I Wear My Sunglasses at Night

“What really got Huggy going was the shades.”

This story originally appeared in the zine, Don’t Give Up On Us, Baby, published in 2001 by Lucy and Elaine H.

What really got Huggy going was the shades.

Starsky appeared in The Pits one evening, wearing them, and he didn’t take them off or even seem to notice that they were on. “Hey, my man, neon too bright?” Huggy asked, and Starsky just shrugged.

He was there alone. That would have been strange enough. Huggy couldn’t remember the last time Starsky hadn’t been either with a lady or with his partner. Or both, like the night at the Play Pen after they caught the vampire, and the partners chatted up and then went home with a pair of beautiful blondes. Not long ago.

Now, he was sitting alone at a table in the corner, casing out the establishment, drumming his fingers on the table. Restless. Didn’t seem to be having any kind of good time. Hard to tell, though, without seeing his eyes.

Huggy knew what he would have assumed if it had been anybody else.

But surely that couldn’t be it. Not Starsky. Not after the way he’d reacted when Forest ….

Seemed like that was the last time he’d been in Huggy’s place alone. When Hutch was missing. While Hutch was tied up at some house of Forest’s, being worked over, having heroin pumped into him.

There was a frightening thought. But he could ask about that. Indirectly. Subtly. Huggy Bear could skim like a butterfly through the mazes of tact. He took Starsky’s order from Diane’s tray and took it to the table himself.

“A draft of ambrosia from the famed Huggy cellars,” he said, putting the glass down with a flourish, marveling that Starsky had apparently ordered a red wine instead of his usual beer.

The shades turned toward him and then away. “Thanks, Hug.” The voice was flat.

Huggy sat down and put a hand on the table between them. He wanted to put it on Starsky’s shoulder, wanted to feel his forehead–wanted to take the sunglasses off and see his eyes. He didn’t. “So where’s your other half?” he asked. Tactfully.

Starsky turned his head toward Huggy again but said nothing.

“You know, the blond, the White Knight, the one you’re usually inseparable from.” Starsky was still silent, and finally, Huggy just said, “Hutch.”

“Said he was comin’,” said Starsky. “Seein’ his girl first.”

“You all right, Starsky?”

“Just fine, Hug.”

He didn’t sound fine. He didn’t say anything else. The table vibrated with his tapping nails and jiggling leg.

Enough. “Well … if you want to talk then just let me know. Huggy Bear is always there.”

A small smile on Starsky’s mouth. “Yeah. Thanks.”

A half hour later, Hutch hadn’t appeared and Starsky had hardly touched the wine.

Huggy couldn’t stop thinking about vampires. He’d been joking, or mostly, when he got all that stuff together for the ceremony after that dancer guy–who believed he really was a vampire–had bitten Starsky. Mostly he’d been trying to gross Starsky out, and it had worked. Had been funny. Then.

Now, though, Starsky was acting like a vampire–or a junkie–or just a way unhappy dude.

Then, at last, Hutch came rushing into the place, like he was late for a cross-country flight that’d take off without him. When he saw Starsky waiting, he slowed down, acted cool, and when he got to the table, Huggy heard him say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” with just that little touch of exasperation Hutch always had when it was his own fault, already defending against the other person’s rebuke.

Starsky looked up and maybe answered, but not in a tone that would carry, and he didn’t smile.

Hutch said a few words and reached for the glasses.

Starsky pushed Hutch’s hand away with one swipe of his own. Hutch sat back, said something that sounded like a question or maybe a joke, and Starsky nodded, but Huggy shook his head as he turned away. It was like watching strangers.

***

Hutch looked at the wine glass, watched Starsky rotate it so carefully and slowly that the liquid hardly seemed to move. As they went on not speaking, everything seemed to slow down, grow heavier, thicker. He began to talk, a little desperately, about how the Rams were doing, and then about the newest gossip in the squad room, and then about what they could have for dinner, and then he said, almost as free association, “Last Saturday Sue and I went to that restaura …” and the glass jerked, slid a few inches, the wine sloshing against the side. Hutch shut up. Starsky breathed audibly, in and out, though his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” said Hutch, feeling like he’d spent the day saying it.

“Wasn’t you,” Starsky answered.

I could have stopped it, Hutch wanted to say. I could have told her who I’d really choose if she made me choose. I could have been standing closer to her, closer to you, instead of across the room trying not to be involved, and then I could have caught the vase when she threw it … He didn’t say any of that, and didn’t refer to what had happened that afternoon in the train yard, either.

Nothing had been supposed to happen there, in between empty freight cars, rusty and vibrating to the distant groans of wheels on tracks and engines that sounded like slow earthquakes; the place was shadowy and smelled of garbage and warm metal. The partners were only meeting someone to get some information, and though the snitch was obviously shy they hadn’t thought he was any more dishonest than necessary. They’d been careful, though, or thought they had, going slowly, looking from side to side and under the boxcars.

The gunman was on top. He used a silencer, and waited until a train was roaring by on another track, and the first they knew about it was the ping! of a ricochet. Starsky threw himself against Hutch and they both rolled under the nearest boxcar.

“Will you get off?” said Hutch under his breath. It was the same thing he’d said dozens of times before, meaning really, not now, for heaven’s sake, don’t distract me–move out of the way so I can get to my gun …. But it was less than twelve hours since Sue had been screaming about what an arrogant bastard Hutch was and what white-trash Starsky was and how it was no wonder Hutch couldn’t really commit to a woman or even satisfy one. While he was still taking that in, she went on with her tirade–what about Starsky, could he fuck at least, did he have that talent, did Hutch have that much taste–and Starsky had tried to say something conciliatory or joking but she hadn’t let him get it halfway out, just screeched and grabbed and threw all in a moment. Starsky had flinched from the impact but Hutch hadn’t thought it was more than the shock, and he felt pretty shocky himself. So he let Starsky leave without a word, and stayed himself, to try to talk some sense into Sue. Went back after work to try again. What a hope.

Anyway, that moment under the freight car had been the wrong time to bother about whether Starsky was touching him. His partner scrabbled away like a crab and the sound made the gunman fire again.

They managed, in the end, Hutch slipping out the other side and creeping around to the aisle behind the gunman, while Starsky made occasional noises to keep the man’s attention and draw his fire. Hutch found him, climbed up the ladder when another train was going by, and got the drop on him. It was a good bust as this was the smuggler they had been trying to get a line on.

It was on the way back to Metro that Starsky had gotten the sunglasses out of the glove compartment and put them on, like a suit of armor. He’d retreated to the point that Hutch practically didn’t recognize him.

He was still there, in some remote spot, hardly registering the Pits and not responding at all to Hutch. Hutch thought.

***

Starsky saw how Hutch’s hand tightened slightly, his nails scraping a half-inch or so along the surface of the table; how his jaw tightened at the same time; how the light held his hair and brushed the ends of his eyelashes. Everything.

The way he’d heard the guilt in Hutch’s awkward question–“Still got a shiner?” he’d asked, as if the thing could have gone down in less than a day–though he hadn’t responded, feeling too evil-tempered to even answer. As if everything inside was bruised too, couldn’t take the touch of Hutch’s concern any more than it would take the brush of his exasperation earlier, under the boxcar.

Stupid to be this over-sensitive. Stupid to notice the slight pause in Hutch’s breathing, knowing that he was going to speak and then that he’d changed his mind. If Starsky could figure out what sense this was he’d close it, deaden it. Somehow. If it had been a part of his body, he would have cut it off. If it had been something he’d worn, he would have thrown it away. Instead all he had were these damn sunglasses to cover it up.

He knew it wasn’t always like this–the feeling waxed and waned, and all he really had to do was wait. But until then it was like a constant drain of energy, as if Hutch were drawing strength out of him, and the only way to get it back was the way he couldn’t even try. They didn’t sleep with each other when either of them had a girlfriend. They’d decided that a long time ago. Otherwise things got too complicated.

Starsky almost laughed. As if things were uncomplicated at the moment. He gulped the wine.

***

“Good stuff?” asked Hutch for something to say.

“Tastes like piss.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hutch tried to take the glass from Starsky’s hand, which tightened, and they struggled over it in silence, more grimly than they would usually do such things. Hutch wrenched it away at last, and sipped from it, finding the edge wet and knowing at that last second that it was the exact part of the glass Starsky had drunk from.

It really wasn’t good wine. Hutch wasn’t sure why Starsky was drinking it at all, but suspected it was some Starsky-ish response to Sue’s insults. He wanted to tell Starsky how bad her life had been, the cold childhood and screwed-up friendships and affairs gone bad, how he’d seen her trying to keep this relationship together, tried to help, but had known that her tolerance for his partnership would have its limit … another apology. No, Starsk didn’t need it.

“If you’re going to drink wine tonight, maybe we should go someplace where they serve better.” Hutch gave the glass back and Starsky put it down, but ran one finger along the edge.

And then it all came together in Hutch’s head and he couldn’t figure out why he’d been so blind to what Starsky needed, what he needed himself.

“I’ll buy,” he said. “Come on. I want Italian food tonight.”

Starsky’s head came up; Hutch felt the eyes behind the shades as they examined him.

“C’mon,” Hutch said again, knowing Starsky wouldn’t deny him. “We’ll go to one of the million places that remind you of the one your grandmother lived over. We’ll eat pasta and bread and oil. We’ll get a good bottle and kill it. Maybe two.”

“We’ll be drunk,” Starsky said, a little smile denting the corners of his mouth.

“Wine builds blood cells.”

Starsky stood up without saying yes, and Hutch followed him out of the Pits.

It wasn’t actually dark yet, but the air was dim and blue; the Torino’s racing stripe glowed. When Hutch was walking past to his parking space, Starsky stopped him, a hand on his arm, the first time Hutch had felt Starsky’s voluntary touch since the train yard. “We can come back for it,” Starsky told him. Hutch stood still.

Starsky took the sunglasses off, and the bright look from the darkened skin pierced Hutch’s heart as if he’d never seen either the injury or the love before.

“I’ll choose the restaurant, okay?”

Hutch nodded. He reached out and just brushed the edge of the bruise. Starsky shut his eyes and then opened them.

“Get in the car,” he said, and Hutch did.

In there it was night. When Starsky leaned over, Hutch wasn’t surprised, but he was when Starsky stopped.

If this was an addiction, Hutch thought, they both had it, and he reached out to prove it, pulled Starsky’s head closer, and kissed him.

“What about Sue?” Starsky asked.

“Sue who?”

Starsky leaned back and their tongues tangled again, slow as the turning wine in the glass but sweeter, and Hutch squinted to see the dark lashes twitch down and up just a little and down before he closed his own eyes completely. His fingertips found the edge of the bruise by its warmer skin; he stroked down the hairline to the temple where Starsky’s pulse beat.

When Starsky sat up to drive, he tossed the shades on the dashboard. “All right,” he said, and started the engine.

“Is it?” asked Hutch after a minute or so, but Starsky didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

“Nothin’ that won’t heal,” he said.

“Good. We got time for that.”

Starsky didn’t look but his teeth flashed in the streetlight’s strobe. “Yeah.” He made a turn. “Fucking ugly vase anyway,” he said thoughtfully and Hutch couldn’t help but laugh.