I’ve heard it all before. Yet, you seemed so perfect. Curse my wretched luck. Here we go again.
I sometimes wondered if I’d ever find love. All these tens of thousands of gay men in Chicago, yet I seemed cursed with always picking the wrong one.
It was the kind of July day we Chicagoans live for—low humidity, brilliant sunshine, and nary a cloud in the sky. There was a slight breeze, warm. We’d headed over to Kathy Osterman Beach, better known as ‘the gay beach,’ and I’d been grateful we’d both decided to play hooky from our jobs that weekday.
At least Iwasthankful until the next words came haltingly out of his mouth, “They say I murdered my first lover.”
At first, I laughed. I mean, I roared. He might as well have said he used to be a woman. Or a Republican, which would have been worse than anything, and grounds for kicking him to the curb.
This is a joke, right?
I’d known Joshua Kade for only a short time, at least in the grand scheme of things, but his being capable of murder was something that was so far-fetched that, well, it sounded insane, beyond implausible. This was a guy who caught spiders in overturned juice glasses and took them outside, a man who would swerve to the side of the road if he spotted a stray dog, someone who would rather serve the homeless at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving or Christmas, rather than celebrate the holiday with friends and family.
His kindness was one of the reasons I was rapidly falling in love with him.
Oh, who am I kidding? I was already in love.
But was I in love with a murderer?
I laughed again and the movie titleI Married an Axe Murdererpopped into my head, which made me even more giddy. “C’mon, Josh. What next? You had something to do with Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance?”
Josh took my hand. “Ted, Ted, listen, I’m serious.” He set down the bag of barbeque chips we were sharing in an impromptu junk-food picnic on the grass bordering the beach.
I slapped at an ant crawling up my leg.
“That’s just not possible.” In spite of him claiming to be serious, I pushed this shocking admission away, like some dead and rotting thing. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to hear any more. But who would joke about such a thing?
I stared out at the beach, populated mainly by gay men in speedos and board shorts on bright-colored towels. There was the fishy tang on Lake Michigan and weed smoke in the air. My gaze moved farther out to the aquamarine, almost tropical, waters of the lake. The waves splashed against the beach, gathering power farther out, their white tips a sharp counterpoint to the blue. I examined the breakwater, with its fishermen and rainbow-colored paint job. We’d walked along the breakwater when we’d first arrived, daring each other to jump off the end of it. Although the water looked inviting, we knew its temperature hovered around a gonad-shrinking sixty or so degrees.
These simple things took on an aspect of the surreal in light of my new boyfriend’s admission.Can we just start over? Pretend you never made your little confession, or whatever you want to call it? Can we make plans for the weekend? There’s that new Japanese place in Evanston I’ve been dying to try.
“Ted, listen. Itispossible, because it happened.” Josh wasn’t looking at me. He too stared out at the water and the beach, but somehow I doubted he saw the same things as I did. His features were contorted, troubled, as though a cloud had offered its shade to only him. He sighed. “It was a decade ago and, honestly, I thought I’d never hear another thing about it, but there’s this podcast, some cold-case crime thing, that’s bringing it all back up.” He shrugged. “The podcast is national, on all the usual streaming apps—Apple, Spotify, and so on. I wanted you to hear about it from me before anyone else.”
“This is for real? Really? Really?” A rising sense of panic grew within me. Sure, I didn’t believe for a minute Josh was capable of murder, but here was this shocking admission.What do I do with it?Obviously, he’d been cleared all those years ago—or else we wouldn’t be sitting here together. But I was having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the notion that anyone hadeven thought to accuse this sweet, gentle man of something as wicked as murder. “Tell me.”
“Can we go back to my place?” Josh took another look at the water, the beach, the perfect day. “It’s quieter.”
I also took another look at the idyllic scene before us. I tore my gaze away, despite my longing to enjoy it without the burden of what my new boyfriend has just revealed.
I thought of asking, “Why? So you can murdermein private?” But the joke fell dead before it reached my lips. The bark of laughter that slipped out was not from mirth, but from near hysteria.
In agreement, I rose. Although the sun still shone and the breeze was a caress, the day had shifted, almost as if a bank of dark clouds have moved in to block out the sun and to turn Lake Michigan’s water to gray. My chill, though, came from inside.
Josh lived just a few blocks from the beach on Kenmore Avenue, just south of the main campus of Loyola University. We walked in silence for several blocks and when we came to his building, an older red brick high rise, he turned to me and gave me a sad smile. “I’m sorry to bring you down on this great day. But really, you need to know and the story should come from me.”
I gulped, my mouth suddenly dry. I followed him inside and we stayed mute as we traversed the lobby and headed up to the fourteenth floor in the rattling elevator.
Inside, Josh’s place seemed normal. Normal for him meant messy, but clean. Cluttered but dust- and grime-free. Scattered across the coffee table were several suspense novels, his iPad, and a couple issues of theNew Yorker. There was a hoodie and baseball cap on the recliner next to the couch. The three big windows in the living room looked out on blue skies and, if I moved close, Lake Michigan a couple blocks to the east.
It all seemed run-of-the-mill, boring even. There wasn’t much personality. Anyone could have lived there. No family or friend pictures anywhere. The kind of furniture people bought in suites that maybe included table lamps and an oil painting of a landscape for above the couch. And yet my nerves buzzed as though there were hot needles embedded beneath my skin.
Josh had gone into the bathroom and, when he came back out, I imagined he’d be brandishing a butcher knife a la Norman Bates inPsycho. There’d be shrieking violins and I wouldn’t have time to scream. “I have to stop this,” I said when I saw all he had in his hands was a towel to dry them.
“Stop what?”
“Imagining you as a murderer.” I smiled to reassure him. I told him about thePsychocomparison.
He didn’t laugh.
