Chapter 12

July 27, 1996

Saturday morning

Saturdays with Ronnie were a rare treat. Most weekends he was completely booked with clients who wanted him to show them properties. Given that we had the commitment ceremony in the afternoon, he decided it was simply easier to move all his clients to Sunday.

We stayed in bed until nine, which was now late for us. My hours were much more normal since I'd quit bartending. We skipped showers, put on some old crappy shorts and T-shirts, and hopped into my Jeep. After a stop at a fast-food place for some breakfast biscuits and borderline coffee, we drove to our co-op.

He hadn't said much about the stunt his mother pulled the night before. I was curious, of course, but I didn't bring it up. As we walked up the steps to our future home, he said out of nowhere, "The joke's on her. By the time she dies, I'm going to be so much fucking richer than she is. She can give her money to whomever she wants. It won't matter to me."

"You don't need her. You'll be fine."

"Did you go through this with your parents?"

This put us into territory I didn't talk about. They, too, disowned me. And eventually I left town. I gave the simplest answer I could think of. "It was a lot cleaner."

Inside the co-op, Ronnie had already spread-out plastic in the living room. Sitting in the corner were several bottles of pigment, a can of white paint, buckets, rags and a bag of big sponges.

"Okay, this is going to be interesting," I said, mainly to get off the subject of family. "You've got it all set up."

"Yeah, I was here yesterday morning."

We ate breakfast standing up and Ronnie explained how this was going to work.

"We're going to mix up three different colors: one dark, one light and one in the middle." He pointed at three bottles: red brick, yellow and terra cotta.

"Okay."

I must have sounded dubious because he said, "You'll see."

We finished our biscuits, and he scurried around getting ready. He filled three buckets partway with water and then with white paint. He added pigment and then stirred. When he was done, he said, "You like?"

"I guess," I said. I had no idea what I was looking at.

"We should see what it looks like on the wall," he said. "Sponge or rag?" Anticipating my next question he said, "One you dab, the other you roll."

"Roll," I said, not sure what I was getting into. He handed me a rag which was folded together and bound in three places with rubber bands. He picked one for himself.

"Let's start with the dark color," he said, dipping his rag into the brick-colored paint and then squeezing it out with his hands. This was going to be messy. "We'll start with this wall."

He walked over to the north side of the living room which had one window looking into the courtyard. I watched as he rolled the rag up and down the wall. It left a mottled mess in its wake. Ronnie turned around and looked at me.

"Start at the other end."

I dipped my rag into the paint, squeezed it out and began rolling it up and down. Pretty quickly, I realized I was going to have a problem. I couldn't raise my right arm much above my head, hadn't been able to for a very long time. I stopped.

"We have to do this three times. Isn't this harder than regular painting?"

"It's about satisfaction. How satisfying it's going to be to remember that we painted this ourselves."

I had a strong feeling we'd hang pictures over the paint job and forget completely about it. I mean, sure if someone came over and said, ‘Wow this is great,' it would be fun to say we did it ourselves. But I wasn't sure how likely that was to happen.

I did the best I could for a while, but it wasn't much. After a while, I looked over at Ronnie. He'd managed to do about eight feet, starting at his knees and reaching above his head by a couple of feet. Even though I was taller, he was able to reach much higher.

He looked over and saw how I was doing.

"This is bothering your shoulder, isn't it?"

"Yeah. A bit."

Okay, a lot. Of course, Ronnie knew I'd been shot. I remembered the first time we had sex—well, not the first time. The first time we had sex without our clothes on.

"What happened there?" he'd asked, touching the scar on my chest.

"I fell on a nail."

"No, you didn't. There's a hole in the front and one in the back. Nails don't do that. Even big ones. That's a bullet hole. Someone shot you."

"I told you I used to work at Denny's. Someone tried to rob us one time and I ended up getting shot."

"You took a bullet to save the Grand Slam?"

Obviously, he didn't believe me, but he did stop asking questions about it.

There was a ladder, so when we finished the middle part of the wall, Ronnie got onto it and worked on the top part. The ceiling was about nine feet at its low point and maybe fifteen at its highest point. There were beams across the ceiling. The previous owners had painted them white to match the rest of the ceiling.

"I got to see unit 20 the other day. They have the original beams, which are brown and have symbols painted on them in different colors. I'm thinking of finding an artist who can duplicate them."

"Uh-huh," I said, hovering around the bottom of the ladder in case he started to fall.

"You don't have to stand there."

"I know."

Then he asked me what was going on with Patrick Gill. I said, "I had to spend most of yesterday working on the Larry Wilkes case. I did find out a little about Ivan Melchor. He was a set designer. His obituary mentioned that he died at his Holmby Hills home, so he was probably living with Patrick. For how long I don't know."

"He was a set designer for the movies?"

"Yeah. It mentioned The Girl From Albany."

"Oh my God, I love that movie. You've seen it, haven't you?"

"I don't think so."

"It has that song, ‘I'm Too Blue to Be Blue'."

"That I remember. My mother used to sing it when she did the dishes."

"We should rent it. Since you know someone who worked on it… sort of."

"Yeah, it's kind of hard to actually know dead people."

He'd finished the top, so he climbed down from the ladder. He still needed to do the bottom around the baseboard, but he stood back and took in what we'd done.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It's dark," I said. I didn't say it was a bit too much like the color of dried blood for my taste.

"It's going to be much lighter when we're done."

"I don't know if I'm going to be much help with this."

"That's okay. John said he'd help me."

The way he said it made me wonder if he'd known I wouldn't be much help. I grabbed a sponge and dipped it in the brick-colored paint. Then I rubbed it onto a two-by-two patch on the inner wall. I flipped the sponge over and basically rubbed it off, leaving the wall looking tea-stained with darker spots catching in the textured plaster.

Ronnie watched what I was doing.

"I actually like that," he said. Then he took another sponge and dipped it into the terra cotta. The patch I'd made was basically dry since I'd rubbed most of the paint off. He repeated what I'd done on top of it. The patch was now about the color of honey with different bits of brick and terra cotta here and there.

Ronnie stood back and took it in. "Yeah. That's it." He looked at the wall we'd already done and asked, "What do we do about that?"

"I guess we could try washing it off."

And we did.

The commitment ceremony was at two o'clock. We'd finished up at the co-op around noon and gone home to have lunch. Ronnie was pleased. We'd managed to wash a lot of what we'd done off the one wall and by the time we'd added the second color it looked pretty much the way he wanted it to. He added a little of the yellow tint to the terra cotta and made it all look even more like honey. I have to say I liked it, too. Though, in all honesty I liked most things that made Ronnie happy.

We were very nearly late. Ronnie changed outfits three times. Finally settling on a cute pair of cuffed linen slacks and the requisite Hawaiian shirt—his was a bright orange, green and yellow. I stuck with a pair of black 501s and the Hawaiian shirt Ronnie had bought me—sexy surfers on a blue background.

On the drive over, Ronnie said, "You need to see a doctor about your shoulder."

"As soon as I have insurance," I said. Actually, Lydia had put me on the policy she had for her and Karen in April. I had the insurance card in my wallet, but I wasn't ready to use it. I know going to the doctor was supposed to be a good idea, but it was also something that never seemed to end well.

Robert and Doug lived in California Heights on the north side of the 405. They'd bought a three-bedroom Spanish-style house on a quiet street for a song. We'd been there once for a party and the inside looked like a Pottery Barn. I'd been tempted to check for prices.

The ceremony, though, was in the backyard. We followed signs and balloons up the driveway, through a wooden gate. There was a rented dance floor with about fifty white folding chairs arranged on it facing a small tent under which the ceremony would take place. On the other side of the yard, was a long white table. There were lumpy tablecloths hiding what was probably our dinner. At one end, sat a very large, elaborate three-tiered wedding cake with two tiny grooms standing on top.

There were nearly fifty people there, most in Hawaiian shirts, we were among the last to arrive. The moment we stepped through the gate Ronnie was off like a racehorse who'd just heard the starting gun. I walked over to the bar and picked up two glasses of champagne. One for Ronnie and one for me—I promised myself I'd just have the one. I avoided alcohol most of the time since it made it difficult to find my way through the thicket of lies my life had become. Alcohol had the effect of loosening my tongue.

When I turned to find Ronnie, it took a moment. Finally, I located him standing next to the gift table talking and waving his hands around with a couple whose names, I think, were Octavio and Phillip? Something like that. I headed over.

We hadn't brought a gift with us. Ronnie had bought them something kitchen-y at Williams and Sonoma and had it sent to them.

"It's cast iron," he'd said. "I'm not schlepping that around."

I handed him his wine. Octavio and Phillip said hello, but there were no introductions since we knew each other. I wished I knew them well enough to remember their names.

We spent a few minutes complimenting each other's shirts and mentioning where we'd gotten them. Then, they were talking about the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, which had happened the night before. I'd seen something about it on the eleven o'clock news the night before but hadn't had time to read the paper that morning.

"Have they caught anyone?"

"No. Not yet," Octavio said. "They're still not sure how many people were killed."

"Do you think it's another Timothy McVeigh thing?" I asked.

"Could be. Those people are crazy," Phillip said.

"And they're saying that plane that went down near Long Island, that was a bomb too."

"All right," Phillip said. "Enough of bombs. We should talk about important things We just booked a trip to New York in November. We're going to see Chicago with Ann Reinking. We have second night tickets. Almost opening night."

"Who's in it with her?" Ronnie asked.

"Bebe Neuwirth."

"Who is that?" I asked. I only knew who Ann Reinking was because I lived with Ronnie. And even she was fuzzy.

"Lilith. Frasier's ex."

"She can sing?"

"Hopefully."

I saw our tenants, Brown and Melissa, and was about to go over and say hello when a young woman dressed as a bridesmaid came out of the house and said, "If everyone could take a seat…"

Ronnie grabbed us a couple more champagnes and we stepped over to the chairs, taking seats about four rows back on the aisle. Phillip and Octavio sat further up. I noticed Robbie, who I'd worked with at The Hawk. He was with an older, larger guy with a beard. A bear. His type. I suspected it was the partner he rarely talked about.

People settled. Ronnie took my hand and held onto it. I couldn't help thinking of Ivan and Patrick. This was no longer the world they'd lived in. That was a good thing. It wasn't perfect. I hadn't been lying when I'd told Sharon Hawley we were still illegal in twenty-six states, but it was also getting better.

Today was an example of that. Yeah, it wasn't legal, and I didn't expect it ever would be. They'd manage to keep that from us, but slowly, incrementally, we'd take everything else. We'd live our lives the way we wanted. Sharon Hawley was jealous that we seemed so free. I wondered why she couldn't see that we'd taken it for ourselves. And why didn't she take whatever freedom she wanted for herself? Because that's what freedom was, something you took, even when they tried to keep it from you.

The wedding march started. We all turned around and watched as the attendants came out from behind the garage and down the aisle alone. First, was the girl I'd seen looking like a bridesmaid even though there was no bride. She carried a small bouquet and tried to look demure, though I was fairly certain she was anything but. Then the best man wearing a Hawaiian shirt to which he'd added some well-placed sequins.

Under my breath I asked Ronnie a question I should have asked long before, "Why Hawaiian shirts?"

"Honeymoon."

Well, that explained it.

The attendants took their place under the tent. An actual minister in robes had snuck in while I wasn't looking. After a slight pause, Doug came down the aisle with an older woman who was obviously his mother. Doug was in his twenties, around Ronnie's age and pretty enough to be an actor, something he'd tried for a few years. He noticed that the guests were all wearing Hawaiian shirts and made a big show of shock, though I suspected he'd been in on the joke for quite some time. Robert and his mother followed. He was older, also flawlessly handsome, his mother around the same age as Doug's.

The ceremony itself was overlong. First, the minister talked about his church and how it was accepting of the LGBT community, which after a minute or two started to sound like an infomercial. He kept emphasizing the love thy neighbor aspect of religion, ignoring the long history of religion doing the exact opposite. Then the boys said the vows they'd written themselves, which were sweet and would be terribly embarrassing if things didn't work out. And then it was over.

The bridal party took over one corner of the yard for photos, and we were asked to step away from the dancefloor while tables were brought over and chairs spread around them. As we waited, I said to Ronnie, "I didn't know the boys knew Brown and Melissa."

"I put them together. They want to foster. Brown and Melissa know all about that. You know what, I just remembered something. Doug's mother used to work in the industry. I wonder if she knew Ivan Melchor."

Looking over at the wedding party posing for photos, Doug's mother was definitely in her early sixties. She'd have been born in the early thirties, the depth of the depression. She'd have been old enough to work after the war. That would have given her an overlap with Ivan of a couple of decades. Of course, the industry was large. Different studios. Different departments. They probably?—

"Come on," Ronnie said, pulling me around the dance floor. The mothers seemed to have been dismissed. Doug's mom was hovering nearby but now separate.

Boldy, Ronnie walked up and said, "Hi. You're Doug's mom. I'm Ronnie Chen. I sold them the house, and this is my partner Dom Reilly. He's an investigator."

I could tell he desperately wanted to put ‘private' in front of that. His interest in my being a P.I. didn't make much sense until I remembered him saying how much he'd lusted after Magnum P.I. when he was a teenager. I was his own personal Tom Selleck.

"Dotty Bridges."

"Someone told me you were in the industry. Do you happen to know Dwayne Whatley?"

I cringed a little. Dwayne had the same last name as the man I had killed, the man Lydia claimed she'd killed. The police had tried to make something out of that, but dropped it when they couldn't find a connection. Ronnie was continuing, "He's in development. Sony or Paramount. I can never remember which."

"I was in crafts. Costumes mostly."

"Oh. Do you remember Ivan Melchor? He was at Monumental."

"Of course, I remember him. I was in and out of Monumental during the fifties and early sixties. I didn't work as much after I had Doug."

"So, you knew him?"

"I wouldn't say that. I knew who he was. I saw him. In the commissary or around the lot. And, of course, people talked."

"What did they say?"

The surprised look on her face made me explain. "I'm looking into a murder from 1949. We think Melchor knew the victim. A woman named Vera Korenko."

"Well, he didn't kill her," she said, reflexively. "I mean… people said he hated women, but I don't think that was true. I think he only hated lesbians. I can't say why. But the woman who got me work at Monumental was named Betsy Carter—her friends called her Bob. I was a very good seamstress and I could pattern. Anyway, she talked about how much Ivan hated her. To the point where it sounded paranoid, but I saw him snub her once. Probably the coldest shoulder I ever saw."

"And there was no real reason for their feud?" I asked.

"None that I ever heard of. He just didn't like lesbians."

I couldn't help but feel that had something to do with Vera Korenko. But what could she have done that made him hate lesbians so much? While I was thinking that the subject changed.

Ronnie was saying, "You're such a wonderful mother, supporting Doug like this."

"I don't think I deserve credit for that. I knew so many gays when I worked at the studios. It was always a safe place for them. Doug came out to me when he was in high school. Not that it was a surprise really. The only thing I said, and maybe I regret this, but I told him not to tell anyone until he was through college. Fortunately, he ignored me and joined a gay fraternity in his senior year."

"I think you still deserve a lot of credit," Ronnie said. I could tell he was thinking about his own mother who deserved none.

Then it was time to sit. We got more champagne. There were a couple of toasts before we went up to the buffet. A couple of times I thought about the invitation to the Westin I'd received. I hadn't decided if I was going or not. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Ronnie about it, to ask his opinion. Which meant I had to stop drinking. I poured the rest of my champagne into his glass.

He gave me a sidelong look and said, "You don't have to get me drunk to take advantage of me. You know I'll volunteer."

"Down boy."

He slipped his hand into my lap, saying, "I don't think anyone here would really mind."

"I think you're probably wrong about that. But let's not find out, okay."

And then it was time to go up and get our dinner. When I picked up a plate, I noticed that I still had paint around my nails. It has been hard to get out, but I should have tried harder.

We ended up at a table with Brown and Melissa, Robbie and his boyfriend, Kyle, and another lesbian couple whose names eluded me even as they were introduced. We talked about how good the food was, how we all knew Doug and Robert, which parts of the country we were originally from, and current events. The grooms stopped by and said hello for a few minutes.

Honestly, the whole thing was a bit overwhelming. Fifteen years ago, something like this would not have happened. Certainly not like this with an actual minister and mothers walking their sons down the aisle.

I said to the table, "In seventy-eight or -nine, I don't remember which, but I went to a ‘gay' wedding at a Howard Johnson's. A flight attendant was marrying his best girlfriend so she could get free trips. Halfway through the reception, he went upstairs to screw the best man while she went to her room to bang the maid of honor. That's what a gay wedding used to be."

"You're right, you've had too much champagne," Ronnie whispered to me. He was right, of course.

Later, when the tables had been cleared and it was time to dance, the DJ played a cover of "Unchained Melody," and Ronnie and I danced. As he slipped into my arms, I realized it was the first time we'd ever danced like that.

"Do you want a commitment ceremony?" I asked him.

"Oh no. I have your name on a deed. There's nothing more committed than owning real estate together."

"That's not very romantic, though."

"You want to do something romantic for me?"

"Sure, I do."

"Tell me the truth. All of it."

Well, I wasn't going to do that.

After a very long, very awkward pause he said, "That's what I thought. It's fine though. Here's what's important. I love you; you love me. That's all we need."

"And as much real estate as we can afford."

"That's a given, darling."