The Next (31 page)

The Couch Potato approached the window and tried to close the curtains, but in his frantic nervousness he pulled too hard and the entire aluminum bar collapsed on his head. He comically became entangled in the curtain as he tried to undrape himself. There’d be no privacy for him.

Schlongzilla cocked the table open, secured the legs, inserted the headrest, and whipped open a crisp white sheet. It floated down to the padding like a sail and revealed the Couch Potato, quivering in his nakedness, now freed from the curtain. His white rotund belly flopped over his pubic area. He was sweating and flushed in the face. Schlongzilla pulled off his tight white tee and exposed his dark smooth washboard abs, then patted the table. If he did this with the intent of putting his client at ease, he failed. The Couch Potato’s knees shook. Schlongzilla put his hand on his fleshy back and prodded him to the table, assisted him horizontally, and then covered his body with a plush white towel. The poor Potato quivered out of control. The masseur rested his hands on his chest and thigh and pressed, holding the pressure, until at last Couch Potato stopped shaking. Schlongzilla then dropped trou, suspended his anaconda in front of the Couch Potato’s eyes, and pressed deeply into the top of his squishy chest.

After kneading his chest, his shoulders, and his arms, Schlongzilla bent down and whispered a question into his ear. The Couch Potato nodded, barely containing his wild enthusiasm.

Schlongzilla withdrew from his bag a bottle of oil.

Down to the right of that apartment, the Princess emerged from her bathroom in a pink silk bathrobe. She sat at her silver dressing table and looked into the mirror, holding her gaze there for a minute. Her wet mane hung straight down in front of her breasts. Her expression was white hot in anger…or sadness…or both. She withdrew a long pair of scissors.

Marzoli looked at me with amusement, although I was alarmed.

“What do you see that I’m not seeing?” I asked.

“The chain.”

I looked on her dresser and spied a set of keys attached to a long thick metal chain which was meant to be clipped onto the belt loop of a pair of jeans. I’d never seen it on her person or her dresser. What did that mean to Marzoli?

The Princess gripped a hand full of hair. She began to saw through the clump with the scissors only an inch from her scalp. Long strands fell to the floor. Something was ending in her life. Or something was just beginning…

Suddenly the door opened in the Couch Potato’s apartment.

Oh hell!

The other Potato had returned from his trip a lot earlier than his partner had anticipated. Schlongzilla stopped spreading the oil over his client’s wide, white body, and looked up nonplussed. The Oiled Potato sprang up as quickly as his mass would allow, wrapping the towel around himself, hiding the hard little pink stinger sticking out underneath his belly. But the towel wasn’t long enough to wrap around his waist, so he dropped it and frantically wrapped the fallen curtain around himself. The curtain rod, which was still braided through the curtain loops, swung around and slammed into Schlongzilla’s knees, sending him down to the floor.

The New Potato fired his traveling wardrobe bag across the room toward his partner violently. It hit him, and the bag’s hook snagged on the curtain. The enraged Potato retrieved the bag with a forceful yank, and ripped the curtain away, revealing how slathered in oil his crotch was. It seemed Schlongzilla had succeeded in oiling
all
of him…

Shouting commenced, mostly unintelligible, but punctured by vocabulary like
betrayed, the minute I turn my back,
and
I’m leaving.
The Oiled Potato whimpered at first, and then began defending himself more and more vehemently using phrases like
we never touch, twenty years,
and
I deserve...

As the argument escalated, Schlongzilla silently collected his bag and towel and packed his bag. Suddenly the red-faced New Potato flipped the massage table upside down, and began to kick in the supports and the legs.

“Stop!” Schlongzilla yelled, his one word puncturing the courtyard.

Hearing this, the Princess, the Beached Whale, and Mr. Layworth paused.

The enraged New Potato pushed the approaching Black Brazilian against the wall with surprising force and picked up the table. He approached the window and flung it open.

“No!” Schlongzilla and the Oiled Potato simultaneously cried.

Marzoli and I watched the wooden padded table plummet down the side of the building in an arc, hit the brick wall at the bottom, and splinter with an echoing crack.

The neighbors all looked up to see the source of the disturbance, but most couldn’t see the window from their apartments. They paused, waiting for another dramatic event to follow, or at the very least another piece of furniture to fall. But nothing fell. Schlongzilla exited the Potatoes’ door naked, his bag, shirt, and sweatpants in his hands. Shortly after the New Potato unzipped his wardrobe bag, stuffed some underwear and a sky-blue tee into it, and headed out the door, slamming it behind him, leaving the Oiled Potato whimpering and pleading.

There was a bracing silence.

Seconds later, the neighbors resumed their activities, unfazed: Mr. Perfect to his phone call, the Princess to her scissors, and the Beached Whale to her television. The Oiled Potato picked up his cell phone, crying. He dialed. Received no answer. Hung up. Dialed. Waited. Hung up. And again. And again. And again.

Marzoli squeezed my hand.

I wondered exactly what Marzoli was saying through that squeeze. That he hoped in twenty years we never experience something like that? Did he even want to see me after the investigation, let alone twenty years? That he figured I idealized the Couch Potatoes for their tranquility, and this illusion was now punctured? Or that he was as surprised as I was at how deep the passions ran between these two seemingly docile partners, masked beneath the pasta and reality television?

“Look!” Marzoli whispered, pointing in the direction of the Little Old Man’s apartment.

The only neighbor who was home and had not gotten up to investigate the drama in their courtyard was the Little Old Man. He remained still on his bed, staring ahead at the painting. He’d not even turned his head.

“Are you going to call it in?” I asked.

But I didn’t need to even ask. Marzoli was already on his phone reporting that a man appeared dead in the rear basement apartment of that building. His tone was detached and matter-of-fact. This kind of reporting was as routine to him as flossing. However, as he spoke, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, picked up the pillow I used to block the view into the Little Old Man’s apartment, and tossed it onto the couch. I would no longer need to be irritated by that view. Apparently, Marzoli knew this whole time exactly why I’d placed it there.

Rather than feeling in any way relieved of any irritation The Little Old Man might have caused, I felt a pang of sadness. I’d grown invested in his life in the last couple days. In his habits, his oddities, and his mystery. He’d wanted this gold-framed painting his whole life. He’d sacrificed his life savings to finally get it, spent a day absorbed in it, and then died. I couldn’t help but wonder…

“Drop!” Marzoli blurted, pulling on a pair of tight blue workout shorts with white vertical stripes on the sides.

I ducked and grabbed my Macbook.

Mr. Layworth was scanning the courtyard slowly, scoping the landscape for obstacles before attacking his prey. And his prey was Marzoli. His gaze landed on my window and held fast.

Marzoli opened the curtain all the way and stepped into full frame, clad only in the tight blue and white shorts. Layworth retreated to the bathroom and returned seconds later without clothing, wrapped in a white towel, looking spectacularly Greek with chiseled muscular definition in the bright daylight. His guns bulged as thick as an average man’s thighs. His shoulders bulged. His chest bulged. Everything bulged. Layworth once again put his arms above his head against the window, and stared into our apartment with supreme confidence.

Marzoli matched if not exceeded Layworth’s physical perfection muscle to muscle, but had none of that overt master-of-all-I-survey attitude. The sulfuric fumes of an over-inflated ego did not fuel Marzoli. Marzoli was cocky, to be sure, but aware of his affectation, inviting strangers to participate in a sexy and lively game. Marzoli pretended to be the shit just to amuse himself as well as others. As a result, he came across as charmingly badass and irresistibly loveable. Layworth, on the other hand, believed to his core he was a better breed of human being than the rest, and he came across as an asshole. As with yesterday, somehow this pose with his hands above his head against the window epitomized this assholishness.

Marzoli rested his hand underneath his dick and clutched the length.

Layworth wasted no time. He flicked his pelvis to the side and the towel fell down to the floor. So smooth, all too slimy.

Marzoli muttered out of the side his mouth to me, “Okee dokee smokee, let’s do this.”

Marzoli pulled his gym shorts down his knees, and let his touched-up organ dangle in the cold air. Layworth licked his lips. Our theory was correct. Layworth had dammed up testosterone from having been cockblocked from Ruben three days ago and then from Marzoli yesterday, leaving his cock raging. Layworth put his middle finger in his mouth, moistened it with saliva, and then reached around his fleshy firm lobes. He inserted, and parted his mouth in ecstasy.

I could virtually hear his long low groan.

“What a fucking creep,” Marzoli muttered.

“You’d better show him you’re game,” I said.

“Put the song on.”

I played it, and Max Angel’s breathy voice crooned “Slow Slide Down From Me
,
”
filling every inch of the apartment with sensuality. Marzoli’s eyes quickly went from bemused to salacious. Marzoli reached his hand to his mouth as Layworth had, slobbered saliva onto it, then reached down to pump his penis until it plumped with blood. The irony hit me—an entire career of songwriting was having its greatest success right at this very moment, with this very dance, with this very libidinous yet noble purpose.

“Take yours out,” Marzoli ordered me over the singing.

I complied. I was already good to go, and Marzoli feasted his eyes on it until his man muscle started twitching. I was so fucking rigid I had to touch lightly so as not to shoot all over my keyboard and fuck up Apple’s fucking no-liquid repair policy. Marzoli gripped even tighter and slid his fist from the base all the way to his scarred head. Precum had already started dripping from his hole, streaking down his shaft. He was going to need more cover-up.

I glanced briefly at the computer. Layworth started rocking his hips to and fro, digging his finger deeper. Suddenly he stopped and extracted it.

Then he did it.

Through the falling snow, he motioned for Marzoli to come over.

This was it.

Marzoli, however, shook his head and mouthed “No.”

I immediately registered Marzoli’s psychological manipulation. Convincing Layworth that Marzoli needed to be cajoled into crossing the courtyard indicated that Marzoli wouldn’t ordinarily be such a slut. It flattered Layworth, making Marzoli all the more desirable.

Layworth signaled again for him to come over more insistently.

Marzoli paused, looked down at his feet, and then looked up and nodded bashfully. Layworth winked in satisfaction. Marzoli quickly stepped out of the frame and put his back against the wall, breathing hard. In spite of his pretense of bashfulness, he was nervous as fuck.

“I want you to know,” he said to me, his voice quavering, “that what you’re about to see isn’t me.”

“You’re going to have sex with him. You can’t fake that. You’re going to have to get into him in order to fuck him.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s got a hell of a body.”

Marzoli couldn’t look me in the eye.

He began to reapply makeup to his plump penis.

When he finished, I handed him his clothes and said, “It’s cold out there.”

He pulled on his jeans, his polo shirt, and his socks.

I held his shoes out for him. My heart was pounding, as was his. But mine was beating from an entirely different line of thought. As he reached out, I withdrew the shoes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The body isn’t there.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Layworth kids played in the closet last night. They saw nothing.”

Marzoli grabbed his shoes and kneeled to put them on.

“Ruben is there.”

“He’s not in the closet.”

“He has to be.”

“But I saw…”

“When were you going to tell me what you saw?” he demanded, dead cool.

He stood up, eye-to-eye, and once again probed my brain, skillfully following my thoughts even more closely than ever. I swallowed the painful dryness in my throat. I couldn’t speak. With each new second a lathe sheered my vocal chords one pass at a time. My eyes filled with tears. He displayed no sympathy. I knew he knew I’d withheld the information for fear of losing him. He crossed his arms. His face was stern. The suspense of how he would react was killing me. Would he be too angry to want to deal with me again, or would he instantly forgive me and overlook my goddamn weakness?