Endless Blind Passions - Chapter 1
“Who are you?” Monty asks the odd-looking man and woman standing at the door to his Seattle houseboat, on an ominous day to have strangers suddenly turn up, knocking loudly on your door, only hours after the horrific attack on the East Coast.It’s nearly evening, but Monty’s still wearing his gray pajamas and black silk bathrobe. A cloud briefly blocks out the sun, darkening the entry porch facing the rear of the small moorage, where a fetid smell hovers over the stagnant water. Two crows squawk brazenly as they chase each other back from who knows where and settle in a nearby tree.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” says the man, tall as Monty but chunky, with hips like a pickup truck with oversize fender flares. In his midthirties, twenty or so years younger than Monty, he’s sporting a glossy black suit, a cropped butch blond haircut, and a grin on his face like a con artist about to cheat you out of your life savings.
Monty and Jamal, his Afghan boyfriend, bought the houseboat two years after they’d hooked up as a couple. Jamal was more confident about the move, and Monty trusted his judgment. They both loved its cozy cabin-like character, with its aged oak floors. They grayed down the clapboard exterior, painted the door and window trims a sexy shade of cabernet red, and modernized the pocket-size galley kitchen where guests entered, from the back of the houseboat, its front facing the water. Monty was surprised to find that he liked the confined space, so compressed compared to the house he’d long shared with his ex. It made him feel like he and Jamal were cuddling all the time—lightly brushing up against one another in passing, squeezing into the bathroom at the same time, snuggling up on the two-person love seat while watching movies or listening to music.
“We need to have a little chat with you,” says the heavyset man at the door, as if he and Monty are old friends.
“But who are you?” Monty repeats, squinting as the sun reappears.
“Who are you?” counters the short anorexic-looking middle-aged woman with a tightly braided bun of salt-and-pepper hair that looks like it could snap loose any moment and strike out at you like a whip.
“It’s best you let us in,” she says, relaxing an iota. “We’re from the FBI.”
Hmm, I should have guessed, thinks Monty, his antennae switching to full alert. A scholar of American history, he’s well versed in his country’s checkered inquisitorial record.He closely inspects the black ID wallets the agents hold up, noticing behind them that his neighbors are spying on the goings-on through the discreetly parted blades of their shuttered venetian blinds. Kirby, the husband, a shaggy tinkerer with a pack rat shack of his own at the top of the embankment overlooking the shared moorage on Lake Union, devised a motion detector to alert him and his chummy wife, Hillary, whenever someone walks down the stairs onto the common dock. Ever since Monty moved into the adjacent houseboat, they’ve been a bit too friendly with him and Jamal. Snoopy neighbors are fine in the unlikely event robbers are breaking into your place; not so great when the Feds show up.
“I’m sorry, what’s this all about?” Monty asks.
“We’ll explain,” Wrankle, the male agent, replies, eyeing Monty directly.
“Do you have a search warrant?”
“No, but we can get one,” Smitt, the female agent, answers, taking a step toward Monty with her pointy black shoes.
“Maybe I should call my lawyer first,” says Monty.
“Of course, that’s your right,” says Wrankle. “But it’s better you just comply. Resisting at this point might affect your situation. All we need is some information.”
What situation? What’s this all about? But in the evening after the terrorist attack, he figures it can only be about one thing.“Okay, I guess you can come in, but I don’t have much time.”
“It won’t take long,” says the woman, forcing a smile. “And we can always come back if we have more questions.”
Questions about what exactly? Monty wonders as he leads the two agents through the narrow kitchen to the living room, too meager to accommodate a full sofa. Gesturing to them to sit on his love seat, he takes the chair.“Does a Zahir Gulbalbalp … carkill live here?” Agent Wrankle asks Monty, grossly mispronouncing his lover’s family name. “About the same age as me.”
“No,” answers Monty after hesitating a beat too many.
“Are you sure?” asks Wrankle, tilting his head. “We have information he does.”
“There’s no one here by that name,” Monty shoots back, this time too fast.
“I see. So, what about this person?” Wrankle asks, pulling out a color photo of Jamal from his inside breast pocket and passing it to Monty across the rattan-and-glass coffee table. “Does he live here?”
Monty looks at the print for a few moments. Dusky face. Strong cheekbones. Long wavy black hair. Neatly trimmed seven-day beard. Sensuous lips inviting lingering kisses. And those arresting translucent green-blue eyes, like a wolf’s eyes, half-tame, half-daemonic, peering straight into your heart. Jamal—“beauty” in Arabic.
“Yes, this man lives here … with me,” Monty replies, deliberately stressing the nature of their relationship. “But his name isn’t Zahir,” he adds, glancing sideways.
“Well, whatever you think his name is, where is he now?” Agent Smitt asks, as if Monty must be hiding Jamal in his pajama pocket.
“I don’t know,” he answers.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” she presses, insinuating again that Monty must be concealing his lover.
“I don’t know. That’s what I mean. I don’t know. And what do you want with him anyway?”
“That, you don’t need to know,” she answers back with a slight smirk on her skintight face.
Before the agents showed up at his door, he’d been glued to his mini Sony TV, watching the news all day, like most everyone else in Seattle and the rest of the world. Earlier that morning, unaware of what was unfolding on the East Coast, he was topping up a bowl of granola with yogurt and dried sour cherries, more miffed than worried that Jamal hadn’t left a note explaining why he wasn’t home.
Unexpectedly Monty got a text message from Jin Li, a young Chinese man he’d had a fling with some years before. The fellow returned home after six months studying English at a private Seattle college, but they’d kept in touch and connected again when Monty visited him during a brief trip to China.
Terrbull what’s happen. R U watching? the message read.Monty flicked on the TV in time to see the World Trade Center’s South Tower collapse, floor after floor sandwiching down onto the next as if in slow motion, the humongous edifice nothing but a stack of flimsy pancakes, with zillions of crumbs thrust out in an expanding cumulus of poison and fear.
Monty’s jaw dropped, granola and yogurt dripping down his bearded chin, a mix of gray and red now that his blondness had long faded away, along with his once-proud blond mane, thinned over time and now shaved off entirely.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed aloud.
Thirty minutes later the North Tower fell. And all day since, CNN has kept replaying footage of the carnage: the two jets crashing into the skyscrapers like arrows penetrating human flesh, the dark, distant blips vainly hurling themselves from the top floor to certain death a hundred and ten stories down, until the buildings themselves cave in, erasing every trace of life. Ghastly images repeated again and again on every TV channel, implanting in the collective American consciousness an indelible posttraumatic stress disorder.
Monty had first seen the Twin Towers thirty-some years earlier, a few months after his college graduation. It was during a week’s stopover in New York, on his first trip anywhere beyond the West Coast. He and Jonathan, the man he’d end up spending over a quarter century with, were visiting the city before boarding a ship to Europe.
Jonathan, five years older, had been to New York before, but Monty insisted they take in all the famous sites, including the Empire State Building. They reached the observation deck shortly before closing time. Standing at the edge, Monty gazed through the canyons of parallel streets with their hundreds of tall lit-up buildings, down toward the World Trade Center. Still under construction and partially sheathed, the towers stood out in the murky twilight like two giant unearthly ghosts.
And ghosts they now are, along with twenty-seven hundred or so of their occupants and the emergency crews who got stuck trying to rescue them. All dead in a giant heap of noxious fumes, smoke, and paranoia engulfing Lower Manhattan and the whole of America. The hijacked jets couldn’t have been more shrewdly aimed, the resulting cataclysm igniting mayhem and xenophobia around the world, like evils released from Pandora’s box.
“So let’s get this straight,” says Agent Smitt, pulling out a notebook from her black purse and snapping it shut again. “Surname Chubatov, Chubatovsky before your grandfather shortened it. Correct?”
“Yes.” How the hell do they know about my grandfather?“First name Montgomery. That is your full name, correct?”
“Yes.”
He’d been named after the broodingly handsome actor Montgomery Clift. It amuses him to think that if his parents had had the slightest suspicion that Clift was a closeted homosexual, surely they would have named him after someone safer and more manly, someone like Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, or John Wayne. But John or Gregory would have been too Christian sounding, certainly not Jewish enough, though his family were anything but religious. Yes, Gary. Gary would have been a more prudent choice.
“You’re what, a hundred eighty pounds, six, six one, fifty-three years old?” says Smitt.
“Fifty-four. Twenty years older than my boyfriend. What else?”
“Grew up in Los Angeles. Went to that, shall we say, left-wing college in Portland, and then here at UW for graduate school. And you’re a full professor in American studies at Seattle State University,” she continues, as if they’ve uncovered dark, incriminating secrets. “And you lead some kind of Buddhist thing there, correct?”
“Yup. Zen.”
“And you’ve lived in this houseboat for about two years, since you split up with, eh, what’s his name?” she asks the other agent.
“Jonathan Weaver,” answers Wrankle.
“Yeah, so what? Our relationship ended. No big deal,” says Monty, wincing. Breaking up after so many years had been a very big deal.
“Let’s see.” Smitt pauses while reading her notes. “You got out of the draft, judged psychologically unfit for military service in Vietnam, right?”
“Look, that was decades ago. Why the hell are you bringing all this up?”
“We need to be sure we’ve got the right person,” says the man, smiling.
“The right person for what? You’re not investigating me, are you? It’s Jamal you want to know about, isn’t it?” Monty asks, realizing they’ve cornered him into pointing the finger at his lover. As if Jamal were guilty. Guilty of what? Collaboration in the attack? Ridiculous.“We like to have all our facts straight,” says Smitt. “And don’t worry, we can always offer you immunity in case he’s compromised you in any way. Just tell us what you know.”
Immunity? From what?
“So when was the last time you saw your friend?” asks Wrankle.
“Partner. Yesterday.”
“Day or evening?” the man continues.
“In the evening before I went to bed.”
“He stayed up?” asks Smitt.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember him coming to bed later?” Wrankle asks.
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Guess so or know so?” the woman sharply interjects.
“Eh, I’m not sure.”
“Okay,” says Wrankle. “So yesterday, how did he seem to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he act normal?” asks Smitt. “Was there anything unusual in his behavior?”
“I don’t think so. He seemed normal. Why are you asking these questions? I really should have my lawyer here.”
“It’s okay. No worries. We’re only checking up on details,” says Wrankle. “So, what did Zahir say to you the last time you talked?”
“I … I don’t remember. Maybe something about what time he was teaching his first class today. And it’s Jamal, not Zahir.”
“Yeah, okay,” says Wrankle. “But was it unusual for him to tell you what time he’d be teaching? Don’t you know his schedule?”
“No, no, no. There was nothing unusual at all in anything he did or said.”
“What was he wearing when you last saw him?” asks Smitt.
“I don’t know. His usual clothes.”
“What sort of clothes? New, old, expensive, plain?” asks Wrankle.
“He usually dresses casually, but he’s well dressed. Nothing shabby, if that’s what you mean.”
In fact Jamal always dressed aesthetically, taking even more care than Monty in selecting his clothes each morning, choosing subtle contrasting shades of gray, black, tan, and maybe a scarf for a dash of color. The two of them often shop together downtown or along Broadway, in the “gay ghetto.” Or buy each other surprises, like a slinky silk shirt for Jamal or yet another Borsalino hat for Monty. Monty rarely bought clothes for Jonathan. But he’s smartened up in his new relationship. And besides, he and Jamal know each other’s taste in clothing right down to their jockey shorts.
“I see. But you don’t remember what he wore when he left the houseboat?” asks Wrankle.
“I told you, I didn’t see him when he left.”
“Okay, fine,” says the woman. “But back to you. You traveled in China not that long ago, correct? Went to the far west there, right up to the border with Afghanistan, yes?”
“How the hell do you know that? And what relevance is it, for that matter? It was way before I ever imagined someone from Afghanistan named Jamal.”
“Speaking of which,” says the woman, “we’d like to take a look at his room.”
“Our room,” corrects Monty.
“Right, whatever. We’d like to go through his things.”
“Sorry, you said you don’t have a search warrant. How about I go over his stuff and let you know if I find something suspicious?”
“That’s not good enough. But, okay, maybe for the moment. And don’t let us down,” says Wrankle as he and the woman rise to make their exit. “Here’s my card. Call me right away if anything turns up.”
Monty sees them out, and as he’s about to close the Dutch door, the two crows fly back across the porch. His hands trembling, he shuts the door firmly and flicks the security lock, watching warily through the door’s upper window as the two agents head back along the dock and up the stairs, until they disappear at the top of the embankment above the moorage.
Barely half a day after the attack, the dust literally not yet settled, and already two agents of the instantly ensuing police state have planted themselves firmly on Monty’s love seat, insinuating not so subtly that his boyfriend was involved in the plot and that he himself might be complicit.
He returns to the living room, opens the double doors to his deck to air out the space, and sits down on his black leather lounge chair, gazing out at the lake. He tries to breathe in and out slowly and deeply through his nose, like he learned long ago to do in meditation. A fresh breeze blows in from over the water. Boats and barges, some dwarfish, others gigantic, sail by on their way to and from the Fremont Bridge nearby, sending out ripples and occasionally waves that rock the houseboat for minutes, gradually dying down until the lake is once again placid for a brief interlude.
Why the hell am I so shaken up? I’m trembling like a wimp. I thought I’d gotten over all these sorts of emotional reactions. What have I been practicing Zen for all these years if I get thrown off kilter so damn easily?
Jamal couldn’t have been involved. It’s impossible. I’m sure they’re just fishing. But why are they questioning me as if he’s guilty and I’m complicit? What am I missing? I thought I finally found the true love of my life. Jesus Christ, I feel horribly vulnerable all over again.
Maybe I’d been better off sticking with Jonathan after all, despite all our issues. At least I knew more about him, about his life, his family. He’s approaching sixty but still slim and charming, and doing something with his life. (There I go again, judging him.)
And what do I really know about Jamal? Maybe I should never have come out of the closet in the first place. I would’ve been safer all my life if I’d kept up the act and played straight. Yeah, and I was a great actor. A great fake.
Damn. I’m falling into the FBI’s trap, doubting everything. Doubting myself. Doubting Jamal. I don’t care what they say, I refuse to think he’s guilty. It’s insane. How the hell did I wind up getting into this whole fucking mess?
A continent away from the devastation in New York, ensconced in his cozy houseboat with its meticulously curated collection of Native American art, with all the lovingly nurtured azalea, dahlia, and begonia plants on his deck, he’d thought he was safe.
But then he’s never really thought he was safe. Death’s been hovering over his shoulder all his life, ready to take him out any second.
< Previous Chapter | Back to Index | Next Chapter >