Laugh Cry Repeat

by John Inman

  Happy tears rolled down Wyeth’s face. “At least she’s got an audience for her big send-off.”

  Deeze wheezed in silent laughter. “They’re only here for the cookies. We’ll go to hell for this. I know we will.”

  “Worth it!” Wyeth snorted back, pulling a Fig Newton from his shirt pocket, then offering Deeze one as well.

  “Thank you kindly,” Deeze said, stuffing it in his mouth.

  Twenty minutes later, after a minister no one had ever seen before gave a glowing eulogy to a woman he clearly had never met in his life or he wouldn’t be offering such effusive praise, a motley collection of faux mourners dutifully filed past Agnes’s casket to say their final goodbyes to a woman most of them never knew any better than the preacher did.

  Wyeth and Deeze brought up the tail end of the procession. Deeze’s face was properly serious now. He was all laughed out. He stood at the casket and laid his hand on Agnes’s forehead, gently caressing her cold skin.

  Wyeth was so touched by Deeze’s gesture, he bit back a sob. He only smiled when Deeze pulled the day’s newspaper from beneath his jacket and tucked it neatly under Agnes’s folded arms. Atop the paper he placed a yellow pencil, Ticonderoga #2, purloined from his stack of school supplies back at the apartment.

  Deeze bent low and whispered in the dead woman’s ear. “Here’s today’s puzzle, Agnes. Just so you know, forty-two across is a bitch.”

  After Wyeth muttered his own goodbyes to the corpse, he and Deeze remained standing alongside the casket. Crazy Bill and three of his cohorts stepped forward to join them as previously arranged. They stood nervously fidgeting while the mortician closed the lid on Agnes’s coffin, sealing her inside forever.

  Directing the pall bearers to position themselves three to a side, the undertaker pointed to a door at the back of the hall. “Let’s carry her to the hearse, gentlemen. This way if you please.”

  And so it was that Agnes Mulroney left the city she had spent every day of her life in. She left it cradled in the arms of two friends and four strangers.

  Neither Deeze nor Wyeth noticed the gentleman in the herringbone suit standing on the steps outside the funeral home. They were too busy staring at the procession of sleek black mortuary limousines lined up at the curb waiting to carry the mourners to the graveside ceremony.

  It seemed Agnes Mulroney had thoroughly planned this day in advance, leaving nothing to chance. She fully intended to be carted to her final resting place in style. Entourage and all.

  AT HOLY Cross Cemetery, five miles out of the city, Deeze and Wyeth and all the other “mourners” traipsed up a hill in drizzling rain and gusting wind to Agnes’s final resting spot, where a large tent had been erected. The funeral home supplied black umbrellas to everyone. And judging by the effusion of thanks the undertaker received from the homeless in attendance, who seemed to think the umbrellas were some sort of door prize, he was pretty sure most of those umbrellas would never be returned.

  While the tent flapped over their heads in the rising storm and the preacher once again started blathering on about a total stranger and how happy God would be to see her arriving humbly at the Golden Gates, as if Agnes had ever arrived anywhere humbly in her life, Deeze and Wyeth were surprised to feel themselves being tugged into a corner, away from the benediction, by a pair of strong, well-manicured hands.

  Once away from the crowd, they had no choice but to lay eyes on the man who dragged them there. The man in the herringbone suit.

  He was perhaps fifty years old, exquisitely maintained, with a neat head of snow-white hair and a necktie Wyeth had seen at Macy’s selling for $125. He carried a Gucci attaché case in one hand and a mortuary umbrella in the other. There was a diamond on his hand big enough to trip over if it ever slipped off his finger.

  “Wyeth Becker and Darryl Long, I presume,” the gentleman said with an ingratiating smile.

  Deeze eyed the guy up and down. “If you’re a cop, we didn’t kill her, I swear. It was a natural death. Ask anybody.”

  Wyeth snickered at Deeze’s dry humor while the man in the herringbone suit merely smiled regally. At that moment, the man’s umbrella accidentally popped open with a whoosh and all three of them jumped in surprise. After that, they seemed to regard themselves as friends.

  “My name is Lawrence Waverly. I’m Mrs. Mulroney’s lawyer,” he said. Stuffing the recalcitrant umbrella under his arm to keep it from flying open again, he stuck out a hand, first to Deeze, then to Wyeth. Both men obediently offered a handshake back, and their friendship was sealed.

  Still, Wyeth appeared more surprised than Deeze at this sudden turn of events. “So. Agnes had a lawyer, huh?”

  Again came that mellow, lawyerly smile. “She had several, in fact,” he said merrily. “Mrs. Mulroney was quite the businesswoman.”

  This caught Deeze off guard. “She was?” All he could think of was her spitting peach pits and orange seeds into her housecoat pocket. “Are you sure?”

  “Undoubtedly,” the lawyer exclaimed as if his word were his bond and everyone damn well knew it. “I’m here because she left a few things in her will to various heirs. And by various, I mean you two.”

  “Us two?” Wyeth echoed rather brainlessly. He even knew he sounded brainless, although he didn’t much care.

  “Yes,” Mr. Waverly said. “Her boys. That’s what she called you. You two are the sole heirs to her estate.”

  Deeze blinked in vaudevillian amazement. “There’s an estate?” He tried to snort back a laugh but didn’t succeed very well. “What did she leave us? Her floppy slippers? Her collection of foam rubber hair rollers? I hate to be the one to tell you, but she didn’t own anything. She couldn’t even afford a newspaper.”

  “Yes, she mentioned that. You boys were generous enough to see that she received home delivery of the San Diego Union-Tribune so she could work her crossword puzzles on a regular basis which meant the world to her. Very fussy about her crossword puzzles was Mrs. Mulroney.”

  “Fussy about a lot of other stuff too,” Deeze slipped into the conversation under his breath.

  To which the lawyer appeared to agree. “Yes, indeedy. A truly trying woman.” He looked like he meant it. “Nevertheless, it was a very kind thing you did for her. She appreciated it deeply.”

  Deeze shook his head. “Actually we did it so she wouldn’t steal everybody else’s paper off their front step. She was so brazen about it the apartment building was on the verge of throwing her out on her ear.”

  Mr. Waverly offered up a doubting grimace in response. “I hardly think Mrs. Mulroney would need to steal newspapers from a newspaper company she owned fifty percent of the stock in. Nor would she be evicted from an apartment building she owned outright. Lock, stock, and barrel. Why do you think you received such a reduced price on the new two-bedroom apartment you recently leased?”

  Deeze and Wyeth both looked like they’d just stepped into an electric fence. Numbed from the neck down. “I thought we got lucky,” Wyeth stammered, while Deeze blankly nodded in agreement.

  “And so you did,” Mr. Waverly said. “And now you’re about to get a whole lot luckier.”

  Wyeth and Deeze stood silently staring at each other. They were vaguely surprised to find themselves holding hands. Neither could quite remember when that happened, although the lawyer didn’t seem to mind.

  The graveside ceremony taking place behind them was all but forgotten. The drumming of raindrops on the canvas roof seemed to seal the two young men inside their own little bubble of astonishment while they stared at the really elegant lawyer with the really good suit and the really expensive tie and wondered just what the hell was really going on.

  A sizzle of lightning shot across the sky, making them jump again. This time all three giggled nervously.

  Giving himself a reality-inducing shake, Deeze inhaled a great gulp of ozone and asked the question he had been aching to ask for the last several minutes.

  “So, Mr. Waverly. What exactly did she leav
e us, then?”

  Mr. Waverly tucked the umbrella between his legs to get it out of the way and started digging through his attaché case. A moment later he plucked out a sheaf of legal papers. Extracting the first sheet from the bunch, Mr. Waverly dangled it in midair by his thumb and forefinger, inviting them to see for themselves.

  “There you go, gentlemen. Agnes Mulroney specifically stipulated that everything she owned be divided equally between the two of you. It’s all yours now, the entire Mulroney estate, minus a few percentage points going to me for my many years of loyal legal counsel and conscientious fiduciary guidance.” With that, he had the good grace to blush.

  Deeze and Wyeth leaned forward, perusing the paper. Clearly confused by what they were trying to read, their foreheads creased in unison.

  “It’s legal gobbledygook,” Deeze said.

  “No,” Wyeth replied. “I think I’d recognize gobbledygook. This looks more like Martian.”

  Mr. Waverly sighed and brought a perfectly manicured index finger around to point to a number at the bottom of the page. It was a very large number with a freight train of zeros chugging along behind it.

  “But, but, but…,” Deeze stammered, still counting zeros.

  “Holy cow!” Wyeth barked. “Look at all those fucking—” Before he could finish, his eyes rolled up into his head like Venetian blinds, and as stiff as a board, he keeled over backward and landed in the mud with a splat. Deeze and Mr. Waverly stared down at him in amazement.

  “He’s a little excitable,” Deeze calmly said.

  “So I see,” Mr. Waverly blandly answered. “He’ll never get that suit clean, you know.”

  Every tooth in Deeze’s head appeared. If his smile had been any broader, the top of his head would have slid off. “I guess now he can buy a new one.”

  Mr. Waverly smiled right back. “Indeed he can.”

  While Wyeth snored peacefully in the mud and the preacher still rambled on from the other side of the tent, giving Agnes the longest send-off in history and boring his audience senseless, Deeze was shocked to see the lawyer step forward and pull him into an embrace.

  The older man whispered in Deeze’s ear, “Thank you for what you did, son.”

  Deeze tried to wiggle free, not only embarrassed, but wondering if the guy had slipped a cog. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  The lawyer gripped Deeze’s shoulders and stared deep in his eyes. “My granddaughter is one of your students, Mr. Long. She was there that day in your classroom. She told us how you threw yourself on top of everyone to protect them from the bullets. Mrs. Mulroney knew about it too.”

  A flash of pain crossed Deeze’s face. He hated being reminded of that day. Since the shooting, he had grown adept at disguising those searing flashes of memory when they came at him out of left field. Or like now, when they were flung in his face. For reasons of self-preservation, he buried the hurt behind a weary smile. “I-I never knew Agnes had a connection to any of my students. She never said.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she did,” Mr. Waverly sighed. “Still, she knew. She knew, and she appreciated all you did that day. As do I. As do a great many people. More than you will ever know, I expect.”

  Deeze stood silent, staring back at the man, his gaze hooded.

  Sensing Deeze’s discomfort, Mr. Waverly plucked a business card from his jacket pocket and slipped it into Deeze’s hand. “But back to business,” he said, clearing the emotion from his throat. “Come to my office tomorrow, son, and bring your unconscious friend along with you.”

  “I have to work tomorrow,” Deeze said, rather dreamily, once again pondering all those zeros.

  “Then come after work. I’ll wait.”

  Deeze glanced down at Wyeth still snoozing in the mud. “And he’s not my friend, Mr. Waverly. He’s my lover.”

  Mr. Waverly gave him a congenial pat on the shoulder. When he studied Deeze’s face, his eyes were kind. “I know that, son. I know. So will you come?”

  “Yes, sir,” Deeze said. “We’ll be there.” He inhaled a great gulp of air as if he was suddenly short of oxygen. Then he remembered his manners. “Thank you for everything. By the way, which student is your granddaughter?”

  Mr. Waverly smiled. It was the first smile he had offered Deeze that contained true heart. It was a grandfather’s smile, not a lawyer’s. “Mary Lou,” he said. “Mary Lou Jones.”

  Deeze nodded. “The one who never stops giggling.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Waverly said with a flash of pride. “The one who never stops giggling.”

  Catching a blur of movement down around their feet, both men gazed at the ground to see Wyeth staring up at them from the mud. He looked remarkably confused.

  “What the hell am I doing down here?” Wyeth asked, blinking himself awake.

  “Ruining your suit,” Deeze said.

  Wyeth’s eyes brightened as the memories flooded in. The last few minutes. The lawyer. The legal forms. The zeros.

  From the other side of the tent, the preacher announced, “Amen!” and Agnes’s send-off was complete—to the immense gratitude of everyone present. Sighs of relief filled the air. Cookies appeared from a dozen different pockets.

  Wyeth rose from the mud, stood there dripping for a minute, then threw himself into Deeze’s arms while the elegant lawyer looked patiently on.

  Overhead, tears of either laughter or grief rained down from the sky. Later in the day, after thinking about it for a while, Deeze decided they were tears of laughter. After all, Wyeth had looked remarkably silly lying there in the mud.

  Epilogue

  “NO WONDER we got this apartment so cheap.”

  “Yes, Wy, but you’re missing the big picture. It won’t be cheap anymore.”

  “It won’t?”

  “No. It’ll be free. We own the building. That’s assuming we deign to live here at all.”

  “Deign? Did you say deign?”

  “I’m rich now. I can say snooty things like that.”

  “Oh yeah.” A silent moment passed. “Deeze?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Does that mean I can say snooty things too?”

  “You most certainly can. You’re just as rich as I am.”

  “Then stop talking and kindly resume fucking. You’ve been inside me for the past three minutes and your dick hasn’t moved except for an occasional twitch. Don’t get me wrong. It feels great. But I’m about to come without you.”

  Deeze giggled and stuck his tongue in Wyeth’s ear. “All right, my pet. If you insist. Let me share my end of the weary load. And when I say load….”

  “Just shut up and do it.”

  “Ooh, so romantic.”

  On that note, Deeze took his long cock out of Park and got it moving again. Sliding deep. Sliding hard. Sounding Wyeth’s luscious heated depths. He was rewarded by Wyeth shivering in ecstasy beneath him.

  “Oh God,” Wyeth gasped. “That’s perfect.” A heartbeat later, he said, “Oh no.”

  “Now what?”

  “I’m going to come anyway.”

  “Well, some people are just never satisfied.”

  As if belying his own last statement, Deeze slipped his hand under Wyeth’s trembling body and gave the lad’s dick a gentle stroke. Before he could stroke it a second time, Wyeth cried out and filled Deeze’s fist with steaming gouts of come.

  Spurred on by Wyeth’s spasms beneath him, Deeze thrust his hips forward and, buried as deep as he could get, exploded in his own orgasmic eruption. Both men clung to each other as they shuddered and gasped and drained themselves dry. While their hearts were still pounding like crazy, Wyeth craned his neck around to cover Deeze’s mouth with his own. In the middle of the kiss, Wyeth’s body started writhing in bliss all over again when Deeze inched his still erect cock a millimeter deeper.

  “You like that,” Deeze cooed.

  “Oh God, yes,” Wyeth murmured back.

  Slowly, but not too slowly, it all quieted. Voices, breathing, heartbeats, l
ust. Deeze softened and slipped free of Wyeth’s warm sheath, creating just enough friction to make them both happily convulse one last time.

  Wyeth quickly turned and buried his face in Deeze’s chest while Deeze gathered him close, cradling him in his arms.

  It was two hours after the funeral. Rain still pounded the bedroom window. San Diego hadn’t seen a rainstorm like this in months. Who knew Mother Nature would be so devastated by Agnes’s demise that a biblical deluge would be sent to herald the woman’s exit.

  Among the sounds of rainwater sluicing through the gutters outside and the distant rumblings of receding storm clouds, Deeze’s warm breath flowed over Wyeth’s skin as he uttered lazy words. “That was the strangest, smelliest funeral I’ve ever attended. Usually it’s the corpse that stinks, not the mourners. Agnes would have found all sorts of fault with it.”

  Wyeth snorted a tiny laugh. “Since it was her own funeral, I’m sure she would.”

  “If it weren’t for the cookies, it would have been a complete flop.”

  “Crazy Bill and Itty Bitty Bob would probably agree. They’re lovers, you know.”

  Deeze emitted a tortured moan. “Sweet Jesus, why do you tell me these things?”

  Wyeth snickered.

  Silence gradually reclaimed them as they lay listening to the rain. Heartbeats thudded in soft unison. Gentle fingers stroked well-traveled stretches of oh so familiar skin.

  “No one knew she owned the building,” Wyeth pondered, snuggling closer, his voice still fragile after his explosively exhausting orgasm and the fact that he had never been more comfortable in his life. “Not to mention half the Union-Tribune Publishing Company and God knows where else the woman had dipped her oar. How could that be? How could we not have known how rich she was?”

  Deeze gave a contented grunt. He was comfortable too. “No one knew much of anything about her.”

  Wyeth tilted his head up to study Deeze’s eyes. “You liked her though. Don’t try to deny it. You liked her from the very beginning. Even when you thought she was poor.”

  Deeze stared back, his gaze softened by the nearness of the man he loved more than anyone else in the world. The man he would do anything for. He squeezed his eyes shut, sending a silent prayer skyward, thanking the unknown entities in charge of such things for the simple and astonishing fact that Wyeth loved him back.