The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook Read Free Book Online

it.
    â€œI was just doing my job,” I said. My wrist was sore now, but I wasn’t about to let him know he’d hurt me.
    â€œDoing your job!” Michi puffed furiously at his cigarette for a moment, not even smoking it, just burning it up as he stared holes into me. Finally, he took a long drag and stubbed the cigarette out in a crystal ashtray shaped like a skull face.
    â€œI’ll never forget the first time I saw you.” He laughed through the smoke issuing from his toothless mouth. “In that god-awful red Kmart suit with those broad shoulders. And that mullet! Whatever were you thinking? I mistook you for a bull dyke. You hurt me with those handcuffs, you bitch.”
    â€œYou deserved it,” I said.
    â€œThat’s right. I was going to make your career, wasn’t I?” He seemed determined to dredge this shit up.
    â€œYou bought a book of kiddie porn.”
    â€œPhotos of nude boys. Art . There is a difference, honey.”
    Cole had returned by then but he stopped just outside the door. I saw his martini hand go up as he took a drink. Michi shrugged. “In any case, the charges against me were dropped once my condition came out in the newspaper.”
    â€œCondition?” Adam asked.
    â€œMichi’s a eunuch.”
    â€œA what?” Adam’s head whipped around in surprise. Cole finally made his entrance. He leaned against the doorjamb and winked at me. Michi frowned at Adam.
    â€œI’m sorry. I had no idea,” Adam said.
    â€œOh good lord, and you call yourself a cop?” Michi flicked his ashes into the ash tray. “Honey, you need to get out more. It’s not like it’s a state secret.”
    â€œAsk anybody working in the Style section at the newspaper,” Cole added.
    Michi continued, “In 1968 I was skinny-dipping in Maui with a certain male friend who shall remain nameless , when I stepped on a stingray. You’re familiar with the species? That’s what killed that Australian boy that used to be on television all the time. The ray’s cruel barb unzipped my scrotum and spilled my gonads into the sea.”
    â€œLost forever!” Cole cried histrionically.
    â€œI never saw my wormy jewels again, alas. Food for fishes, I suppose.” Michi stood and spread his arms wide, the huge embroidered sleeves of his kimono nearly draping to the floor. “From the bloody foam I arose, a naked Japanese Aphrodite, flush with her first period.”
    â€œIs he serious?” Adam asked me.
    Michi returned to his seat and lit a new cigarette from the gold cigarette case. “Naturally at the time I didn’t feel gloriously reborn. Frankly, it hurt like Christ on the cross. But I survived. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Isn’t that what the man says?”
    Michi caught Adam staring at his crotch. “Would you like to see it?” he asked. He started to unwrap his kimono. Adam shook his head no. “Oh, come on. I’m not shy.”
    â€œI am,” Adam said.
    â€œSuit yourself. They didn’t want to see at the trial, either. Because of my disability, so to speak, I couldn’t possibly receive sexual gratification from looking at those pictures. When I threatened to drop my pants and show the court, the DA dropped the charges.”
    â€œI wrote that last line for him,” Cole noted.
    â€œYou got lucky,” I said. Michi wasn’t fooling anybody. Politics won that trial, not justice. “The law doesn’t care whether you’ve got testicles. You buy a book of kiddie porn, you go to jail. Unless you’re rich or famous.”
    Michi puffed his cigarette and squinted through the smoke at me. “Lucky for me I am both. As I recall, your old photography professor testified as to the book’s artistic merit. Not to mention the photographer’s international reputation. But then again, he was more than just your former professor, wasn’t he?