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Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 11

The Story Behind The Story

Rick Chris, the author, (as opposed to the artist type guy) reveals how he came up with the plot for the story, his motivation behind publishing the story as well as other insights into the story and the original ending (much different than the ending the story has now). Click on the gray box to go to the page.

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© 2005 - 2006 Rick Chris
Illustrations and photos ©2005 - 2006 Rick Chris

Chapter 12: Have Yourself A Weird Little Christmas
(The final chapter in the serial.)

"Never underestimate the power of one little prayer."

"The gift will be self explanatory," assured the man, "Very good to meet you, man. Got to head off into the wild blue yonder." The man began to walk down the hallway towards the stairs. He snapped his fingers and pointed a finger at Matson, saying, "Turn out the lights and call the law."
Matson looked down at the flat little package in his hands. "Your boss, is he a former client…?" As Matson looked up, there was no one in the hallway. "Good everlovin' grief," muttered Beef, "I've got to get Minerva up here and do a reading of this hallway."

Entering his office, Matson did not take off his coat and instead went directly into his personal office. He quickly opened up the package and found it was a compact disc. He then started up his computer and while the machine booted up, he went to the coffee maker to make the early morning brew. Returning to his desk, he found the computer was ready and placed the disc into the drive. An icon appeared on the screen and Matson opened that. The CD contained some word processing files.

The detective banged his fist on his desk, shook his head and leaned back in his chair in thought. He decided to not look any more at the contents of the disk; he needed to finish the work on his assistant's case first. He would save this odd gift for another day, and investigate its authenticity, origin and what the information on the disc was being used for, after he was assured that Randy's situation was stabilized. Ejecting the disc from his computer, Matson placed the CD back in its jewel box and went to the storage closet in his office. He first slid open the sliding wood door, then stooping down to a cabinet, he grabbed the cabinet and slid it aside. He then slid a panel in the wall behind the cabinet. Behind the panel was a small safe set inside the wall. The safe was opened, the CD jewel case and the wrapping paper it came in placed inside and closing the safe again, Matson slid back the panel and the cabinet. Matson looked back at the closet. The coming year might indeed be a busy year for him.

A cut-away and bird's eye view of Beef Matson's office suite with Randy's office at right and Beef's at left. (click for a larger view.)

********
"Permission to bury my face in your chest, sir."

Matson had put in a very productive hour and a half of work when he heard the front office door open. The door to his office opened and a very chipper looking Randy popped his head in.
"Mornin' boss," greeted Randy, "I stopped on my way in and picked up that special coffee roast you like. I'll put on a fresh pot."
"Great," said the detective, "you look to be in good spirits this morning. I heard about some impromptu Christmas party developed on Castro Street last night, some minor ruckus. You and your friends run into that last night?" Matson walked to the outer office to place his jacket in the coat closet.
"Ah…not really, I guess," answered Randy, "I don't remember doing much out of the ordinary…just going to some bars and doing some dancing."
Randy paused, watching his boss place his jacket on a hanger and then spoke again.

"I hope you don't think I'm getting all religious on you, and this is kind of personal stuff…but I pray every once in a while." Matson closed the closet door and turned to face Randy, smiling. Randy continued. "I've been asking God why I had these problems put in my lap, but in spite of all my prayers, I never seemed to get an answer. That is, until this morning. When I woke up this morning I had this thought in my head that I just couldn't ignore and it seems to answer everything for me. Here it is. We can plod along with what we're given in life and keep trying to adjust to that and end up miserable as a result. I think maybe God or the universe or whatever throws a mess of problems into our lives in order to encourage us to rise above our current situation in our lives, and by overcoming those problems, we grow and become a better person as a result…you know, maybe rise up to a higher spiritual level or something and wind up in a better place in our lives as a result." Randy nervously rubbed his neck, "I don't know if that made a whole lot of sense."
Matson folded his arms with authority, beaming a proud smile at Randy, "Made perfect sense to me." Then, the detective shook a finger at Randy. "You know, you keep reminding me why I hired you. You're one a pretty sharp cookie. There are a lot of people who go through their whole lives without making that realization. Trying to fit in and adjust until they realize they've wasted their whole lives doing that."
Randy shook his head and smiling shyly, looked down at this desk.
"Uh…Lynn," Randy said shyly, "Can I have a little chat with you?"
"Uh-oh," responded Beef, "Serious time, you called me by my first name. You must be going to ask me for a raise."
"No…nothin' like that. I heard on the radio this morning that some T.V. stations are running a tape of an incident I had yesterday where this little girl propositioned me and it showed some women apparently coaching her to do that. I guess now there's a big uproar that somebody would encourage a little girl do that, and some of the radio commentators were even saying that people should get off my back and leave me alone. Amazing, like overnight…I'm not the bad guy anymore." Randy had a sad smile on his face, which was suddenly replaced by an expression of determination. "Then I wondered who could have possibly shot the video tape and that someone must have been following me in order to catch that incident on tape." Randy shook his finger at his boss. "I know how you work, so all things considered, you had to be the one who shot the video."
Matson shrugged his shoulders, "Yeah, guilty."

Randy got up from his chair and walked over to Beef, staring him in the face.
"Lynn Gordon Matson, sir! Permission to bury my face in your chest, sir."
Surprised at the request, Matson laughed, "Permission granted!" Matson grabbed Randy and pulled him tightly against his chest, pushing his face into the top of Randy's head affectionately.
"To let you know, there's more about your case that will be making it's way into the news. You will be completely vindicated. I should also let you know that…well…it turns out that Sharon and Rocky have been involved in some really bad stuff. It appears that Sharon murdered her husband. From what I understand, she's a complete sociopath. Ah…from what Sharon revealed to my undercover operative, she also murdered your Uncle Marty. She was secretly giving him medication that she was stealing from a nursing home where she was working at the time.
"My Uncle Marty…" gasped Randy, "Oh gosh, I could have maybe done something…"
"No, Randy," admonished Matson, "You were a teenager at the time, there was no way you could have know or suspected. Sharon's quite the pro at that sort of thing. This should just show you that your relationship with Sharon and her family was just a one-way street, whatever concern you had for her or her family was just a waste of time on your part, Randy. They never had any concern for you or probably anybody, for that matter."

Randy looked up at his boss for a second, saying nothing. He then grunted a "Hmmph!" and laid his head against Matson's chest again. "Oh man," sighed the detective's assistant, "Yeah, I guess I suspected there was some not good stuff going on in that family. But I was so eager to be accepted by them, to be part of a family that I would just ignore the bad things I'd hear about that family. It was because I was illegitimate, gay…I always put myself on the bottom rung of the social ladder and everyone else above me, so I guess I had a blind eye for other peoples' failings and always put myself below them. That's another thing that suddenly popped into my mind this morning, that trying to gain acceptance from people who won't give it is a waste of time, so don't bother trying and just move on."

Beef Matson looked down at the top of the blond head in his embrace and spoke softly. "The real victim of abuse in this case is you, Randy. Sharon and her family abused you. They stole your ability to believe that you can be loved and cared about by others. A common mistake many very moral gay people I've known make is that they mistakenly assume that just because someone is straight, that person has to be more moral than they are. You're right, trying to get acceptance from an immoral person is not only a waste of time, but it just allows you to be used and gives the immoral person something to laugh about. This business of someone being better than you because they're straight and you're not, isn't any more of an argument than someone saying they're more adult than you because they smoke cigarettes and you don't."

"Now that is whole business with you is practically finished and done with, you should concentrate on getting yourself a boyfriend. I know you haven't had one since your Brett passed away, so it's well overdue that you get some…well, good lovin' into your life. You've got to throw away all the negative stuff drummed into you when you were a kid and realize that you're a great looking nice guy that a lot of other guys would jump at the chance to be paired off with."
"Well, you know…" excused Randy, "back when I lived in Illinois, finding a boyfriend was like spiders running the risk of being killed by the other spider when they try to mate. I mean, I never knew if some other guy would turn out to be a straight guy who just wanted to beat me up."
"You haven't been living in Illinois for awhile, and still you're not dating any guys."
"What about you," reminded Randy, "I haven't seen you dating anyone in awhile."
"That's only because the groupies keep getting in the way of the quality men," laughed Matson sarcastically, "Getting myself a man will be a new year's resolution."

Just then the door from the hallway opened and Tony from Just Desserts entered carrying a box of donuts. "Country dance lessons again?" he asked.
"Nope," replied Randy, "Thanking my boss for everything he's done for me. 'sides, hugging my big, handsome boss is one of the perks of my job."
"Really…I didn't know you felt that way," added Matson, "Would you consider hugs in lieu of raises?"
"Absolutely not," answered Randy tersely.
"Got a box of donuts for you guys," interjected Tony, "To celebrate Randy's vindication. Just heard on the radio the little while ago that guy who was accusing Randy of molesting him, has just been hauled in for questioning, along with his stepmother, about the murder of his father. As well as for the attempted murder of our very own Beef Matson. Ain't that just the kick in the pants turn of events."
Randy shot a look of utter shock at his boss, "They tried to kill you?"
"They never got close. The operative I had working on the case for me was the person they tried to get to shoot me."
"Shoot you?…omigawd!" Randy put a hand to his mouth.
"Nothin' to worry about, didn't even come close to happening."
Matson's assistant hugged his boss again, this time with a sincere, protective hug.

"I would have come up with some donuts earlier," continued Tony, "My staff and I have been working like crazy to keep up with demand this morning. The craziest thing, we're suddenly doing a land office business this morning and some of people who have been coming in are guys I thought I haven't seen in years, yet at the same time, I know they've been living in the neighborhood for years. Goofiest thing. Like I've been having a terrible sense of deju-vu or duplicate but different memories of the same people."

"Did you see any of the gay Christmas near riot that's been in the news this morning?" asked Beef.
"If there was," answered Tony, "I would have missed it, I go to bed very early…have to get up before sunrise to make my donuts. I did hear there was a shopping frenzy in the building last night, all the retail shops did fantastic business."

"Say, uh…Tony, since you get here pretty early, " Matson began to inquire, "You didn't happen to see a guy hanging around inside the building this early this morning? Dressed in a dark suit straight out of the 1960s. You know, white shirt, thin tie, stovepipe slacks, like those pictures of the Rat Pack, you know, like what Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin would wear back then."
"Didn't see anybody like that this morning," answered Tony, "When I come in at the crack of dawn, there's hardly ever anybody in the building. Our customers come right into our shop from the street early in the morning. What you're describing sounds like the wise guys who hung around the old neighborhood back east when I was a kid. Are there gangsters involved in Randy's case? Oh boy, this is getting exciting."
"No, no," responded Beef, "Has nothing to do with Randy's case. I just had a question."

********
"You shameless hussy, you're tempting me with high calorie foods."

"Is everything pretty well wrapped up then in Randy's case?" asked Tony.
"Yeah, pretty much so, " said Matson, nodding his head.
"Oh goody, then sit down and tell Randy and me all the messy details."
"Nah, I've got a ton of things to do."
"Oh please, oh please, oh please, Mr. Matson."
"No, really…there's really something important I'd like to start on…"
"Oh please, oh pretty please. Puhleeze, Pull-leeze, Pull-leeeze, Pull-leeeeeze…"
"Tony, you're getting obnoxious."
"Then you'll tell us the story then."
"I really don't…"
"I did bring donuts," reminded Tony, "and the very best. Look, look. New York style raised triangles with a cream cheese filling. Fresh raspberry jelly filled raised donuts, cinnamon apple cheese pastry, chocolate iced cinnamon raised donuts…and those are diet jelly filled donuts, I left off the butter cream frosting."
"You shameless hussy," remarked Matson, "you're tempting me with high calorie foods."
"So? Tempting people with high calorie foods is what I do for a living." Tony began waving the box under the detective's nose, "Tell us the story, tell us the story."
"You smart ass," said Beef as he grabbed a sweet roll, "O.k., close the hallway door, sit down and I'll tell you guys the whole thing."
"Yea!" exclaimed Tony, shutting the door and pulling a chair up to the front of Randy's desk, resting an arm on the desk. With a donut in one hand and a cup of coffee in another, Randy plunked himself behind his desk. Beef Matson slid a chair around backwards and straddled it, leaning on the back of the chair facing his assistant's desk and then gulping down a donut, began to relate his behind the scenes story.

"Well," started Beef Matson, "I knew the child molestation charges against Randy were obviously false, since I know his personality and what his tastes are, so the idea that Randy was a molester was just a no go with me. Randy's worked for me for a while and I know he simply doesn't have the personality of a molester. To be blunt, Randy, you instead exhibit the traits of someone who has suffered abuse as a child, mostly, I think, from neglect and certainly not a child molester. In fact, what I heard is that you were the one who tended to be the protector when Sharon Ledbauer or one of her sisters would start being abusive towards their kids. When I tried to interview one of Sharon's sisters, I saw just how abusive she could be.

Also, the sneak attack on Randy by laying these charges on him when he went back to Illinois to visit the Ledbauers for the holidays that also bothered me. Since I knew the charges had to be false, I wanted to find out what the real reason why Sharon Ledbauer and company would want to file these charges and why they waited all these years to do so. The entire thing just so did not make any sense. What could they possibly hope to gain from these charges against Randy? He's not rich and he certainly doesn't make very much money."
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, boss," interrupted Randy.
"Hush," said Matson, pointing a finger at his assistant, "I sensed some sort of scam might be the underlying reason for everything. You see, from what Randy initially told me about Sharon, I began to suspect that she might fit the profile of a predator herself, all the while she was pointing a finger at Randy as a child molester. I began to think that whatever was going on was quite possibly something Sharon had initiated so she could somehow benefit from it. This was underlined when the Sharon and Rocky's lawyer began suggesting to Berry Starr that the charges might be dropped if Randy moved back to Illinois and moved in with Sharon or maybe became a nice husband for one of Sharon's sister's daughters. I thought, whoa! If you really think someone's a child molester, why on earth would you want him to marry one of your daughters?"

When I visited Randy's hometown in Illinois, and did a little snooping there, what I was able to find out about Sharon told me that she did very much fit the profile of a predator. Her behavior at a nursing home she worked at seemed to really suggest that. From the various interviews I did I also found that her family and relatives are pretty much on the dysfunctional side. The complete opposite of our Randy. When I got back here, I devoted a lot of my time to running background checks on Sharon and her family members. That's why I was spending so much time in my office when I got back, Randy.

Sharon and her dear sisters and their husbands have a history of offenses ranging from domestic violence, child abuse, disorderly conduct, receiving stolen property…what have you. It's interesting that while the press was tearing into Randy, they never bothered to check into the background of his accusers. I managed to find out that some people had filed restraining orders against Sharon to keep her away from their elderly relatives. Sharon is one of those people who preys on the elderly, stealing from them, trying to get them to sign over property, change wills and so on. I finally found out that the nursing home Sharon had worked at years ago, discharged her for much the same reasons, as well as suspecting her of stealing medications. Some of that medication she stole she apparently used to poison Randy's Uncle Marty. From what I was told from your closer relatives, like your cousin Justin, Randy, is that Sharon probably manipulated your Uncle Marty into letting her move in with him, for the sole purpose of gaining control of his property. In fact, Randy, it was probably sheer luck that saved you from just being thrown out of your uncle's house by Sharon. I became convinced that the only reason Sharon now came up with this molestation con, is that she found some reason to prey on Randy.

In addition, the guy you were supposed to have abused, Rocky…well, when I ran a background check on him, a lot of drug related charges came up, along with fencing stolen goods, domestic violence charges and so on. I also found out that some of the guys he's hanging with are some heavy-duty bad guys involved in drug trafficking. On top of that, he's up to his eyeballs and beyond in debt. I was also able to get hints that some federal type of investigation was swirling around Rocky involving drug trafficking and money laundering. All of that seemed to go against the image of Rocky as a distraught, clean living straight male who had his masculinity ruined by a gay encounter years ago. Give me a break, I mean Rocky's riding Harleys, is a babe magnet, and had a paternity suit filed against him and he's macho enough to get himself involved with some hard core drug gangstas. All of a sudden this big, macho guy decides he's totally distraught because of some mutual jack off scene that occurred when he and Randy were teenagers. That so didn't make any sense. Again, something else had to be going on there.

The profile I came up with for Sharon just screamed predator. However, when I came up against a brick wall when I tried to interview anybody in Sharon's family, so I knew I couldn't uncover any information that way. So what I decided to do was set up a sting, provide Sharon with a potential victim she might find irresistible. That's why we went to the Robes Roses that night, Randy. While you were in the show lounge watching the show, I went with Myles, the owner of the place, to audition one of his performers, Tommy Morton, as a naive country girl who stood to inherit a lot of money if only her stepmother would just drop dead. Tommy was very convincing in his performance, so I sent him into the field as my operative in Illinois to act as bait for Sharon. Sharon took the bait, big time. I guess Sharon was so used to preying on innocents she didn't suspect anything. She was so convinced that she was manipulating the operative I sent out there to trap her, she told Tommy all kinds of damning information about her and Rocky poisoning Sharon's husband, so Rocky could get some money to pay his debts and poisoning your uncle Marty and even sent Tommy on a mission to my office to shoot me because Sharon felt I was being a nuisance."

Tony and Randy looked at each other with amazed looks and continued to munch compulsively on donuts.

"The bottom line is that Sharon comes from a family of con artists and that the molestation charges against Randy were merely just another of her cons. Randy had impressed Sharon as being a good worker, and she places absolutely no value in other people unless she thinks they're good workers or have money and if she can find some other way to use them. The bottom line is, Sharon has absolutely no problem with offing people to improve her cash flow. Apparently, she was using the fact that Rocky had fathered a child with her to blackmail him into filing the molestation charges against Randy, with the idea that Randy would then be forced to, essentially become a built in babysitter and take care of the child she and Rocky had, much like Randy took care of Sharon and her sister's kids when he was a teenager, as well as being a much younger replacement for the older husband she had murdered.

What was complicating this mess was that at the precise moment the charges against Randy came out, a vitriolic campaign to paint Randy as a monstrous child molester began, trying to convict Randy in the media long before any litigation took place. Apparently, the district attorney back in Illinois was determined to make an example of Randy as a homosexual child molester, especially, I guess, after he found out Randy worked for me. I suspect he gave advance knowledge of the charges against Randy to some political forces out there that began to orchestrate a campaign against Randy and paint the entire gay community as a hotbed for child molesters. Political forces that who are a lot more concern with their own political agenda than with any concern about child molestation. It didn't escape my attention that there was a campaign to embarrass me as the homosexual private investigator with a child molester as an assistant with no regard as to if the charges against Randy were actually valid. The intensity of the attacks on Randy was probably only due to the fact he works for me, plus many of the attacks in the media, the hate mail, the phone calls were directed at me and Berry Starr."

"Maybe that was all coincidence, rather than conspiracy," suggested Tony, "just a lot of crazies attracted by the publicity."

"My theory on coincidence is that if something happens over and over again to the same person, it ain't coincidence. The harassment Randy was receiving, the physical attacks, then he suddenly gets an eviction notice…give me a break, sounds a bit like a conspiracy to me. Plus, Berry and I have both represented gay people in the past that had the same type of dirty tricks campaign waged against them. More so if the gay person was in the public eye. Precisely the same thing that happened to Randy, a sort of dirty tricks campaign to trash a person's reputation. Some of my clients have been very, very decent people but the people who were trying to trash their reputations didn't care. Sorry to leave you out of the loop on so many things this time Randy, but you were just too close to the center of the storm to fill you in on everything. For instance, some guy went to one of the bars you like to go to and was telling patrons and the bartenders that he was a friend of yours and both you and he were really into kiddie porn. I guess that was some lame attempt to uncover some sort of child molestation ring. The owner of the bar called me and I decided that I'd wait until all of this was over before I told you. You were pretty depressed already and I didn't want to bring you down any further. Both Berry Starr and myself have had clients commit suicide, so I know what depression can do to people. So the second part of your case was to see if I could identify who might be behind the dirty tricks and see if I could get them to maybe cease and desist.

I noticed that with similar cases I've had in the past, whoever orchestrates these attacks seems to go about it in the same way, so that would suggest that maybe the same people are involved. In fact, I came into possession of some material this morning that suggests that a campaign against gay people might be more organized than I thought. Anyway, with similar cases I've had, the same woman always seems to show up, either trying to get information about my clients or trying to stir things up. In your case, Randy, she showed up at Minerva's shop asking questions about you and then later, in a stroke of luck, when we were at the Cozy Cup with Minerva and Berry, we saw her walking down Castro Street with another woman. Then Minerva went undercover for me and was able to obtain some information about this woman, whose name is Gloria. I tracked Gloria and the team she was working with for awhile and was able to get an idea of what she was up to, which was setting up dirty tricks and trying to make Randy's life miserable. Again, I apologize for not letting in on this, Randy, but I started following you around, in disguise and with a video camera, in the outside hope I might catch somebody in the act of pulling a dirty trick on you.

I lucked out again when Gloria and her team had the little girl proposition you. Having some little girl dressed up as a little sex queen proposition you for sex that has got to be the most lowlife thing I have ever seen. I handed a copy of that video over last night to a local television station and from what I hear, that video has been distributed literally around the world at light speed. There's been quite an uproar about the video and should be quite an embarrassment to the women I caught in it and whoever put them up to it. I imagine that should put the kibosh on a lot of the harassment you've been getting, Randy.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been supplying the police back in Illinois, physical evidence and audiotapes that incriminate Sharon and Rocky and totally vindicate you, Randy. In light of that, the district attorney back there, even though reluctantly, will not consider any charges against you, though I did have an interesting conversation with an individual in the district attorney's office back there tell me that homosexuals who initiate sexual encounters were predators, while heterosexuals who initiate sexual encounters were merely sexually aggressive. In addition, the army of social workers that were sent out to interview the children in that family to find out if Randy had molested them was instead given all sorts of other unfortunate information by the kids and none of it about Randy. It seems Sharon's sisters were encouraging their daughters to have children through prostitution and out of wedlock, even with their own cousins, simply to bring in welfare support money, and the local authorities really frown on that sort of thing. Sharon and her family, by falsely accusing Randy, ended up putting the spotlight on things in their own family they would have preferred to keep hidden. I spent early this morning faxing the last of my transcripts and testimony regarding this case off to the police in Illinois. Apparently, they were pretty close to arresting Sharon and Rocky anyway, so when they got the last of the stuff from me this morning, that's exactly what they went out and did.

Again, I'm sorry that I had to keep you pretty much out of the loop on this one, kid," Matson gave a sympathetic look towards Randy, "I realize what a rough time you were going through. But you were just so much in the middle of everything that I couldn't risk spoiling my undercover operation and I also needed to catch the people who were harassing you in the act. Okay, then. Any comments or questions?" asked Beef.

"My, my, that's certainly an involved little story there," replied Tony, "When's the hard cover version coming out? Still, I may be dense or something, but I don't get it. Why should these right-wingers be so obsessed and go so out of their way to make all this trouble for Randy and you? I realize that you have a big reputation for defending gay folks and caused some embarrassment in the past to some right wing types, but why would those right-wingers want to go out of their way to make trouble for you or anyone else just because they're gay? If you don't like a group of people, you just don't associate with them."

"The right wingers attack us because they know without us queers…they just ain't got nothin'."

"For the same reason they would make any group of people a scapegoat, because they need us," replied Matson, a bit angrily, "to cover the bankruptcy of their ideals, to cover up the fact that they really don't stand for anything except their own narrow self interests. It's to cloud over the fact that they really don't stand for anything except for some warmed over self-serving and very tired political and religious clichés. By trying to get other people to hate us, they hope to distract those people from the fact that it's getting harder and harder to make a living and that their lives suck. The right wingers attack us because they know without us queers…they just ain't got nothin'."

Beef Matson paused, sighed and continued, "You may not understand why hate groups are obsessed with you and you can ignore them. You can ignore them all you want. You can ignore them until one day they come for you…and then they will be impossible to ignore."

*******

After Tony had left the office, Matson told Randy he would be doing some work for awhile in his office and told his assistant that he did not want to be disturbed, with Beef closing his office door behind him. From past experience, Randy knew that this would mean his boss would be locked up in his office for most of the day. A scant fifteen minutes later, an unexpected Matson emerged.
"You know what?" he said, "I realized I need to take care of a much more important matter." The detective opened the clothes closet and began to retrieve his coat.
"Okay," replied Randy, barely giving Matson's announcement a second thought.
Matson pulled Randy's coat out of the closet. "This important matter involves you, so put your coat on, we're heading out," informed Beef as he threw Randy's coat over to him.
"What…?" puzzled Randy.
"Well," said Matson, "I know you've had a kind of messed up holiday so far and there's only a few days left until Christmas, but I think that's time enough to try to make it a little better holiday for you. Let's take some time off, go do some window-shopping on Castro Street and I'll buy you a sandwich for lunch. I figured that if I keep working on a new project I started, I'm just going to get all pissed off and get myself in a royally grumpy old mood as a result. Since there's only a little bit of the holiday season left, I don't want to waste it by being grumpy. 'Sides, there's a whole brand new year coming up in which I can be grumpy."
"Good idea," added Randy, "I've seen your grumpy moods, no fun."

Matson put his arm on Randy's shoulder guiding him towards the hallway door, "I'm a firm believer in keeping up the morale of my staff."
"Staff…?" remarked Randy looking about the office.
"You need to get something in you besides sweet rolls, anyway," added Matson. "Otherwise, you'll turn into a blimp and I'll have to poke holes in you to let some air out." Matson began to poke his fingers into what he knew were sensitive spots in Randy's sides as they entered the hallway. Randy responded with jerky movements and high-pitched complaints.

*******
"Listen here…you ignorant, slimy, pathetic weasel."

As the private investigator and his assistant exited the main entrance of the office building, a good looking young man with well-coifed hair and smartly dressed in a suit with a bow tie approached them. The man stopped in Matson's path and spoke.  "Mr. Matson," he greeted, you know what your problem is?" The man adjusted his bow tie and shook his head in a manner that seemed indicate the young man was very much aware of his good looks. "You're a bad influence who's way too popular, bringing publicity to a isolated, unimportant group of people. We just can't have people like you running around corrupting the country, moving it in a direction we just don't want it go. That means we are not going to stop until your reputation is ruined and you're not popular at all, gay boy. You may have come out on top this time, but you were just lucky…just a lucky, overrated gay boy detective. The next time, you irritating fruitcake, you may not be so lucky."

A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST:"You don't have any real ability, all you are is just walking homosexual propaganda…"

"Believe me, there will be a next time. Lots and lots of next times. If your assistant wasn't the sexual molester and predator, maybe you're the predator and you molested him, bringing over to your side. With all the time, money and energy we spent trying to expose a pedophile and predator…well, one of you is going to damn well stay labeled as a pedophile. My suggestion is that it might be a lot healthier for you if you assumed a much lower profile and were a lot less aggressive in…"

Randy noticed that his boss was beginning to stretch ever so subtly, a posture he knew Beef Matson assumed when he was at the end of his patience or getting ready to punch somebody's lights out. The man was continuing to prattle on, "Real Americans are tired of diversity being used as a code word for immorality. You don't have any real ability, all you are is just walking homosexual propaganda…" Suddenly, a minute quivering started in the small of Randy's back and shot up his spine to the base of his brain. Randy's head shook ever so slightly and then suddenly stopped. He stepped in between the stranger and his boss. Smiling into the man's face, Randy interrupted the stranger. "Excuse me," Matson's assistant said cheerily, "when anyone wants to talk to Lynn Gordon Matson they have to chat with me first, you know, to arrange an appointment. You see, I'm his assistant." Randy smiled graciously.
Suddenly Randy's face filled with an alarming focused rage. Words began to crackle out of Randy's mouth like a drill sergeant's lightning, spattering into the terrified face of the man with the bow tie. Randy's face was a glowing red, making his blond eyebrows appear like white-hot coals. Intensity lasered out of his ocean blue eyes.
"I want you to know something…” Randy growled, "and I want you to be perfectly clear on this…'boy'." Randy jabbed his finger into the stranger, near the bow tie and kept stepping closer towards the man, who moved backwards until Randy had him pinned up against the building wall, squirming and with a near panic look to his face. Being about the same height as the stranger, Randy stared right into the man's eyes.
"Listen here…you ignorant, slimy, pathetic weasel. If you want to come down here and threaten somebody, you threaten me first. What I will do then is grab a hold of your worthless testicles and give them a squeeze until your freakin' bow tie starts spinning. You understand that…'boy'? In fact, you better have one pretty damned good excuse why I shouldn't get freakin' medieval all over your worthless ass right now. Speak up, moron, and make it fast, otherwise I hope to hell you know a damned good dry cleaner."
The man attempted to squeak out a response, "Hey…I only…well…uh…"
Beef Matson did nothing, tilting his head and watching Randy's behavior with complete marvel.

"What I want you to do right now," continued Randy, "is to apologize to Mr. Matson and tell him you couldn't help yourself because you're just a total, worthless idiot. Do it fast, man…because I just so can't wait to have some fun with you. Believe me, it's just going to feel so damned good to release a few months of pent up aggression on the sorry ass of some homo hater."
Trying to squeeze away from Randy, the bow tied stranger spoke to Matson, his eyebrows slanted in an apologetic expression, "Sorry, man…"
"That's Mr. Matson," barked Randy.
"Sorry, Mr. Matson," continued the man, "I was just acting like an idiot. Sorry. Really sorry."
The man looked over to Randy's face to see if his apology had been accepted. Randy merely shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. The man hurriedly took off down the street, grabbing quick looks back at Randy with an amazed expression.

"Randall…" Matson stepped over and looked at his assistant, "is that you in there?"
"Sorry, I guess I just kind of lost it. I just didn't want the two of you to play pitch and catch."
"Pitch and catch?"
"You would've pitched your fist and he would have caught it in his jaw."
Matson laughed a hearty laugh and grabbed his assistant with a mighty bear hug, nearly lifting Randy off his feet; "You're just full of surprises sometimes, aren't you?
Randy shrugged his shoulders again; "I've been under a lot of stress, lately." Matson laughed and pulled Randy's shoulder into his. "Thanks for dealing with that moron for me." The pair continued their walk with Matson occasionally rubbing Randy's shoulders and patting him on the back, and uttering occasional exclamations, much like a father whose son just made a winning touchdown.

*********

The General
The General suddenly woke up. He did not remember anything since his confrontation with the mysterious stranger in his SUV. The General also suddenly realized that he was restrained and a cloth gagged his mouth. Looking about, he realized too that he was still in his SUV, the back seat was folded down and he was lying on the carpet floor. With a jolt, the man realized he was tied tightly to his assistant…and they were both completely naked. With a clank and a thump, the side door of the SUV was slid open, and as the General looked over to the opened door, he saw the faces of a dozen women staring at him through the open door.

Gloria

After being imprisoned overnight in the basement of the old parish office building, Gloria returned to the hotel just after sunrise and took a short nap. Later, she met with Amber and Heidi who had just returned from Colorado Springs, told the two women of her terrible experience of being locked up, but rather than being angry, told her coworkers, that since this would be their last day in San Francisco, they could take a little time for themselves and come into the office later. Gloria then returned to the parish office building. On her way back to the office, Gloria sensed the day seemed to have a strange feel to it, like everything was out of kilter, an oddness, as if things were not quite the same. Still, in spite of the odd, strange feel to the morning, nothing seemed to bother Gloria, who was in an undeniable good mood, and even felt an energizing invigoration.

Unlocking the door, she found an envelope lying on the floor; apparently it had been slid under the door. Inside the envelope was a message from the parish office, wanting her and her team to vacate the offices immediately if not sooner. Gloria soon discovered the reason behind the sudden urgency when she listened to the news on the portable radio she brought with her. It seemed that a video of little Chantay propositioning Randy Hardwicke was playing on all the local morning TV news shows and the video seemed to be creating an uproar, probably the reason for the urgent memo from the parish office. Still, Gloria was not going to let the news bother her, at least until she found out more about, perhaps from Amber and Heidi when they arrived at the office.

Before her two co-workers arrived, Larry Doolan showed up at the office to drop off a receiver and tape recorder, which would pick up broadcasts from a microphone bug he said he had planted in Randy Hardwicke's apartment. Due to their mutual dislike of each other, Larry's visit was short, but long enough for Gloria to notice he had somewhat of a limp and a large bruise on his face. Larry set up the receiver, and informed Gloria, that while he had heard on the news about the video of Chantay, he did not know much more about it than Gloria.

Gloria also decided to call the General and touch base with him about the video of little Chantay's attempted seduction of Randy Hardwicke, and perhaps sooth the general's nerves regarding this matter. However, the general seemed to be extremely disturbed and preoccupied with other matters and relatively unconcerned about the video itself. His only response about it was that he could have spin-doctors work on the matter. The General's primary concern was to have Gloria and her team to expedite their departure from San Francisco.

Heidi arrived shortly thereafter, with the woman making a casual comment about being asked for money by homeless people on the way in. Gloria volunteered that she and the General had once discussed the homeless situation.
"You know…" she began to lecture, "Slavery and indebted servitude build this country. The Roman Empire lasted at thousand years because of slavery and the Nazis built a great empire in Europe using slave labor, until the Jewish bankers started making a fuss. The General pointed out to me that we would have a lot more homeless in the coming years, so why not use those people as a natural resource. The minute you become homeless you become a slave, and you can be sold to corporations, whoever needs free labor. Other countries may have their oil, but we will have the power of slave labor, lots and lots of slave labor. Other countries will have cheap labor, our labor will be completely free."
"That would make it harder for people to find jobs. It's not easy to find a job out there as it is," reported Heidi, "My boyfriend's a carpenter, he's been an apprentice for years and now he's finding it impossible to get anything other than a short term assignment."
"My dear Heidi," prattled Gloria, "Any barbed wire jumper from south of the border can pound a nail into a board. Perhaps your boyfriend should look into customer service or collections. If your boyfriend can't find a job, either he doesn't want one or God doesn't want him to have one. I think you should just get yourself a new boyfriend." Gloria continued, "It's just a matter of raising the rung. The American people will just have to work harder, they always do. I think using the homeless as slaves is an exciting concept, for instance…lying on the couch and having your shoulders and feet massaged by beautiful little blond children, having them run back and forth for you, catering to your every whim, like little cherubs."
"I think that's called child labor," commented Heidi.
"Oh no…you wouldn't be paying them anything, they would be slaves," corrected Gloria, "If you're trying to make a moral issue of that, it's already been decided by God. If people become homeless, that must be the way God wants them to be. Just like those of us who have money, that's because God wants us to have money. So, therefore God must want the rich to use the homeless as free labor."
Heidi smiled a defeated and lemony smile and nodded her head.

Heidi informed Gloria that Amber would be in later, their co-worker had gone shopping to pick up some gifts for some boys she worked with as a counselor. Gloria told Heidi they would not be at the office long. From Gloria's earlier conversation with the General, their departure from their parish office, as well as from San Francisco, was now an issue of extreme urgency. Apparently, the video of little Chantay propositioning Randy on a San Francisco street was being seen all over the country and one of the people who had seen the video was Chantays's mother, who, the General reported, was screaming about child abuse and threatening all kinds of lawsuits. So, an attempt was being made to placate Chantay's mother and the General wanted Gloria and her team to immediately disappear from San Francisco before being located by the local news media. The General had also told her that the news media had received the video from none other than Beef Matson, apparently the detective himself had filmed the scene.
"We were set up by that fag detective and his assistant," snapped Gloria, "We were victims of entrapment!"
Gloria also reported how odd and distracted the General sounded. Heidi was able to give her a possible reason for the General's behavior.

"On the TV news this morning, just before I left the hotel, I saw a news report about two naked men who were found at a scrap booking convention at the Moscone center. The two men were found inside of a SUV parked right inside the convention. How the SUV got in there is anybody's guess. They showed a video of the two men being taken out of the center, wrapped in blankets. One man had his head wrapped in the blanket but I could see that the other man was the General's assistant. Anyway, the women at the convention thought it was some sort of exhibit or maybe the SUV was going to be the prize in a giveaway, so some of the women decided to get a closer look, and then somebody yelled that there were some naked men inside which attracted a crowd of women who also wanted to see and when they saw the naked men lying there all tied up and naked in the back of the SUV, they panicked and started to run away and several of the women got cuts and scratches from falling over each other."
"Yes," agreed Gloria, "I imagine seeing our General naked would be one terribly unfortunate sight, indeed. The only image that keeps coming to my mind is that of a boa constrictor shedding it's skin, I could see how that would cause a panic."

Gloria put a bent finger to her lips in an almost delighted expression upon hearing this news about the general.
"One thing I heard on the news on the radio this morning, though it's not being mentioned any more, it was taken out of the later newscasts…was that the general and his assistant were tied together in one of those sex positions."
"Sex positions?" asked Gloria, "I don't understand."
"Well…it's a position that's perverted and people shouldn't talk about."
"Dear, how am I supposed to know unless you tell me, I'm not a child you know."
"It's one of those positions where people face…well, it's something terrible…" Heidi stammered, "It's disgusting…well, because…"
"Heidi, dear," admonished Gloria, "I really haven't got all morning, just give me a simple description."
"Well, it's what they call oral sex, the general and his assistant were tied naked, face to lap, face to lap."
"Oh my," Gloria began to chuckle, "The general…of all people." Gloria's chuckle turned into laughter, sounding like a tinny Santa Claus.
"In addition to that," continued Heidi, her expression becoming slightly mean, "The general had his assistant's underwear stuffed into his mouth and his assistant had the general's briefs stuffed in his mouth."
"No!" uttered Gloria, placing a hand to her chest and then immediately breaking out into heaving laughter, a string of 'ho's' that echoed off the walls. "Oh dear, oh my, "said Gloria, bending forward and leaning on the desk, "I shouldn't laugh…how terribly scandalous. Still, with the behavior that the general is rumored to be involved with, it was probably only a matter of time before something like this happened. But…we shouldn't talk ill of others, especially of our superiors." Gloria stifled another bout of giddy laughter under her breath. "We shouldn't worry about the general, he has a knack for making unfortunate bits of news like that totally disappear."
Gloria paused a couple of seconds staring off into space. "Still, this might be something for me to remember when I need to remind our little general of his responsibilities." Then Gloria offered a deadly serious comment, "The General's poor assistant…I imagine he'll proceed to have a string of incredibly horrible nightmares because of this ordeal. Being tied to the General when he's naked is not something I believe anyone could endure without a fair amount of emotional trauma."

"That could be why our General sounds a bit on the confused side this morning. Originally, he had told me that our efforts here were not cost effective, now, this morning, he tells me this morning that the source of our funding has disappeared. Apparently, the Defense Of Marriage Act, which provides our team with just about all of its funding, abruptly disappeared this morning."
"Defense Of Marriage Act? What's that?" asked Heidi.
"Who knows?" replied Gloria, "Perhaps something that came into the General's mind when he got tied up and thrown into the back of his SUV. Maybe he got popped on the head when that happened. Anyway, the General called Dr. Dobson and Hillary Clinton right away and told them to look into the matter and see if they could find out what happened to that phantom law and the funding connected to it. Supposedly they knew all about this DOMA thing and Dr. Dobson's Focus On The Family gets a lot of funding from it, so the General had the two of them frantically searching this morning to see what happened to it. Then, sometime later, both Dr. Dobson and Hillary Clinton lost their memory of the law as well. So, somehow, through some screw up, our team seems to have lost its funding overnight."

Gloria began tapping the fingers of her right hand on Heidi's desk, something like a caterpillar tap dancing.
"Uh…did you stop for coffee on the way in this morning?" asked Heidi cautiously.
"Mmm…no," responded Gloria, pulling her hand quickly from Heidi's desk, "I'm just feeling my oats this morning, nothing wrong with that. You know, our friend the general did not come through on one matter he promised to help me with. There was one young man I worked with on one assignment that totally misunderstood my desire to help him get closer to Jesus and he actually filed a sexual harassment complaint against me."
"No!" exclaimed Heidi with all the sincerity she could muster.
"Yes…" replied Gloria indignantly. "The company and I immediately decided to lay him off and the general and his people were supposed to come through with another job for him so that he would be…more quiet about things. Well, I found out that all that was done was to offer the young man a job half way across the country without giving him a means to relocate himself in another state. So he's still bouncing around in Colorado spreading rumors - uhhh! Now at least I have some leverage when I bring this matter up with the general again."

"It's a pity though that we have to close down shop here. If we had more time to work on Randy Hardwicke, if we really had him feeling total misery, he would have begun to engage in self-destructive behavior and we would have had him. When you deprive humans of all the joy and passion they feel about life, they turn inwards and become self-destructive and they will cooperate in their own destruction. It's like when zoo animals are overly confined, they begin to chew on themselves and pull out their hair or feathers."
"Gloria," asked an alarmed Heidi, "are you sure you're feeling all right?"
"Of course I am," Gloria flashed a puzzled look at Heidi, "I feel wonderful, exhilarated and energized. I haven't felt this good in a long time."

Gloria began to grumble about the negative reaction to video. "It's beyond me how anyone could be upset about a video showing our effort to unmask a child molester. With all the homosexuals in this town, why should anyone care what we do with one little girl? When people see me in that video, they should realize that I am simply an outraged Christian woman trying her best to rid this country of the homosexual vermin."
"Actually," revealed Heidi, "you're really not seen in the video."
"Heh?" said Gloria suddenly focusing on Heidi.
"From what I saw of the video…" continued Heidi, "You can only make out that Randy Hardwicke, and our Chantay and Amber. You and I are only seen heading into the SUV, neither of our faces are in video."
"Really…" replied Gloria, becoming thoughtful, "Only Amber is recognizable…well then…Hmmm." Gloria smiled a crinkled, alligator smile at Heidi, "Thinking about it, that video is probably not worth any of our anguish, besides the general told me that he will also work on having it suppressed or discredited. He said he may even get me on that colored girl…Oprah Winfrey's show, to discuss my efforts to unmask homosexual child predators."
Gloria stood at Heidi's desk for a few moments and then seemed to have a revelation. She instructed Heidi to keep monitoring the receiver which was supposedly getting transmissions from the bug Larry planted in Randy Hardwicke's apartment, as they might yet catch Beef Matson's assistant in the act of molesting a boy. As Gloria walked back to her office she remarked, "Only Amber is recognizable…hmmm," and picked up the phone to call the General.

Heidi turned on the receiver set up on her office desk and it immediate began to pick up something. However, it was just music, what seemed to be old disco music, mixed with some ballads from decades past. Occasionally, there were voices, but she could only understand a word or two. In addition to that, there was the sound of clinking glasses, laughter and other sounds like chairs being moved on a floor or doors being opened and closed. Heidi reported her findings to Gloria. "Sounds like you're listening to the inside of a tavern," opined Gloria, "this is perhaps another case of our Mr. Doolan falling off his wagon again. He may have lost the bug inside of some local watering hole or perhaps, for his own convenience put the bug in a bar instead of that Randy Hardwicke's apartment."

"Why, you unadulterated complete and total witch,"

As Amber entered the little parish office, she found that Gloria was waiting for her.
"Went shopping for some gifts, I see," observed Gloria.
"Yes," replied Amber, "For a few of the boys in the my counseling program."
"Counseling them…is that what you call it?" added Gloria, "There's no need for you to stay. You should just continue on to the airport. I talked with the General and you are no longer on our team."
"Excuse me…?" replied Amber.
"You are no longer on the team," repeated Gloria. "You thought perhaps that when you joined our team, that we wouldn't bother to do any background checks? Well, we found your behavior involved with your counseling activities to be incompatible with our standards."
"Excuse me…" queried Amber, "What behavior?"
"Oh my…" feigned Gloria, "Such innocence. You thought perhaps that your young friends, the teenaged boys you…counsel…would never report about your advances? The gifts, the dinners, the sleepovers? Sounds more like dating than counseling. The General decided that your presence on our team was reason for some unfortunate decisions that our team made regarding Chantay."
"Oh, I get this now," protested Amber, "It's that video of Chantay that's making the rounds on TV, that's causing the big uproar in the press. Having Chantay do what she did was not a team decision…it was yours."
"I always listen to the input of members of my team," responded Gloria, "Therefore, having a child molester on the team is obviously going to affect…"
"Why, you unadulterated, complete and total witch," interrupted Amber, "You live up to every little bit of your reputation, don't you?"
"Just exactly what is that supposed to mean?" snorted Gloria.
"It means that no one in his or her right mind can ever trust you. I have been on this team long before you showed up and if anyone had a problem with the relationship I have with the boys I counsel, they could have brought that up a long time ago. My background check was years ago, funny how it should suddenly matter now at this exact moment. The General didn't make any decision, it was you…you backstabbing…piece of…piece of…"
"I don't have to put up with any of this. You're leaving now. I want you to leave now. Goodbye. Goodbye."
"It is so not going to be that easy. I'm leaving, but before I leave, your ears are going to be tickled by some things you probably won't want to hear."
"I said goodbye…" repeated Gloria, almost musically.
"Don't be unhappy if I tell you this hasn't taken me completely by surprise. Just another of Gloria Pelson's famous ambushes. I've heard how you like to have people terminated at the companies that employed you…people come back from their lunch hour to find their belongings piled outside their office door, along with a security guard to tell them that their services are no longer needed and they have five minutes to get off company property. Having that feeling of power gives you a rush, doesn't it?"
"Whatever you say you have heard is of no interest to me. I believe in decisive action, in getting rid of people who are not team players, slackers, lacking in moral standards…"
"Spare me that verbal diarrhea of yours. What this is really about is the new order you middle aged and elderly babes are trying to impose on the rest of us, trying to reverse the natural order of things, with you old gals wanting to replace younger women as desirable sex symbols. Let me tell you…that ain't gonna happen, young wants young, old wants young. No man wants to waste his genes on some old biddy's dying vagina. How moralistic you doddering relics are about saving the youth from predators, yet whenever a new young male joins our church, the way you old praying mantises paw on him, it's like fresh meat being served up. Oh, and how you ladies shuffle we younger females off to be chummy with those whiskered walruses you call husbands. We're told how we should defer to the church elders and grace them with our company. Yeah, as long as those disgusting, disintegrating hulks are hanging onto the younger women, they won't be crawling on top of you. I've heard your views about prearranged marriages…how great they are, and it wasn't so long ago our church members were arranging marriages for their kids as soon as they hit puberty. Molesting teenagers is okay as long as it involves a church marriage? None of our little adventure here in San Francisco had anything to do with moral outrage about gay men dating each other…it was just about your sexual frustration of not being able to get any of them to climb on top of you. Don't you find it the least bit ironic that the only person who's interested in jumping your bones is that strange Bessie person and her pathetic obsession with older mother figures?"
"Don't try to drag me down to your moral level."
"Moral level…moral level? What a laugh! You don't have a moral level; you're a bottomless pit. All you care about is your ambition; your concerns about morality are all relative to that. You think I haven't noticed how much time you spend sitting in your office ogling those photos you have of that detective Matson wearing some skimpy swimsuits?"

"For someone who's a sexual predator of teenaged boys, you're in no position to discuss morality with anyone."
"Oh really…I think your stepladder of morality is just a bit shaky, old girl. I've heard how much you like the young ones. Though in your case, you feel the need to dress it up as Bible study. You honestly think none of those guys were really aware of what you were really up to when you were rubbing up against them or grabbing a feel here and there while you're reading a Biblical passage to them? At least I'm honest. I like the young ones because of their fresh faces, young smooth bodies, and the control that I, as an adult, can have over an immature mind, how they have to obey me because I'm an adult and do exactly as I want them to. It's like going back to high school and having all the boys who ignored me when I was in high school, because now, I'm an older babe that they want, and those high school boys are always so horny. Besides, I'm turning the boys onto women at an early age, isn't that what our team is supposed to be all about? Getting boys to focus their sexuality on women? I thought that was what you wanted."
"You are pathetic…"
"Pathetic…? I prefer to think I'm honest. At least my tastes don't drift towards the incestuous. That's another thing I've heard about you…how your son couldn't wait to go to college, and he picked a school that was as far away from you as possible. I've also heard those rumors about what he told the counselors at our church, and a few other people as well, how distressed his mother was making him, how his mother was trying to push him into a relationship that mothers aren't suppose to have with their sons. How his mother was even crawling in bed with him, telling him how emotionally needy she was, how your big thrill was to pinch him till he squealed, how you wanted him to let you hurt him, how it pleasured you to hear his squeals."
"Shut your mouth…" Gloria growled, "You're trying to make something dirty out of a mother's love…our church got rid of that politically ambitious counselor, she had to take her rumor mongering some place else".
"Now I could understand how you could have so much love for your son…" continued Amber, "your husband's gotten rather afflicted with that middle aged spread, and since he doesn't like to shave anymore, he's got a beard right out of the Old Testament…a face full of hair with bits of food stuck in hit, pretty disgusting, if you ask me, plus I've heard that the two of you have never really gotten along that well. Now, your son is sort of a younger version of your husband, no beard, young, athletic, tight body…so if you're tired of your husband, I could see how you might see your son as a convenient alternative."
"You impertinent slut…" Gloria breathed out the words with pure anger. Then she quickly slapped Amber across the face. Amber tilted back her head for a second in response to the stinging slap, pausing, then automatically responded with a slap of her own to Gloria's face. Pausing again for an instant, Amber heaved a deep breath and slapped Gloria twice again for good measure. The glare of an enraged beast filled Gloria's face. "I will have you arrested for assault," she exclaimed.

"Oh yes, please do call the police and have me arrested for assault. Then, out of my Christian and civic duty, I'll just have to mention to them that video tape that's making the rounds of all the TV stations, that video that stars our little Chantay propositioning a man on the street, like some preschool whore, well, I'll just have to mention to the police that all the credit for that little scene should go to you, after all, you're the one who thought it up. Considering the public uproar about that tape, I'm sure police might want to ask you a few questions regarding child abuse, not the sort of publicity our little Gloria would want, would she? Since we're in San Francisco and not back home, you don't have your network of preacher friends here to intercede on your behalf and save your scrawny ass."

Gloria, her face red not only from the sting of Amber's slaps but also from rage, nevertheless regained her composure. "I believe you should just leave. There's no point in you digging a deeper hole for yourself than you already have. No one speaks to me like that without consequences. Just leave." Without saying anything further to either Gloria or Heidi, Amber dialed for a cab on her cell phone, gathered her belongings and waited outside for the cab to arrive. Heidi, who had been stealing glances at the confrontation, quietly closed the door to her office and sat for a while trying to calm her nerves.

Moments later, Gloria was on the phone again with the General. "Yes, she's gone. A dirty business, but things like that are necessary sometimes, aren't they? It did feel good to finally tell her what I thought of her. Exposing Amber will help placate Chantay's mother, to explain to her how perhaps things got out of hand. Amber's fascination with teenaged boys will be a great convenience for us; whatever allegations of child abuse there might be can now be easily shifted to her. Yes, that just leaves Heidi and myself in the office and I will shortly send her on her way. That leaves things open for my private meeting with Bessie, giving that woman her instructions, and then I will be on my way back to Colorado Springs. There will be absolutely no trace of my team in this office. It will be like we were never in San Francisco at all. I wouldn't worry about those lawyers and courts, General. While judges may have their black robes, you have tanks at your disposal."

"I just so totally agree with you, General, that having the fag Matson and the dyke Starr meet with unfortunate events, will serve to reinforce the traditional notion that homosexuals often come to tragic ends. Your idea of having someone from within his or her community to do the dirty deed is brilliant. This way our detective and lawyer won't be perceived as martyrs, merely victims of a dysfunctional lifestyle. Any possible problems with Bessie? Absolutely not. I will simply give her a little pep talk and then send her on her way to meet with your people, who I understand are quite the professionals when it comes to supplying motivation to receptive individuals. Frankly, if our little Bessie were any more the compliant, passive doormat, she'd be a zombie." Gloria laughed a wicked little laugh.

"Romper stomper bomper boo, tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic mirror tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?"

Still rather shaken, Heidi turned on the receiver again and tried concentrating on the music coming from it, to see if she could make out any voices. All Heidi really wanted now was for this assignment to end and for her to be away from Gloria, far away. Suddenly a voice came from the speaker of the receiver, that of a young man, "Romper stomper bomper boo, tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic mirror tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?" The voice continued cheerily, "Let's see who I can see in my magic mirror today. Oh, I can see Heidi and Heidi is not very happy because Gloria has been very naughty today."
An ice water chill flowed down Heidi's spine. She froze, listening to the voice from the speaker.
"Let's see what else I can see in the magic mirror. Oh, there's Heidi again and she's being naughty too. I see her at one of her neighbor's houses on Flintridge Drive, staring through the bedroom window of a teenage boy. Is that because he's so pretty without his shirt?"

Heidi felt compelled to speak. "I heard in the neighborhood that he was homosexual. The women in the neighborhood were keeping an eye on him to make sure he wasn't bothering any of the children in the neighborhood."
"Is that really so, Heidi? Oh, I can see Heidi in the magic mirror again. She must think no one can see her because of all the bushes around the window, because while she's peeking through the window at the boy in his briefs, she's got one of her boobies hanging out of her blouse and she's playing with it. Oh my, Heidi, that's really naughty."
Heidi froze, gripping the armrests of her chair tightly; it felt like the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end.
The voice continued. "Oh look what I see now in the mirror. It's the parents of the young man installing a video camera in his bedroom facing the window. Oh, my, my, my, my. Look at all the times they're catching Heidi at the window and Heidi's being very naughty when she's looking in the window. Oh, now look. The parents are giving the tapes to the police. I'm afraid when Heidi gets back home, the police will tell her she's not been playing nice."

Suddenly, Heidi hit the erase button on the tape recorder and then gave the receiver a very hard push off the desk. It hit the floor with a bang; it's case shattering and becoming silent. A few moments later, Gloria looked in, actually looking concerned.
"Are you all right, dear? You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"
"No, I'm fine. The set slid off the desk and I tried catching it, but…"
"Oh, never mind about it," dismissed Gloria, "accidents happen. I heard voices. Did you start getting something?"
"Uh…ah," stammered Heidi, "a commercial, I think all the set was picking up was a radio station."
"Oh, of course," replied Gloria, "should have known better than to rely on our little Larry Doolan. He may have just stuck that bug to the underside of some bar stool or lost it somewhere and all you were going to do is to waste your time listening to static and picking up radio stations."
Heidi smiled and heaved a slight sigh.
"Just throw that thing into the trash," instructed Gloria, "I wouldn't worry about it. The worse accounting will do is to deduct cost of the set from your paycheck."

Gloria headed back to her office, and then suddenly appeared again in the doorway of Heidi's little cubicle. "You might just as well as pack up everything of yours and just leave. I'll have to stay a bit longer before I leave. Our little friend the General just gave me another call and I guess the peanut butter's really hit the fan. It seems a big uproar has developed locally over that tape suggesting child abuse regarding Chantay. The General was going to put the kibosh on the tape through his media connections, but now he tells me that the people he knew who were in positions of authority in the media, no longer seem to be in those positions anymore, some of them even replaced by fags. Supposedly those people he knew were supposed to have been in positions that have been occupied by other people for years. I think our dear little General's just having a bad day."

Gloria paused a couple of thoughtful seconds. "With all the homosexuals in this town, why should anyone care what we do with one little girl? Instead of complaining about what we were trying to do, I think people's energies would be put to better use if they worked to have homosexuals registered as sexual offenders. Then the homosexuals along with the rest of the sexual offenders could be put in camps or isolated on some islands somewhere away from everyone else. This business with our very own Amber makes me wonder if children should not be raised by certified professionals, away from their parents and everyone else who might molest them. Perhaps all children should be taken from their parents to compounds where companies could be contracted to professionally raise them to be good heterosexual Christians. We could also require people to have a permit in order to have sex. People would be required to state with whom they're going to have sex with, why and when. If you don't have a permit to have sex, and you're discovered having sex, you go to jail."
Heidi began struggling to keep herself from shaking.

"The General also wants us to leave San Francisco as soon as possible since the city is talking about getting the local district attorney's office and social services involved. I mean, where are their priorities? This city allows gays to adopt children and all we were trying to do was to show them the hazards of involving homosexuals with children." Gloria paused a moment in thought and spoke again. “I guess the lesson learned here is that our activities in the future will have to in a more secure area and away from snoopy camera lenses." Gloria paused again. "Perhaps if we had taught Chantay how to caress Mr. Hardwicke's private place, maybe that way we would have gotten a reaction out of him and that's what would have been on the video."
"Gloria!" protested Heidi.
"Oh yes…" responded Gloria, "I may be going a bit too far. You know, Dr. Dobson does suggest that gay men respond to the advances of an older women, a mother figure. So perhaps if I had caressed Mr. Hardwicke's genitals, that might have at least stirred heterosexual cravings in him, prompting a homosexual cure…"
"Gloria, "insisted a very stressed out Heidi, "I probably need to get my things together and go."
Gloria cocked her head and dismissed Heidi with a wave of her hand, "Oh yes, please do. I imagine you'll have people waiting for you at the airport when you get back to Colorado Springs."
"People…?" gasped Heidi, "What people…who will be waiting for me?"
"Why your friends and relatives, of course," responded a puzzled Gloria, "Who else would there be?"

Moments after Heidi had left the office, a courier delivered a small envelope for Gloria sent by the General. The office now deserted except for her, as Gloria waited for Bessie to arrive; she began to pull folders from her desk to place in her briefcase. She paused with the one marked "Matson" from her briefcase quietly. "Yes, once all the homosexuals like you are declared sexual offenders, you will no longer have any rights, we will be able to do whatever we want to you and we will place sensors connected to every private part of that body of yours…and we will find out all of your secret desires…and do whatever we want to you experimenting at ways to correct your sexual orientation. You will have no personal privacy, you will no longer have control over your own body, every part of your body will be exposed…and poked…and prodded…at our whim. We will choose your friends, your associates…you shall be refocused on women…" Gloria began to hunch her back and mold her face into a haunted expression, "You shall…" There was a loud banging at the front door. Gloria yelped out at the interruption, "Drat!" She quickly threw the photos back into the folder. "Then again Mr. Matson, you might avoid all of that through an abrupt death."

It was Bessie at the door, she had arrived very punctually. Gloria was as cordial as she could be to someone she found totally repulsive. Gloria briefed Bessie on her assignment and it's importance, not only to her personally, but in the overall greater scheme of things, of protecting women, children, and of a world that should be well ordered and controlled. Gloria stressed that her people viewed Bessie’s assignment as so important, that they had arranged for Bessie to have a little bonus. Gloria pulled an envelope from her briefcase and gave it to Bessie.

Very excited and shaking, Bessie clumsily fumbled with the envelope containing the money and one hundred dollar note fell to the floor, near Gloria's foot. Bessie immediately fell to the floor, on her hand and knees to retrieve the bill. As she stuffed the note back into the envelope, Bessie suddenly leaned forward and put her face up to Gloria's foot, her tongue darted out of her mouth and she began to carefully lick the top of Gloria's shoe, looking very much like a very big dog, her large jeans clad behind shaking as she licked Gloria's shoe. A complete feeling of revulsion came over Gloria, still she resisted the desire to yank her foot away, instead allowing Bessie's display of total submission, even feeling somewhat exhilarated by the display of an adult prostrate at her feet. Bessie then quickly returned to her feet, deliberately brushing her face against Gloria's skirt at she rose, folded the envelope and stuck it into the pocket of her flannel shirt. Gloria quickly repositioned herself behind her desk and away from Bessie.
"Now, you go to that address that's inside the envelope and the men there will give you your instructions for the little assignment we have for you. I'm sure you will do a very good job for us, as you always do."

Gloria let Bessie know how busy she was and that she really needed to get back to work and with some minor pleasantries, coaxed Bessie to leave and be on her way. Smiling, shaking and bowing, Bessie finally left.
"Oh dear," muttered Gloria to herself, "that woman does so give me the absolute creepy crawlies." The woman began dropping files into her briefcase, looking at them as she did. "Mr. Hardwicke…Mr. Matson…and Ms. Starr. I do believe some bullets and a little gasoline might just be a more effective way to deal with nuisances."

********
"Are you having one of your moments? I've heard about your moments. Is this one of your moments?"

Matson left his office early to hand deliver a check and his personal thanks to Berry Starr for her services on Randy's case. A cold rain pelted the private investigator's older but very reliable compact car as it headed down the freeway for the thirty some mile trip to the lawyer's house near Stanford University. There wasn't much traffic on this messy night; Matson thought he even saw random snowflakes mixed in with the rain hitting the windshield. The inside of the car was warm, Beef had his jacket off and the drive was effectively relaxing him. The detective was sipping on a soft drink and station on the car radio was playing occasional Christmas songs to which the teddy bear air freshener, hanging from the dash, seemed to sway back and forth to. The detective began to feel jolly, happy with the world, pleased that his assistant had been cleared of charges. Yet, Matson had a gnawing feeling that Randy's case wasn't entirely played out.

When he had talked with Berry Starr that afternoon, she mentioned that she and her partner, Bobbi would be having some friends over for a little get together. Matson envisioned a very pleasant night, Berry would be in a good mood, the check he was going to give her, along with a gift he had for her and Bobbi would add to their celebration. It would be a very pleasant evening. When Matson pulled up on the street where Berry's house was, it was clear that from the number of parked cars, the get together was actually a large party; the detective ended up parking a distance away. The moist air was heavy with the scent of wet grass and evergreens and the detective's breath formed little white clouds as he approached the house carrying a gift-wrapped package under his arm. As he neared the front door, Matson could hear many voices and the pounding beat of music.

Berry Starr answered the door. She had a cocktail in her hand and was dressed in a frilly, low cut French maid's costume. "Wow, exclaimed Matson, peering into the house jammed full of women, "If this is your definition of little get together, when you throw a party, it must be something on the scale of a Mardi Gras." Behind Berry, Matson could see most of the other women were also dressed in costume. "Is this some sort of belated Halloween shindig?" Berry laughed, "Isn't my outfit just the most delightful thing?" She made a 360 degree turn, showing off her costume. "I feel so absolutely girlie in this. I picked this out at Tic and Tac's vintage clothiers and rented it for our party. Supposedly, it was worn in some movie back in the 1930s or forties. I got Bobbi, the most outrageous gown, looks like something Morticia Addams would wear, except it's white and silver.

A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST:The lesbian costume/pajama party at Berry and Bobbi's.

Oh…you don't know about our holiday sleep over party. It started years ago as our holiday party and some of our guests started sleeping over…you know, then not having to worry about getting a DUI driving home. The party evolved into a lesbian pajama party and then pajamas evolved into whatever costume the ladies wanted to wear."

Matson looked into the living room, there were women dressed in a variety of pajamas and costumes, such as a veiled harem girl, a Viking woman, a cowgirl and so on, including a woman who was dressed up in a teddy bear costume, who kept bumping into things because she couldn't see out of the costume's head very well, and another woman dressed up in pajamas resembling something a small child might wear, complete with a bottom flap, which had unbuttoned and fallen open. The pounding beat of techno dance music was reverberating off the walls, some women were dancing and some foam rubber balls were being tossed around the room.

As she led Beef into the house, Berry had to raise her voice to compete with the noisy party, "What's this I hear about a gay holiday celebration that turned into a near riot in the city?"
"Near riot? From what I've been able to gather, mostly a near nothing," answered Beef, "Probably just some queens getting a little too much holiday spirit under their belts and started dancing in the street. I went to bed early that night and missed whatever it was."

Snippets of lively conversations drifted from the crowd.
"…the new temp came to see me so she could let me know that she thought we had lesbians working in the office. I told her to let me know immediately when she thought she found any."
"…our Ms. Vicious, the receptionist, took the day off and while she was gone the carpet cleaners moved her desk. When they did, one of her desk drawers opened up and Walgreen’s fell out. That woman had more uppers and downers in her desk than a roller coaster, and most of the prescriptions weren't even made out to her. Our manager took the pills and left a note in the drawer saying, see me, we need to call the Betty Ford clinic."
"…Then, really loud so the whole office hears, she says, 'Are you having one of your moments? I've heard about your moments. Is this one of your moments?'"
"…I thought I was having a really good day until I met with a client and complemented her, telling her what lovely and provocative earrings she was wearing. She gave me a really irritated look and said, 'That's my phone".
"…I asked her why she hadn't submitted her parts of the report yet. She tells me that she works better in a mostly male environment. So I told her that since none of the rest of us were planning to get a sex change operation, she better get cracking."

Berry finally gave up on trying to have a conversation with Matson in the foyer, competing with the noisy din of the party, also finding the occasional foam balls bouncing off her head a distraction. She led the private investigator into the sunroom she called her study and closed the doors, which muffled the sound.

"Thankfully, Bobbi and I only have a party like this once a year, so the neighbors seem to tolerate it," reported Berry. "If we get too loud, all that happens is that the lady who lives next door will stand in her driveway and stare at our house. She always wears the same bathrobe and pink fuzzy slippers, and if the weather's wet, she'll wear galoshes. The middle aged guy who lives catty corner across the street will stand in his picture window and watch our house, but other than that, no one complains."

"Some of the ladies this year wanted to hire a stripper. The stripper they wanted to hire is noted for her ability to spin a tassel on one of her boobies in counter clockwise direction, while spinning the other boobie in a clockwise direction…and she's also noted for the rpms at which she can spin her tassels. A truly amazing and talented woman. However, when Bobbi heard of the stripper idea, she put the damper on the whole thing. She was afraid that someone would leave the drapes open and the guy across the street would see the whole thing, have a stroke and paramedics would have to peel him off his picture window. Oh well."

"It seems like there always ends up being something unexpected and exciting that happens during one of our pajama parties," added Berry.
"Unexpected…how so?" asked Beef.
"Oh…one year a piece of construction equipment left on the front lawn of a house being remodeled down the street caught fire, lots of flames, looked worse than it was…fire trucks all over the place. Then a couple of years ago, a garter snake got in the house somehow. I ended up standing on the living room sofa with a bunch of other slightly inebriated women screaming like a bunch of sillies. Bobbi, of course, took a picture of us on the sofa; we looked like that picture of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Then she just grabbed the snake and released it outside. Things like that just give me willies, but those critters, snakes, spiders and moths don't bother her at all. Bobbi had a ton of prints made of that photo, wouldn't you know."

"I was going to discuss some information that came into my possession with you," revealed Matson, "but well, tonight's probably not the right time, it can probably wait until after the holidays…it would be best if I verified the information first anyway."
"Whatever," responded Berry, taking another sip of her cocktail, "just give me a call when you're ready."

"Well…" said Matson, reaching into jacket pocket; "Here's the main reason I wanted to make the trip down here. The check for your services in Randy's case. Thought it might be nice for you to have some extra cash flow right smack dab in the middle of the holidays. Let me know if you have any more expenses and I'll get another check off to you. I've sort of kept this from Randy, but that little guy's got more friends than he realizes. I had a number of people who wanted to give money to help with the expenses in his case. And plus…" Beef put the package on Berry's desk, "Here's my Christmas present to you and Bobbi, and it’s sort of a collaboration from a couple of businesses in my building and myself."
Berry carefully opened the package with curiosity.
"It's a lipstick lesbian Barbie doll, from Minerva's shop," said Matson, "she told me somebody in San Francisco makes them."
"Oh, she's magnificent, just beautiful," cried Berry, peering through the cellophane window of the boxed up doll, "Bobbi will just love her."
"In the envelope taped to the box you'll a gift certificate for a nice formal dinner at the Ruby Slipper," added Beef, "and I added the two theater tickets for a show downtown. I know with some of the issues you've been having with your mother and so on…that it might be nice for you and Bobbi to have a nice evening on the town."
"Well bless your little private investigator heart," said Berry, kissing Matson on the cheek, "Bobbi and I could really do with some rest and relaxation."
"How is your mother doing, by the way?" asked Beef.
A very serious look came to Berry's face. "Well, you know… It's just a one-day at a time sort of thing. The doctors keep telling me that Alzheimer's is a progressive illness and they're limited as to what they can do. I was also told that, as a care giver, I'm supposed to be aware of my own needs…watch my stress levels, realize there's just so much I can do." Berry shook her head. "Whatever. It's like gradually watching someone go away without physically leaving." Berry paused again. "Earlier this week, mother was having a hard time remembering who I was." Berry paused again; sucking on her bottom lip, then quickly took a sip of her drink and changed the subject.

"Actually…" confided Berry, sighing, "I'm quite happy that this whole business with Randy is easing off. For a while there, things really seemed to be getting out of hand. The threats, the phone calls, emails and so on…were getting a bit old. And just so much of it was irrational. For instance, I got a phone call from some very agitated woman who wanted to let me know that she and her friends were prepared to form a protective guard around their local day care center in case we homosexuals tried to storm the building, trying to get in to molest the kids. I told her to go refill her prescription. Then, one day when I went in to my office I found all these storage-moving pods arranged across the entrance to our building. When I asked who in the building was moving, it turned out no one was moving. In response to bomb threats, building management had rented the pods to place them across the entrance to prevent someone from driving a truck bomb into our building. Amazing, simply amazing. Then I had to get my windshield repaired because somebody threw a concrete block on it. You know how long it takes to get a windshield repaired? Forty-seven minutes. Ten minutes to actually replace the window and thirty-seven minutes for the repairman to talk to his girlfriend on his cell phone.

That whole business of having that little girl dress up like some miniature whore and proposition Randy on the street, that has got to be a monumental case of what were they thinking. I don't even want to try to get into the mind of whoever thought that one up. I can't begin to comprehend the mindset that comes from, what…did they think there are pre-school prostitutes hanging out on the streets, or they were actually going to seduce our Randy with some little girl? I can't imagine what sort of confusion they've put in that little girl's mind. Thankfully, your video brought a very bright and glaring spotlight on whatever is going on with those women and that little girl."

"Oh… and while I'm thinking of it," added Berry, "I've got a couple of gifts for you and Randy." Berry walked over to a leaded glass cabinet and, stooping down, opened the wooden doors at the bottom and retrieved a couple of wrapped gifts. "Go ahead, open yours," she said, pushing one of the packages towards Beef. Matson quickly removed the holiday wrapping. "I had a couple of caps, black corduroy, embroidered with your agency's name on them, one for you and one for Randy."
Matson picked up one of the caps, marveling at it. "Way too excellent," he exclaimed, "This'll be awesome for field work. Don't know if I'll be able to get Randy to wear his…he tends to be kind of shy about stuff like this, but I'll work on him."
"Speaking of Randy," added Berry, "His gift is a signed set of Patricia Nell Warren's Front Runner Trilogy. She graciously donated a signed set to a fundraiser I was involved with some years ago and gave an extra-signed set to me. I'd like Randy to have it…I wanted him to have something extra special and fine to help offset what has probably been a miserable holiday for him so far. I'll leave your gifts here in my study, don't forget to take it with you when you leave, of course, you're such a stickler for detail, I know you won't."

Berry wanted Beef to chat with Bobbi and to have something to eat and drink before he left. Berry opened her study doors and the cacophony of the party poured in.

"I should warn you that Bobbi's just a bit stressed out. All the preparation for the party, you know, plus some things did not go right, my mother's been a handful this week, our houseguest, Sheila, been getting under Bobbi's skin a bit and some of our guests have decided they needed to get on her back as well. On top of that, Bobbi's been sucking down the coffee trying to get everything done, with the end result being that she's a bit too wired. My strategy is to wean her away from the coffee and onto something with alcoholic spirits in it. So if she's a bit short with you…it has nothing to do with you. I'm just trying to get her to realize that the party's going wonderful, everybody's having tons of fun…she just needs kick back and enjoy it herself with a hot toddy or a spiced wine."

On their way to the kitchen, through the noisy living and dining rooms, Matson noticed Berry's mother, quietly sitting in a chair in the living room, dressed plainly in a house dress, a slightly confused, though mostly vacant expression on her face. The detective noticed that they passed the woman; she made no acknowledgement of Berry. Matson also noticed two women sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room, playing with a young child who seemed to be in awe of all the costumed grown-ups around him.

Berry and Matson found Bobbi in the kitchen surrounded by a number of other women. Bobby was dressed in a slinky and stunning silver gown glittering with sequins, however, looking fatigued and frazzled as she tried to deal with the requests of the other women.
"Bobbi…" called out Berry, "look who's here."
"Oh, hi Lynn…" Bobbi flashed a gentle smile towards Matson, and then her attention was directed back towards some trays of food, while the other women in the room wanted to exchange greetings with the detective. Berry introduced Matson to the women in the kitchen and to one young woman who was preparing to open the refrigerator.
"That's Sheila Levy," informed Berry, "she's our house guest from New York. You've talked with her on the phone. Sheila is helping us understand the concept of being eaten out of house and home."
Sheila smiled, waved and turned her attention back towards the refrigerator and began digging around in it, much to the dismay of Bobbi. Another woman was pulling some dishware from a kitchen cabinet.
"No, these plates will be fine," the woman said to Bobbi, "no need to pull out your finest china for us. Whatever you use everyday is fine with me, if all these little chips and dings on the plates don't bother you they won't bother me." The woman headed back towards the living room with the plates.
"Meow?" asked Bobbi, turning towards Berry.
"Meow." affirmed Berry.

The other women in the kitchen turned their attention back towards Bobbi gathering trays of appetizers from her, while Bobbi at the same time, was trying to restrain Sheila Levy from raiding the refrigerator. One of the women called out to Beef Matson.
"You really need to sample some of Bobbi's appetizers before you go," advised the woman. "Whatever she makes is pure heaven, but if she offers you some of her jalapeno popcorn…" A gale of giggles arose from the women in the kitchen. "Make sure you pass on the jalapeño popcorn," continued the woman, "unless you want to have a very long and interesting drive back to the city." The women continued to giggle, with Bobbi lifting her eyes to the top of her head, looking as if she was about to shoot steam out of her ears.

"Oh, her jalapeño flavored five alarm popcorn," squealed another woman. "Not something you want to make when you have a houseful of women and your house only has two bathrooms." The giggles began to turn into laughter. "Not that it wasn't tasty…" explained one woman, "it was salty and buttery with a bit of a tang to it. It's just that after you ate a bunch of it, you realized that someone had just laid some land mines in your digestive tract." Matson was left with a perplexed expression on his face while the women howled. "It's like this, honey…" explained one woman sipping on a highball, "One year Bobbi experimented and come up with some jalapeño flavored and spiced up popcorn. Was like having a weapon of mass destruction hidden in your lower G.I. tract. You're suddenly repeating like a howitzer. Everybody gobbled up tons of the stuff…then, well. Let me tell you, kid, the lines very quickly formed at the bathrooms." "Yes," added another woman, "We were even thinking of hanging sheets for privacy screens around the bushes in the backyard." "It wasn't that bad," complained Bobbi. "We're only teasing…" countered one of the women, "You should be proud of yourself, inventing an instant cure for constipation. Have some of Bobbi's jalapeño popcorn and you're regular with a bang!" Bobbi sauntered over to the sliding glass door in her clinging silver gown. "I'm going down to the basement to get a case of soda," she opened the sliding glass door, "Sorry, but we have an old house and the entrance to our basement is in the backyard." Bobbi slammed the sliding glass door behind her. "Oops," said one of the women, "I guess we went a bit too far."

A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST:Hurt, angry and over-stressed, Bobbi leaves for the basement.

"There is such a thing as too much teasing, you know," replied Berry, "She's been working very hard to put the party together, mostly by herself. You'd be hard pressed to find someone else who can do what Bobbi does as well as she does it."
The other women looked a bit guilty and began leaving the kitchen. "We only tease her because we love her," said one of the women.
"Bobbi just needs a little time to herself and she'll be back upstairs," assured Berry.
"Oh dear, I'm afraid they pushed her a bit too far. Bobbi will sit in the basement for awhile and sulk," Berry confided to Matson, "After a while she'll cool off, come back upstairs and be as good as new. Though I may need to go downstairs and help her with that case of soda."

Berry folded her arms watching Sheila continue to explore the refrigerator. "You know," she addressed Sheila, "There's a woman in my office who has an appetite just like yours. She's four months pregnant."
Sheila continued her searching on the lower shelves of the refrigerator and then suddenly froze. She turned with a look of alarm on her face. "Oh, no, no, no," she exclaimed, "Moi…moi? Don't even think that. Like I mean I would have to had to have done something to cause that…and I'm pretty sure I would remember that." Sheila turned back into the refrigerator and grabbed a couple of platters, then balancing the platters, headed towards the living room. "I'm not that way at all…you can see what a rail I am. It's just that I don't normally get to eat this gourmet, your Bobbi's top in her class as far as goodie making goes."

The many distractions and the noise from the party made it difficult to have a conversation with Berry in the kitchen. At one point, someone increased the volume of the stereo so that the beat of the techno music was pounding on the walls. Berry walked to the kitchen doorway and requested the volume be turned down. "All right, you munchkins, please…our neighbors. We need to keep the volume below that of a rocket launch." The volume was decreased and then a couple of foam rubber balls bounced off Berry's head. She picked up one of them, tossed it back towards the living room and then stood near the stove, out of reach of any projectiles thrown from the dining room.

As noise and conversation from the living room became even louder, Matson casually walked over to the sliding glass door, doing his automatic private investigator scan of the back yard. "Well, before the weather gets any worse," he commented, zipping up his jacket a bit, "I suppose I should be heading back to the city…"
Suddenly there was a loud bang, accompanied before and after by yells and screams.
"Oh, good grief…what now?" asked Berry, alerted, "So help me, if they've broken something, Bobbi's just going to have a fit."
A chubby woman barged into the kitchen.
Berry Starr identified the woman, surprise in her voice, "Bessie?"
And Bessie was holding a gun.
"Oh for Pete everlovin' sakes," muttered Beef.
Bessie looked at Matson. "Going so soon?" she questioned, "Why, I wouldn't think of it. My little party's just beginning."
Berry looked over her old, if not obnoxious, friend in disbelief. Bessie was dressed simply in jeans, a shirt and a plain winter jacket with white tennis shoes. Bessie's complexion seemed to be off color, almost yellowish and her skin was very, very shiny, as she was sweating terribly, obviously not from the temperature on this chilly winter's night. An odd thought suddenly came to Berry's mind as she gazed at Bessie, that for a large woman, she certainly had tiny feet. Unbelievably, Bessie kept waving a shiny revolver back and forth at her and Matson.
"I don't like this forest…" muttered Beef quietly to himself, "its dark and creepy…"
"Well, well, well…" continued Bessie, " the gang's all here. Both Berry and Beef. Saves me a trip. Only…Beef fag Matson, where's that little child molester employee of yours? What's his name…Randy? It would be nice to have him around so I could blow the top of his blond fag head off so the problem of him molesting kids would be solved forever."

A gasp went up from the women gathered at the doorway. Beef Matson suddenly felt an overwhelming current of rage that he quickly suppressed.
"She shot Sheila…" announced one of the women in the doorway, "Sheila tried to stop her."
Berry attempted to assert control over the situation. "Sheila," Berry yelled out, "Are you okay?"
Sheila Levy poked her head into the doorway, looking extremely pale and holding her right arm, which was soaked in blood from the shoulder down. "I'm okay," Sheila said with a rasp, "Guess this woman just likes to throw her weight around."
Controlled alarm raced through Berry, but she calmly instructed the women to have Sheila sit on the dining room floor and have someone help her with the bleeding. Berry turned to Bessie; "We need to call for some help for her."
Bessie responded shrilly, "Nobody calls anybody, nobody leaves. I don't wanna hear no cell phones. No cell phones! Turn off your cell phones. If I hear somebody using a cell phone, you're gonna get it too. Sorry, that's the way things are. I'm in charge here."
"You know," Berry replied to Bessie, "you're really being a bitch."
"I don't give a crap what you think…" responded Bessie, "I don't give a crap what any of you dykes think. If anybody tries to leave, I'm gonna pop 'em and I don't care who it is."

In the reflection of the glass of a framed print on the wall directly behind Bessie, Matson could see the two young women he had seen earlier with a child wrapping their little one in a blanket, preparing to leave. Matson purposely changed his posture shuffling his feet loudly and Bessie turned her attention to him, away from the dining room and living room.
"Don't…do anything," she warned.
Matson waved his arms in the air in front of him, purposely focusing Bessie's attention to his hands. "I'm not…doing…anything," Matson laughed, waving his right arm even more, causing Bessie to direct her gaze further away from the doorway. Matson looked directly at Bessie, trying not to focus any stare into the reflection of the living room on the framed print behind her, lest Bessie realize the detective was observing something else. He could see one woman had covered her child in a blanket and was quietly heading for the front door; however, her partner seemed to be looking for something on a chair. "C'mon, c'mon," thought Matson and he watched the reflection and at the same time stared into the somewhat disoriented face of the woman with the gun, "Whatever it is, forget about it. Get your bods out the damned door."
"I was told to watch out for you…you and your little tricks," continued Bessie. "You're supposed to be full of them."
In the reflection behind Bessie, saw that the woman carrying the child suddenly grabbed her partner and quickly pulled her to the front door, both slipping out without the door making a sound.

Matson smiled and relaxed his arms at his sides, letting Bessie focus her attention elsewhere and off of him, so the detective could plot a strategy. The private investigator's initial assessment of the situation was that it was not very good. If he were closer to Bessie, he could immediate try to disarm her, forcing the woman to point the weapon to the floor, so that if it discharged, no one would be hit. As it was, he was too far on the other side of the room, by the time he got to Bessie, she could shoot him full of holes. The other problem was Berry Starr. She was standing in a corner with no exit route. While the women standing in the kitchen entrance could scatter to other rooms, Berry would have no place to run. She was a sitting duck. Matson needed some time to figure something out. On the plus side, Bessie seemed to be enjoying the fact that she was now the center of attention. Matson remembered Berry telling him how much Bessie liked to talk. Maybe that's what she would do now and Beef would have some extra time to figure out a way to disarm her.

A satisfied grin came to Bessie's face; thanks to her shiny revolver, she was now the very center of attention, everyone would have to pay strict attention to her. However, as Bessie attempted to speak, her body seemed to be stimulated to the extent that momentarily her mind could not focus, and all she could manage was to shake and make grunts and squeals. Bessie's obviously strung out condition disgusted and further angered Berry; she bravely made mocking comments.
"What is it girl? What are you trying to tell us? Did Timmy fall in the well?"
Some giggles erupted from the women collected at the doorway.
Bessie suddenly collected her wits and yelled out, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Waving the gun at Berry, the woman addressed her, "You always think you're so damned smart. Well, now it looks like you're going to have to listen to me, doesn't it? You had years and years to listen to what I had to say, but none of you would, so now it's come down to this and you only have yourselves to blame."

As Bessie continued her rant, Matson kept evaluating the situation and scanning the room for possible solutions. There was a freestanding wooden shelving behind Bessie. It might be possible for him to reach the shelving and push it down on Bessie. The falling shelving and contents would knock her to the floor and prevent her from aiming her weapon at anyone, giving the detective time to disarm her. However, Bessie's attention would need to be directed away from him. Perhaps, the more she directed her speech at the women in the doorway, the more distracted she would become.

"It's not about me, it's about you."

"For years, I tried to tell you how wrong this lifestyle was, how you shouldn't live this way, how you should turn away from the gay lifestyle…"
One of the women in the doorway spoke up, "What about you? I know you've been living with a woman for years."
Bessie shook in irritation. "This has nothing to do with the way I live. It's about you having responsibility for your own lives. It's not about me, it's about you. It's about facing up to your responsibilities to be what society, your parents, especially your mother, want you to be. It's about finding getting a nice husband so your mothers will have a handsome son-in-law to show off. You don't have to be gay…you can have a nice strong husband to provide emotional strength for you. If your mother wants you to have a full quiver of children, you should have a full quiver of children, no questions asked. So she can have a lot of photos of grandchildren to show off."
"How many children do you have?" demanded another woman, in open rebellion.
"There you go again, avoiding responsibility for yourself," Bessie barked again, "This is not about me it's about you."
"You're acting like you think being gay is a choice."
"That's not the point," snapped Bessie, "I don't know if it's a choice or not, I do know you have a responsibility to suppress it and fit in to society. You must realize that you're inferior to straight women; you must become subservient to them. You must completely forget about your silly, stupid gay rights and gay marriage and instead think about how you can serve straight women, focus on their needs, help them find nice men. A man who will help them through life, a nice man to hold their hand when they walk down the street."
Disgruntled grumbling began to emerge from the crowd of women.

"Oh, you think you are all so right and correct and special," retorted Bessie. "Well, you're not. While you all were trying to be so gay special and so gay proud, flaunting an aberrant lifestyle, I was working with women who are normal and in the right and providing them with all kinds of information about you. Your recreational drug use, your child custody disputes, where you work, what organizations you're involved with, everything. And you know what…? They like me and they don't like you. They make sure I have a nice job and favors, while some you have to struggle to get along. That's because they like me and they don't like you. They don't like fags. In fact, they tell their kids to beat up on fag kids. If you feel you have to be a lesbian, then you must devote yourself to serving straight women, that the only purpose a lesbian can have."

"That's it…just keep on talking to the nice ladies," thought Matson, intending for Bessie to become completely distracted, "Completely forget about me."

"Look at you all," Bessie continued ranting, "grown women running around in silly costumes, indulging in your lifestyle. Don't you realize how much this behavior is probably due being molested as a child, probably by your parents?"
"Did your parents molest you?" came a retort from the crowd.
"My parents did not molest…" squealed Bessie, "This is about you, don't try dragging me into this. Most of you were probably molested as children. I know people who could help you remember your suppressed memories. A child predator molested you and now probably most of you are predators yourself. I bet if any of you were given electro shock therapy and had your childhood memories of being molested burned away, you wouldn't be gay anymore."
"Well, if we're all predators, then you must be one, too," suggested a woman in the crowd.
Bessie was aghast at the suggestion, "Absolutely not. I was always working to help young women avoid lesbianism. In the town in Oregon that I grew up in, the older women would send young women they thought were having problems with lesbianism to me. I would tell these women that their gayness was like a demon they had to seal up in a coffin. Whenever they would think lesbian thoughts I told them they should just think of pounding another nail into the coffin lid to seal the gay demon inside. Keep pounding those nails and silence the lesbian demon. Oh, no, no, no. I helped keep women from becoming predators.

Even if you don't physically touch a child, you're ruining children by your examples. Just look at it, it's all over the place, demands for gay marriage, gays on TV and in the movies. It's you…all of you, just by example, how you live your lives…you're turning children into homosexuals. They see your example, and they decide it's alright to live the gay life. Don't you see how else you're being bad examples? Women are genetically made to need a strong man in their lives they can rely on. They need that strong man to make them feel secure, that's how things are supposed to be. They need to have a man who will crawl inside their heads and fix their minds. If a woman doesn't feel that need to have a strong man to guide her, well, that's because she has some genetic flaw. The correct role models we should be providing to the children are that of women who have strong men at their sides. You've got to realize that choosing another woman for your life partner means something is terribly wrong with you, your genetics are screwed up."

"Just keep on talking," Matson again thought, "Keep turning and talk to the ladies standing in the dining room."

Bessie observed that her captive audience was simply not receptive to her ideas. "Obviously, you're all too infected by this lifestyle to have any sense of what is right and normal. To even see that it's just a product of being molested as a child or caused by genetic flaws. You don't even care when that this private investigator's assistant has been molesting and brutally raping dozens of children…"
Berry spoke up, "That's a crock. There was only one accusation, and that's be discredited."
"What do you care about fags…?" Bessie fired back, "They're just a bunch of hairy little apes who like to dance around with their shirts off. How gross. If they aren't taking care of women…what use are they? Just disgusting, hairy apes. If you women really wanted to do something, you'd go to gay bars and demand that gay men have sex with you. At least you'd be helping them turn on to women. As far as I'm concerned, AIDS didn't get rid of enough fags. Gay men should be forced into being perfect companions for women, that's the only use I can see for them. Maybe gay bars could be turned into brothels for normal straight women." Bessie rattled her head proudly as if she were leading a parade.
Berry didn't bother trying to further respond to Bessie's diatribe, she just shook her head.

"Don't look back at me, I'm not important…forget about me," Matson addressed Bessie mentally, "Devote all of your attention to the women, that's who you want to preach to."

Pausing for a couple of dramatic seconds, Bessie turned to address the women standing at the kitchen doorway. "I have been chosen to make a dramatic example, I've been sent here to do some pruning of some bad examples and help stem the tide of homosexuality. I have been sent to terminate Berry Starr and Beef Matson to show what happens to people who defend pedophiles. Getting rid of these two will be a signal, that the tide of homosexuality can and will be reversed." A gasp went up from the crowd of women, Berry Starr took a deep breath with her eyes widening and Beef Matson made an involuntary swallow.
"Look, you…you…passive aggressive nazi. Don't you care about anyone else?" protested Berry.
"The only thing that matters is that I know I'm right and that I believe in what I'm doing." Bessie stated coldly.

A deathly silence filled the room. A smug expression came to Bessie's face as she peered at the women standing in the doorway, each individual having an expression of fear. Bessie became the schoolgirl bully, enjoying the attention and the amount of distress she was inflicting. To her irritation, a woman in the crowd spoke up.
"You can't hope to get away with this…you're going to be caught. It's pointless."
"I will have done a necessary thing, eliminating two threats to society," answered Bessie, "and whether you can comprehend it or not, a lot of people will thank me for this, this will help reverse the homosexual tide."

A slight grin came to Bessie's face and she lifted the gun impulsively, pointed it at Berry's head and fired. There were screams from the onlookers mixed in with the loud bang and the only thought that had time enough to come to Berry's mind was, "I'm shot." Instead, a plume of plaster dust spurted from the wall a couple feet away from the lawyer's head, where the bullet hit the wall slightly below a little shelf. Berry suddenly realized that she felt no impact and swallowed hard as she saw the dust sail out into room air. Bessie's head shook in brief shock at her terribly bad aim. Matson was also amazed, from his perspective; the shot was dead on, though he was very much grateful that it had been a miss. Matson knew that Bessie's action of casually firing off the shot at Berry meant that she was no longer satisfied with merely delivering a windy lecture and that he no longer had the luxury of waiting for an opening when the gun toting woman might be distracted enough so he could make his move. He needed to act now before Bessie impulsively fired off another shot, and the next shot would probably not mean a lucky miss, this time Berry would take a bullet. He was going to have to make a dive at Bessie, and take her down that way. He knew he would take a shot as a result, how serious the wound would be would be anyone's guess. Bessie had turned away slightly from Matson; she was raising her gun and grinning, liking the reaction from the crowd at the door.

A PERSON IN A POSITION OF TRUST: Beef Matson prepares to tackle Bessie, knowing he will probably be shot in the process.

Bessie began to point the gun directly at Matson. " 'spose I should start from this end of the room."

Bessie turned away a bit more, apparently trying to decide whether Berry or another woman standing in the doorway would be her next victim. Matson firmed his shoes on the floor, bent his legs slightly and nearly shot himself forward when he saw a light colored object hurl to the floor almost directly in front of him. A small porcelain figure of an angel fell to floor from a shelf just above where the bullet had entered the kitchen wall. The shot must have set the figurine wobbling and it had finally worked itself to the edge and fell to the floor, making a loud cracking sound, shattering into a few large pieces and many smaller ones. This startled Bessie and she flailed her arms about like a waterfowl taking flight. Matson immediately abandoned his assault plans as Bessie quickly turned around, staring at him, shaking mightily. Matson was hoping that the woman might just now have a stroke or a heart attack. Instead, Bessie began to laugh when she saw the broken angel on the floor and looked up at the shelf above the bullet hole. "I guess I did hit something," she uttered with a high-pitched giggle. "My aim's not so bad after all." Bessie began to point the gun directly at Matson. " 'spose I should start from this end of the room."

As Matson sighed and shook his head slightly at the unfortunate predicament, there was a commotion at the dining room doorway. When Beef directed his stare to the doorway, Bessie quickly turned and pointed the .38 caliber weapon in that direction. This time, Berry Starr's mother poked her head through the crowd of women and then pushed them aside and walked into the kitchen. Berry's mother seemed to have a fatigued, yet focused expression on her face, as she moved forward in a stiff, almost robotic gait. Bessie stared at the woman in disbelief, pointing the gun at her, yet Berry's mother ignored Bessie. Berry's mother calmly went to a cabinet behind Bessie, opened the doors and began going through the pots and pans.
Berry was almost in tears; still she calmly addressed her mother. "Mother…we can make something for you later on. Please, mom now is not the time. Later on. Just go back and sit in the dining room."
Berry's mother ignored her and continued to busily rummage around in the cabinet, the pots making clattering sounds.
"See…see," said Bessie, apparently delighted at the sight of Berry's mother, pointing at her with the gun, pointing out Berry's mother to her captive audience. "That's what happens to you when you lead a promiscuous lifestyle. Everybody talks about the great lawyer Berry Starr, but nobody mentions what happened to her slutty mother."
Berry stiffened her jaw and shot a steely glare towards Bessie, who continued to prattle on.
"Oh yeah, everybody talks about the great la-de-da lesbian lawyer Berry Starr, but they all keep quiet about her mother's history of booze, drugs and a loose sexual lifestyle. And being exposed to that lifestyle probably turned Berry into a lesbian. That's something Berry wants to be proud of and something kids should look up to?" Bessie pointed her gun again at Berry's mother. "Nobody wants to mention her mother, especially now, that she's burned out from her lifestyle. This is what's going to happen to you. This is what's going to happen to you."

"She has no idea of what's going on. She won't even realize that you're…dead."

"And did Berry take the responsibility of taking care of her mother? No, her mother was living on her own, until just now, probably because her mother's gotten too crazy, and Berry probably doesn't want to be embarrassed by her. Now she's taking care of her, just to avoid the bad publicity. I took care of my mother. I watched out for my mother. I made my mother sell her house and move in with me. I took charge of her life. I made sure I was involved in every little bit of my mother's life. I took command of every little detail of my mother's life and I planned out and controlled every bit of her daily life for her. And I stayed devoted to her on that level until the day she committed suicide."

The rattling from the cabinet of pots and pans stopped and Berry's mother pulled out large cast iron frying pan, looking quite pleased at her choice. The woman then stood up and began to walk nonchalantly in the direction of the stove, on the other side of the kitchen, near where Berry was standing.
"Mother…" Berry again pleaded, "please…"
"Let her…" commanded Bessie, "She has no idea of what's going on. She won't even realize that you're…dead."

Bessie decided once again to take aim at Beef Matson and turned towards him as Berry's mother walked past her. However, Berry's mother suddenly stopped next to Bessie, the confused smile on her face changing to an expression of solid determination. She quickly lifted the cast iron frying pan up, swinging and slamming it mightily into the side of Bessie's head, making a sound not unlike that of a church bell falling out of its tower. An expression instantly formed on Bessie face, making her look like a chipmunk attempting yodeling. The gun toting woman dropped her immediate plan to shoot Beef Matson and swung around to face the older woman with the frying pan.
"You skanky, wasted old bitch…" she screamed into the face of Berry's mother. Berry's mother immediately swung the business end of the heavy frying pan into Bessie's face, the tip of Bessie's nose remaining flat for an instant, then popping out again. In pain, Bessie let out a low-pitched sound similar to a heavy chair being dragged across a wooden floor. Bessie immediately decided that the next person she was going to shoot was Berry's mother. She tried raising her arm holding the gun, but something was wrong, she couldn't raise her arm and a great pain was now shooting through her arm, starting at her elbow. Suddenly the woman remembered that Beef Matson had been standing behind her and she quickly turned to see where he was, but it was too late, Matson was already on top of her, grabbing her, it was he who was preventing her arm from going up, he was pinching nerves in her elbow that was causing excruciating pain in her arm. The private investigator was now also delivering sharp chops to her arm and banging it against his knee to get her to release her weapon.

A couple of women quickly grabbed Berry's mother and hustled her away into the dining room. "Berry!" yelled Matson, "Get your tush outside…now…go!" Berry quickly ran to the sliding glass door. The door resisted her attempts to open it for the first brief instant, then it slid open and she ran out into the dark backyard. "Everyone else…away from the doorway…go…go!" yelled Matson again in staccato bursts. The women quickly moved away from the kitchen doorway into the darker dining room and living room and looked on from a distance. Others ran outside to the front lawn, the sound of the front door banging. "Damn…woman," uttered Beef as he tried to dislodge the gun from the screaming and swearing Bessie's hand, "You are one irritating…individual." Bessie found her hand to be nearly paralyzed from Matson's pinch on her nerves and the detective's continued chopping on the woman's forearm made the gun fall to the floor with a loud rattle. "Bastard! Bastard!" she screamed. Beef quickly kicked the weapon to the side and it slid along the floor, stopping about four feet away. "Bastard!" screamed Bessie again. Beef quickly released his grip on the woman, moving away to retrieve the weapon. As he did, he spun around and flung a kick at the pursuing Bessie, hitting her in the thigh and pushing her back a foot or so. She continued to approach, her hands stretched out in front of her, a total lack of sanity in her face. Unbelievably, her voice kept getting shriller, like someone torturing the strings of a violin. "Faggot bastard!" she screamed.

"At least you're finding more variety in your vocabulary," Matson commented out loud as he snagged the gun from the floor, slid a bit on the tile floor and spun around once more to face the approaching assailant. "Bastard, bastard, bastard!", squealed out of Bessie like a pipe organ, her eyes wide and white, with her pupils looking like dark dots. Her shiny, glossy face had an expression that showed only mindless anger. Still, Matson tried to reason with Bessie as he now pointed the gun at her. "I want to kill you," screamed Bessie, "Why won't you let me kill you? I'm supposed to kill you! I need to kill you!" Matson held the gun firmly, pointing it at the approaching woman, shaking his head, "I really, really don't like shooting people, but I have…and I will…"
Matson suddenly looked behind Bessie to see a great movement coming through the kitchen doorway. Now that he had disarmed Bessie, the women who had retreated to the other rooms, were now rapidly streaming into the kitchen, approaching Bessie from behind. A number of hands grabbed Bessie's shoulders, two pairs of hands grabbed her hair, and other hands grabbed her arms. Bessie was then rudely yanked back, causing her to fall backwards onto the floor, making the sound identical to several sacks of potatoes falling. Then, woman after woman, they began to leap upon Bessie, falling on her until only the sight of Bessie's wriggling lower legs and tennis shoe clad feet were visible. Panting, Beef Matson lowered the weapon. As he observed the sight of Bessie's wriggling feet, a thought came into his mind, that for a big woman, Bessie certainly had tiny feet.

*********
"I want to go out there and just slap the crap out of that woman."

The passage of approximately forty-five minutes brought about a much more mellow scene to Berry and Bobbi's house and neighborhood. The weather had become wetter, with occasional drizzle switching back and forth into light rain. Flashing lights from police cars and rescue squads decorated the neighborhood. A next-door neighbor stood in her driveway observing, dressed in pajamas, a pink terry cloth bathrobe and galoshes. Bessie was safely packed into the back of a police cruiser where she continued to protest in her high pitched, squeaky voice that she had meant to do no one any harm, that some bad men had given her some bad drugs. In Berry and Bobbi's living room, an attractive, young, female police detective was taking witness accounts from the party goers, who were eagerly gathered around the woman, like girl scouts gathered for story telling at a campout. Two women were playing with their happily cooing baby on the living room floor. The hard pounding techno music was gone, replaced by easy listening holiday music, complementing the flickering Christmas lights.

In the kitchen, Beef Matson and Berry Starr were calmly nursing themselves with hot toddys, while Bobbi red-faced and wiping away an occasional tear, was still vocalizing her anger.
"That stupid, stupid woman…" growled Bobbi, "All the times we welcomed her into our house, our house…extended her our hospitality…this is how she repays us? Hurts our friends…" Bobbi looked up at Berry, "Tried to kill you…" Bobbi began to silently cry again while Berry massaged her shoulders.
"How's your leg?" asked Berry looking over to Beef, "You took quite a nasty fall."
"Don't worry, I bounced. Yeah, that was pretty dumb…" laughed Matson in a soft voice, "Long after everything was over and done with, I step on a piece of that broken porcelain figure and go sailing over a kitchen stool."
"You did let the paramedics let you check you over, like I told you to?" asked Berry.
"Yeah, " replied Matson, taking another sip of his hot toddy, "They wanted to because of my altercation with Bessie anyway. No problem because of her, but I'll probably end up with a bruise on my side because of the altercation with the stool."
Bobbi turned to Berry, "I was so stupid…I was sitting in the basement mad and sulking just because I thought you guys were insulting my cooking. I was so stupid…I was sitting down there while that Bessie was trying to hurt you."
"Bobbi…" said Beef Matson in a soft, masculine voice, "There was nothing you could have done if you were up here. When someone has a gun, there's not much you can do about it. The fewer people around, the better. Maybe fate, the universe, whatever…meant for you to be somewhere out of harm's way. "
Bobbi blew her nose delicately, "Well, Lynn, I'm glad that you were here, at least."
"Well, I'm glad that your mother was here, Berry," added Beef, "Where is she…does she remember what she did?"
"Mother's in my study. She's actually quite lucid about the whole experience. She heard the shot, saw Bessie pointing a gun at me and decided she needed to take her down. Dear mother! She went to sit in my study so she could calm down. She's in there with a cup of hot chocolate with the Lady Astrid in her lap. Astrid and her have become quite the pair of late."

"Ooh gawd, that Bessie", yelled out Bobbi again, "I want to go out there and just slap the crap out of that woman. What did she think she was going to accomplish by coming here and shooting people?"
"All Bessie managed to accomplish," observed Berry, "was to become a shining example of why blind obedience to hate mongering authority figures is such a bad idea. I mean, suppressing your own ability to make decisions as an adult in favor of being an obedient, co-dependent puppy makes you look awfully pathetic."
Berry began massaging Bobbi's shoulders more vigorously, "Come on, drink more of your hot toddy, all you're doing is sipping it."
"What did you hear when you were in the basement," asked Beef, "When did you realize that there might be something wrong?"
At Berry' insistence, Bobby swallowed more of the hot beverage and spoke. "It's pretty muffled down there. You can't hear distinct sounds. It was when Bessie fired the shot into the wall…that carried down into the basement, plus I heard the screams. I thought there had been an accident, like an electrical short. Then when I came up out of the basement and looked through the sliding glass doors and saw Bessie, and knew that we hadn't invited her, plus she's holding a gun on you and Berry, and I always thought she was a nutcase…well, I ran next door to Mrs. Webb's to call 911. "Mrs. Webb…" Berry informed Beef, "she's the pink terry cloth bathrobe with galoshes, you probably saw her standing outside."
"The police did get here pretty fast," commented Matson, "they were at the front door as soon as everyone piled on Bessie."
"Dottie and Elaine," said Berry, "they're the ones with the little baby boy, they snuck out just when Bessie came into the kitchen."
Matson smiled. "Elaine couldn't find her cell phone so they ran across the street to Mr. Campbell, he's the neighbor who likes to stand in his picture window. When he saw them come running to his house with the baby, he came running out to get them and then had his wife and daughter take them to a rear bedroom for safety in case there was any shooting, he then called he police and was waiting for them when they arrived.

"It's a shame your party was ruined," added Matson.
"Au contraire…my dear private investigator," responded Berry. "No one's left, everybody's going to stay overnight. I mean, with all the police around, where else could you be safer? The only thing is that it will be hard to top this next year."
Matson smiled, shook his head and took another sip of his hot toddy.
Bobbi continued to brood. "I can't get over that evil woman. How could she be that way? Everybody told me what she said. I just hate her…"
"You need another hot toddy," advised Berry, "This time with more brandy."
"I know what you're trying to do…" said Bobbi, looking up at Berry.
"Just exactly what am I trying to do, dear?"
"You're trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me."
"I should know by now that I could never put anything over on you, sweetie pie," said Berry kissing the top of Bobbi's head.
"You know what I want to do now?" invited Bobbi.
"What's that?" asked Berry, turning on the burner under a pot of water for the next round of hot toddys.
"I want to make up a batch of my jalapeno popcorn."
Berry gave Bobbi an odd look, "Dearest, the evening has been explosive enough."
"No, I want to make up a big batch of my jalapeño popcorn, right now."
"What, pray tell…is the reason for this sudden urgency?"
"So I can make up a big batch for Bessie to take with her…something she could munch on in jail."
"That would work…" Berry smiled wickedly.

Suddenly a bang filled the house, like someone had just hit the building with a log. "Uh-oh," alerted Matson, "I think we're about to go for a ride…" He gripped his chair and spread his legs out slightly to help anchor it. Sure enough, almost immediately, the room began to gently bounce, like a boat suddenly entering choppy water. A couple of cookbooks on the kitchen counter fell over on their sides. In about five seconds, the shaking stopped. Laughter and loud talk could be heard from the living room with someone yelling out, "Earthquake!".
"That is everlovin'…" Berry was going to swear, but she stopped herself, "…too much. That is really more than enough for one night. Thank you very much."
Matson chuckled, "You ladies really do go out of the way to put on a party. I mean the special effects and everything."
Bobbi took a sip from her cup and lifted her eyes up from the mug. "We try our best," she said dryly.

The trio sat for a while in the subdued lighting of the kitchen while Berry began fixing a new set of hot toddys. "By the way," added Matson, "How's your friend…what is her name, Levy…Sheila, doing?"
"Oh my gosh," exclaimed Bobbi, "I'm sitting here whining and I forgot all about Sheila. Did they take her to the hospital?"
"No…I don't think so," replied Berry, "Do you suppose she's still outside with the paramedics?" Berry yelled out, "Sheila? Has anyone seen Sheila? Come out, come out, wherever you are."
Grasping the doorway jamb, Sheila leaned into the kitchen, her left sleeve rolled up with her shoulder bandaged.
"Is it okay just to walk into your kitchen, or should I wear a helmet and crawl in on my belly? Is the wicked witch gone?"
"Oh Sheila…” gasped Bobbi, "You're okay, they didn't have to take you to the hospital?"
"For awhile there," replied Sheila, "I thought they were going to. They had me hooked up to an IV, kept yelling at me to stay awake. My shirt, my favorite one too, wouldn't you know, was soaked in blood. They even let one of your neighbors into the ambulance with me. I guess they thought he must have been my grandfather or something, because he kept trying to comfort me and tell me everything would be alright. Didn't even bother the paramedics that the old guy was sitting right next to me while they were working on me, as far as they were concerned, like he wasn't even there. Some goofy looking, chubby old guy with a red goatee and a derby hat…know who that is?
"Who knows…" responded Berry, "I've met more of my neighbors in the last half hour than I have in all the years we've lived here."
Sheila continued, "Then the van started shaking, the paramedics told me it was an earthquake…I asked them what's next? An alien invasion? Then right after that, the paramedics unhooked the IV, put some bandages on me and said I could go. They said I was just grazed by the bullet and not punctured. I thought the bullet went through one of my veins the way I was bleeding, but I guess it looked worse than it was. When the paramedics cleaned me up, the wound was on the top of my shoulder instead of under my arm. Even my shirt seemed to have almost no blood on it, almost as if somebody had cleaned it, but it still has a nasty rip in the arm, so it's ruined. Then the old guy with the derby hat told me that I should let you guys know how I am."

"Sorry about your shirt…and everything…" Bobbi began weeping again.
"Oh hon…" replied Sheila, "Don't worry, It's all water under the bridge. I'm gonna have some great stories to tell when I get back to New York. After what I've just been through tonight, I'll probably feel safer riding the subways. I even had a ringside seat watching our own Beefy Matson in action, disarming your nutty buddy, Bessie. I was on the floor in the dining room propped up against the armoire and I had a perfect view of everything. This guy's incredible, it was like watching one of those Asian action films."

Another figure appeared at the door, it was Berry's mother. She stood at the doorway, gently smiling. Matson had to do a double take, unlike the woman he had seen earlier, Berry's mother now had well coifed hair without any gray, her eyes had a glistening sparkle of awareness and instead of the simple house dress she was wearing earlier, she was now dressed in an elegant black evening gown, topped with a black shawl of lace, sparkling with gold and silver glitter. Looking very dignified and refreshed, Berry's mother spoke. "I thought I should check in to see how you weathered our little earthquake."
"Compared to everything else tonight, the earthquake was a breeze, mom. Hardly noticeable," answered Berry.
"Stupid Bessie…" muttered Bobbi.

"The very handsome gentleman. Still, I think you would look so much better with an equally handsome young man parked on your arm."

"Hmmm…Bessie," continued Berry's mother, "A pathetic, dysfunctional woman with a mommy fixation who I suspect still wants to be breast fed. Exhibiting such slavish loyalty to authority figures may be very quaint, but hardly makes for a successful adult."
"Hrr-rumph!" vocalized Bobbi in an unrestrained mutter, "Sounds like somebody with a prison matron fetish. Hopefully, that fantasy will become reality soon for Bessie."
Berry's mother continued, hardly pausing. "My daughter-in-law Bobbie has a degree in psychology and she would be able to explain Bessie's behavior better than I can. I only wish my daughter would exhibit the same skill in choosing her friends as she did in choosing her life partner."
Bobbi's eyes widened with surprise as she looked up at Berry's mother and choked slightly on her sip of hot toddy.
Matson continued to marvel at the stunning improvement in the appearance of Berry's mother, he kept glancing over at Berry and Bobbi to see what sort of reaction the two women had, but there was no surprise or shock in their faces. "I have to say, Mrs. Shelton," commented Beef Matson, "That you're looking incredibly well this evening…ahh…considering everything."
"Our Mr. Matson is so debonair, so lavish with his compliments, always the gentleman," replied Berry's mother. "The very handsome gentleman. Still, I think you would look so much better with an equally handsome young man parked on your arm."

Berry's mother smiled with a slightly fatigued look. "You'll have to excuse me, I'm afraid my little nap left me so very mellowed out, I'm just not the life of the party right now."
"None of us are, mom," replied Berry.
Berry's mom smiled wistfully and knowingly at her daughter. "Berry is my very wise child, indeed. I can see why see she choose that little sunroom as her office. It's a very calming place, very conducive to provocative dreams. It was so nice and cool in there, I was sitting in the chair at Berry's desk with Lady Astrid purring away in my lap and I was watching the rain dripping down on the windows, all twinkling from the glow from the Christmas lights and the police cars and then suddenly I was sitting in a chair in a much bigger dimly lit room, like at a low keyed cocktail party. A place halfway in shadow, halfway in light. A young woman was giving me an intense scalp massage, in fact, it hurt and I told her to stop, but she told me that it would do me a world of good and to just relax. The people I was with were showing me something like a video of my life and they were helping me edit it…take out whatever I didn't like from the past few years and then those years would be rerun with all the changes made. It was supposed to be something like a Christmas present to me…I have no idea who from though. They even gave me this gown so I would have something nice for my daughter's party. I didn't recognize any of the people in the room. Then when I said everything was okay with me, the people in my dream told me they were going to start to make all the changes, and that's when the room started shaking and I was woke up by the earthquake. I opened my eyes and saw a man standing next to me, smiling. I closed my eyes and when opened them again, he was standing outside looking in the windows. A man with kindly eyes, sort of old fashioned looking, with a red goatee, a derby and a three piece suit."
"Sounds like our neighbor again, " observed Berry, "I wonder if he's a stalker."
"Let's see…" mused Bobbi, "Elderly, kindly stalker versus Bessie with a .38 caliber gun. Elderly, kindly stalker…Bessie with gun. Elderly, kindly stalker…Bessie with gun. Okay, I prefer the elderly kindly stalker."

Bobbi fixed her mother-in-law a cup of tea and Berry's mother retired to the living room to give her testimony of the night's events to the police detective. Beef Matson began to question Berry Starr about her mother.
"When did your mother change into that gown?"
Berry paused a second, as if she couldn't come up with an answer. "Shortly after the police arrived…she…she wanted put the gown on so she would look nice. Yes, now I remember. I got things mixed up a bit, with all the police running around. Then I let her sit in my study away from all the commotion. It's a beautiful gown isn't, I picked it out at Tic and Tac's store when I picked out the outfits for Bobbi and myself."
"Your mother seems very lucid; I mean she is very, very, ah…with it. Does she have episodes like this where there is a rapid improvement?"
"What do you mean improvement?" asked Berry, "How so?"
"In her behavior…when she was talking to us just now."
"Mother's behavior? I didn't notice any change in her behavior."
Matson cocked his head, a bit confused by Berry's answer. "You told me earlier tonight that she was having problems remembering you."
Berry shot a quick glance at Bobbi and then looked back at Matson. "I don't remember saying anything like that to you at all. Mother's been perfectly fine now for quite some time, at least since we got her on treatment and it stopped the progression of Alzheimer's and began to reverse it."
Berry seemed deadly serious, but was she joking? Beef Matson glared at Berry Starr. "What treatment is there for Alzheimer’s? Last I heard it's incurable."
"Lynn Gordon…" Berry's voice was slightly annoyed, "Just about every time I've talked with you, you've asked about mother and I told you about her treatment and how she was progressing. You were even knew about the treatment for Alzheimer’s, the drugs used and so on." Matson looked perplexed. "I don't mean to be rude, Lynn, " said Berry, "but sometimes having a conversation with you is like reading the Scientific American. You have to admit you can be the ultimate techno geek sometimes."

"Somethin' about some compounds in Box Elder trees," continued Sheila, "They get some chemicals from 'em, it screws up the HIV viruses somehow…oh man, I don't know. I'm just not into that techno stuff." Sheila paused, to pull some silverware from a kitchen drawer. "You know, Mr. Matson, maybe you need a little vacation to relax from all this excitement, you should come to New York. I betcha we can get Mayor Fierstein to give you a key to the city." Matson froze, "Mayor who?" "Mayor Fierstein." "The mayor of New York City is…" Beef Matson stood like a child trying to remember the spelling of a word at a spelling bee, "The mayor of New York is…uh…uh…Harvey Fierstein." Matson marveled at this new bit of information, which suddenly formed in his memory.

Bobbi began to look extremely concerned, "You don't seem to remember any of this, do you?"
"I distinctly remember…" said Matson, suddenly realizing he couldn't distinctly remember, pausing, trying to sort his recollections, which seemed to be rapidly rearranging themselves.
"Lynn Gordon…" said Berry, a grave seriousness in her voice, "are you sure you're alright? You didn't bang your head on that stool or the floor when you fell."
"Oh yeah, Mr. Private Investigator, you really flew into that stool," added Sheila, "That was just about the time the paramedics were putting me on the stretcher. I was kind of woozy at the time but I remember you sailing through the air into the stool. I remember thinking, wow, this guy's incredible, and he can even fly, too. What…? I told you I was woozy."

"Wow…hmmm…all of a sudden I remember everything," revealed Matson. "About AIDS, Alzheimer's…all the technical stuff, who discovered what…everything."
"Oh…I know what this is about," announced Berry, "its Mr. Beef Matson's famous teasing sense of humor. It's his way of trying to lighten up a stressful situation. You should hear how he answers the phone sometimes. Oh gosh, I can't believe I walked into that. Not knowing about the cure for AIDS, let alone the Alzheimer's treatment, give me a break. You really got me good…it's just that you were so serious, I really thought you had bumped your head something nasty. Shame on you."
"Yeah," replied Matson, examining his memories with internal amazement, "Imagine a gay man not being able to remember about the cure for AIDS."

Sheila opened the refrigerator door and began poking around inside. "Hey…" she asked, "you guys got any of those crabmeat puffs left?"
"My gawd," amazed Bobbi, "after everything that happened, you're still hungry?"
"Especially after everything…" answered Sheila, "I was wounded, I need sustenance to repair my body…oh, you do have some crab puffs left…there's still a tray of your excellent horses durveys left, and omigosh, a big slice of cherry cheesecake!"
As Sheila left for the living room with the trays of delicacies, Bobbi turned to Berry, "The woman has the metabolism of a hummingbird."
"Wait until she turns forty," assured Berry, "Her thighs will explode."

Matson finally dismissed himself from Berry and Bobbi's party, convincing them he was fine and in good enough shape to drive back to San Francisco. Some of the party goers were retiring to the upstairs for the evening, others were setting up camp in the living room and dining room, laying out sleeping bags on the floor with some putting up makeshift tents of blankets and sheets for the added sense of security after Bessie's unwanted intrusion. Bobbi and Berry accompanied the detective to the front door, making sure he had their Christmas presents for him and Randy.
"C'mon, Abigail," said Berry, adding a western accent to her voice, "Let's see Sheriff Matson to his horse. Now that he's subdued the outlaw Bessie, he's got to head back to town."
"Pleased to oblige you, ma'am," replied Beef, tipping an imaginary cowboy hat, "jes doin' mah job".
"Why, sheriff," asked Bobbi, "What is your horse's name?"
"Why, Nissan, ma'am," answered Matson, "Mah pony's name is Nissan."

*********
"It was like having a date with a squirrel on crack…"

It was a dim, foggy, drizzly and unforgiving morning as Beef Matson, collar on his jacket turned up and hands in his pockets, made his way towards the building his office was in. The shooting of the previous night still blazing in his memory, the private investigator scanned the shadows for any menacing presence. The nasty weather and the early time of the morning limited the pedestrian traffic on the street and the few people on the street hurried along, ignoring Matson, who also hurried out of the chill into the warmth of the building lobby. As he entered the lobby, not only the pleasant smells from Just Desserts and the Ruby Slipper greeted him, but also the haunting sound of "Carol Of The Bells" being gently tapped out from the ivories of a lone piano echoing in the deserted lobby. As he walked closer, Matson could see that the man behind the piano was Teddy, the piano player from the Robes Roses.
"Teddy," asked Matson, "What's are you doing here?"
"I'm tinkling on the piano," answered Teddy, "but if you want to get a rag, I'll clean it up."
Teddy stopped playing momentarily to shake Matson's outstretched hand and then continued to play.
"It's your assistant Randy's doing," continued Teddy, "The building association wanted some entertainment in the lobby to lighten up the mood for the holidays and bring in some customers. So Randy recommended me and here I am, playing to the deserted early morning lobby of the Gay Professional Services Building. This little mall has good acoustics, like playing in a church. Nice gig though, Tony from Just Desserts brought me a coffee and a Danish and I get to play some serious holiday tunes I otherwise don't get to play. That is, until the lobby fills up with people and I get the inevitable request from some little kid to play "Granma Got Run Over By A Reindeer". Until then, I'll try to class the place up with some more classical selections."
"You mean the Harvey Milk Memorial Professional Building. That's what this building is called."
"Harvey Milk Memorial Building?" replied Teddy, "If there's a joke there, I don't get it. My contract is with the Gay Professional Services Building Tenants Association. That's what they told me the building was called."
"Ahhh, it's not important," said the P.I., rubbing his neck, "It's early and my mind seems to be doing some weird crap lately. Is there anything I can get you before I head up to my office?"
"Yes, you could have Michael Bublé sit on my piano and sing while I accompany him, that would be nice."
"Sorry, that's a bit beyond my range of capabilities, I meant something a bit more practical," replied Matson with a smirk.
"No, I'm fine. Say…Beef," Teddy continued to play while speaking, "Your guy Randy never fails to go out of his way to help someone out, like getting me this little job. Yet, I'm thinking he lives up there on Divisadero in that run down building all by himself and he's gone through a world of crap the past few weeks. My thought is that maybe it's time to get our little Randy a boyfriend."
"Matchmaking's a dangerous thing," said Beef shaking his head. "I remember once I was set up on a blind date with a guy who was an ultra super multi-tasking real estate broker type, who was juggling a cell phone, a Palm Pilot and a few other electronic thingies. It was like having a date with a squirrel on crack, not very much fun for me."
"I met my partner because of a blind date," countered Teddy, "I was set up with someone who was a complete and total tool and a pail full of ugly…"
"You don't mean your partner?"
"Oh, no. The blind date was such a total disaster that I ended the date early and went to another bar. That's where I met my future husband."
"I rest my case," replied Matson, "Besides, after what Randy's just been through, what my thought is that he's feeling really violated and probably wants to be in his own space for awhile. But I agree with you. However, my idea is to nudge him into socializing more and let nature take its course. Who knows, somebody might just pop into Randy's life when you least expect it. Don't worry, come hell or butt fuck, I'm gonna make sure this is one of the best Christmases he's ever had."

Teddy smiled as Matson walked to the side lobby door that led to the stairwell to the second floor. The private investigator paused as Teddy began tapping out "This Time Baby" on the piano keys, and then changed to playing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas". The detective suddenly spied something in the direction of Steve's Ruby Slipper Restaurant. Outside the restaurant, standing in the mall, was the owner, Steve, making some adjustments to the Christmas decor on the facade of the restaurant and Beef altered his path and headed for the restaurant. What concerned Matson was the restaurant's sign.
"Hey Steve," he called out, "What's up with the change to your sign?"
"Change?" asked Steve, "The sign's the same as it ever was. What do you mean?"
Matson cocked his head and smiled. "The sign says Steve and Don's Ruby Slipper. You get someone to go in with you for the restaurant…a partner?"
"I've always had a partner," replied Steve with a very puzzled look, "Don has always been part owner of the restaurant…like he's the guy I live with, you know, like the husband sort of thing. Are you making some kind of joke…?"
Matson looked back and forth at the sign and at the restaurant owner standing in front of him, looking very confused then having a look of enlightenment. "That's right, " he said, "the two of you have always owned the restaurant, I ah…hmmm…don't know where my mind was at. Sorry, I haven't had my morning coffee, yet." Smiling an embarrassed smile, Beef Matson headed back to the door leading to the stairs.

So it was that later that morning, Beef Matson hustled Randy Hardwicke out of the office treating his assistant to another lunch and secretly with the intent to nudge Randy to begin socializing. On the way to the Cozy Cup, Beef began making all kinds of suggestions that Randy begin to start celebrating the holidays by going out more, with Randy dismissing all of the suggestions. "Maybe this is being a bit insensitive," Matson warned Randy, "but I think you're still hung up on your Brett and I think it's about time you put Brett behind you, and found yourself somebody. I mean, Brett's in the past and there's no possible way he could come back into your life." "Brett's a hard act to follow, not somebody who's easily replaced," observed Randy. "Look, I don't mean to upset you…" continued Beef. "No, I'm not upset," returned Randy, "I completely understand…I've got to move on. I'll get back into a more social mode, as I get all this nasty stuff behind me. I promise, you'll see."

Brett joins Beef Matson in the booth.

A few moments after Randy had left for the bathroom, a young man suddenly threw himself into the booth on the seat across from Matson. Without breaking his lounging posture, the detective threw an puzzled and irritated look at the man who smiled and spoke. "Hi, how's it going, Beef. Where's my favorite guy, that cute little assistant of yours?" "He just stepped into the men's room for a second. Is there something I can help you with?" "I don't think so…" answered the man with a puzzled smile, "I'll just hang out till he gets back." "Actually, I consider this a private time for my assistant and myself…I consider strangers who invite themselves to a private lunch, rude." "Stranger…?" laughed the man, "When did I become a stranger. Uh, oh. Did I do something to piss one of you guys off?" "Who are you?" "Brett!" announced the man with confused amazement. "Brett who?" "Randy's Brett. Good gosh, Beef. Randy's Brett from back in Illinois."

Randy continued, "Brett and I ended talking for over four hours. Well, then…I told him to get his butt up here to San Francisco and since I had lost my apartment, we could get a place together."
"I agreed…" replied Brett, "I…kept missing Randy, more and more since we broke up. So if you can't get over somebody, you might as well get back together with them again."
"Brett drove up the next night and we met at a coffee house."
"The first thing I did when we sat down with our coffees…" related Brett, "Is I proposed to him immediately. This time baby, I wasn't going to take any chances or waste any time."
"I accepted before he finished…" added Randy, "I wasn't taking any chances either. Besides, Brett proposed to me some years ago, and I guess I still considered us married. I guess Brett is kind of old fashioned about proposing, but in a nice sort of old fashioned."
Beef Matson was staring wide eyed at the two men sitting in front of him, rubbing his temple with his left hand. "And this all happened a few days ago and Brett never moved back to Illinois from Los Angeles…?
"No," replied Randy, with a sincere, puzzled look. I told you all about Brett coming up from Los Angeles like about three days ago."
"Beef," added Brett, "I talked with you over the phone earlier today when Randy had stepped out of the office. You told me to meet you and Randy down here for lunch. So you were kidding when you said you didn't know me…right?"
Matson knew something was dreadfully wrong with the scene before him, but the reasons why there was something wrong with the situation were rapidly escaping him. He began rubbing his forehead and temples with both of his hands. "Damn…" he said, "It feels like somebody's moving furniture around in my head. Like suddenly finding a grand piano's been put in a corner of a room, and realizing you've never had a grand piano before."
"Lynn Gordon…" inquired a concerned Randy, "You didn't get whacked on the head or something, yesterday at Berry and Bobby's house, when you disarmed that Bessie crazy person".
"Oh yeah," added Brett, "I heard on the radio about the crazy woman crashing that party while you were there…"
"No…No…" answered Beef, "I didn't hit my head, and it was hardly a scuffle, just knocked the gun out of her hand."
"Lynn Gordon?" Brett asked Randy, "Is that his real name?"
"I know Randy's getting serious when he uses my formal names," answered Matson again, "It's like a code between us, he knows to take me seriously when I start calling him Randall."
"Sort of like when I call you Snickers," added Randy, talking to Brett.
"Oh, Randy," said Brett, "I thought you forgot about that…"
"Snickers…?" asked Beef.
"Brett used to really woof down Snickers candy bars," answered Randy, "I thought he'd live on them if he could. So I started calling him Snickers. Brett knows that when I call him Snickers, I'm getting personal."

"I'm okay, now," announced Matson, "I remember everything…now. You telling all about Brett coming up to San Francisco and wanting to find a place with him. I remember Brett's call this morning. Just don't know what got into me."
"You have a headache?" asked Randy.
"No…nothing," answered Beef, "Just a passing thing, like vertigo almost."
"Lynn, you've got me worried…"
"Nah, just one of those things," dismissed the detective, "Color me space cadet…maybe they've been using some cleaning solvents or something in here. That could be it."
"I'll ask Blanche for some aspirin," said Randy, "taking a couple won't hurt."
"I'm fine now," insisted Matson, "I even remember now how you and Brett met. In that little bar in the middle of winter, right around Christmas time. You know, it was a narrow, little bar that had big Styrofoam snowflakes hanging from the ceiling, Brett asked you to play pool, then you sat for awhile talking and when that song, "This Time Baby" started playing, Brett kissed you and that was it."
Randy looked at Brett and back at his boss, "That's exactly how it happened, but I never told you about that, I swear."
"Then how in the hell would I know that?" snapped Matson; "I remember watching you guys while I bartended, starting to make out…" Matson paused, looking puzzled, "Well…you would have had to have told me about that. Otherwise how would I have known that?" The detective began rubbing his temples again. Randy got Blanche, the waitress's attention and she strolled over to the booth. Randy asked for some aspirin for Beef.

"I've been warning you guys for years about the food here," she barked, "but would you listen? Now you're asking for medication. Sure you wouldn't want some anti-acid instead…maybe even a stomach pump?" Randy informed Blanche that the aspirin was for Matson, who seemed to have a headache. Blanche left and returned in short order with a little packet of aspirin and a fresh glass of water for Beef. "No wonder you got a headache," said Blanche, "with people trying to shoot you. Heard about it on the radio this morning. I'd have a pretty damned good headache myself if I had to wrestle a gun away from some nut case."

Matson obediently washed down the aspirin with a swallow of water. "You seem to be in good spirits today, Blanche."
"Yes, I'm in a real holly jolly, holiday spirit…" the waitress announced, tugging a string hanging from a Santa Claus pin attached to her blouse, making Santa's nose blink off and on, "I'm going to my brother Jimmy's ranchette for Christmas. He and his partner are going put up with me and a couple of my grandkids for the holidays. My grandkids love the horses my brother has. Me, I prefer to stay a distance away from those critters."
"Your brother, Jimmy?" puzzled Matson, "I thought your brother Jimmy had…" Beef Matson began to massage his forehead vigorously.
"Lynn…" Randy spoke with concern, "maybe you should make a quick visit to an emergency room and have them check you out."
"No, I'm fine," insisted Matson, "It's not a headache, it's just as if my memory got reshuffled."
"You know," added Brett, "There are two things you need to watch out for, one is memory loss…" Brett paused.
"What's the other thing?" asked Randy.
"I don't remember," answered Brett.
"Do you want me to slap him?" quipped Blanche.
"I remember your brother, Jimmy, just fine, "assured Beef, "He's got the little place up Santa Rosa way, not too far from where Sgt. Leonard Matlovich has his ranch…ho boy, it's like somebody's using a shoe horn on my brain. I visited his ranch once, it was during the summer. A real hot day. Your brother took me on a horseback tour of his place. My mind's just hitting some speed bumps today. All I need is a little nap."
"Who's this guy?" asked Blanche, pointing to Brett.
"This is my partner, Brett," answered Randy.
"Well, good for you, Randy," said Blanche, "You picked yourself up one cute little guy. You two make a cute couple." Blanche stared at Brett for a second or two and then announced, "Oh yeah…you two were in here the other night. Right after the sack of sugar fell over and…and…" Blanched paused, looking at Randy and Brett shaking their heads in the negative. Blanche suddenly looked very confused, as if she were having a hard time remembering things. "I better tend to my tables. Whatever you guys have got…I think it might be catching."

"Oh, Randy, " announced Brett, putting the plastic bag of CDs on the countertop in front of Randy, "I've bought some CDs for you, my early Christmas gift." Brett began pulling CD's out of the bag, offering them to Randy.
"Oh sweet," exclaimed Randy, "This is Mark Weigle's "Soulsex" CD, this is one of his CDs I don't have in my collection." Randy thanked Brett with a kiss, while Beef looked on both pleased and still amazed at Brett and Randy together.
"Here's a another shiny new CD for my Shugabug," said Brett, "Out From Under" by Josh Zuckerman, and a Christmas album by Clay Aiken." Randy in turn, kissed Brett for each gift CD.
Matson was smiling comfortably, still watching with curious amazement as the drama in front of him unfolded.
"Clay Aiken…" said Randy with delight, "love his singing voice and that southern boy twang when he speaks."
"I'll start speaking with a southern twang if you want," added Brett.
"You're perfect the way you are."
"And…," announced Brett, "because I know your tastes and I thought you'd think he was cute, here's a Christmas album by Michael Bublé."
Randy planted another kiss on Brett for the Bublé album, "Yes, he's cute, but not as cute as…" Randy pointed at Brett.
"Last, but not least, "added Brett, "here's a Christmas album by the rat pack, you know, Sinatra, Sammy and Dean. I kind of thought you might get into it."
"Yeah," replied Randy snuggling up against Brett, "I really like the old Vegas style stuff…how'd you know that?"
"Just a lucky guess."

"So Beef, "spoke Brett, "So you're doing alright now? Your memory's fine, you're not having headaches or anything like that?"
Matson shook his head, "Nah, I'm okay now."
"So…" continued Brett, trying to start some chit chat, "What do you think of the rumors of Harvey Milk running for governor, now that Governor Newsom's going to run for the U.S. senate?"
"Oh great big shiny disco balls, here we go again," mumbled Matson under his breath. "Ah…why don't you tell me all about Harvey Milk and ah…Governor Newsom?"
"Well," continued Brett, "Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he's not running for Governor again in order to run for the U.S. Senate and there's been rumors that Harvey Milk will come out of retirement and run for governor. I guess he got tired of his Russian River resort and wants to get back into politics, after being a senator for all those years."
"Senator Harvey Milk…" Matson replied with a half question.
"You've heard of homos in congress, haven't you?" asked Brett, teasing, "Randy told me that you're into that political stuff big time."
"Sure I have…" dismissed Beef, "There's Representative Barney Frank and Representative Andrew Sullivan from Maryland or Virginia…" Matson paused as if waiting for reassurance.
"That's right," assured Brett, "You got Frank and Sullivan correct, but you seem a little unsure."
"No, no", replied Beef, "I'm doing hysterically fine, I'm just uh…relearning my history. I seem to be remembering everything perfectly fine now." Matson jerked his head towards Randy, "Wasn't our office building named the Harvey Milk building once?" Randy shook his head emphatically no and his boss let out a high-pitched sigh.
Randy paused a second and then pointed a finger at Matson. "You sure you didn't hurt yourself when you got thrown on that stool? You thought I didn't know about that, but Berry Starr called me this morning and told me all about that and to keep an eye on you."
"I didn't get thrown…" countered Beef, "I skidded on a piece of broken pottery and fell…I'm fine."

Randy gave his boss a steel-eyed glance then began looking through his new CDs again. "This Vegas Christmas CD really looks like fun." Randy turned to Brett; "We should make a trip to Vegas and take in a show. I hear Liberace's having another retirement show…his shows are supposed to be incredible."
Beef Matson began fingering the silverware on the counter as he focusing a stunned stare on Randy, listening to his assistant as if Randy's words were ice water being poured down the detective's spine.
"The rumor is that Sylvester might be part of the Liberace show…that should be a hoot."
Beef Matson twitched like someone had stuck a needle in him and the fork he had been playing with suddenly jumped up a couple of inches in the air. His counter companions looked at him. "Liberace…Sylvester?" Matson paused, "Yes…I remember quite clearly all of a sudden, Liberace's been performing in Las Vegas for years and he's had a couple retirement shows but keeps coming back to perform." Matson looked quite proud of himself.
"Lynn…" said Randy with concern, "Are you sure you're fine? Brett and I could take you down to an emergency room…you know, for a quick check up."
"No, no…really I'm fine now," replied Matson, "As long you don't tell me you melted the Wicked Witch by throwing water on her after Brett came to rescue you from her castle."
Brett and Randy gave each other puzzled looks.

Just then a nicely dressed middle aged black man with salt and pepper temples accompanied by two children was walking past the booth where Beef, Randy and Brett were sitting, heading for the empty booth just past theirs. The man happened to glance at Beef Matson and seemed to have instant recognition. He paused momentarily at the booth with Matson and company with a little boy clinging to the man's leg. "Excuse me, sorry to bother you," said the man, "but aren't you Beef Matson?" The private investigator nodded gently in agreement.
"You must be his assistant, Randy," announced the man, turning towards Randy. "You know, it's so good to see you all in person. I heard about all those charges against Randy being dropped. I just knew they were all trumped up to begin with." The young girl, perhaps fourteen or thirteen years of age, tugged gently on the man's sleeve. "Daddy, may I go play a few songs on the jukebox?"
The man gave his daughter his permission and she skipped joyfully to the front of the restaurant towards the jukebox, while the other child, a smallish boy around five or six years of age, continued to cling tightly to the man's leg, looking cautiously at the strangers in the booth.
"I live out on the east bay," continued the man, "and I decided to bring the kids down to the Castro today for a little shopping and sightseeing, and this is a real treat to happen to run into you. I've heard so much about you, Mr. Matson."
The girl called from the front of the restaurant, "Noble, look…cookies!" Standing with her was Dorothy the waitress, with a plate full of Christmas cookies. The little boy looked up at his father for approval.
"Go ahead, Noble," the man replied, "you can help Freedom pick out some songs on the jukebox, too."
The little boy ran to join his sister.
"I guess I can speak a little more freely now," the man continued, "The real reason I brought the kids down here was to get them out of the house. My lover is decorating our house today and wrapping presents, so we thought it would be best that the kids were out of house, prying eyes, you know. I thought it would be fun to bring the two of them down here to the Castro, take in an old movie at the Castro theater, have lunch, then later go up to Golden Gate Park…and then when we get back home…it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

The man looked over to his children standing at the jukebox eating cookies. "I hate to think where Noble and Freedom might have ended up if it wasn't for my partner and me adopting them. They were getting to that age where nobody would want to adopt them. They've got it a lot better with us. The house they were taken from was total hell. Their mother and her boyfriends were all crack heads; it's amazing those two children came away as good as they did. Freedom was older and bigger and she could at least defend herself to some extent, but poor little Noble, I was told he was treated something terrible, tossed around like a football. He had a couple of cracked ribs and other fractures here and there. I just don't understand how a parent can let her own child be treated like that. For the first few months my partner and I had him, he would have terrible nightmares and whenever strangers were around, little Noble would latch onto my leg and just wouldn't let go. I was thinking for awhile the little guy was intent on becoming my third leg.""Noble's finally getting away from the effects of the abuse and he's coming to learn that not everyone is crazy and wants to hurt him. He's becoming more assertive and doesn't hide behind one of my legs so much anymore when we meet strangers. Goes to show you…a little security and love goes a long way."

"Well, it could be there are just a lot of people with the name Bedford. I haven't lived in the city for years," explained Franklin. "I got sick years ago and went to live with my grandmother in Oakland. While I was recovering, I read a quote by, I think, Mark Twain, that you should buy land, because that's the only thing no one's making any more of. So, as I got better and started working again, I started buying property, and now I guess you could call me a big time real estate broker. Maybe you've seen my name in some real estate publication."
"No…that's not it," replied Randy, "Where did you used to live here in the city?"
"I didn't live around the Castro…I lived up on Divisadero."
"That's where I live now," revealed Randy, "I'll be moving soon…I got evicted."
"Oh…where do you live on Divisadero?"
"It's in a building called the Wadsworth apartments."
"The Wadsworth?" exclaimed Franklin, "That's where I used to live. What apartment do you live in?"
"I live up on the third floor of the building…mine is the only apartment on that floor."
"Well, ain't that somethin'," remarked Franklin, his eyebrows twitching, "That's the same apartment I used to live in, way back when in the late 1970s. Truly is a small world, isn't it? Amazing."
"I should say…" answered Randy, "I bet my apartment looks the same as when you rented it. It probably looks the same as when the building was built."

Franklin began to study the faces of Brett and Randy. "You know," he stated, "I'm getting the strong feeling that I've been here with the two of you before…but when I was much younger…and that just couldn't be. Yet, the more I look at you, the stronger of a memory I get of being here with the two of you, like just the other day. We were here for awhile and then left to go to a bar…"
"Welcome to the club," said Randy, "Strange feelings like that seem to be going around the Cozy Cup today. My boss seems to be really having a problem with remembering things today."
"Randy…" warned Beef Matson.
"Oh…it's probably just one of those things," dismissed Franklin, "People tend to get sentimental around the holidays, old memories get reawakened and jostled, that's probably what it is."
As the jukebox wailed "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas" by Johnny Mathis, Franklin Bedford thanked Beef Matson for the signed Cozy Cup napkin and settled into the next booth with his two children and waited to order their lunch.

*******

Blanche brought Matson's party a tray of their meals. "You sure you guys still want your meals, you're not hallucinating or anything, like seeing psychedelic wallpaper, something like that?"
"We're okay," said Randy, "It's just my boss who's having some memory problems."
"Anyway…" continued Blanche, "working at this place gave me an idea for a reality TV show."
"S'pose you want me to ask," replied Randy.
"Of course," said Blanche, carefully setting plates of food on the booth table, "Celebrity bingeing and purging, would be a great hit…I hear some celebrities are pretty good at that."
"Blanche…" scolded Matson.
"Oh well…" added Blanche, putting the last plate on the table, "Bon appetite, holler if you want anything else, or want me to call 911. By the way, Mr. Matson…next time you tackle a lunatic, wear a helmet, please."

*******
"Never underestimate the power of one little prayer."

Outside the Cozy Cup restaurant, a stocky man was observing the tribulations of Beef Matson with a red goatee dressed in a three-piece suit and a derby that was accompanied by another man in a suit who appeared to be his assistant. The man in the derby hat was amused by the happenings in the Cozy Cup.
"You really are quite the slight of hand expert, the very master of subtlety. However, our poor Matson seems to be having a hard time adjusting to the changes to his world," observed the associate.
"It will take their world a little time to fully assimilate the gay Christmas party that just spilled out into their world," the stocky man answered with a wink. "It's the humans' linear perception of time. From their perspective, they usually they can't perceive any changes in the timeline, however, Matson has such a vice grip on details that these changes don't slide by him very easily and he's having a bit of a hard time adjusting to the alterations to his reality. It's not easy to put something over on him even when it's the universe doing it. He's close to adjusting to all of the changes, though and I've got a nice surprise lined up for him that should make up for everything."

The Creator paused, looking about Castro Street and seeing the procession of people walking on it. "It's nice, every once in awhile to take a hands on approach like this and to see the results up close…though I have to restrain myself. You know, I'm really having fun with this."
"I imagine Lucifer would have quite a different opinion," observed the associate.
"Ah, yes…him," the Creator gave a knowing look, "Lucifer's running joke, which lost its punch eons ago, is that he can use the human's political isms and religions against them, to get them to destroy themselves in the name of what they perceive morality and in My name."
"Interesting…" commented the associate, "In that he lost his sense of humor as well."
"True…but he likes to think he still has a sense of humor, he just improvises. What he thinks of as humor something to be done out of spite, that which would bring pain to someone. That's why his disciples, the demagogues of humankind, all tend to lack a sense of humor."
"He was terribly rattled that you were going to intercede on behalf of the gay folk…" reminded the associate.
"The simple reason I put homosexuals into the human mix was to introduce a kinder face to humankind, individuals who would bond with each other simply out of love and not just to procreate and grapple for territory to expand their increasing population. Individuals who value other humans, not just an animal-like eat, reproduce and fight for more territory. Lucifer knows this and it well…" the Creator chuckled, "irritates the hell out of him, which is why he tries so hard to have them exterminated. The homosexuals are part of the human element that goes beyond the simple animal element of reproducing and acquiring territory. It's something like the evolution that dogs went through when humans domesticated them. As canines became domesticated and more gentle, their faces became more rounded, their ears more floppy and less pointed, indicating they were friends of man, could work with him and were no longer aggressive wolves."

"When human society is completely reproduction oriented, it becomes its violent and aggressive, focused on primarily on reproduction and acquiring territory. Much of human history involves peoples pushing each other back and forth over the same bits of land. That in itself does not result in much in the way of advancement and with the nations of earth becoming older and becoming entrenched in their territories, that aggression results only in destruction. The only thing the humans have been accomplishing with their numerous wars of pushing each other back and forth is just changing borders and neighborhoods, not much else. Now that people are much more technically advanced, they also possess weapons that may result in turning themselves into a mere memory on this planet. The humans haven't really caught on as to how much their last two world wars contaminated their cultures and religions with violence and that if they have another war on that scale, using their technology, it could very well spell the end of them. That's why I made love such a powerful emotion for them, that's My hint that love would make their lives so much better. My practical view is that it's better to have men kissing each other than blowing up their planet."

The Creator began motioning toward the people on Castro Street pointing to them as examples. "The homosexuals are those humans who have an interest in each other out of pure love, rather than just procreation, people who are more concerned with developing their society and culture, creating, rather than being aggressive…a blessing considering the existing strains on their heavily populated and overheating little planet." The Creator paused momentarily, His attention drawn to a shabby looking car with a rusty finish. He quickly tapped a finger on the vehicle, which leaped up a bit with a jolt, rattled around a bit and suddenly became as shiny and new as the day it left the factory. The Creator then continued to speak. "Plus, the idea that gay people are bonded by love rather than an instinct to reproduce, irritates Satan to no end, since the old boy's lost his ability to love. His hatred of the gay folk is largely based on jealousy, knowing that the gay ones are more emotionally advanced then he his."

"That's why Lucifer is so fond of cultures that seek to exterminate the homosexuals, the ones that are always very aggressive and violent, like the Nazis, for instance. Those cold, uncompassionate exterminators while corrupting German culture with their contrived mythology, viewed themselves as so very moral even when the mounds of bodies started piling up around them and most of Europe was reduced to rubble…the only thing they achieved was that they lost their humanity and took a step backwards in spiritual evolution. Lucifer just had a picnic with them. That's Lucifer's joke, so he can point and show me, look, look, how violent and destructive a people that views itself as extremely moral has become, how much evil they are doing in the name of morality or My name. As I said, that joke that wore out its welcome eons ago. So this time around, I decided to pull a bit of a practical joke of my own."

The Creator's companion shook his head, "With all the other creatures in the universe, why do you even bother with these humans?"
The Creator smiled wistfully, pausing to stare into one of the windows of the Cozy Cup, "It's a creator thing…it's because I love them. Besides, what would a Creator be without His creation? Also, those who possess the kind and caring spirit like Mr. Randy Hardwicke over there, help make up for all of those who are unkind and not caring. Besides, we mustn't forget Mr. Hardwicke's prayer. He called to Me. As bad as things were for him, he still retained faith and he called out to Me. He even offered his meager resources to Me if I would just protect him and his friends. His prayer resulted in causing My love to rain powerfully down upon himself along with My protection and My irresistible abundance. Never underestimate the power of one little prayer. One silent little prayer is louder and more powerful than the screams of any strident moralist."

The Creator and one of his assistants observe Castro Street.

"Ah, the power of Your irresistible generosity," laughed the Creator's associate, "It certainly is hard to ignore." "Yes, and such great fun, too," agreed the Creator, "There are times it does well by me to intercede and spread joy directly. And as wonderful as this all is, I think the perfect touch would be a little snow…a little holiday snow. You know, Michael, I may just give this city a little snowfall before this holiday season is over." The Creator paused a second and spoke again. "I'm in an astoundingly good mood. I tell you what, Michael. As long as we're in California, let's go to Disneyland." "Again…?" "Of course…" A short ways behind the Creator, a woman nearly dropped her shopping bags, discovering her old car was now incredibly shiny and new.

******* "People…well, you just can't replace people.." Finished with their meal, as the trio was preparing to leave the booth, Randy casually mentioned that he and Brett would be staying at his apartment that night. Matson let out a terse negative, that he didn't want anyone staying overnight at Randy's apartment. Randy began to disagree and his boss became all the more adamant. "Uh-uh," Matson shook his head negatively in a pronounced back and forth manner. "No, no, no, no and no." "Oh, boss," argued Randy, "It's just for one night. Besides, then tonight I can pack up the small stuff I haven't gotten to yet." "This is very strange," quipped Beef, "I know you understand English and I know I'm speaking English, yet I don't seem to be getting through to you. Once again…you're not staying at your apartment tonight." "Well…ya know," interjected Brett, "If you don't want Randy staying at his apartment, it'd be no problem for me to stay at Randy's place and keep an eye on things. Make sure everything's safe."

Beef Matson scolds Randy, "Once again…you're not staying in your apartment tonight."

Randy suddenly relaxed his posture, spied a smiling glance at Brett and eased into the padded back of the booth seat. Yeah…O.K., I understand. I've learned another lesson…that places are just places, big nothings, without having somebody there with you that you care about. Home is where you make it, where your heart is, not bricks and mortar." Randy put his hand on Brett's leg. "A slum can be a pretty scary place when you face it alone and even a big, fancy expensive apartment is no better than living in a museum unless there's somebody there with you." Randy tightened his grip on Brett's leg and squeezed slightly.
"Good, that's settled then, " the detective snapped his head and took a quick sip of his coffee. "I will be expecting both of you…” Matson scanned the expressions of his two restaurant booth companions, "at my place at seven tonight, pronto." Shooting a glare at Randy, Beef spoke again. "And that means absolutely no excuses."

*******
"He'll be our guard teddy bear."

Slightly after seven, Randy and Brett showed up at Beef Matson's apartment, Randy carrying a couple of suitcases and Brett grappling with a bundle of blankets, pillows and a comforter, the bedding smelling as if it was freshly washed. Brett was also grasping a couple of plastic supermarket bags with some soft drinks and frozen pizzas. Over his assistant's protests, Matson decided that Randy and Brett would sleep in his bed and the detective would bunk on the couch in his modest sized living room. The trio dined the frozen pizzas baked in Matson's oven, chatting for awhile and Matson showed off his collection of curios in his living room, small items like decorative lamps to large chests and cabinets that were given to him by grateful clients. Conversation continued until around ten, when Matson decided he needed to get to bed. Beef accompanied Randy and Brett to the bedroom to get a sheet, blanket and pillow from the closet. Randy offered his boss some of the bedding he had brought along.
"Nah," replied Matson, pulling a blanket and sheet from the closet, "this should be fine."
"I like the big overstuffed chair," commented Brett, "Looks like you just got it reupholstered."
"Yeah, I know this guy who has a shop…" Beef paused.
"Are you getting another headache?" asked Randy.
"No, just got suddenly got this incredible sense of deja vu," answered Matson.
"Hey," asked Brett, pointing to the large teddy bear sitting in one of the chairs, "what's his name?"
"That's Fred," chuckled Beef, walking over to the chair, grabbing Fred and tossing him on the bed against the headboard. "He'll keep you guys company tonight."
"O.K.," laughed Brett, "He'll be our guard teddy bear."
Matson then proceeded back into his living room with the bundle of bedding.

"Hey boss," inquired Randy, leaning out of the bedroom, "I'm not really tired. Is it all right if I stay up for awhile…maybe read a book or something?"
"Sure," answered Matson, "I just don't like a lot of light when I'm sleeping. Put the lamp on the nightstand on it's lowest setting. That should be enough for reading."
"No problem-mo," replied Randy, "G'night. Oh, and uh…Lynn. Thanks again for everything you've done for me…and for letting Brett and me stay here."
"It's good to have you guys here…" smiled the detective and he waved his arm towards the bedroom and began laughing, "Now I got you chipmunks where I can keep an eye on you…just go to bed."

********
"I've seen penises before."

Beef Matson awoke the next morning to the sound of a ringing phone. He tumbled off the sofa, headed for the phone on a table near the bedroom door, dragging the comforter with him to keep warm in the chilly room air. A quick glimpse through one of the windows revealed the morning to be cloudy, dark and wet. Matson answered the phone and then replied, "Yeah, this is Lynn Gordon Matson", as he brushed hair out of his eyes with his free hand. Brett suddenly appeared at the bedroom door, covering his midsection with a shirt.
"I gotta use the bathroom," Randy's partner explained.
Brett's shirt snagged on the doorknob of the bedroom door and the door kept noisily banging against the wall as Brett attempted to pull the shirt off the doorknob. An irritated Beef quickly grabbed the shirt from Brett's grasp and threw it back into the bedroom.
"I've seen penises before," snapped the detective, "Go to the bathroom." Without saying a word, Brett continued on to the bathroom.
"No, not you," Matson spoke into the phone, "What was that again? No, I know for a fact he wasn't there last night. O.K., I'll head right down there. I just got up so it may take a few minutes. O.K., yeah, bye."

Matson quickly threw the comforter on the bed and rapidly pulled on his clothes. As he headed for the front door Brett was coming out of the bathroom.
"I'm going to Randy's apartment building; I think there's been a fire there or something. The police want me to come down there and talk with them. Until I get back, I want Randy to stay put right here. I don't care if you have to sit on him or screw him; just don't let him leave this apartment. Tell him if he leaves this apartment before I get back, I'm firing his ass."

*********
"The only way not to have enemies is to…well, not be born."

When the detective arrived at Randy's apartment, there was a scattering of fire trucks and police cars. There was no smoke and the firemen were in the process of retrieving fire hoses. Matson could see the building's outside walls were charred above some windows. The detective's approach was observed by a couple of police detectives. One of them, a large, burly black man, approached Beef.
"Mornin', Hamilton" Matson greeted the cop, "Somebody picked a cold morning to do some mischief. What's going on here?"
"Morning, Gordon. Thanks for coming. Yeah, way too early and too cold. Cold enough to see your breath. Need to ask you a few questions." The police detective cocked his head towards an old man holding a cane standing with some cops a distance away near the entrance to Randy's apartment building. "Know that man there, the older gentleman with the cane?"
"Seen him before," answered Matson, "He was standing at the building entrance once when I came to visit my assistant's apartment. He said a few words to me and then walked off with a younger woman."
The black detective gave a knowing smirk and nodded to his companion.
"Your assistant has an apartment in this building. He was not in the building…I've been told he's been evicted."
"Yes, that is correct, but I've got another apartment lined up for him. I will be glad to have him out of this rat hole anyway. As you've probably heard, my assistant's been up to his ear lobes with harassment issues of late, so I've got him staying in a place that's a lot more secure until his new apartment is ready. This building's got a lot of security problems."
"Yeah, I would say so" replied the police detective, "the other tenants informed us a crack dealer moved into one of the ground floor apartments last week."
"That I didn't know," stated Matson.
"The crack dealer doesn't have anything to do with this fire, though," the cop looked over towards the apartment building, "The arsonist is that old man with the cane. He told us that you paid him to set the fire to revenge the eviction of your assistant."
"Give me a break," responded Beef bluntly, "Getting my assistant out of this building is the best thing that ever happened to him. Burning it down? Why bother? The building looks like it's close to being condemned anyway. The lobby of that building smells like a latrine…"
"Totally believe you, Matson. Just needed to get a statement from you, only because that loser made an accusation. You see, we just happened to have the old man under surveillance. We got a few complaints from some women in the neighborhood. Our boy over there apparently likes to urinate in public as well as exposing himself occasionally. Oh, he's mister righteous red neck if you talk to him, but he has a history of public drunkenness, likes to patronize the sidewalk stewardesses and buys street drugs when he can afford them. A couple of women in the neighborhood were really getting up in arms about him being a nuisance, so we just happened to have some of our people keeping a casual eye on him this week. Very early this morning, our people were waiting for the old man to do his crack of dawn morning constitutional and public urination, but instead of pulling out his winkie and tinkling on the sidewalk, a car pulls up and the driver opens up the trunk and gives the old guy a large gas can. The car drives off, our boy hauls the gas can into the building and lo and behold, minutes later there's smoke coming out of some of the windows and some of the tenants are calling 911."

"The old guy said the guy in the car was you, however, our people saw the driver and it was not you. We've also got the license number of the car, and it's registered to someone who works for the company that manages this building. We've also learned that the company that owns the building is trying to get the site rezoned…I guess the city wants low-income housing; the owners of the building want to tear it down and build some expensive office lofts in place of it. So maybe arson is their attempt at resolving this conflict and my guess is that they paid our kindly old man over there to be the torch. Maybe, since your assistant's been in the news lately, and he happens to live in this building, they hoped to shift the blame for this sophomoric attempt at arson over to you. The problem is, they just happened to pick the absolute wrong day to try that."

Matson smiled and shook his head in irritation. The police detective continued. "That's what happens when you're too good at what you do, Gordon. You end up having people who want to make trouble for you. You wind up having enemies here and there."
Beef Matson shrugged, "The only way not to have enemies is to…well, not be born."
"Very true, Gordon, very true. You've made quite the name for yourself since you left the force. You ever considered coming back? You know, there's security, pension."
"Nah, I'm happy with what I'm doing."
The other policeman spoke up. "Maybe the police department's not gay enough for him. That is, for somebody with some way gay names like Lynn and Beef. Though I can see how you might like working for yourself, Beef, that way you can put on make up and wear high heels any time you want."
Matson gave a quick expressionless look to the other officer and turned and questioned the detective named Hamilton.
"How extensive is the fire damage in the building?"
The other officer continued with his needling, "Then again, Matson, the cop shops have locker rooms and showers, you could always wait for some guy to drop his soap and when he bends over to get it, you could get yourself a quick poke."
Matson continued to coolly ignore the other cop and asked the burly detective again, "How extensive was the fire damage?"
"Matson, I'm talking to you," the other cop furled his brow but Matson had no reaction, as if the cop did not exist, "What's the matter, shamus? Can't you take a little kidding? I'm talking to you, Matson!"
The heavyset black detective turned to his companion and calmly spoke, "Lenonetti, go start on the paper work. We adults are talking business."
Lenonetti flashed an angry frown and walked away.

The black detective gave his head a slight negative shake. "He's an idiot, Matson. Failed the course on how to win friends and influence enemies. Yeah, I can see why you might not want to come back."
"I was ready to tell him to eat me, but he probably would've gotten off on the idea," added Matson.
"Fire damage?" continued Hamilton, "Quite a bit. The old boy spread the gasoline in a vacant apartment and through the hallway on the first floor and in the basement. Even though the fire trucks got here in just a few minutes, that fire really took off and gutted the first floor and spread up into the ceiling into the second floor. Some chunks of the first floor collapsed into the basement before the fire department was able to hose out the fire."
"What about the third floor?" asked Matson, "That's where my assistant has his apartment. He still has his belongings up there. I'll need to tell him if anything is salvageable."
"The third floor?" replied the police detective, "The fire captain said that was the strangest thing. Must be how the building is constructed or something. The fire totally stopped at the third floor, like there was a barrier or something. You would think in a wood building like that the fire would keep on going, but while there was moderate damage on the second floor, the third floor was untouched, there wasn't even any smoke damage up there. The fire captain told me that sometimes fires behave in strange ways, guess it was just one of those things. Your assistant should be able to retrieve all of his belongings, I don't see any problem with that." The detective named Hamilton put his hands on his hips and turned to look at the apartment building. "Yes sir, for sure that building's going to have to be condemned. Guess they'll be able to build those office lofts now." Near the entrance of the apartment building the old man was screaming as two patrolmen were loading him into a police car. "Get your hands off me, I know my rights! I'm a veteran!"

*********

When Matson returned to his apartment, he had been gone only a little over an hour. Beef Matson found Randy and Brett in the living room, sitting on the couch watching TV. Randy was snuggled up against Brett with Brett's arms wrapped around him. Randy had that furled brow worried look that the detective had become all too familiar with. Randy's look of apprehension vaporized when Matson told him about the situation with Randy's old apartment and that he would be able to retrieve all his belongings from it. Suddenly, Randy got up from the couch and his mood turned festive and almost giddy.
"You know," he declared, "I'm almost afraid to say this, but I may just have a good Christmas after all."
"Not to rain on your parade, kid," interjected Matson, "but I checked the office voice mail. You won't be able to move into your new apartment until after Christmas. So you guys will have bed up here until then. You can't stay in your old apartment, the fire department will only let people retrieve their belongings and that's it, so you guys will have to stay here."
It appeared that Randy was going to say something, but his boss interrupted.
"No, no, no and uh…no," said Matson, pointing a finger at Randy.
Randy bit his bottom lip, paused a second and then spoke again. "If I may just point something out, sir. Brett and I couldn't help but notice that you are six foot something and the couch is five foot something. So we're thinking you could not have been comfortable at all on that couch last night. And you do look pretty rugged this morning."
"Well, you do have a point there," replied Beef, rubbing and stretching his neck, “However…" Matson raised his arm and pointed an authoritative finger towards the ceiling," I do have an inflatable air mattress on which many a relative and I and out of town guests have slept on without a complaint. So that should solve that problem."
"Brett and I can sleep out here on the air mattress. You need to sleep in your own bed. Fred was asking about you all last night."
Matson smiled a gentle smile and chuckled, "Whatever. I'm flexible. I guess I'll have to be, you guys will be living here for the next five days."
"What…?" protested Randy, "The three of us in your postage stamp apartment? Maybe I could…"
"Uh-uh…" scolded Matson, shaking a finger at Randy. He then stood behind his assistant and holding Randy with one of his strong arms and rubbing the top of Randy's head with his other hand, messing his hair. Brett smiled at Randy's protesting grimace. "Look kiddo," explained Beef, "You're going to have to live with the fact that I consider you part of my family now. With me, family is everything and I feel strongly about family and I protect them." Matson tightened his grip around Randy and with his other hand gripping Randy's blond hair, he tugged Randy's head in side-to-side motion. "So, the sooner you learn to accept that, the better off you will be." Matson then forced Randy's head in an up and down motion. "See, you're agreeing with me."

Matson released his hold on the flustered Randy and then the amused Brett, who was on his way to the kitchen, suddenly found his arms pinned behind him by the detective. Beef rubbed Brett's head vigorously, messing his hair. "That goes for you too, bud," announced Matson, "You've also been adopted. Both of you are now part of my family, like it or not. My standards are pretty high, so the two of you should be pretty proud that you're now part of my clan."
Randy smiled proudly at his boss and his partner, fighting to hold back a sentimental tear.

"Damn," said Matson, looking down at Brett's ash blond head, "With the two of you, I'm gonna have blond hair all over the place."
"The sooner you learn to accept that, the better off you will be," smiled Randy.
Matson wrapped his arms around Brett from behind in a bear hug and rested his chin on top of Brett's head, with Brett's eyes looking upward in a puzzled expression.
"You know," observed Beef Matson, "you two guys look so good together, you're just so perfect for each other. Yeah, I may have a postage stamp apartment, but at least you two teddy bears will have a safe place to stay until your new apartment is ready. And at least I'll have the piece of mind knowing that the two of you are safe. Think of it like staying at a relative's place for the holidays. It won't be so bad." Matson released Brett from his grasp and let loose a very large yawn, stretching.

Hmmm…well, I suppose…might feel good to get a massage," said Beef, rubbing his neck. Brett and Randy accompanied a still somewhat protesting Matson to his bedroom. The detective sat on the edge of his bed and spoke to Randy. "All right already, I'll do the massage, but I'm kind of thinking I should really just go down to my office for a little while afterwards." "Just do the massage," irritated, Randy shook his head and left the room. Matson continued to sit on the edge of the bed. "You need to lie down on your tummy, in order for me to work on you," advised Brett. "Maybe I could take a nap afterwards…" Matson's face was drooping. "Well, just lie down," repeated Brett. "I should undress…"

*********

"Randy…Randy!" bellowed Matson's voice from within his bedroom. Randy opened the bedroom door and leaned in to see his boss sitting on the edge of his bed. Matson looked like he had just woke up and was rubbing his hands through his raven black hair. "Why'd you let me sleep so long?" complained the detective, "It's almost quarter to five, it's dark outside." "It's usually dark outside at quarter to five in mid winter," advised Randy. "I mean, I've blown away most of the day sleeping." "If you slept that long, you probably needed to, Lynn. Brett said it took all of thirty seconds for you to fall asleep." "Oh man, geez," continued Matson, rubbing his eyes; "I need to get myself going. Randy, would you be a real good guy and put some coffee on? "Sure." "I need to get myself into the shower." Matson perked up his head, "What's that smell, it's good." "Brett and I are making supper." "Bless your little hearts," added Matson, grabbing his briefs from the floor and pulling them on. He then got up from the bed and began to march towards the door, arching and rubbing the small of his back, muttering another, "Oh, geez."

When Beef entered his small living room, he stopped suddenly, "What's all this?"
Beef Matson's living room was sparkling with Christmas lights, which hung from the door jambs and the wood trim near the ceiling and there was a medium sized Christmas tree, lighted and decorated in one corner.
"While you were sleeping," explained Randy, "I took Brett's car and ran down to my apartment…" Beef suddenly glared at Randy, who continued. "Don't worry, there were still a lot of cops hanging around the building. When I told them who I was, they were really helpful, escorted me up to my apartment and let me take out whatever I wanted. The decorations you see are mine. When I got back, Brett ran out and got a tree. As long as you have Brett and me staying here, we're gonna help you have a Merry Christmas."
Beef spied several brightly wrapped packages underneath the tree, looking closely, he found they were all for him.

"Those are from Brett and me. I've been plotting for months what to get you."
Matson shook his head, chuckled an embarrassed laugh and smiled wistfully at Randy, "Well, I've been plotting, too."
The detective went back into his bedroom, banged around a bit in the closet and came out with an armful of packages. "Now that there's a tree in my living room, might as well put these under it. These are from me and there's a package for you from Berry and Bobbi. There's even a couple of presents for Brett, that I ran out and got at the last minute."

"Oh sweet…" exclaimed Randy, "Presents!"
"We'll open them on Christmas Eve," instructed Beef.
"Christmas morning."
"Christmas Eve, that's the tradition in my family. I'll have you know I'm the head of the household here, bud," countered Matson.
"Whatever. Christmas Eve it is."
Beef lifted up his head and took another wiff of the air. "Man, whatever you're cooking, it smells heavenly."
"Brett took some cooking courses too when he was living in L.A.," announced Randy, "he's making a roast."
"The dude is worth his weight in gold," commented Beef.

Beef Matson felt a lot better after he had his shower and a couple cups of coffee and dressed. By then, Randy and Brett had supper ready. There was an aromatic roast, baked sweet potatoes with a marshmallow topping, a green bean casserole, baked dinner rolls and a fresh salad. Randy even produced a bottle of wine to pour into chilled glasses. The trio had a candlelit dinner at Beef's dining table in the bay window area just off his dinette kitchen. Randy was persistent, and finally persuaded Matson not to go in to the office. With the dining table cleaned off and the last of the dishes put in the dishwasher, the trio adjourned to the living room, where Beef pulled out a little package out of a storeroom connected to the living room. The package contained the air mattress, which Matson inflated on the living room floor. Laying down on the air mattress, Matson showed his houseguests how comfortable the mattress was, and that he would be more than happy to sleep on it. Randy would have none of it, insisting that Matson deserved to sleep in his own bed.

Brett produced another bottle of wine from the kitchen and the three men all laid on the air mattress, watching TV and sipping wine, groggy from the big meal. Matson found one of his favorite Pink Panther movies on a cable channel and the three watched that, after which Randy found another cable channel showing some old music variety Christmas TV show, during which the three men drifted off to sleep.

When Matson awoke, the cable channel was showing an info-mercial with a greasy haired man selling a dietary aide promoting healthy bowel movements. The detective reached with his left arm and grabbed the remote from the coffee table above him, shut off the TV and put the remote back on the table. The room was now just lit by the twinkling Christmas lights. The room was very chilly and Matson could hear the wind pelting rain against the apartment windows. Matson also found his right arm and left leg were restrained. Brett was lying in a fetal position, with his back up against Beef's right side. The only problem was that Brett had seized Matson's arm, seemed to be lying on top of it and it felt like the circulation was being cut off. Randy was lying further down on the mattress and was using the detective's left thigh as a pillow.
"Damn…" he muttered to himself, "this is like having two very large dogs."

Matson tried rousing Brett so he could free his arm. Brett awoke briefly, uttered something that sounded like "Mrrph!" and turned himself over, grabbed Beef's arm again and began using Matson's shoulder as a pillow. Beef then tried to wake up Randy. Randy simply turned over on his belly, wrapped his arms around Beef's leg and buried his face in Matson's thigh, ignoring his boss's tugs on his shoulder. Matson paused for a couple of seconds, quietly growled, "Geez, you guys." Finally, Matson pushed himself up, forcing his housemates off him. Brett and Randy had sleepy, hurt expressions on their faces like two bear cubs disturbed from their winter's hibernation. As Beef stood up, the two young men rolled over on the air mattress, instantly falling back into a deep sleep.

Beef Matson shook his head and walked off to get some bedding. He returned shortly, arms grabbing a bundle of sheets, pillows, blanket and comforter.
"Come on, guys. Get undressed and into bed." Matson tried arousing Randy, but all he got out of his assistant was, "Er-rah…oonie," and Randy tumbled back onto his side and fell back asleep.
"Oh, Randy…" complained Beef as he threw the bedding on the floor. "I forgot what wine does to you. Apparently Brett too. Two ga'damn peas in a pod. Probably tuckered out from all the work you guys did while I took my nap, too." Beef spoke louder, "Get off the mattress and take your clothes off. Beddy bye time." There was no response. In frustration, Matson pulled Brett off the mattress and Randy's partner simply continued to sleep on the floor. Next, Matson pulled Randy off the mattress and propped him up against the coffee table. Randy seemed barely conscious.
"Randy…get undressed for bed."
Randy undid a couple top buttons of his shirt and then nodded off to sleep again. Matson quickly outfitted the air mattress with sheet, pillows, blanket and comforter. He looked down at the two sleeping men.
"Come on, guys. Get undressed…" There was no response. "Good everlovin' grief," muttered Matson again, "Looks like daddy's gonna have to put his two boys to bed."
Matson stooped down in front of Randy, quickly unbuttoning his assistant's shirt, while Randy continued to sleep. When Matson pulled off his shirt, Randy seemed to wake up a bit, but did not cooperate. Matson continued, unbuckling Randy's belt, undoing his jeans and since Randy was not wearing shoes, pulling off the jeans was easy. This seemed to wake up Randy more. "Ooh…it's cold," he complained.
Matson pulled off Randy's socks in an instant. A grumpy expression came to Randy's face. "You'll be warmer when you get into bed." Matson quickly slid his fingers into Randy's briefs and in an instant, pulled them off Randy's legs. "Shorts off, I'm an ardent believer in sleeping naked." Randy did not protest, and then Matson shoved Randy onto the mattress and under the blanket, much like stuffing a letter into an envelope. The detective lovingly pulled the blanket up around and over Randy's shoulders and tucked him in. Matson chuckled, "You're such a cute little guy."

Brett was still oblivious to everything and Matson tackled him next. Brett started to unbutton his shirt, then promptly fell back asleep. Matson then went quickly to work, pulled off Brett's shoes and socks, stripped off his shirt, jeans and of course, Brett's briefs. The feeling of the chilly room air on his naked body woke Brett up enough to so that he scrambled under the covers at Beef's command. Matson pushed Brett towards Randy, and tucked him in. Rubbing Brett's head gently and smiling, Matson said quietly, "G'night, Snickers." Brett responded with a "Ooh-ya, mrrph."

Matson turned off the Christmas lights and as he looked back in the darkness towards the air mattress, he could see Randy and Brett had pulled themselves into a cuddling embrace. Matson walked back to the mattress, stooped down and stared wistfully for several seconds at the sleeping couple. Then, he delicately kissed the heads of Randy and Brett. Patting the mattress gently, the private investigator stood up and retired into his bedroom, stripped down into the nakedness he loved and stretched mightily. It was very chilly in the bedroom and from the windy sound outside, a mighty rainstorm was falling on San Francisco. The detective looked down at the ever friendly and smiling face of Fred the teddy bear, sitting calmly in the corner of one of the bedroom chairs.
"Come on, Fred. Cuddle with me."
Pulling Fred into bed with him, Matson burrowed under the covers, switched off the bedside light and lay awhile in the darkness. Bringing his hands up to cover his brow, Beef began a silent prayer.

"God…sorry I don't pray very often, but I'm not even sure I believe you're there. When I pray, I never seem to get an answer. I guess that could be that this can be one sad world and maybe the lines get too busy and my call never gets through. I pray once in awhile because my mom always told me it was something I should do. The reason I'm doing this prayer tonight is that I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and feeling totally alone. You see, I got these two guys here in my apartment that I'm trying to protect. I got this feeling that something bad might happen to them if I let them out of my protection. The thing is, I can't keep them here in my apartment forever. I feel like I almost lost Randy and that would have been terrible because I've realized that in my heart and mind, that he's become part of my family. Losing Randy would be like losing one of my closest family members. I can't let anything happen to that little guy. He's got himself a boyfriend now that I can tell is just perfect for him. So now I need to keep an eye out for both of them, if I could, I'd carry them around in my shirt pocket for safe keeping."

*******
"Boss, you're naked."

When Matson awoke the next morning rain was still pelting his bedroom windows and the faint, gray light sneaking in between the drapes indicated it was another dismal day. Burrowed in the warmth of his blankets, Beef could feel the chill of the room air and then he noticed something else. There was a faint, pleasant odor of something cooking and the faint cheery sound of music. Both enticed the detective from his bed. Opening his bedroom door into his living room, the aromatic smell became stronger and instrumental Christmas music gently played from the kitchen. Randy was absent from the air mattress where Brett was still very much asleep.

"Shawn and Mark are friends who have a Christmas party this afternoon and we're all invited. Oh yeah, I meant to tell you guys about that, but since the two of you are living here, I figured I'd just take you when I go. Shawn and Mark will be your new landlords. You new apartment will be on the top floor of their house. It's still being remodeled but they want to show you guys what it will look like. I meant to tell you that." Beef Matson, poured a little cream into his cup, dumped in some coffee and headed with his cup around the corner to the bathroom, "Thanks for making the coffee and breakfast, Mr. Hardwicke, you're just too good. Gotta take a shower so I start feeling functional." As Matson closed the bathroom door, Randy muttered, "You're just too good yourself, Mr. Matson." Beef totally enjoyed his shower, the exhilarating feel of the hot water, which also filled the bathroom with heavenly clouds of steam. Exiting the bathroom and heading back to his bedroom while rubbing a towel through his hair, Matson found Randy had dressed and was sitting next to Brett, who was still partially under the covers on the air mattress. Randy had brought Brett a hot cup of coffee and had his partner's head propped up against him and was massaging Brett's temples. "Is Brett okay?" asked Matson. "Brett has a hard time waking up, so this is the way I like to help wake him up in the morning." "Randy, you are just too good," commented the private investigator as he towards his bedroom, "Bathroom's all nice and warm now for your shower, Brett." As Beef closed his bedroom door, Brett looked up at Randy. "You know, I think I remember him putting us to bed last night and tucking us in." Randy smiled down at Brett and continued to lovingly massage his head and neck. "This morning," continued Brett, "I woke up with this sense of total security and being totally safe here. I know your boss's place is on the small side, but it's really cozy and warm, and I don't know what it is, his furniture, the spicy smell his place has, or maybe just being around him, but his place feels like a real home and being here is just really like…coming home for the holidays. Do you think we can get him to adopt us?"

*******

Matson emerged from his bedroom looking outstandingly good in a white polo shirt and jeans. The way his male midsection and well developed behind and thighs looked in jeans was the reason it was said that the next best thing to seeing Beef Matson naked was to see him in jeans. The private detective rummaged a bit in his storeroom and emerged with a couple of boxes he placed on his living room coffee table. He sat down on the couch and called Randy to join him. Randy emerged from the kitchen and Matson patted the couch with his hand. "C'mon here…sit. I want to show you something."

Randy plopped himself down next to his boss on the couch and looked curiously at the boxes on the coffee table. As Beef began pulling one of the boxes closer to him, he glanced at Randy and offered a comment. "You're looking pretty good this morning, Mr. Hardwicke." Matson sniffed the air, "You smell good too." The detective held his assistant in a loose embrace and rubbed his nose against Randy's hair. "The shampoo you use smells terrific."
At that moment, Brett, who had just finished dressing after taking a shower, came out of the bathroom, and walked into the living room to catch Beef in what appeared to be a passionate embrace with Randy. He stopped suddenly at the entrance to the living room, not knowing what to do. Matson casually released Randy and looked up to see Brett.

"Brett…" called Matson, "Just in time for my presentation. C'mon…sit yourself down."
Brett paused for a second and looked away, "No…I guess I'll just sit in the kitchen for awhile."
"No…c'mon here. Sit down."
"No…" repeated Brett, "I'll go sit in the kitchen and you two can continue to do whatever you were doing."
"Brett…" announced Beef sternly, "I don't allow attitude in my household, come over here and set your tush down."
"I'll just sit in the kitchen for awhile…"
"Mr. Parker…you don't want me to come in the kitchen after you."
With that, Randy looked up at Brett, giving him a nod that he should sit on the couch. Begrudgingly, Brett walked over and sat on the other side of Matson.

"C'mon, don't be selfish with your good self," Matson reached around Brett and pulled him close, wrapping his leg around one of Brett's legs and anchoring him closely. Beef then nuzzled Brett's head, sniffing his hair, "Damn, you smell just as good as Randy does. You're gonna make my Randy very happy. You know, out of my whole family, I think I'm going to like you guys the best."
Brett suddenly realized he had misjudged the situation.
"Randall," said Beef very seriously, "This is my most important Christmas gift to you."
"Uh…what?" asked Randy, looking around the room.
"This…the stuff in these boxes I'm going to show you…is my way of presenting myself as a gift to you…and Brett. Since you don't really have a family, I, uh…am offering you…and Brett, to be part of my official family. In whatever way you want to consider me, brother, uncle…whatever. I'm serious about you guys becoming part of my family. So…well, as a start, but I'm gonna share with you everything about me there is to know, all the personal stuff. Since you work for me, I think it might be helpful for you to know the truth as opposed to the urban legends. So if anyone tries to lay any rumors about me on you, you'll know what the truth is."

"In this box, are photos from my entire life. I want you guys to go through the box with me, feel free to ask any questions. When we're finished, you'll know me as well, and probably better than any of my biological family members do." Matson pulled off the lids to the boxes and began pulling out albums, envelopes and little boxes, all containing photos and memorabilia. Through the late morning and early afternoon, the trio went through the photos, with Randy at one point making some hot chocolate and snacks. The photo sharing became a bonding experience for the three, with Matson even discovering that Brett also had sensitive, ticklish spots just like Randy did.

The first photos Matson started out with the ubiquitous photos of any personal photo collection, pictures of himself as a child, his parents and an assortment of relatives. Later the photos progressed to his years in high school, showing Matson on the wrestling and debate teams, and in the acting club. Then there were photos of Beef in a military uniform and later in a police uniform, the private investigator also sharing anecdotes of his years in the military and then on the police force along with the photos.
"You might find these a bit more interesting than the standard family and friends photos," said Beef, as he pulled some larger, fancier envelopes from the boxes. "This is from the days when I had just left the police department and was trying start up my own investigation agency. Things were a bit lean back in the early days, so I took a few side jobs to bring in some money. Those side jobs kept me afloat until my little firm started rolling."
Matson gave Brett a large, fancy dark gray envelope and Randy's partner's eyes widened as he opened the flap and pulled out the photos.

"Oh, my hell…" exclaimed Brett.
Matson suddenly turned his head toward Brett, "Are you originally from Utah?"
"Yeah…," answered Brett, "When I was a kid. Why'd you ask that?"
"Ah…nothing," said Beef.
"Ah, well…Mr. Matson," gasped Brett, "You certainly do have an award winning tan in this photo…in fact, that's all you're wearing." Brett passed the photo on to Randy and began looking at others in the envelope.
Matson chuckled, rather proudly. "I think I look pretty damned good in those photos. One of my modeling jobs."
"Oh wow…" observed Randy, "You really are naked. I mean you're even smooth, like totally shaved smooth."
"What I'd call buff and polished," added Brett.
Matson refused to be embarrassed. "I think that's the best tan I've ever had. That was down at a Palm Springs resort. Stayed there for two weeks, all expenses paid plus what I got for the modeling job. I modeled swim wear and uh…little tiny g-stringy type things for a catalog photo shoot."
"You kept yourself shaved back then?" asked Brett.
"Well, the guy from the catalog wanted me smooth for the shoot, he felt a smooth body was more aesthetic."
"I have to say you do look good, boss," added Randy, "You don't even look freaked out at being nude."
"Nah…" dismissed Matson, "it was one of those nude resorts, after a couple of days when I started getting my all over tan, it didn't bother me at all; I was happy with just wearing running shoes. I just wore running shoes and socks and nothing else for almost the entire two weeks I was there. Besides, it was in the middle of summer and was just like a furnace down there. It was a thing of if being my nude didn't bother anyone else…it didn't bother me. I think a guy looks a lot more masculine when he has an all over tan, to me, tan lines are sort of wussy."
"Hmmm…" muttered Brett, looking at more photos from the envelope, "these are not so much swimsuits as they are attempts at swimsuits…maybe pieces of swimsuits."
"Well…" informed Matson, "they're what is called novelty wear, let's face it, some of the things I'm wearing in some of the photos are nothing more straps and little cloth bags. Expensive cloth bags, though."
"One thing I will never call you is a prude," responded Brett.

"That photo shoot helped pay my rent on the new little private investigator's office at the time, along with my apartment rent. It also led to other side jobs." Matson pulled out some other envelopes full of photos. The additional photos showed Matson doing a nude bartending stint and a couple of other nude photos sets apparently taken for a magazine.
"Oh my gosh," squawked Randy as he looked through the nude bartending photos, "There are celebrities at this bar…"
"It was a charity event," explained Matson.
"Look…in with the customers, there's Zak Spears, Bruce Vilanch and Armistead Maupin. Too bad Zak has his clothes on," added Randy.
"And thankfully, Vilanch also has his clothes on," contributed Brett, looking at the photo.
Another envelope contained photos revealing Beef Matson as a male stripper.
"I guess I had issues with the stripper thing," confided Beef, "that scene was too rambunctious for me to feel comfortable with. I started thinking too, that people would have a hard time taking a private investigator seriously if he was also a stripper."
"I guess I'm impressed and amazed," added Randy.
"Suppose you've heard about the x-rated films…?" asked Matson.
"I've heard the rumors," admitted Randy.
"That's all they are…rumors. I've never been in any x-rated films," declared Beef, "I had offers…some tempting ones, but I decided I didn't want to go that route. Some friends of mine have appeared in adult films and I did some investigation jobs for adult film studios, but I've not been in any films. So…" the detective put his hand on the back of Randy's neck, massaging it, "if anyone tells you to the contrary, now you know they're just talking trash."

The last of the photos, and there were a lot of them, were of Matson and friends at social gatherings, birthday parties, Christmas parties, gay weddings and other gatherings, at private homes and bars and on vacation.
"Man…" exclaimed Randy, looking at a photo of his employer attired in cowboy duds, hat and boots, securing a horse to a hitching post, "You make one hot cowboy!"
Mr. Matson appeared to be a very popular man and in many of the photos he was shown with attractive men hanging onto him. Additionally, there were photos of Matson posing with celebrities, such as k.d. lang, Lily Tomlin, Elton John, Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etheridge, Will Clark, Chi Chi LaRue, Ellen DeGeneres and RuPaul. Beef delighted in this last batch of photos, identifying the people in the photos, his relatives and his friends. Family and friends were very important to Beef Matson. He genuinely delighted in relating tales about the people in the photos to Randy and Brett, who in turn were genuinely impressed by their introduction into the more private world of Beef Matson. Indeed, Randy and Brett had now become part of this private world, they now knew Matson as personally as anyone did and accepted him as family, and Matson now more than ever, had come to feel that these two young men were as close to him as any member of his family could be.

********
"All of a sudden Brett looked up at the ceiling, and then he just sort of went out of focus and disappeared."

That afternoon, around three o'clock, Beef Matson led Brett and Randy off to the Christmas party at Shawn and Mark's. The house they arrived at was slightly off Castro, a very well kept, prim and proper painted lady Victorian row house. A party guest answered the door and led Matson and company through a couple of rooms congested with gay men, the sound of bouncy, 1970's classic disco echoing through the big old house. Matson, with Randy and Brett in tow, was brought to the big Victorian kitchen, where the hosts, Shawn and Mark were found. Two kitchen tables were lined up end to end, covered with heavy table cloths, the table tops jammed with a holiday buffet.
"Beef Matson!", exclaimed Shawn as the detective entered the doorway. "Here's Randy, and this must be Brett. My, my, cutiepie one and cutiepie two. Matson, you sure know how to surround yourself with cuteness…I've got to find out who your distributor is. You guys grab yourself a plate, we're just ready to open the buffet. Now don't be shy…Mark and I have gone to great efforts to produce this buffet. From the very wilds of Wisconsin, we have imported a smoked turkey, a honey ham and a wheel of Swiss cheese. There's a melt-in-your-mouth smoked salmon, St. Louis style smoked barbeque ribs and from one of our local illustrious Chinese restaurants, we have some to die for sweet and sour chicken and egg rolls…"
"Don't forget the liver paté, we mustn't forget the liver paté," interrupted Mark, mimicking the voice of the French Chef, Julia Childs.
Shawn continued, "Not to mention the cheese logs, the cheese tortes, cheese spreads, dips, veggies, crackers, etcetera, etcetera. Then, after you get started with that, there's the petis fours, our fabulous homemade Christmas fudge, the tortes, the cheesecake collection, the macadamia cake, the Black Forest Yule Log cake and last, but not least, grandma's fruitcake, mellowed with 100 proof bourbon. Any questions?"
"Ah yeah…" quipped Matson, "Where's the Cheetos®?"
Shawn quickly elbowed the detective in the side, with Beef muttering an "Ooof!" Shawn then spun around to face the crowd lining up for the buffet, and tapping his wine glass with a knife he grabbed from the table, addressing everyone lining up for the buffet.
"For those of you who don't know, this is gay San Francisco's very own detective, Mr. Lynn Gordon Matson, known to just about everyone as Beef Matson. I'm sure just about everyone here also knows his assistant, Randy Hardwicke…and anyone who knows Randy, knew that those charges against him were just pure phony baloney from the get go, dreamed up by some sick minds who are the real perverts. What I really want to say is that we all should be glad that we have someone around like Beef who will stand up for us, even to the point of having some crazy person come after him with a gun. This is somebody we should have respect for, a man we are fortunate to have on our side." There was a momentary pause after Shawn's last word, and then a gentle, dignified and sustained applause began in the room, everyone facing Beef Matson and deliberately directing their applause to him. Randy noticed that his boss was a reluctant recipient of the attention, suddenly looking shy and embarrassed, even surprised, with Matson giving a polite smile and respectful nods to the long applause.

As the applause died down and the buffet line began to fill up, other individuals crowded around Beef and Randy to chat, some curious about Randy's "new" boyfriend. As the vintage "Hold Tight" by the Andrews Sisters came pouring out of speaker on the wall, a trio of men began doing an impromptu mimicking performance to it, entertaining the buffet line. After a while, Randy and Brett found themselves chatting with Shawn who explained to Randy and Brett that he and Mark had known the gay private investigator for years and Matson had even worked on a couple of assignments for them. Mark explained that he and Shawn owned a production company, which brought plays to San Francisco. He further explained that the hardest part of producing was deciding on which project would be the one to produce. "Sometimes it's easy," explained Mark, "like it was easy to decide a Gregorian chant version of 'Grease' was probably a real bad idea."

Randy quietly a sided to Brett that Mark and Shawn were the youngest looking fifty plus year old men he had ever seen. Randy and Brett and Beef soon lost themselves in the party crowd, which filled all the downstairs rooms of the house. After a bit, Beef Matson was patrolling the rooms looking for his assistant. Finding Randy in the main downstairs hallway, Matson gently placed one of his hands on Randy's shoulder while holding a highball in his other hand. "Here's my astounding and super efficient assistant," exclaimed Beef, appearing to be slightly under the influence, something remarkable to Randy, since Matson was such a determined teetotaler. The few times Randy had seen his boss indulge in alcoholic beverages was during parties such as this, and even then Matson was self-limiting in his drinking.

Matson applied a gentle hold on the back of Randy's neck. "I told Shawn and Mark I'd track you down so they could show you and Brett your new apartment. I've seen the place…it's pretty damn nice. You and your guy are going to be very happy living there. Where is Brett anyway?"
"Dunno…" replied Randy, "Been looking for him myself. He wandered away while I was chatting with some friends and I haven't seen him since. This is one well packed house party."
Randy asked a young man holding a martini and leaning against a sliding wooden door at the entrance to the living room if he had seen Brett.
"Brett…your Brett?" responded the young man while he chewed an olive, "He's gone…just disappeared."
"Disappeared?" exclaimed Randy with alarm, his eyes widening, "What do you mean just disappeared?"
"Well, it was just the strangest sort of thing," explained the young man, still munching on the olive, "All of a sudden Brett looked up at the ceiling, and then he just sort of went out of focus and disappeared."
"No…" gasped Randy.
Matson noticed a look of sheer terror was filling Randy's face. He firmed his grip on Randy's neck and began massaging it.
"He's kidding you, Randy," said Matson calmly and directed a stern question to the young man with the martini. "Where is Brett?"
"He's behind that speaker, in the living room…where all the big potted plants are," revealed the young man, "Somebody tripped on a wire and tore it out of the speaker. Randy's handyman boyfriend volunteered to fix it. He's back there with a screwdriver, fixing the wiring. Not the cocktail screwdriver, but the handyman's tool. I don't mean he's back there fooling around with a handyman's tool…he's fixing the wiring. Well, you know what I mean." Something else caught the young man's attention. "Oh, there's that dreamy little English guy named Ian," and he drifted off into another room, still nursing the martini.

Turning to Matson, Randy apologized, "Sorry, guess I freaked a little."
"I noticed…" replied his boss, looking at Randy with a bit of concern.
"I guess I must still be a little stressed."
"Don't give it a second thought…" advised Matson, "Go get your hubby, Shawn and Mark are waiting."
Brett had now revealed himself, standing up behind the speaker, apparently finished with his repair job. Beef Matson watched with curious interest as his assistant made his way across the room and threw his arms around Brett from behind, grasping Brett and rubbing his face against him in an embrace of desperate longing, as if Randy actually thought Brett might have suddenly been irretrievably lost.

"Me for you, you for me, that's the way it's gonna be, this time, babe,"

As Beef wandered off into another room, Shawn and Mark led Randy and Brett up the flight of stairs at the back of the house. "The place was one of those hopeless efficiencies, but we got one of those low cost loans through the California Affordable Housing Program and decided to remodel it. Redid the kitchen, the cabinets were just about all shot anyway, and expanded this floor out a bit so now there are two bedrooms, or bedroom and a den, depending on how you look at it, and a big deck which you could use as your yard. The deck faces south, so there's plenty of sun if you want to raise some plants out there." Randy noticed some of the windows even had an excellent view of the Twin Peaks. "We always thought our house was just like the one in the old movie 'I Remember Mama'," added Mark, "So having you guys living up here will be just like having family in the house."

After their new landlords had left, leaving the couple to explore for a little while the new apartment on their own. As Randy and Brett prepared to leave and rejoin the party, Randy stopped and pushed Brett gently up against a wall near some unfinished kitchen cabinetry.
"Since we split up," said Randy softly, "I had some places of my own, but they never seemed like home. As hard as I tried, I could never make a place feel like home. I wanted to go home, I kept wanting to go home, but I realized that I just didn't know where that was. I realize now that home can only be where I can be with you. This place…with you…finally, this is it. This is home. I know this will be our home."

"Randy," said Brett, first biting his bottom lip and frowning a bit, "this is all super and everything, but how are we going to afford this? I mean I just dropped everything when I came up here from Los Angeles. Even if I sold everything from my apartment down there, it wouldn't add up to very much and I'm not working. To be honest, I just wasn't doing very well at all. I haven't done very well since we split up. I did okay before I met you and when we were together then I did super, but after we split up…well, I just don't do very well without you."

"Beef wanted to make sure you had a job, so he asked me if you'd want to work with him on some secret little project he's got cookin'. He wanted somebody that no one associates with him to do some undercover work for him. Secondly, Shawn and Mark are helping to test a new play here in San Francisco for some New York producer guy and they needed a production assistant, so I volunteered you. Should only be temporary, but might be a lot of fun. Then I got you a job as a part-time chef at the Ruby Slipper, will be great experience and could lead to some other jobs. San Francisco has a lot of restaurants." "I should have known you were already working on things," replied Brett, "Once again, you've totally amazed me." The two young men paused momentarily staring into each other's eyes. "Me for you, you for me, that's the way it's gonna be, this time, babe," said Brett softly. "Me for you, you for me," answered Randy. Brett suddenly reached out and pulled Randy's arms around him, "Give me one more chance to prove my love." Randy lunged into Brett, reaching around his lover, pushing his face into Brett's chest, "You don't have to prove anything…" Brett grabbed Randy tightly, rubbing his face into Randy's blond hair and noticing that Randy had become a waterfall of tears. "Randy…my precious little Shugabug, what's wrong?" "All the stuff that's happened to me…I'm just now letting go…" Brett continued to hold his Randy firmly, rocking him gently back and forth, "Baby, you're so fine…".

********

Returning downstairs, Randy and Brett joined houseguests in Shawn and Mark's living room. The guests had noticed that the angel ornament the top of the beautiful Christmas tree was leaning and the tilt was becoming more prominent, meaning it would probably soon cascade to the floor, spelling certain disaster for the glass ornament. Randy volunteered to fix the ornament's perch and looked about for a chair he could stand on to reach the top of the tree. Matson didn't like the idea of his assistant balancing on a chair, and grabbed Randy's legs, telling him to stiffen them. Beef Matson then lifted Randy into the air, which then was able to reach the angel with ease and fix its precarious pose. At that time, the two hosts entered the room.
"That's a beautiful ornament, Beef, but I just don't think it'll fit on the tree," said Mark.
"Where'd you find an ornament like that? I'd like to get a whole set just like it for our tree next year," said Shawn.
Grinning, Matson turned as if he were presenting Randy to the entire room, "I'd like to thank the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for this beautiful award…", the entire room breaking into laughter.

"Well, I'll be damned," announced one of the guests lifting up a drape and peering out a window, "It's snowing outside, light and a little wimpy, but it's snowing!"
The party guests began to flock to the windows, affirming the announcement.
"Who wants to go outside for a quick stroll in the snow?" asked Beef enthusiastically. There wasn't any response, the guests preferring to watch the weather from the warmth of the house. "Been there, done that." quipped one of the guests. Randy, however, was already headed out the front door with Brett and Beef, putting on their coat and jacket, following him. The trio stood on the sidewalk marveling at the snow which was falling heavier and began sticking on pavement, the tribulations of drivers attempting to navigate their vehicles on the slick, hilly streets becoming added entertainment.
"Isn't this beautiful?" said Randy as he outstretched his arms, slowly spun around and looked up into the sky, "Look how big the flakes are getting. This is perfect, just the way a Christmas should be."
Brett walked up behind Randy. "It's too cold to be out here without a coat," he complained. Brett drew Randy back into him and pulled his coat around his partner, wrapping Randy in a cocoon of warmth. The trio stood for awhile on the sidewalk in the snow as a number of residents of the neighborhood came out onto their porches to watch the phenomenon.
"We should go back in," advised Matson, "we're all beginning to get soaked."

"I'm sorry, I guess there was just a misunderstanding on my part."

"I…I guess I must have misunderstood you…" continued Ken, his voice cracking, "Sorry…I even brought a Christmas present for you. The bag got a little soggy during my walk here, but the present's still dry inside. See?" Ken pulled the gift partly out of the bag to show Beef, who was obviously embarrassed but still did not recognize the handsome stranger. Randy and Brett looked at each other with puzzled expressions. "I'm sorry, I guess there was just a misunderstanding on my part," said Ken, "I should probably pass on the party." Biting his bottom lip he smiled a timid smile at Matson. "You're a beautiful man, Mr. Matson, but I guess you can be a little hard headed at times." Ken reached up and brushed a bent finger along one of Matson's eyebrows, and this was followed by a silence broken only by the sound of a breaking heart. He turned and began to walk away with a defeated posture. Matson stiffened, flicking the eye that Ken had brushed. Ken's stroll was suddenly interrupted when Matson suddenly yanked him back by the belt loops of his jeans and spun him around.

Releasing Ken from his grip, Matson introduced him to Randy and Brett. "This is Ken Frietag, I met him a few days ago. He's opening a shop in our building."
"Wow, you do have your little secrets, boss," commented Randy, "Nice to meet you Ken. You'll have to excuse my boss, he's been working too hard lately."
"All is forgiven and forgotten," said Ken, as Matson nuzzled and planted kisses on him. "I guess now I can give you your Christmas present, but you have to wait till Christmas Day to open it."
"Well," replied Beef, "Since you're going to be staying at my place, at my house we open presents on Christmas Eve". Matson turned to Randy and Brett, "Since Ken just arrived in San Francisco, and he’ll also be staying with us until his place is ready. The more the merrier."
"Our family opens our presents on Christmas Eve," affirmed Randy proudly.

The four men began walking towards the glowing light of the front door of the house as the snowfall became even heavier. "Hold on a second," announced Matson, "I need to check something out first."
The investigator tugged on a puzzled Ken to stop, encircled his arms around the young man, massaging him with the detective rubbing his body against him. Matson then released Ken, saying, "You passed the test, you'll work out just fine".
"Test…" asked Ken, "What kind of test was that?"
"My cuddle test, of course," smirked Beef, holding Ken and pausing momentarily as their breath formed white clouds and mingled in the chilly air. Beef began tugging Ken towards the house, "C'mon, the way the snow's coming down now, we're all gonna get drenched."

"This bag's really soaked," observed Ken, handing Beef his present, "You guys go ahead, and I’ll toss this bag into the trash." Ken motioned towards the gift box, confiding, "It's a companion teddy bear for Fred. I thought he might get lonely since he won't be sleeping with you anymore." "Huh? Oh…" Matson smiled knowingly. As Beef, Randy and Brett, climbed the stairs to the Victorian row house, an exuberant Ken trotted over to a trashcan, lifting the lid and throwing the soggy bag in. He turned to see Matson and his companions nearing the top of the stairs. Ken took a deep breath and smiled. "You've really made my day, Mr. Matson." He spun around once and then punched the air with his arm. As he did, a glowing fissure ripped open and several glowing orbs flew out of it before the fissure disappeared. Brett and Randy had entered the front door and Matson remained at the top of the stairs waiting for Ken and waving to him to hurry up. Kenneth Freitag joined Lynn Gordon Matson at the top of the stairs; they embraced, kissed tenderly and then entered the front door to join the party. As the snow continued to fall, a portly man, with a red goatee and dressed in a derby hat, three piece suit and smoking a cigar paused momentarily while walking past the house to gaze up at the front door. "I really do good work", he uttered as he blew some glowing smoke rings into the air. He beamed a powerful smile, chuckled proudly and continued on his way while speaking out loud, marveling at the sights around him, "How delightful, totally wonderful, absolutely brilliant…"

Click on the image above to see an animated version of it, courtesy of Josh from the United Kingdom.

- - - - - - -The End - - - - - - -

EPILOGUE

Gloria
Gloria returned home and quickly rose to a position of power and authority in her church, because, it seemed, that anyone who opposed Gloria soon met with an unfortunate event. Her bearded, middle-aged husband, an elder in the church, was killed when his car careened off of interstate 25 in a fiery crash into a pancake house restaurant. Gloria immediately married a church member that was much younger than her. This man, too, met with an untimely end, when, some ten months later, he and a young lady companion were electrocuted in a freak hot tub accident. Other church members who took issue with Gloria's authority also suddenly found much unpleasantness entering into their lives, ranging from house fires, sudden baldness, cancers and numerous freak accidents, resulting in a decline in church membership as members sought refuge in other, less dangerous denominations. The declining membership did not bother Gloria, as she was very content with maintaining absolute control in her church.

Bessie
Bessie was charged with attempted murder for the incident at Berry and Bobbi's house with her original defense that she had been drugged and brainwashed by a right wing group, however, she later recanted, saying her actions were due to her rage against homosexual militants. She also stated that the skinny woman she shared her house with had preyed upon her many years before, forcing her into a homosexual relationship and ruining her forever. Her housemate countered saying that she had done no such thing, Bessie had seduced her and revealed details about their relationship, including the fact that Bessie had built and maintained an altar in their house, devoted to authoritarian women Bessie admired, such as Marilyn Musgrave, Dr. Laura and Janet Reno, and in fact, Bessie would force her to pray with her at this altar.

Bessie was convicted and imprisoned, but only spent ten months in jail, being released early for good behavior and her cooperation since prison authorities found Bessie to be an excellent informant who regularly provided much information about other inmates. Upon her release, Bessie wrote a book called "My Vagina Is Sad", which chronicled her efforts to protect women on the religious and political right from militant gay rights activists. Around the same time she formed a moderately successful organization, Codependent Rights, Codependent Women (CD-R, CD-W). Her organization emphasized the idea that women needed constant guidance and companionship, particularly from strong men, to help them through their lives. The organization championed causes such as a "Time Out For Crying", in which employers were encouraged to set aside an hour each day for their women employees to they could have somewhere to go to weep in private. Bessie's organization also conducted protests, such as some outside gay bars, where codependent woman would wail hysterically, roll on the ground and demand that gay men turn straight and become perfect husbands for them. Bessie also set up another organization, "Rest Your Head On My Breast", which set up teams of women who would rush to comfort straight women who had just found out that homosexuals, free thinkers, or other not really nice people had moved into their neighborhoods. The organization also set up booths at fairs handing out information and selling bumper stickers, which read "Strength Through Codependency" and "A Codependent Woman Is A Natural Woman". Bessie's organization also argued that for the protection of women, early intervention was necessary, using drug and electroshock therapy on school children that exhibited homosexual or nonconformist behavior. Pamphlets bearing the title, "Why Electroshock Is Your Best Friend", written by Patricia Arquette, were printed up and even distributed in some schools. Bessie appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, highlighting her "Time Out For Crying" program, impressing Oprah, who sobbed quietly while Bessie spoke. Other campaigns were not as successful, such as one in which Bessie sought to protect women from being stalked by handsome and rich males by providing women with companions such as her.

Sharon Ledbauer

Sharon Ledbauer was brought in for questioning and questioned by a sympathetic woman police detective who suggested to Sharon, that her murders of her husband and Randy Hardwicke's Uncle Marty could be understood if Sharon had been abused by the two men. However, Sharon was adamant in professing her innocence. Finally, the detective revealed that Sharon's stepson, Rocky, had confessed, spilling the beans about how Sharon had plotted with him to kill his father so that Rocky could then get his hands on some money to pay some drug related debts. In turn, he agreed to accuse Randy Hardwicke of molesting him, in a scheme to get Randy to move back to Illinois, move back in with Sharon, and in effect, become her new husband. Sharon was also convinced that Randy must be fairly rich, since she thought all gay men were wealthy. Rocky also admitted to fathering a child with Sharon, shortly before they plotted to kill his father. The police detective also revealed that a person, that Sharon thought was a woman called C.D., had also furnished the police with information Sharon had given her about how she had poisoned her husband and Randy's Uncle Marty and that Sharon also wanted the private detective Beef Matson killed as well. When faced with this information, Sharon still professed her innocence, but only for a very short while. Then, Sharon's face of innocence was suddenly replaced by a expression of rage and she hit the police detective with a sucker punch that sent her sailing nearly half way across the small interrogation room.

Later, a much less sympathetic police investigator again questioned Sharon, this time in the company of several other detectives. Sharon accused the detective of conspiring against her, that the detective had found out what a good worker Randy Hardwicke was and she wanted him for himself. Sharon also declared she had a right to murder her husband and Randy's Uncle Marty, that old people had no use at all and were pointless to have around, especially when other people could make use of their money. Sharon related how her parents had raised her to watch out for herself, the only person she had any feeling for was herself, and the way she was going to make it through life was by watching out for number one. Sharon ended up with an indefinite term in prison, where her attitudes about other people helped her fit in rather well. However, she also learned that the legacy of a lifetime of hatred can also result in having practically nothing.

Back in Illinois, the district attorney's plans to paint Randy Hardwicke as a child predator were thwarted by the offspring of Sharon's siblings who all seemed to be living checkered lives, including some who were having children out of wedlock with their cousins. It seems that the culture of Sharon Ledbauer's family discouraged their children from higher education and encouraged the girls in the family to have children instead. One Chicago TV station featured a news story on Sharon's nieces, how most of them had children on welfare, and the story showed images of the residences of the nieces, all with many unattended young children playing on barren front lawns, running in and out of pushed out screen doors. On top of it all, Sharon had a brother who turned out to be very involved in the white supremacy movement and his views seemed to be shared by everyone in their family, so interviews with the family by the press often turned into highly racist discussions. That reason, along with the revelation that some of Sharon Ledbauer's nieces and nephews were not only having children with each other, but selling the babies for profit, made the district attorney finally decide that for his own political safety, he needed to quietly distance himself as far as possible from Sharon's family and forget about Randy Hardwicke, since Beef Matson's assistant, by comparison, seemed to be the very rock of decency.

Amber
Amber went on trial for having sexual relations with underage teenage males. Before the trial Amber dyed her hair blond and wore a tight and somewhat revealing dress to her trial. The judge gave Amber six months probation and a year later, Amber was back working in a counseling program for teenage boys. This time, Amber became pregnant with a child fathered by a 15-year-old boy, and a year later, had another child by a 16-year-old boy.

Heidi
Heidi was not as fortunate as Amber. When the parents of the neighbor boy gave the videotape of Heidi peering into their son's bedroom window and masturbating, she was promptly arrested. The less attractive Heidi's trial also did go as well as Amber's. Heidi spent many months in prison, many years more on probation and had to register as a sexual offender. Her life ruined, Heidi ultimately moved to New Jersey and ended up having a career as a waitress.

Berry and Bobbi
Berry and Bobbi continued in their long-term relationship, legalizing their marriage by exchanging vows. Later, they also added several children to their family. Bobbi preferred to stay at home, though she occasionally held positions at local high schools as a guidance counselor. She also started a culinary arts business, publishing a couple of successful cookbooks and offering a line of specialty foods. Berry Starr continued in her legal practice, occasionally using the services of Beef Matson in a number of cases. Berry ultimately moved on to become a respected jurist on the California Supreme Court.

Randy Hardwicke
A couple of days before Randy and Brett were scheduled to move in their new apartment, Randy Hardwicke married Brett Parker in a civil ceremony in the San Francisco City Hall, insisting that their relationship be official before they moved into their new place. Randy's boss, Beef Matson found out about the civil ceremony and quietly arranged for a surprise reception in the lobby of their office building, which was very nicely catered by the Ruby Slipper restaurant with the Just Desserts bakery providing an incredible wedding cake for the event. Not only were many friends and a good part of the Castro in attendance for the reception, but Matson also arranged for a gay minister to conduct another, more ceremonious and memorable way for Randy and Brett to exchange vows at the event.

Randy and Brett lived for years in the apartment on the top floor of the Victorian mansion in the Castro neighborhood, with Randy becoming noted for his hobby of cultivating herbs on the deck of the apartment. Randy continued his long-term professional association with Lynn Gordon Matson and became as devoted to Beef Matson almost as much as he was to his beloved Brett Parker. Randy also became involved with gay civil rights and historical organizations in San Francisco and continued his life long interest in music and was especially noted for his love and enjoyment of the Christmas season. Randy had a special sensitivity to, and was also passionate about helping gays who were facing issues regarding homelessness, loss of a partner or those dealing with financial problems due to illness or loss of employment.

Brett Parker became a noted chef and also worked with Beef Matson on cases as an operative. He would often accompany Matson and Randy on cases, which took the three of them out of town. Randy and Brett were inseparable as a couple; in fact, their relationship was one that could be considered as indestructible. When referring to Brett and Randy, people often described their marriage as one that truly was made in heaven.

Lynn Gordon "Beef" Matson
San Francisco's famous gay private investigator continued to have many more interesting cases, not all of which were in the city by the bay. Other cases took him far from the city, often with Randy, or Randy and Brett in tow. When it came to defending gay clients, Beef Matson was noted for an uncanny ability to dig up information favorable to his clients, almost as if he had a special insight. Matson's abilities, along with his loyalty to his clients and to the gay community, earned him a solid reputation with the same community as its much-respected defending knight. With Matson's permission, his assistant, Randy Hardwicke later published records of his boss's adventures and cases. What exactly those cases were will have to wait for another time.

Rick Chris Home Page
Previous Chapters in the Beef Matson Archive - Chapters 1 to 4
Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 5 to 7
Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 8
Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 9
Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 10
Beef Matson Archive - Chapter 11
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