Remember: Sequel

Sequel to Remember by Lolabobs.

“For seven years he’d played at being Paul Solberg.”

For the third night running, Starsky lay awake listening to the histrionic moans and groans coming from the next room. The motel he was staying in was sleazy; cheap and ugly. The room next door seemed to be on permanent open rental to the lady whose breathy moans were keeping him awake, a lady who entertained her guests by the hour — although few of them seemed to stay that long.

Starsky knuckled the sleep from his eyes and lay there in frustration. There was a time when he’d have known what this place was, known the likely clientele, sure as hell known not to rent himself a room. He sighed at yet more evidence that seven years was a long time to be out of the loop. He hadn’t been a cop since he left Bay City, but never thought he’d lose the instincts. He sighed once more as he heard his neighbor’s latest business transaction come to a climax. Glaring up at the ceiling as he listened to the unmistakable sounds, he heard the creak of bedsprings, followed by the furtive and hurried exit. It had amused him at first to realize that contrary to any expectations he may have had, the men visiting his neighbor left so much quicker than they arrived. Diffident steps on the way in, exchanged for haste and embarrassment on the way out.

4:17am and the room, due to the stupid neon ‘rooms’ sign flashing across the lot, was lit well enough for him to see his suitcase on the dresser — opened but still full of clothes. His jacket and jeans were tossed over the back of the only chair. The only other evidence of his residence was the trash can with its uneaten fast food and, on the bedside table, the bottle of whisky that he’d bought but hadn’t drunk. He glanced at the liquor briefly, and then closed his eyes. Maybe Lolita – or whatever her name was — was finished for the night?

He was still awake when the next set of hesitant footsteps could be heard approaching. Damn it — if he’d realized the sort of dive this place was… Starsky gave up the pretense of sleeping as the clock flipped over to show 5:00am. He padded through the bathroom in order to shower. Starsky looked around the dingy room and smiled mirthlessly. ‘If he’d known’ — who was he trying to kid? He’d booked this room because it was the first one he’d come across; hadn’t ‘missed’ the signs because he hadn’t bothered to look. Starsky hadn’t actually planned to be sleeping here, what he hadn’t realized was just how far he’d screwed things up.

As the shower trickled its lukewarm water, Starsky attempted to wash some life into himself. He saw again the shock on Hutch’s face in the parking garage, heard once more the finality of Hutch’s instruction to go, and, felt again the emptiness inside as Hutch quietly closed the door behind him.

And he told himself that it was the soap that was making his eyes sting and nothing more.

Thirty minutes later, he was out on the street. Starsky contemplated calling a cab, but couldn’t summon the energy, instead he started to walk. He snorted to himself — his head didn’t make much sense these days. The last two days, since he’d seen Hutch, walking was pretty much all he’d done. Starsky had stumbled away from Hutch’s place, shocked and unseeing, only becoming alert when a couple of uniforms stopped to ask what he was doing in such an area at that time of night. He’d shown them Paul Solberg’s ID and told them he was lost. Something about him must have triggered some bud of sympathy because they’d given him a ride to his motel and a lecture on the dangers of the city at night.

Grimacing at the memory, Starsky kept on walking, wondering if they’d told anyone at the station, wondering if Hutch had mentioned him, if anyone had put two and two together.

He’d walked by the station the day before and had felt an overwhelming urge to walk through the doors, to go to his desk, pour himself a coffee, and wait for Dobey to give him his assignment. But he’d stood and watched for 15 minutes and not seen one face he’d known. And he’d remembered what Hutch had told him about Dobey’s enforced retirement, remembered that he didn’t have a desk or a partner, and hurried away, unable to cope with his thoughts.

***

The streets around him began filling up as the day got started; people on their way to work, traders setting up their stalls, hustlers getting ready to hustle. Starsky got jostled for the third time and, with a reaction speed that surprised even him, grasped the arm that was trying to lift his wallet. He surged across the pavement, pushing the guy ahead of him, so that soon they were backed up against the wall. The guy, a youngish man, mid-twenties and tall, was trying to twist his arm free even as Starsky held it tighter. He started to offer some kind of apology. “Can’t blame a guy for trying…” aiming for affability, but found his words cut off as Starsky gripped his throat with his other hand. The man was a full head taller than Starsky, but as they stood there, with Starsky pressing him into the wall, gripping his throat and squeezing, there was no doubting who had the advantage.

Starsky felt the rage surge through him, felt the power as he pushed the perp against the wall. He pulled the man toward him, and then slammed him back into the wall. Once, twice… as he did it for the third time he heard the man groan in pain and, suddenly horrified, let go and stepped back as the man slumped against the wall. The man stood, gasping for breath for a second before fleeing. Leaving Starsky standing there staring at the wall; a small spot of fresh blood remained from where the thief’s head had scraped against the brick. He stared blindly at the spot for a second before punching it, hard, twice.

The physical pain shocked him. His own blood now obliterated that on the wall and he shook his hand gingerly before flexing the fingers. Bloodied, he thought, bruised — but not broken. He felt for his wallet, thinking how ridiculous it would be if after all that it had still been stolen.

He was falling apart. Hell, Starsky knew he had a temper, but not like that. He’d lost it a few times, Hutch had had to hold him back once or twice, but that was over real things, something that mattered, child abuse, rape, someone hurting his part… well, real stuff. Not over a wallet.

***

Starsky glanced around at his surroundings, trying to pretend he was surprised at where he was. On the street opposite was The Pits. Except, as he walked over to the door to go inside, he realized that this particular watering hole was now called ‘The Basement Seven’; a private members club that didn’t open till evening. And what had he expected – Angie, Anita, and the girls to come together and buy it? To keep The Pits open as a shrine to Huggy? Jesus Christ!

Fighting the urge to thump the wall again, fearful that if he were to start he might never stop, he bowed his head and walked away.

Starsky stopped for breakfast at a diner a few blocks up. He’d stood in the line, contemplating pancakes, waffles, or toast. Even, for a few seconds that reassured him that somewhere inside there was still a bit of Dave Starsky, contemplated ordering a big plate of Blintzes… but the wrench that thought gave him prompted him to just order coffee, which he sat in a booth to drink, black and sweet.

For seven years he’d played at being Paul Solberg. He’d dressed up, gone undercover, and for 24 hours a day he’d hidden his identity. He’d eaten Paul Solberg’s food, worn his clothes, and driven his cab. And in all that time he’d known exactly who he was. He knew David Michael Starsky. Knew what he felt, what he believed in. Two weeks of actually ‘being’ Starsky and he didn’t even know which way was up.

The pointed cough of the waitress wanting to clear his table moved him on, and another hour’s ‘aimless’ walking found him outside Hutch’s old apartment. Three days ago he’d slumped on these steps not knowing what to do. Today? Today he found himself tapping gently on Susan’s door. As she answered, frowning briefly before recognition cut in, Starsky upped his charm. He smiled, sparkled, and wooed. Thanked her for her help earlier in the week. Beamed as he told her just how very much help she’d been — the great success of his reunion with his old bud Ken. How he was keen to thank her in person, how Ken’d maybe done him a favor by moving, allowing him to meet such a beautiful doll. All the while flirting, watching her succumb to his charms, and wondering how she could be so blind.

As she asked him for coffee, apologizing for the mess in the apartment, explaining that she worked shifts in the garment area and got behind with her chores, Starsky felt his heart pounding. He stepped across the threshold, walked into the living room, and stopped, dismayed. The room was starkly modern and decorated with red and grey paintwork, black furniture, and geometric prints on the walls. The kitchen area was hectic with piles of snack foods on the surfaces and dirty pots on the stove. There were magnets on the fridge and a mangy spider plant was drooping listlessly from a shelf.

So fucking stupid. Susan was chatting to him, making coffee, and he couldn’t breathe. Starsky put his hand up to loosen his collar, realized he was wearing a t-shirt, and rubbed his hand over his face instead. The twinge of pain as he jolted his bruised fingers gave him the incentive to inhale, and he was dimly aware that he was panting for breath as everything swam out of focus for a few seconds. When everything righted itself, Susan was standing in her living room, peering at him anxiously. His knuckles had started bleeding again, and he knew he had to get out of there.

Starsky pushed past Susan, uttering a ‘sorry’ as he went, and then was out; down the steps and hurrying along the street. He hailed a cab to take him back to the motel, but halfway there, calmer and reluctant to return to the breathy moans and groans any sooner than he had to, he diverted the cabbie and got out at the Bay City Memorial Gardens.

He’d found out where Huggy was buried as soon as the Feds had shown him the news report of his death. So mindful of the outcome of his last rebellion, Starsky had wondered even then if he was trying to bring down some kind of wrath on himself when, openly defiant, he’d called the funeral home for details. He had been surprised, or maybe disappointed, that no further reprisals had come his way alongside the information.

He wandered along the rows until he found Huggy’s gravestone. The grave was well tended; flowers that were beginning to wilt, but no weeds. Starsky was glad. Someone was looking after it. He stood over it for a moment or two, trying to marry the memory of his vibrant, eclectic friend to this neat, still place. Then he sat gently to the side and patted the headstone. “Hey Hug.” he whispered, then subsided into silence.

He’d come to say sorry, to pay his respects, and didn’t know where to start. Would Huggy even want him to? He remembered the pointed, mobile face that was always quick to express the way it felt when he and Hutch dropped in, remembered the big smile that lit up the place, or the scowl when they were pushing a little too hard. Remembered Huggy selling him a pet rock and Hutch mocking over his shoulder. Or when Huggy decided he was the next great escapologist, having Starsky and Hutch strap the strait jacket on him. Starsky smiled weakly. He thought about Huggy keeping special food in his kitchens – sweet concoctions for himself and all that healthy stuff for Hutch. He winced, remembering Huggy letting the cat out of the bag when Starsky had been convalescing and trying to sneak a holiday – which ended up with Hutch pouring water all over him. Huggy coming to Pleasure Island with them, helping out despite his fear of the voodoo – and in the end it was Starsky who got hexed and ended up trying to kill his best friend.

“Ah, Hug.” Starsky reached out and held on to the gravestone as the tears he’d been holding in since forever finally came. He kneeled, holding the headstone in one hand, clenching his broken fist against his thigh as he wept; seeing a slideshow of memories running through his head.

And with the tears came guilt. Not because he’d caused Huggy’s death, although he knew that however inadvertently, he had. Rather, it was because even now he was letting him down. Starsky wasn’t just weeping for the Bear. Every scenario he saw, every memory he revisited, was the three of them-Huggy, Starsky, and Hutch. And as he cried, more and more it was just about Hutch. So, when he heard the voice, he wasn’t even that surprised.

“No.”

Starsky looked up to see Hutch standing a few feet away from him, fresh flowers in hand.

“No?” he echoed, stupidly, quietly.

“No. You don’t get this. You don’t get to do this.”

Dragging his arm across his face to clear the worst of his tears, Starsky stood.

“You don’t get to play the grieving friend,” Hutch continued. “You gave up that right when…”

“When I killed him?” Starsky interrupted.

Anger flashed in Hutch’s eyes and he took a step closer.

“When…” Hutch started to speak, but Starsky saw the rage and the hurt and realized that he couldn’t do this anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, then walked forward, lightly touching the grave in farewell.

When he reached Hutch, he almost flinched away, but at the last minute found courage. Starsky stopped in front of him, looked into his eyes, and gently reached up to touch his face.

It was meant to be a fleeting touch of farewell, but Hutch snatched at the hand to push it away, crushing it as he did so. Starsky’s exclamation of pain was involuntary and, instead of brushing him away, Hutch examined the hand carefully, flexing the fingers and glancing over the bruised knuckles. Hutch turned the hand palm up to extend the fingers, then seemed to realize what he was doing. For a moment he froze, holding the hand in his own, his own fingers gently brushing Starsky’s palm. Then Hutch looked up.

Starsky stood there, hand captured, unable to move, and felt the touch as if it was the last thing he would ever feel.

Starsky couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Could only gaze at Hutch. Starsky’s heart was pounding high in his throat and he knew he was trembling. Knew Hutch must feel it, couldn’t possibly avoid it as the trembles became out and out shudders, and he started to breathe in harsh rasps. Starsky’s throat was blocked and his heart pounding hard and fast and heavy. And he thought that if he had to die, then here at Huggy’s graveside, with Hutch holding his hand, was as good a place to go as any. But he couldn’t really see Hutch so well, as the sparkles and spots in his eyes got in the way and all his focus was taken up with the wheezing breaths that he couldn’t seem to control.

Then he was on the ground, with his head being shoved between his knees and a big heavy hand rubbing in circles on his back “Breathe… come on Starsky, deep slow breaths.”

He tried, he really did, but wasn’t getting anywhere fast. He felt his chin being lifted and a hand brushing the hair from his eyes.

“Look at me.” Then again, louder, more insistent. “Look at me!”

He forced his eyes open. Hutch was there, squatted beside him, face up close.

“Look at me, pal, come on. You just gotta breathe. Slow and steady. Come on, with me… that’s it, slow and steady… that’s it.”

Panicking, agonizing, but he managed it. Matched his breathing to Hutch’s, exhaling slowly, and taking deep shuddering inhalations that gradually came under control. Hutch’s hand left his chin and instead rested on his shoulder, fingers rubbing the nape of his neck.

Then, as Starsky’s breathing slowed and became even and regular, Hutch rocked forward a fraction till his forehead was touching Starsky’s. Eyes closed.

“You ok?”

“I’m breathing…”

Hutch rested his knees on the ground and the hand at Starsky’s nape stopped rubbing and just rested there as he started speaking.

“I screwed Huggy over.”

“Huh?” Starsky risked a glance at Hutch, confused.

“I’d come to visit him and end up talking to you. Telling you what I’d been doing, telling you all about my cases, about the job… how much I missed you.”

The hand on Starsky’s neck was withdrawn and Hutch sat back, hands resting on his thighs.

Starsky hesitated, then reached out tentatively and covered Hutch’s right hand.

“Seven years,” Hutch whispered.

“For me, too.”

Hutch looked up at him.

“For me too,” Starsky repeated. “I didn’t choose this.”

With an exclamation Hutch pulled his hand away from Starsky’s and pushed himself to his feet. About to walk away, he paused and rested his hand on Starsky’s head, fingers threading through the curls.

“Don’t.” Starsky almost wailed the word, then caught hold of Hutch’s wrist, pulling it out of his hair and using it to pull himself up from the ground. “Don’t touch me and then walk away. Don’t do that. Don’t…” He stumbled over his words, glaring at Hutch to prevent interruption. He carried on. “Don’t do that. Don’t…” He held on to Hutch even as the other man tried to pull away. “Don’t hate me for walking away from you, then do the same thing. Don’t…” He gazed at the impassive face and choked. “Don’t leave me.”

How pathetic did he sound? How little did he care?

“Don’t make this about revenge, Hutch. If you hate me, hate ME, not a mistake I made.”

“Hate you?” Hutch spat out the words “Hate you? You died, Starsky. When you left, I hunted for you. I trawled every low life joint and warehouse; every morgue. I couldn’t find you. I fought everybody and anybody to find you, but you’d disappeared. They closed your case and I still looked. Even when they made Dobey retire and suspended me. And then, they declared you dead. Dead, Starsky. The Feds ‘found’ your body, ID’d you and cremated you before I got chance to say goodbye. You died.”

Starsky was stunned. “What? I didn’t, Hutch. I didn’t know.

It was as if Starsky hadn’t spoken.

“It was 5 months after Huggy died so we had a wake for you right here. Dobey and Edith, some of the guys from the precinct, me, of course. We drank to your health and mourned you.”

Starsky wanted to touch the man in front of him but dare not let go of the wrist he was clutching.

Hutch was still speaking. “I thought I’d died, too. Wished I had. It was hard enough looking for you everywhere I went, hoping I might see you, but after you died? I saw you everywhere – bums in the street with your hair, guys in the bars with your posture.” Hutch waved his spare hand. “But I knew it wasn’t you — couldn’t be you. So I’d come here and talk to you some more. Every day, Starsk, every day I mourned you and missed you.”

“Hutch.”

“And everyday I built a new world, just for me.”

Starsky didn’t think Hutch was even seeing him any more; looking straight at the gravestone, talking directly to it.

“How can I knock that down and start again?”

Starsky heard the plea in the question, let go of Hutch’s wrist, and instead wrapped himself around his friend. Pressed his whole body up against Hutch and wrapped his arms tight around Hutch’s back, crushing him. Rubbed his face into his neck. There was nothing soft about the embrace. It was rough and it hurt and after a second Hutch broke free, but only to grab Starsky’s’ face between his hands to hold him still.

“I’m here” is all Starsky could say, looking into scared blue eyes, trembling under the weight of his own fear. “I’m here,” he said again, as Hutch stood there trembling and lost. And “I’m here” as finally, finally Hutch let go and pulled him into a hug so needful, so needed that Starsky thought he might break, if only he weren’t squeezing so tightly himself.

“I’m here.”

The end.