Foothills Pride Stories, Volume 1

by Pat Henshaw

  A few men raised their cups, a few men rose and left, and the rest settled into the morning. Max and I ate our breakfast and began to put my idea into action.

  8

  WHEN WE got to Max’s cabin, the Behr Construction crew were unloading their trucks and putting tools on the porch. They were going to tear down the kitchen cabinets and rip out the carpeting and linoleum today. An industrial dumpster was in place outside the front door, perched on the only piece of flat ground. The Behrs had parked their trucks alongside the road and were carrying tools up from there.

  Abe Behr, the oldest and biggest of the three brothers who owned the company, dumped a couple of sledgehammers and some crowbars on the porch, then walked over to us.

  “How ya doing, Max?” Abe reached over to shake Max’s hand. “Haven’t seen you around very much lately.”

  The Behrs could easily have fit in with the lumberjack crowd at the Rock Bottom. Not only did they have on the regulation uniform, but all three hit the six foot mark and were what rural people would call “husky lads.” They looked like they bench-pressed sequoias before breakfast. I loved watching them work and get sweaty.

  “Abe. It’s been a while. How’re you and the boys?” Max asked.

  They got caught up like good old boys often do, how many fish they’d caught and when, the wildlife they’d spotted and where, major property repairs in the area, all of which I tuned out as much as I could considering I was enjoying watching Max. I perked up when Abe asked, “What ever happened with Cary or Casey, the girl you were engaged to?”

  Max stood stock-still, gave me a little smile, and took a deep breath. “Didn’t work out. Now I’m dating Fredi.”

  Abe gave me a wide-eyed what-the-fuck look. Since Abe had been my contractor the last time I’d dated a client and had helped me down from the heartache and my murderous intentions, I knew Abe was more shocked that I was dating another client than Max was gay.

  After a short silence, Abe looked at Max, then back at me. “Well, good luck, then.”

  As his crew waited on the porch, Abe filled us in on the day’s plans.

  “Carlos is coming by later with the grader so we can get the drive fixed and make a parking area over here,” he said, pointing to the area in front of the cabin. “We’ll get the interior stripped today. Larry’s coming by to upgrade the electrical sometime this afternoon or tomorrow morning. His brother-in-law, the inspector one, will be along afterward. We got the posthole digger on tap for tomorrow. Everything should be on schedule.”

  “Good. You’ve got our cell phone numbers if anything comes up. We’ll be at Granite Guys and then Sierra Tile, maybe the appliance place if we get time, doing all the fun stuff,” I said.

  “Yeah, okay.” Abe turned to Max and said under his breath, “Good luck with the fun stuff. Ain’t my idea of fun.” Then he laughed and walked away.

  I grabbed Max by the hand and hustled him to my car parked on the side of the county road.

  “No, not goin’ anywhere in your car. Takin’ the truck.” Max was backing away from my hybrid. “No way.”

  “But….”

  “It’s….” He waved his hand as his face registered disgust.

  “Too yellow?”

  “Got no leg room.” Max opened the passenger door of the truck. “Get in.”

  When I stood in front of him, my arms crossed and the most stubborn look I owned on my face, Max sighed. “Your car’s just too damned uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t whine. You haven’t even ridden in it,” I snarled. “And you forgot to get coffee to go.”

  “No problem.” Max put his hands around my waist and hoisted me onto the seat. He nuzzled my tummy with his face as he lifted me. Okay, he started with my stomach and kept nuzzling on down. We were both breathing a little more heavily when he added, “We’ll stop by Penny’s before we go to the stores.”

  Not just coffee, but designer coffee at Penny’s. All right. I brightened, blushed, and smiled at him. He knew how to bring me around all right. A little nuzzle and coffee. I’m easy.

  Max slammed my door shut and started toward the driver’s side. Abe whistled at him, and when Max turned, Abe gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Nice save!” he shouted.

  Max was blushing so hard when he slid into the driver’s seat, I thought he might implode. I was grinning, all the ugliness of the morning behind me.

  JUST AS I had suggested, we took our relationship slowly. Ice cream melted faster in a snowstorm than us moving toward any kind of heavy-duty sex. The pace felt strange to me since I’d spent so much of my time getting laid and not getting to know the other person. Strange, I was finding, was good. Very good.

  As the days and weeks followed, our courtship and the house remodel seemed to be on identical tracks. Little glitches and minor arguments flared up seemingly on the same days, but mostly the courtship and the remodel followed the lines I’d mapped out.

  We had meals together and got to know each other. We talked about the mountains, the forest, the animals, and the birds. He told me about rafting and camping trips. I talked about houses I’d designed and offices I’d redesigned. We shared our triumphs and our woes.

  We still ate a lot of the time at the Rock Bottom, mostly because we were monitoring the cabin’s progress and were in the vicinity so often.

  Steve was a no-show every time we were there, as per Lorraine’s instructions. His sons, not being part of the ban, pretty much camped out there, probably reporting everything they saw and heard to their old man.

  Max acted freer now, introducing me to men he called his buddies. Most of them ran rafting, fishing, and hunting trips through Greene’s and were of the good-old-boy ilk. They were nice enough to me, not insulting in any way, shape, or form. From their hesitancy and diffidence, I got the idea they didn’t know what to talk about around me, didn’t know how to relate until I dropped my love of bird-watching and relaxing in nature into a conversation.

  “Oh yeah?” Larry, a six-and-a-half-foot wall of muscle, tight jeans, and a perpetual smile under freckles and auburn hair, sent a quick glance at Max, who nodded. “Well, then, you and Greene have a lot in common.”

  That’s all I needed to talk on and on about the cabin and the view and how I’d incorporated nature into the design. Larry lazed back and listened, every now and again sending Max a little secret smile. If Max hadn’t said he was mine for the duration, I would have thought Larry was making a play for him.

  It was all very covert and unsettling. I didn’t get it. What was Larry doing? Were Max’s friends sort of laughing at me? My clothes? That Max touched me or I touched him so often? What was going on?

  Even more unsettling was every time I went to the restroom at the cafe. Junior would follow me into the bathroom and wash his hands while I did my business and cleaned up. He never said a word, but left after I did.

  “What’s going on with Junior?” I asked Max.

  He looked at me and shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “He follows me into the john,” I said. “Doesn’t talk, just hangs around. Then leaves when I do. Is he trying to scope me out or something?”

  Max looked off toward where Lorraine and Junior were talking. Again he shrugged. “Maybe he thinks you shouldn’t be alone in the bathroom,” he finally said.

  I laughed. Didn’t he know about Boner? Still, I was feeling better and better around Max as time went on. Considering Max’s friends and employees were now urging me to take a rafting or camping trip and Lorraine and Junior seemed to be protecting me from the unhappy lumberjacks in the cafe, I was starting to feel like I was part of a community. Max had opened the door and shoved me inside his version of the Stone Acre men’s club.

  I found it a little strange at first that he and Stone didn’t know much about each other. As I thought about it, I realized Stone ran with the bikers and bar customers whereas Max stuck with the outdoorsmen. Both their families had been in the area for decades, but the two circles didn’t seem to o
verlap much.

  I kept suggesting we go out to dinner with Jimmy and Stone and Felicity, who was dating one of Stone’s biker friends, but the plans never quite gelled. It would happen, just not in the foreseeable future.

  In the back of my mind, I wondered why Max had picked me. When we talked to Max’s friends at the cafe, I’d been given the names of other gay men in the area, always under the guise of a question.

  “Hey, Fredi, do you know (fill in the blank)? He’s gay too,” one of his friends would say. It was like I belonged to The Gay Men’s Club, an exclusive group where all the members should know one another. And I kept failing all the time. What I did understand, however, was these other gay guys weren’t as flamboyant, weren’t as out, weren’t as “me” as I was. So as I learned their names and what seemed to me their unexciting occupations, the question why Max wanted me kept looming—until one day when I accidentally heard the answer.

  On my way back from the restroom, I was looking at the rack of local newsprint circulars. I was standing behind and to the side of Max and one of his friends when I overheard the friend say, “I don’t get it, Max. Why him? He’s so… out there, so weird.”

  “You think so?” Max answered. “Huh.” After a couple seconds, he added, “Maybe that’s why. He’s not like all the rest of us mud hens and barn swallows. He’s interesting.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Besides, who’s to say why somebody likes somebody else? Why do you like Cindy?”

  “You’re kidding, right? She’s got enormous jugs.”

  Max laughed, but I could tell he was probably thinking the same thing I was. Our relationship stood on more solid ground than theirs did. Didn’t it?

  As I thought and watched Max, his friend had scratched his ear, then looked at Max. “Whatever it is, it’s sure making you happy. Ain’t never seen you so relaxed and… and… and happy before.”

  “That’s ’cuz I am.”

  His words made me scurry back to the table and slide in next to him. I too was happy. Really, really happy.

  NOT EVERYONE was as supportive or understanding as the men Max introduced me to. Steve’s sons and their friends still made guttural noises whenever we saw them. As the clouds of doom gathered from the disapproving lumberjack contingency, Max and I found we had more in common and knew each other better than we would have imagined. In other words, just as Steve said, I just kept turning the man gay.

  We headed back to the granite place one day after I received a text from Tony, head of the cutting crew.

  Sorry Mr. Z. Granite broke. Stop in today?

  Sure.

  Breakage happens. Granite slabs occasionally split when they were being cut, so I was used to returning to Tony’s shop to pick out replacement slabs.

  Max had grumbled, “We’ve already been there.”

  “And we’re going to do it again, sweetie.” I turned and looked at him. “I thought you liked the granite place. Didn’t we have fun last time?”

  Okay, fun. Definition of an overstatement. He’d been interested. He loved nature, and rocks like granite were part of nature.

  Just like the first time here, I had to keep him on track as he walked around, running his hand down the slabs. He finally found one he liked and pulled me over to it. I shook my head since he had no clue about what would make a good food prep surface.

  “Hey, come here, Fredi. Look at this one!” He dragged me by hand to the slab. “What d’ya think?”

  “It’s not finished. We don’t know what it’ll look like when it is.” I turned and took a step to go back to the bin with the finished slabs.

  “No, wait, Fredi. Feel it. Nice, huh?”

  He ran my hand down the nubby surface.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Wonderful,” I deadpanned. “You can wash clothes in the stream with it. If you can lug it down to the water.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a washboard. For a kitchen counter, you want something smooth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He shook his head, his arms folded over his chest, his feet planted. “No, it isn’t.”

  “Okay, here’s more of an answer: Because I said so.” I mirrored his stance. “Who’s the award-winning designer here? Me? Or you?”

  “Who’s the client here?”

  “Nobody. You forfeited.”

  His frown upended into a smile. He bent and kissed me on the cheek. “You win.”

  He finally found something he loved, something I really liked too. Tan with bands of brown and gray running in rivers down it with a thin ribbon of teal, it would look spectacular in the cabin’s kitchen.

  “You doin’ anything tonight?” he asked shyly as we got in the truck.

  “No. What have you got in mind, sweetie?”

  “How about dinner at my place?”

  Since I hadn’t been to his house yet or he to mine, I was thrilled. Was it going to be a brown-on-brown monstrosity? Or a family heirloom? Didn’t matter. I’d love it either way because it was his.

  9

  HIS HOUSE, a rambling single-level structure with lots of native stone and adobe, sat off the beaten path outside the settled area in the foothills. From the front, it presented like a family home, cozy in a Wild West sort of way. What looked like a small barn was behind and to the left of the house.

  “Wow, this is really nice,” I said, stepping out of the monster truck into the garage.

  He had a midsized SUV parked next to the truck and some sort of motorcycle in front of the two vehicles. On the outside the house appeared peaceful and idyllic, only the wind rustling through the olive trees to break the silence.

  “Yeah, well, welcome to my castle,” he quipped. Why he was nervous was beyond me. “I didn’t decorate it.”

  “Oh, so there’s more than brown on brown in there, right?”

  He glared at me. “You think I only know one color? I remember sayin’ I liked green too.”

  “Yeah, as long as it was a brownish green.” I walked through the door.

  We were in a laundry room, the appliances pristine. He was grimacing, but I smiled up at him. “Very well, I’ll look for the other colors,” I said, trailing my hand over the white surfaces.

  He led me into a ginormous kitchen. The kitchen was integral to the open-floor plan. A bank of windows looked out on the mountainside. As he guided me from room to room—this time not shy about the bedrooms, even his magnificent master bedroom—I got this itchy feeling that I’d seen this house before. It was just too deliciously familiar.

  When we got to the deck with drinks in hand, it finally came to me.

  “OhmyGod! OhmyGod!” I turned to him so quickly I almost spilled my gin and tonic all over him. “Did you build this house?”

  He nodded.

  “Where’d you get the floor plan? The idea?” I was so excited, I was shaking.

  “Uh, Abe suggested it about five years ago or so. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Do you still have the plans?”

  He nodded. “In the study. You want to see them?”

  “Oh yes. Please.”

  As I followed him back inside after putting down my drink with shaking hands, I dithered between excitement and dread. How had Abe Behr gotten his hands on these plans?

  Max had framed the huge master floor plan and hung it behind his desk. I went up and studied it, finally letting out the breath I’d been holding. Everything was on the up and up. I was so relieved.

  “Gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” He was leaning on the side of the desk watching me as I flopped into his office chair.

  “This is my house,” I said happily. “My house!”

  He looked blank for a moment, then inquisitive. “Yeah? Could have sworn I built it. How’d it get to be yours?”

  I waved my hands around the room. “It’s mine. I designed it. While I was in graduate school. I entered it into a des
ign contest. It won! I won! This house won! The plans are famous.”

  Okay, not precisely famous, but well-known enough. I’d won the coveted West Coast Design Competition with this entry.

  “Oh yeah? I got an award-winnin’ house?”

  This was so fabulous. I’d never seen the house, my very first dream house, in the flesh. I squirmed around in his office chair and stared at the floor plan.

  I remembered visiting the site the contest judges had picked out. It was south of San Francisco on a cliff overlooking the ocean. There were photos in the contest brochure, but none of them did the site justice. Nobody could look at a picture and feel the sea breeze coming off the ocean or smell the slightly salty sea air. Nobody could bask in the sunshine or watch the fog roll up the coast to envelope the landscape.

  I’d thought a long time about how to give the homeowner the maximum sensual experience before I sat down and drew my initial sketches. The house had to be functional enough that maintenance like cleaning salt spray from windows was a minimal activity. It had to be open so the wind and sun could be enjoyed, but closed enough the coastal rainstorms would be drama played out behind glass.

  In the end, I’d put my heart and soul and my teeny-tiny bit of experience into the design. I’d won enough money to keep going to school without having to be an absolutely down-and-out starving student. I’d used my creativity to support myself. I remembered the glorious feeling when I’d opened the letter inviting me to the awards dinner as one of the finalists, and the heady blankness when I’d actually won.

  I’d thanked the college instructor who’d accompanied me and the group that had put on the competition and then gone completely, stone-cold silent. The presenter, one of the city’s best-known architects, had guided me off the dais, getting me a scotch and water, and then offered me a part-time job.

  “I get first dibs on hiring you full-time when you graduate,” he’d said, and I’d taken him up on his promise. He’d turned out to be an asshole to work for, but I’d learned and benefitted from his patronage.