Chapter 8 - One Evening.

So, while I was still reeling from reading that apparent suicide note we’d found - which was, like, wow, that’s really intense, what do you say or do after that, huh? - I remembered that I’d seen the name ‘Jay’ somewhere before. I turned back to my piles of receipts and rifled through them till I got to the oldest levels. I almost gave up hope before I finally found the ones I had been looking for at the bottom of the pile of rental receipts.

“Aha! That’s what I thought. Lookie here - I think we have our ‘J’!” I pulled a couple of the scraps of paper out so my own Mystery Man could see and hopefully help me solve this new mystery.

The document I’d located was pretty unremarkable on its face. It was just one of the many rent receipts that had been saved in that file. It showed that the firm of ‘James M’Millin & Sons’, a job and book printing business, had pre-paid their rent for the ground floor retail space for six months beginning in May of 1887. The cost of such extravagance was a whopping $75. And, while most of the other receipts that I had looked at covering that time period had been signed by ‘A. Peebles’, this one showed the name of ‘J.H. Frick’.

“I think we’ve got him!” I crowed happily. “So, it’s pretty clear, I think, that the J & A on the ring are ‘Jay’ and ‘Alma’ from the letter, right? And the fact that this letter was kept along with all these other records would indicate that our ‘Jay’ must have had some connection to the building, wouldn’t you say? So, can we reasonably conclude that Alma’s ‘Jay’ is the same as our ‘J.H. Frick’ here?”

“Jay Frick . . . that sounds familiar,” my man replied, apparently just as caught up in the mystery as I was by that point.

Egbert got up from the sofa and wandered out of the room without saying anything more. I was fucking curious, so of course I followed him. We ended up down the hall in his grandfather’s beautiful old office, where Eggy went straight to one of the large floor-to-ceiling bookcases and pulled out a slightly tattered, leather bound book with the impressive title of ‘A Short History of Pittsburgh’ on it’s spine.

“The Frick family was huge in Pittsburgh back in the day. Henry Clay Frick controlled the production of almost all the coke in the region and, since you couldn’t make steel without coke, he also played a major role in all the local steel production,” Eggy explained as he paged through the book.

I was surprised by the fact that he didn’t seem at all reluctant to touch the book, whereas he’d been unable to touch any of the papers that I’d tried to hand him. I would have to ask Daphne about that later, because it seemed significant. Maybe, though, it was because he kept all the books in this office so clean and dust free that he knew he didn’t have to worry about them? Or maybe it was that he was just as caught up in the enigma of our ancient lovers’ identities as I was and he’d simply forgotten about the risk of any germs on the book? Who knew. But whatever the reason, he obviously knew what he was looking for so I just let him do it, only asking questions as they came to me but otherwise letting him take over the research efforts for the time being.

And the first question that came to my mind was, “why did you need Coke to make steel? Did the workers drink, like, gallons of it while they were making steel beams or something? I bet it WAS super hot in those old factories, so I guess it makes sense. But why didn’t they just switch to drinking water?”

My Egbert broke out laughing at my off the wall question, almost dropping his book, he apparently found me so hilarious. “You’re cute, but so misinformed,” he declared, confusing me for a minute because I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be offended at being called misinformed, or flattered that he thought I was cute, so I said nothing and just pouted. “I was referring to coke with a small ‘c’, not Coke with a big ‘C’ as in Coca-cola,” he explained further. “Coke was the fuel source they used to use to make steel. It’s made by baking regular coal in these huge closed ovens in order to get rid of all the impurities. Coke burns hotter and longer than coal, and was the primary fuel used in the blast furnaces they used to smelt the iron for steel back in the day. It’s nasty stuff though, with horrible environmental effects, and one of the primary reasons that Pittsburgh used to be such a hole. The fumes from the coke plants poisoned all the vegetation for miles around them and it’s what caused the air quality in the city to be so atrocious for most of the city’s history.”

He held out his book to me, opened to a picture of what looked like an old factory at night, as an example. “Is that an old coke factory? Did they run all night?” I asked.

Again he laughed at me. “That’s one of the main U.S. Steel factories in Pittsburgh back in the early 1900s. And the picture was taken in broad daylight, or at least what passed for daylight around here at the height of the steel industry. That’s how horrible and toxic the air quality was here in Pittsburgh. I can’t even begin to imagine how dirty it was.”

I could see him shudder as he took the book back and continued to look through the pages.

“Okay. Here it is. I thought I remembered that name,” Egbert offered me the book, opened to the correct page when he’d finally located what he’d been looking for. “See. Jay Hubert Frick was the youngest brother of Henry Clay Frick.”

I looked at the book and saw that he was spot on. The pages he’d turned to gave a brief biography of the famous Mr. Frick, listing a bit of the man’s genealogy, including the names of his parents, spouse, cousins, children and siblings. And there on the page was our missing Jay H. Frick. Jay was one of three children born to John W. Frick and Elizabeth Overholt Frick, the other two being Henry, the oldest, and a daughter named, Chastity. The book even listed Jay’s wife, Alma, and the date of their marriage in December 1878. The rest of the passage went on to list some of the many illustrious accomplishments of Henry Clay Frick, and his cousins who had helped him get his start in the coke business, as well as the prominent careers of two of Henry’s children, one of whom, Childs Frick, became a famous paleontologist, and another, Helen Clay Frick, ended up a famous art collector and philanthropist. Oddly enough, there was nothing further listed for our man, Jay, other than his marriage to Alma. Apparently Jay hadn’t done anything worth writing about. But at least that answered the question about whether or not we had the correct J.H. Frick.

“Sweet. So, this Jay Frick was famous or something and, based on the fact that he was signing rent receipts for our building, it seems he might have been a business partner of Peebles or something,” I summed up what we’d learned.

“That makes sense,” Egbert agreed with me. “A large part of Henry Frick’s business empire in the 1800s came from him being one of the major landowners in the city. It wouldn’t be unusual for his brother to want to get in on the game too. Peebles was mostly just a lowly architect, so he probably wouldn’t have had the capital to build this place without getting an influx of cash from some other source - and a Frick would definitely have cash to burn around about the time this place was built.”

“So, we’ve found our ‘J’ and our ‘A’. Now we just need to figure out who the ‘B’ was that Peebles was writing to in that other letter,” I speculated aloud. “I wonder if they’re connected? Shit, I love a mystery like this.”

Egbert continued flicking through the book in his hands. “Well, I can assure you that the mystery ‘B’ they’re talking about isn’t me. I may look like I was born in the 1800s, but I promise you I wasn’t.”

My head shot up. Was he giving me some sort of hint as to what his real name was? I looked over at him and I don’t think he’d noticed what he’d said. I studied his face as best I could with that bushy-ass beard covering most of it and tried to guess what his name could be. Benjamin? No, he didn’t seem like a Ben. Something elegant like Byron? Definitely not anything trendy like Braden or Blair or Brock, though. Hell, what else was there? Bob? No . . . well, maybe he could pass as a Bob. Hmm, how about Barry? Nah! I was going to go crazy thinking up all of these names, though. I think I’ll stick with Egbert until he’s ready to tell me more.

Whoops, Eggy caught me staring at him. “What?” He asked nervously. “Do I have something on my face?”

I couldn’t help but smile, this guy was too stinking cute. “No, nothing like that. I was just trying to work out what your name is.”

“And you think you’ll figure it out just by staring at me?” He smirked.

“So, is this going to end up being like that fairy tale? I have to guess your name or you take my first born child or something? Can I jump straight to ‘Rumplestiltskin’ and just skip all the suspense?” I teased him, enjoying the shy smile I got in return.

“Sorry, Brat, but you’re not even close. Keep guessing.”

“You’re just a big tease, aren’t you?” I accused him. “No matter. I’ll just keep calling you Egbert till you get so annoyed that you can’t take it anymore and you have to tell me your real name or go crazy.”

“Already been there and done that, so your threat to drive me crazy isn’t going to work, little boy,” he replied with an even flirtier grin than before - and can I just say that I really like this flirty version of my Mystery Man?

“Well, maybe your name is in here along with the other ‘B’?” I suggested as I went back to scanning through the history book listing the names of all the prominent founding families of Pittsburgh.

“I seriously doubt that. Not unless the book includes a list of the relatives of poor Micks who barely had a nickel to their names when they arrived in town. My grandfather, Donal, wasn’t just dirt poor when he got to Pittsburgh, he actually owed the dirt money, I think. When he was a kid, he used to walk alongside the railroad tracks with a bucket, picking up the lumps of coal that dropped off the trains going to the coke plants and then sold what he found back to the plant owners for a few pennies a bucket. That’s how he fed himself. If he hadn’t knocked up my grandmother and then forced her parents to let him marry her, he would have probably died penniless.”

“This is the grandfather that used to own this building?” I asked, just to clarify.

“Yep. Good old Donny boy. Friend to every bar keep in Pittsburgh back in the day,” Eggy answered, sounding bitter even as he praised his grandfather. “Little did they know that the Don everybody claimed to love in public was a nasty mean drunk to his family behind closed doors, huh? Or maybe they did know and just didn’t care? Either way, I doubt the bastard would have ended up in this list of powerful, upstanding people. And, just in case you’re wondering, I’m not in there either.” My man reached over and, with the tip of one finger, flipped the cover of the book closed.

I obstinately opened the book back up again. “Yeah, well, I’m not giving up. You might not be in here, but maybe Peebles’ ‘B’ is. And maybe there’s some relationship to the unhappy Jay and Alma. You never know. B might be the other woman that Jay shared his bed with.”

“Maybe. But I’d think you’d have better luck identifying her by going through that binder full of documents than in here,” my man wisely suggested.

“Good point, Eggy!” I declared, getting back to my feet and heading for the door of the office. “So, you going to help me go through all those damn rent receipts or what?”

“You’re on your own there, Brat,” he warned, although I noticed that he seemed happy to follow me back to his rooms at the other end of the hallway.

“Fine. You can just supervise. But I’m GOING to find our lost ‘B’. Somehow. Just watch.”

“Knock yourself out,” my man chuckled at me as I sank down onto the sofa once more and started examining the pile of documents more closely, looking for any ‘B’ names that might arise.

“Morning, Sir. I’ve got your delivery here. Shall I put it on the counter as usual?”

The booming words startled me out of the lovely dream I was having of me and Eggy dancing in the courtyard of the old Phipps Conservatory. We were wearing old fashioned suits and I was carrying a wedding bouquet. He was sporting Alma’s wedding band. And, for some unknown reason, the band was all dressed in Lederhosen but the music they were playing sounded a lot like Cardi B’s ‘Best Life’. Okay, I admit that my dreams have never made much sense, so sue me. I can’t help where my crazy subconscious goes. And I may be the only gay white boy who likes Cardi B, but to each his own, right?

Anyway, that’s probably why the transition from my fantasy dreamscape to the present reality seemed so harsh. Because when I woke up I wasn’t in a beautifully manicured arboretum; I was lying on a lumpy old sofa with a sore back and drool drying on my cheek and the pillow under my head. I blinked up at the light fixture over my head as I tried to remember where I was. This was definitely NOT my comfortable queen-sized bed in my own messy but familiar apartment. So where the fuck was I? Did I get wasted drunk and have sex with some rando again? I hate when that happens. It’s always so embarrassing when you wake up and can’t remember the guy’s name, let alone the lukewarm sex you’d had the night before. And then you have to try to remember where you left your car or, if you didn’t drive, figure out how the fuck you’re gonna get home when you don’t even know where you are to start with. I can personally confirm that public transportation on a hangover is less than fun, and if you vomit on the bus, the driver will get really pissed off at you. Plus, even if you’re not hungover, the walk of shame - shuffling down the street in the morning when you’re still wearing the assless chaps and see-through shirt you thought were SUCH a good idea the night before - is never fun. Trust me on that. NEVER a good idea!

“Thanks, Chad. Yeah, just put it all over there and I’ll take care of it later,” replied a smooth baritone voice that made ripples of yum vibrate through my midsection.

THAT voice I at least recognized. It was my Eggy. And once I’d heard his voice, it all started to come back to me. I recalled where I was - on the sofa in the Mystery Man’s rooms on the top floor of the Triangle Building - and that, unfortunately, this time I wasn’t waking up after a night of crazy, wild, unbridled monkey sex. I was waking up after a night of research and poring through page after page of dusty old building receipts. Apparently the research had been so thrilling that I’d fallen asleep in the middle of it all and Egbert had let me stay over. Hmmm. Not sure what that meant, but I’d think on it later. For the moment, the first order of business was finding a toilet so I could take a piss; all that tea Egbert had made for us while I was going through the building records the night before was turning out to be a little much for my bladder.

I got up off the sofa and hobbled over as gracefully as I could to where my Mystery Man was standing, despite feeling as though I was mere seconds from pissing my pants. I could feel my bladder pressing painfully against my abdomen and I knew if I didn’t get to a bathroom soon I was going to embarrass myself. By the time I’d reached the other side of the room, the guy bringing up what I could now see were Egbert’s groceries, had gone. I wanted to stand there and watch as he wiped down and organized his groceries into categories - a fascinating and elaborate endeavor - but I currently had more pressing matters to attend to.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” I asked, bouncing from one foot to the other as a way to distract myself from the water Eggy had started to pour into the coffee machine.

He jumped at the sound of my voice and quickly turned around to face me. The asshole made no effort to hide the smirk on his face as he watched me squirm.

“Please?” I heard myself ask.

I watched as he chewed his lip anxiously, clearly having some sort of intense internal argument with himself. He couldn’t say no, he knew that - it was obvious how desperate I was - but he still hesitated. What the hell? How was my asking to use the toilet a problem here?

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he finally conceded to my request. “It’s over there.” He pointed to a door in the far corner of the room. “Just . . .”

“What?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “Never mind.”

I wanted to wait around and see what it was he was trying to say, but I couldn’t risk it. I legged it into the bathroom and could hear him laughing at me as the door slammed behind my ass. Then I was finally standing above the toilet bowl as my morning stream arched downward, sighing happily as I felt the pressure easing. That morning piss was always the best, wasn’t it? I mean, there’s just nothing else to compare it to. Okay, so maybe I was getting a little overly sentimental about a bodily function, but I really did have to go pretty fucking badly and I am allowed to enjoy the fact that I didn’t piss myself in front of my Eggy, right? There’s a reason it’s called, ‘relieving yourself’.

As I exited the bathroom I could see my man pacing the length of the living area, he was practically wearing out the wooden floors with the way he was going at it. It was only then that I thought about what I’d just done and how that was probably fucking with his mental state.

“I’m sorry . . .” I apologized. “I really needed to . . . you know.” I wasn’t sure if I could even say the word ‘piss’ without setting him off; I wasn’t quite accustomed to what sorts of things were triggers for him yet, but I had a feeling letting some stranger piss in your toilet was probably one of them. “Don’t worry, my mother was a fanatic about always reminding me not to splash - hell, one time she got so mad at me and my dad for making a mess that she threatened to institute a rule that everyone in the house had to sit down to piss at all times - so I’m always careful . . . and I washed my hands.”

The audible sigh of relief broke my heart a little. I couldn’t imagine living in that sort of fear over something, that to me, was so inconsequential, but to him was clearly a huge deal. It must be a bitch trying to get through even a normal day with all that fear hanging over your every move. All in all, though, I thought my man was handling his unexpected overnight guest pretty well, considering.

But, now that the issue of my personal hygiene was resolved, Mystery Man went back to putting away his grocery delivery.

“So this explains one mystery,” I declared, leaning back against the counter so I could have a good view of the proceedings. “I’d wondered how you were getting your supplies, since I’d never seen you go out. I’d never seen any deliveries either, but that must be because they all came at ass o’clock.”

“Not all of us are lazy-assed art students, who never get up till lunchtime, Sunshine,” he commented, as he took out one wet wipe after another, applying each to a different grocery item, and then setting all the cleaned products to one side.

“Sunshine?” I asked curiously.

“I was just teasing. You don’t seem like much of a morning person.” He commented.

“I’m not . . . but I don’t sleep till lunch,” I insisted, slightly defensive, but then reassessed and had to qualify my statement. “Well, at least not all the time. I mean, I DO have ten o’clock classes twice a week, so I’m up by at least nine on those days. And next semester, I think I have one class that meets at nine even, so I’ll be up at, like, dawn those days.”

It was good to know that I was a source of endless amusement to my host, who was still chuckling as he took up a stack of boxes of latex gloves - you know, like the kind doctors use - and wiped them down before storing them in a lower cupboard.

“I stand corrected. You’re not lazy. You’re just ‘morning-challenged’,” he maintained. “I, on the other hand, like to get most of the more mundane parts of my day over with early so I don’t have to interrupt my work later in the day.”

While he was speaking he had made his way through the preliminary sanitization of a case - seriously, he got an entire fucking CASE - of wet wipes, as well as about ten other types of cleaning solutions, sprays, soaps, and other sanitary supplies. The amount of actual food in his grocery delivery was relatively meager compared to the huge haul of all his cleaning paraphernalia. Again, I couldn’t imagine a life that would require that much cleaning shit. Of course, I was lucky if I remembered to scrub out the toilet once a month and I only cleaned the shower when it was so gritty that it grossed me out when I felt the grime on my toes, so I wasn’t one to talk. Daphne wasn’t much better, although she was a stickler for a clean kitchen, going on and on about bacteria if I left food out or shit like that. But for the rest of the apartment, she was mostly just as lax as I was. We didn’t even own a vacuum - we just borrowed the neighbor’s when it got too disgusting for either of us to ignore any more. My poor hermit probably wouldn’t be able to set foot in our apartment without a biohazard suit. Yeah, we wouldn’t tell him about that, though, because he was stressed out enough without knowing his guest was the foulest of foul fucking slobs. At least I was on top of my personal hygiene.

“So, I get the wet wipes and the cleaning stuff,” I commented as he moved on to the smaller pile of toiletries, “but why the carton of condoms, Eggy? Are you secretly sneaking out after dark and plowing your way through the city’s gay bars?”

“Yeah, right . . .” Egbert scoffed as he quickly removed the box of Trojans from my view, wiped the box down and then carried them into the bathroom so as to remove them from sight altogether.

Apparently he wasn’t going to answer my question about what he did with his supply of rubbers, though. Oh well, it really was a little intrusive of me to ask, but then again nobody ever accused me of being overly concerned with propriety . . . to my mother’s everlasting shame. By the time he came back I’d mentally chastised myself into a less nosy frame of mind and vowed not to embarrass him with more annoying questions.

Unfortunately my resolve not to be nosy lasted only about thirty seconds before I gave up on that impossible vow. “You don’t eat much, it seems. No wonder you’re so skinny. Bagels, bread, cold cuts, salad fixings . . . Where’s the real food?”

“That is real food,” he argued as he quickly retrieved the items I’d commented on and began putting them away in the various containers he had ready before depositing it all in the refrigerator.

“You can’t seriously live on bagels and sandwiches, can you?”

“You can if you don’t like to cook.”

I stopped myself only seconds before I made a total ass of myself by arguing with him. Personally, I’d die on a diet of only sandwiches and salads. I lived on pasta and pizza and take out Thai and . . . Well, I hadn’t actually met any kind of food that I didn’t like, except maybe the crap that passed for food with the Vegan crowd. And I loved to cook, when I wasn’t being too distracted by school or my art. I felt worse for my Eggy about the food thing than I did about the weird germ thing. You were really missing out on a huge slice of life if you limited yourself to this pitiful array of cold foods. Poor Egbert. I would definitely have to work on him and his eating issues.

But, to distract myself from making any more negative comments and totally putting my foot in my mouth, I decided to change the subject. “So, you mentioned that you do all this in the morning so it won’t interrupt your work? What do you do? I’m assuming you work from home since I never see you leave, so I’m guessing . . . Maybe one of those horribly rude customer service reps that never say anything useful when you call to complain about your cable going out? Or you could be the annoying guy doing cold calls to try and sell people new phone plans they don’t want. Or . . . Oh, I’ve got it! You’re the guy people call for phone sex - the one who always has that amazing, sultry, sexy voice and says the hottest things, but who you secretly suspect is clipping his toenails while he’s talking to you. You’re THAT guy, right?”

I loved that I could make my man outright giggle the way I had just then. I really don’t think my hermit laughs nearly enough. You can tell because all the crinkles around his mouth and eyes are sad crinkles, not happy laugh lines. And I KNOW I just met him a few days before, but for some reason I feel like I NEED to be the guy that makes him laugh. Weird, huh? Whatever.

“You’re giving me way too much credit, Brat,” he admitted as he stowed the last of the delivery and then wiped down the counters to ensure there were no errant germs left behind. “I’m only a mere technical writer.”

“What’s that?”

“I write all the boring user manuals for all the gadgets people buy. Like computers, phones, cameras, even cars. You know, like, how to insert the metal tang of the seat belt into the slot of the seat belt harness . . . shit that should be common sense to most people but that, for some reason, most of the morons in the world can’t figure out without detailed, step-by-step directions, complete with pictures. It’s boring as hell, I’m afraid, but I’m good at it and I make decent money. Plus, I get to work from home and all my assignments come by computer so I don’t have to deal with anyone in person,” he explained. “Mostly I just do it to stay busy. I inherited this building from my grandfather, along with a bit of money - enough to keep me going as long as I don’t live too extravagantly - so I’m not hurting or anything. But, since I don’t really have anything better to do with my time, I might as well earn a paycheck, don’t you think?”

“Must be nice,” I answered with a tinge of jealousy. “Starving art student here. I can barely make ends meet on what my father allows me for my living expenses. But with school and my artwork, I don’t have a lot of time for a real job. Although I do sometimes pick up a shift or two waiting tables at this kitschy little gay diner a few blocks over in the Strip District - mostly just to pick up tips, because the pay sucks, but the clientele there love me - and the manager is pretty understanding about working around my wonky schedule. Other than that, though, I’m kind of a pauper.”

“Not for long, I’m sure. I’ve seen your work - it wasn’t half bad. I expect you’ll be making plenty of money before long.”

“If you say so,” I smiled at him and stretched to loosen my back after the night on his lumpy sofa. “But I’m certainly not going to be getting rich any time soon. Especially if I miss class and don’t graduate with that art degree that’s supposedly going to open up all kinds of doors for my budding career. So, not to drool on your sofa and then just run, and all, but I think I better get going,” I pushed away from the counter where I’d been leaning and started to head for the door, looking back over my shoulder to say my goodbyes. “Thanks for letting me crash here last night and all.”

“No problem. It was . . . nice to have the company,” my man admitted, hesitantly, as he followed me.

“Awww, Egbert, don’t go getting all soft on me or anything. You’ll get kicked out of the Hermit Club if you start letting crazy art students invade your sacred precincts all the time like this,” I teased, because for some reason I just couldn’t stop teasing and flirting with this man.

“I’m not a fucking hermit.”

“No? Well, maybe not. I always thought of hermits as dirty, half-naked, mostly crazy sorts, so that definitely doesn’t fit YOU. No, you’re more of the Ascetic Stylite type,” I declared. “Yeah. That’s more you. A principled person, of excellent taste, who chooses to live a purer life than the rest of us peons, and therefore maintains himself in the seclusion of his tower, where he can contemplate life on a higher plane, away from the rest of humanity.”

“You’re something else, you know. I don’t even know what to call you. You’re . . .”

“I think the words you were looking for are ‘annoying brat’. Right?”

“Precisely.”

“Later, my Stylin’ Stylite.”

“Later, Brat.”