The Butcher's Son (22 page)

“Now, you enjoy the show, hear?” And with that, he disappeared down the hall toward the bathrooms.

While I’ve never been one of those people who won’t go anywhere unless they have someone to go with, or wouldn’t dream of eating in a restaurant alone, sitting by myself at a table in a gay bar surrounded by couples and groups did make me feel just a little self-conscious. When Chris and I had been together, and we’d seen someone sitting by himself, we’d kind of felt sorry for him. Now that shoe was on the other foot.

Bob hadn’t shown up by the time the house lights dimmed for the second show, so I decided to just sit back and enjoy it. It was pretty much a carbon copy of the other times I’d seen it but still enough fun to be worthwhile. T/T was as outrageous as ever—he did a version of Sophie Tucker’s “You Gotta See Momma Every Night” that brought down the house. There was a new kid who did a pretty good version of Marlene Dietrich’s “Falling in Love Again” and a campy version of “Lili Marlene.”

Then it was time for Judy.

If her selections had been a little on the reflective side the last few times I’d seen her, tonight she was on an upswing. She opened with “The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” followed by “Get Happy,” and ended with “Swanee.” This time, there was no doubt—she looked directly at me at least three times. Quickly, but no mistaking the eye contact.

The audience, as usual, went wild and wouldn’t let her off the stage. Finally, she relented for only the second time since I’d started coming to see her. She sat on the edge of the stage directly in front of me. The lights dimmed to a single light-pink spot on her face, and she sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” And she sang it to me!

At the end of the song, the spotlight went out, and I saw her—because I was so close—get up and disappear behind the curtain. Despite nearly five minutes of wild applause and whistles and calls of “Ju-dy! Ju-dy!” the curtains remained closed. The other performers came out for their curtain calls, and the show was over.

I was sitting there, finishing my drink and wondering what in hell that had been all about—she rarely had even seemed aware of the audience, let alone played so directly to just one guy in it—when the waiter came over and handed me a note. Puzzled, I opened it to read
Come backstage
.

Thinking it was from T/T and not sure whether I wanted to go backstage or not, I hesitated a moment before deciding, again,
What the hell?

I flagged down the waiter who had brought me the note and asked him how I could get back to find T/T. He looked at me oddly.

“It’s not from Tondelaya,” he said. “It’s Judy.” He pointed me to the hallway leading to the bathroom.

Okay, Hardesty
, I thought as I started toward the hall.
What in the hell is going on here?

If, by some totally-out-of-left-field chance Judy had decided to make a pass at me, I really didn’t dig drag queens. I vastly prefer men who aren’t pretending to be…well…women. Still, my curiosity was pushing me into the hallway, and I knew I’d have to find out one way or the other.

I’d never really noticed before that the bathroom doors were at the end of the hallway on the left but there was also a doorway on the right. I realized now it was directly behind the stage. I should have knocked, but I opened it to find another short hallway paralleling the rear of the stage.

At the end was an open door, and I could see a couple of the drag queens removing their makeup, changing clothes, and talking and laughing among themselves. About halfway down, on the left, was a single closed door with a large gold star on it.

Okay, Hardesty. You’re here! Do it! Taking a deep breath, I knocked.

“Come in.”

Oh, Jesus! I knew that voice!

I entered the room to see a seated form in a man’s bathrobe, his back to me, in the process of removing his contact lenses. A wig I recognized as the one Judy wore for the show was on a small stand on the dressing counter. I also recognized the sandy blond hair of the man in front of me, and I had a knot the size of a grapefruit in my stomach.

Putting the contacts carefully in their case, he got up and turned toward me for the first time.

Kevin!

He smiled, coming toward me and extending his hand.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Patrick.”

Chapter 16

I somehow managed to take his hand and, de
spite my shock, was aware of its strength. He stood there, staring into my eyes and smiling. And still holding my hand.

“That’s why we’re called identical twins,” he said, my confusion apparently being written all over my face. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

“Well…uh…yeah,” I managed to stammer.

“Kev was right,” he said, pulling his head back slightly and looking me over slowly from head to toe like a rancher contemplating a prize bull,

“About what?” I managed to say, wondering when he was going to let go of my hand.

“You
are
sexy. How about a nice, hot fuck?”

Whoa, cowboys! Break time!

I managed to retrieve my hand and back away a step or two.

“Thanks for the offer, but I just screwed the waiter and two busboys on the way in here.”

He laughed and shook his head.

“I knew I’d like you! You’ve got balls—big ones, I’d guess—not like that little wussy brother of mine.”

Part of me suspected I was way out of my league here, but the rest of me knew I had no idea what league that might be.

“Yeah, well,” I said, running my hand over my chin, “I really did want to talk to you.”

“About Kevin?”

“Well, yes, about Kevin. And about—”

“He’s got the hots for you, you know,” Patrick said, turning around to remove his robe and hang it on a clothes hook. He had his shorts on, but I could imagine what lay inside—hell, I’d seen it, on Kevin.

“What in hell gives you that idea?”

He turned toward me briefly to give me a big, sexy grin.

“We are brothers, you know,” he said, picking up a towel to wipe the remainder of his makeup off. “That ‘I’m married so I can’t be a queer’ bullshit might work for dear old Dad, but it don’t mean squat to me. But why don’t you hold on a second while I change, and we can go somewhere and talk—like your place.”

Jesus, the guy had balls, I had to admit. And while my head told me taking Patrick to my apartment was not a good idea, my crotch was telling quite a different story.

I waited in silence while he quickly dressed then went to the door. I started to follow, but he shook his head and turned the deadbolt. He motioned me toward the closet in one corner of the room. Puzzled, I watched as he swept the hangers—mostly with Judy costumes but a few sets of men’s shirts and pants—to either side to expose another door.

Opening it, he made an elaborate “after you” gesture with one hand, and after I’d stepped into a narrow stairwell leading down, he moved the clothes back into position, closed the door, and followed me down the stairs. The door at the bottom opened onto the alley behind Bacchus’s Lair.

That’s
why no one ever saw Judy coming or going
, I thought.

“Which way’s your car?” Patrick asked, and I motioned down the alley to the left. “Well, let’s go around the block this way.” He headed to the right. “The street’s closer here.”

As we walked down the dark alley, I could hear music coming from the second floor of one of the buildings on the other side. A piano. Beethoven. Suddenly, I realized we were passing directly behind Salvation’s Door; the buildings backed up on the same alley!

Patrick glanced up toward the sound of the music and obviously read my mind.

“Ironic, isn’t it? So close and yet so far apart. Little brother at his prayers and meditation, you and me going for one of the hottest times
you’ll
ever have.”

I was more than a little irritated by his last sentence. He was pretty damned arrogant to think that’s what was going to happen. I was also pretty sure he was right.

*

Now, here’s a guy you met all of half an hour ago,
I
thought as we rode in relative silence to my apartment. A guy who very well may be a total loon capable of just about anything, and your primary concern at the moment is to get him into bed? Just how fucking stupid can you be?

Well, anybody who is out to keep Chief Rourke from
becoming governor can’t be all bad
, I rationalized—not very convincingly.

“Look, Patrick, I think maybe we should talk first ab—”

He looked at me.

“Fuck first. Talk later.”

Damn, I hated myself, but my crotch told me he was right.

Part of me was thinking
Jeez, Hardesty, you’re a real slut!
, but I hastened to my own defense by reminding myself that I’d just come out of a monogamous (on my part) relationship of five years and was kind of out of practice on the etiquette of hardcore cruising. True, I’d had sort-of sex with Kevin, but that really didn’t involve cruising. Neither had the night with Don. And if Patrick was anywhere near as good as his brother…

Suffice to say my Scorpio sex drive won out over my Scorpio deductive reasoning, and it was as exciting as all hell.

*

We hadn’t even closed the apartment door before
Patrick started ripping—and I do mean ripping—my shirt off. We were all over one another, stumbling across the room and finally falling backward onto the sofa, then onto the floor. Patrick on top, then me, then Patrick, stripping clothes as we went. We didn’t even try to make it to the bedroom.

I did things with him that night I had never known two human beings could do to/with one another. He had been absolutely right—it was one of the greatest nights of my life.

I woke up at ten-thirty Sunday morning in bed. Alone. The apartment was a total shambles. We had done it in every single room, including the kitchen and the bathroom. I was sticky from my chin to my thighs and desperately needed a shower (we’d been there, too, at one point). How I had the energy to stand up amazed me.

But Patrick had lied. He had said, “Fuck first. Talk later.” We hadn’t talked. Not in words.

And of course, I had absolutely no idea how to get in touch with him. No phone number. No address. Just Bacchus’s Lair, and they didn’t have a show on Sunday nights.

Which got me to thinking, Patrick Rourke might be a drag queen, but, oh, my, strip him down to the basics, and…

I stood in the shower and had one of my little Hardesty-to-Hardesty talks.

Okay, Hardesty, now what’s happening? Now you’re falling for Kevin Rourke
and
Patrick Rourke?

Who said anything about falling for anyone? Getting a trifle obsessed with, perhaps, but “falling for?” Get a fucking life!

I was hoping against hope Kevin wouldn’t call. What would I—
could
I—possibly say to him? I sure as hell couldn’t tell him I’d met his brother and fucked the stuffing out of him without finding out one single thing of the millions of things I wanted to find out. And I am one of the world’s absolute worst liars.

But Kevin couldn’t possibly know his brother was working as a drag queen less than 200 feet from Salvation’s Door, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Damn it, I had to nail Patrick down…
uh-huh
…and get some answers.

Bob called just after I got out of the shower to ask if we’d gone to Bacchus’s Lair. When I told him I had, he apologized and said he’d gotten involved with some friends and ended up playing cards all night. He asked how the show had been, and I told him fine.

I just took it easy most of the day, not really in the mood to do much of anything except reflect on the night before and wonder for the two-thousandth time what was going on between the two brothers and me.

Bacchus’s Lair didn’t open until six p.m. on Sundays, and featured only a pianist as entertainment. I wrote a note with my phone number and the message “Call me!” addressed to “Judy” and gave the waiter five dollars to let me slide it under her dressing room door.

*

C.C. informed me Monday that I would be accom
panying the chief and the adult members of the Rourke clan on a four-day campaign swing of the state, beginning Tuesday. The primaries were almost here, and recent polls had shown the chief trailing slightly behind Senator Evans.

McNearny had proposed the modern-day equivalent of a whistle-stop tour, concentrating on the smaller, conservative rural communities the chief’s handlers considered key to his election. The chief, his family and his advisors would be traveling by chartered bus. I and Jim DeCarlo, another of C.C.’s staffers normally in charge of the Xerox room, would travel ahead of the bus in a rental van with banners, posters, press kits, bumper stickers, and assorted PR paraphernalia.

Arriving two hours ahead of the bus, it was our duty to meet with the chief’s local supporters and be sure they had all the materials they needed for a rousing spontaneous display of enthusiasm when the chief himself rolled into town. Having thus dispersed our materials, we would speed on down the road to the next stop and repeat the process.

I’d never spent much time in that part of the state but was quickly reminded that my world—the world of gay bars, Sunday brunch, and Gay Pride rallies—was not the same world as the Bubba-land I found myself in. There, pickup trucks outnumbered other vehicles by two hundred to one and patriotism, as the locals saw it, went considerably beyond singing “God Bless America” on the Fourth of July.

For me, the whole experience was summed up in a gun-rack-in-the-rear-window pickup we were lucky enough to be stuck behind for about thirty miles on a two-lane road. It was covered with bumper stickers: “America for the Americans!” “America First!” “Buy American!”

It was a Toyota.

Actually, the tour was a pretty shrewd political ploy. At each stop, Kevin would introduce the family, give a brief speech praising his father’s accomplishments and plans for the future of the state, then introduce the chief. The chief would recite one of five brief canned speeches prepared by his team and designed to fit the perceived particular interests of the specific community. If time allowed, and it usually didn’t, he would take two or three planted questions from strategically placed supporters in the crowd. Again everything was finely honed to avoid any possibility of spontaneity on the chief’s part.