True Detective

He was sitting in the middle of the floor. The room was dimly lit, and so was something he was smoking: from the smell of burning incense in the room. I figured it was a muggle, a marijuana cigarette. He was a little blond boy of about twenty in a vermilion sweater and corduroys; he didn't seem to notice me come in.

It was a big room, with a high ceiling and a skylight; but there wasn't much furniture in it- just a mattress covered by messed-up blankets, and a chest of drawers against one wall, looking lonely and out of place, like it had wandered in accidentally, off the street. The walls were hung with startling modernistic paintings: loud colors, distorted shapes, sound and fury signifying guess what. They hurt the eyes; they hurt mine, anyway.

'You paint this stuff,' I asked him.

'I painted them.'

'Does that one have a name?' I asked, pointing to a canvas where red, green, and blue weren't getting along.

'Certainly. That's Man's Inhumanity to Man.'

'How'd you arrive at that?'

He looked at me with a smirk and eyes the color of soot. 'The way I arrive at all my titles.'

'Which is?'

He shrugged. 'When I finish a work, I hold it one way, then another, and just keep tilting it till it suggests something. Then I title it.'

'Tilt and title, huh?'

'You could put it that way.'

'I just did. I take it you're Alonzo.'

He stood, smiling. 'You've heard of me?'

'Mary Ann mentioned you.'

'Oh,' he said, a little disappointed. 'I talked to you on the phone today, didn't I?'

'I believe so.'

He sucked on his muggle, held the smoke in; then he spoke, and it was like somebody speaking while taking a crap. 'I suppose I'm expected to get the hell out of here.'

'I wouldn't know why,' I said.

'I don't do menage,' he said, waving both hands, including the one with the muggle. which had served its purpose by now. He dropped it to the wooden floor and ground it out, walked to one corner of the room, where an old corduroy jacket was tossed, and put it on and left me alone with the paintings.

Pretty soon Mary Ann came in with two cups and saucers. She handed them both to me and went across the room and through a doorless doorway into darkness. I stood there like a cigar store Indian, balancing the two cups of tea, with no furniture to set them on, and finally walked over and used the top of the dresser for hers, and stood sipping mine.

She came out in a trailing black kimono with red and white flowers on it; it was belted at the waist with a black sash, and the white of her legs flashed as she walked toward me and then stood with hands on her hips.

'How'd you like Alonzo?' she asked, arching an eyebrow.

'About as much as his paintings.' I said.

She tried not to smile, then said. 'I think they're good.'

'Really?'

The smile won out. 'No. Not really. Come on.'

I followed her through the doorless doorway, which as she pulled an overhead string lit up and turned out to be a small connecting hall, with a bathroom to the right, and another room straight ahead, which she led me to.

It was a smaller room, but big enough for the four-poster bed within; the walls were draped with blue batiks and so was the ceiling. It reminded me of a booth on a midway. Against the dark blue-batiked walls were a couple of pieces of furniture, for a change, including a small dresser and a makeup table with round mirror; on the makeup table was a small cylindrical art-deco lamp that provided the only light in the room. The only window was painted out, black.

'You and Alonzo don't share…' I searched for a polite way to put it.

'A bedroom?' she smiled. 'No. Why should we?'

I shrugged. 'You live together.'

'We're roommates.' she nodded. 'But mat's the extent of it.'

I sat on the edge of the four-poster, then quickly got up; but she tugged my arm until I sat again and sat next to me. with a wry little smile.

'Poor baby.' she said. 'You're confused.'

'I just don't understand Tower Town. I guess.'

'Alonzo likes boys.'

'You mean he's a fairy?'

'That's it.'