by Ariel Tachna
The last two words gave Michael pause, but he pushed the nerves away. Lee hadn’t given him any reason to be nervous other than making leather items, and his kindness to the children was plenty of reason to give him a chance. “We should look at the menus. The waitress will be back soon.”
Almost as if summoned by Michael’s comment, the waitress returned with their drinks. “Do you have any questions about the menu?”
“What’s the soup of the day?” Lee asked.
“Chicken tortilla soup,” the waitress said. “We also have an entrée special. This evening, we’re serving cocktail de camarones. If you’re ready, I can take your order now, or I can come back in a few minutes.”
“I’m ready if you are,” Michael said to Lee.
“We’ll go ahead and order,” Lee told the waitress. “I’ll have beef fajitas, please, with extra guacamole.”
“I’ll take the special,” Michael said. “That sounded really good.”
When she had left, Michael leaned forward. “So, do you have a shop somewhere?”
“I have a workshop where we do all the cutting and sewing,” Lee said, “and I do see customers there if they’re local and want to come in, but I do most of my business at shows like this one and online. That way I don’t have the overhead of a huge stock or the cost of retail space. I converted a barn on my family’s property into the workshop so the only cost is electricity and then the equipment and supplies, of course.”
“Of course,” Michael said, his own business background adding to his curiosity. “It seems like an odd profession to get into.”
“I learned from my grandfather,” Lee explained. “He was a leather worker, all the way from the tanning to the finished product. I don’t tan the hides myself. I always hated that part, but I learned to love the finished leather and everything that could be made with it. The problem is that fewer people use leather regularly these days than in my granddad’s day, so I have to be creative with the products I make. People don’t want to spend enough on wallets and purses these days to make that profitable, but when I was first starting out, an acquaintance referred me to a local BDSM club. Talk about a shock for a poor country boy, but once I got over that, I started looking at the gear in the room. Ninety percent of it was made of leather, so I looked a little closer, and it was all stuff I could make. Not stuff I knew how to make, but stuff I could learn how to make. So I asked the owner if he’d be willing for me to leave some cards on the bar or in the bathroom or somewhere. He agreed, and that’s how I got started.”
“So you aren’t into the leather scene?” Michael asked.
Lee shook his head. “Afraid not. I hope you’re not disappointed. I’m really rather vanilla.”
Michael smiled. “I’m not disappointed. Relieved might be the better word.”
“I still love leather, and I love wearing it,” Lee said, “so it was easy to put together outfits for cons like this or visits to clubs that draw attention and show off my workmanship. People see what they want to see. If it helps my business, I’m all for it.”
Michael could hardly argue with that when he had fallen into the same trap. “But if I wanted a leather wallet or satchel or something like that, you could make it too?”
“Sure,” Lee said. “I still have all my grandfather’s old patterns, and the satchels especially are popular because they’re smaller than a briefcase or a backpack without being as feminine in appearance as a purse.”
“Are most of your clientele men?” Michael asked.
“About half and half,” Lee said. “I’ve got the web site divided into two catalogues at this point, although there’s some overlap, obviously, for items that could appeal to either gender.”
The waitress interrupted once again with the meals, and they grew silent as they ate. When they finished, Michael said, “So what’s next?”
“That depends on you,” Lee said, “but my suggestion would be to start with a trip to Hermann Park.”
“Okay, why?” Michael asked.
“Because it’s a beautiful place to walk at night,” Lee said. “Shakespeare in the Park is going on this weekend.”
“You like Shakespeare?”
“What’s not to like?” Lee asked. “He’s a brilliant comedian, and his tragedies are heart-wrenching.”
“You’re full of surprises,” Michael said. “I keep thinking I have you figured out, and then you say something like that.”
Lee shrugged. “I’m a pretty ordinary guy, really. I own my own business. I work the occasional weekend, but for the most part, it’s weekdays nine to five. I like to read, pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I travel when I can afford it and surf the Internet for ideas of places to go next when I can’t.”
“And help out your fellow vendors at a con by playing with their kids,” Michael said. “That isn’t ordinary.”
“It is when you grew up in the country,” Lee insisted. “My mother’s friends would come to visit with their kids in tow. As the oldest, I ran herd on all of them, from the one two months younger than me to the baby, when I was sixteen. I’m not sixteen anymore, but the habit hasn’t faded.”
“You didn’t get tired of it?”
“Not yet,” Lee said. The waitress brought their checks. They paid and Lee led Michael to the door. “You said you’d let me show you the world through a different set of eyes. Will you come walking with me?”
“Why not?” Michael said, not really expecting much to come of it, but it couldn’t hurt. After all, drinking aside, how different could Lee’s view be from his own?
By the time they reached Hermann Park, Michael had already started revising that opinion. Lee had chosen to drive down all the back streets instead of taking 59 like Michael would have done. They didn’t get there as quickly, but they saw so much more, with Lee pointing out a bungalow in Bellaire, the last one left on the street, and telling Michael about his mother’s parents who had lived in the area before it was fashionable and sharing his memories of visiting a little bungalow almost exactly like that one for years as a child. When his grandparents finally had to move into a nursing home, they had sold the house for nearly four times what they had paid for it. Within a week, the new owners had torn it down and started building one of the huge McMansions that now filled the lots almost completely. From there, he had taken Michael up Buffalo Speedway and shared the story of his sister, who as a child had always wanted to know where the buffalo were and why she never saw them speeding. Michael had laughed so hard at Lee’s recounting he could barely see. He’d driven by Buffalo Speedway hundreds of times without ever thinking twice about the name. Now he’d chuckle every time he passed by.
That led them down to North Braeswood and one of the four big bayous that drained the swamp Houston had been built on. “They built on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, you see,” Lee explained, “and then as the city grew, it expanded into the swamp, so they had to create miniature bayous to drain into the existing ones so they could keep building.”
Braes Bayou ran down to Fannin and the first light rail line in the city. Michael expected Lee to turn up Fannin to the Medical Center since the park was on Fannin, but Lee kept going straight. “That’s the part of the park everyone knows,” Lee said. “We’re going to start with the road less traveled.” He continued almost to 288 before turning onto a street Michael had never been on before. “There used to be a stable here where people could take riding lessons, but they moved farther out 288 past Beltway 8. You used to see them taking trail rides through the park.”
Lee parked on a side street and got out. “Shall we walk?”
Intrigued by all the discoveries about a city he’d thought he knew, Michael jumped out of the car, ready to follow Lee pretty much anywhere. Lee led Michael back toward the bayou. “This is a natural regrowth area,” Lee said as they walked along the edge of the brush and bushes that grew up between the huge live oak trees. “They’re actually studying it to watch the progression of natural species now that
it’s a no-mow zone. The wildflowers came first, but those have mostly been pushed out now by the taller wild grasses and the next generation of live oaks. Then there are the crepe myrtles and the oleander too.” With each plant he named, Lee pointed them out to Michael, touching the leaves with a reverence Michael could not explain.
“How do you know all this?” Michael asked.
“I pay attention,” Lee said. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to what’s going on in the broader world—and don’t tell me how dangerous or stupid that is. My sister has already told me. That’s out there. I want to see what’s happening right here around me. I want to know the whys and hows of my home or of the place I’m in at that moment. I want to see and understand the changes around me. That has to happen first. If I understand that, then I can understand the world outside, but if I don’t know my here and now, how can I understand the rest?”
“Some people would say that without an understanding of the wider context, you’re missing something,” Michael said.
“That’s just it,” Lee said. “I travel quite a lot, and I learn so much from it because I do have my eyes open to the world around me. But when I travel, I look at my destination the same way I look at Houston. I want to see and understand on the most local level possible because that is how you understand on a larger level.”
“I don’t follow,” Michael said. “Give me an example.”
“I went to Créancey, France,” Lee said. “It’s a town of two hundred people. Maybe. In front of the church, there is a pillar, and on it are the inscriptions of all the men and boys from Créancey who were killed during World War I. There are forty names on that list. One fifth of the town’s population died in the Great War.”
“Yes, and?”
“And that explains history. People scoff at the French for the Maginot Line because it failed to stop the Germans during World War II,” Lee said impatiently, “but that’s hindsight talking, and it’s Americans talking. For a young mother in Créancey, holding a baby boy and facing another war, the Maginot Line let her sleep at night. Look at the local level, the impact of events on the narrowest plane possible, and suddenly the reactions make sense. Maybe not immediately, but over time. But if you stop watching and thinking, you might miss the thing that makes it all click.”
“So what does the restored natural area here tell you?” Michael asked.
“That there’s an increasing awareness of the importance of green spaces, of native plants,” Lee said. “There may be a portion of it that’s flood control in that keeping the waterways free of erosion will help them flow more quickly and accept more water before they flood. It’s a small improvement, but it is one.”
When they neared the Texas Medical Center, “the largest collection of hospitals in the world,” Lee mentioned, they turned to stroll up Cambridge and then along Hermann Park Drive toward the more frequently visited section of Hermann Park. At that hour of the night, the golf course was empty, giving it a slightly eerie feel. Without even realizing what he was doing, Michael walked closer to Lee’s side.
“You don’t have to worry about this area of town,” Lee assured him. “Between the traffic from the Medical Center and from Rice University, there’s always someone driving along here if you need help, and tonight there’s also Shakespeare in the Park, which means the zoo lot will be full too.”
“That doesn’t mean they’ll stop,” Michael said.
“No,” Lee agreed, “but it usually means the unsavory element chooses to hang out elsewhere. You can’t jump the fence into the zoo anymore the way my granddad talked about doing when he was a boy, but sometimes you can hear the animals if it’s really quiet at night. The wolves are on the other side of the fence, as are the elephants, a little farther up.”
They walked past the parking lot, crossing into the park toward Miller Outdoor Theatre where the play was still going on. Lee didn’t lead Michael up the hill to the point where they could see down into the amphitheater, taking him instead around to McGovern Lake. “If it weren’t so late, we could go out on the pedal boats,” Lee said, “or take the train around the park.”
“That stuff is for the kids,” Michael scoffed.
“Really?” Lee said. “When was the last time you did something ‘for the kids’ to see if you still enjoyed it? And if you tell me it was when you were fifteen, I’m going to smack you.”
“How about if I tell you it was when I was sixteen?” Michael said, flinching a little in anticipation.
Lee smacked him on the shoulder. “You were sixteen, too cool for anything that might have challenged your dignity, except that at sixteen, everything challenged your dignity. You aren’t sixteen anymore. I bet you’d enjoy it a lot more than you expected if you tried it again now.”
“So what do you suggest?” Michael asked, intrigued enough by the idea to want to hear more.
Lee shook his head. “You make the suggestion. Think about something you loved to do, somewhere you loved to go as a kid. Something you outgrew because it was ‘kid stuff’. When you figure it out, we’ll do it together.”
“There’s not much open this late on a Saturday night,” Michael said, “at least not that would be kid stuff.”
“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” Lee replied. “You’re local; I’m local. It can be a week from now or a month from now. Whenever you’re ready to relax and look at something familiar through new eyes.”
He’d already done that tonight, Michael thought as he looked at Lee. He’d looked at the familiar if undesirable world of leather and seen a new layer to it, a layer that was purely about the hide, not about a lifestyle that didn’t fit Michael’s interests. He’d seen a side of his hometown he’d never noticed before. Lee had shown him that much. It made him wonder how much more Lee could show him if he let it happen. “It’s a deal,” he said. “I’ll think of something and call you when I do.”
Lee smiled. “You won’t regret it.”
Impulsively, Michael leaned forward and brushed his lips over Lee’s, the dry contact fleeting. “I know that already.”
Michael didn’t return to the dealers’ room before the end of the con on Sunday. He wasn’t ready to face Lee again. He needed to think about everything he had heard and learned the night before first, and by the time they made it back to the hotel, it had been too late for any serious reflection.
The intervening week had given him plenty of time for thought, though, as he caught himself studying the details around him and wondering how Lee would interpret them. The following Saturday, he picked up the phone and called the number on the card Lee had given him.
“Lee Mitchell.”
“Hi, Lee, it’s Michael Donovan, from the con last weekend,” Michael stammered, wondering if Lee would remember and make the connection.
“I remember. How are you, Michael?”
“Fine. And you?”
“Quite well, especially hearing your voice. I wondered if you’d call.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Michael said, irrationally pleased that Lee had thought about him, “and I came up with something I loved doing as a kid and haven’t done in years.”
“What’s that?” Lee asked.
“Brazos Bend State Park,” Michael replied. “We used to go down there in the fall and spring, when it wasn’t too hot yet, and hike. Sometimes we’d even camp. Or we’d look at the stars from the Observatory. I haven’t been there since I was twelve, probably, and my older brother decided he was too cool for the trip, so of course I did too.”
“It’s too late to go today, and I have plans for tomorrow already,” Lee said, “but we could go next Saturday if you want. We’ll drive down, have a picnic, hike as long as you’d like, and see how the day goes.”
Michael grinned, even knowing Lee couldn’t see him. “That sounds wonderful. Do you want to meet me there, or would you rather drive together?”
“I’ll pick you up,” Lee offered.
“No,” Michael said, “this date is my ide
a. I’ll drive.”
“So it’s a date?” Lee asked, his voice teasing. “Quite a plan for a first date.”
“Second,” Michael said. “Last Saturday was the first.”
“Second date, then,” Lee agreed. “What time do you want to leave?”
“It will take an hour to get down there from the Meyerland area where I live,” Michael said. “It depends on where we meet, or where you live if I pick you up.”
“Picking me up would be out of the way,” Lee said. “I’ll meet you at Meyerland Plaza, and we can drive together from there. What time?”
“At nine?” Michael suggested. “That will get us to the park a little after ten and we’ll have two hours to hike before it’s time for lunch. I’ll pack a basket. Is there anything you don’t eat?”