by John Inman
What the hell he saw in me I would never ever know. But even more confusing was what I didn’t see in him. What was it I thought he lacked that made him lousy lover material? We were friends. We got along. We were sexually drawn to each other. Still, I didn’t want him. Not that way. Whatever element was missing in making us a couple, was missing from my end of the equation, not Chaz’s. And I felt bad about that.
But not bad enough to lie.
My eyes wandered back to the busboy, who now squatted on his haunches in front of a high chair, wiping salsa from a toddler’s foot. The parents were apologizing, the toddler was goo-gooing, and the busboy was smiling and shaking his head, obviously telling the parents not to worry, he’d have the little tyke cleaned up any second now. Even from six tables away, I could see the young man had a good heart.
When he interrupted his duties for a moment to pat his own ass and make sure my book was still in his back pocket, I had to fight the urge to clutch my heart. That’s how moved I was by his simple gesture. My book actually meant something to the kid. Maybe. Or the other option was he had borrowed it from a friend and didn’t want to lose the damn thing. That was a possibility too.
“Earth to Robert,” Chaz said.
I jumped and Chaz laughed. “Talk about being a lech. How about directing some of that fawning attention on the guy who’s buying you dinner?”
I dragged my eyes away from the busboy and back to my tablemate. It was the least I could do. Before I could dig around for an apology, the food came. With a plateful of steaming chimichangas in front of me, I was transported to that place where apologies didn’t matter anyway.
God, I really was hungry.
Chaz tapped my water glass with his fork. “Didn’t you order a side of guacamole?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, realizing it wasn’t there. I turned to grab the waiter’s attention, but he was already gone.
The busboy, done cleaning up the toddler now and gazing around for something else to do, saw my hand in the air and came hustling over.
By the time he was standing in front of me, the fact that he was so beautiful made me forget what I had been after to begin with.
“Uhh,” I stammered.
Chaz clucked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “Guacamole,” he murmured.
“Oh, yeah!” It all came back to me now. “Excuse me,” I said to the young man with the stunning body, stunning face, and the cute little red bow tie I suddenly realized I would love to nibble on. “I wonder if you would check and see what happened to my side of guacamole.”
“You ordered a side of guacamole?” he asked. “Nobody ever orders a side of guacamole.”
I blushed. “Well, I did. I love guacamole. My name is Robert, by the way.”
The busboy’s lips twisted into a smile, and two dimples dug holes in his cheeks. I suddenly realized his eyes were the color of chestnuts. In the dim restaurant light, they glittered with golden points of light.
“I know your name, sir,” he said.
I felt my jaw drop. The fact that he already knew my name floored me. Not only it was I floored, but I had also gone beyond the blushing stage. Now my ears were about to catch fire. What the hell was I doing? Why had I told the busboy my name? No restaurant patron ever tells the busboy their name! And even if they did, how many times would the busboy already know it unless they were a fucking relative or something?
Chaz had stopped eating and was sitting there with a bored expression on his face, watching me go down in flames.
The busboy apparently decided to take pity on me and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll go fetch your guacamole. Maybe it’s hiding out back, smoking a cigarette.”
“Funny,” I said, resisting the urge to twist my head around and lick the lad’s hand.
With the busboy gone—and probably chuckling his way toward the kitchen—I turned my flaming red face back to Chaz.
“Astonishing” was all he said, and that in a tone as dry as dust.
A simpering grin spread across my face. I knew it was there, but I was helpless to do anything about it. Besides, I was too stunned by the most important aspect of the whole embarrassing scene. The astonishing aspect was…
“He knew my name,” I said. “Did you hear that, Chaz? He knew my name.”
Chaz still appeared less than enthralled. “I heard.”
“Probably from reading my book, I suppose.”
“Yes. That would be my guess.”
“Did you see his dimples?”
At that, Chaz leaned forward, plucked a tortilla chip from the platter, and stuffed it in my mouth.
“What are we, twelve? Chew on this and shut up,” he said.
I chewed, but I wasn’t quite ready to shut up yet. “Wha? Wha’s wrong?”
Chaz glowered at me. He was smiling, too, but it was still a glower. The happiness meter on his smile was registering one. Maybe a low two. “You’re an award-winning author, and you’re making passes at a busboy because he’s reading your book. What’s wrong with this picture?”
I swallowed to get the damn tortilla chip out of the way. “I’m not making passes. And it wasn’t that big of an award.”
“How desperate for attention are you? Have a little self-respect. Show a sense of self-worth. He should be fangirling over you, but instead, you are fangirling over him. It doesn’t work that way. This isn’t high school, you know. Where’s your pride?”
“But he’s so cute!”
Chaz gave a rumble way down deep in his throat. “He’s also young enough to be your—”
“Don’t say it! He is most certainly not young enough to be my son!”
“Younger brother, then. He’s young enough to be your younger brother. Or maybe a cousin.”
“Fine. He’s young enough to be my cousin. I’ll give you that.”
“Either way,” Chaz said, “it’s incest.”
“Oh, please.”
“And where was all this enthusiasm for your adoring fan on the street?”
I had already beat myself up over that. I wasn’t about to do it again. “Don’t go there,” I snarled, in a way I hoped wasn’t too snarly.
Chaz immediately clammed up, so I figured the busboy was approaching from my rear. When I felt a gentle hand once again come to rest on my shoulder, I knew I was right. The busboy leaned over me and slipped a heaping bowl of guacamole between my drinking glass and my dinner plate.
“I gave you some extra,” he said. Was I truly so pathetic that he had to feed me extra guacamole?
I gazed up at him and smiled a thank-you. He stared back down at me with his little towel draped over his arm and said, “Enjoy your dinner, sir.” There was a twinkle in his eye that made my heart skip a couple of beats.
He turned to step away, and I plucked at his arm before he could escape. “How do you know my name?” I asked, ignoring Chaz whistling nonchalantly while he checked out the wrought-iron chandelier hanging over our heads.
The busboy didn’t speak. He simply plucked the paperback from his rear pocket and held the picture up to my face.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re reading my book. I had no idea.”
Chaz whistled all the louder, bringing nonchalance to heights it had never achieved before and would probably never achieve again.
“I’m reading it for the twelfth time,” the busboy said.
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. I love this book.”
“Oh, brother,” Chaz muttered. The busboy and I both ignored him.
The young man looked down at the book in his hand, then raised his eyes to take me in. He was blushing now too. I could see the glow of it in his cheeks.
“I hate to ask, but would you sign it for me?” he asked, his eyes so filled with hope I almost slipped off my chair.
My voice box seemed to have closed up shop for the night. It would take more than a paleontologist to find it now. I simply nodded and started slapping my pockets for a pen. He retrieved one of his own and handed it to
me.
I slipped the book from his hand, noticing all too clearly how our fingers brushed together when I did, and opened it to the cover page. The book was warm to the touch, and that was about the sexiest thing I’d ever known in my life. I tried to ignore the fact that I was trembling while I held the lad’s butt-warmed book in my hands.
I stared up into the busboy’s face and said a silent prayer of thanks when I realized my voice had returned. Most of it anyway.
“Who shall I dedicate it to?” I croaked.
“Dario,” the boy said, smiling wide. “My name is Dario. Dario Martinez.”
I nodded, swallowing hard, uncomfortably aware that, beneath the table, I was getting a boner. What the hell was that all about? Jeez, how desperate for attention was I?
“Dario Martinez it is, then,” I said, glancing at the book cover to reassure myself I knew what my own name was and the correct way to spell it. I didn’t want to seem like an imposter.
Chaz shook his head and stuffed the better part of a burrito into his mouth. I suspected he was trying to shut himself up, for which I was immensely grateful.
When I finished scribbling my spidery handwriting across the cover page, then signed it with a flourish even I knew was over the top, I handed the book and the pen back to Dario. He stood next to my chair long enough to tuck the pen into his shirt pocket and read the words I had written.
Upon finishing, he trained his eyes back on me. “Thank you, Mr. Johnny. I hope so too.”
“Call me Robert,” I said.
He smiled and his dimples came out for an encore.
I felt my heart thundering in my chest as the young man walked away, still staring at the words I’d written in his book.
“I hope so too, what?” Chaz asked when the busboy was out of earshot. “What exactly did you write?”
“Never mind,” I said. That was my little secret.
Chaz did not look pleased.
“Eat up,” I said, directing his attention back to his plate. I dumped my bowl of guacamole over my chimichangas and lit in.
“I hope so too,” the boy had uttered.
I wondered if he meant it.
Fifteen minutes later the snooty waiter came over with a dish of flan with a flaming candle sticking up in the middle of it, and I forgot about the busboy completely. Well, except that he was one of the waiters and waitresses who proceeded to sing me the happy birthday song with the strolling mariachi band as backup. The snooty waiter seemed as appalled by the idea as I was.
Trying not to pass out from shame, I endured the humiliation of Chaz and a bunch of strangers honoring the fact that I was now in my thirties, thank you very much. Dario stood with his little towel draped over his arm, once again gazing at the book in his hand.
When he looked up, our eyes met from across the room. He smiled at me and sang all the louder. I couldn’t decide if I loved the kid or hated him for that. I could pick his voice out from the crowd. He sang in a pleasantly warm baritone that was only a smidgeon off-key, yet very charming. His dimples flashed on and off as he warbled the words.
After the singing stopped, thank God, the chorus dispersed, and the waiter slid our bill onto the table. Out of sheer spite, I ignored it lying there.
I turned to Chaz and growled, “I’m killing you in my next book.”
“I figured you would. Blow out your goddamn candle,” he said.
I blew. For my birthday wish, I wished Chaz heartburn.
With a self-satisfied smirk, Chaz snatched up the bill and glanced at it before plucking the smoking candle away and sticking a fork in the flan, giving me a quizzical look while he did.
I shook my head and said, “Eat it all.”
So he did. Every last blob and crumb. We left the restaurant before Dario came to bus away the dishes.
I didn’t tell Chaz, but I considered that to be the low point of the evening.
Chapter Three
AS IT turned out, the weatherman’s prediction was a little off. The storm didn’t reach the coast until five o’clock the following evening. Five o’clock on the button, in fact. I stood at the bedroom window, bleary-eyed from sleeping the day away, and stared out as an ominous curtain of rain swept its way across the bay, headed straight for me. By 5:05 the city was deluged. The Coronado Bridge was a smear of blue watercolor, like a splash of memory, barely visible through the downpour. Coronado Island beyond was erased completely, lost in the torrent. Rain sheeted down the windowpanes. Great sweeps of it lashed my balcony, drenching the furniture and rattling the hummingbird feeder on the railing. Streaks of lightning, as sharp as scalpels, sliced across the pewter sky. Thunder grumbled and echoed between the crowns of skyscrapers, tumbling away into the distance like the rattle and bang of garbage trucks on trash day—a simile that brought a smile to my face.
Now this was honest-to-god weather. No namby-pamby endless glut of California sunshine for the masses today. This stuff had balls.
Clutch stood at my feet, also looking out, wondering what the hell was going on, perhaps, since his experience with thunderstorms was limited. His tail was puffed up to twice its normal size and stood straight up off his rear end with just a teeny crook of curiosity twisting the tip of it. He bumped my ankle with his forehead, either for reassurance or because I was blocking his view, so I picked him up and held him close. I stood there in sleep-wrinkled boxer shorts with a piss hard-on, aka my morning boner, tenting the fabric. I call it a morning boner because cocks can’t tell time, so how could mine possibly know it was running twelve hours late, like the storm? I buried my lips in Clutch’s warm fur and felt his purr stutter through me.
I thought of Chaz. Wondering what he was doing at the moment. Wondering if he was thinking of me, but not really caring one way or the other. Wondering why I couldn’t be nicer to him. But not really caring one way or another about that either. The love simply wasn’t there. If I did begin a relationship with him, if I opened up enough to let him in at all, I would end up truly breaking his heart. He was better off this way. I knew it even if he didn’t.
He had walked me to my door last night and stood there in the hallway with me, chatting of idle things, stalling for time, hoping for an invitation inside that never came. I saw the hurt in his eyes, which he tried to hide with humor, but I was powerless to do anything about it. Sex with him would have been a nice way to end the evening, but hurting a friend by leading him on would have been a terrible beginning to my thirty-first year on the planet. I was dick enough as it was. I didn’t need to compound my crimes.
Later I would phone Chaz, make sure he was okay. I could imagine the conversation. We would talk about the rain, about dinner the night before, about my being a year older. Nowhere in our chat would we mention the fact I had turned him away at my door. Nor the fact I would probably do the same again the next time we went out to dinner. Yet the knowledge of all that would lie unspoken between us, as it always did.
There we were, the two of us. In love with the wrong people. Me with Jason, Chaz with me. And there was no hope for either of us getting what we really wanted.
The city lay oddly hushed beneath the angry, roiling sky and the tumultuous wash of rain. Traffic noise did not penetrate this high up through the roar of the storm. Sirens did not intrude. Only the roar of wind and the swish and chatter of raindrops splattering the windows filled my empty rooms. I imagined the building swaying sideways from the buffeting gale, rocking gently back and forth. At least I hoped I was imagining it. I felt lonely standing in the empty condo with the unfamiliar sounds of the storm raging outside, battering against the walls, demanding to be heard. Demanding to be let in.
Like Chaz.
I flipped a switch, and artificial light flooded the room, dispelling the melancholy gray of a storm-clouded twilight. I flipped another switch, and a gentle swell of music filled the space around me, blocking out the sounds of rain and wind and thunder amid the muted strains of Rachmaninoff. The piece was something heavy-handed, which fit my moo
d exactly.
I found myself wishing there was a third switch—a switch to kill the thoughts inside my head. But there wasn’t. So I did what I always did. I parked myself in front of the computer and booted up. Weeding my way through the mindless, all-too-familiar steps of logging in, I finally found myself staring at the pages of the new manuscript I had been working on.
I glanced through the neatly typed pages and tried to lose myself in what I had written. Not one word grabbed me. With a sinking feeling that made me a little sick to my stomach, I scrolled back to Page 1 and began reading the manuscript from the very beginning. Still I felt nothing.
Without allowing myself to think too much about it, I did this morning what I could not find the courage to do the day before. With the storm raging around me and Rachmaninoff getting a few licks in now and then, I hit Delete, obliterating the entire manuscript from the face of the earth.
Suddenly the words I had tortured together were gone. Every one of them. Before me lay a blank page. Pristine. Beckoning.
I smiled seeing it there. The possibilities opened up by that blank page were hell and gone more promising than the words written there before. Now at least, there was a chance for greatness. A chance to tell a story that meant something. All I had to do was sit down and write it.
I tore my eyes from the snow-white computer screen with the little Page Number 1 flashing in the upper-right-hand corner, awaiting my words, awaiting my beginning, awaiting page after page of a story to unfold—a tale that had never seen the light of day before. A tale dredged up from imagination and caffeine and a longing to leave a fingerprint on this world after I left it, toes up on a mortuary slab. A reminder I had been there. Since I was gay, there would be no progeny. Hell, even Clutch was neutered. My stories were the only part of me I could leave to fill the void I left behind. I wanted those stories to be worthy tenants. I wanted those stories to be cherished.
I trailed my eyes around the room, seeing it all as if for the very first time. Wondering why I had bought that. Wondering why I had arranged those pieces of furniture so. Wondering how it could all be so cluttered, yet feel so empty.