In my dream, I had long black hair and pouty lips. A tall man in a tuxedo held me tight as I danced in three-inch heels.

Q's baritone voice disrupted my most excellent dream. "Wake up. Your boy-toy is dead."

I reached under the bed for my vibrator.

"Not that toy. Your flesh and blood toy, Clifford." Q said, chucking the Sunday Tribune on my outstretched leg. "Page six."

"Ouch! That hurt."

"You mean my waking you with bad news?"

"No. I mean, dropping the Sunday Trib on my shin bone. Now I'll have a bruise."

"Nothing compared to Clifford. Someone bruised him to death and left his body behind the Leather Club," Q said, dangling my robe with one finger. "Shall I make you a bloody Mary to drown your sorrow?"

"Please, and easy on the horseradish. I still have scar tissue on my throat from your last batch."

"Your wish is my command," he said and promptly left the room.

It may surprise you that I continue to have the newspaper delivered to my door every day. Some rituals are comforting. Drinking coffee while thumbing through the newspaper is one of them.

I slipped on my robe, ran a comb through my hair, and found my way to the breakfast nook.

My bloody Mary sat on the counter. I cautiously took a sip as Q busied himself, concocting the world's finest cup of coffee on his new two thousand dollar Jura We8 expresso machine.

Finally, he topped his composition with steamed milk and served them on an oversized saucer, flanked by a biscotti.

"You look stunning," Q said through lying teeth.

"Cut the shit. I'm still deducting your professional brewmaster device from your paycheck. Me and Mr. Coffee we're doing just fine. Now I can't even make a cup of coffee in my own house."

"Madame, I can retrieve your eight-year-old sludge maker from the trash..."

I cut him off in mid-sentence. "Fuck the coffee. What happened to Clifford?"

Background information to follow: A few years ago, I employed Clifford to provide certain much-needed services. Clifford was a professional Bell Ringer. Or, as I often say, the Jacques Cousteau of muff divers.

Q sipped his expresso and smacked his luscious lips to signify his approval. "Best guess â?" he got caught stealing someone's watch, and they overcompensated kicking his skinny little ass."

"He had a nice ass. Not as nice as yours, but still nice."

"Madame, you have never seen my ass."

"Well, certainly not in action, but I've not lost my ability to peer into keyholes."

Q demonstrated his disapproval of my keyhole peeking by stirring his coffee â?" aggressively striking his tiny silver spoon against the demitasse cup. I momentarily feared for my life. (Not really.)

"Clifford was a petty thief. He stole shit. He stole shit from you," he barked.

"Of course. That's how I found himâ?"stealing costume watches from Nordstums. I rescued him from a life of crime."

"Now that's fat. You flipped him from being a petty thief to a male prostitute and pimped him out to your lady friends."

"A noble profession indeed. And, those lonely women are not my friends."

"So now we're calling them lonely?"

"Lonely sounds better than horny."

"I suppose. But he's still stretched out on a slab at the county morgue."

"Poor Clifford. All that talent went to waste," I said with a sniffle.

"I talked to my guy. So far, no one has claimed the body."

"You gotta guy at the morgue?"

"Comes in handy," Q said. "Want another coffee?"

"Make mine a double and pour it into my regular coffee cup."

"You are such a heathen," he said. "My coffee is to be sipped. Not slurped."

And so, I slurped my designer coffee, read my newspaper, and tried to forget that I'd lost two men in my life â?" Mr. coffee and Clifford The Bellringer. Life can be so cruel.