December 21st- Swing Shift Part 3 by Spencer

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It’s just another concert hall, Starsky repeated to himself as he stood in the wings. But the stage was larger than the previous others, the ceiling soared a little higher, and the audience — their biggest one yet — was dressed in Italian suits and designer gowns straight out of the pages of fashion magazines. What else did he expect? It was the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center, for crying out loud, and even David Starsky had heard of that.

There were only a few performances left in their schedule. Just a few more mindless days on the road, restless nights in hotels, and hours of standing while pulling at stiff, white collars. The holidays were approaching and holiday lights and decorations had begun to appear in store windows and hotel lobbies. And although Starsky should have been looking forward to the grueling trip coming to an end — and having his bank account replenished — he wasn’t. Other than his sweet but heedless mother and loose cannon of a younger brother, he had nothing to go back to. Besides, Starsky thought with a flutter in his belly, everything that drew him was up on that stage.

The trip had changed Starsky in more ways than he could have imagined. He’d learned more than he ever thought he would about the world of classical music. He still felt like a fish out of water but at least he was a fish who could bob with the current. As long as he wore a clean shirt, didn’t botch any of the pronunciations of the composers’ names that Hutch carefully drilled into him, and nodded at the appropriate times, he could pass as something more than a bouncer from Brooklyn. And he didn’t need anyone to tell him that Hutch kicked some serious classical ass.

If only someone could explain to him how someone as special as Hutch was so lonely. Even if he was gay. His sexuality was only one part of him. He was also caring and talented and smart and funny and — Starsky squeezed his eyes against the image that jumped out front and center whenever he thought about Hutch — the man was definitely hot. Whether in a loose robe or formal black tux, it was easy to be taken in by Ken Hutchinson.

Starsky looked out over the audience once again and felt the need to straighten his collar for the fourth time. It’s a good thing no one could read his mind, he thought. Waves of unease pulled at him, dragging him down. Who was he kidding? He didn’t belong here. And he vowed to stay far away from Hutch after this was all over. Starsky belonged at a place like Swing Shift, watching out for the boozers, breaking up fights with his glib tongue or fists, whichever worked best. And dealing with his messed-up sex drive. Guys like him were a dime a dozen, according to Joe Durniak.

Hutch walked out on stage and took his seat at the piano. The audience quieted, waiting for his first note to be played. But his fingers paused over the keys. He turned to look over his shoulder at Starsky and gave him a small smile. Damn if it wasn’t a message of encouragement. It should have been Hutch’s confidence that needed bolstering, as he was about to perform before his biggest, most sophisticated crowd yet. Starsky was just a shadow in the dark. But Hutch seemed to have known the unease Starsky was feeling. And he’d broken his concentration to focus on his scruffy driver, of all people.

Starsky was flooded with a warmth that hadn’t come from the stage lights. He felt connected to another person in a way he’d never had before. Someone who seemed to see past the bullshit and bravado and accept him anyway. Up until that moment, Starsky had Hutch’s back because he’d was paid to. Now the money didn’t matter so much anymore. He’d stick with Hutch for free.

After the concert followed by the obligatory, stuffy reception at which Hutch seemed to be treated more like a trained poodle than a human being, Starsky lay in his bed and listened to Hutch play his guitar through the thin hotel wall. He smiled to hear Hutch play Here Comes the Sun in between the melancholier pieces.

He imagined that Hutch played the private recital specifically for him and it lulled him into a more peaceful sleep than he’d had in a long time.

Lush Richmond, Virginia, seemed a world away from the concrete and steel of Brooklyn, but there, stepping into the lobby of the storied Jefferson Hotel, were two familiar faces — Chet and Rocky. They were two of Durniak’s men, although Starsky had never known exactly what they did. He hadn’t wanted to know. In any case, Starsky figured the two thick-necked goons with even thicker heads had been sent south to work some dirty deal for Joe. He’d forgotten how high Joe Durniak aspired. It wouldn’t have been beyond Joe to want to squeeze himself into the genteel world of the South, where breeding mattered as much as chutzpah.

Just like Starsky, Chet and Rocky were wearing silk ties and their shoes were freshly polished. Even so, they looked like rust on a new Cadillac. You can take the hood off the street but you can’t take the street out of the hood, Starsky mused, but then felt a pang as he wondered if that was the way Hutch saw him, too. He was as different from Hutch as a lump of coal was from a diamond. He probably looked as pathetic to Hutch as Chet and Rocky now looked to him, he thought moodily.

Starsky tried to ignore the two men as they passed, Starsky on his way toward the elevators, Hutch’s bags in hand, while Chet and Rocky headed toward the main doors. But at the last moment, Chet side-stepped to jostle him, a mockingly accidental move.

“What’d you know, Starsky. You’re a long way from home aren’t you?” Chet stopped and looked him over like a disappointing cut of meat about to be returned to the chef.

“Same to you, Chet,” Starsky remarked coolly, his hands curling into fists on the handles of the bags. He was keenly aware that Hutch was just a few feet behind and dreaded a public scene. He considered how such a display might look to the hotel’s well-heeled guests and more importantly, how it would reflect on Hutch.

“Everyone in the neighborhood’s been wonderin’ where you scurried off to,” Rocky sneered.

It wasn’t as if Starsky had the kind of friends who would miss him if he disappeared for a few weeks. He figured it was more likely that Joe had groused loudly about losing his prize lackey. Perhaps he’d even taken his displeasure out on the two men who stood before him.

“I don’t see where that’s anyone’s business,” Starsky retorted.

“You don’t need to get defensive, Starsky. It’s just that with how things ended between you and Joe Durniak, we were all wondering how you were gettin’ by. Call it neighborly concern.”

Concern, my ass, thought Starsky. More likely Joe was itching to drag Starsky back by his ears, if only to remind him how the big man had pulled the wild kid off the street and how much Starsky owed him. Joe Durniak thought he owned Starsky the same way he did the liquor stores or the delivery trucks. But Joe was wrong — nobody owned Dave Starsky, he told himself. Starsky may not be much, but he was his own man.

Starsky took a few slow, deep breaths to calm his tingling nerves. “You tell Joe Durniak I’m doing just fine,” Starsky stated with a firmness he didn’t really feel. What he felt was a bitter concoction of anger, disgust, and…shame.

Suddenly, Hutch appeared at his elbow. “Is there a problem here?”

Starsky’s heart sank. He saw Chet and Rocky’s attention swing automatically to Hutch and knew they’d miss nothing — not the well-modulated tone of Hutch’s voice, the expensive cashmere of his sweater, or his fine-boned hands. He could practically see white pockets of drool form at the corners of their mouths, like hungry wolves at the appearance of an unsuspecting, harmless sheep.

“Is this who you’ve been occupying yourself with? Some fancy pretty boy?” Chet guffawed. “Why, Starsky, I’m surprised at you. I didn’t know you swung that way. Although I have heard rumors…”

Starsky knew the taunt was made to spark his ire, nothing more, but it worked surprisingly well. Starsky might have erupted like Mount Vesuvius if Hutch hadn’t spoken up quickly.

“Mr. Starsky happens to work for me now, not this Joseph Durniak person. And I don’t appreciate you casting aspersions at my employee.” Hutch’s eyes took on an intense luminescence. He lifted a long finger and pointed it straight at the two other men. “So go crawl back into whatever gutter you came out of. We’re late for our dinner with the mayor.”

It was clearly not the reaction they’d expected. Chet and Rocky stared back at Hutch speechless, their tough guy act dissolved. They looked more like two misbehaving schoolboys who’d just been reprimanded by the principal, grinning thick-lipped and foolishly.

“To each his own, Starsky,” Chet said, and shrugged when he found his voice. “Joe’s never gonna believe this,” he said to no one in particular, then added a disingenuous “Happy holidays,” as he straightened his off-the-rack jacket. Then both men continued on their way out.

Starsky felt as though he could be knocked over with a feather. No one had ever spoken up for him like that. Although Starsky was sure he could have bested both Chet and Rocky with one hand tied behind his back, an unfamiliar sensation bloomed in his core. He started to say something he might eventually regret, but at the last minute changed his mind when something else occurred to him. Just like in the roadside restaurant, Hutch’s words had been distinct and unfaltering. Unable to be ignored. It was as if Hutch had just needed to speak up for someone other than himself to make himself understood.

“Hey, Hutch, what happened to your stutter?” asked Starsky bluntly.

Hutch turned back to Starsky from watching Rocky and Chet saunter out toward the street. “What?” he asked.

“Your stutter. You didn’t stutter when you were givin’ those two what for. Which you did very well, I must say,” Starsky added with a grin. “Not my style, but effective.”

“What f-for?” Hutch asked in bewilderment. He looked like someone who’d been cavorting in the waves suddenly being reminded that he didn’t swim.

“You know. The old heave ho. Amscray. You put the fear of god into those two bozos.” Starsky laughed and let go of the bags. “It was like they’d never heard proper English before.”

Hutch reddened. “I hope I didn’t over s-s-step myself. I know you had the s-s-situation under control b-b-but–” The stutter was back in spades. He trailed off, his eyes darting around as if searching for an escape route.

“But nothin’. I didn’t know ya had it in you. You’re always surprisin’ me, ya know that, Hutch?” He reached out and patted his shoulder, wanting to reassure him that he’d done just the right thing and that Starsky appreciated it. But Hutch flinched at his touch as if he’d been struck, and Starsky quickly pulled back. His stomach felt like an elevator had just dropped him ten floors. He thought he’d schooled himself to be immune from put-downs, but apparently he just been given another lesson.

How had he gotten his signals crossed? Usually, reading people came easily to him. But Hutch constantly kept him guessing about where they stood. Boss, employee, business partner, friend, or something altogether different? While sometimes it felt as though he’d known Hutch for a million years, other times they might just as well be aliens from different galaxies.

“Is that wrong in your world? An employee as you say I am,” Starsky spat out, “to touch the guy who signs his paychecks?”

“I’m…sorry. Don’t m-misunderstand.”

Suddenly, it was Starsky’s turn to need an escape route. He pressed the button to call the elevator, then picked up the bags, shoulders back as he waited. “I ain’t misunderstanding anything.”

When the elevator arrived and they both stepped inside, Starsky felt they were impossibly close. He could smell Hutch’s aftershave and inspect the fineness of his hair. He swore he could even hear Hutch’s heartbeat reverberating against the steel walls. Or was that his own?

“You’re n-n-not just an employee, Starsky,” he heard Hutch say softly, his head down. “I c-c-consider you a friend. I d-d-don’t want anything to ruin that.”

They were friends? Ya could have fooled me, thought Starsky. “What could ruin our friendship?” Starsky replied, confused, but before Hutch could answer, the elevator stopped to let in an older couple. The moment was broken. Starsky didn’t know if he felt relieved or disappointed.

Chapter Seven

The phone on the small bedside jangled shrilly, jolting Starsky awake. He blinked open his eyes, disoriented and unsure of where he was. There’d been so many hotels, so many low rent apartments, so many strange beds. So many restless nights and bad dreams. But the dream that Starsky had just been torn from had reached a pleasant conclusion. Or had it only been beginning? He’d been dreaming that he’d found his way home after being lost in a maze of concrete, every turn of a corner more pointless than the last, until he’d stumbled on an unexpected path. In his shadowed dreamworld, however, home had seemed less of a place and more of a person. Someone smart and brave and loyal, with fine blond hair and piercing blue eyes….

The phone continued to ring as Starsky fumbled for the watch he’d set beside it. The cheap, illuminated dial showed ten minutes after two a.m. He picked up the handset and cleared his throat. “Hello?”

“Is this David Starsky?” The man’s voice on the other end of the line demanded unapologetically even though he must have realized how he’d interrupted Starsky’s sleep.

“Yeah,” Starsky replied, pushing aside the dreamy images.

“I’m calling from the Dial Tone bar on West Cary Street,” the caller continued brusquely. “A friend of yours is here and he’s pretty drunk. You better come pick him up. We don’t like to call the police about these matters, but we will if you don’t get here soon and get him out of here before there’s any more trouble.”

Hutch. Starsky’s stomach clenched. Any more trouble? “What happened?” Starsky asked even as he grabbed at yesterday’s jeans that he’d tossed on a nearby chair.

“He was hitting it off with one of our regulars then decided to play hard to get. Chicky wasn’t too happy about that. They started scuffling and your buddy may have gotten the worst of it. We sent Chicky home but your buddy here is in no condition for a cab. You better come get him right away.” Surprisingly, the caller’s last words indicated that he wasn’t completely unsympathetic.

Without wanting further explanation, Starsky followed the caller’s directions to the section of Richmond known as the Block, the apparent hub of the city’s gay community. Although most of the establishments of the Block had closed for the night, a few young men still milled about, perhaps looking for a last-minute hook up, perhaps loath to go home alone. They gave the place an aura of loneliness and desperation that Starsky well understood.

When Starsky located the Dial Tone after circling the neighborhood several times, he found Hutch slumped at a table just inside the door. Hutch lifted his head at Starsky’s arrival and Starsky’s stomach rolled at the sight of his fattened lip, dried blood and ugly bruise that discolored his slit of an eye.

“What the hell, Hutch?” Starsky barked louder than he intended, and Hutch winced. Starsky could imagine what he was feeling — physical pain, drunken disorientation and, above all, humiliation. Not only had he’d been bested in a fight, but his employee had come to see it. But it wasn’t the time or place for Starsky to explain that his anger wasn’t from having to retrieve him at such a time and place, but at the person who had purpled Hutch’s eye and wounded his pride.

A thin man with shoulder-length hair who’d been stacking glasses behind the bar looked up at Starsky. “Tell your buddy that this isn’t the place to lead someone on if he’s not willing to put out,” he explained matter-of-factly.

“I d-didn’t… I wasn’t…” Hutch mumbled thickly. “You…you don’t understand.”

“It ain’t none‘a my business,” Starsky said, attempting to dial back his temper. As if he was acting purely out of an obligation to the man who signed his paycheck rather than out of concern. Another look at Hutch’s disheveled appearance caused him to slip. “But tell Chicky if he ever comes around Hutch again, I just might kill him,” he stated icily as he hefted Hutch up and put an arm securely around his waist.

Starsky felt Hutch’s attempt to hold himself stiffly away but Hutch fell heavily against him after a few staggering steps. “N-no, Starsk. M-m-my fault.”

“We don’t like trouble around here,” the skinny bartender repeated. He turned back to the task of closing up for the night, obviously not interested in engaging Starsky further. Starsky understood his position. Like with Swing Shift, keeping Dial Tone under the radar of the local authorities and the media was of prime importance — but for different reasons.

Starsky settled Hutch in the back of the Galaxie and tried to assess the damage to his face in the dim interior lights. The smell of whisky clung to him heavily. Starsky touched Hutch’s jaw to determine if it was broken. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Starsky said. “Find a way to cover up this mess you call a face and figure how to explain your bruises to your audience tomorrow night. They’ll be expecting a fine-looking gentleman in a tux, not a bar brawler.”

Hutch wince again, and not just from Starsky’s ministrations.

What a dumb thing to say. The last thing he needs is somebody else coming down on him, Starsky chastised himself.

“This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Stanley,” Starsky quoted, then congratulated himself when he thought he saw Hutch smile.

At the hotel, Starsky wrapped a chunk of ice in a hand towel and held it to Hutch’s mouth but Hutch pushed it away. “I’m s-sorry…” he said. “L-let me ex-ex-plain,” but Starsky pressed the cloth insistently against his lips, effectively silencing him when he would have said more.

“Look, Hutch. What you were doing at a place like the Dial Tone is none of my business. I don’t care if you were trying to pick up this Chicky character or not. Your love life ain’t none‘a my business.” But even as he said it, Starsky wondered which of them he needed to convince more. “The only thing I care about is getting you to your show and getting my paycheck. I’ve been around and I’m no angel myself. So next time you decide to go out prowlin’, maybe you could give me a heads up. That way I can keep an eye out for you.”

Hutch shook his head. He put his hand over Starsky’s fingers that held the chilled cloth. “I wasn’t on the p-prowl. I m-may do a lot of things b-but not that. I wasn’t l-l-looking for a p-p- pick up. I just… needed to get away. Some p-place I could be m-m-myself.”

“So you picked a seedy gay bar?” Starsky sighed and settled on the bed next to him. “And I thought I was the only one with a self-destructive streak.”

Hutch gave him a small smile. His eyes were liquid. He lifted the cloth from Starsky’s fingers and put it back on the corner of his mouth. “Maybe we’re m-more alike than we at f-first thought.”

Something twisted in Starsky’s chest. “A street punk like me and someone as talented as you?”

He didn’t want to feel any more for this man than he already did. In another week or two they’d never see each other again.

“We’re both lonely, m-misunderstood, far from home. Besides, there are all… kinds of talents. You have g-gifts I can only dream of.”

“Like what?” Just stop — would ya? Just stop before I… The conversation seemed surreal, more personal than any Starsky had ever had before. The hotel room surroundings seemed to recede into the background until he forgot where he was. But even half swollen shut, the warmth in Hutch’s eyes drew him. He couldn’t help himself. He leaned in closer, as if he and Hutch were attached by a silver cord.

“I d-d-dream of the way you see through p-people,” Hutch was saying, the stutter mingled with a slight slur, reminding Starsky that he was far from sober. “Your acceptance of yourself, the w-way you s-stand up for people no m-matter who they are. I d-dream of your smile, your laugh, I d-dream of –” Hutch’s proximity was hypnotic. Even the faint scent of whisky on his breath was as intoxicating to Starsky as if he’d drunk it himself.

They’d moved so closely together that their lips were nearly touching, and then for the briefest second they were.

In the recesses of Starsky’s mind he considered that what he was doing was wrong — against nature even — but at the moment it felt incredibly right. And extremely natural. It was as if every twist and turn his life had taken thus far had led him to this moment. To be in this place with this man. As if they were twin souls separated at birth that the universe took pity on to reunite.

Then Starsky felt Hutch flinch and Starsky jerked away. He wanted to believe the reaction was from pressure on his abused mouth rather than distaste, but he didn’t dare ask. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Starsky quickly interjected. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, it’s my f-fault. I’ve had… too m-much to d-drink.” Hutch took back the hand towel, stood and walked over to the small sink that was positioned outside the hotel room’s bathroom. He turned on the spigot and twisted the cloth with a vengeance under the stream of water.

Starsky came over to join him at the sink. “It’s not your enemy, you know,” he said, taking the towel from Hutch. He wrapped it around a few more of the cubes of ice he’d collected in the bucket supplied by the hotel. Lifting it to Hutch’s purpled eye, he pressed firmly yet gently. “And neither am I.”

Hutch lifted his gaze to meet Starsky’s in the mirror above the sink. “C-can you continue to work f-f… with me knowing what you do?” Hutch asked.

Funny, Starsky thought he might just was well ask Hutch the same thing. Would Hutch still want him around if he knew his tough, street-wise driver was incredibly turned on by him? That his employee had fantasies about touching him and being touched by him in return. That when Starsky went to bed that night he’d be thinking about Hutch as he came. And it had nothing to do with a troubled childhood.

Starsky held Hutch’s look as he pressed the compress to his eye. “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he said. For the first time in his life he wished it were true.

To be continued…

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