Ruminations on the Meaning of Life

As near as I can tell, I’ve been locked in this room for five days. The only window faces east and is at eye-level, so every time the sun temporarily blinds me, I make a mark on the floor with my heel.

There are five marks there now.

This story was first published in the zine, Here With You, a Tribute to Kaye Austen Michaels.

For KAM: the strongest fighter I know.

There are five marks there now.

Of course, the weather could be playing tricks on me and threw in a couple of rainy days for kicks, but if that happened, I don’t remember it. I also don’t want to admit that if it’s been longer than five days, and Starsky hasn’t found me, no one ever will. The man’s a bloodhound, especially where I’m concerned, but he’s not Superman. Though I sometimes find myself praying that he’s wearing a set of blue tights underneath his jeans. Not that they’d fit, of course, but when you’re desperate, you find yourself entertaining all kinds of impossible notions. And hoping that David Michael Starsky can fit anything but air between his jeans and his skin is about as impossible as it gets.

I’m pretty sure my arms are still attached to my body, even though I can’t feel them anymore. If I could turn my neck, I’m sure I’d notice them up there, near the ceiling, my wrists braceleted in my own handcuffs. I think the right one is broken. I remember because when I realized the ambush was on and I tried to reach for my gun, my hand just flopped around like a fish plucked from a lake and dumped on the bottom of the boat. By the time I figured out why, I was tied up in the trunk of some car going ninety to nothing down roads that were nothing but one big pothole after another.

One of those potholes must have been pretty deep, because I remember a jolt, a bump, and fireworks exploding before my eyes. I had enough time to marvel at the pretty colors until they faded to black and I came to in this very room, standing in this very spot, looking at this very window, my arms pinioned so high above my head, I had to stand on my toes or risk dislocating both shoulders. If I haven’t done that already. Dislocated my shoulders, I mean. As I’ve said, I can’t feel them anymore, so I can’t even guess what the damage is.

When Starsk finally finds me-and he will, damn it, I know it-these arms of mine are going to hurt like hell when he lets them down. Even if I hadn’t quit med school in my second semester, I’d still know exactly how blood rushing back into numbed limbs feels. I’ve been in this particular position more than once, unfortunately. So yes, I know it’s going to hurt. I also know that it’s an agony I’d get down on my knees and beg for, if that was physically possible.

I think I’m going to make a new rule. The next time I let my dick get together with my ‘rescue the damsel in distress’ complex, I’m going to tell that partner of mine where I’ll be, who I’ll be with, and how long I’ll be there. Hell, I’ll put it down in writing and staple it to his chest so he won’t miss seeing it.

Why I keep these things a secret from him, I’ll never understand. He’s the best cop I know, and the best friend I’ve ever had. If I can’t trust him with my secrets, who the hell can I trust?

It always happens, though, no matter how much I trust the guy. No matter how much I love him. And I do love him. Hell, I tell him enough, in that buddy-buddy way we sometimes have between us. Sensitive man of the seventies, that’s me. Nothing wrong with telling your best buddy you love him. It doesn’t make your wrists go limp, or change your stutter to a lisp, or make you develop a sudden fondness for gold lame and nipple rings.

No, I can tell my buddy I love him, and the world doesn’t come to an end.

But I’ve got this pattern, see.

A Friday night, a down on her luck beauty, a sob story, and I’m out the door about five steps behind my cock, leaving behind one of the only people who will give a shit if I show up to work on Monday or not. And, of course, it never fails. Monday rolls around and I’m just an empty seat on the other side of the desk we share. I wish I could say it was because I was being selfish, leaving Starsk to cover for me while I tried to eke out an extra few hours, loath to end a fantastic, bed-busting weekend. But the fact is, or so I’ve come to learn, my libido will invariably lead me to the one woman in the world who has someone hunting for her. And that someone is almost always huge, carries a gun, and has a bunch of henchmen who are also huge and carry guns. And they hate cops. Mustn’t forget that.

Face it, Hutchinson, you’ve got a kink for ladies in trouble. The sweet, cute, together ones you leave to your partner. You get hard for the ones with the bullseyes on their backs.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve become so jaded that it’s just a game for me. A game where I snare the beauty and try to keep a step ahead of the goons who want her back. If it is a game, it’s one I always lose. Maybe I wouldn’t if I simply told my partner, my best friend, the man who has my back and guards it like the Crown Jewels, where I’d planned on spending my little sexual marathon, but no. I guess that’s another rule in the game. Hide and seek, with innocent lives at sake.

God, that’s sick.

No, I know it’s not a game. Not all of it, at least. I’m simply a sucker for a hard-luck case, and if that hard-luck case is blonde and has legs long enough to wrap around my waist when I’m delving into her secrets, all the better for me.

What I’ve never understood, even after nearly a decade of thinking on it, is why I always take such great pains to keep Starsky’s nose out of these little escapades of mine. Jealousy? I don’t think so. With one notable-but let’s not note her now, please-exception, Starsky and I don’t really have the same tastes in women. Oh sure, he’ll play the skirt chaser against me if we’re both up for a little fun, but the minute it starts to get serious, he backs off like a lead actor exiting stage left. And when Friday night rolls around and I indicate that I’m not going to be present to experience the thrill of watching him tune up the Tomato, he just smirks and sends me off with a wave and a ‘don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’ Having shared a couple of trois with him before, I’ve got a pretty good idea of just what it is that David Michael Starsky will do, and just what it is that he won’t. So that last remark’s off the table pretty damn fast. The things that I’ll do but he won’t, well, we don’t talk about that too much. Even when we’re stuck in the same car for twelve hours straight and have drained dry every other topic of conversation known to man.

Starsky’s interesting in that way. He’ll drop crude sexual insinuations all the time, but when it comes to the specifics, he’s oddly prudish. I know he plays the cad to get my goat, but it never goes further than that.

He’s never really gotten into the locker room pissing contests of who did what to whom, what the mechanics were, and how many times it was done. He keeps that pretty much to himself. Of course, so do I, but I’m not one who the guys would expect to be touting my sexual escapades all over the place. Starsk is more ‘one of the guys’ than I would ever be. But it’s mostly an act, put on for show. Not a boast, per se, just playing along with the gang to get whatever kicks he can out of it.

To each their own, I say, though his reticence with anything sexual never fails to surprise me. Even though we’ve shared more than one woman, I feel like I know less about him than I should. Sexually, I mean. I know that I’ve barely skimmed the surface of Starsky the man. He’s an iceberg, all right; all glittery on the surface but with depths that no one, not even me, can touch.

I don’t take it personally, though. I know he’s let me in deeper than he’s ever let anyone else, and as foolish as it may sound, I consider that an honor.

Well, just thinking about Starsky and sex makes me realize that there’s at least one part of my body that isn’t numb to the point of near-nonexistence. Seeing, or just thinking of my partner naked, has had the tendency to turn me to iron from the first time I saw him in the Academy showers.

I’d done a little fooling around with guys at college, and one memorable time in a bar I’d never been to before, but I was sure I’d grown out of it once I got married. Van was all one man could handle, and once I set eyes on her, I didn’t have eyes for anyone else.

Well, we all know how that turned out, don’t we.

It’s funny how we can fool ourselves, isn’t it? Just because something goes into hibernation for a while doesn’t mean it’s disappeared entirely, even if we hope it has. One look at that fine ass slick and shining with water was all it took to remind me that I could swing from both sides of the plate.

Here I am again, thinking with my dick, when I should be thinking how to get the hell out of here. Never mind that escape is a thought that has consumed every waking moment since the second I found myself prisoner. A cop never stops looking for a way to escape, no matter how impossible that escape may seem.

So why did I? Why is the memory of Starsky’s ass packed into his favorite pair of jeans, or better, those ragged cutoffs that seem to get shorter and tighter every time he wears them, turning my dick into stone? I swear, if I could, I think I’d gnaw my own damn arms off just to get to him.

Stupid, isn’t it. Escape should be for escape’s sake, not for running out and finding your partner so you can nail him through the floor. But hell, escape is escape. The why isn’t important. The how is.

Only I have absolutely no idea how it can be done. They’ve left me with nothing except for a couple broken bones, ribs that shift every time I breathe, and a pair of calves tighter than violin strings. And the arms that I’m pretty sure are still up there.

Oh, and a hard-on that could pound down a cement wall. But they didn’t leave that. My partner did.

Funny thing is, if those gorillas who captured me were to walk in right this minute, I don’t think I’d be the least bit embarrassed to be seen with an erection doing a damn good impression of a flag pole. Without the flag, of course.

Then again, I’ve never been embarrassed about my body and what it can do. In fact, I’ve always been pretty proud of it. Oh sure, I can be clumsy at times, and get me on the dance floor and watch your toes, but when I need or want it to do something, it always comes through for me in spectacular fashion. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing there to be embarrassed about.

When he’s with me, on the job or hanging out after work as we often do, Starsky isn’t really embarrassed if he sports wood either, but let it be in front of a lady, and you can tell he’s praying hard for the apocalypse to come and save him from his mortification. I’ve tried to talk about it with him, of course, but he always says it’s the way he was brought up and closes the book right in front of my face, as it were. No one, not even me, tries to reopen a subject when Starsky indicates that it is completely and utterly closed. We all value our teeth more than that.

God, Starsky, where the hell are you? I know you’re busting your ass, and everyone else’s, trying to get the tiniest clue, but man, you have to hurry up, because I don’t know how much longer I can last like this.

In the past five days, I’ve gotten exactly five beatings, three cups of water and absolutely no food whatsoever. Despite me constantly pooh-poohing Starsky’s idea of culinary delights, what I wouldn’t give for a thick slab of beef, done just right, and a twice-baked potato swimming in butter, sour cream, cheese, and chives. I’d be salivating right now if I had any spit in my mouth. I suppose I should be glad I still have a mouth to not salivate with. And I’m pretty sure I have all my teeth, too. For some reason, aside from that crack on the head, my captors have been careful to keep away from my face. Why? God knows. Goons tend to have different mindsets than the rest of us mere mortals, and trying to decipher them mostly causes more pain than it’s worth.

Ah, look. The view outside my private little window is getting brighter. Another day in paradise. In a minute, I’ll have to shut my eyes against it or risk burning my retinas out. I guess I’ll make a sixth mark on the dirty floor with my heel. I don’t know why that bothers me so much. I still know Starsk is going to find me. Alive. But, see, the thing is, we’ve never spent six straight days apart since we were first partnered up. Never saw a reason to, I guess. Even when we split up to go off somewhere with our lady of the month, it’s three days, four max, before we’re back together again. Sure, our jobs have something to do with that, but the simple fact is, after two or three days, I simply miss the guy. He can irritate the living hell out of me-and frequently does-but after a few days without it, I find myself not caring if he irritates me every single second of the day. I just want to be with him again.

Strange, isn’t it.

Where was I? Ah yes, the brightening of a new day. Only…it’s not bright anymore. No, the view outside that window is black as night. What the hell happened? I know it was getting lighter. I saw it with my own two working eyes. Did I pass out? Was I so caught up in my own thoughts that I missed an entire day? Two? More? Oh, God help me. I think I’m losing what’s left of my mind.

Jesus, Starsk, find me already, will ya? I promise I will never, ever, ever go somewhere without telling you again. If I’m bad in here, I can just imagine the hell you’re going through out there, not knowing even if I’m still alive, not having one freaking clue where I could be because I kept my damn lips zipped when I should have been telling you everything.

Everything.

Interesting word, that. Telling my partner everything would mean telling him far more than the secret hiding place of my latest damsel du jour. It would mean telling him that I can draw every line of his body in my sleep, that I know his face better than I do my own, that I wonder what it would feel like to trace my tongue through the hair on his chest or to take that cut cock into my mouth and suckle on it till he gives me what I want.

And that…that would be a disaster. He probably-probably-wouldn’t sock me one, though I’m sure I’d deserve it. He probably wouldn’t even leave in a huff of affronted macho dignity and ridiculous blue sneakers. It probably wouldn’t even affect our partnership or even our friendship. Hell, he already knows that my compass needle swings back and forth. He’s known that for years. Don’t really know what he thinks about it, but he does know. That’s one secret I couldn’t keep.

What he doesn’t know is that whenever he’s around, that needle is always pointing toward him. Always.

At least, I don’t think he knows. Starsky wears as many masks as a whole city of kids on Halloween. He seems to have one for every occasion. But I’ve seen his true face. It comes out every time I’m in trouble and he can’t find me, can’t save me, can’t stop me from hurting. That is the true Starsky. Stripped of the toughness he had to build to get through his childhood, let alone two tours in Nam, it is a vulnerable face, an empathetic face, a face so beautiful to me that I sometimes want to cry looking at it.

Why do I have a feeling that if I told him exactly what he meant to me, I’d never see that face again?

Is my sharing my truth worth losing his?

That answer’s easy.

No.

Oh good. The gorillas are coming back. I can hear them through the flimsy walls of this damn room, not even trying to be quiet. I wonder what surprises they have in store for me today? Truthfully, whatever they are, they’ll be a blessing because they’ll take my screwy brain off the dangerous track it’s been circling and give it something else to concentrate on.

So I breathe as deep as I can with my cracked ribs and wait for the door to open and the pain to start.

When pain is a mercy, you know you’re in trouble.

The voice I’m expecting to hear isn’t the one I hear. The one I do hear causes me to believe that the lack of food, water and sleep have finally brought me around the bend to the one place Walter Disney never thought to put in his theme parks: Hallucinationland.

Because Starsky could not possibly be frozen in the doorway behind me sounding as if he’s having a hard time breathing.

But the touch, when it comes, can’t possibly be a hallucination, and an involuntary moan escapes my lips as he gently strokes my back and flanks, like he’s petting a frightened kitten. That tough, macho street cop with the hands of a healer. So gentle. Tender. Warm.

Maybe I should tell him that. Just for a laugh.

But here’s the thing. I can’t. Yeah, sure, part of it’s the fact that having been without water for God knows how long means my voice is probably shot. And part of it is that I’ve got this boulder in my throat that would be impossible to talk through, even if I could talk.

But, see, most of it is because if I do say something and he doesn’t answer back, all this…this love here in the room with me turns out to be a huge case of wishful thinking. I don’t know if my heart could take it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t.

Yeah, real tough guy, right? But it’s true. Until I can see him, face to face, know that he’s real, I can’t let myself believe it’s true.

Problem there is that my eyes refuse to open. Oh, I want them to, all right. I’d pry the lids open with my fingers, if I had access to my fingers, or was even sure that I still had fingers. But without that, there’s nothing I can do to make them open.

Suddenly, I’m a five-year-old in a movie theater with my eyes screwed shut because, as all five-year-olds know, if you can’t see it, it’s not real, it isn’t happening. You’re safe and nothing can get to you.

But my ears, now, they aren’t shut. Without my fingers, I can’t plug the holes. And when those tender, gentle, warm hands cup my face, all it takes is one word to turn me from the five-year-old kid I once was into the thirty-five-year-old man I now am.

“Hutch.”

It’s whispered, and scratchy, and filled with tears and laughter, both, and its strength opens my eyes as nothing else could. His face fills my view; sallow skin, scruffy with a week’s worth of beard he didn’t bother to shave, his hair wild with corkscrews, his eyes sunken and ringed black, he is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

Faint with relief and half out of my mind, I do what I would never even consider when healthy and whole. I lower my head and brush our chapped, rough lips together, once, twice, before opening my mouth and sealing him to me in the purest kiss I have ever given.

His absolute stillness seeps through the fog in my brain and I, too, freeze, then pull back in utter horror. I’ve done the one thing that I swore on my life I would never do. A coward, I close my eyes again so that I don’t have to see the revulsion in his face, the betrayal in his eyes. I find myself wanting to die.

But his hands never leave my face; his touch doesn’t harden. If anything, it grows even more gentle. His left hand leaves my cheek and cards through the back of my hair. It’s always been a special touch between us, and nothing bad can ever come from that touch.

Then it’s hardened and I feel my head being forced down. Before I can resist, his lips are on mine again, fevered, wet, hot with a want that I’ve never felt in any woman, or man, that I’ve ever kissed.

It has to be a dream. It has to be. But when he pulls away after just a moment and husks, “Open your eyes, partner,” I do, and what I see is a smile that would put the Mona Lisa to shame.

And it’s all for me.

For me.

We just stare at one another for a small eternity before that smile fades and it’s down to business. First thing is the release of my arms and, yes, the agony is every bit as bad as I’d feared, but he clasps me to him and chafes them with his hands and, like that time in the hospital when I was slowly dying from that bastard plague, he makes the magic happen again, and the pain goes away.

“You did it again,” I say. Or think I do, because my mouth is so dry, I can’t even understand what I’m saying.

But his smile tells me he understands and he hugs me tighter, just for a moment, just until my rusty groan tells him that my ribs aren’t in such great shape either.

His frown is terrible, but I know it’s not for me. Or it is for me, but it’s not at me, if that makes any sense.

“Simmons! Bring me that blanket and call the paramedics in. Now!”

Nobody, not even Dobey, questions him when he gives orders in that tone, and before I know it, I’m wrapped in a soft, warm blanket and the paramedics are there with their equipment, and he’s easing me down on the stretcher they’ve brought with him.

And he never lets go of my hand, even though the paramedics make it more than obvious he’s in their way. Times like this, nothing comes between ‘me and thee’, and if they don’t like it, well, they can just lump it and he’ll drive me to the hospital himself. Or carry me there, if that’s what it takes to start me healing.

As the needles slide into my veins and the blood pressure cuff cuts off my circulation again, I squeeze his hand and croak out, “Samantha?”

His face twists into a scowl, and when he sighs, it’s from the bottom of his guts. “The next time you get it in your head to pick up a marked woman, partner, could ya please choose one with more brains in her head than I got in my big toe?”

I squeeze his hand again and I hope the look I’m giving him is telling him he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

His grin tells me he already knows.