Facade

walked ostentatiously back and forth.
    Jonas chuckled. “Yes, I can see you prancing around.” Nicky walked down the steps and joined Tanna downstairs.
    “Let’s do it,” he announced triumphantly.
    “Are you sure?” Tanna checked. “You thought it was too dark? And too small?”
    “Oh come on, we’ll never get a location like this again. All the stores around here are big names. Dolce & Gabbana are across the street, Prada, Gucci! Chanel is just around the corner!” Tanna threw Jonas a pleading look, but Jonas just shrugged, while Nicky ran outside to look at the dilapidated marquee.
    “He’s going to nag and curse all the while we’re redecorating this,” Tanna sighed.
    Jonas couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t know that. He seems happy now, and it looks like a dump. Just wait until it starts to take shape.”
    Tanna shook her head. “You weren’t around when we did the house. I almost shipped him off to Timbuktu with a big stamp on his belly, only he wouldn’t leave.”
    Jonas chuckled. “I’ll be around to get him out of your hair,” he soothed her.
    “If you can stand it. It’s one thing when he has a design deadline, but when he’s got an interior designer working for him, he 174
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    has to relinquish control and he becomes intolerable. Mark my words!”
    “Have you called the realtor yet?” Nicky asked Tanna after running back inside.
    Tanna took out her cell phone. “Last chance to back out?” She looked at Nicky and then at Jonas. When neither man seemed willing to stop her, she dialed the number.

    LATER that night, Jonas still had the feeling Nicky was avoiding him. Nicky was spending much more time than usual at the studio during the day, and he’d barely made it home when he announced that he was expected at a party in the city. Jonas rarely joined him at those functions because it was just not Jonas’s thing, but also because there was too much chance to bump into people who knew Jonas’s clients. Being at a fashion show or an official representation with Nicky wasn’t a problem. In Jonas’s professional life, he often accompanied one of his clients to an official function and then stayed discreetly in the background. The kind of parties Nicky went to also classified in that category, but Jonas disliked them immensely because it felt like work and he didn’t want anything connected with Nicky to feel like that.
    So Jonas stayed at home and waited for Nicky to return.
    It was well past three a.m. when Jonas woke up hearing Nicky creep into their rooms. He’d gone to bed after midnight and probably wouldn’t have woken up if it hadn’t been for the racket Nicky made while traversing the living room toward the bedroom.
    “Oops!” Jonas heard Nicky utter, followed by a loud curse.
    Sounds of pain coming from the next room made Jonas get up out of bed to see what was going on.
    Nicky was half lying on the sofa, clutching his shin and muttering expletives.
    “Everything okay?”

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    Nicky looked at Jonas, and a dippy smile appeared on his face.
    “Knocked my leg on the coffee table.”
    Jonas could tell Nicky was drunk, which was no surprise, but Jonas also knew that Nicky wasn’t adverse to some chemical abuse as well, only it was too dark to see just how unfocused Nicky’s eyes were. He decided it didn’t matter for now and simply sat down next to his lover, taking Nicky’s leg and placing it on his knees.
    “Let me look at this.”
    “Ouch!” Nicky shouted when Jonas hitched up Nicky’s pants to survey the damage.
    “You broke skin, baby. Let me take care of this first. I’ll go get something to clean it up. Why don’t you get out of your pants?” Jonas retrieved a washcloth and some antiseptic from the bathroom and returned to find Nicky butt naked from the waist down and negotiating his release from his rather flamboyant shirt.
    “Come here,” Jonas soothed, helping Nicky out. He’d done this more than once. Nicky wasn’t too bad with drinking when there wasn’t much going on. At catered receptions he rarely got more than slightly buzzed, but when he went out to parties, he invariably came home either blind drunk, or high, or both. “Relax,” Jonas said softly when Nicky wouldn’t stop moving. “Let me clean this up and you’ll feel better, trust me.”
    “I’m sorry, mon amour ,” Nicky eventually sighed after protesting loudly to Jonas’s attempts to get the superficial gash on Nicky’s leg