Shock to the System by Richard Stevenson

Author:Richard Stevenson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery, detective, gay, movies
ISBN: 9781934531273
Publisher: MLR Press
Published: 2008-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

12

I saw no single men seated either at the bar or in the dining room of Would You Like to Take a Wok. But a male-female couple at a rear table seemed to be waiting for someone, and when they saw me peering quizzically, the man got up and came my way.

"Would you be looking for Gene Cebulka?"

"Yes, I'm Don Strachey."

"Glad to meet you. I brought my wife along. I hope that's okay."

"Sure, that's up to you."

He was a well-scrubbed, ruddy-faced man in his late twenties in crisply laundered khakis and a pale pink polo shirt that matched the restaurant linen. He had a broad grin and a country-boy lope, and he could have passed for a soda-fountain boy on a Saturday Evening Post cover from 1952 had it not been for his ravaged head. Cebulka's honey-colored hair was thick in spots but in others it was missing altogether. This was a result not of disease, it soon became apparent, but of Cebulka's habit of absently tugging at clumps of his hair as he spoke. This seemingly pleasant young man with a look and demeanor as wholesome as any I'd run into in recent decades was, clump by clump, pulling his hair out by the roots.

"And this is my wife, Tracy," Cebulka said, smiling, as he twisted and tugged at his head. "Tracy, this is Mr. Strachey."

"Don. Nice to meet you, Tracy."

She was freckled and pretty and slight under a mainsail of

permed hair broad enough to launch a brigantine. She looked scared to death of me, but squeaked out, "Hi."

"Tracy thought if I was going to meet a good-looking man in a restaurant, she better come along and keep an eye on me," Cebulka joked, but Tracy just looked embarrassed. I probably did too.

Then it was my turn to put my foot in it. "So, how long have you honeymooners been married? Six months? Six weeks?"

"Eleven years," Tracy said sadly.

"Oh. So—you were already married then, Gene, when you went into Vernon Crockwell's program. I'd have guessed you were younger."

"I'm twenty-eight," he said, "and Tracy's twenty-seven."

"Ah."

"I just figured," Cebulka said brightly, "that I better get my ducks in a row before Tracy and I started a family. If you catch my meaning." He winked.

I was about to come up blank but was saved by the waiter, who arrived with red-tassled menus the size of the gates to Nanking. The three of us set about studying these and after a time summoned the waiter and placed our order for an assortment of multicolored edibles in cornstarch. Tracy Cebulka glanced at me nervously, and Gene smiled and twisted his hair.

When the waiter was gone, I said, "Gene, I guess your experience with Vernon Crockwell's program was a happy one. And it achieved the outcome you desired."

"That's true," he said, his fingers busy above. "I used to be turned on by men, but that was strictly no-win. I had a chance to be straightened out, so to speak, and I availed myself of the opportunity.

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