A Sticky End

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ONE LOOK WAS ALL IT TOOK TO KNOW THAT MORGAN was in serious trouble. He stood at the door of his family home in Wimbledon, his face haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his clothes, usually immaculate, crumpled. He'd sounded fine on the phone, a little hurried, perhaps—but I put that down to his eagerness to get me over to the house now that the coast was clear, so that I could fuck him.

He'd been keeping me at arm's length ever since I arrived in London, which I understood—he was a married man, a father of two small children, and it was not always convenient to entertain your old college pal, especially when the entertainment involved cock, rather than cocktails. Now, however, his wife had taken the children to stay with friends, he was a bachelor again—and he wanted good old Mitch to come around and give him what his wife never could. I was ready for him; it had been over a year since I last had my dick in Morgan's tight ass, and by the time the train had rattled its way from Waterloo down to Wimbledon, I had a healthy hard-on in my pants. I'd take him straight up to
the bathroom, I thought, as I walked through the leafy suburban streets, bend him over the sink, grease him up with a blob of Brylcreem, and fuck him good and hard before we even said hello.

But the moment I saw Morgan, my dearest friend, standing distraught and disheveled on the doorstep, the blood rushed from my cock to my brain. Something was wrong—and I wanted to know what. I'm ashamed to say that I felt a shiver of excitement; here was some mystery I would get to the bottom of. Not the bottom I'd been hoping for, but not a bad alternative.

“Morgan! What is the matter? You look like death.”

He drew breath to say something, but nothing came out. He turned the color of porridge and swayed a little, catching hold of the column that held up the porch to prevent himself from pitching headlong down the steps. I grabbed his arm and guided him indoors. He walked unsteadily, as if drunk. So much for chasing him up to the bathroom, ripping his pants down, and parting his cheeks; it was the most I could do to drop him on a chair in the dining room, where he sat gasping, staring into space. I poured him a brandy.

“Drink this, come on.”

He looked at me, and looked at the brandy glass, as if he had never seen such things before. I took his hand—it was as cold as ice—and carefully put the glass between his fingers. Gradually, we got it to his lips, and tipped a little of the golden spirit between them. It seemed to break the spell; Morgan swallowed, gasped, and started to breathe again.

“My God, Mitch,” he said, as if he had only just noticed I was there.

“What the hell is going on, Boy?” I've never been able to break the habit of using the nickname he earned at Cambridge for his fresh looks and high spirits—but at that moment he looked anything but boyish. Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture. His eyes were bloodshot,
sunken in rings of shadow, his lips, usually so full and laughing, were thin and bloodless.

“Dead,” he said. The word came out in a ghastly croak, and he started coughing. Now his face turned an awful, livid purple, as if he were being gassed. A thick vein stood out in his forehead, framed on either side by Morgan's dark hair, falling almost into his eyes. I held him until the fit had passed, and then pushed his hair back, an action I had performed so many times before in more pleasant circumstances. His forehead was burning hot.

So that was it—he was running a fever. That would explain the grim looks, the bloodshot eyes, the distracted manner. It was a relief—for a moment I thought something was badly wrong. Now I realized he was just ill. Perhaps he hadn't said “dead” but “bed”—which is exactly where he needed to be.

“You're sick, Morgan. Why on earth didn't you tell me?”

He was shivering now; yes, this was a real lulu of a fever, and he needed to be looked after. Lucky for him that his best friend, Edward Mitchell, was a doctor. I had planned to get him into bed for different reasons, but at least he was in good hands. I hoped it was not influenza; I had no desire to ruin my longed-for vacation by catching that. If I was going to be ill, I wanted to do it on company time. I spend all my working hours caring for the sick in the hospital in Edinburgh where I work; it seemed unfair that I should have to play nurse on my vacation.

“He's dead.”

The voice was clearer now, the word unambiguous. I snapped out of my selfish reflections.

“Dead? Who's dead?”

He said nothing, just stared gloomily at the brandy glass on the table in front of him.

“Morgan, for God's sake! What are you saying? Who is dead?”

His eyes moved slowly, horribly slowly, to meet mine, and I saw in their depths a misery and desperation that I hoped never to see there.

“Who, Morgan?”

“Bartlett.” His voice caught, and I thought he would start coughing again, but he swallowed and cleared his throat. “Frank Bartlett.”

“Who is Frank Bartlett, Boy?” I realized I was speaking as I would to a child.

“My…my friend…” His eyes were darting from side to side now, unable to hold my gaze.

“You've had some bad news, Morgan. I'm so sorry. If it would help to tell me about it…”

He looked puzzled, as if I were speaking a foreign language.

“Did someone call you on the telephone? Did you have a telegram?” He shook his head, said nothing. “Was this after you spoke to me? Morgan? Come on, please, tell me what's going on!”

“I think I'm going to—” He leaned over the side of the chair and retched; nothing came up but gas. When he sat up again, I noticed that he was blue around the lips. I grabbed his wrist and felt for his pulse; it was fast and weak. He was exhibiting all the symptoms of shock.

The doctor in me sprang into action. I got him into the lounge, laid him down on the couch, and put two cushions under his feet; that would get the blood flowing back to his heart. There was a thick woolen blanket over the back of the couch, which I tucked around his body, and placed a rug on top of it. Morgan was shivering violently now, his teeth chattering so much that he could not speak. I took off my jacket, unbuttoned the front of my shirt, pulled back his covers, and lay down beside him, pressing my body against his, trying to warm him. We lay like that for ten, maybe 15 minutes until, gradually, the shivering subsided and he began to
breathe more regularly. I took his pulse again; it was stronger and slower this time. The crisis was past. I stood up, buttoned my shirt, and tucked it back into my pants, taking the opportunity to rearrange the completely inappropriate erection that had been straining painfully down there ever since lying beside him. I'm not above taking advantage of a man when he's down, but there are some depths to which even I won't sink.

I sat on the edge of the couch, smoothing his hair, holding his hand. He kept his eyes tight shut, like a child pretending to sleep. Whatever had happened, he couldn't yet face it. I would have to wait.

I have lived in Britain for long enough to know that what was needed at this point was tea—hot, strong tea with plenty of sugar. I rang the bell for the maid.

There was no reply.

“There's no one here,” said Morgan, in a weirdly normal, controlled voice. “I gave the servants the weekend off.”

“I see.” Was this part of his plan—to have the house to himself so that we could fuck uninterrupted? If so, why the hell hadn't he called me yesterday? We'd wasted a whole day and a night. As usual, I was letting my dick do the thinking. I found my way to the kitchen—this was my first visit to Morgan's new family home, but it was modeled on traditional lines—filled the kettle, and lit the gas. The kitchen was scrupulously clean, the floor scrubbed and shining, the grate clean, the pots and pans neatly ranged on shelves and hooks. There was a vase of lilacs on the windowsill, and the fresh, sweet perfume filled the room. Nothing here was out of place. It was exactly what I expected. Boy's wife, Belinda, would know just how to run an orderly, pleasant house. A cook and a maid were all she would need; she would take care of everything else, looking after her husband and two small children as if it were the easiest thing in the world. I admired Belinda tremendously, despite the fact that she was
married to my dearest friend, the man who, of all the men in the world, I most enjoyed fucking. More than Vince—my own husband, or wife, or whatever the world would call him. My own beloved Vince, with whom I shared my life and my home. Who was now in Paris, on publishing business, negotiating British rights for American books, and wanted me to go with him, but I had invented some nonexistent medical conference as an excuse to get down to London and see Boy Morgan.

The kettle boiled, and I made the tea to the best of my ability; Vince said that no American would ever make a really good cup of tea, but grudgingly admitted I had just about risen above the dishwater level. Vince again. I hadn't done anything with Morgan, and already I was feeling guilty. I shouldn't have come. I should leave.

And perhaps I would have left—turned on my heel and left Wimbledon without a word to Morgan, taken the boat train over to Paris and surprised Vince…

But then I saw the blood in the hallway.

I hadn't noticed it before. How could I miss it? A dark red smear on the black-and-white tiles, about two feet from the door, drying now to brown but still unmistakably blood. I've seen enough of the stuff in operating theaters to know what it looks like.

There was a fair-sized patch of it, perhaps four inches long, roughly the shape of an elongated leaf, with a few sprayed droplets at the end. From this angle, it was as clear as day. I must have overlooked it before. Yes, from the other side the light from the fanlight above the door fell strangely, and it looked no more sinister than the scuff mark from a rubber-soled shoe.

I bent down for a closer look. It was still tacky. This blood had been spilled within the last few hours.

I set the tea tray down on the living room table. Morgan was sitting up a little, and the color had returned to his cheeks.

“Tea.”

“Thanks, Mitch.”

I poured, added milk and sugar, stirred, and handed him a cup.

“That's better.” He sighed. “I'm sorry about that little performance. Don't know what came over me.”

“Morgan,” I said, “there's blood in the hall.”

“Blood?”

“Blood. A great big puddle of the stuff.” I needed to know what was going on, and saw no harm in exaggerating, if it would prevent Morgan's upper lip from restiffening.

“Ah.”

“I think you'd better tell me what's going on.”

He sat with the teacup poised between saucer and mouth. “Yes,” he said at length, replacing it in the saucer with a dainty tinkle, “I suppose I'd better.”

We sat in silence for a while, sipping our tea, for all the world like two old maids whiling away the hours before death. The clock ticked, somewhere a bird sang, and we listened to horses' hooves approaching and then departing along the street outside.