Mary, Queen of Scotch

by Rob Rosen

  “Parents are supposed to do things like this for their kids. For free.”

  “You got that in writing, Barry?”

  That was her standard reply. Mom put nothing in writing, nothing that you could hold against her at a future date. I’d seen Maude reruns when I was younger. Mom was Maude twice over, but wrapped in a tiny, Kristin Chenoweth frame. She had the whole big thing/little packages shtick down to a tee.

  “I’m taping all our recordings moving forward, Ma,” I replied.

  “It won’t be admissible in court.” She chuckled at her own joke. “I’ll be in touch.”

  So, to recap, I now had my mom, dad, and ex-boyfriend on the payroll, in a manner of speaking. I was pretty certain all three were a no-no in the detective handbook—had there actually been a detective handbook.

  * * * *

  Since I was waiting on the lab results and my parent’s results, it was now time to fulfil my end of the bargain with Jeff. In other words, it was time for our date.

  He showed up in a suit and tie, flowers in one hand, a box of chocolates in the other. To say he looked adorable would be an understatement. To say I wanted to rip the suit off him and fuck him right there would make the first understatement even more understated.

  “Cliché much?” I chided.

  He handed me the flowers and the chocolate. “I wanted to do this right.”

  I nodded. I leaned in and kissed him. “You did it right, Jeff. A-plus.”

  I put the flowers in a vase. I put the chocolates away, a regift for Mom, as I thoroughly enjoyed my thirty-one-inch waist and planned on keeping it forever. My gravestone would say as such: HERE LIES BARRY, JUST AS SKINNY UP IN HEAVEN. It was a morbid if not thoroughly delightful thought.

  I turned around and stared at him. He stared at me. The silence was deafening. I’d had umpteen conversations with him while we were together; now, I hadn’t a clue what to say.

  “Um,” I managed.

  “You look nice,” he replied.

  I was in jeans and a button-down. We looked mismatched. Sex with Jeff was easy. Strange how everything else was hard.

  “Maybe we should go to dinner,” he suggested.

  I nodded. I smiled. “Yep.”

  He stood there waiting for me to lead. I stood there waiting for him to lead. If we had been in a dance competition, we would’ve been the first eliminated.

  “Why is this so difficult?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “We dated. It ended badly. We not only burned the bridge, we blew it up.”

  “That line between love and hate, turns out, it’s razor-thin.”

  “It’s a scary thing, huh?” I said.

  He pulled up a chair and sat down. “Trying this again?” I nodded. “Do you think people change?” I nodded. I shook my head. “I think I’ve changed. I know who I was before. I was unhappy then. It was all too close to the arrest. I needed some distance from it. I never should have dated you. Still, I’d like to try again. Take it slow. Nothing exclusive. Just see how it goes.”

  Nothing exclusive, he said. That’s what I wanted, right? I wanted Jeff. I wanted Ray. I wanted to have my cake and then the whole fucking bakery. It was selfish of me. I knew it. But I also wanted to be happy. I wasn’t happy with Jeff before. Did people change? All the queens I worked with were ex-cons. Had they all changed? I was an adult, but still a young one, and yet I knew that by the time people were my age, they were pretty much locked into place. Sure, they lost some hair, put on a few pounds over time—I planned on bucking this trend—but personality-wise, morals-wise, most people stayed the same.

  In any case, Jeff did seem to be an exception to the rule. Jeff, in fact, was fairly exceptional. Plus, I liked cake, like eating it, and, most importantly, liked Jeff. Like, a lot. “Are you ready for dinner?” I asked.

  He hopped up. “So, we’re good?”

  I pulled him in. I planted one on. Jeff had the softest lips. Kissing him was like landing on a cloud. “We’re good,” I eventually replied.

  “Good.”

  I nodded. “Dinners on you, right?”

  “Fucker.”

  “Well, you asked me out. Isn’t it the standard practice for the asker to pay for the askee?”

  “Fucker.”

  I patted his rear. “Count on it.”

  * * * *

  We woke up spooning at the forks in our roads.

  “Morning,” he said.

  He’d left out the good part, as in good morning, which was apt because, all too soon, the morning was anything but that.

  I rolled over to kiss him, but my cell interrupted the gesture. I was getting a message. I could tell by the ring. In fact, I could tell by the ring that it was a work-related message. Personal messages played Britney; work messages played Katy.

  “God, you’re gay,” mumbled Jeff into the pillow.

  I bounded up. My crowbar of a cock created a minor breeze in its swaying wake. “Lucky for you.”

  He glanced up at the rearing beast. “Amen to that.”

  I grabbed my phone from my jeans. I flicked through to my messages. I read the most recent one. It was a short read. It was a troubling read. I was frowning the entire time, even as my dick remained resolute. My dick, it seemed, was not to be deterred by a bit of bad news.

  “You’re frowning,” said Jeff, who was now propped up against a pillow, the sheets down, his cock aimed high for the ceiling. Wondrously, it almost reached.

  “Our boners don’t seem to care when bad news comes aknockin’.”

  “Because our boners only care about that coming part.” He gave his a tug. “I’m sort of on its side.” He looked back my way. “How bad?”

  I hopped back into bed. I gave his thick prick a kiss and a suck. “Pretty bad.” I slapped the slab of meat against my lips. “Pretty.” I tossed him my phone. “Bad.” He perused the lab report as I sucked his morning wood. He moaned. “Told you so.”

  I’d read the moan wrong. I knew this as soon as my face was covered in aromatic jizz, white spooge quickly dripping from my nose and chin to his still throbbing cock below.

  “Oops,” he panted. “And, yes, bad.”

  I flipped around. One minute I was hovering over him, the next on all fours. Presto! Soon enough, his prodigious fingers were pummeling my prostate while his other hand was pounding my pole. I quickly moaned as he had moaned a short while earlier, a sea of spunk soon amassing below me as I shot and shot and shot.

  “Well,” I managed, once we were both again on our backs, holding hands as we stared up at the ceiling. “That took my mind off that message.”

  “Past tense?

  “Yep.”

  He squeezed my hand in his. “I guess not all people change.”

  I shook my head. “The only thing the lab found was crystal meth on that strip I swiped. Why would Lester have an empty filing cabinet that once held crystal meth? And why did Chad have the key to that filing cabinet?”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” said Jeff. “I knew all of them in prison, however briefly. And out of all of them, Chad was the one who seemed the most different on the outside. Maybe it was marriage or simply maturing with age, but the Chad I know now isn’t the Chad I knew then.”

  “And Lester?”

  Jeff snickered. “Same, only worse.”

  “So, if there is a connection between the two of them, Lester is probably the instigator.”

  Jeff nodded. Jeff’s dick nodded. I had a feeling it was getting ready for round two. “But what’s the connection?”

  Now that was the million-dollar question.

  The answer would have to wait, though, as round two had begun. Ding, ding, ding!

  * * * *

  I met up with Ray later that day. He was at the bar. I had an idea. Not about me and Ray. On that, I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. No, my idea was about that connection between Lester and Chad. Or, more appropriately, Auntie and Lucy.

  “Oh, this is a nice surprise,” he said when he spotted me, scotch
bottle and shot glass quickly in hand.

  Pang went the guilt in my heart. I’d have to make my underhandedness up to him. I thought of a whole bunch of options. All of them involved him being naked. And me being naked. And us being naked together. With me trying not to think of Jeff. Which meant that pang went the guilt in my heart, yet again.

  I chugged my shot and leaned over for a kiss.

  “You taste nice,” he said. The standard wink followed. “This a social call or are you here for work?”

  “Work,” I replied, adding a kiss in for good measure. “While being social.”

  His imaginary Stetson got tipped. Had cigarettes still been considered cool, Ray would’ve made a great Marlboro Man, wink and all. “Can I help?”

  Phew. He volunteered. Sort of. “Sure, now that you mention it, I could use some help.” I remained cool as the proverbial cucumber. Pickles were jealous of my coolness. “Since you do the music most nights for the show, I assume you have the order of the performers written down somewhere, right?”

  He nodded and walked away, then quickly returned with a clipboard. “Here’s the past three months. Why do you want to see this?”

  “Just curious to see if tipping is related to order of performance, if people tip more toward the beginning of the show or at the end. I’m going to compare notes with some of the others, see if I find a pattern. Maybe get Lucy to adjust the schedule, if need be.”

  Ray chuckled. “Yeah, good luck with that. Lucy has an iron grip on that.”

  I nodded. “So I’ve heard.” I grabbed the clipboard. “Thanks. I’ll give it right back.”

  I went backstage to the dressing room and had a seat. I wasn’t there long. It was obvious right from the get-go what the pattern was. I called Jeff. He was on the road, wouldn’t be back for a night. It was one of the things that tore us apart. I’m too codependent to be alone for long stretches of time, for sporadic amounts of time, for just about any amount of time. Heck, I missed him already. I even missed Ray, and he was barely a hundred feet away.

  “I got it,” I proclaimed.

  He giggled. My cock twitched. Jeff gave good giggle like Ray gave good wink. “Well, I hope there’s a cure before I get back tomorrow night.”

  Tomorrow night. I felt the old, familiar bitterness. Maybe it wasn’t Jeff that needed to change; maybe it was me. “I’m thinking of riding that fat cock of yours when you get back.”

  “Graphic much?” he said. “And do I get any say in the matter?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Okay, no problem. And what exactly did you get, now that we’ve got the whole riding my fat cock thing out of the way? Oh, and as to that, my fat cock is super fat right now.” There was a brief pause on the line. A moment later, there was his fat cock on the screen. Or some of it, seeing as the whole thing didn’t fit on my screen. “See?”

  “While you’re driving? I’d like it back in one piece, please.”

  The chuckle returned. I sent him a pic of my own cock, which was nothing to sneeze at, mind you. You could, in fact, pack a whole flu in my cock. “I pulled over. I’m in a parking lot. Wait for it….wait for it…” I heard him come a moment later, his huffing and puffing exploding in my ear like a crescendoing symphony. “Better. Now, tell me what you got.”

  “Our relationship wasn’t like this before.”

  He sighed. “I told you, I’ve changed, grown.”

  I hope he meant that in a figurative sense. If he meant that literally, I felt sorry for my tight, little hole. Anyway, back to business. “I have the past three months of show schedules,” I said.

  “And?”

  “And, any night that Lucy and Auntie work, no matter what the schedule is, Auntie will go on before Lucy. Not necessarily directly before, but before. Always, every schedule.”

  “Forgive me, I’ve just ejaculated and am still a bit loopy,” he said. “Please explain.”

  “It’s a connection,” I said. “A pattern. And not some random pattern, but an intentional one. Lucy makes these schedules. Auntie enforces them. For some reason, Auntie always goes on first and Lucy always follows.”

  “And?” he repeated.

  I paused. “Well, I, um, I don’t know the and. All I’m saying is, Auntie uses the filing cabinet to store crystal meth. Or at least has, at some point. Lucy has the key to that filing cabinet. The two of them intentionally create a performance schedule. These things all must be connected.”

  “But you were hired to find out if Lucy is cheating on Arthur, not if Lucy is somehow connected to drug dealing.”

  And there it was. This was the Jeff I remembered. I could hear it in his voice, loud as a gong. “You’re worried about me.”

  There was that sigh again over the line, too. It was all coming back to me. They say you can have an acid flashback, that the drug stays in your brain, that you can have a recurrence of it, even when not taking the drug. Jeff was like a drug to me. I’d been addicted to Jeff, and addictions are never a good thing. “I’m just saying,” he said, “that you’re in dangerous waters here. You were hired to do an easy case, a safe case. These guys, Lester especially, is not someone you want to mess with, in or out of a dress.”

  “Don’t you want to know if you’re working in a club that practices illicit activities?”

  “Not especially,” he replied. “I love my work there. I love the crowds. I love the girls, even Auntie, most times. If they’re up to no-good, then I’d rather not be the person who helps point it out, who helps to potentially end a gig that I hold so dear.”

  “But they could be breaking the law.”

  “Then the law will eventually catch up with them.”

  My blood was starting to boil. “But I am the law, to a degree.”

  “Um,” he said, and you could read a thousand words into that um, all of them saying that I was a measly detective with an even measlier degree. This was an old fight. All of this was an old fight. And I suppose I was being petty, perhaps unrightfully so, but he was picking at a wound that clearly had not healed yet, and so petty was the best I could offer.

  “You want me to drop this, Jeff?”

  “I want you to drop this, Barry. It’s not safe. I’ve been in prison. I know what seemingly innocuous people can do.” I could hear him zipping up his slacks. “Lucy isn’t cheating on Arthur. I’d bet anything on it. Tell her husband that. Get your money. Move on.”

  Move on. He said it. He said it, not me. He said it at the exact same moment that Ray walked into the dressing room. He said it as Ray walked into the dressing room and my dick was still out of my jeans, flagging, if only temporarily. He said it as Ray saw my state of somewhat undress and decided to up the ante, seeing my exposed prick with a raised shirt, one that soon landed on the floor.

  “I have to go,” I said to Jeff. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t be mad,” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  His sigh returned. I liked it better when he sighed while I was fucking him. “I know you, Barry. You’re mad. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you. I wish you’d take that as something nice.”

  Ray’s sneakers and pants joined his shirt. He was in a jock strap that tented as if it was joining Ringling Brothers. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good luck with your sales calls.”

  “Okay, Barry. Okay. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  But today wasn’t tomorrow. And a bird in the hand, blah, blah, blah. Meaning, my hand was soon buried in Ray’s bush, my mouth down deep on his throat-pumping rod. I was mad at Jeff. I was mad even as I knew that I might have been intentionally jinxing our budding relationship, causing it to crash before it ever had the chance to rise.

  Ray and I had no history. Jeff and I did. And history has this way of repeating itself, which terrified the fuck out of me.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked as he rammed and jammed that glorious prick of his down my gullet.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to a
nswer, seeing as said gullet was quite full to the max. I was glad I didn’t have to answer because I didn’t know how to answer, unsure of what I would say, what I wanted to say, what I needed to say. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do and who I wanted to do it with.

  At that moment, I only wanted to suck Ray’s stunning dick and stare up at his beautiful, hairy body into his stunning eyes of blue. A man could get lost in that sea.

  I was more than happy to be that man.

  Chapter 6

  Mom called the next morning. I wasn’t alone. Ray was there. Ray was there spooning at yet another fork in another road. Pretty soon, I was going to need a new cutlery drawer.

  “Did I catch you at a bad moment?” she asked, apparently hearing the hesitation in my greeting, which consisted of “this better be good.” FYI, it was barely seven in the morning. FYI, there was a boner pressing up against my bum. So, yes, it was a bad moment, even though it was a delightful one.

  “Would you like to speak to the naked man next to me?” I replied groggily.

  I like to try to shock my mom. Inevitably, I’m always unsuccessful. This case was no exception. Which is why when I handed Ray the phone, he handed it back to me a moment later.

  “Your mom said we should use protection,” he said in my ear. “And please don’t hand me the phone when I’m naked and your mom is on the other end.”

  I nodded his way. “That was Ray,” I told her.

  “Nice boy?”

  I shrugged. “You know Michelangelo’s David?”

  “I didn’t ask you what he looked like; I asked you if he was nice.”

  Well, he was nice to look at, so that was sort of the same thing. I rolled over. He seemed to also be waiting for an answer. “Salt of the earth, Ma.”

  “Odd expression. Never liked it. When you salt the earth, the crops die. Plus, it gives you high blood pressure. Also, it’s a biblical idiom, and you know how I feel about the bible.”

  “Makes good kindling.” I winked at Ray. “Don’t worry, my mom isn’t a book burner.”

  “Just one book,” she said.

  “In any case, Ma, why are you calling me at barely seven in the morning? Did Dad finally leave you? Will there be a knock at my door any moment? If so, I better get dressed.”