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The Reverse Lysistrata
He dozes, wrapped around your arm, his head on your shoulder. For once his thin face is peaceful, void of its nervous ticking, and you would not go so far as to call him handsome. But he’s not ugly.
There are no bruises on the hip that’s left uncovered by your bed sheets. You were gentle, tonight. He responds much better when you are. Even if you hadn’t been, he would be right where he is now, trying to curl all of his long body around your arm. Perhaps he’d like to hang off of that arm in public. It would explain the fervor with which he devotes himself to the task now. If you ever let him be seen with you, he might actually try it.
Then you would have to bruise him.
As smart as he can be, Pickle Inspector is amazing dumb.
Some would say he was brave, but they’re wrong. You’ve seen him jump for no other reason than a clap of thunder, seen him continually check over his shoulder at nothing more than his own shadow. The Inspector is not brave.Any attempt he would feasibly make to be close to you like this in public would result in you tossing him around a little. At best.
You exhale smoke, feeling it push against your upper lip upon exiting your nose. You close your eyes, leaning your head back and sinking your back into your pillow.
Your Inspector.
It’s not a phrase you like to use, for all that it is true. But it suggests such melodrama. You don’t have him collared, dragging him around like some dog. He would gladly do it, and that thought makes you sick. He’s absolutely spineless, willing to do whatever you say regardless of what it means for him.
He’s a weak little man.
The phone on the nightstand rings and you both start.
Inspector grumbles and rubs his eyes as you sit up and reach over and grab the receiver.
“Fifteenth street, Ronald McDahl. Boxcars is already there.” Slick hangs up before you can get a word in.
You growl and don’t bother passing it off as a sigh, rubbing your eyes.
“Is it important?” He hasn’t let go of you yet and you sit there, feeling his weight for a moment. Skin and bones, you might be able to lift him with just one hand.
“It shouldn’t be,” It’s another one of Slick’s trivial enemies. A man he lost a fight to, or perhaps someone willing to flash their wits in contrast to his own. His pride is so easily hurt, and his reactions are so drastic.
And people think you’re the crazy one.
“Then, you ddon’t need to, to go,” he presses closer, folding one arm around your chest and snaking the other under your back, its hand on your shoulder. His nose presses against the side of your neck as you start peeling him off.
“I still have to go.” Inspector knows not to interfere with your work. He goes back to clinging to your arm, his legs moving under the sheets and tangling with your own. A bony knee presses into your calf. “Inspector.”
“P-please, s-stay,” he holds on tight, his face pressing into your neck again. You grumble and pull at his arm as he starts kissing your neck. “Droog, please,” he squirms against you, dragging himself along your side as you pull him off your arm. He’s fast, you’ll give him that. He’s climbed into your lap as soon as you’ve escaped his grip.
“Stop it—” He leans in and kisses hard, the way he does when you’ve got him writhing and begging. You shove him off, his fingers find your hair and he draws his neck in, looking up at you with those big blue eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You-y-you don’t h-have, have to—” he drops off there and you glare at him.
He whimpers as you hold his wrists and pull his hands away from your head. For a second he looks up at you, before his eyes flick around for anything else to stare at. You catch a glimpse of that weird watery gleam that means he wants something. Something other than sex.
“You can’t stop me, Inspector.” What does he think convincing you to stay will accomplish? It won’t make you any less of a killer, it won’t mean your record is clean, it won’t even save Ronald McDahl’s life. And it won’t make dealing with Slick any easier for you, which will only make the Inspector’s life harder, once you come home angry.
“I-I-I—” you let go of his hands and they’re on your shoulders almost immediately. His knees press against your sides. “Ah-any-anything, anything that you, you w-want, I—l” You push his hands away again, and they go for your waist this time.
“Inspector.”
He kisses you again, desperate now. That’s enough. You grab him and shove him into the mattress. He doesn’t squeak or gasp, bringing himself lower in his attempt to make you stay by faking it. You’ve got him by the neck, your other hand on his side. His ribs stick out against your palm. You feel him shaking, his legs trembling on either side of your hips.
He tries one more kiss, pulling you down to him and grasping at your lips feebly. You break the kiss as soon as it starts, and bite his neck to make your point. He yelps, shivering harder. You don’t ever bite until you’ve made him beg for it. You pull back, tasting blood. His eyes are closed, his mouth trembles open.
“P-p-ple-please, please Droog,”
His voice shudders out of him and fills the room, the second floor, the whole house, and doesn’t move more than a few inches from his mouth. The hair on the back of your neck stands up and suddenly all you can think of is how empty the rest of the house is, and how loud he would have to scream before anyone would come to his rescue.
What are the chances they would reach him before it’s too late?
Your chest swells as you lean down, pushing him deeper into the mattress. You taste the blood on his neck, pulling his hips up higher against you.
Your hand roams down his side, feeling the ribs and following them in, over his chest to his sternum. If he were any thinner you could use them as handles. As he is now you’d have to cut him open to get a good grip.
Air shudders out of him as you close your lips around the bite and suck. A hand moves down your front, curving along your side, feeling muscle where on him there’s only bone. He’s staring up at you, wondering how he got here, how he ever ended up under Diamonds Droog.
The hand moves to find that one spot in the small of your back. His little touch sends a shiver though you. Your mouth fills slowly and you swallow, feeling your head spin as he runs his hand up and down your back. He sighs and you feel the room slip away entirely as you become lost in blood and skin and his moans.
The Malumat
“Afghan,” he stares as you snap them onto his cuffs. He wants to take a closer look, pick them apart with his eyes and perhaps his fingers if he’s sure he can put them back together. “Artisan made.”
You let him inspect them, the way his cat inspects a new toy. He brings a wrist up to his face, squinting at the cuff links. Lapis lazuli, set in copper that’s been polished to a golden shine. Yes, they are the most expensive thing on his body, no, they do not match any piece of clothing he owns. They don’t even match his eyes. The tiny triangulated stones are a much more vibrant blue than that watercolor wash. You could never bring yourself to do something as stupidly romantic as match a gift to his eyes.
But it’s close. If he would ever indulge you enough to let you take him to a decent tailor, you would have suits made to compliment the cuff links. Something light and perhaps only as dark as a simple cream. Eggshell, because the Inspector is fragile and you can’t imagine him in something as hard and sophisticated as one of your black suits. Day suits, the kind of thing that’s a trend among the rich and Southern.
Now that you think of it, you can easily imagine him in a pale suit, a hat that fits, your cuff links, surveying the grounds of some sunny estate. He would be ecstatic if he could get out to the country. You file that idea away for later.
“You spoil me,” he kisses you, unable to stop smiling, his long hands on your shoulders.
He’d like to wrap his arms around your neck and smother you with kisses, and the restraint he shows is precisely why you’ve elected to give him the cuff links. He’s learned to curb his affectionate impulses, along with most if not all of his usual impulses, to keep you happy.
Depending on the situation, you can tolerate, or even enjoy his fawning, but those times are rare. The thing that keeps you together is a mutual need for intelligent companionship. Your understanding is not based in sex, though that is a part of it from time to time.
Pickle Inspector is not a physical man. And, for all that you are exactly that, you take comfort in a relationship based on intellect.
After all, you are the two smartest men in the city.
You kiss back, passing your fingers over the cuff links as you pull at his lips gently.
They really are beautiful little things, you’re glad you found them.
“Naturally.”
He goes back to inspecting them.
“I-I h-haven’t got, I’m sorry but, I d-didn’t get you ah-anything.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.” It must seem very spontaneous to him. You’ve put him on the spot, put him in your debt. What will he do to repay you? Grand gestures won’t work, and there’s nothing he could deny you in the bedroom. He can’t afford a trinket like this, and no matter how much of a treat it would be for you, he thinks letting you have your way with his wardrobe would only put him deeper in your debt.
He looks around as you take your usual seat at his kitchen table. The tea is waiting for you.
Since you started meeting regularly he’s slowly gotten better with schedules. Frequently he forgets you’re coming over, but sometimes he can remember from week to week to week.
You pour yourself a cup. This is the fourth week straight he’s remembered. A new record for him.
The Inspector sits across from you, a note pad and pen in his spidery hands. He flips through it, jots a few new notes down, and then rips out several pages. You watch. He’s very careful, tearing each page away so that it doesn’t rip down the fault line his grip creates. They all come out completely intact.
He stacks them very carefully and looks up at you with one of his scared little smiles. You put your tea down as he offers you the stack.
Fourteen pages, seven pieces of paper covered front and back, worth of notes on the Marxist Gang from Lexington Avenue. The contents of their main shipyard, their major warehouses, names of their political handlers and puppets.
A diagram of their hideout.
Your mouth waters.
You look back at him. His eyes dart away and he reaches for the tea pot.
“Th-thank you, again.”
The Breakdown
He was on the subway, something you know he only does in the morning and early afternoon. The creak, jangle, lurch and screech of the trains unnerves him so badly in broad daylight he’d rather walk the length of the city at night than ride the subway. He can’t even take one of the trains that goes underground.
You can picture it, Pickle Inspector hunched in one of the cheap alloy seats, near the rusting metal doors and looking out the window, over the city. Fussing with his cuff links, keeping to himself, a tall thin man who would be a mark for thugs if he didn’t unconsciously advertise the fact that his pockets are empty.
A woman, older, the wealthy type who rides the train to try and become one with the lower classes, sitting next to him.
He’s terrified of women, but if you recall correctly Ronald McDahl’s wife does not look much like a woman. More like a prize pig in hair-curlers.
She notices his fussing, out of the corner of her eye she watches this strange man, thinking about what she’ll do if he reaches a shivering hand over to her. Long hands, twitching, what is it he’s got there?
And then she recognizes the cuff links.
And screams.
He jumps, tries to apologize despite his sudden, intense shaking. The train lurches into the station and he flops around, his poor balance destroyed by a piece of livestock in a dress. She grabs his wrist and tries to rip off the cuff links. He twists away and runs out of the train.
You can see him staggering across the iron platform, fighting the crowd as he drops whatever he was planning to do that day and runs for home.
And of course he calls you, once he can use the phone.
He tells you about it, clinging to you and stuttering so badly you have to stop him again and again to remind him to breathe. You stroke his hair and hold onto him, until he gets his story out.
They should have never met, they move in completely different circles. Ronald McDahl’s dealings with Slick were entirely coincidental.
The Inspector hides his face in your neck, his hands moving frantically together.
You sigh through your nose.
“S-s-s-s-sor-sor-sorry—I-I’m sorry,” He pockets the cuff links, whimpering into your neck. “C-can-can you-will you,” he grumbles and squirms. He’s curled up in your lap, because if you let him stand he would crumble to the floor and not move for days. His body betrays him when he gets like this. You give him a squeeze, just to assure him that you are, in fact, still here.
“H-h-h-her ah-ah-address-s-s?”
You sigh and tighten your hold on him.
“Alright.”
The ‘Ashes to Ashes’
You drive him. He’s still in a state, you don’t trust him in a cab or even walking. It’s raining hard, and you have to force him to take an umbrella. He’d stand there until the service was over, he might even try to take a seat near the grave, and bear the rain without you.
You drove up one of the paved paths twisting through the cemetery, and insisted he stay near the car. If you could have kept him in the car, or better yet, in his apartment, you would have. But he couldn’t be dissuaded.
The best you manage was the umbrella.
You watch his silhouette in the rain, the air calm around him, under the umbrella. He doesn’t shiver, but he will once you get him home. The service some twenty feet away has his full attention, particularly the widow.
It would have made more sense for him to just leave the damn cuff links in her foyer.
You rest your palm on the horn.
You’ll call him back to the car, force him back inside if you have to, and get him back home before he contracts hypothermia. He’s a symbolism-obsessed idiot, and he’ll kill himself before he makes a difference in this woman’s life.
He moves, walking against the wind towards the service.
You’ve got to stop him.
He fights to keep his grip on the umbrella and you go to hit the horn.
But your hand fails you. It sits still on the horn, while he stalks across the graveyard, pulling the umbrella down to his side. Your gut roils as you watch him come up to Ms. McDahl. There’s no making out what’s going on through the rain.For a moment you think you’ll have to leave the car and drag him back, but he starts back towards the car as you take hold of the door’s handle.
His head is down and he clutches his hat and the umbrella close to his chest, the shiver growing up through him as he comes closer. You reach into the back and throw the door open, just to get him inside faster. Water and cold and Pickle Inspector blow inside and you slam the door after him.
He’s hissing with cold, his teeth chattering and he tries to speak. You pull your coat off and pass it back to him. You can only reach him with one arm, but you still help him pull it on.
“She-she-she-she-she—” he buries himself in the back seat and your coat, whimpering and mumbling. You start the car as he continues his exercise in repetition.
He quiets down as you drive into town, and he’s absolutely silent as you help him inside.
“You’re going to kill yourself.” You peel him out of his clothes, wrap him in a towel as you wait for water to boil.
He whimpers and rubs his drenched face on your shoulder.
“She t-t-took them,” The corners of his mouth twist up, then pull back. He shivers hard and you sit him down and get a towel for his hair.
The Private Investigation
“She w-wasn’t h-h, she-e didn’t want to-to see me.”
You stay with him until he’s warmed up, which takes a good two days. He sticks close to you, first in your lap and then under your arm. His shivering breathing returns to normal and he tries to sleep. You wake him up time and again, to make sure he’s still warm. Finally he’s stopped shivering and you let him rest.
When he wakes up he’s got to tell you, but you stop him until you sure he’s fine.
“B-but she’d seen mme, ah-already.” He snuggles closer, pulling your arm tighter around him. “So it wasn’t, wasn’t a s-surprise. She didn’t-didn’t think I’d give them back.” He smiles and laughs a little. A rare, soft sound, pressed into your side.“She t-told me, asked me to l-leave her alone. I don’t mind that.”
You listen to him breathing, feel it on your side. This man’s very job as a private investigator entails that he put his life on the line for others. A life of stepping in front of crosshairs, just to press questions about other people’s lives. You can’t see why he would do that.
You avoid the confusing concept, in favor of coming clean.
“Hearts suggested it.” A stupid, extravagant gesture. A gift lifted off of a dead man. You have got to stop listening to him. Boxcars might know more about romanticism, but you knows more about Pickle Inspector and his terrible luck.
You should never have taken the cuff links in the first place, let alone passed them off as a gift.
“Hm?” His eyes flick up to you. “S-suggested what?”
You watch him for another moment, then run your fingers through his hair. He doesn’t press the question.
The Median
“How can you stand it?”
“St-stand what?”
“People.”He knows your sudden harshness is involuntary.
Pickle Inspector is stretched out on the couch, his head on your thigh and the cat on his belly. He’s scratching the animal’s ears with one hand, playing with your arm with the other. His fingers are wont to wander as much as his head.
This, you know, is just as involuntary as your harshness.
“They ah-aren’t s-so bad,” the cat purrs and rolls over on his stomach. He scratches its chin, even as it sinks into the dent between his ribcage and hips.How can he manage to overfeed that creature, yet skip his own meals for days?
He holds your hand over his face, curling and uncurling each finger. For once his hand is warm.
“You’re kind to them and they’re cruel to you. Don’t you realize that?”
He presses the pad of his thumb into your palm and looks at it with one eye closed. Then he smiles and knits his fingers over the back of your hand. You see the marks on his knuckles where the cat, seeking attention, bit him.
“Th-they’re just, well, they don’t mmmean to be.”
“I’m sure they do.”
He just hums and shakes his head.
“P-people get, they get c-confused. And then they, they g-get scared, and they sometimes, just s-sort of st-stop thinking.”
He holds your wrist in one hand and balls your fingers into a fist with the other.Your arm is limp, if he were to let go that fist would collide neatly with his nose and he’d have no one to blame but gravity and himself.“You’ve thought about this.”He hums happily and nods, feeling the lines between your curled fingers.
“Elaborate.”
His eyes leave your fist and lock with your eyebrows.
“Go on, I want to hear this.”
“People ah-aren’t as cruel as they, as they’d like to think they are. Deep ddown e-everyone is, can be very k-kind.”
You watch him as he runs a finger over your thumb, then squeezes your fist in both of his hands to make it tighter. Your knuckles show white through your skin.
“Not me.”
“Y-you’re n-not like other, other p-people,” he concedes. He starts to say something more, only to be interrupted by the cat’s yowling. It’s standing on his stomach, moving up to his chest. Inspector squeaks under its weight, but reaches out to the cat with both hands, running his palms over the sides of its face. He coos at the animal, stutterless and loving, and you’re not sure that he’s actually saying words, rather than making gentle noises. It purrs and meows in response, pawing at him and shoves its head and neck against his hands.
Your fist hangs motionless over him.
He sits up and leans in, letting it paw at his chin and nose, still noising at the creature. It purrs loudly, and finally he wraps his arms around it, one around its fat belly, the other supporting its back legs, and cuddles up to you.
He presses in, rubbing his face against your shoulder before pressing his brow into your neck. The cat squirms out of his hands and jumps down from the couch, landing with a meaty thud. It doesn’t like being near you. That’s just fine.
Inspector kisses your neck gently and repeatedly.
The first time he was this affectionate you thought you’d have to hurt him. Since then you’ve learned to deal with it. You’re an expert at avoiding emotionality, Inspector is not. When he feels something he has to express it.
He snuggles in closer, humming against your neck. Inspector wraps his arms around you and squeezes gently, the bridge of his nose against your neck. You see the mark on his neck where you, seeking attention, bit him.
“What was I saying?”
“You think people are kind.”
He takes your arm, the one he was playing with, and wraps it around himself.
“Th-they can be, I s-s-said they can be, n-not that they are. But it’s, it mmmakes them h-human.”He finds your hand again, the fist still intact. His fingers pull yours apart and runs his palm over yours, before knitting your fingers together.
“Y-you too. You’re h-human too.”
You watch his face as he looks at your hands, held together by his fingers, closed over your knuckles. He turns both your hands to the side, seeing how they look together in profile, then looks at the back of your hand, then the back of his.
Then he looks up at you.
You close your fingers over his knuckles.