I’ll Sing You The Song of the Rainbow

Hutch contemplates all that he has, and finds joy in the simple things with Starsky beside him.

Hutch walked outside as the sun sank into the ocean far to the west, turning the Pacific as golden orange as molten lava. He stood in their small backyard, one hand on the rough bark of the olive tree, staring across the Los Angeles valley at the daily spectacle, grateful at the way his life had turned out. It could so easily have been very different.

He had a home, a more peaceful job, and most importantly, he had Starsky. Two years after the assassination attempt that had nearly killed Starsky on an otherwise normal May morning, they were a couple. The last twenty-four months had been eventful with Starsky’s lengthy recovery, the still pending trial date for James Gunther, and a switch from the Zebra unit to the much quieter but deeply involving cold case department, but Hutch was happy.

In the growing twilight, he sat on the lounge chair next to the purple one where Starsky dozed in the evening heat. With an orange cat on his chest.

Except they didn’t own a cat.

“Where’d this cat come from?” Starsky asked muzzily, waking from his nap.

The animal peered at him with wide green eyes, apparently content to stay where it was, despite the consternation of its perch.

“Think she adopted you,” Hutch said, bemused. He reached out a hand to stroke the sleek marmalade fur but the cat hissed, butting its head against Starsky’s jaw as if seeking refuge.

“Doesn’t belong to anyone else on the block?” Starsky asked, scritching the cat under its chin. It purred blissfully.

“How would I know? I’ve met the Khalsas and that’s all.” Hutch regarded the cat with a hint of resentment since he would have liked to be cuddling up to Starsky at that moment. He considered pushing the interloper off but didn’t want to make an enemy in case the cat intended to take up residence with them. “She likes you.”

“It’s a girl?” Starsky slid a hand under the cat’s hindquarters which she took as an invitation to roll over on her back to show off a fluffy white belly. This caused her to slide completely off Starsky’s chest to the ground. Starsky snorted with laughter and the cat regarded him with regal distain before stalking off to groom her butt in the shade.

“Couldn’t wait for her to leave,” Hutch said, perching on the edge of his chaise to steal a kiss.

Starsky twisted, keeping their lips connected while still looking over his shoulder at the cat. “Definitely a she, no boy parts, and she’s here to stay.”

“You’ll have to buy cat food.” Hutch got in a couple more kisses, popping his tongue into Starsky’s suddenly open mouth to parry and joust with Starsky’s tongue.

“Why’d I have t’do it?” Starsky mumbled between kisses, pressing up so close to Hutch he was in danger of following the cat’s lead and tumbling off the lounge chair onto the grass.

Hutch put his hands around Starsky to keep him in place, diving in for another kiss.

The cat had other ideas, yowling loudly, demanding attention.

“She wants food.” Starsk craned his neck, causing Hutch to practically bite him on the neck. “Ow! You hungry, too?”

“No!” Hutch swiped irritably at his now drooly mouth. Starsky did have a reddish mark on the side of his neck, but it he didn’t mention it, Hutch was certainly not going to point that out. “I originally came out here to tell you that Doug Aspin called.”

“What now?” Starsky grimaced, coming to a stand. He gave the cat a perfunctory pat on the head and she swooned against his calf, marking him.

“You’ll never be rid of that cat now,” Hutch warned, although, privately, he’d always wanted a cat. His mother and sister had had allergies, but his own tended toward pollen, trees and dust, nothing in the feline species.

“There are a couple of cans of tuna in the earthquake preparedness kit.” Starsky walked into the house, his cat following at his heels.

“When was the last time you checked those?” Hutch grimaced. He hadn’t opened the box of emergency provisions in years, certainly not since they’d moved here two months earlier.

“What did the lawyer say?”

Starsky clamored up on a chair to reach into a cupboard Hutch had never actually used, ever—and had not been aware the emergency box was there. Which meant it wasn’t really useful in terms of an emergency, was it?

Hauling down a small box crammed with cans and a couple bottles of water, Starsky placed it on the floor. The cat watched eagerly, investigating the carton immediately. Starsky sorted through the contents, pulling out two cans of Bumblebee and one of Chicken of the Sea.

“Oh,” Hutch said, watching, with only half a memory of what the phone call had been about. “Gunther’s team has filed another postponement—at least for the next two months, more likely until early ’82.”

“Damn.” Starsky clutched the Bumblebee, leaning against the counter for a long moment before grabbing the can opener from the drainboard and savagely attacking the metal lid.

“Hey, hey, you’ll stab yourself in the hand, I’ll have to call the paramedics, and then file all kinds of paperwork for the insurance before they pay your medical bills…” Hutch seized the offending can opener and made quick work of slicing into the top.

“Fucking Gunther.” Starsky crossed both arms over his chest, biting down hard on his bottom lip. “Money gets you whatever you want, huh?”

“About the size of it.” Hutch poked into the cabinet, wondering whether to use the everyday Corning ware dishes for a cat’s dinner or the fancier but untouched ever by a fork or spoon Fiesta ware an aunt had gifted him when he got married to Vanessa two decades ago.

“Use that one.” Starsky pointed at the odd white china bowl with a blue fish in the center someone had left after their house warming party. “I… was hoping to turn the corner on all this, get past Gunther, but beginning to think that will never happen.”

Hutch nodded, doling out tuna for the cat. She attacked her meal with the ferocity of someone who hadn’t had food in days. “She eats like you,” he said, getting out ingredients for their dinner now that the visitor was fed. “The old man has cancer.”

Starsky stared at him, going pale. He shuddered, straightening his shoulders as if shrugging off an old weight. “That why they want a postponement.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yeah.” Hutch pushed the plastic container of mushrooms in front of Starsky to let him get his aggression out on the defenseless fungi, and then applied the can opener to cans of stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce. He didn’t wish a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on anyone, really, but the fact that the man had maybe months to live didn’t fill him with despair, either. The faster the old bastard went to hell, the better for them all. Except it left a hole, and he didn’t know how to fill that vacuum. The one that found resolution—what did the psychologist call it? Closure seeing Gunther in front of a jury of his peers and condemned to a life in prison—without parole.

The mushrooms were not just sliced, they’d been reduced to confetti. They’d still be great in the spaghetti sauce.

Starsky braced himself against the countertop, shoulders hunched. Hutch slid half an onion and three cloves of garlic in front of his lover and began frying up a pound of ground beef. It wasn’t the first time he’d used cooking to mitigate strong emotions into a useful endeavor.

“So he dies, and we’re free of him,” Starsky said at long last. He selected a bottle of Napa Valley cabernet and yanked the cork free. “No trial, no stress, he’s just gone from our lives?” Starsky splashed red wine into two glasses and then a goodly portion into the tomato sauce. “I can live with that.”

Surprised, but relieved that Starsky could accept the inevitable. “Even if we never get a real trial, or even another hearing?”

“I don’t wanna go to that courthouse anymore,” Starsky said. He swallowed half the contents of his glass before swiftly smashing the garlic cloves and chopping onions with a technique Julia Child would have been proud of. “He tried to kill us, Hutch.” Dumping the results of his work into the pan, Starsky stood hip to hip with Hutch, their bodies touching from shoulder to thigh. “He tried to ruin us, but he couldn’t, and you know why?”

“Why?” There was a sweet warmth all the way through his body, from the way Starsky looked at him, both loving and fierce.

“Cause we are better than him,” Starsky declared. “We got integrity and good looks on our side.”

“No truer words were ever said.” Hutch clinked his wineglass with Starsky’s, swirling the ground beef into the mixture. A bit of oregano, a few bay leaves he’d picked on his morning jog, and some pepper to taste. The whole temper of the room seemed to have mellowed, leaving a hominess Hutch cherished. He stirred sauce while Starsky got out spaghetti to boil and some French bread to sprinkle with a mixture of butter, parmesan and garlic.

“Add to that—we solved the damn Viking murder!” Starsky grinned proudly as if bolstering his resolve with their latest accomplishment.

Hutch nodded, sipping the wine. A body had been found in 1970, naked, and partially burned in a row boat that came aground on a deserted beach. It had obviously been someone’s attempt at a Viking funeral. Who the man was, and what had killed him was investigated in the early seventies before it was shelved as a cold case. Starsky and Hutch had come across the intriguing mystery in the hundreds of files they inherited when they took over the cold case department.

“And that the girl we hired as an intern would be the one to point us in the right direction.” Hutch shook his head, still amazed at the coincidence. Timid little Malory, with her watery blue eyes and limping walk had piled up the relevant files and then dropped them on the floor. Paperwork and photos spilled out every which way. She’d stared at a photograph of the dead man in shock.

“That’s my grandfather!” she’d cried.

It took weeks to unravel a convoluted case of malice, inheritance, greed and family conflict, but they’d proven the murderer to be one of the sons—luckily, not Malory’s father.

“Have you decided which case you want to dive into next?” The sensation of something solid pushing against Hutch’s legs made him look down. The cat’s body was heavy on him, marking his suede sneakers with the top of her head. Hutch grinned. “What’s your cat’s name?”

“Bumblebee.” Starsky squatted, stroking the soft fur with both hands. “Aren’t you a good girl?”

She chirped a meow, slid sensuously against his knee and hopped up onto the counter to bat at a stray mushroom stem still on the cutting board.

“No, no!” Hutch scolded, shoving the animal’s backside. Bumblebee erupted, dashing wildly across the bar to the other side and into the living room. She careened from sofa to arm chair, up onto a bookshelf, the window ledge, and two times around the carpet before flopping over in exhaustion on the ottoman. Hutch laughed, having gone from fond kitty lover to annoyed cat owner in the space of one minute.

“Made herself right at home.” Starsky raised an eyebrow as if to prove what a good idea it had been to get a cat.

He’d broiled the garlic bread to a perfect crispiness. The noodles were boiling and the tomato sauce filled the room with a wonderful aroma. Hutch brought down the blue and white Corning ware dishes and two yellow napkins for the table. As he was striking a match to light the candles, he mentally sorted through their record collection for a little background music.

“You know what I’d love to solve?” Starsky drained the spaghetti and divided it between their two plates.

“Jimmy Hoffa?” Hutch suggested, finding the correct album on the shelf beside the record player. Exactly the right combination of slightly angsty songs and sweet sentimentalism.

Starsky stared at him, blue eyes so wide Hutch felt like he could slip right into Starsky’s brain. “That would be terrific. ‘Cept he didn’t die in Southern California.”

“Not that anyone knows, no,” Hutch agreed, setting the needle on the record. The perfectly blended harmonies of two men and a woman filled the air. “That whole thing is a mystery.”

“I’ve always wanted to dig into the Black Dahlia murder,” Starsky said, spooning sauce onto the noodles. He flourished shaved parmesan over the top and sat down with a satisfied, yet wistful expression. “I like what we’re doing. We give families—what’d that woman the department made us see call it?”

“Closure,” Hutch supplied, unsurprised that Starsky had thought of the same thing he had. “I’ll walk in the rain by your side…” he sang John Denver’s lyrics, “I’ll cling to your tiny hand…” He came up beside his love.

Starsky laughed, waggling his hand which was by no means tiny but was smaller than Hutch’s and clasped his palm, joining in belatedly. “I’ll be there when you’re feeling down to kiss away the tears that you cry…” He leaned his head against Hutch’s chest, kissing their joined hands.

“I’ll share with you all the happiness I’ve found, a reflection of the love in your eyes…” Hutch continued, their voices blending well with Peter, Paul and Mary’s. “And I’ll sing you the songs of the rainbow…”

Bumblebee added her yowl to the family sing, head butting Hutch’s ankles before climbing into Starsky’s lap to commune with her men.

“She’s pitchy and really off-key,” Hutch groused, digging into his spaghetti.

“Hey, she can hear you!” Starsky covered the cat’s pointy ears, grinning at Hutch.

And that was all Hutch needed to make it a perfect evening.

FIN