In The Running Lane

Gary and Richard follow the Headwaiter to a table. After they sit, the Headwaiter tells them, "your waiter will be with you shortly," and then she walks away.
Gary looks at Richard and moves his head from side to side to tell him shame on you.
"What?" Richard inquires.
"You look like shit."
"If I didn’t feel like it, I’d cuss you out."
"You need to stop being a sex machine."
"I need a break, to stop would be inhuman."
"Yeah, I guess you would die."
"Worse that that."
"Whom are you fooling with now? Somebody I know?"
"Why would you ask that?"
The waiter arrives and input their order on a pad.
"I need to cut down with my sex escapades."
Gary interrupts. "Cut down? How many do you have?"
"Right now, I got two?"
"Two?"
"A nooner and an after dinner sweetie."
"Never mind lets change the subject."
"Okay. What do we talk about now, the job, football?"
"The job."
"What about it? Remember office rumors begets lies."
"I hear Monica is up for that promotion."
"That's true and she deserves it."
Their conversation goes on until the server interrupts them. They eat in silence, until Richard announces, "I got to tinkle."
"Okay."
Richard leaves the table. Gary glances to make sure he goes into the rest room, after he is out of sight Gary gets a tiny plastic tube from his trousers pocket and in a stealth manner sprinkle its content over Richard’s meal. Richard returns.
"Scrub your hands," Gary jokes.
"With lime soap in a cup of ammonia."

The next morning, the office staff walks around in a shock expression of mourning.
"What’s going on?" Gary asks a woman.
"It’s Richard; he’s dead."
"What happened?" Gary asks in a shock manner.
"They say a heart attack."

Gary sits looking across the desk at the manager.
"You got to deal with your clients and Richard’s until we get a replacement."
"Okay, well, at least a woman in the future will not have the pleasure of being screwed by Richard the lion hard-on," Gary says in a sarcastic manner.
The manager looks at Gary with a frown.
"What’s the look for?" Gary asks.
"It can come out now."
"What can come out now?"
"Richard was a homosexual."
"What?"
"He wanted it kept a secret."
"You got to be kidding."
"I told him it wouldn’t matter but he wanted it that way; it was nobody’s business he said."
"That’s bullshit."
"He wouldn’t even give up his sperm to impregnate a woman."
Gary does not hear anymore all he remembers is the day he saw his wife with Richard together that afternoon downtown not far from that bed and breakfast, she visits every Wednesday.

That day, Gary’s wife parked her car to meet her lover but needed change for the parking meter and Richard stopped to help her. He too used the bed and breakfast for his rendezvous with his married lover.

For two weeks, Gary has been trying to purge the sin of his guilt of killing his coworker for, what he believed, interfering with his love for his wife. He believed it was Richard who met his wife at that bed and breakfast, for sex, every Wednesday afternoon.
"I hired a replacement for Richard," the Manager interrupts his thoughts.
"Oh. Okay. Good. What’s his name?"
"He is a she and her name is Elizabeth Greene."
"Okay."
"You will have to break her into the office routine, but she has the mechanics for the job."
"Okay, that’s good news; you can consider it done."
"Good. But, I really miss Richard, don’t you."
"What?" Gary asks in a lack of hearing manner.
"He killed the boring downtime."
"Oh yeah, he did do that."
"The police say it wasn’t a heart attack that killed him."
"What?"
"They say he was poisoned."
"Poisoned?"
"It seems he enjoyed seducing husbands, and they think one of them poison him to get rid of him out of fear he may tell his family out of revenge for stopping their relationship."
"How do you know this?"
"One of the detectives told me the other day; they wanted to give me a heads up; they read his diary, but he kept his affairs out of the office."
"That’s good."
"He’ll be missed."

Gary sits in the luncheonette across the street from the bed and breakfast, looking at his wife pass through its entrance. He decides to wait some minutes before he makes his intrusion.
In the hallway, Gary’s right hand raps on the door, while his left hand grip and rattle the doorknob until a tall muscular woman with a bed sheet wrapped around her naked body open the door in a huff. "What the hell do you want?"
"My wife," Gary snaps as he shoves his way into the room. His wife makes haste to cover her nakedness with a blanket.
"I killed for you bitch," he snarls.
"You did what?" His wife stammers.
"I killed my co-worker, Richard, thinking he was screwing you, and I find you here being fucked by a dyke."
"A cop dyke," the woman shouts.
Gary stares at her. "What?" He shrieks.
"She’s a police detective," his wife tells him. END