with a ‘person of colour.’”
Dan turned to Domingo. “What do you think?”
“I’ve met Lester a few times. He’s a very nice boy. But like any kid, he has to make his own mistakes. Live and learn.”
“That’s right,” Donny said. “I won’t be the surrogate dad who kept him apart from his blood family. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m his chosen family. I told him he’s welcome back here any time, even if it’s just for a weekend stay-over.”
They sat there silently contemplating this.
Donny stood. “Time for dessert,” he said, heading for the kitchen.
“Seems kind of hard,” Trevor ventured when Donny had gone. “Donny’s looked after the boy for a year and now he just wants to leave.”
“It’s ingratitude,” Dan said, colouring. “I don’t like it.”
Domingo looked at him sympathetically. “It’s not ingratitude, Dan. It’s a fifteen-year-old boy wanting to be a part of his family before it’s too late. Don’t judge him for it. Time will tell if it’s the right thing or not.”
Trevor put a hand on Dan’s. “In any case, Donny has been both generous and courageous in having Lester here with him this past year. Let’s hope it works out for the best.”
“Oh, it will,” Donny said, flouncing back into the room with a tray of tiramisu. “Anyway, that’s me — social issues galore. But having that boy here has given me a new lease on life. No regrets — and I have you to thank for it, of course,” he said, looking at Dan. “Anyway, I’d rather not talk about it any more, if you don’t mind.”
Domingo excused herself to use the bathroom. When she was gone, Dan turned and hissed at Donny. “What is she doing here?”
Donny gave him a baleful look. “She called me up last week and said she wanted to get in touch with you. I thought it was time you two talked, so I offered her your phone number. Then I remembered you were coming over this evening, so I invited her to join us. And here you both are.”
Dan shook his head. “I didn’t even know you’d kept in touch with her.”
“I’ve kept in touch with all your cast-offs.” He affected a mock-shiver. “There were so many of them I thought at one point I’d have to open a shelter.”
Trevor grinned but turned away so Dan wouldn’t see.
“There’s nothing for you to worry about,” Donny told Trevor. “You’re one of the few he’s met who were worth keeping. Apart from moi, of course.”
Domingo returned. Donny refreshed everyone’s drink.
Trevor looked over at Donny. “Dan said you’d started a new job.”
Donny’s face lit up. “Yes! You are looking at the official buyer for Mondo Beautique. It’s a very upscale specialty chain where they purposely price things higher than necessary to discourage non-exclusive clientele.
I fit right in.”
Glasses were raised all around the table.
“Are you still in the private investigation business?” Domingo asked Dan.
“More or less. I’ve been on my own for the past year, though. It’s been tough.”
Donny looked over. “But not so tough that he would ever reconsider the offer to go back to his old firm.”
Dan shook his head. “It was time for me to get out. As for the sort of cases I’m handling now, you don’t want to know.”
“Why is that?” Domingo asked.
Dan shrugged. “It’s mostly a lot of chasing down child support evaders.”
Trevor shot Dan a look to say he was being needlessly disingenuous, but he was not going to spill his secrets for him.
Donny caught the look passing between them. “Tell,” he said. “You are doing something besides chasing deadbeats. What is it now? Chimney sweep? Rat catcher?”
“Nothing so innocuous,” Dan said. “In fact, the opposite.”
He told them briefly about his unsuccessful attempt at tracking down Darryl Hillary.
“He was sent to jail eleven years ago for dating a fourteen-year-old girl. He was nineteen at the time. They were serious about each other, apparently, till his father turned him in for statutory rape. He ended up doing two years in jail.”
“And now he’s dead,” Domingo said.
Donny shook his head. “Seems a bit harsh when you consider Michael Jackson dated a fourteen-year-old boy and didn’t do any time at all. But maybe boys don’t count.”
“I agree with you,” Domingo said. “It’s reverse discrimination. Had it been a fourteen-year-old girl sitting on Jackson’s lap, he would have ended up in jail on charges sooner. But because boys are supposed to be tougher than girls, people weren’t freaking out as much, especially not in the arts community, where homosexuality is taken as a matter of course.”
“It’s true,” Dan said. “But the issue here is whether it’s immoral for two people who want to have sex to do so no matter what their ages.”
Donny nodded. “I always wonder if Liz Taylor knew. She defended Jackson to the ends of the earth. I can’t believe she’s naïve about such things. All those rumours about child molestation can’t have passed her by.”
“She’s a smart woman and apparently they’re very close,” Trevor said. “Remember how she went to Singapore to bring him back to the States after the charges were laid?”
“I think she believed they were in love,” Domingo said. “And that they were entitled to it.”
The others turned to look at her.
She shrugged. “After all, the boy was an adolescent, not a child. Jackson might like ’em young, but that doesn’t make him a child molester.”
“I agree,” Dan said. “I don’t think he’s a child molester. Not in the way we think of it. He was dating a younger man, not unlike what happened to my client and his girlfriend. If it were such a dirty secret, Jackson wouldn’t have dated the boy in public. He even brought him to the music awards. He just misjudged the public’s ability to tolerate such things.”
Donny nodded. “Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin, for god’s sake!”
“What did that make him?” Dan asked.
“A pariah. It pretty much ended his recording career for nearly a decade. He also claims to have been fourteen when he married his first wife, who was seventeen. They just did it young down there.”
Dan whistled. “Hey! How come you know so much about Lewis? He’s not a jazz artist.”
Donny raised a finger in warning.
