by Alexa Land
“Cioppino! Didn’t I already say that?” She looked at the camera Trevor was manning and said, “It’s basically a fish stew. You got some onion in there, some fennel, some tomato paste. It’s good stuff. If you’re thinking you don’t like fish, get over it! Look at all the gorgeous seafood we got here.” She started pulling plastic bags from the ice while I snapped a few pictures. “We got some halibut, some mussels, some shrimp. We went to this real nice fish market in North Beach. You know what they were out of though? Clams! How can a fish store run out of clams, I ask you? They said a customer came in right before us and cleaned ‘em out. But here’s a tip for you: no matter what you’re cooking, always be ready to improvise! Cioppino’s gotta have clams, or else it ain’t cioppino. But really, it don’t have to be them little Manila clams like I’m used to. Take a look at this.”
Nana pushed back the sleeve of her pink Chanel suit and plunged her hand into the ice. “Where the hell’d it go? I know that fucker’s in here somewhere,” she muttered as she dug around. Finally she announced triumphantly, “Got it!”
What she pulled out of the ice looked exactly like a thick, ten inch cock with a shell where the balls would be. From the corner, Josh snort-laughed loudly. “Now, I know this ain’t the type of clam you’re used to. Me neither if I’m bein’ honest. But the fishmonger assured me these are real tasty,” Nana said. “It’s called a gooey duck clam. I got no idea what that name means. I sure as hell never seen a duck packin’ anything that looks like this.”
Jessie chuckled and snapped a picture with his phone, then asked, “So, what do we do with it, Nana?”
“Well, before we do anything, we gotta get it out of its shell.” She tried prying the shell loose with her fingers, but it didn’t budge.
“Should we just trim it off above the shell, Nana?”
“No. We got several inches of good meat there. It’s a shame to waste all those inches.”
Jessie grinned at that and said, “Truth.”
“What we just gotta do,” Nana said, handing Jessie the shell end of the clam, “is yank it. It’ll release eventually.”
“It usually does, when you yank it,” he said with a smile.
Nana wrapped both hands around the fleshy appendage and started pulling on it with a series of quick, short tugs. “I know I can jerk it off,” Nana said. “I just gotta keep tugging.” I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Behind the camera, Trevor was shaking with silent laughter and turning red.
Jessie braced his feet on the floor as Nana hopped off the step stool and really started going at it. I snapped a couple pictures, because I didn’t know what else to do, and Hoss or Moss circled with his camcorder. Mr. Mario, the orange hairdresser, took his video camera off its tripod and circled around behind the kitchen island as he exclaimed with a thick Spanish accent, “Show eet who is the boss, Nana!”
“Oh, I’m showing it,” she said as her chef’s hat listed to the side. She was really putting her back into it, digging in her low heels and tugging the meaty monster with both hands.
Jessie almost toppled over, so he bent at the waist to try to lower his center of gravity. Immediately Tom Selleck, Nana’s great, big mutt, ran in and tried to mount the petite blond. “No! Stop! No means no!” Jessie yelled, trying to dodge the dog. He ended up stepping over his left arm to point his butt away from the animal, but kept hold of the clam, which now jutted out between his legs. The dog yipped and bounced up and down excitedly. While all of that was happening, Nana’s grandson Nico, a straight-laced law student, came into the kitchen, took one look at the scene before him, turned and walked right back out again.
Nana wasn’t deterred in the slightest by her lack of progress. She got up right behind Jessie and kept pulling with both hands, thrusting her skinny hips back and forth to really put her weight (all eighty pounds of it) behind each tug. “Holy crap,” Josh muttered from the corner. “It just got all Skinemax up in here.” His father shot him a look and the kid said, “Come on, I’m in junior high. I have questions.”
“Then talk to me! Don’t learn it from softcore porn with poor production values,” Trevor exclaimed. “How’d you even manage to access those shows? I have all the parental controls set up.”
Josh rolled his eyes. “You password is your wedding anniversary. Duh.”
“I’m changing that as soon as we get home,” Trevor said before turning his attention back to the video camera. His son just grinned.
I snapped a couple pictures, just because it was too funny not to, then jumped out of the way as Mr. Mario slid in from underneath and got the shot from between Jessie’s legs, his adult entertainment background suddenly quite obvious. This seemed to inspire the Bigfoot researcher/videographer, who came in for a tight shot of Nana’s death grip on the clam cock. Trevor stayed right where he was, calmly filming all that transpired, as if any of that was going to be useable for the cooking show.
Finally, after a few more firm yanks, some liquid leaked from the end of the clam and the whole thing drooped a bit as Nana let go of it. “I gave it my all,” she said, mopping her brow with the back of her hand. “That shit was hard. I need a drink now, and I feel like smoking a cigarette, even though I stopped smoking forty years ago.”
Jessie straightened, holding up the sagging sea creature, and said, “This victory goes to Long Duck Dong. Or whatever this thing was called.”
“I’m spent,” Nana said. “Let’s take five.” She grabbed a bottle of wine off the counter, which had probably been meant for the cioppino, and chugged about half of it while Jessie tossed the clam back on ice and washed his hands.
As she carried the bottle out of the room, Jessie said, “I don’t suppose you got any useful shots out of that.”
“Not so much.”
He thought for a moment, then pulled a shallow, white bowl from one of the cabinets and put it on the counter. As he opened the bag of mussels and dumped them into the bowl, he said, “Maybe you can take a few pictures of the ingredients. I’ll get ‘em arranged for you. I always wanted to moonlight as a food stylist.”
I grinned at that. “A food stylist? Really?”
“Not as like, my dream job or anything. But I saw a show once on people who make food look good for a living and thought it’d be fun. I’m a try anything once kind of guy.”
“So, what is your dream job?”
“Don’t laugh, but I’ve wanted to be a race car driver since I was six. Like that’ll ever happen. The closest I’ve come is street racing. I wrecked my car though, so now I’m not even doing that, although I’ve been saving up and should be able to buy another car soon.” As he was talking, he knit his brows in concentration and tried to get the mussels to form a pyramid. They kept slipping off.
“That takes a lot of balls. I could never race. Hell, I just bought my first car ever at the age of twenty-six, so I’m not exactly what you’d call a gearhead.”
Jessie straightened up and looked at me, the mussels forgotten. “What did you buy?”
“Nothing fancy, just an old Honda Civic.”
“Good call, they run forever with a little TLC. Some people even soup them up for street racing. There’s a lot that can be done with that car. What type of Civic is it?”
I grinned and said, “A blue one. It’s from, like, the mid-1980s. I honestly don’t know shit about cars, aside from where the gas goes.”
“Do you want me to teach you how to work on it? You can save a lot of money by doing your own oil changes and routine maintenance. Plus, if you want, I could get it running real nice for you, maybe even boost the performance a bit.”
“Does ‘boost the performance’ mean make it go fast?”
He grinned and said, “That’s one option. But I can also make it run really efficiently to save you money on gas.”
He looked excited, but I said, “I’m sure you have better things to do than work on my car.”
“Not really, and besides, that’s totally fun for me. Please?”
&n
bsp; That made me grin, too. “You’re actually begging to work on my Honda?”
“I’ve done all I can do to Nana’s limo, short of a sick paintjob with some flames. Her grandson Dante doesn’t want me to do that, even though it’d be tight. So yeah! I’m itching to get under the hood. Until I can afford my own car, I’m at the mercy of whoever will let me tinker with theirs.”
“Well, hey, tinker away then.”
Jessie beamed at me. “Awesome. We can work in Nana’s driveway if you want, since all my tools are here. Can you come by Friday around ten a.m.? That’s when Nana leads an exercise class for a group of her girlfriends and they usually have cocktails afterwards, so she won’t want me to drive her anywhere for at least a couple hours.”
“Sure, I’ll be here.”
I looked around as Jessie turned back to the mussel pyramid. Things were considerably calmer. Mr. Mario had grabbed a second bottle of wine and gone off with Nana, and the Bigfoot researcher had let the dog into the backyard and was filming him, probably just in case the brown, hairy beast turned out to be a baby sasquatch. Meanwhile, Trevor rounded up his three little nephews and gave them each a squeezable pouch of apple sauce, then tossed a dog treat to their multicolored puppy, who was aptly named Gismo. His son Josh tried to reject the offer of a pouch at first, claiming he was too old for that kind of thing. But finally, he accepted the apple sauce, sucked it down quickly and asked for another.
It felt good to be in that gorgeous home, watching the everyday interactions of such a loving family. Those little boys probably took it all for granted, but I couldn’t. It was just too far removed from anything I’d ever experienced. Being in a clean, beautiful kitchen with enough to eat and a family who cared about them was an incredible gift. So was the fact that they let me be a part of it, at least for a little while.
Nico stuck his head in the kitchen, decided the coast was clear, and crossed the room to pour himself a cup of coffee. He then joined Jessie and me and said, “Hi guys. Do I even want to ask what was happening a few minutes ago?”
“Cooking show,” Jessie said. That was explanation enough.
Nico nodded knowingly and took a drink from his mug as I studied him from beneath my lashes. He was a strikingly handsome guy, probably in his mid-twenties with jet black hair that grazed his collar, flawless olive skin and glasses that framed intelligent, dark eyes. He always looked tired though, every time I saw him. I knew he was in law school, and that he’d really thrown himself into it after a bad break-up. It always seemed like school was wearing away at him, and even though it was summer, that apparently hadn’t lessened any. I asked him, “Are you on break now?”
He shook his head. “The regular semester ended, but I’m taking three classes this summer in the hope of lightening my load a bit next term.”
“Which is so crazy!” Jessie exclaimed. “Dude, you need a break!”
“I’ll have one during our four weeks in Italy.” Nana’s grandson Gianni and his boyfriend Zan had bought Nana a trip to Italy, and were sending Jessie and Nico with her for company. They’d probably included Nico because he was desperately in need of some downtime.
“But that’s not until August and this is only June! You’re gonna, like, implode or something!”
“I’ll be fine, as long as we don’t suddenly run into a worldwide coffee shortage.” Nico took another drink from the white mug he was holding, then said, “I’m going to get back to the books. If all of this actually ends up turning into dinner, would you let me know?”
“Sure thing, Cousin,” Jessie said with a big smile.
That made Nico grin. “Thanks. But you know we’re not actually related, right?’
“We are now. Nana adopted me.”
“You can’t actually adopt twenty-three-year-olds,” Nico told him.
“Not officially, but close enough.”
Nico’s expression softened and he gave Jessie’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’re a good addition to the family,” he said before leaving the kitchen.
Jessie looked really pleased with that. I asked him, “Do you have an actual family somewhere?”
“Yes and no. I have a mom and dad and three brothers and sisters. But my dad’s a Baptist minister, and let’s just say having a queer kid doesn’t sit too well with him.” A shadow passed over his normally cheerful features, but he pushed it aside and smiled at me.
I got the impression he did that a lot, hiding pain behind a smile, and it made my heart go out to him. “If you ever feel like you want to talk about it, I’m a pretty decent listener,” I told him.
“Thanks, I might take you up on that sometime. I do go to a weekly support group at the LGBT community center, but it’s also nice to have friends to talk to.” He turned his attention back to the seafood on the counter and once again tried to stack the mussels. “We should probably get to those photos while this is all still fresh. I want to make sure this turns out really good for Nana.” He said that so sincerely. I picked up my camera and went to work.
*****
My time spent in Nana’s big, beautiful home, full of family and life and activity, was such a huge contrast to the rest of my life. The one hundred and forty square feet that comprised my studio apartment felt really empty when I got back later that night. There wasn’t anything I could do about that, though. I’d already knocked on Zachary’s door, but he wasn’t home.
I pushed my shoes off, hung up my jacket and cracked a window to offset the ever-present heat. That increased the noise from outside as cars and buses rattled by and voices drifted up from people out on the sidewalk. I was used to it.
After retrieving my paperback, I sat on my bed and tucked my feet under me. For some reason though, it was tough to concentrate on the pages. I really didn’t know why I felt kind of sad, there was no reason to. I’d had a good day among people who were nice to me, and I was full from a wonderful Italian dinner. Once Nana gave up on the big clam, she and her family had made a terrific meal. Also, thanks to Finn Nolan, I could afford the luxury of staying in and reading, instead of spending the night hustling. I knew for a fact that being safe and warm with a full belly was nothing to take for granted.
*****
I’d been trying to focus on the book for about half an hour when I head footsteps on the stairs. They were immediately followed by a knock on my door. When I opened it for Zachary, he launched himself into my arms.
I held him tightly as I asked in alarm, “Did someone hurt you?” He shook his head no. I led his over to the bed and sat down with him, then went right back to holding him. “What happened?”
When Zachary pulled back to look at me, his eyes were red and a bit swollen. He was still dressed in the suit and tie, and the shirt was now unbuttoned at the collar. “Can we please not talk about it? I just…I can’t.”
“Sure, as long as I know you don’t need to go to the hospital or anything.”
“I don’t. I just need a friend.”
“I’m right here,” I said as I hugged him and he wrapped himself around me.
After a while he whispered, “I’m so glad you were home tonight.”
“You can always call me if I’m not here.”
“But what if you’re working or something?”
“You’re way more important.”
He was quiet for a while before saying, “I’ve tried so hard not to become dependent on you. The last thing you need is some clingy, desperate loser making demands on your time. But you’re all I have, Chance.”
“You’re not even sort of like that.”
“I know I am. You’re just being nice.”
After a pause I said, “If you wanted to, I could help you meet some new people. You don’t have to feel so alone, Zachary. I’m going over to Nana’s house on Friday because her driver Jessie offered to work on my car. Why don’t you come along? They’d love you.”
“I wouldn’t fit in.”
“Like I do? They accept me anyway, and they’ll accept you, too. Come with me
. It’ll be really low-key. We’ll pretty much just hang out in the driveway with Jessie. Remember the blond from the wedding photos who you thought was cute? He’s one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet.”
Zachary sat up a bit and mulled that over while smoothing out the fabric of his suit jacket. Finally he asked, “Do they know what you do for a living?”
“Some do. Others just assume I’m a photographer.”
“I don’t want to tell them I work for an escort service. I’d feel like they were judging me.”
“You don’t have to tell them if you don’t want to,” I said.
“But then what am I supposed to say? It’s always one of the first questions people ask, ‘what do you do for a living?’ My two choices are telling them I sell my body, or lying to them. Both options seem kind of shitty.”
“Just tell them you’re between jobs. It’ll basically be the truth. You’ll be between tricks while we’re there.”
He grinned a little for the first time that night. “Way to find the loophole.”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’ll think about Friday.” Zachary stood up and said, “I’m going to get out of this suit and take a long shower.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Thanks for everything, Chance.”
“I didn’t really do anything,” I pointed out.
“You do way more than you realize,” he said before leaving my apartment.
Chapter Six
It was cold and foggy, typical San Francisco summer weather. I tugged the collar of my denim jacket up a bit as I hurried down the sidewalk. The business district was deserted at nearly ten p.m. and the fog gave it a slightly eerie air.
That wasn’t why I was hurrying, though. I rounded a corner and saw the light on in room two-fifteen of the Whitman. Finn was standing at the window, watching for me. He gave a little wave as soon as he saw me and I raised my hand in return. He closed the privacy curtains and I picked up my pace.