The List

Don’t look in Hutch’s glove compartment. It’s scary in there.

It was Charlie the Mook that started the whole thing, Starsky reflected a few days later. Starsky needed something that was in that little book with all the stuff in it about every whippo, scumbag and piece of crap they’d ever busted. Starsky was looking for whats-his-name, that guy that liked peeking at women in ladies public toilets because Huggy said that what’s his name knew where Charlie the Mook was hanging out this week. And Charlie the Mook knew where…well, never mind, because as Hutch once noted, going into Starsky’s thought processes is like spelunking a very dark and tricky cave with a lot of blind passages. Be sure to take at least a week’s supply of water, trail mix, and lots of batteries for your flashlight.

His near famous memory for once failing him, (late night stakeouts with nothing to eat but squirrel bait out of Hutch’s jacket pocket and cold coffee will do that to a guy) he opened Hutch’s glove compartment to find The Book.

Carefully, because Hutch, being a bit of a packrat, might have anything in there. Once Starsky had opened it and a five pound barbell had dropped onto his right foot. Adidas are great shoes for running down a perp, but they lack steel toes. He’d limped for about a week until his second to the biggest toenail fell off. He made sure that Hutch saw it or heard about it at least once a day for the whole week and twice a day after the toenail came off. Those sympathy points come in handy when your partner is annoyed at you for stealing half his tuna sandwich and his bag of chips. Hutch never ate the chips anyway.

Anyway, in his search for The Book, he came across The List. Starsky knew Hutch had always been a list maker, not that it helped him get any more organized, but it seemed to be necessary to his thought processes. Even though he rarely had a pencil or even a note pad with him. The lists were usually jotted down on old napkins from The Pits, or on the backs of sales receipts from Taco Haven, or sometimes on the inside of his left arm when a scrap of paper was no where at hand.

Starsky grinned briefly remembering when once he’d had to type up a report reading case notes written the inside of Hutch’s arm. Good thing they’d had a ball point pen. He’d kindly helped Hutch wash every trace of it off that evening in the shower.

The List tumbled out onto the rest of the overflowing collection of used coffee cups and fast food wrappers that occupied the floor of Hutch’s car at any given time. They often used Hutch’s car for stakeouts. It had a bigger back seat and was far less noticeable than the Torino. There were different rules for Hutch’s car too. Spilling root beer on the seats was tolerated. Throwing hamburger wrappers and pizza boxes in the floor was okay, too.

The List looked like any old scrap of cheap filler notebook paper. Starsky picked it up to cram it back into the glove box when the words, “Things that Annoy Me about Starsky” in Hutch’s distinct script swam into his vision. This required further investigation. He was, after all, a detective. There were ten things on the list. It read as follows:

It Annoys Me When Starsky:

1. Steals my food.

2. Hogs the bed. He just sprawls everywhere.

3. Wants to watch drag racing Saturdays when PBS is running a good special on organic gardening.

4. Wants to eat at Taco Haven more than once a week.

5. Wears blue jeans that most people would give to Goodwill.

6. Makes fun of how long it takes me to fix my hair in the morning.

7. Never lets me forget I once told him he was a lousy kisser.

8. Volunteers me up to sing at the department picnic every year without asking first.

9. Still tells his mother we’re “roommates.” Does he think the woman is stupid?

10. Doesn’t want to try anything new.

Starsky ran through his whole repertoire of expressions as he read, from surprise, concern, back to surprise, then pissed off, back to concern, then finally arriving at totally pissed. He crammed The List into his coat pocket, slammed the glove compartment closed, kicked the door to Hutch’s car shut (banging his toe with the still-tender nail, but he hardly noticed) and bolted up the stairs to their apartment.

“HUUUTCH!”

The person to whom this was directed lifted his head briefly from a book entitled “Compost, Your Garden’s Friend,” and grunted softly. “What?”

Starsky brandished the offending piece of paper. “This…this!” he yelled.

“It’s paper Starsk. You remember. Comes from trees. You write on it.” Hutch smiled a faint, superior smile, rubbing his non-existent mustache, which if you think about it, wasn’t a wise thing to do at this particular time.

“You’re mean. You’re just plain mean. And a backstabber, that’s what you are. If you wanna say something bad about me, at least be a man and say it to my face. Don’t be hiding it in your piece of crap car on sneaky little pieces of paper!” Starsky had more to say, but at that point, breathing became necessary. Being really excited tends to use up your oxygen faster, as Hutch had calmly explained to him once when they were trapped in a mechanical room with a bomb about to go off.

“What the hell are we talking about?” Hutch asked, reluctantly putting down the book. It was a good book. It had a plan for turning an old whiskey barrel into a compost container.

“This!” Starsky strode over and thrust the paper into Hutch’s face. “You Benedict Arthur, you, you….”

Hutch pried the paper from Starsky’s outraged fingers, smoothed it and read through The List quickly while Starsky panted and scowled, arms folded across his chest.

“Oh, this.” Hutch finally said after a brief, uncomfortable silence. Since they didn’t have a lot of those, it felt much longer than the 43 seconds that passed in actual time. “I can explain this.”

“Well, you start explainin’ Hutchinson and I’ll just be in the bedroom packin’. Because I sure wouldn’t want you to have to spend one more minute of your precious time with someone who annoys you as much as I do.”

“Starsky, it doesn’t mean anything. Will you come back here, you moron.” Hutch followed Starsky into the bedroom where he had pulled his battered Army duffel from the closet and was folding several pairs of his crummy blue jeans and two of Hutch’s shirts to put in the bag.

“Where’s my shorts? Did you borrow them again? It’s not enough that he writes mean lists about me behind my back, he steals my underwear too.”

“I never stole your underwear, they don’t fit me!” Hutch exclaimed, simultaneously indignant at both the accusation and the frightening idea that Starsky was actually packing to leave. “Aren’t you even going to let me explain? And that’s my red sweater, put it back, I was going to wear that to work Monday.”

“It looks better on me.” Starsky mumbled, but sat down heavily on the bed and folded his arms, averting his eyes and pushing out his lower lip. He swiped angrily at his eyes. “The arms are too short for you.”

“Starsk, you’re not crying are you?” Hutch asked, kneeling down in front of the other man, cocking his head to one side to look up into those blue, blue eyes.

“No, there was dust or something in the closet.” Starsky sniffed and used his sleeve. “You know what a lousy housekeeper you are.”

“Oh, I see.” Hutch sighed. “Starsk, that list is just my way of blowing off steam. Sure, we annoy each other. Every person that lives with another person will find something about that other person that annoys them. Writing it down is my way of letting it go. You understand? I’m over it, I let it go. Here.” Hutch took The List and wadded it into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket sitting by the bed. “See, it’s gone, all gone. In fact, I want you to do the same thing.”

“What?” Starsky sniffed. “You want me to do some kind of psycho-babble hocus pocus trick and then everything will be square between us again?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to do,” Hutch smiled enthusiastically. “I’ll get you a piece of paper, a pencil and you just have at it, buddy. Write down everything about me that annoys you.”

Hutch jumped to his feet and loped into the kitchen to find said objects.

Starsky thought a moment and unpacked his jeans, and put the red sweater back in his drawer, not Hutch’s. He hung the shirts back up in the closet. “I hate green and tan plaid anyway.”

Hutch came back in with a pen with a chewed end, and an old phone bill envelope. “Here,” he said, holding them out to Starsky. “Let me have it, write down every annoying thing I’ve ever said or done to you. Let me read it, then we’ll light a match and burn it. We’ll burn mine too. Sort of a cleansing ritual.”

Starsky took the pen, stuck the chewed end into his mouth and looked at the envelope.

“Okay, just leave me alone and I’ll let you know when I’m done.” Considering that Starsky’s ideas of a “cleansing ritual” usually involved Spin and Span and a rag, he was being very open minded, he thought.

He looked through the bedroom door where Hutch was again engrossed in “Compost, Your Garden’s Friend” (it was the really exciting part about microbes that add life-sustaining nitrogen to the soil) , chewed on the end of the pen (it came from their bank, he noted absently, Hutch always took pens from the bank, he was kind of cheap that way) and after a few minutes of deep thinking, began to write.

It was about an hour later when Starsky was done. The pen had been chewed some more. The envelope was covered with Starsky’s left slanted scrawl. Hutch had dozed off with “Compost, Your Garden’s Friend” still in his lap. Apparently, the excitement of life-sustaining nitrogen was too much for a 40-something year old man.

Starsky stood, and stretched, listening to the satisfying sound of his thoracic vertebrae cracking. Writing was hard work. That’s why Hutch usually did most of the reports at work, except, of course, when the notes where written on the inside of Hutch’s arm.

“Hutch, I’m done!” he called from the bedroom. Silence greeted him.

“Hutch, did you fall asleep?” Starsky asked, illogically, because if Hutch was asleep, he probably wasn’t going to answer, and if he weren’t he’d have answered already. But, nowhere in the history of human beings had that ever prevented awake people from asking sleeping people if they were asleep.

“Hutch, wake up.” Starsky shook Hutch’s shoulder, which caused him to make a snuffly noise and open his eyes. “Wha…?” he asked articulately.

“I finished the list.” Starsky said proudly offering forth the envelope. “And would it hurt you to actually buy a pen?”

Hutch blinked, used to those kinds of non-sequitars now, so it didn’t annoy him nearly like it once had. That’s why it wasn’t on The List. One can adjust to nearly everything, given enough time and concussion-inducing blows to the head, Hutch mused in the second before he realized Starsky had shoved an envelope with writing on it under his nose.

“Well, let’s see what we have here.” Hutch cleared his throat noisily and braced himself. He knew he wasn’t the most pleasant person to live with sometimes. He kind of wished he had a beer.

He looked down and realized his reading glasses had slid off his face when he was asleep.

He grinned self-consciously, put them on and read:

I Love Hutch Because:

1. He never makes me feel that dumb. Even when I do dumb things. Like pay $250.00 for a guinea pig.

2. He was right about lecithin and Vitamin E and all that jazz. As long as he doesn’t make me drink it in goat’s milk.

3. He’s got a real big heart and is always trying to help people, even when they don’t appreciate it.

4. He’s a good guy to have backing you up in a rough spot.

5. He’s not a slave to fashion. (this was followed by “ha ha!” and a stick man saying “I love plaid.”)

6. He’s never let me down. Not really.

7. He’s gorgeous and could have anyone, but he picked me.

8. He’s the best person I’ve ever met, no exceptions, period.

Hutch pawed briefly at his eyes.

“You cryin’ Hutch?” Starsky asked softly, easing next to Hutch on the sofa.

“Must be my allergies acting up, Starsk,” Hutch replied in a hoarse voice.

“Want my handkerchief?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

As Hutch attended to his allergies, Starsky bounced into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later with a metal pie plate, and a book of matches with “The Pits, the Best Place to Make a Stop” on it.

“We gonna burn our lists now?” he asked, placing Hutch’s crumpled list he’d retrieved from the bedroom wastebasket into the plate.

“No, we’re going to burn mine.”

Starsky gave Hutch a curious look.

“Your list I’m going to keep until the day I die, and I’m going to be buried with it.”

Starsky grinned.

The End