Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

You could want to die for regret. 
    It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent—holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly, so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting. 
    The good memories stopped you. 
    For him they began with that crazy bed. Nineteen fortyfive. He was just out of the army. Los Angeles was crowded. Unable to find an apartment, unwilling to stay with his father and stepmother number four—his own age, pretty and stupid—he had taken the college money banked for him as a kid, and made a down payment on a house. A little old one-story wooden side-street place. Christmas was two weeks off. He wanted to move in before that. Maybe because he was very young, the first thing he thought of buying was a bed. 
    The nearest furniture store was on Western Avenue, a broad, bright acre of shiny woods and metal-shot fabrics. Tinsel and bells overhead. Loudspeakers tinkling carols. Crowds of shoppers in rain-damp coats. He edged among them, looking for a clerk. They were all busy. But in a far comer he saw one, a short, dark boy, finishing a sale. The boy took crumpled bills from a worried-looking Mexican woman, punched the cash register, handed the woman her change and her receipt, and gave her a smile. Dazzling. 
    I want you , Dave thought, and wondered if he'd said it aloud, because the boy looked at him then, over the heads of a lot of other people. Straight at him. And there was recognition in the eyes, curious opaque eyes, like bright stones in a stream bed. He ignored the other customers. He came to Dave. 
    "May I help you?" Zero for originality. 
    "I'm looking for a bed." For a second, the start of a smile twitched the boy's mouth. It didn't develop. "Single or double?" 
    "Double," Dave said. "I don't want to sleep alone forever." 
    The boy didn't react. He was already moving off. "I've got something to show you." 
    It turned out to be extra wide. 
    Dave laughed. "I didn't say I wanted to sleep with an army. I hope that's over with." 
    "Wait," the boy said, "let me tell you about this bed. See, most of the furniture in this place is put together with wooden pegs and glue. Wartime restrictions. But this bed is built. It's prewar. The mattress too. They've been here years. I can give you a good price." 
    It was white wicker, swirls, arabesques. 
    "I'll feel like I'm waking up every morning in my basinet," he said. 
    The boy let the smile develop now. "Not if you've got somebody with you." 
    "Seriously, isn't it a little chichi for a male?" 
    The boy shook his head. "Use rough fabrics for the spread and curtains. Plain colors." 
    "Will you help me pick them out?" 
    "Aw ... I'm sorry." He meant it. "That's in another department. " 
    Dave felt lost. The boy saw it and laughed. 
    "Don't look so worried.... " He began writing out the sales slip. "You can do it. Just stay away from yellow, with your coloring. Blues would be right for you, but too cold with white. Try burnt orange." He looked up. "Name? Address?" 
    They painted the walls burnt orange, had a spread made to match and curtains of white muslin. Because the boy did help him pick out the fabrics. And the paint. Not for the bedroom only. For the rest of the place too. And to remodel it, something Dave wouldn't have thought of. It was a shambles on Christmas Eve, the floor strewn with tatters of old wallpaper, rumpled tarpaulins, color-dribbled paint cans, buckets of plaster, brushes, putty knives, crowbars. . . . He didn't care. He couldn't have been happier. 
    When he'd seen Rod first, talked to him first, heart running quick as a watch, mouth dry, he had told himself, This will be good for exactly one sweet night . The kid was