by Land, Alexa
I mulled that over for a long time. Eventually I asked, “Do you have any idea what Vincent’s mixed up in these days?”
“It’s not Dombruso business, I can tell you that much,” Nana said. “His cousins are running the family’s affairs now and keeping it legit. But Vinnie, he’s gone rogue, I guess you could say. I don’t know any particulars, of course he won’t tell me a damn thing. Maybe if you end up as his honey he’ll tell you what’s going on, and then you can tell me.”
“I’ll bet our boy Trevor here could rehabilitate him,” River said, trying to lighten the mood. “He’s one of these good Samaritan types. After a week together, I bet Vinnie would be walking the straight and narrow. He’d probably even volunteer with you at that soup kitchen, T.”
“It’s not a soup kitchen, they deliver meals to shut-ins. You should come volunteer with me. I’m going again before work on Wednesday,” I said.
“See what I mean? Total do-gooder,” River said with a smile.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “are you trying to push Vincent and me together because you know Skye’s interested in me, and you don’t think I’m good enough for your brother?”
He looked guilty. “It’s not like that, T. If anyone was good enough for Skye, it’d be you. I just don’t think he should be dating right now, he needs to focus on other things.”
“For the record, your brother asked me out yesterday, and I turned him down.”
River’s brows creased with concern. “How did he take it?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Maybe I should call him....”
“River, he’s fine.” I came around the counter and started transferring the vegetables he’d been chopping into a big metal bowl. “Jeez, I need to conduct a seminar for you and Christian. It’s going to be called Why You Don’t Need to Worry Obsessively about Competent, Intelligent Twenty-One-Year-Olds.”
“And the subtitle of that is Unless They’re Skye.”
“Alright boys, time to focus,” Nana chimed in. “We got six recipes to get to today, so we’d better get cracking.” She pulled a huge skillet out of the cabinet and put it on the stove, then turned the heat on under it.
“What’s the pan for, Nana?” River asked.
“The gazpacho.”
“But, you don’t cook gazpacho.”
“Sure you do.”
“Um, you really don’t.”
“You do the way I make it,” she insisted, and the two began arguing. I grinned and stayed out of it.
*****
On my way to the bus stop after leaving Nana’s house a couple hours later, I pulled out my phone and dialed Vincent’s number. It went straight to voicemail. “Um, hi. It’s me. Trevor,” I stammered. “Call me, okay?” After that brilliant message, I didn’t know what else to say so I disconnected.
I dialed Skye’s number next, and he answered with an exuberant, “Hey!”
“Hi. How are you?”
“Okay, but I feel stupid for making things weird between us.”
“You didn’t at all.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Awesome. In that case, do you want to hang out after work? I won’t try to lock lips with you, I promise,” he joked.
“Love to.”
We spoke for a couple more minutes, and after we said goodbye I dropped my phone in my pocket and stepped under the roof of the bus stop. A moment later, someone grabbed me by my throat and slammed my head against the glass wall. “Hey there, Trevor,” a familiar voice said.
Pain radiated from the point of impact and my heart raced as I looked up, way up, into the face of Bo Millen, my cousin Melody’s abusive, steroid-guzzling ex-boyfriend. I was absolutely terrified, but tried to hide my fear. “Let go of me,” I managed to choke out.
“Sure. Right after you tell me where that little bitch and my baby are.”
“Gone. She met some guy and took off to Montana,” I lied, maintaining eye contact.
His brows knit. “Why should I believe you?”
“Why would I lie?”
After a long moment, he let go of me. He was obviously thinking about what I’d just told him, which was clearly an effort for Bo. I could practically see the hamster running around on its squeaky wheel inside his brain, trying to generate enough intelligence to process that information.
“How did you find me?” I asked, rubbing my sore neck.
“You’re all over the internet, dumbass,” he said. “My buddy Mick found out who the old lady in that cooking video was, then tracked down her address for me. I been watching her house for a couple days, figuring you might come back here. Is she a relative of yours? She must be loaded, that house is a fuckin’ mansion.” Bo was a petty criminal, and apparently he was trying to generate enough brain power to figure out how to rip Nana off.
“When you found out where she lived, did you also find out who her family is?” I asked him. “Her last name is Dombruso. You mess with her and you mess with the mafia, Bo. Cross them once and you’re dead, end of story. You understand what I’m telling you?”
Bo actually scratched his head, like a cartoon character trying to figure something out. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. After a minute he glared at me and said, “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You have to be. How would a dumbfuck like you, a nobody from fuckin’ Sacramento, get in with the mafia?”
“You don’t have to believe me, just ask around. A lot of people in San Francisco know who the Dombrusos are.”
The hamster wheel was turning again, I could almost hear it squeaking. After a moment, Bo came up with, “Well, if you can get in with the mob, then I can, too. I bet there’s all kinds of money to be made there. You’re gonna introduce me to the head of the family.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Bo, they don’t let outsiders in. Mafia is all about family.”
“Then how’d you get in with them?”
The real answer was too complex for Bo, so I just went with, “I’m dating Mrs. Dombruso’s grandson.”
A disgusted expression replaced his usual blank one. “I always suspected you were a faggot.” He actually took a step back from me, as though being gay was contagious.
“You were right.”
All of this was a little too much for Bo to process, so he said, “You ain’t heard the last of me, you fuckin’ queer. I’m gonna find out if you’re lying about the mafia, and if you’re lying about your bitch cousin. And if you are, you’re fucking dead. You got that, faggot?” To make his point, he lunged forward, grabbed me by the neck again and bashed my head against the wall of the bus stop one more time. Instead of waiting for a reply, he turned and sauntered down the street.
My vision blurred for a moment, but then I steadied myself and took a couple deep breaths. For the first time, I was glad Melody had taken off with that tattoo artist. Bo was really dangerous, even if he was dumber than a bag of marshmallows. I hated to think what would happen if he ever found her and the baby.
The bus pulled up and I held on to the handrail as I boarded, fishing my wallet out with shaking hands to display my Muni pass. The driver glared at me, and I wondered what I looked like to generate that kind of reaction. Maybe he thought I was drunk or something. Whatever. I made my way unsteadily to the back of the bus, ignoring the stares of the other passengers.
When I finally got to work, I sat in the empty employee locker room for a few minutes, trying to steady myself as my head pounded. The encounter with Bo had left me shaken. I knew what he was capable of, he had an arrest record a mile long and was a thug to his core. I’d warned Mel about getting involved with him, but she hadn’t listened. She never did.
I reached up and gingerly touched the back of my head, then drew in my breath as pain shot through me, making my headache worse. My fingertips were bloody when I pulled them away.
“Trevor, what happened?”
Jamie had been walking past the locker room, and he rushed to my side.
“I’m okay,” I said automatically.
“No you’re not. Let me see.” He cupped my head gently while he brushed aside the hair around the injury.
I murmured, “Did you know that if you get roughed up at a bus stop in San Francisco in broad daylight, no one even slows down? A hundred cars must have driven past while this was happening. I would never do that, I’d stop and try to help. But I guess that’s not true for the majority of people.”
“Were you mugged?”
“No. My cousin’s psycho baby daddy tracked me down, which showed more brain function than I’d thought he was capable of. For fun, he bounced my skull off the bus stop shelter a couple times.”
“I can’t tell how bad it is, there’s too much blood matting your hair. We need to clean this up,” Jamie said.
“I really didn’t mean to bring all this drama to work,” I said quietly.
“We’re a family here at the bar, Trevor, we look out for each other. If you’re going through some stuff, I want to know about it.” I nodded in agreement, which made my head throb. As I squinted from the pain, he said, “I’ll be right back. Don’t get up, okay?”
“No problem there.” I let my eyes slide shut.
He was back about a minute later with a cloth, a basin of warm water, and his husband Dmitri, who sat beside me and rubbed my back as Jamie gently washed the wound. “I’m fine,” I insisted. “I just have a headache. You guys don’t have to fuss over me.”
“But we enjoy fussing over people,” Dmitri said, his smile framed by his cute dimples. “Let us have our fun.”
After he cleaned me up, Jamie tried to insist on taking me to the hospital to get checked out, despite the fact that the wound on my head turned out to be pretty small. He was worried that I had a concussion. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case though and only agreed to a couple ibuprofen and a glass of water. They next tried to send me home with pay, but I turned that down too. By then, I knew I was fine.
The two of them finally let me get to work, though there was some definite hovering for a while until they were convinced I wasn’t going to collapse face-down into a plate of Irish Nachos. The couple eventually headed back to their office hand-in-hand, after telling the entire staff to keep an eye on me and make sure I was okay. It was a good feeling, knowing someone cared about what happened to me.
Chapter Ten
I’d totally been set up.
This was evident within about three seconds of entering the huge kitchen in the oceanfront villa where Christopher and Kieran were getting married on Saturday. The restaurant where I worked had closed for a week beginning this morning, a Monday. I’d planned on meeting River for some pre-wedding strategizing, but then I received a frantic call from Nana. She’d claimed the kitchen where we’d be preparing the food for the wedding was a complete disaster, filthy and with absolutely no pots, pans, or cooking utensils. “We gotta get down there now, Trevor, and straighten it out, otherwise there’s no way we’re going to be able to cook for the wedding. It’ll all be ruined,” she’d said. “I’m sending a car and driver for you in fifteen minutes, we got a ton of work to do to get ready!”
I’d quickly jumped in the shower, then got dressed and packed my things in the ratty old backpack I’d had since high school. It didn’t take long, since I only owned six articles of clothing. I was outside waiting on the curb with time to spare.
A few minutes later, a black town car pulled up and a driver in a dark suit got out to open the door for me. “Where’s Mrs. Dombruso?” I’d asked. The driver informed me she’d be traveling separately. I shrugged that off, then climbed into the spacious backseat. There were three big shopping bags behind the driver’s seat which I figured had nothing to do with me, so I ignored them.
It took nearly three hours to drive from San Francisco to Big Sur. The last leg of the drive was really pretty as the highway hugged the rugged coastline. Sunlight sparkled off the blue Pacific, and I relaxed and pretended I was on vacation.
It turned out I didn’t need to pretend.
I’d knocked when I arrived at the gorgeous, sprawling Mediterranean villa, even though Nana had told me the homeowner was gone on a cruise. When no one answered, I unlocked the door with the key the driver had handed me. He removed the shopping bags from the backseat, and when I got the door open he lined them up in the foyer.
“Thanks for the ride,” I called as he returned to the car.
“Not a problem,” the driver muttered as he got back behind the wheel. I’d found out over the last three hours that he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.
The town car pulled out of the circular drive as I closed the huge, carved wood door. After dropping my backpack on the glazed tile floor, I glanced around me. The Mediterranean theme continued inside with stucco walls, lush potted plants, and a warm color palette, dominated by gold and terra cotta tones. I went to find the kitchen, where the theme carried through seamlessly in rustic dark wood cabinets and rich honey granite counters.
The kitchen was not only spotlessly clean, it was stocked like the set of a gourmet cooking show with every imaginable cooking implement, pot, pan, appliance and gadget. I was at a loss as to why Nana had sent me on ahead for no reason, but then some movement caught my eye outside, through a set of open French doors. Vincent was across the huge yard, his back to me, trimming a hedge. I hadn’t heard a word from him since he took off over a week ago, even though I’d left him three messages. But now here he was.
Apparently, Nana was pimping me out.
This was confirmed when I cut back through the house and took a peek inside one of the shopping bags, pulling aside the white tissue paper. “Holy crap,” I muttered, a furious blush immediately warming my face. The bag was practically bursting at the seams with the most embarrassing things I could possibly imagine. A huge box of condoms and a bottle of lube big enough for an entire gay NFL team were among the first things I noticed. A bright blue bit of fabric caught my eye. I almost didn’t want to look, but I just had to. I plucked the little turquoise thing out with two fingers. It caught on something, so I had to give it a hard tug. It came free, but not before setting off something deeper inside the bag, which started making a low buzzing sound.
I took a look at the little pair of underwear in my hands. Oh. Dear. God. The tag told me they’d cost almost sixty dollars, and had come from a men’s boutique in the Castro called Shag. I dropped them back into the bag, which was still buzzing and also vibrating slightly, then retreated across the foyer and pulled out my phone.
Nana answered on the first ring with a cheerful, “Helloooo.”
“Please tell me you weren’t the one who went shopping at Shag,” I said.
“Why, you think old women can’t buy sexy stuff? Don’t be ageist! I brought my gay homosexual hairdresser Mr. Mario along to act as a consultant. We had to guess your size, but I think we probably got pretty close.”
“My size for what?” I asked, horrified, still thinking about whatever was buzzing at the bottom of that bag.
“Clothes, silly. Didn’t you look in the bags?”
“I only got as far as the condoms and tiny man-panties.”
“We picked out a few cute summer clothes for you. No offense sweetie, but if I see you wearing that ratty old cardigan even one more time, I’m ripping it off you and setting it on fire.”
“You bought more than clothes, though.”
“I instructed Mr. Mario to pick out anything he thought would be fun for a gay homosexual honeymoon. That’s kind of what this is like, I think, an early honeymoon while you kids get to know each other.”
“So what’s the plan here, Nana? Am I supposed to doll myself up and go throw myself at your grandson? Because like I told you, Vincent won’t even return my calls.”
“My grandson is an idiot! Don’t tell him I said that. You’re what he needs, Trevor. I’m sick of seeing him moping and
alone, and it seemed like you were getting ready to give up on him, just because he hadn’t picked up the phone. Both of you needed a big push in the right direction!”
“But, Nana—”
“But nothing! Are you at the house yet?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Is my grandson there?”
“He’s working out back. Why is he trimming hedges?”
“I told him he had to go early and fix up the overgrown landscaping, or else the wedding photos would be ruined. He fell for it just like you did.” She sounded immensely pleased with herself.
“Why would that be a job for Vincent?”
“Gardening is his hobby, he’s real good at it. You’ve seen my yard, he did all of that. He’s also got this roomful of orchids going over here, it’s pretty impressive if you like that kind of thing.”
“Ah.”
“Does he know you’re there?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Go say hello!”
“This is such a terrible idea.”
“Humor an old woman.”
“Oh, don’t play the age card, Nana. You’re not old.”
She chuckled and said, “You’re right. Now go say hi, for the love of God! Do I need to do everything?”
“Okay, okay, I’ll go.”
“River and I will be there Friday morning to begin the prep for Saturday’s big event, and Christopher, Kieran and a few of their close friends are arriving some time Thursday evening. That gives you and Vinnie three days and nights to get to know each other. Byeeee!” She hung up on me.
I sighed and put the phone in my pocket, then went back through the house and stepped out the French doors. Vincent’s back was still to me. He wore nothing but a pair of khaki shorts and white sneakers, his olive skin glistening with sweat, the powerful muscles in his back and shoulders working as he trimmed a vine. Two thin cords ran from earbuds to what was probably an iPod in his pocket. He had no idea I was there, and since he was holding a huge set of clippers I thought it was probably best not to startle him.