Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [51]
TV movies had taught him that there would be certain pivotal moments in his life, so like a good little actor, he had rehearsed for them. The emotional press conference he would have to give after his adopted daughter was abducted off their front lawn. The moment when Ron finally sank down on one knee and officially proposed. And, of course, the black day when he would walk in on Ron in bed with someone else.
Where was the tearful rage he had practiced? What had become of the venomous one-liners he had meant to hurl at the offending home-wrecker as he made a mad dash from the bedroom? Indeed, it was Ben who had headed straight for the back door, not the tall baseball cap—wearing stranger. Now, down on his knees in a dark corner of his own backyard, he tried to read some meaning into his own strange instincts.
Why had he run? Why was he still hiding? Because it wasn’t a confrontation he wanted. He had to get a good look at the man who had led Ron to stray. He had to observe him. Pinpoint just what qualities the man had that Ben had squandered. Maybe Ben could get some of those things back, even if he had already lost Ron.
He drew his knees to his chest and wedged himself between the back fence and the box hedge, readjusting until he was in a position that allowed him to see the back door. After only a few minutes of this, his back started to tense up, and his stomach clenched at the thought that Ron might ask this stranger to spend the night with him in their bed. Their friends Phil and Tom had been in an open relationship together for years, but both of them were always eager to recite their number one ground rule: Never in our bed. If the wait became unbearable, Ben would use his cell phone to call the house, claim that he and his agent had had it out and he had pulled over to collect himself on the drive home. Would be there within minutes. Surely that would send the tall dark stranger racing out the back door.
The stranger had been too tall to be Mike Ellis, prince of the sweaty jock strap. That left the blond Yale Law graduate he and Ron had met at a fundraiser cocktail party for the Equal Liberties Defense Fund two weeks earlier. Yalie had made a beeline for Ron after spotting him across the buffet table. The arrogant little prick didn’t even bother to extend his hand to Ben when Ron finally introduced them after several agonizing minutes of small talk. Like every other twentysomething queen fresh off an American Airlines flight from JFK, Yalie heaped generous amounts of disdain on a city that had already granted him a flawless tan and the most spacious apartment he had ever lived in, all while undressing Ron with sparkling chestnut eyes.
Overboard. That was the expression Ron had used when Ben had vented his annoyance about the little son of a bitch on the ride home. When he saw the look on Ben’s face, Ron had tried a sheepish grin and said, “Relax. I said overboard. Not over thirty.”
The touch of cold steel brought Ben back into his body, and he realized he was standing in front of the garden shed, fingering the padlock on its doors. The lock had been left open and the gas-powered leaf blower abandoned on the dirt floor inside. Another image struck him. Ron hearing the phone ring over the leaf blower’s dull roar, tossing it inside the shed before he ran back inside the house, steps quickened by arousal and anticipation. A set of manual hedge clippers hung from a nail inside the shed. Ben could just make out their silhouette, knew that if he opened the doors a few more inches the security light over the back gate would throw them into sharp relief, transform them into an invitation he might not be able to turn down. When Lorena Bobbit cut off her husband’s dick, it didn’t actually kill him, Ben thought. Ergo, while cutting a man’s dick