West Coast Love

by Tif Marcelo

  I tear my gaze away. This is your job, not a hookup, asshole.

  “You haven’t said a word in at least an hour, since the last rest stop. I mean, you haven’t even noticed that we’re listening to this awful radio station,” she says.

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” I turn up the radio volume. “ ‘Love in an Elevator.’ This is a good one.” I laugh when her face scrunches up like she bit into something sour. Too damn cute. “Don’t tell me you’re not an Aerosmith fan either. Then again, you don’t have to love them to appreciate their success—they have sold over a hundred and fifty million albums.”

  She shrugs. “They scream the entire time.” She bites on her bottom lip as she thinks. “Okay, I admit it. I liked the collab they did with Run-D.M.C. But, yeah, that’s it.”

  A grin pulls at my lips. These small nuggets about Victoria have made these rough couple of days bearable. I’ve learned the she’s not afraid to jump right in to solve a problem and that she can’t go long without having a conversation. And I’m not going to lie—the fact that she can start a fire kind of turns me on, even if nothing can ever become of us. “You like Run-D.M.C., Miss Classical Music?” I point at the phone perched on the dashboard, at the screen that reads Mandolin Concerto in C major.

  “Vivaldi. Surprised?” When I nod, she leans her head back on the headrest so she’s tilted upward slightly, and a veil of a smile graces her lips. Her profile is lit by the sun behind her, and damn, she is a sight. “I can write to music only if there are no words. Otherwise, I get totally confused. That’s okay—I didn’t think you were the throwback nineties rock kind of guy. What else, nineties movies?”

  “Yep.” I grin. “And muscle cars. I have a seventy-one Chevelle in my driveway, or used to, anyway.”

  She laughs. “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. It was my dad’s. I used to work on it on weekends.” I glance at her. “I could never get it to run, though. It’s been in my sister’s garage under a tarp for years now.”

  A pitying look comes across her face, and her cheek caves in as she bites it. It’s as if she has a question to ask but decides against it. “Remind me not to let you do a thing to this truck.”

  “Hey, you might be a whiz parking this thing, but I promise I can hold my own.” I look up as we pass a sign for Desert Willow. “Look, we’re here.”

  We descend into a town that’s dotted with bungalows on one side, banked by the water on the other. A light fog hovers over the water. Beyond the pier are three large tents with flags whipping against the breeze. I roll down the window, and sure enough, the smell of smoke is in the air.

  Victoria gathers her things and stuffs them into her backpack. Then, as if thinking twice, she retrieves a book and flips to a page in the back. She radiates tension as she puts a finger to the page and mouths words.

  I, on the other hand, am in hog heaven.

  I reach across and pull the book from her grasp.

  “Hey!”

  “No cramming. You’ve got to talk about the experience, so focus on the moment. Stick your nose out the window and breathe that air in.”

  And she does. She rolls down her window, the breeze blowing her hair across her face. As we come to a parking lot, next to other trucks, she takes her hair down from the bun and runs her fingers through it, then pulls a small zippered pouch from her backpack. I can’t help it, I watch as her fingers glide across her face, adding colors, lines, and whatever other magic women seem to do.

  “Gonna do a quick change.” Vic unbuckles her seat belt and rushes to the back as I maneuver the RV into the furthermost space left for buses. Movement in my rearview mirror snatches my attention: a reflection of Victoria, a flash of skin. Her back and spine and the straps of her bra. I avert my eyes right before a shirt glides over to cover it.

  How the fuck am I supposed to do this for another week?

  I swallow to compose myself in time to stop the truck and stomp down on the emergency break.

  The top of Tara’s head appears at my window. “Let’s keep the gear in the vehicles first, and do the rounds with the vendors before we shoot.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I’m suddenly ravenous, my body pumped with newfound energy. I jump out of the truck and welcome the fresh, coastal air into my lungs to calm down my wayward thoughts of Victoria.

  We don our press badges, which allow us free and early entry into the festival. It doesn’t technically open until noon, so we’ll have first dibs on the food. This festival has six vendors—a small show—but it’s to be expected. Desert Willow is fairly isolated as the northernmost city in California, a half hour from the Oregon border, north of Crescent City, and far from the main traffic of Highway 101.

  We decide to split up to preview the booths, though Victoria sticks by me. While I drool over the options and try to decide what needs to get into my belly first, she hangs back.

  “I’m gonna eenie-meenie-miney-mo it. You good with that?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  The smile she gives me is more like a grimace, so I wrap a hand around her wrist, slide my fingers against hers. I tug gently. “Relax, okay?”

  But when she looks down, at the contact my hand has made out of instinct, I drop it like a hot potato. What the hell am I doing?

  I swiftly walk to the first booth in front of me: Benny’s BBQ, marked with a bright yellow banner. Behind their tent sits their workhorse, a black smoker that’s over six feet tall and about eight feet long, situated on a trailer. The pitmaster tending to it looks like he camped out overnight, scruffy and disheveled, eyes hooded with exhaustion. The guy plating our samples in rectangular paper bowls matches his appearance, down to their yellow sauce-splattered T-shirts.

  The bowl of meat is passed to me. Steam rises from the char, and it triggers my salivary glands to full-on drool. “Burnt ends, brisket, and pulled pork.” He points to covered heated dispensers. “We’ve got a sweet brown sugar sauce, a Carolina sauce, and a smoky hot-chili-based barbecue sauce over here. Help yourself.”

  Victoria grabs napkins and an extra bowl and follows me out of the tent to a picnic bench, where we sit across from each other. I fork half the meat into her empty bowl but gasp as I watch her drench all the meat with sauce.

  “What? What did I do wrong?” Uncertainty plays across her face.

  “You didn’t taste the meat first.”

  “I mean, isn’t that what I’m doing now?”

  “Nope. Naked is best.”

  My face is on fire as soon as the words are out of my mouth.

  But Victoria is cool and collected. “Okayyy.” With her fork, she spears a piece of meat from my bowl—my bowl and without asking—then takes a bite. “It tastes like meat.”

  Exasperated at her obvious refusal to learn, I say, “First of all, there’s no sharing. I’ll grab another helping. Here.” I push my bowl to her. “And secondly, it’s not just meat. A ton of love went into that small bite you took. Hours’ worth, sometimes eight to twelve.”

  “I know, I read it in my book.”

  “So you know then that the signature is in the seasoning and the smoke.” Intent on showing this woman at least one thing on this trip, I fork up a small piece of burnt end. “Open up.”

  Hesitance flashes across her face, and her mouth flattens a tad.

  It reminds me of something I would have done as a kid, refusing that airplane of vegetables my mom used to feed me. I chuckle.

  Her expression eases then, and her lips part. She leans in.

  Her lips come over the fork, tongue lapping the underside of it. Her teeth peek out to snatch the meat from the plastic, and all the while, she’s staring at me. Blood rushes south, and I don’t snatch my gaze away. Like a voyeur, I take in the microcosmic changes in her body as she chews and swallows.

  “Tastes like smoked meat.”

  Her nonchalance is like a cold bucket of water. “Really.” My voice is deadpan, incredulous. “You don’t detect hints of spice or
seasoning?”

  “I mean, yeah. It’s almost an earthy aftertaste. Like . . .” She pauses, licks her bottom lip in contemplation, taking all my attention back to my dick. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I tell her. I tell myself. “Keep going.”

  “It’s like mushrooms . . . like dirt-ish.”

  I scrunch my face at her words. “Well, we’re getting somewhere.”

  She shrugs. “My biggest observation is that you don’t like to share food.”

  I lower my fork.

  “It’s not like I have the cooties. I mean, we did have se—” She catches herself.

  “Sharing food is . . . intimate.”

  She snorts. “Sex is less intimate than sharing food?”

  “I . . . it’s hard to explain.” Her bringing up our history causes me to look away and double-check if Tara or Adrian are in hearing distance. It would help if I knew what the reasoning behind it was as well. Sharing my food meant spending copious amounts of time with that person, which meant getting to know someone. It meant giving up some of my own needs for another. “Guess I’m weird?”

  “Yeah, you are.” Her face changes, as if resigned. She smiles. “But I respect that. Part of living together is knowing each other’s boundaries, right? For what it’s worth, I don’t want anyone to do my laundry or use my toothpaste.”

  “Noted.” I grin, gesturing for us to head back to the tent. “C’mon.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Going to get me my own bowl. And research.” Now in the humidity of the tent, I say to the pitmaster, “Hey, we’re from West Coast BBQ, and we’re covering the festival today. Do you mind telling us what kind of wood you used to smoke the burnt ends?”

  “Oak, acacia, and a little bit of this and that.” The guy’s gruff, chewing on something. “Secret combo, you understand. Smoked for about twelve hours.”

  “Thanks. We’re doing the rounds, but could we come back and put you in front of the camera?”

  The guy’s stance straightens. He palms down his shirt. “Yeah, sounds good.”

  “Great. My director will be here soon, and she’ll catch you up on all the details.” I nod and lead Victoria back out to our table, but not before I grab another sample for me. She jots something down in a pocket journal that came out of nowhere, as I text Tara with the details about the vendor. “Now, dip the meat into the different sauces.”

  As we eat, my impressions naturally fall from my lips. “The sweet sauce isn’t bad, though it’s heavy on the brown sugar. The Carolina sauce has too little vinegar for me. Then again, my tastes lean to the kind of sour that makes most people wince. But the spicy hot-chili-based sauce—that was perfect, with different layers of heat and flavor, and I’m going to guess there’s some chocolate in it.”

  Victoria hums through my commentary, nodding. She scribbles in her notebook, and I daresay, she’s starting to learn.

  Meanwhile, the festival seems to wake up. Groups start to filter into the space. My appetite increases. “I’m ready for more. Are you?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  We go from Nor-Cal Smokies to Oregon Trail BBQ, this festival’s only out-of-state vendor. I pick up flyers and ask vendors some of my own questions: How do they make their sauces? Who’s tasked with keeping an eye on the smoker? What are their bestsellers? I geek out on the equipment they use. Not having a permanent home, I’ve got dreams of a paved patio with a smoker and a grill, of smoking a Thanksgiving turkey so soft it falls off the carcass. Victoria’s shocked when I tell the guy at Gold Country BBQ about the time my gas grill caught on fire. Doesn’t everyone have that story?

  Victoria and I are in the middle of a discussion about the spiciest food we’ve ever eaten when my phone buzzes in my back pocket. It wakes me from the trance of a perfect morning. BBQ and a beautiful, funny date—what more could I ask for?

  It’s not a date, asshole.

  Seems that Victoria’s phone buzzes, too, because she slips hers out of her pocket and scrolls down. “Tara says it’s a good time to begin.”

  I mumble an agreement and scarf down the last of the meat on my plate. Vic only consumed a quarter of hers—which is pretty much what she’s been doing all morning. She’ll eat the meat naked, but when it’s time to taste the sauce, she barely has any. “Let’s go.” Throwing my trash away, I push aside my ruminations on how she’s going to pull this off. Did she even taste half the sauces?

  Not my circus, not my monkeys, right? I’m here to shoot, and that’s what I’m going to do. I did my best to help her out today. If Victoria is half the professional I’ve witnessed at Paraiso, she’ll pull through.

  The setup is easy: me with the camera, Victoria with a wireless mic clipped to her shirt. Since we’re in a festival situation, everyone who attends is fair game for the camera and mic, but Tara’s hanging with us to manage crowd control. She’s also in charge of the overall “look” of each segment, so I’m going to have to rely on her to give me subtle cues as to where I should stand. Adrian is in the portable office they have set up in one of the tents, mixing the audio and video together into one recorded package to be sent over to LA for editing.

  We position ourselves so we’re far enough away from the band that we can hear ourselves speak. Tara’s doing a quick once-over on Victoria: fixing her collar, pushing down her flyaway hairs, nothing too serious. They speak for a couple of minutes, probably going through what Victoria’s going to say. Tara checks in with the guy at Benny’s BBQ and positions him so he’s in front of the table. They’ve cleared out the tent for their five-minutes of coverage. Unlike Paraiso, this is going to be edited, but the segment is going up this afternoon and time is of the essence.

  Tara approaches me with a light in her eyes. “Here’s the plan. Victoria’s going to start here, introduce what we’re doing, and then start walking backward, to Benny’s. We’ll do a close shot of the food, then back up for her facial expressions and impressions. Got it?”

  Nodding, I affix my eye to the viewfinder and focus on Victoria’s face. Her pupils stare back, as if asking for help. They’re deer-in-the-headlights worried, and a pang of anxiety shoots through me.

  So I focus on her nose and tamp down the inclination to pop my head to the side for a word or two of encouragement.

  I’m here for my job. She’s here for hers.

  “Ready everyone? Here we go.” Tara takes her place in front of Victoria and cues everyone like a maestro. “Camera.”

  My finger presses the record button.

  15

  VICTORIA

  When the red light on top of the camera’s lens comes on, I freeze. The only thing I can remember to do is spread my mouth into a smile, as if Mother Nature blew a breath and froze me in place. All movement, all thought, and all words escape me. Tara’s instructions tunnel themselves into the deep recesses of my brain, submerged by the shock that I have to perform. Right here, right now. No practice, no script. On food I don’t love.

  It’s only now that it dawns on me that everything in my work life usually takes practice, memorization, and edits. My travel blog posts are edited several times before they’re published. My vlog posts are shot and reshot, sometimes edited mid-shot to get the exact look I’m searching for. I’ve even taped notes below the camera as a prompt, so I know exactly what to cover and at what point during the segment. My audition might have been successfully ad-libbed, but I hadn’t felt like I had anything to lose.

  I don’t work off the cuff like this, and definitely not under this kind of pressure. There’s a reason I’m usually prepared. All kinds of trouble happens when things aren’t practiced and planned. That’s the time when Murphy’s Law shows up, when the unexpected slaps you in the face. There’s a value in making sure contingencies are in place, in double-checking and triple-checking facts. In finding the solid and the sure in a world that doesn’t makes any promises.

  I should have learned this lesson already. Going off the rails, running away to Phoenix with my hea
d filled with romantic thoughts was one of those unplanned moments, and where did that get me?

  Tara clears her throat, interrupting my barrage of doubts. She’s clutching her notes like there’s a tornado passing through. Her expression is skewed, filled with equal parts concern and impatience. Still stunned, my eyes cut back to the camera, and as if he sees the plea in them, Joel tilts his head so I can make eye contact. And next, an almost imperceptible nod.

  Joel.

  Our time together flashes in my head: at the tattoo shop, in bed in Vegas. In those moments, he saved me. He took me home, he took me to bed, and now with that nod, he was helping me.

  I’m grateful to him. I’m pulled to him over and over again because he knows exactly when I need him. There were moments this morning when our jobs fell away, and we picked up from where we left off in Vegas.

  But it’s only me in front of this camera now. And this time, I have to catch myself, because what happened in the past, in Phoenix, can no longer have a hold on me. I have to regain my voice. It can’t hurt me any longer. I can be and do and become whatever I want today, even if I’m going to be shitty at it. It’s time to go all in.

  The thought pulls the words from my throat. “Hi, my name is Victoria Aquino, and welcome to West Coast BBQ. We’re covering five festivals in eight days to show you the absolute best of California barbecue. Follow us as we hit the road to catch the opening days of each festival, where we hope to chat with a pitmaster or two. Bonus? After our segment, you’ll still have time to head out to a festival near you by dinnertime.” My arms spread out, presenting the hordes of people behind me. My nerves spent on my introduction, my body relaxes and I smile through the rest of my spiel. “Today we’re in Desert Willow, at the Gate to the Redwoods Festival. Yes, we are definitely up north, so much so that this can be considered the Pacific Northwest. I mean, we’re lucky it didn’t rain on us today. But as you can see, this tiny city is big enough to be featured on the barbecue festival map. Six vendors and lots of delicious food. Let’s take you around.”