He tossed the Whilitte file onto his desk from a distance of six feet and hit it dead center, all pages intact. Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents; everyone could hear the wind whistling through the air vents and it seemed like the whole building trembled with the force of it. The storm was making people nervous if they had to stay in and miserable if they had to go out. But nothing was going to ruin this day for him, nothing. It was June 25, 1980, and it was The Anniversary, and everyone who saw him knew it.

He was whistling softly to himself, moving with his old grace and speaking with his old charm. Instead of looking as though he had spent the past week on stakeout, as was his usual habit these days, he had come into work dressed in a soft black alpaca turtleneck, a black cashmere jacket that must have been custom-made and probably cost more than a cop's two-month salary, and snug black pants of matte silk that showed everything he had been hiding for a year, and more. His long blond hair had been brushed meticulously into place and his mustache was trimmed neatly. Around his neck he wore a thick gold braid that glittered almost as brightly as his hair. The chain had been a birthday gift; everyone knew who had bought it. Dan Driver, filling out a report at his ancient typewriter, flashed on a memory of a dark curly head bent over an upturned piggy bank the day the thing had been purchased, coins being counted meticulously; but that had been an act designed to elicit knowing laughter: The jewelry was from Shreve's and worth a small fortune.

No one was brave enough to speak to him.

He was filling his coffee mug when Randozzi sidled into the crowded room and caught sight of him, instantly wary. "Morning," the other cop offered, suspiciously.

Randozzi was a man of few words. No, try again. He had been trained to be a man of few words. It had taken six months, but when the attitude had finally caught on, it made the next half-year of their partnership that much easier. Oh, but today, today . . . the blond looked like he was about to sprout wings and jump from the window, and he wasn't going to let anything or anyone spoil his mood.

He slid into his seat with the coffee, propped his black boots up on the desk, carefully crossing his long legs at the ankles, and pulled another file into his lap, flicking it open with a deft twist of wrist. Then he looked up at Randozzi and smiled. It was that dazzling golden smile of his, the one no one had seen in a year; it lit up the whole place like a klieg spot. Randozzi, stunned, started taking deeper breaths. So did everyone else in the room.

"'Ain't it though?" He paused, reconsidering. "'Ain't it a great morning?"

"'Side from the rain. And the wind. And traffic could be a little better." Randozzi pulled up a chair, swung it around backwards, and sat down. "It would be nice if the little boy's room wasn't flooded." He knew he was treading on dangerous ground; that had been one whole sentence and three fragments.

The blond's head tilted to one side and his icy blue eyes examined Randozzi carefully. "Randy, m'boy, if you had ever listened to what I said about developing your Kegel muscles, you would never need to use the bathroom." The edges of the mouth curled up again and there was a flash of white teeth. "Connie would probably be a lot happier, too."

Randozzi blushed. His partner had never even repeated vaguely sexual jokes to him, much less referred to his relationship with his wife. She had once commented, in all sincerity, "Ken doesn't like you. He hates you. He doesn't want a new partner. He wants Dave."

"No kiddin', baby. But the decision came straight from the mayor's office. I was the sacrificial lamb." He had winced as his wife started to cry. She had been three months pregnant; it happened a lot. Still, he didn't like to see it; it hurt him in some indefinable way. "Don't think I'm special, Con. Ken hates everyone right now."

"But you're the one in the line of fire."

He had misunderstood her. "Don't, Con. He's a good cop; one of the best on the force. He'll watch my back." Connie was right, as usual. It had been Ken's bullets he couldn't dodge.

The breakup had been bad. One heart torn in two and expected to keep beating. Hell, they had hemorrhaged. It should have been the other way around; but through the whole thing it was he, the diplomat, who screamed until he started hacking up blood. Well, all relationships fell apart, sooner or later, in the police department. Metro was conspicuous for its high rate. And frequently, one partner wanted it and the other didn't; no difference here. The physical separation had been, as Dobey put it, "taken out of our hands". But the emotional rupture had not been his choice, and dear loving God in Heaven, he had done everything he knew to prevent and deny it when it happened. He pleaded, he manipulated, he expostulated. He felt like Elmer Gantry trying to hawk his love like an evangelist, and he was nothing if not a dogged salesman. In the end, like Gantry, he had watched the whole tent of his passion and commitment burn, sagging, to the ground of reality.

He had joined AA. "Hi, I'm Ken."

"HI, KEN, WELCOME!"

"I'm addicted to my lover and he's left me. I've started drinking and I can't stop. I do my job but I'm afraid someday it's going to end and someone will get hurt, maybe killed. I lie awake at night and watch the moonlight on the wall and see things moving in it, and then I drink some more. I WANT HIM BACK, AND HE WON'T COME BACK!"

"We'll help you, Ken. We all care about you. We've been there."

"Ken, do you have a higher power? Believe in your higher power."

"Ken, you have to learn to make yourself right, first. Concentrate on yourself."

But he was! He was concentrating on himself! Didn't these people understand that his partner literally was his other half? That he could hardly breathe for lack of him? That he couldn't sing anymore, couldn't play the guitar, didn't want to water the damn plants? That he blamed himself for every stupid argument they had ever had, every hostile word they had ever exchanged?

He went through four of Kubler-Ross' five stages: anger, denial, depression, bargaining. But he never could, or would, reach the fifth stage: acceptance. It was too alien a concept to him. Reconciling himself to having eyes in the back, instead of front, of his head would have been easier.

He started praying immediately, the very day the split took place. He hadn't stopped for one day since. His prayer was like his mantra, and slowly, in his mind, he came to believe devoutly that when he had said the prayer for a year, his lover would come back to him. It was that belief that kept him alive.

Once, a voice in his head had whispered, where do you get off doing this? How long has it been since you stepped foot inside a house of God?

It matters to him, he had snapped back. And what matters to him is all that matters.

"How was your day off? Get some rest?" asked Randozzi, feeling, in the back of his mind, that somewhere a wall was crumbling.

"Was great! Got some stuff around the house done. A project I've just been putting off for too long."

"Yeah, I guess that's productive. Thought you were gonna catch up on sleep, though. You were looking awful tired."

The blond chuckled and flipped quickly through the Generao file, adding a few comments and depositing that one into the "out" box, too. "Me? Tired?" He shook his head, not enough to dislodge the shining hair, and looked off towards Dobey's door. "Well, yeah, I guess I was a little bushed, there. Ain't getting any younger! But after I finished the housework, I took a couple of Dalmane with a few glasses of this great old port I had lying around, and I slept like a baby 'til the alarm went off this morning."

Randozzi didn't know how to react to the personal information, especially since a cop like his partner would have known that a strong sleep medication like Dalmane wouldn't need the help of alcohol, of all things. But he said nothing, just nodded and tried to grin.

"Well, Randozzi, m'boy, what say we hit the streets? I got a big date tonight; don't wanna be late." He winked.

That really threw Randozzi. Everyone knew who he was talking about.

It's gonna be a real bitch showing up here tomorrow, he thought, bleakly.

It wasn't at all now like it had been in the first few months; the days where he'd run from his desk for the bathroom and barely made it; the coughing fits that had become a chronic hacking everyone in the squad room had grown used to; the repetitive sneezing. People stopped bringing him things to eat; he couldn't keep anything down or in, and the doctor that Dobey had ordered him to see had finally told him that all these symptoms were the reactions of a body trying to reject what his mind wouldn't accept.

There were one or two embarrassing episodes when he'd laugh at Baylor or Minnie or someone else's joke and the laugh would lodge in his throat and turn into something horrible and it would explode out as a sob that wouldn't stop, couldn't stop; and he wasn't able to catch his breath or speak and everything splintered, like his life. People didn't know what to do then, not even Huggy; the intensity and uncontrollable nature of his grief was like the tail of a Level 5 twister, all you could do was run for cover, hide when it touched down and develop an intimate relationship with God.

One night he was watching an Oscar marathon on late-night TV, and the film was Wilder's The Apartment, and there was a scene where the MacLaine character has just broken up with her married boyfriend during an argument and she flings her compact at him. The Lennon character finds the compact and returns it to her, but when she opens it he comments, apologetically, that the mirror's been shattered. She stares at her reflection in the cracked glass and says, "That's all right. I like to look the way I feel." After that, the few visitors he had to Venice Place would always ask him about the smashed wall mirror in his bathroom, and he'd tell them it had been an accident, he was going to fix it the next weekend. But of course he never did, because nothing inside his heart or head ever got fixed, either.

He slept with Meredith one night when he got so falling-down drunk that to drive the LTD home would have been attempted murder. She returned him to his apartment and got him through the upchucking phase of his evening and then she went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like . . . no, not I love you, but worse: "The more you suffer, the harder you make it on Dave. The less you're able to let go, the more you keep him chained to you. You never wanted to hurt him before, why now? Stop, pick up the pieces, try to enjoy your life. Give Randozzi a chance."

"Joan, you're a bitch," he had snarled, and shoved her to the floor, thinking of what she used to know. As he yanked her panties down and unzipped his jeans he watched her, unprotesting, watching him, and could only focus on what she remembered of someone he could no longer touch. She suffered with him because her heart was breaking, too, and he couldn't get an erection anyway and they ended up crying together, stretched out on his scratchy throw rug, a regular grab bag of dysfunctional platitudes.

He found his faith shaken to its foundations, and despite his unconventional and almost dismissive attitude towards religion, doubting God was something that had never occurred to him before. He had to struggle with that; hell, every damn day was a struggle, and it shouldn't have had to be. Somehow he kept pulling top ratings; he didn't screw up cases, he solved them effectively and efficiently; he had the feeling Randozzi was becoming really attached to him. That was sad. Randozzi was a good cop; a nice guy. He didn't deserve someone that couldn't commit because he was already committed. He didn't deserve a partner who hated him because he wasn't who he should have been.

He'd rarely scrape up enough nerve to talk with his ex. Damn! He felt like a thirteen-year-old with a crush again. There were the expected statements: "I put in again for a transfer to Watts Division," even when he knew it was hopeless; they'd just reject him like they had three times before. "I testified before the parole board today; they turned Diana Harmon down for another two years." He remembered like a snapshot from yesterday the leather-clad arms wrapped around his robed, bleeding body, supporting and protecting him. And the worst of all, "I still love you so, David. Please forgive me, oh please . . . " It was humiliating to beg like that, when he knew there was no succor; but sometimes he just couldn't stop the words from escaping his mouth.

The proclamations were always met with stony silence.

"Have fun tonight," said Randozzi; and then, as his partner hopped from the Dodge towards his old beige LTD, insanity took hold of his vocal chords: "Ken, don't get too smashed, and if you need help, call me."

The blond turned back. The midday sun, working its way through a brief break in the clouds, was directly behind his shoulders. His face was in shadow, but the white teeth and rock candy eyes were easy enough to discern, even so.

"You think he won't show," he accused, quietly, dangerously.

Randozzi jerked back instinctively as he felt his partner's rage flatten everything in the parking lot like a ground-level H-Bomb explosion, silent and deadly. A few other cops turned and stared at them curiously.

Then suddenly the anger was gone, like a leaf swirling away down a creek filled with snow run-off. It hadn't faded . . . just . . . vanished.

"See ya, Randozzi."

And so their last day together ended, just like that.

"Oh, Jeezus," Hutch giggled madly as he staggered into the living room, "tha' was close."

Starsky carefully guided his burden to the first available piece of non-moving furniture, which happened to be the couch. "Thank God LA has four-lane freeways, Blondie. That was the middle of rush hour. In the rain, yet."

"Hug has taste—Kettle is expensh—expensive vodka. Good goin' down." Hutch looked boneless, flat on his back and feeling no physical pain. Starsky sat next to him, perched precariously on the edge of one of the cushions. With great tenderness, he swept the spun gold hair back from the other cop's forehead and caressed his cheek.

"Hug has taste—you don't. Ya shouldn't mix vodka and tequila, babe. It 'ain't so great comin' back up."

Hutch flung his arms towards the ceiling in an expansive, effusively drunken gesture. "I wan—want everything to come back up! Jus' like a goddamn champagne bottle, Mount St. Helens! All over the fuckin' place!"

Starsky shut his eyes for a moment and the blond, through his fog, felt an ache run through the darker man like a breaking wave. Then Starsky reached over, grabbed Hutch's waving arms by the wrists, and carefully pulled them into his lap.

Hutch opened his incredible glacier-blue eyes. "Will you make love to me tonight, baby?"

He could see the ache wash over Starsky once more; this time it was almost unbearable. "No, Blintz. You're more marinated than a kosher dill. You wouldn't even feel it."

The cornsilk lashes dipped. "I feel you every moment of my life, Starsk. With every heartbeat."

"Keep it that way, Blondie," murmured Starsky, his left hand slipping over to cradle his partner's drowsing head. "Keep it that way and know I'm here, always."

The last rays of the struggling orange sun abruptly tilted through the window blinds at just the right moment and caught Hutch squarely in the face; shining, he looked like an avatar of God, lit from within as well as without. He was silent for a moment, then slipped off the couch, struggling into a standing position. "6:46," he said, suddenly sounding sober.

One corner of Starsky's mouth curved up. "Ya don't need to do it tonight, babe. Get some sleep, please?"

"No." Firm. "Tonight's The Anniversary. I get you back tonight."

"You never lost me," murmured Starsky, gently.

Hutch didn't hear him. Instead, he steadied himself with effort and swayed towards the window, dropping to his knees in front of it, his hands folded in prayer. He knew he should still be standing, but couldn't manage it. Staring up into the fading light, he looked as much of an Archangel as Gabriel himself. He took a moment to compose himself; the strength it required to overcome the alcohol and stop the reeling was almost beyond him.

"Do I look reverent?" he whispered after a moment, without moving, a halo of gold crowning his head.

"Yeah, Blondie. You look like there should be white feathers floatin' everywhere."

There was a beat. Then Hutch's voice, soft and precise, so heavy with love and pain that the room was filled with the sound of a multitude of voices sighing at once.

"Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba—" So carefully, from this Lutheran boy, with such passion and devotion. Starsky's mom would have been proud. Hell, Starsky was proud. "—b'alma di v'ra, kir'utei, v'yamlikh malkhutei b'hayeikon u-v'yomeikhon—"

"Hutch . . . we can't go back, babe. We can't undo it." Gently, like a butterfly's wings.

The penitent bent his head a fraction. Everything about him glittered around the edges. "—u-v'hayei d'khol beit Yisra-el, ba'galah u-vi-z'man kariv, v'imru amen—"

"Babe, it's done. You gotta learn to let it go, please."

The expression on the blond's face was beatific, but now he was crying, and the tears tore at his throat. "Y'hei sh'mei raba m'varakh l'alam u-l'almei almaya. Yitbarakh v'yishtabah v'yitpa-ar v'yitromam v'yitnasei, v'yit-hadar v'yit-aleh v'yit-halal sh'mei d'kudsha—"

"Oh, stop, Hutch—" snapping. "Please stop!"

"B'rikh hu!"

Starsky stared, effectively silenced.

"L'ela min kol birkhata v'shirata tushb'hata v'nehamata da'amiran b'alma, v'imru amen."

Softly, softly: "Babe, I'll always be with you. Always watch over you."

"Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya v'hayim aleinu v'al kol Yisra-el, v'imru amen."

"No one—nothing could stop my love. Keep going. Try. For me. Oh please."

"Oseh shalom bi'm'romav, hu ya'aseh shalom—oh God—aleinu v'al kol Yisra-el, v'imru—" A gasp: "Amen."

The dark, curly head tipped forward in defeat; shoulders drooped.

The blond's eyes opened. He looked over at his partner, his features radiant with something even the other cop didn't want to see. "Starsk. Today's Yahrzheit. I've finished Kaddish for you."

"Who will say it for you, Blondie?" said his other half, softly.

He actually managed to grin. "I'm Lutheran, dummy. I've already achieved eternal life."

Starsky returned his gaze. "And I thought the Jews were the Chosen."

"Everyone's chosen," slurred Hutch, wavering to his feet, weaving his way back to the couch and managing to collapse onto it once more.

He awkwardly assumed the lotus position; settled; tried to calm his mind. Focus . . . 

The phone rang.

Focus.

Another ring. This one sounded shrill. From somewhere, he heard Van. "Ken, would you answer the fucking phone!"

He did, a nasty look on his face.

"Hush—this is Hutchinson." Hostile.

"Dobey."

His tone changed instantly. "Oh, yeah, Cap'n. Wash—was gonna call you."

"You sound drunk, son."

"That I am, and pleashant—pleasantly so. Kettle Vodka from Holland. Pretty damn smooth. You should try it shome--sometime . . . oops, forgot. You don' drink."

"Am I interrupting you?"

"Not now, but five minutes ago, I would've said yesh—yes."

"What happened five minutes ago, son?"

"I said Kaddish."

"Kaddish?" There was just the tiniest note of apprehension in Dobey's voice. "Isn't that a Jewish prayer—for the dead?"

"'S'right. What we had—it died one year ago, today, and itsh—it's over now. The Jews say Kaddish for one year, every day, at shun—sundown." His eyed the clock blearily. 7:01 p.m. It had taken all of five minutes to say; two whole lifetimes crammed into the angelic, ancient, proud song of a people who refused to perish, against all odds.

"Tonight was the 365^th day, The Anniversh-ary. They call it—Yarzy—Yahrzeit." he murmured, almost forgetting he was speaking to Dobey and not himself. "He came back to me tonight."

Dobey's words trembled in a way that would have been noticeable to no one, much less his inebriated detective. "Hutchin—son, stay right where you are. I'm coming over now. It'll take me ten minutes. Don't go anywhere or do anything. That's an order, son. Do you hear me?"

Hutch smiled sleepily. "I love you, too, Cap'n. Don't ever forget it." Without waiting for a response, he hung the phone up gently.

When the ringing started again 10 seconds later, he politely ignored it.

He picked the Magnum up slowly; examined it carefully. It had always served its purpose; it was he who had been deficient. Another photograph in his mind: a hot summer afternoon, one year earlier, in the middle of a turf war over drug boundaries. His partner had seen the child in the line of fire, launched himself at her, curled up around her and taken five bullets. The Python heavy at the end of his outstretched arms, his blond backup hadn't been fast enough, strong enough, clever enough. His reason for living had died in his arms, shot through the heart.

He bit the inside of his lip and placed the gun down carefully on the coffee table, tilting his head as he regarded it closely. You failed me, he thought bitterly. I failed me. I failed him.

His hand was steady as he reached for the Smith & Wesson. He wasn't familiar with automatics, but this had been Starsky's service 591. For a moment, he was confused. What the hell was a 9mm? Could it off a canary? But he had seen his partner use it with incredible efficiency. I'm just not as effective as he was . . . 

Well, no more hair shirts and self-flagellation. Tonight the gun and he would work in concert, like ice dancers, perfectly attuned to one another. A .9 load would do the job; he had trusted his partner for that. The bullet wouldn't pass through his body, but it would work its way past his sternum. Now he needed to tell it how to do that most effectively.

He held the automatic in his right hand and placed his left over his heart. His left hand belonged over his heart; it always had, since he had met the man he knew would be his soulmate. Found the strong, steady, rapid beat. He moved the gun slowly, turning it back on himself, grasping the trigger with his thumb and guiding the muzzle until it touched the back of his palm and found the pounding beneath. He cocked the weapon with his index finger. Shot through the heart.

Kaddish had been finished; he had expressed, in the way David Michael Starsky had wanted, his honor, respect, and grief. Now he was about to express his love, too, and the thought filled him with a sense of freedom he had not been able to achieve for a year.

I've never been scared of doorways, Starsk. I'll step through any doorway if I know you'll be on the other side. Wherever you are, God's there, too.

For a moment, a split second, he thought he heard a voice, more a feeling than a sound.

"Oh, babe, I never left your side," sang the thought, "I've always been here, beside you. Always."

He could see clearly the dark, curly hair; the indigo eyes, depthless; the wistful, sad, crooked smile.

"Guide me home, mi corazón," he whispered to the vision. "Guide me home to you."

He never even heard a sound when he pulled the trigger.

Dobey stepped into Hutch's bathroom. "Gotta wash the blood from my hands," he mumbled to Doyle. And the tears from my face.

He noticed the sealant and caulking putty lying in the counter right away. He stared at them for a moment, then turned the hot water on, watching, detached, as his fingers rubbed one another like Lady Macbeth's, and the burgundy stream twisted away down the drain. When he was finished, he splashed his face twice, blindly grabbed for a towel, wiped his face dry. Looked at himself, pensively, in the mirror. Realized immediately that nothing was going to hide the pain etched into features, the dark circles under his eyes. There was a splotch of bright red blood across his white shirt and the blue tie Edith had given him for his birthday. How had that happened?

That was when something clicked in his cop's brain.

The work in the bathroom had just been completed, maybe as recently as last night. The caulk had hardly begun to set. It had to have taken at least a whole day of work, and it had been carefully, painstakingly, almost lovingly, done.

He was off yesterday.

Why would Hutchinson have put so much effort into such a mundane task when he had obviously known what he would be doing the very next evening?

Dobey blinked. Who cares, now? Does it matter? He was hurting so badly inside he couldn't think about it. Maybe tomorrow. He wanted to be in Edith's arms, able to cry without fear or shame. She had loved them so much, too.

Tentatively, he touched his reflection in the shiny, clean and seamless expanse of the wide new mirror facing him, then pivoted away, turning off the bright lights as he left.