Summer in Eclipse Bay

use to make them back off those rumors?"
    What the hell, he thought. She would probably find out sooner or later, anyway. He lounged against the padded seatback and contemplated her for a moment.
    "
Lavender and Leather
," he said finally.
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "Lavender and Leather
is the name of a gay bar located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle," he explained. "About a year ago, Eugene and Dwayne went off to the big city, had a few beers, and decided it would be amusing to hang out in the vicinity of the establishment. They planned to entertain themselves hassling some of the patrons."
    She was instantly incensed. "And here I've gone out of my way to be polite to them whenever I see them on the street. I actually felt sorry for those two."
    "The interesting part is that, being Eugene and Dwayne, they managed to misjudge their intended victims. They picked on a couple of guys who had studied the martial arts. In short, Eugene and Dwayne got their asses kicked. Literally. It was not, I am told, a pretty sight."
    "Oh, good." Octavia brightened. "I love stories that end like that. They confirm Aunt Claudia's theories about karma."
    "Eugene and Dwayne apparently got a real jolt of karma that night." He picked up the menu she had taken from him and opened it again. "As you can imagine, however, it is not an incident they wish to have widely publicized here in Eclipse Bay."
    "Ah, so that's it. Now I understand. No one here knows about their humiliating experience in Seattle?"
    "Trust me, it is, perhaps, the best-kept secret in Eclipse Bay. If it ever got out that two gay men had used Eugene and Dwayne to mop out an alley, I doubt if the dynamic duo would ever be able to appear in public around here again."
    She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. "In other words, you threatened Eugene and Dwayne."
    "That's pretty much what it comes down to, yeah. Subtlety does not work well with those two."
    "Hmm."
    He looked up at that. "What?"
    "If no one here in Eclipse Bay knows about Eugene and Dwayne's excellent adventure in Seattle, how did you learn the details?"
    "Virgil Nash."
    "Virgil? What does he have to do with Eugene and Dwayne?"
    "As little as possible, like everyone else. It's another long story but I'll give you the short version. Several years ago, back in our wilder days, a bunch of us used to get together with some other guys out on a road near the bluffs to race our cars."
    "I thought drag racing was illegal."
    "Hey, we were nineteen-year-old guys with cars. What else could we do?"
    "Right. Guys with cars. Go on."
    "At the time, Eugene's pride and joy was a Ford that he boasted could beat anything else on the road. He was winning regularly but one night I beat him. He didn't take losing well, to put it mildly. After the race he followed me home. It was one o'clock in the morning."
    "Go on."
    "He had Dwayne with him, naturally. They probably egged each other on. At any rate, Eugene started playing games on the road that runs along the low cliffs just south of town."
    "I know it. There are a lot of tight curves. What kind of games?"
    "Coming up fast from behind, nipping at the bumper of my car, pulling up alongside and swerving toward us just as we went into a curve."
    "Us?"
    He shrugged. "Jeremy was in the car with me that night."
    "I see." She looked thoughtful.
    "We didn't know if Eugene was really trying to force us off the road or merely attempting to scare us. He was more than just annoyed because he had lost to me that night. He was crazy mad."
    "What happened?"
    "I figured I had two choices; I could either try to outrun Eugene, which would have been dicey on those curves, or try to fake him out. I went for faking him out. Jeremy watched him while I concentrated on driving. When Eugene made one of his moves to pull up alongside, Jeremy gave me the word. His timing was right on the mark. I braked hard. Eugene kept going and lost control. His car went over a low bluff and down a short incline, and landed in some shallow water."
    "Whew. Well, obviously he and Dwayne weren't killed."
    "No. The only thing that saved them was the fact that the tide was still partially out. I stopped at the top of the bluff and Jeremy and I went down to see how bad things were. Eugene was slumped over the wheel. At first we thought that he was dead but then we realized he was just badly dazed. Dwayne was frozen with shock. There was no time to get help because the tide was coming in fast. Jeremy