Snowman

by Abramson, Mark

  "Jason?"

  "We were… sort of an item… for a while. He’s dead now—murdered—but I’m sure some of his friends would want to see me, the ones who came up to San Francisco for his memorial. We had it at the restaurant—Arts, on Castro Street—where we both worked together. They said if I was ever in L.A. to be sure to look them up. I think they’d remember me."

  "I see," Adam said.

  Tim felt foolish, having admitted that he didn’t really have any friends in L.A. They were Jason’s friends, not his. He reached for the Altoids box where he stashed the joint he’d started earlier and relit it. "Wanna hit?"

  Adam looked up. "Smells good, but no thanks. You go ahead. Sorry to hear about your friend."

  "It was a while ago," Tim took another long toke off the joint and tried again to remember the last time he’d made it with a black guy. "I don’t like to dwell on the past." But his mind raced back to Mario… Marcello… NO, it was Martino! That was his name.

  Tim laughed at himself, forgetting Martino’s name. He could just about hear Jake right now saying, "I’ll bet you remember his cock!" Man, the guy was gorgeous, too! He should have been in movies, but he worked for Hewlett Packard. Tim met him one night after work back when the Pendulum was still a black bar on 18th Street, across from the Edge. Jake was seeing one of the bartenders there and invited Tim along to keep him company while he waited for his date to get off work at 2AM.

  It was about 1AM when Martino walked in with a group of friends. Tim was standing at the urinal when he came up beside him. Tim remembered the toilet in the old Pendulum, the chipped white tiles that looked as if someone had tried to spray paint them blue. They gave the room a wintery look, even when the weather was warm. Tim always expected to see his breath when he exhaled in there, whenever he was as stoned as he was right now. It felt like being inside an ice cube or a space-ship where the aliens had blue lips and cold blood.

  "So you’re driving to L.A.?" Adam steered the subject back on track.

  "I guess so. I’m not in any big hurry. You’re just getting here and I’m ready to leave. It seems a shame to take off right now. I don’t want to impose on Sam though, especially when Aunt Ruth isn’t even here."

  "I’m sure Sam doesn’t mind," Adam said. "Your cousin Dianne is still here too, right? I’m sure you’re no greater imposition than she is."

  "So you’ve met my cousin?" Tim asked with a grin.

  "No, like I said, I’ve only heard about her from my mother." Adam stood up and took a few steps to the end of the pool. He dived in and let the motion propel his long body to the far end. A few easy strokes brought him back. Adam raised his head at the edge of the pool in the same spot where Tim had first laid eyes on him an hour ago. "The water is perfect. You should join me."

  "Oh-oh! Speak of the devil," Tim said softly to Adam before he yelled, "Good morning, Dianne!" His cousin dashed back inside the house as if she didn’t hear him. Curtains moved at the window so they knew she was watching them. "I’ve got a great idea, Adam. I was thinking about stopping at San Gregorio on my way down the coast. Do you want to join me?"

  "The nude beach? I haven’t been there since I was a teenager. It sounds great Tim, but I just got here. My mother…"

  "We’d only be gone a little while," Tim interrupted. "Just for a couple of hours… I promise to have you back here in plenty of time for dinner. Sam said something about barbecuing later."

  "Wait right here." Adam pulled himself up out of the pool in one smooth move. He grabbed his towel and disappeared into the house. Tim had a dip in the pool and Adam was back before Tim had climbed out of the water. "Can we wait about fifteen minutes?"

  "Sure… why?" Tim asked. "I hope you didn’t ask my cousin Dianne to come with us."

  "No way," Adam laughed. "Mom wants to pack us lunch to take along, that’s all."

  "Sounds great."

  Tim wasn’t crazy about city driving, but with the top down and the smells of freshly mowed lawns and eucalyptus he enjoyed being behind the wheel in the country, or the suburbs, at least. He also realized that as much as he wanted an adventure by himself, he also liked having this handsome man beside him.

  He was so sexy and so easy to talk to. They headed north on Highway 280 for several miles until Tim said, "Adam, could you find the map in the glove box for me? There’s got to be a place to cut across to the coast from here."

  "Not until we get past Lake San Andreas," Adam said as he started to look for the map.

  "Is that named after the San Andreas Fault?"

  "No, it’s the other way around; the fault is named for the lake. It was a sag pond, a dip between parallel fault lines that fills with water. They dammed it up to make Crystal Springs Reservoirs, north and south. It covers several miles along here."

  "Maybe we don’t need a map with you along," Tim said.

  "You’re not only handsome, but smart, too."

  Tim remembered when Martino… or was it Mariano?

  Anyway, the hot young black guy was riding along in the passenger seat of Tim’s old black Mustang on their way to Yosemite. They’d spent the night together in Tim’s bed on Collingwood Street and decided to get up early and have an adventure on hardly any sleep. Mariano was handsome too. Tim remembered him going through the glove compartment looking at old music cassette tape mixes, popping them in and pulling them out again. Then he turned on the car radio and found a station Tim hated. The sex with Mariano had been great, but Tim started regretting this Yosemite idea when he realized the vast gap in their tastes in music.

  "I grew up here, you know," Adam said and Tim came back to the present. Adam had found the map and refolded it to spread northern California across his knees. "It’s been a while, though. I majored in Geology before I got into modeling. Hey Tim, look what else I found in the glove box. Is this the cell phone you promised your Aunt Ruth you’d keep turned on?"

  "That’s the one. Do you know how to work it?"

  "I think I can figure it out. Where do you turn it on?"

  "I don’t know, somewhere on the side there. I’ve never really used it. I hate the damned things. Nick bought it for me for Christmas, but I’ve resisted learning."

  "Really? I thought everyone had a cell phone these days."

  "Everyone else does, maybe. Can’t I be different?

  Everywhere you go, people are talking and texting and tweeting.

  I was the last person I knew to buy a computer, too. The only reason I got one of those was so I could cruise the dating sites.

  Do you use dude surfer?

  "What?"

  "Dude surfer dot com. It’s a hook-up site, my personal favorite."

  "I’ve never even heard of it."

  "Maybe it’s not that big back in Chicago. There are so many of them nowadays, aren’t there? You could spend your whole life on-line. Since I met Nick I haven’t nearly as much, of course." Tim knew he was still a little buzzed from that joint earlier. He was talking too much.

  At Pacifica they turned south onto Highway 1 and drove into a thick bank of fog. "Damn, I wasn’t counting on this," Tim said. "It was so hot in Hillsborough. This fog is as thick as it is in the city half the time."

  "It’s probably too cold for any nude beaches, but we could head north. It looks clearer in that direction and at least we can pull over somewhere."

  "I guess so."

  "What else was your Aunt Ruth was trying to get at, besides promising to turn on your cell phone?"

  "Do you mean… about Nick?" Tim pulled onto a scenic overlook.

  "I guess so… white meat or dark?" Adam reached for the picnic basket behind the seats.

  "Nick is white… blond, even… oh, you mean the chicken.

  I’ll take a breast."

  "Yeah, that was it." Adam handed Tim a piece of fried chicken in a paper towel. "Who’s Nick? You mentioned him earlier, too."

  "He’s my boyfriend. He’s really wonderful, but…" Tim started to take a bite. "Wow… this chicken is delicious."r />
  "But what? It seemed like something important, at least to your aunt."

  "He is," Tim said. "Nick is very important to me. It’s just that I was laid up all winter and he had to take care of me. I think he must be really sick of looking at me like that, feeding me, washing me, emptying bedpans... you know."

  "He must really love you."

  "I guess so… maybe I’m just being silly, trying to give us a break from each other. Have you ever had anyone like that in your life?"

  "I do now," Adam said. "Alex is like that for me. Did you stick that issue of Vanity Fair in your bag? Look at page 97."

  "Another model?" asked Tim, reaching for his backpack.

  "Yeah, we met on a job in Atlanta last summer—the most beautiful person I’ve ever known—inside and out."

  "Let’s see…" Tim wiped his hands on a napkin and flipped through the magazine. "Page ninety-sven? That’s a lipstick ad. I thought you said Alex. There’s a girl on that page."

  "Isn’t she beautiful? That’s my Alexandra. We’re getting married around Christmas."

  Chapter 8

  ife at Sam’s Hillsborough estate moved at a snail’s pace compared to the hustle and bustle of Castro Street. No L sooner had the police left Arts than the crowds poured in. A customer at one of Jake’s first tables ordered a dry Rob Roy and Ruth had to stop and think how to make one. Hmmm… a regular Rob Roy is scotch and sweet vermouth with a cherry, so a dry Rob Roy must use dry vermouth instead. And probably a lemon twist for garnish. "Jake, who’s ordering Rob Roy’s at brunch? That’s a dinnertime drink. Did you tell them what good Bloody Marys we make here? Push the Bloody Marys. Tell them they’re on special."

  "It’s for that lady in the green hat with the two really cute guys in leather. She must be the mother of one of them."

  Ruth reached for the Old Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide that Artie kept in the drawer between the cash registers. She fingered through the tattered pages until she found the recipe.

  "If it’s for somebody’s mother I’d better make it good," she muttered. "My feet hurt already and it’s going to be a long day."

  If only she’d taken the time to stop at Collingwood and change into more comfortable shoes. All she would have missed was a few extra minutes of the police asking her questions she couldn’t answer. But Arturo had been so insistent on the phone that they needed her help, and Ruth loved to feel needed more than she hated to admit she was growing older. But if Artie could still work as hard as he did, she ought to be able to as well.

  News of the findings in the dumpster spread fast. Ruth suspected most of the gossip flying around was wrong. Despite the rumors, no weapon had been found. No arrest had been made. And she actually overheard a couple of men suggesting that diamond rings covered the severed fingers as if they belonged to Liberace!

  A pair of police cars, still parked nose-to-nose in front of the restaurant, blocked one lane of traffic on Castro Street and drew even more attention to the place. Ruth thought the grisly news of body parts in the restaurant’s plumbing might have kept people away, but not on Castro Street. The telephone and the Internet had spread the word too and stirred up a lot of folks’

  curiosity. Someone insisted that a Rolex watch was still ticking inside a latex glove on a severed arm. Ruth shook her head. How did so much misinformation get started?

  After the policemen left, Nick stayed for an omelet, toast and coffee, as well as to give Ruth some sane company for the first hour. He was the only one at the bar who wasn’t involved in some kind of wild speculation. She served him a Bloody Mary that he didn’t order. "What’s this?" he asked.

  "It’s a mistake," Ruth whispered. She’d learned that old trick from Artie, who used it whenever he wanted someone to stick around. "I made one too many for that table in the corner, so it’s on the house. Besides, you look like you could use a drink."

  "Thanks, Ruth." Nick lifted the glass and took a sip.

  "Tasty mistake." He smacked his lips in appreciation. "But I only have time for one."

  "Are you going back to the Russian River already?"

  He shrugged. "I don’t know what I should do. The police said they want to talk to me again, but that I could go home for now. I only came into town to see Tim. I have contractors coming to the nursery again tomorrow morning. I might drive over to Alameda and say hello to my mom and dad and visit with them and my grandmother this afternoon. I could wait and drive back to Monte Rio tonight.

  "I’m sure your family would love to see you. And please give my regards to Amanda." Ruth already knew Nick’s paternal grandmother, Amanda Musgrove, the mystery writer. The two women had hit it off from the start when they met here at Arts before Christmas last year.

  "Did Tim tell you how long he plans to stay in Hillsborough?" Nick asked. "Did he say when he was coming back home?"

  "No, he didn’t say, but I can’t imagine he’ll stay there long. He mentioned something about taking a drive along the coast, but it’s awfully foggy for that today. I’m sure Sam would like Tim to stay and visit longer, but everything’s up in the air since I had to rush back to work this morning. And my daughter Dianne is there, too. That’s a whole other story in itself…"

  Ruth thought back to the last time Nick came to town unexpectedly, the night he discovered Tim in the Midnight Sun with a drunken, but very sexy, young athlete from the UCLA track team. He was someone’s nephew, either Theodore or Leonardo’s. Ruth couldn’t remember anymore and it didn’t matter. She just knew how hurt Nick had been over a misunderstanding. Now she couldn’t get the image of Delia’s handsome son Adam out of her mind. She pictured those long, dark fingers rubbing suntan oil into the small of her nephew’s back and her mind’s eye zoomed in on them sliding along the elastic waist band of Tim’s shorts. She wanted to erase the image, as if Nick could read her mind. "You should give Tim a call."

  "Don’t you think I’ve tried? All I get is that old answering machine of his when I call him at home and he never picks up his new cell phone I bought him for Christmas."

  "I’ll bet he would now. I told him just before I left to keep it handy so I can reach him on it. You should try calling him again."

  "I don’t know." Nick finished off the drink, then sucked on an ice cube a moment. "He said he needed a break or he thought I needed a break. Sometimes I just don’t understand what’s going on in his mind."

  "You know what? Back in Minnesota people talk about something called ‘cabin fever.’ I think Tim might have a touch of that. It comes from being snowed in during the winter with that sense that you just want to break out and go someplace…

  anyplace. I’ll bet Tim felt a bit of cabin fever being cooped up after the accident. He must have made a terrible patient."

  "Tell me about it," Nick agreed with a chuckle.

  "Try him on the cell phone again, dear."

  When the brunch rush finally wound down, Ruth wondered why she was even here. It would have been so much nicer to stay in Hillsborough with Sam and Tim, to have gone ahead with the barbecue, even with Dianne under foot and so unpredictable. It would feel good to have Sam put his arms around her right now. He was always such a comfort. She looked up from washing glasses and was shocked to see a very pale-looking Artie coming in the front door.

  "What are you doing out of bed?" Scott asked. "I didn’t think we’d see you again for at least a week."

  Artie sat down on a bar stool at the center of the bar where he could talk to both bartenders at once. "I just crawled out of my death bed to see how you two were getting along without me," he said. "Fix me a mild Bloody Mary, one of you…

  please? It will go great with my Vicodin and muscle relaxers."

  "Are you sure it’s okay to mix, Artie?" Ruth asked.

  "I’m not driving."

  "That’s not what I mean and you know it."

  "The worse thing that can happen is that I’ll gain weight.

  How many calories are in a Bloody Mary, anyway? I’m trying to take off at least
another ten pounds so I can fit into my old gowns. Mark my words, one of these days I’m gonna surprise everyone. I’m gonna work my old act back into shape and Artie Glamóur will make the biggest come-back since—"

  "In the meantime…" Scott interrupted. "What about tonight? You’re not planning to come back to work behind the bar, are you?"

  Artie reached for the reservation book and flipped it open to see how busy the evening was shaping up to be. "I hate to ask, but could either of you darlings pull a double?"

  "Yes, Artie," they both answered at once, and Ruth added, "I just have to go home and get some different shoes.

  These are killing my feet."