Virtuoso

Starsky finds a dejected Hutch after the Fitch case ends.

Originally published in Venice Place Chronicles Volume IX in 2012.

Closed — Death in the Family, the flimsy sign read, taped to the club entrance. Starsky marveled that Hutch hadn’t ripped it free of the door and into shreds, scattering the pieces like so much confetti. Maybe some well-meaning insider had thought of Marianne and her loss and posted those solemn, final words. If not, if it was some Fitch hanger-on, then family was a criminal mockery, a cruel play on words that twisted Starsky’s gut and had probably sliced Hutch’s.

Starsky rapped sharply on the door. He’d made it to six jangle-taps of his keychain against his thigh when the door swung open under the power of a thin black man in shirtsleeves. The man’s expression belonged at a funeral, dark as his suit pants, and didn’t change with Starsky’s flash of badge. He beckoned Starsky in with a nod.

Somewhere along the way Starsky lost his guide. He didn’t immediately notice the man’s disappearance. Frozen in place halfway down the stairs, Starsky couldn’t take his eyes off the suede-jacketed figure hunched over piano keys, lamplight casting shine on hair already gilt. Tendrils of smoke curled up from an amber glass ashtray beside the lamp, and Starsky clenched his keys until he felt the bite of metal teeth along his fingers.

Was the half-smoked, forgotten cigarette a tribute to the woman whose low, soulful voice filled the club: sultry, cynical tragedy on a phonograph? Starsky had never seen her perform, hadn’t seen enough of her to even say he knew her in passing, but he doubted any other woman could cram that much irony, bitterness, and longing into an old speakeasy ballad. And only Hutch could cram irony, bitterness, and pain into a slump-shouldered brood over piano keys.

He wanted to go ten rounds with himself for Hutch being in any kind of pain. Truth was, he couldn’t have fucked things up more if someone had given him a how-to manual for making the wrong moves in a split-team cover op. Giving Hutch space to juggle the professional and personal, he’d left Hutch feeling isolated. Instead of running interference with Dobey and Stanton, covering Hutch’s back from the wrong “enemies,” he should have grabbed Hutch and hauled him in out of the cold, away from Marianne and Fitch and the whole shitstorm.

What right did he have to show his face around Hutch in this place? Starsky squared his shoulders, unzipped his light jacket, tried to get comfortable. Was it enough, that he felt every bruise and scrape on Hutch’s face as if he wore them himself? He could almost swear he’d touch a scab on his face if he flicked a thumb over that space between his eyes or the corner of his lip. Hutch looked up, his expression blank, no immediate welcome sign in his eyes. Starsky couldn’t blame him. He eyed the lit smoke in the ashtray, raising his eyebrows. With a headshake, Hutch shrugged, a clear denial of possession, and Starsky gave him a relieved, half-apologetic smile in response. Something softened in Hutch’s eyes, then, and that was it: the welcome sign.

Starsky slid on to the bench at Hutch’s side.

~*~*~

Jesus God, Hutch didn’t want to talk.

He’d heard enough words to last him a lifetime.

He had endured a lecture from Dobey on making rookie mistakes in undercover work and getting his priorities twisted around. From Dobey, he took that in stoic silence, knowing the words owed some of their harshness to the honest concern in Dobey’s voice. It was also an easier pill to swallow with Starsky never lifting his hand from its warm resting place on Hutch’s shoulder.

He had listened to Stanton raving that he was lucky to still have a career, to which Starsky fired back that Stanton was lucky not to spend time in the trenches and if he wanted to experience it firsthand, Starsky would happily dig one and shove him into it. Hutch had gotten no chance to tear a strip off the bastard himself, too busy jerking his partner back, his arm across Starsky’s chest, before Starsky could slug someone a little higher on the food chain than Simonetti.

He had let Marianne tell him in a biting singsong to go right the hell away, very, very far away, and to stay out of her life, what was left of it, thank you very much. He hadn’t expected a thank-you for getting to her before Fitch could make sure she had no life left—he didn’t want one.

Now, here was Starsky, who probably wanted to talk, and if they opened their mouths and it went anything like their conversation on the stairs at Metro, the weight of awkwardness would more effectively flatten Hutch than the damned piano falling over on him. But Starsky still knew him, still took him at his word even in the face of contradictory evidence, and Hutch could only reward that faith with some of his own, making it clear Starsky was welcome to join him.

For a long, heavy moment of silence, Starsky stared down at the ivories, his mouth quirked, eyebrows mobile: the handsomest study in concentration Hutch had ever seen. Then with a wriggle of fingers and tweaks of imaginary cuff links, he placed his hands on the keys, and the silence broke with Heart and Soul, a good melody for left-hand dominants.

There it was: their talk, not in words but in scales and chords, because Starsky had learned that frivolous little beginner’s exercise one afternoon at Venice Place shortly after Rosey Malone’s departure. He’d so badly needed a distraction of any kind he had let Hutch sit him down at the piano and turn him into a music student.

Hutch watched him, thinking, He gets it, he knows, he’s been there before. He’s been here before. Where I am now. Of course. God, when hasn’t he been?

Starsky glanced at him then, with a flash in his eyes and a duck of the head that said I’m sorry.

Hutch rested his hand on Starsky’s forearm, lightly, no real pressure, nothing heavy enough to impede movement, and rubbed the jacket fabric between index and thumb. It was Starsky’s talent, conveying a five-minute speech with the brush of fingers on a sleeve, but if he could try tickling the ivories, Hutch could give him this. He closed his eyes and thought fiercely, We fight for the weak, we ‘re suckers for the vulnerable, we try to fill the empty places in incomplete lives, like Rosey ‘s, like Marianne’s, we get in over our heads, we pull each other out. It’s what we do.

He wasn’t surprised when he opened his eyes to find Starsky nodding, and not just to the melody’s lilt-skip beat. Starsky quirked a grin at Hutch’s hand on his sleeve, eyebrows raised, the faintest hint of sensuality warming the friendliness in his eyes, and Hutch heard, loud and clear, And one day when we pull each other out, we’ll keep right on holding on.

“You’ll never make no piano player outta that one.”

Hutch looked up; Chicky had come back for his cigarette just in time to notice that Starsky’s hand placement faltered when he wasn’t staring a hole through the keys. There was kindness in the accompanist’s eyes as he took a drag on his smoke—Starsky gave Hutch another blink-and-it’s-gone sheepish smile-and Hutch laughed at the outraged glare Starsky turned on Chicky.

“Hey! Much you know—”

“Maybe not,” Hutch interrupted, addressing Chicky, “but as partners go, he’s a virtuoso.”

Shaking his head, Chicky wandered off again, trailing cigarette smoke this time, and Starsky pulled his hands away from the piano, dusting them off on his pants. “Virtuoso, hm?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, chump.”

“How do you like that?” Starsky grumped. “Virtuoso to chump in three seconds flat. Gotta be some kinda record.”

“What can I say, Starsk? You’re gifted like that.”

“Yeah? Well, how about this? The guy was implyin’ a big hole where your teaching skills oughta be, so come on, let’s see what you got: show me another one and we’ll prove Mr. Music Critic wrong on both counts.”

Hutch exaggerated a put-upon sigh-Starsky would expect no less—but he could feel his pulse quickening, he could feel the sore tug on unhealed abrasions when he smiled. He’d gone from numb, buried alive, to tingling awareness, breathing in fresh, wholesome air on the surface. They’d pulled each other out yet again, and maybe, this time, they’d keep right on holding on.