Much Ado

Starsky laid on the porch swing. His partner, the love of his life, was right. It wasn’t bad out here, just chilling. He wasn’t much for reflection, but as he got older, it had its significance.

The cell phone vibrated, but he left it to wobble across the pine stand by the screen door. Damn phones. Combined with emails, blogs, my spaces, the world was a constant source of communication that was much ado about nothing.

Take for instance, grocery shopping. How many times had he heard it, in various aisles. ‘Okay, they got the large can, the 16oz for 1.89 and the small can for 1.29. That’s 9 oz. What? No not the red kind, the one with the yellow dressed lady in the hat…’

He shook his head as he pushed the swing. How did anyone ever shop twenty years ago? Did they buy every can and bring it home, or did they just shop together? No, it had to be easier than that. They just made a decision because they knew.

He watched Hutch pamper his vegetable garden thirty feet away. Hutch looked up every so often, a force of habit. Starsky watched for that smile that always came next. He’d never get tired of it, in fact, he craved it, time after time. Starsky raised his ice tea and lifted his eyebrows. Hutch waved a “no, thanks”, and went back to his weeding. Five minutes from now, Starsky would bring him his anyway, and Hutch would take a sip. Then Starsky would too, because he liked seeing the lip marks, one on top of the other, on the rim. Like a wet kiss on the glass.

They had taken to travel, after their retirements, and Starsky had found, to his greatest delight, that the autonomy of visits to unknown places suited both of them so well. Roaming across continents, their pursuits were as varied as their interests. They’d taken the train across Canada, and stayed at Victorian Station hotels. One year, they followed the Tour of France, another, the Iditarod. In Egypt, Hutch battled a three week illness after visiting the older pyramids, while Starsky lamented daily it was the curse of King Tut’s tomb. Starsky chuckled to himself, as his eyes blurred thinking of that scare. Hutch had barely said a word for a week, stuck in that foreign hospital. Starsky was left to the language that surrounded them, fiery and incomprehensibly staccato, while he gazed at that beautiful face, chiseled in anguish. He hung on, with looks, pouring his devotion in with his eyes. Starsky believed, as Hutch would too, and he recovered, with an apparent immunity that sobered his constitution for further pursuits. At least now, he could drink the water wherever they went.

Starsky watched Hutch handle the wheelbarrow full of discarded clippings. He’d be back after he dumped the pile in the compost bin. He knew Hutch had put in a good effort, and he’d be up for conversation, just by the way he tipped his neck up in greeting on the way by.

The tea was still cool. Cool like the day they had gone to, amazingly, the Rock of Gibraltar. Hutch had insisted he wanted to see it, just once. Just like he had to kiss the Blarney stone, even though he wasn’t Irish. Making a joke, Hutch stated he could have been, but his ancestors moved to Minnesota instead. But Hutch insisted on kissing it, he said, so he could learn to babble like his partner. Starsky remembered saying, “I think you’d better give it a good make-out, you’re a tough case.”

It was in those next two weeks, Hutch told Starsky his life story a chapter a night. By the end of the trip, he’d gotten quieter. Then they visited the big rock.

“You gonna kiss this stone, too?” Starsky had teased him.

“No, but this is a once in a lifetime event anyway.”

Starsky smiled remembering Hutch’s gold hair toss in the wind that day. Without a word, down on one knee, Hutch curtseyed, and gracefully took Starsky’s hand. Starsky shivered, suddenly aware. Hutch looked at him with the intensity he’d had when they’d thrown their badges away years before.

“Babe, please…say…”

Hutch gently spoke, “May I have your hand, would you marry me?”

He couldn’t remember if he’d answered specifically, but the intensity of their kiss, as Starsky sunk to the stone’s surface, meeting those lips would never leave his memory…

The screen door opened. Hutch watched Starsky jump. “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to startle.”

Starsky sat up. “It’s okay, Babe. I was just…reflecting.”

“Ahh. I’m corrupting you.” Hutch poured a glass from the pitcher and sat beside his partner.

“Sit closer.” Hutch obliged. Starsky ran his fingers through Hutch’s wet locks, rubbing his ear a bit.

“Just showered.”

“I know. You smell like earth and rain and sun and you.” Hutch moved his neck to deepen the contact with Starsky’s hand, as a rosy glow filled his cheeks, that blush was a trademark by now.

“So where’ve you been?”

“Oh, watching you, here, and in my mind.”

“You traveled.”

“I did. To Italy, at that little coquina two streets past the Hotel Academia…”

“…where they sold fresh cracked coconut on the street, that they had under running water…”

“Yeah, after we threw coins in the Fountain of Trevi…”

“…one if you want to come back, two if you wish for love…”

“…and we both threw ours in but didn’t say how many.”

They both pushed on the swing more. Making it rock. Communicating. No phone, no computers, no words.

Starsky put up three fingers. Hutch did too.

“I wanted to come back and love forever.”

“I wanted to be married to you over and over.”

The cell phone vibrated again, jiggling itself to the edge. They both heard it fall, and grinned. But they didn’t break their gaze. Starsky knew they didn’t communicate, they communed. In timeless minutes like this, confessing much ado.