“No, dear, I’ll be getting plenty of rest when it’s my time for the – ” she glanced at her friends and then back at me ” – for the big you-know-what.”

Then she wobbled away, trailing ash and fumes.

The first thing Jerry Treece said was, “Steven is calling in the loans.”

“Can he do that? I thought Sturdivant was the lender.”

“It’s in the contract I signed. If Sturdivant were to die, Gaudios would automatically take over as the lender. And the deal was, the loan could be called in on a week’s notice.”

“That last part sounds kind of mob-like.”

“It seemed like a bargain at the time,” Treece said resignedly and sipped from his own Sam Adams as I contemplated mine.

We were in a place called The Brewery just north of town, where the potato skins were as rustic as the decor. Treece was a light-skinned black man in his thirties with a high forehead, a shiny beard and a sedate manner. He worked for a photography restoration company in nearby Housatonic and lived there with his partner, Greg.

Treece said he’d met Sturdivant at the Supper Club and had heard from others that Sturdivant lent money at a below-market rate. Treece had heard rumors of the unwritten conditions of Sturdivant’s loans, but he said that that would not have been a problem unless it involved unsafe sex. And when the time came for Treece to collect the car loan he requested, the requirements were minimal and unobjectionable. His biggest problem, he said, was keeping from laughing when the dog had his martini.

I asked, “How much did you borrow?”

“Twelve thousand. But I’ve been paying it off in big chunks whenever I could, and I’m down to eighteen hundred. So Greg and I can get it together by next week without borrowing somewhere else. It was just kind of a shock, especially after what happened to Jim.”

“And Gaudios just phoned you this morning and told you to pay up?”

“He said a registered letter was in the mail, but he was just giving me a heads-up on what to expect.”

“For some of the other borrowers, this is probably going to be a real problem,” I said. “Did Gaudios say what would happen if you didn’t pay the loan off within a week?”

“He used the words ‘legal action.’ I told him to be cool, that I got the picture and I’d pay up. I told him I was very sorry to hear about Jim’s passing, and then Steven got weepy and said he and Jim had been together for forty-six years, and how was he going to live without him? He cried on the phone and said he didn’t think he could bear it. Both those guys were a couple of scuzzy characters in a lot of ways, but I do feel sorry for Steven. He’s totally devastated. Even people who are not very nice are capable of love, and in their weird way these guys had one of the solidest marriages around.”

“I don’t think they were married,” I said. “In fact, Jim told me they were not – for family reasons, he said.”

“They wore matching silver wedding bands,” Treece said. “I saw them.” He laughed and added, “They were the same design as their cock rings.”

“Oh, goodness.”

“Maybe they had a non-legal union ceremony and exchanged rings at that time.”

“Could be,” I said. “Though I think not at Mount Carmel Church in Pittsfield, where Sturdivant’s mother is a parishioner. Maybe at their house.”

Treece laughed at the idea of a gay union ceremony at Mount Carmel. “I don’t think Jim was even out with his family. Steven either. Everybody who was gay knew they were a couple, and so did a lot of other people down here in South County. But Pittsfield is another world. It’s a kind of gay pit of shame, where only the bravest of the brave come out. For instance, Jim and Steven gave a lot of money to arts organizations and charities, but they were never listed as joint donors. You’d see their names in theater programs as patrons, but unlike most gay couples these days they were always listed separately. It’s a schizoid kind of existence, and it has to take a toll on a person.”

I said, “Are you from the Berkshires, Jerry?”

He smiled. “Nope. I grew up in Batavia, New York. Would I have come out there? Noooo way. I was too much of a coward. People who come out in their hometowns are the bravest people in the world. But I’m not one of them. Were you, Donald?”

“Nah.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’m from New Jersey, where the ex-governor recently did all the coming out the state will be needing for the next several decades.”

“Yeah, I read about that.”

“How could you not have?”

Treece asked, “When did you come out, Donald?”

“At Rutgers. It was more of a semi-coming-out. Then I found myself in an official capacity in Saigon – that’s a large city in Southeast Asia that’s since been re-named.”

“Yeah, I’ve read about that, too,” Treece said.

“And I went pretty far back into the closet again. Army Intelligence is not the best place to raise the rainbow banner. I sneaked around a little, formed no real attachments, survived the war, got out of the Army, soon fell in love with a fine woman in the anti-war movement, was married for a while, then figured out who I really was, and started getting it right fast.”

“And became a grown-up.”

“Often a bumbling one, but a grown-up.”

“Have you got a honey?” Treece asked.

“You bet. Timothy Callahan and I have been together for a thousand years, though it doesn’t feel like more than a hundred and fifty. We’re as comfy and nuts about each other as Al and Tipper Gore. Of course, we have had our Bill and Hillary moments. I will say, he never hit me over the head with a lamp, even when I had it coming. Those early conflicts were over differing sexual mores, as is often the case with both homosexuals and heterosexuals, pertaining mainly to monogamy versus a little variety. Over the years we’ve hit a happy medium in that department. Now we both go to Paris twice a year and join the over-forty grope at the Odessa Baths, and that pretty much takes care of that biological imperative. There are annoyances and roll-your-eyes or even clutch-your-head differences, of course, but all within the normal range. We’re a really interesting many-celled organism, the two of us. And terribly lucky to have found each other. We’ve got exactly the kind of marriage the anti-gay religious right says is needed for social stability, proving that they are full of slit. We’re both proud of that.”

Treece said, “Jeez, it sounds just like Greg and me. Except we haven’t been together for a thousand years. Just five.”

“Mazel tov. Together may you live to be a hundred.”

“Are you Jewish?” Treece said.

“No, I was raised Presbyterian. So maybe I should just say, ‘Oh, go ahead and have a second lump of sugar with your Earl Grey tea, boys.’”

“Yeah, well, I was raised Baptist,” Treece said, “and what the Baptists have in mind for me is a big lump of hellfire. Greg and I attend the Church of Christ in Lenox, which is open and affirming. That’s where we had our union. You know, I saw in the Eagle that Jim’s funeral will be in a Catholic church in Pittsfield. But Steven wasn’t mentioned at all. It looks like Jim’s family snatched him back from his world of sin and corruption. That must be terrible for Steven. Do you think that’s why he’s calling in the loans? Maybe being around Berkshire County is now so painful for Steven that he’s cutting his ties and just running away.”

I said, “Possibly. If so, I should ask him what his plans are.”

“So, you don’t think Barry Fields shot Jim?”

“No, I doubt it.”

“I’m glad to hear that. He’s tense, but a good guy, I’ve always thought. So, who the hell would want to shoot Jim? He was obnoxious but basically harmless. Steven’s saying it was Barry. But if it wasn’t, I wonder if Steven knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”