Displacement
by Miriam Heddy

I am not unmoveable but my flesh has a constitutional reluctance to sudden, violent or sustained displacement."
--The Red Box by Rex Stout, 1937.

     Don't get me wrong--it's not that I've got anything against yellow pajamas, per se. Myself, and as a matter of habit, I prefer sleeping in something a little less... well, yellow. But as someone wise once said, you can get accustomed to pretty much anything that doesn't kill you, and so far, the pajamas haven't. Nearly blinded me once, but then Wolfe woke up, frowned, and the sun streaming in the room glanced off his troubled brow, took the not so subtle hint, and found a convenient cloud to hide behind.

Needless to say, this evening, I wasn't going to be so lucky. Wolfe opened his mouth and I held up a cautionary hand. "Don't say it, don't even think about saying it."

I anticipate well. Some might say it's what's kept me alive and unmarried this long--two states I'm invested in preserving at all costs. And yet I put these priorities somewhere behind keeping Wolfe alive and, where possible, happy.

This time, Wolfe (and take note of this, because this is probably the only time you'll hear it from me) took me by surprise by not firing me outright.

"You're naked," he said, instead, which, ironically, came out sounding exactly like, "You're fired."

"Well, yes--yes, it appears that I am," I agreed. I couldn't help noticing that his gaze lingered longer than was strictly necessary to confirm his initial observation that I was not wearing pajamas, yellow or otherwise.

"Confound it. Do you mean to--to--continue to stand there in a state of undress?"

"Possibly. Or I could stand here," I offered, stepping through the door, closing it behind me, and making it all the way to the foot of his bed before my nerve gave out.

Apropos of nothing, my left elbow had started to itch. Wolfe watched me scratch it, and you'd think he'd never seen an elbow before. Now, at this point, various other nervous impulses in me were firing wildly, some in places that I figured few had ever fired before (at least not in Wolfe's presence).

"This--this is--outlandish. Have you taken leave of your senses?"

I shrugged. Maybe. The answer was a definite maybe. And just maybe Wolfe knew that, because I saw him turn on that switch in his brain that's signaled by a little quirk of his mouth that shakes his jowls just a bit. He twitched, then he nodded, which shook them some more. Then he stopped moving entirely. Wolfe was thinking.

Strangely, my own erection was bobbing, but not deflating, in sympathy with his facial tics. Call me perverse, if you want to, but maybe that's why he kept me on all these years--because immovable objects move me. That or it's because every great partnership needs a looker--someone to distract the rube while the other one does the work of picking his pocket. I work the smile angle, occasionally throw some punches, which is all right by me. Whatever Wolfe thinks he needs. I am the man for all occasions, even the ones Wolfe hasn't thought up yet. I anticipate. That's my special skill. Well, one of them, anyway.

But the point of the matter is, Wolfe was deep into it--the thinking--and that's something of a privilege to see, or hear on those occasions when he choses to share the inner workings. Frankly, it's the sexiest thing about him, yellow pajamas aside.

"The most obvious explanation is, as is usually the case, the least palatable. Still, we must consider it, after dismissing the other, less plausible possibilities. You are clearly not sleepwalking, as you do not sleepwalk."

"Negative. I'm not sleepwalking. Or, if I am, I don't know about it. So I'll have to leave it to your judgment whether I am or not. But I'm reasonably sure that I'm not."

"Pfui. We must move on. You might have been drugged, but as we have spent the last five meals together, with the exception of lunch, which Fritz served to you in the kitchen... And to have infected you with something--a hallucinogen or other mood-altering substance more powerful than alcohol, though with a similar repression of the inhibitions--would therefore have been difficult. Not impossible, no, but difficult. Drugs fed to you through the kitchen, under Fritz's watchful eye, would mean that I, too, would have been equally affected--"

(And I was not going to take it upon myself to point out that, if there were drugs in the food, or the beer, Wolfe would have been likely more affected than me, owing to the obvious fact that he consumes more than I do of just about everything, save scotch.)

"A blow to the head we can dismiss as, again, unlikely, as there have been no opportunities for injury in the last few days to account for this uncharacteristic display, although perhaps long-term damage from previous encounters with blunt objects and brutish fisticuffs may be responsible--"

"I'm not punch-drunk, if that's what you're implying."

Wolfe ignored me, continuing onward: "Of course, the simpler explanation--that you should be--and forgive me for not using the latest terminology, but semantic temerity can only draw a veil over what is, or should be, made visible if we are to lay bare the--"

At this, he glanced at my erection, and a small spot of color flushed over him, like a sun, setting behind a mountain.

"the facts of this situation, a homosexual, does not, in and of itself, surprise me."

"Nothing surprises you, Wolfe," I offered, because I was starting to feel a little unnecessary, just standing there, naked.

"Yes," Wolfe agreed. "Yes, well."

He was flattered. I could tell, because he hadn't ousted me from his suite yet.

"Yet for you to turn your--"

(penis)

"affections toward me, and in such a blatant manner, is--"

"Unheard of," I offered again, and he frowned, giving my "affections" another once-over.

"Ridiculous," he clarified.

"Depends what you mean by ridiculous," I countered, because cold analysis of the facts I could take, and might even encourage, but name-calling was, in my book, unnecessary. Laying aside the fact that all genitalia were somewhat ridiculous, mine were no more ridiculous than anyone else's, and I liked to think they had their own peculiar charm.

"No offense intended."

"Naturally. None taken," I agreed. I suppose that, given the circumstances, and in the present company, I could, as they say, afford to be big about it.

But there we were again, brought, by the conventions of polite intercourse, to a state which was not actually any closer to that particular brand of intercourse I was interested in at that moment.

"Forgive my saying so, Wolfe, but we appear to be back where we started, which is with me, standing here naked and you, reclining over there, in that blasphemous vestment you insist on calling pajamas."

"Pfui," Wolf shouted suddenly, as he tended to do when reason failed him. "Clothe yourself, immediately."

"Or what--I'm fired?"

"Yes."

And there, he'd said it. The relief, I'll admit, gave me the extra push I needed to actually sit on the bed beside him. "Good. Seeing as I'm no longer your employee, indentured or otherwise, let me have a couple of inches."

"Archie!"

"Nero! I'm referring to the fact that I'm perilously close to falling to the floor. Now do not make me take out the tape measure in order to demonstrate to you that there is, in fact, enough room for two in that continent you call a bed. If necessary, I will call in Fritz to check my work, but as you know, mathematics was always my strongest subject."

He frowned, an expression that made me want to lean in and nibble on his lower lip.

So I did, and it turns out that one plus one does indeed make two. After a few minutes, I came up for air.

"Archie Goodwin. You must--"

"Hmm?"

"You can't possibly mean to--"

"I can, and I do, and, more to the point, I will. Unless you have any serious objections along the lines of your continued disinterest in my sex in the general or myself in the particular?"

Wolfe said nothing, which might have had something to do with the fact that his mouth had again become otherwise occupied with mine. He was a fair kisser, in terms of skill (not temperament, which I would've classified as selfish), prone to stealing the air from my lungs and claiming it as his own, only to exhale in short pants before beginning the whole ritual again. It was heaven, a comparison I don't make lightly.

And, it turned out that, if you closed your eyes, Wolfe's objectionable pajamas were the highest quality silk, easing the glide of my body against his. And, though he is, at first glance, hard of heart and soft in the middle, he's also the reverse: a softie inside, not to mention being hard where it really matters.

Needless to say, though I started out on top, I soon found myself pressed and pinned to the mat. Wolfe wore me like a good shirt just out of the package, which was then, in short order, dishabille, as was the man himself.

Wolfe himself didn't say much during the act, other than to give the occasional imperious command, most of which I ignored in favor of following my own interests, desires, and the none-too-flexible Laws of Physics. After all, I didn't work for him anymore, and that meant we had plenty of time to explore the apparently limitless expanse of his imagination, not to mention the likewise expanse of his body, with which I decided it might take weeks to properly acquaint myself, a few responsive centimeters at a time. Thoroughness was yet another trait I knew he valued in me, back in the days of my employ.

Thus, when our mutual ardor cooled, or at least halfway through his multi-course breakfast (I couldn't foresee which appetite would prove heartier), Wolfe would be forced to admit I was irreplaceable (not to say irrepressible).

In this, my single--however illusory-- moment of freedom, I would, to quote the estimable Chairman, do it my way... which meant, of course, doing it Wolfe's way, our ways being mutually, and perhaps eternally, intertwined.

—FIN—

 

© 2005

 

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