Death Wore a Smart Little Outfit

by Orland Outland

“Because if you are, you’d better start. KC’s coming over.”

  Doan shrieked and flew out of the chair. “How could you?” He began wielding the feather duster like a machete around the apartment, stopping at the table to dust the fallen ashes from Binky’s cigarette onto the floor. Convinced Binky wasn’t watching, he furtively scuffed them into the carpet.

  The doorbell rang. “AAAAAAKKK! It’s here!”

  Binky didn’t move. “You’re the maid; answer the door.”

  Doan opened the door and curtsied to the waiting KC. “Alors, m’sieur. Comment allez-vous? Como esta usted? May I take your dead cow, senor?”

  KC shook his head and walked past Doan. “Hey, Binky.” He smiled, shaking his head, his dark brown eyes twinkling with amusement as they always did at the sight of Doan.

  “Did you...you look different,” she said.

  He rubbed his crewcut head. “Got a haircut.”

  “Which hair did you cut?” Doan asked, whipping past KC and giving his head a few quick brushes with the duster. Binky sighed. It was no use telling them not to get on each other’s nerves. The only thing the two of them had in common was an inordinate love of gossip. She plunged ahead.

  “Remember Mark?” she asked.

  Doan put a hand to his forehead and sighed. “That gorgeous man you work with.” His tone darkened abruptly. “The one you told me was married. I gave up on him and then I find out that he’s married to another man!”

  “So what’s the difference?” she asked him.

  “The difference is that straight men are off limits. All gay men are fair game. Especially when they move into an apartment within walking distance of the Castro.”

  “Anyway,” she cut him off, “he got fired today by Old Rotgut.” One thing Doan and KC had in common was a severe hatred of Sergeant Flaharity.

  “That jerk. l bet it was because he’s gay,” KC declared.

  “You got it.”

  Doan shook his head. “Why do they let that creature out of its cage?”

  Both of them had been harassed by Flaharity and his friends more than once. While there was one faction in the SFPD that tried to keep good relations with the gay community, most cops were still pretty bigoted. You always knew when something had brought Flaharity or one of his cronies into the Castro, because enrollment in self-defense courses rocketed the next day. San Francisco’s police department was still predominantly composed of white Irish cops whose fathers had been cops, and whose grandfathers had been cops, etc., etc. And it did not help that many of these Irish cops were also members of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, an institution that, while it no longer feels secure publicly endorsing the burning of homosexuals at the stake, nonetheless maintains an artful silence in the face of violence against sinners.

  “So what’s he gonna do?” KC asked.

  “Poor thing,” Doan empathized. “He can stay with me.”

  “He has a home,” Binky reminded him.

  “Maybe not for long,” Doan hoped fervently. “Maybe hubby will kick him out when the rent comes due and...”

  “God, you’re such a cynic,” KC shot.

  “No, I’m an optimist. I wait for terrible things to happen to other people, and then everything they have falls into my lap.”

  “Good things come to those who wait,” Binky reproved.

  “Yeah, yeah. But a good shove in the right direction doesn’t hurt.”

  “Why don’t we organize a protest?” KC suggested.

  Doan gave him a distrustful eye. “Are you suggesting we carry signs and shout and otherwise look frightfully undecorative in front of television cameras, so that all our friends and relatives can see us having a tantrum? All of which must be prefaced by about six hundred meetings presided over by angry young men who look like affronted insects in their little round glasses? Are you suggesting that I listen for hours to someone (who ought to be packed off from the Finland Station sealed up in the great train of historical necessity) as he talks about hammering out our politics? Besides, any time some group like that becomes effective, it just gets taken over by a bunch of Commies with their own agenda.”

  KC looked at him sideways. “I can’t believe you’ve ever heard of historical necessity.”

  Doan sighed and crossed his legs. “You think any intellectual bent I might have is invalidated by the fact that I like to wear a dress.”

  “The first time I saw you, you were doing Gloria Swanson in a drag show. That is not a healthy testament to your mental skills.”

  “I’ve never seen you dressed like Gloria Swanson,” Binky said, mad at missing out again.

  “You never saw the stupid drag show I did,” Doan informed her.

  “If it was a stupid drag show, why did you do it?” KC asked.

  “Taste, charm, and wit do not pay the rent. It is merely something I got good at back when I was a screaming queen and enjoyed such things. It also beats working a counter at Macy’s.”

  “Well, no offense, but you are, after all...a drag queen.”

  Doan turned to Binky. “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

  “What were we talking about?” Binky asked, trying to remember what it was she had been about to say.

  KC thought about it for a minute. “Let’s see...we started with your friend getting fired, then about Rotgut, then Doan on love and sex, then Doan on politics, then Doan on paying the rent...”

  Doan leaned back with a satisfied sigh. “Just the kind of trivial, pointless conversation I adore!”

  Binky jumped up. “Oh! You’ll be delighted to know that I heard something that actually appeared in the news today!”

  “No!” Doan and KC chorused.

  “Yes. I heard Eleanor Ambermere’s getting divorced!”

  They leaned back into their seats. “That,” KC informed her, “is not exactly what I’d call hard news.”

  “True,” Doan agreed, bursting to tell them the whole story but sworn to secrecy by Eleanor. “Far more important than hard news, but hard to miss hearing.”

  “Well,” she said indignantly, “I also heard the cops have a lead on the SoMa Killer.”

  Doan shrugged. “So? Who cares about someone who goes around murdering bad artists? I thought artists were supposed to be poor! So why is it every time they move into a neighborhood, all of a sudden no one else can afford to live there? So who in their right mind wants him caught? You know how in mysteries there’s always one character who says, ‘I didn’t do it, but if I met the guy who did, I’d thank him’? God, in this city there will be ten thousand people saying that.”

  “Doan,” Binky interrupted. “I realize now why I keep you around.”

  “Really? Do tell.”

  “Every time I feel like I’m out of touch with reality, I can always turn and see you and know there’s someone even further out of touch than I am.”

  “That’s a lovely thought, dear.” He got up and began idly dusting again.

  “What am I going to wear to that party tomorrow night?” she asked.

  “Do you want to borrow something of mine?” Doan asked.

  “Hmmm...yeah, I’ll take a look at what you’ve got.”

  “Of course,” Doan added, “if you really wanted to cause a splash, you should borrow something of his,” he concluded, pointing dramatically at KC.

  “Is this your cop party?” KC asked her.

  “It’s the Annual Police Department Charity Ball,” she corrected him. “And I go because I can meet a cute policeman from another station and take him home and sleep with him, secure in the knowledge that it won’t get around that I’m a slut.”

  “Are you?” Doan asked.

  “Never you mind.”

  “How do you know it won’t get around?” KC asked.

  “Simple. I lie. I tell him I’m some muckety-muck’s secretary. Then if he goes and brags about how he slept with so-and-so’s secretary, well...I always pick someone mean and ugly to impersonate.”

  Doan screamed. “And th
en someone who knows who she is laughs at him, tells him how mean and ugly she is, and no matter how hard he denies it, they’ll believe it was her! You’re so cruel!”

  KC frowned. “Hell of a trick to play on a guy you sleep with.”

  “Hey,” she shrugged, “if he keeps his mouth shut, no big deal. If he brags about his conquests, then he deserves all the shit they can pile on him.”

  “Haven’t you ever been really mean to a man?” Doan asked KC.

  He thought about it. “Well, once. Kind of. This really unpleasant man ...”

  “You mean ‘this horrid old troll,’ ” Doan corrected him.

  KC frowned. “I don’t use that word. Anyway, this very unpleasant man came up to me in a bar, pointed at his friend and said, ‘My friend over there bet me you wouldn’t give me the time of day.’ Well, I told him I was just leaving and gave him a phone number and told him to call it sometime.”

  “A number?” Binky asked. “What number?”

  “Time, of course.”

  “I didn’t think you had it in you,” Doan said.

  “Had what in me?”

  “A mean streak.”

  KC only smiled.

  Doan sighed. “I love calling time. I love the time lady. Whenever I get depressed, I just call the time lady. ‘The time is ... five forty-seven ... exactly!’ She’s so thrilled that it’s exactly five forty-seven. How can you be depressed when there are people out there who are happy just knowing what time it is?”

  KC sighed. “You’re trivial, Doan.”

  “Whimsical. The word is whimsical.” He placed the feather duster on KC’s head and came around to study the effect.

  “I don’t think it’s me,” KC opined.

  “You’re right. You need to shave the moustache.”

  KC tossed the duster at him. Doan shrieked and ducked. “Well! That’s it, I’m leaving. I’ll be back tomorrow. To clean.” He glared at Binky. “While you’re gone. Now I’m going to go home and put on a simple frock and go shopping. Bonjour, madame et sefior.” He grabbed his purse and was out the door.

  KC shuddered. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  “Oh, really? You seem fine to me.”

  “Yeah. But I think I actually enjoyed having him around.”

  “Oh, my God! We’ll get you to bed and give you some aspirin and some orange juice.”

  He laughed. “I’m fine, really. I came over to talk to you about your finances, actually.”

  Binky sighed and fell back on the couch. “Must we?”

  “If you’re to have any finances, we must.”

  Binky had not regretted hiring KC to be her accountant; she’d wanted someone who’d watch over her profligacy and keep her from total bankruptcy, and she’d gotten that, and a good friend to boot. It was just...so depressing to talk about money, at least when she didn’t have any.

  KC pulled some papers out of his bag. “Now, about some of these bills ...”

  “Uh-oh. I think I know which ones you’ve got there.”

  “Three hundred seventy-two dollars and fifty cents at the Castro Day Spa? On Visa, no less?”

  “I was...short of cash that day.”

  “Which explains why you also spent eighty-seven dollars and ninety-five cents at Le Marcel Hair Design? Excuse me, Binky, but...you’ve got a bob. Does a bob really require eighty-seven ninety-five worth of design’?”

  “I suppose you’d only really be happy if I cut it myself,” she said, lighting an imported cigarette.

  “If Supercuts is good enough for the cast of Friends, it’s good enough for you.”

  “Hmph,” Binky replied, at a loss for a rejoinder to that.

  “Look, Binky. You get thirty thousand a year from your trust. You wouldn’t have to take some demeaning job you hate, if you’d just manage your finances a little better.”

  “Why don’t you invest those finances of mine in some unknown software company and make me a millionairess, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of cash?”

  “If you ever left enough cash in your account for me to invest, I would. Instead, you act like the ATM is just ... a place to get more free money when you run out.”

  Her eyes widened. “It isn’t?”

  He sighed. “I give up. I see now why you’re such good friends with Doan.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re just like him.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She proffered a dish. “Caviar?”

  “Well, it’s already bought and paid for, so I might as well.” It had actually been charged on her Visa, and thus bought but not actually paid for, but she discreetly saw fit not to fill him in.

  She smiled. “Enjoy, darling. It’s the only good that ever came from the wealth of the Van de Kamps.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Binky hid in a doorway alongside Davies Symphony Hall, where the policemen’s ball was already in full swing. She grabbed the front of Doan’s black, strapless cocktail dress and pulled it out as far as she could, getting a few deep breaths before gently letting it pull itself back into place, knowing full well that if she just let go, the damn thing would snap back and cut off her breasts. She cursed Doan for forcing her into it.

  “Suck in that gut!” he’d commanded, “flex those tits! We’ll make it fit!” Attempts to explain the difference between the male and female hip structures had fallen on deaf ears. As far as Doan was concerned, if they could wear each other’s airy summer dresses, then they wore the same size in evening gowns. But what fit Doan gripped Binky like a boa constrictor. She didn’t dare look down at the dress when she stepped out of the doorway and back onto the street – the flash of streetlights off the sequins would blind her.

  She dug her ticket out of her purse and surrendered it at the door, checked her wrap, and walked directly to the bar in short, careful steps, terrified of ruining the dress. She was already sweating by the time she got to the bar. “I’m wearing a goddamn sauna suit,” she muttered.

  “Looks more like asbestos Saran Wrap to me,” the bartender confided. She fell in love with the sound of his voice, but then she looked up and saw the buzzcut and moustache. It may not be true, she sighed, that all the good ones are gay - just all the amusing ones.

  She got her drink and left the bar in search of attractive and unfamiliar men. Her efforts seemed to be for naught until she caught sight of something tall and dark in a tuxedo. She threaded her way across the hall, avoiding people she knew who might corral her into conversation and cause her to lose sight of the glittering prize.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered from her vantage point behind a huge floral arrangement. Tall and Dark was at the bar talking to the mayor. He was about six foot four, black hair, sharp features, and an olive complexion. Furthermore, Binky’s practiced eye told her from his hands and jawline alone that he had an incredible body.

  A fat personage blocked what view she’d had. She cursed and got ready to dash just as soon as the mayor left Tall and Dark alone.

  “I can’t believe it!” a booming voice from behind her declared. She grabbed a compact out of her purse and pretended to check her makeup as the source of so much bluff heartiness passed her by to clap a hand on the shoulder of the fat obstacle. “If it isn’t Sergeant Flaharity looking like a penguin!”

  Flaharity! The last person she wanted to talk to! She ducked, unladylike, behind a huge flower arrangement that looked like it had already seen two funerals before this party.

  “Well, now, Mr. Ambermere, you aren’t exactly looking fit and trim yourself!”

  “Ho! Ho!”

  The dialogue continued in this fascinating vein for a while, and Binky was about to make for the bar again when Ambermere nudged Rotgut with his elbow, pointing his drink at Tall and Dark. “Get a load of that.” Binky leaned into the flowers to hear better.

  “Yeah, I see.” Rotgut muttered.

  “Goddamn fags are everywhere.”

  Oh, no! she thought. One candidate
for my charms, and he’s another sister. Damn it! I’m going home.

  The two charmers bid each other their adieus, and Binky discovered that her head was quite entangled in the floral arrangement. As she struggled to get out, a hand reached in. “Can I help you with that?” the deep, silky voice asked.

  “Only if you have a pair of pruning shears in your pocket.”

  “Here, hold still.” Confident, capable hands brushed her neck and neatly unknotted the flowers.

  She laid her trauma aside to check the left hand for a wedding ring and found none, always a promising sign. She pulled her head out.

  “Nice hands,” she complimented him before turning around to face him. “Oh, damn!” It was T and D.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” he smiled, and extended his hand. “Name’s Luke.”

  “Binky,” she replied.

  “You sure don’t look like a Binky.”

  “Thank you. If there’s anything I’m not, it’s preppy. You don’t look like a Luke.”

  “If there’s anything I’m not, it’s biblical.” He finally let go of her hand. “See you around.”

  “Bye,” she crooned, the way she’d seen Kathleen Turner do it, or as close as she could with the breath the dress allowed her to take in. She sighed, watching him walk away. “That man,” she said aloud, “is not gay.” She felt something sticking to her palm and opened her hand to find a piece of paper with a neatly written phone number.

  “Nice trick!” she murmured.

  Being smart enough to realize that after that one, any other man would be far too pale in comparison, she pulled the dress out, fanned her breasts, eased it back into place, tucked the precious piece of paper into her purse, and went to fetch her wrap.

  She entered her apartment to find Doan sprawled on her couch watching TV, wearing one of her silk negligees, which barely covered his privates.

  “Home so soon?” he asked. “Didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow, if then.”

  “What are you watching?” she asked, ignoring the comment.

  Doan yawned and stretched, the negligee creeping up over his genitals. Binky threw her wrap over him just in time.

  “Thank you, I needed a blanket. Have a good time with the straight boys? Give your number to Mr. Goodbar?”