Trial By Fury

Months before, acting on Ames ' suggestion that I'd best do some investing with my recent inheritance, I had joined with a group of other investors to syndicate the purchase of a new, luxury condominium high-rise in downtown Seattle. Now, operating as an individual, I was purchasing an individual condominium unit from the syndicate.

Ames and the other attorney busily passed papers back and forth, both of them telling me where and when to sign. Between times, when my signature was not required, I sat and examined the contrast between the panoramic view of water and mountains through the window and the impossibly ugly but obviously original oil painting on the opposite wall. I couldn't help but speculate about how much this exercise in penmanship was costing me on a per-minute basis, and how many square inches of that painting I personally had paid for.

In less time and for more money than I had thought possible, I was signed, sealed, and delivered as the legal owner of my new home at Second and Broad. Ralph Ames literally beamed as I scrawled one final signature on the dotted line.

"Good for you, Beau. It's a great move."

Dale Rogers nodded in agreement. "That's right, Mr. Beaumont. As soon as the weather turns good, you'll have to have us all over for a barbecue. I understand there's a terrific barbecue on the recreation floor. My wife is dying to see the inside of that building."

"Sure thing," I said. My enthusiasm hardly matched theirs, however. I didn't feel much like a proud new home owner. I felt a lot more like a frustrated detective battling a case that was going nowhere fast, fighting the war of too much work and not enough sleep.

It was ten after five when we walked out of Columbia Center onto Fourth Avenue with a crush of nine-to-fivers eagerly abandoning work.

"Where's the car?" I asked.

"In the Four Seasons' parking garage," Ames answered. "But we've got one more appointment before we can pick it up."

I sighed and shook my head. I wanted to go home, have a drink, and put my feet up. "Who with now?"

"Michael Browder, the interior designer, remember? I told you about it on the phone. He's meeting us in the bar of the Four Seasons at five-thirty. Now that you've closed on the deal, he needs a go-ahead for the work. He told me the other day that you still haven't even looked at his preliminary drawings."

Bull's-eye! I had to admit Ames had me dead to rights. I had been actively avoiding Michael Browder, but I didn't care to confide in Ames that the main reason was that Michael Browder was gay. Ames had dropped that bit of information in passing one day. It didn't seem to make any difference to Ames, but it did to me.

I'm not homophobic, exactly, but I confess to being prejudiced. I don't like gays. I had never met one I liked. Or at least hadn't knowingly met one I liked.

Ames and I found a small corner table and ordered drinks. I sat back in my chair to watch the traffic, convinced I'd be able to pick out a wimp like Michael Browder the instant he sashayed into the room.

Wrong.

The man who, a few minutes later, stopped in front of our table and held out his hand was almost as tall as I am. Broad shoulders filled out a well-cut, immaculate, three-piece gray suit. He had neatly trimmed short brown hair. The solid handshake he offered me was accompanied by a ready smile.

"Mr. Beaumont?" he said to me with a polite nod in Ralph Ames' direction. "Michael Browder. Glad to meet you, finally."

No limp wrist. No lisp. No earrings.

Old prejudices die hard.

Settling comfortably back into a chair, Browder ordered a glass of Perrier. "Mr. Ames has been a big help," he continued. "He's given me as much information about you as he could, but it's very difficult to design a home for someone I don't know personally, Mr. Beaumont. I've been told, for instance, that you're sentimentally attached to an old recliner, but that's secondhand information. I told Mr. Ames that unless I talked to you, in person, I was leaving the project."

That didn't sound to me like much of a threat. I didn't care much one way or the other, and Michael Browder's speech didn't particularly endear him to me. In fact, I was downright insulted. On the one hand, he accused me of sentimentality. On the other, I was offended by what I viewed as his personal attack on my old recliner.

What he had said was true, as far as it went. I had indeed sent word through Ames that my recliner was going with me no matter what, and that it was moving to the new place as active-duty furniture, not as a relic destined for the storage unit in the basement.

"So do you have drawings along to show me or not?" I demanded impatiently.

Browder leaned down and opened a large leather portfolio he had placed beside his feet. By the time he had finished showing me the sketch of the living room, he had my undivided attention. By the second drawing, he had me in the palm of his hand. My previous experience with an interior designer had achieved somewhat mixed results. Michael Browder, however, without our ever having met in person, seemed to know me like a book.

The furnishings, the swatches of material, the colors, were all straightforward and attractive, functional and practical. They were the kinds of things I would have picked for myself, if I'd had either the brains or the time to do it. Throughout his presentation, Browder kept asking me pointed questions and making brief notes about color preferences, wood grains, and stains. His enthusiasm was contagious. By the time he was finished, I was pretty excited myself.

"So when do you start?" I asked.

"As soon as you say so," Browder replied.

"So start," I told him. "ASAP."

"And when can I pick up the recliner to have it recovered?"

I had been happy to see that he had included my recliner in his drawings for the den, but Browder had negotiated my consent to have the old warhorse reupholstered. It was a small concession on my part.

"You can pick it up whenever you want," I answered.

He nodded. "Good. What about now? I have my van along. We might as well get started."

Which is how we ended up carava

By then my opinion of Michael Browder had come a long way from my preconceived notion of what he'd be like, but once the recliner was loaded, he declined an invitation to come back up to the apartment for a drink.

"I've got to get home," he said.

It was a good thing. I was out of booze. Ames and I had to walk over to the liquor store at Sixth and Lenora for provisions before we could make drinks.

When I went into the kitchen to serve as bartender, I discovered the answering machine in a place of honor, sitting in state on the kitchen counter. In the intervening hours of paper signing and apartment designing, I had forgotten about the answering machine and how I had fully intended to wrap the electrical cord around Ralph Ames' neck.

Next to it on the counter sat not one, but two boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Mints.

Ames, from the doorway, saw me encounter the cookies and the machine. My dismay he read as a combination of pleasure and surprise. "I figured living in a secured high-rise there's no way you'd have a chance to buy any Girl Scout cookies on your own," Ames said proudly. "I bought some at the airport and brought them along on the plane."

I didn't have the heart to tell him I had already single-handedly bought and given away a whole mountain of Girl Scout cookies. As far as the answering machine was concerned, it was easier to accept it with good grace than to be a pinhead about it.

Ames eagerly explained all the little bells and whistles on the machine, including the blinking light that both signaled and counted waiting messages and the battery-operated remote device that would allow me to retrieve my messages from all over the world. Great! I gritted my teeth into a semblance of a smile and kept my mouth shut.