The Ninth Man by Dorien Grey Page A

Alan been together?”
    Miller sighed deeply, took another drink from his Manhattan, and laid his free arm along the back of the sofa. His fingers were disturbingly close to my shoulder.
    “Only about eighteen months,” he said. “Alan was my first lover—can you imagine that? I’m thirty-two years old, and Alan was my very first relationship.”
    I resisted the temptation to speculate as to why, and I needn’t have bothered, because he went right on talking.
    “This probably sounds like bullshit,” he said, looking directly at me, “but it ain’t easy being beautiful.” He gave a quick half-smile, but his eyes were serious…and sad. “I was married at nineteen, had two kids, hated every minute of it. I came out when I was twenty-two and started modeling. When I found out there were other guys who liked guys, I became a number-one whore—and I could have just about anybody I set my sights on.
    “Then, about two years ago, I was sitting at home one night getting ready to go out, and I started thinking about all the guys I’d been with, and I realized I couldn’t remember a single thing about any of them. They were all one big blur. I knew then that it was about time for me to settle down. Do you have a lover?”
    “Nope. Not at the moment.”
    He nodded as though I’d proved his point.
    “Then you probably know that wanting a lover and finding a lover are two different things.”
    We each took another sip from our drinks. I was uncomfortably aware of Miller’s hand just inches away. It wasn’t that I thought he was coming on to me. It was that I rather wished he were.
    “Then I met Alan. He was bright, and talented, and charming, and I said, ‘Aha! This is what I’ve been looking for.’ We courted, just like the squarest of square straight couples. I did everything but formally propose.
    “What I didn’t know, and didn’t find out until much later when I suddenly came down with a case of the clap after being faithfully and happily married to Alan for six months, was that monogamy wasn’t part of his vocabulary. Alan was something of a male nymphomaniac—a satyr, I think they’re called. If you had a dick, you qualified.”
    He drained his glass and got up from the couch in one quick motion.
    “Like a refill?” he asked.
    “No, thanks,” I said. “This one’s fine.”
    He continued talking as he made himself another Manhattan.
    “You can imagine what that did to the old ego, finding out your one true love is everybody else’s not-so-one, not-so-true love. Fucking egos!”
    He came back into the living room and sat down beside me, much closer this time. I was becoming very warm.
    “It happens,” he said, letting his arm drop into the small space between us. “But it doesn’t happen to me! I’ve been spoiled rotten all my life just because I’ve got a nice-looking face and a halfway decent body.”
    Now, there , I thought, was the understatement of the century .
    “Do you know what?” He turned to face me full-on. “When I found Alan dead—just lying there in bed like he was asleep, except Alan never slept on his back—I was sure somebody had killed him. But there was no blood, no mess, no sign of a struggle, nothing out of place. Just Alan, dead in bed.
    “The police asked me all sorts of questions and said they’d get back to me. They never did. When I tried to find out what was going on, no one could—or would—tell me anything. But I kept after them, and finally, somebody told me—off the record—that he’d committed suicide. He’d taken some kind of poison.
    “And you accepted that?”
    “It wasn’t really that much of a surprise, if you knew Alan.”
    “Had he ever threatened suicide?”
    Miller sighed again and took a sip of his drink before answering.
    “Only two or three times a week. Alan was a temperamental artist—aren’t they all?—and a spoiled brat. Every time we had a fight, he’d threaten to kill himself just to make me feel guilty. He was very