what's he doin' here?" Mike asked
Gina tilted his hips forward enough so, apart from anything else, Mike could see that he was seated on a gigantic African drum. The objects in his lap proved to be a set of bongos, and he set up a savage tattoo. "I just like smackin' em," he said.
"This is Miss Sierra," Timon said, kissing her on the forehead. She kissed his cheek. "My Hodgeberry friend," she said. "Imogen, may I present Sergeant Mike Reynolds? Mike, Miss Sierra—nee Idabelle-- is certain to become the toast of the theatrical profession." She blushed a little, becomingly. "But in the meantime, you see, I teach a little…this and that…"
"Askin' her friends for fifty bucks for the powder room…" Gina said.
"Hey!" Mike said. "No need to be offensive to a lady."
Imogen smiled at him, and he felt his heart melt a little. She was tall and slim, her wavy dark hair captured in a chiffon scarf, with a larger scarf wrapped around her hips over a scoop-necked black leotard and footless black tights. She wore a necklace of large, barely polished turquoises. "We'll wait a little longer for Gualtiero," she said. "He is…not very punctual."
Moon and half a dozen other girls, in circle skirts and t-shirts or leotards and tights, sprawled on the floor in attitudes of competitive relaxation. One girl knitted away on a circular needle at a much-handled pair of pink tights.
Then the door opened, and Gouache came in, kicking off his shoes. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a paint-spattered t-shirt. "Sorry!" he said. "I got this idea for a cut-paper series…." He saw Mike and gave him a little salute. "The complete artist!" he said. "Gotta experience every way to make body art!"
Imogen dropped the needle onto the turntable, and as the "Missa Luba" pounded through the studio, augmented by Gina's flailing at the drums, Imogen led the class through stretches, extensions, and contractions, then gave them themes and allowed them to improvise.
Moon was the best, by far: her thin long legs flashing, crouching and hunching her body in then fluttering to the freedom of huge jumps.
It was too noisy to talk, but Mike felt content, sitting on the bench next to Timon. Timon passed him the silver flask (which, somewhat to Mike's surprise, contained brandy; he'd expected bourbon).
Mike handed back the flask, and realized it was the first time he'd ever really looked at Timon—whose hair he still thought was too long, but who, he noticed with a small shock, was remarkably handsome, with bluebell eyes and the mien of an overworked angel.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Pursuit
"Thank you, Gina, for looking after Moon," Timon said. "Did you have a nice day, sweetheart?"
"We went to the zoo," Moon said. "All those sad little lives. Had you chosen to pursue a vocation of advocacy rather than one of healin' betcha you could have gotten them let off with a warnin'."
"Hey, what are you, Doc, some kinda Commie?" Gina asked. "'Cause, I dunno, I always thought the two of ya got toys in the attic—like, your parents was cousins. If you was lucky. But turns out there really was somebody followin' Moon, ya didn't make it up just to sound important. Little fella, blue suit, glasses. And when I braced him, he said he was from the Federated Bureau of Investigation."
"What happened?" Timon asked. "Are you all right?"
"You should have been there," she said.
"Yes, I know, I'm sorry, I should have protected you, of all of my failures that is the very saddest…"
"Oh, stop caterwaulin'. No, I mean, you should have been there, it was amusin'," Moon said, twirling in a circle and then reaching up to touch Gina's collarbone (which was about as far as she could reach). "Gina picked him up by the neck and set him down some distance away, and then took my hand and we ran. I have always depended upon the kindest of stranglers."
CHAPTER NINE: I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair
J.B. yelped. It was so uncharacteristic that everyone's head turned. She waved a letter written on blue gingham stationery. "It's from my Mama," J.B. said. "She and my daddy are comin' to visit…next week."
A pall descended. "Is nice, to see your parents," Mrs. Washburno said.
"You don't understand, Mrs. Washburno, uh, there's things about our apartment…"
Mrs. Washburno brushed her objection away with the sweep of a barmop. "Some of my big strong boys, they go to your apartment and push apart the two little beds…"
Gina guffawed. "Yeah, an' put away your stash of girlie magazines."
"Hey!" J.B. said. "I just get it for the articles!"
"And the Dottore, he will lend you his sister to pretend to be your roommate, because they will see is una bianca and be happy, and the Dottore's friend the stuck-up actor lady will lend you a dress that is not too big like your girlfriend's. Even, if you wish, I send you a pot of gravy so you can pretend you know how to cook."
"You're a champ, Missus Dubya, but all that garlic…they wouldn't even chaw enough of it down to get heartburn."
A week later, J.B. looked into Imogen's hand mirror, and nearly burst into tears. "My hair!" she said.
"I am sorry, but you didn't give me a lot to work with," Imogen said. She had swapped the Brylcreem for hairspray and set a flurry of tiny pincurls, but the result was, frankly, grotesque. "Tell them that it's like Mary Martin's hairdo in South Pacific. She had to wash her hair right on stage, eight performances a week."
Imogen preferred the serious, experimental Drama to the musical indulgences of the tired businessman, but she would have given a lot for a long run. Even a bus and truck tour.
"And perhaps I can find you a darling little cocktail hat…All right, now," Imogen said. "Hold up your arms over your head." She held the cage crinoline over J.B.'s head and let it fall, until it belled out around her. Then she eased the starched cotton frock, printed with lavish bunches of violets, over her head and zipped it up to the sweetheart neck. "Walk a little bit…you should practice, so you don't flip your hoop."
"Jesus!" J.B. said, grimacing at her pinched toes and slithering heels. "How do girls walk in these things?"
"Oh, come on," Imogen said. "You used to do this all the time!"
"Me? Hell, no," J.B. said. "Right around when it was gonna stop lookin' cute that I was a tomboy an' all, the Army recruiters blew through town. One of 'em taught me a thing or three, and she said if I joined up they'd put me in the motor pool."
CHAPTER TEN: Chickens Come Home to Roost
"Oh, lord," Frannie said, putting down a wide, striped china bowl of potato salad. "Look at that big ol' fry-kettle. And two whole cans of Crisco."
"Well, I had them in the house anyway," Timon said, turning his back on Frannie's shocked expression and neglecting to explain it was for piecrust. (Although it was hardly his usual youthful pastime, he had a copy of "The Joy of Cooking" and a lot of time to kill in the evenings, and a vague idea of thrift involving saving money for wherever he and Moon eventually would wind up.)
"You gonna drown that poor chicken," Frannie said. "Pan-fry it, in not but a couple of inches of lard, that's the ticket."
Timon opened the icebox and took out a pan of neatly cloven chicken pieces. He put it down next to the dishtowel on which the tongs and pancake turner and wooden spoons were laid out. He lifted out chicken pieces and drained them. "Soaked in buttermilk," he said proudly.
"Chicken for frying should not be soaked in one thing," Frannie said. "Whoever told you you know how to do this?"
"My ma—that is, our housekeeper, Mrs.Jukes."
"Uh-huh. What're you gonna do now?"
"Put a cup of flour on a dish, roll the chicken in it, give it a minute to dry off, then set the grease to heatin'."
Frannie shook her head. "I can't tell you how wrong all this is."
"Just sit on that stool and keep me company, then," he said, lighting the burner and turning on the oven to keep the chicken warm. "I know you'd say we ain't even from the same planet, but I like havin' someone down-home around me. I….I just can't get used to it here. It's damp and it's cold and I'm grateful to have the smell of antiseptic in my nostrils all the time, because otherwise it would all smell wrong. How 'bout you, Government Girl? You like it here?"
"I don't relish spending all day, every day, in a little blue smock sortin' letters. I miss farmstand peaches. I miss folks in church knowin' you even though I came all this way for 'em not to know my business. I hate spending a week's wages on a coat, and still not bein' warm enough. But J.B.'s my home, so if she's here, I'll stick."
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Had been a haunted
House even before the dawn
He gulped down the
"Moon, honey, whyn'cha go into the kitchen and get my folks some iced tea while we're catchin' up?" J.B. asked, after having exclaimed over the Captures of the Frye's trip to Aberdeen Planetary Park.
Several minutes later, and to loud clashing and slamming noises evidently not limited to the kitchen, neither Moon nor iced tea was forthcoming (although she did manage to locate and hide the Pirelli calendar that had escaped notice earlier).
"Ha-ha," Mike said unconvincingly. "They been cleanin' up all week, Mrs. Frye. Wanted to make it look nice for you. No wonder they can't find a thing."
"I hope your intentions toward my daughter are honorable," Mr. Frye said. Mike couldn't figure out if he was joking or not.
"Well, uh, I sure wouldn't say we're engaged or nothin', if that's what you mean, but I swear to you on a stack of Bibles that I have behaved like a perfect gentlemen toward her. You ask J.B…." (he paused, desperately racking his brain for what J.B.'s actual name might be or if he had ever heard it) "or Moon if I ever stayed the night here, or ever didn't leave at a decent hour."
Moon made an entrance, her arms filled with everything vaguely liquid that had been in the refrigerator (having remembered that people keep food in refrigerators).
"So, Moon, did you have a nice summer vacation? Did you go away?" Mrs. Frye asked, righting the milk carton where Moon had dumped it on the coffee table
.
Moon swiveled her head around to look at Mrs. Frye. "I…I don't know," she said. "No, wait…" and then began to scream, keeping it up until Mike scooped her up, said, "I think I'd better take her home…uhh…to her brother's apartment, he's a doctor, he'll know what to do…" and ran down the stairs. J.B. opened the window and threw down the keys to Frannie's car, parked around the corner.
Moon was still screaming, in syncopation with the squeal of the tires, when Mike pulled up in front of her apartment just as Gina arrived, carrying a squashy butcher-wrapped package for hamburgers.
"Uh," Mike said. "We came back…a little sooner than we planned."
Timon put down the tongs, switched off the burner under the pot of chicken, and hugged Moon until the screams died down.
"Pills," Moon said. "They gave them, they gave us, pills. Last summer. And it made some people happy, and content, and they thought nobody had any right to complain or interfere in any way whatsoever, even though they knew what was awful was awful. But some of them…some of them, suddenly, like a flock of plucked birds came darting up to the barbed wire fence as if blown there by the wind, and they would play, on instruments of percussion! Rushing out through a wicket gate like an assault party in war! Do you know what I mean?"
Actually nobody did.
"White hot, a blazing white hot, hot blazing white, at five o'clock in the afternoon in the city of—Cabeza de Lobo. As if a huge white bone had caught on fire in the sky and turned the sky and everything under the sky white with it! And the oompa-oompa of the—following band—there was a flock of featherless little black sparrows—and they devoured parts of each other, torn or cut parts of them away with their hands or knives or maybe those jagged tin cans they made music with…until nothing was left but a big white-paper-wrapped bunch of red roses torn, thrown, crushed—against that blazing white wall."
"Hunh!" Gina said. "When'd that get fun? And that's what they do with our tax money? No wonder I never pay any."
"Well, if the G-men are chasing you, you can't stay here," Frannie said, once the injection had taken effect and Moon slept peaceably. Timon knelt by the daybed and cleaned her tear-stained face with a lace-edged pink washcloth.
"No," Mike said. "We can't stay here. I was gonna tell you later, save it for a surprise, but I bought a ship. OK, it needs some work, but J.B.'s been helpin' out with that. And Timmy—ah, that is, the Doc—he got some prescription pads and some stationery printed up, looks real official. And the companies that make the pills, either they think he's runnin' some kinda clinic or somethin' or they don't rightly care, long's he pays up and they got the paper. By the time anyone gets to analyzin' the legalities, we'll be long gone. Gouache will hop us from planet to planet—he says his time dirtside's about done anyway, his hands are gettin' itchy for the switches--and we'll get rich. And we'll be free, no one lookin' over our shoulders."
"So your point is, bunch of queers like us, we're gonna be God's gift to snatchhounds?" Gina asked.
Frannie shrugged. "The Lord moves in mysterious ways."
CHAPTER TWELVE: Suddenly, in Autumn
Despite J.B.'s best efforts, it took a little longer than planned. ("What good's a ship to you, if you got stuff fallin' off all the time?" she asked, not unreasonably.)
As soon as the paint was dry, where Gouache had painted "The Fugitive Kind" on the fuselage, they took off.
"Well, dip me in honey an' throw me to the lesbians—once they're done christenin' the ship, that is--if we ain't the swishiest gang in the 'Verse," Gina said.
THE END
