by John Inman
I couldn’t have been more flattered if he had hauled out an easel and palette and began painting my portrait.
“Are you waiting for me to order dinner?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m not ready.”
He returned a sly smile. “Good.”
We sat eyeing each other for a minute. The only thing breaking the silence was me chomping on tortilla chips and slurping at my margarita. Occasionally our eyes would drift to the window we sat beside, and we would watch the pedestrians scurry past in the rain, heads bent, shoulders hunched. Once in a while, one of them would cast a jealous glance at me through the window. I wasn’t sure if they were jealous because I was in out of the rain or because I was sitting with the sexiest busboy on the face of planet Earth.
“Was that your lover you were with last night, Mr. Johnny?” Dario asked.
The question took me by surprise, but it was the formality at the end of it that really threw me. “No. Just an old friend. And you can call me Robert. Or Bobby. Or Bob. Or Hemingway.”
He gave me a smile. “How about Robert?” he asked. Then he said the word again, as if tasting it on his tongue. “Robert. Can I ask you a question?”
“Certainly. Anything you want to know.”
Dario pulled the paperback out of his back pocket and opened it to the cover page. Tapping his fingertip on the place where I had signed my name, he asked, “Why did you say you hoped you’d see me again?”
I swallowed hard and wondered if I was about to freak the lad out, but since there was no way to lie about it, I simply told him the truth. “I said it because I meant it. You seemed nice. Lord knows you’re handsome. And you like my book. Why wouldn’t I want to see you again?”
“Oh.”
“Tell me, Dario. Do I get my own shot at asking a question?”
He shrugged, his white teeth shining through a heart-stopping smile that seemed to know already what I was about to ask. “Hit me with it.”
I had to take a sip of my drink before I could find the courage to ask it. In a pinch, I’m such a pussy. “Why did you reciprocate by saying you hoped so too?”
His smile faltered. “Did I say that?”
“You mouthed it during that humiliating sing-a-long performance of the Happy Birthday song with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Which, by the way, may have scarred me for life.”
He laughed. “Okay, I admit it. I know I said it. I think I was flirting.”
That was a perk-me-upper if ever I’d heard one. “You were flirting with me? I thought I was flirting with you.”
He straightened his bow tie. “It was sort of a round-robin thing. The flirts were flying back and forth like artillery fire. They still are, I think.”
Dario opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, we both heard a loud “Ahem!” coming from the wet lady three tables over. I was so lost in Dario’s brown eyes, I had almost forgotten he was still at work.
To my ultimate surprise and appreciation, Dario reached across the table and laid his hand over mine. The touch only lasted a moment, but it was long enough for me to feel his heat.
“I’d better get back to work.”
I nodded, rendered almost speechless by that casual, yet not so casual, touch. “Of course,” I said. “And you can bring me the same thing I had last night. Chimichangas. So your boss will know you were wangling my order out of me and we weren’t just chatting.”
He blinked long black lashes, not seductively but in the natural act of moistening his eyes. “Which we really were.”
I blushed. “Which we really were.”
I sucked at another margarita, and when my dinner came, I wolfed it down. Dario and I maintained a businesslike relationship through the rest of my tenure as customer. He became marginally busier, but not much. Only a handful of people showed up to escape the rain, and most of those were only headed to the bar, not the dining room. I was seriously contemplating sending a thank-you card to the waiter who hadn’t shown up for work, since it was because of him I had been able to squeeze in a few extra minutes with Dario.
Glancing at the bill, I was preparing to haul out my credit card to take care of it when Dario returned to my table. I hadn’t seen him for a few minutes.
I looked up and gasped. “My God! What happened to you?”
Dario’s face was swollen on one side, and his lip was bleeding. He was holding a napkin to his mouth to slow the blood. What had been fresh-faced and glowing before now looked trampled and stricken. Aside from the physical discomfort, he also looked embarrassed and ashamed. He refused to meet my eye.
“It’s nothing,” he said, wincing when the words pulled at his split lip. “Would you mind if I collect from you now? They are closing early because of the rain.”
I looked over and saw the bartender already turning a couple away at the door. I swiveled back to Dario.
“But what happened to your face?”
I was shocked to see tears rise in his eyes. The tears sparkled in the light from the chandelier hanging over our heads.
“It’s nothing, really,” he said, his voice growing hoarser by the minute. Hoarser and more desperate. “Please? Your credit card?”
I handed it to him, and he left. I watched him go, studying the unfamiliar stoop to his shoulders, the uncharacteristic way he held his head to the side, as if to ease the pain of whatever had happened to him.
At the front of the dining room, he leaned wearily against the counter as the hostess took the bill and credit card from his hand and proceeded to take care of business. The hostess appeared worried. She reached out and patted his arm. Then she gave him a clean napkin to press to his bleeding lip.
I could see her commiserating with him, but I couldn’t hear the words she used.
She turned as someone walked through the front door from the street. At that moment I heard her clearly say, “Get out!” in no uncertain terms.
The man who entered was younger than I, but older than Dario. Handsome, thin, dark. Glowering. He was dressed in jeans and a jacket, and he was soaked. The man tried to ignore the hostess and speak to Dario, but she stepped from behind the counter and physically pushed him back through the door and into the rain. She slammed the door in his face and flipped a switch, locking the door behind her.
Dario hurried away from the front desk, his face downcast. He returned to my table and handed over my credit card and bill and waited while I signed the tab and added a tip. Before I returned it to him, I pointed to the chair opposite and demanded he sit.
He sat.
“Who was that?” I asked. “Who was that man at the door? Is he the one who did—that?” I motioned to the injuries on his face. Dario had tears on his cheeks now. He seemed too weary to argue anymore. Too weary to be ashamed. He simply nodded.
“My boyfriend. He was mad because I had to work tonight. Then he walked past and saw us sitting together by the window. I guess he thought I was cheating on him. While you were eating, he cornered me in the back and we got into a fight.” Dario tenderly patted his lip, which had finally stopped bleeding but was now swollen and looked painful. “I lost,” he said, wincing when he tried to smile.
“So he hit you?”
“Twice.”
I breathed the only two words that came to my head. “The fucker.”
Dario didn’t answer. He still wouldn’t look me in the eye. I could see the humiliation rising in his face yet again. I thought I could see something else there too. Fear, maybe. Fear of what his boyfriend would do next. Or fear of losing his job. Poor kid.
“Would you like me to talk to him?” I asked. “Tell him we were just talking?”
He pressed the napkin to his lip again. “It wouldn’t help. When he gets like this, nothing helps.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
Dario shrugged, as if it was all out of his hands. “Go home, I guess. If he’s waiting for me outside, we’ll probably fight some more. That’s what we always
seem to end up doing lately.” He gingerly laid a fingertip to his eye, which appeared to be darkening. He would have a shiner by morning. A big fat puffy shiner. “This is the first time he’s hit me, though.”
“And hopefully the last,” I said. “I don’t think you should go home tonight. I think you should stay with a friend until he cools off. He still looked pretty angry when the hostess tossed him out the door.”
Dario shook his head. When he did, his dark bangs fell over his eyes, and he impatiently pushed them back off his face, away from his injured eye. “I have nowhere else to go. I have to go back. He’ll probably be waiting for me outside my room, all apologetic. It’ll be all right.”
“You don’t live with him?”
“No, thank God.”
“Thank God is right,” I said. “Do you have a car?”
“No. I’ll take the bus. I always do.” He gazed up at me and sadly asked, “How bad do I look? I’m supposed to participate in a debate tomorrow.”
“A debate for what?” I asked.
“Social studies,” he said.
“You’re going to college?”
“Yeah. That’s where I live. At the dorm. At San Diego State.”
He continued to stare at me as if waiting for me to answer his previous question. Finally, I did. “I have to be honest. You’ve looked better. And I think by morning you’re going to look worse.”
“A black eye?” he asked.
I sighed. “Among other things.”
“Well, crap,” he groused, and pushing himself to his feet, he said, “I’ll take care of your bill now. Thanks for being nice, Robert, but you’ll have to go. They are locking the place up.”
I nodded and accepted my credit card and a receipt for the bill. Before he could walk away, I reached out and laid a gentle hand on his arm as he passed by my chair. “Be careful tonight,” I said.
He gazed down at me, and once again I saw a tear threatening to spill over his lashes. “I will,” he said and gently pulled away from my touch.
Feeling helpless and uneasy, I had little choice but to leave. I nodded to the hostess as I left and waited as she unlocked the front door for me. Dario did not turn from whatever it was he was doing by the cash register.
Stepping outside, I heard the restaurant door click closed behind me. I stood there beneath the front awning, wondering what I should do. I thought it was a bad idea for Dario to go home alone while an abusive boyfriend might be lurking about, but it wasn’t really my place to tell him so.
I waited beneath the awning. If anything, the rain was coming down even harder than it had before. There was almost no one on the storm-tossed street. Even the asshole boyfriend wasn’t hanging around.
When I heard the restaurant door open behind me, I turned. It was Dario.
He gave a tiny gasp when he saw me standing there. Then his eyes shot around, looking up one side of the street, then the other.
“He’s not here,” I said quietly.
Only then did Dario break into tears. I stepped up to him and pulled him into my arms. We stood there with the rain beating on the awning over our heads, and I felt Dario’s shoulders shake as he sobbed quietly in my arms. Since he was a head shorter than me, his forehead pressed to my coat collar.
“You’re going home with me,” I said softly. “I’ll put some ice on your eye. Maybe we can prevent it from turning into a shiner by tomorrow morning.”
“What about Lee?”
“Is Lee the asshole who gave it to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck him,” I said.
Dario lifted his head from my shoulder and gazed at me through a blur of tears. “Can I really go home with you? It would be great if I could have a safe place to go for an hour or so. Just until I figure out what to do. He’ll be watching for me at the dorm. Maybe if I kill some time, he’ll give up and go home.”
I grunted in agreement. “No problem. In fact, I insist. It isn’t safe for you to run into him again tonight, and you know it.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. Even he could see the wisdom in that. “I don’t…,” he stammered. “I don’t….”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I can be a gentleman when I have to be. And you don’t have to stay just an hour. Stay all night. You can sleep on the couch.”
He looked uneasy. “Well, we’ll see,” he whispered.
“That’s fine,” I said. “You can decide later. We’re only three blocks away. Come on.”
Dario wore a light jacket that wasn’t meant for rainstorms. He’d be soaked by the time we got to my place. Still, that couldn’t be helped. We stepped out into the downpour, and I steered him toward my condo.
Halfway there, the power went out, and the street went black around us. We stopped dead in our tracks. I gazed up at the high-rises hovering over our heads, and each and every one of them had been thrust into darkness.
“Power failure,” Dario mumbled. “What a night this is turning out to be, huh? Chimichangas. Jealous boyfriends. Blackouts.” He reached through the darkness to take my hand, which shocked me all the way down to my toes. But I liked it. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.
“How’s your lip?” I asked.
“Okay.”
He was lying through his teeth. He had to be. Nobody could look like he did and not be in a little pain.
“Hope you don’t mind stairs,” I said, trying to ignore my pounding heart. I was getting nervous just thinking about taking Dario into my home. Not scared nervous, but excited nervous. And not sexually excited nervous either, I realized. It was more that I wanted him to like me. I sensed a friendship beginning, and I didn’t want to blow it. “With the power out, the elevator won’t be working.”
He stepped closer as we recommenced our walk. Our shoulders brushed as we moved warily down the darkened streets, leery of puddles and uneven places in the sidewalk, more than once sidestepping light poles at the last possible second before we knew they were coming up in front of us. We didn’t need any more injuries to contend with. Dario was beat-up enough already.
“How many steps?” he asked.
“Twenty-three floors worth,” I replied.
He thought about that for a moment, then said with a smile in his voice, “If you can climb them, so can I.”
I poked him with an elbow and growled, “I’m not a hundred, you know.”
He chuckled and said, “Ouch. I can’t laugh.”
The next thing I knew, I was smiling too.
The street was painted in strokes of shadow, only an occasional pair of passing headlights or a streak of lightning stabbed through the darkness, strobing us as we traipsed through the rain. I was as alert as a guard dog, wondering if the insane boyfriend would wade in to tackle Dario again, but he must have given up. Or maybe we were invisible in the dark.
In about five seconds, I would find out how wrong about that I was.
I was seeking the right words to say to this beautiful young man as to why he should not let anyone into his life who was physically abusive when a fist came out of the night and caught me smack on the chin. My teeth clacked together, a panoply of stars burst in front of my eyes, and I went down like a bag of cement.
I lost a few seconds of my life, sitting there in a puddle, shaking my head, trying to come out of the mindless haze that fist had sent me hurtling into.
Squinting into the rain, blinking my way back to reality, I gazed up to see Dario bending over me.
I sat up, rubbing my chin. I dragged my tongue over my teeth to see if they were all still there. I didn’t seem to be missing any. “Was that…?”
Dario laid his hand to the side of my face. “I couldn’t see for sure. It’s too dark. But who else would it have been? I’m sorry.”
“Is he gone?”
“Yeah. He took off like a rabbit after he decked you. I heard his footsteps sloshing away as he ran off down the street.”
“Lucky for him,” I said with brazen bravura.
D
ario chuckled and helped me upright. He apparently knew my threat was as empty as I did, but for some reason he seemed to find it charming.
Go figure.
Chapter Four
“CAN YOU stand?” Dario asked after I began hauling myself to my feet. He slipped his hand into my armpit, helping to hoist me out of the puddle I’d landed in.
I rose on shaky legs, more rattled than I had expected. “Is he gone?”
“You must have a concussion,” he said. “You asked that already.”
“No concussion. Just making sure.”
Dario tried to brush the puddle off my ass. I was so discombobulated by being smacked in the face by his irate boyfriend that I didn’t even consider the ramifications of having the young man’s hands on my butt. I must have been smacked harder than I thought.
“I guess he was jealous.” Dario sighed.
“Gee, you think?” I wiggled my jaw around to see if any shattered bones would pop through, but I seemed to be intact. Physically, at least. Only my machismo had been sullied. “Jeez, I went down like a three-year-old.”
“Lee’s strong,” Dario said. He had given up chuckling. Perhaps he thought a tsk of sympathy might be more appropriate. So he gave me one of those. “Tsk. He caught you by surprise. I’m sorry.”
I forced up a laugh that couldn’t have sounded more contrived if I had planned it. “It wasn’t your fault.” I brushed myself off with shaky hands and said, “Come on, let’s get ourselves in out of this rain. I’m starting to think maybe accompanying you down an unlit street in a monsoon with your homicidal boyfriend running loose isn’t such a good idea.”
Dario sounded abashed by that remark. “Really?”
I chucked him on the arm. “No, silly. Come on. We really do need to get out of this downpour, though. I’m starting to prune.”
The power was still out, but we were only a few doors away from the entrance to my condo. Once we made it through there, we’d be safe from Mr. Neanderthal.
“It’s none of my business, I know. But do you love this guy?” I asked. “I mean, are you like… lovers?”