by Pat Henshaw
The boy moving up behind Christopher stood almost as tall as me. I thought I was skinny, but this kid gave a whole new meaning to the word. His T-shirt caved in toward his chest as he walked, and I swear I could see his hip bones outlined at the top of his slacks.
Going by looks alone, he could have easily been my son. The boy and I shared prominent Adam’s apples under long, thin faces and unruly, cowlick-prone brown hair. Only our eyes were different, his a striking light tawny brown flecked with gold, like Christopher’s, to my plain old brown.
“Dad.” The way the kid groaned it, the word had four or five syllables. “I told you’d I’d come talk to him myself.”
Yup, fifteen years old all right.
It’d been on the tip of my tongue to ask Christopher why in the world his son would want to work here, in what some considered the dullest store in town. Now I’d be able to ask the kid himself.
“May I help you?” I mainly asked the question so the two of them wouldn’t start discussing—or even worse, fighting over—why the dad hadn’t waited for the kid to come in on his own. I didn’t want to give Christopher a chance to say something that would deflate his son, like the dad didn’t think the kid had enough nerve or could handle the conversation with me.
The kid gave me a blinding smile.
“Hi. I’m Henry Darling, and I’d like to apply for the summer position.” He hadn’t stumbled over his last name, so there was no question whether he was addressing me by a pet name.
Henry held out his skinny hand, and I shook it. The kid was stronger than he looked. “Well, Henry, I’m Franklin McCord. Everybody around here calls me Frank. Let me get my calendar.” I squatted and pulled out my paper day planner and plunked it down on the counter.
Father and son shared a smile. Oh, I knew why. They’d come from Silicon Valley and probably had their calendars on their iPhones or Androids or somewhere else in a cloud or in the ether. Just because I kept the paper tradition started by my grandfather didn’t mean I was a complete Luddite.
I flipped through the pages, then took out a piece of paper from the back of the book.
“I’m having applicants take a little test after they fill out this form. So if you want to complete it right now, we’ll set up a time for you to come in.”
“Okay. May I ask what kind of test, sir?”
Wow. “May,” not “can.” What an interesting kid. But I had to break him of the “sir” habit. Made me sound way too old. At least too old for his father.
“Like I said, everyone calls me Frank, even the kids.” I pointed to the former soup can overflowing with pens and pencils. “The test’s pretty simple, really. I’ll have you name some hardware items and build a little something. I’ll provide directions. You just have to follow them.”
The test was the only way to separate the potential baristas and movie ushers from the hardware enthusiasts. Not only did everyone in town call me Frank, but they also knew I paid more than minimum wage to my high school help. So kids who didn’t give a damn about the difference between a nail and a screw—except when they were talking about sex—applied for any jobs I offered.
I watched as Henry filled out the application quickly and neatly. Christopher was eyeing him with a proud, besotted look on his face. His gaze turned to me, and he smiled over his son’s head. He nodded like we were sharing a moment here.
A pang of longing shot through me. I’ve always wanted kids—the more the merrier. As a modern gay man, I knew it was possible. Proof stood in front of me. As the geeky town tinkerer without any hope of finding a man I could love and want as my husband, however, I knew the prospect wasn’t plausible. Sometimes, like now, that realization cut deep.
After Henry studied the page a moment, he returned the pen to the can, picked up the application, and handed it to me.
“The school year ends soon.” Henry, unlike many high school kids, was looking me straight in the eye and wasn’t relying on his father to fill in any blanks or prompt him. I was impressed. “I can take the test today, tomorrow, or after school next week.”
I read down his application. I don’t use a standard form, because the ones I’d found online didn’t tell me anything I wanted to know about my applicants. My form has the usual name, address, and contact information, but it also asks about extracurricular activities, interests, and passions. A lot of kids stopped at the word “passions,” and some even asked what I meant.
Henry had had no problem answering the questions. He wrote that he was a game player, both electronic and nonelectronic. He was a serious reader, listing The Silmarillion as the last book he’d truly enjoyed. Some boys can’t remember a book they’ve read, much less the last one they really got into. Also unlike most of the boys who applied, Henry hadn’t listed any sports, either as a participant or a fan.
“You don’t like sports?” I tried not to ask it too gruffly, but both Darlings’ faces scrunched up.
“Is that a problem?” Christopher evidently wasn’t worried about being too gruff.
“No. I follow a few teams. So I try to make sure rivalries and loyalties won’t become a point of contention here in the store.” Some people have remarked that mildness could be my middle name. I’ve worked hard at keeping my cool, so I don’t usually flare up. I try to surround myself with people who don’t either. The world around me got really ugly when I was angry.
“Dad. I’m the one applying, so let me answer.”
Christopher appeared properly chastised and a little amused as he nodded for his son to take over. He winked at me as if to ask “Isn’t my kid great?”
I smiled back. Another tiny secret moment shared. It was broken by Henry squaring his shoulders and answering me.
“It’s not that I’m against sports. But see, I’m not built like an athlete. Most of the time, what I like to do is make things or read more than do physical activity. So sports aren’t high on my interest list. But I would like to know who your favorite teams and players are, uh, Frank.”
This time Christopher and I smiled at the same time. The boy’s ability to act like an adult tickled both of us. I admired Henry for wanting to handle this interview by himself. Sure, I could feel him relying on his dad’s presence. Christopher oozed strength and support, and his rock-solid backing assured Henry he was there whenever the teen needed him. It also said Christopher would fight to hold back unless he felt he absolutely needed to jump in.
I took out my pocket watch. I thought I had another unassembled test in the back room. If Henry passed—and I thought he would with flying colors—I could get him squared away with all the official paperwork and hired to start working a few hours next weekend while I interviewed a couple of the other candidates.
I don’t know why I was pushing Henry through the hoops, except that I was eager to find out more about him and work with him. I got the feeling the hours he was in the store would pass more quickly than they did now. Just as they flew by when his dad roamed the aisles.
“Are you free this afternoon at two?” As I asked, Henry’s eyes lit up and he turned to his dad.
I could feel their excitement as it rolled off of them and hit me in the chest. I smiled as I absorbed their shared joy.
When Christopher looked at me, a weird jolt of recognition hit me, like spying a loved one in a crowded room. I felt like I had reached out and found a matching half. I dropped my eyes, feeling a sudden weight of longing. Before it could consume me, I reminded myself that I don’t believe in magic or miracles or soul mates.
When I blinked, he was back to being newcomer Christopher Darling, here with his son, who was applying for a job. No woo-woo, no aura, no pulsating lights. Both he and Henry were staring like I’d suddenly started yodeling Madonna songs. I gave a mental shake of my head and righted myself on the tracks of life.
With the point of a pencil I plucked from the soup can, I ran down my daybook and stopped at two o’clock. Then I looked up at Henry, who hadn’t answered my question.
“Y
es, I’m free at two. Is there anything I need to bring with me?” The boy’s response helped shelve the odd moment.
I wrote his name in my book, then explained about social security and parental permission. I took out the form for the latter and had his dad complete it.
“I’ll see you at two.” I stuck my hand out, and an exuberant Henry shook it.
As they turned and I started to close my daybook, intending to go back and find the pieces of the test project, who should walk in but Emil? My morning went straight downhill.
2
FOR A while now, bank teller Emil Legrand had been plucking at my nerves. Five years ago, he’d rented the top floor of my home, the McCord ancestral farmhouse. Arriving in Stone Acres from Cupertino, he’d been a quiet, shy twenty-five-year-old bank teller whose flamboyance was limited to an odd-colored pocket square now and again.
At the time, when the men’s dress code was a lot more rigid, he’d been chastised by his boss for his outlandish accessorizing. Now his conservative three-piece suits were considered boringly quaint despite his wide range of colorful shirts, ties, and pocket squares.
As the years passed, Emil had flowered and flourished. Today some of his outfits would make even RuPaul blush from embarrassment. He made matryoshka dolls seem fussily subdued. I’d watched every excruciating step as he shed his reticence and embraced his inner diva. I was tired to death of him and his push to stand out. Personally I prefer keeping a lower profile.
We’d had a short “affair”—his word, not mine, for a few sexual encounters—when he’d first arrived but hadn’t touched each other in over four years and eleven months.
Last week he’d decided he was waiting for his perfect lover to appear in order to gift this saint with his supposed virginity. I’d told him he didn’t have any virginity to share, especially after being the self-proclaimed Slut of Sacto three years ago. After a short discussion, I gave up arguing. If he insisted he was a virgin, so be it. Emil’s fantasy world didn’t need to include me.
I had no idea why he was here in the store today. As far as I knew, the bank was still open. Not only that, he hated the hardware store. He never came in here if he could avoid it.
He pranced past Christopher and Henry, who turned their heads to watch him as he came to stand next to me. Emil leaned dramatically over the counter. His Christmas-green suit drooped, and his sky-blue shirt sagged, part of it not neatly tucked in. His orange tie shouted “danger.”
“Ugh, Frankie darling. I’m ready to go home.” He was referring to my home, my farmhouse, and Darling wasn’t my last name.
“Oh? How do you plan to get there?” I drew a deep breath and closed my calendar.
“Honey, you won’t take me?” He gave me a baby doe gaze with his big, medium blue eyes and tried to be seductive. Instead, it was a red flag telling me that more difficult times sat on the horizon.
“No. I told you this morning that I’d be here until after two.” I looked down at the calendar and tapped the cover. “Now I’ll be here until after three.”
Emil took out a hankie, today a rainbow-striped bandanna, and wiped his face.
“It’s too hot.” He drawled the complaint and looked around for an audience. When the Darlings ignored him, he stuffed the hankie in his back pocket. “Why’s it so horrible in May? It’s not supposed to get this way until July.”
Having no answer to his questions, I walked through the wide arch separating the sales section in front from the workroom in back to see if I had the test materials ready for the afternoon. Emil followed like a pet dog. Riley, who was already in the back, gave me the evil eye. He hated Emil with a passion I’d never seen him show for anyone else.
“What’s he want?” Riley whispered while he was bent over putting together some furniture.
“A ride back to the farmhouse.”
“Tell him no. Don’t let him walk over you. He’s crazy.”
“Language, Riley.”
Riley looked behind me, dropped the piece he was working on, and sidled past Emil into the other side of the room.
“C’mon, Frankie, if you can’t take me home, then at least give me the keys to your truck.”
I turned and got the doe eyes again, as well as an outstretched hand.
Fleetingly, I wondered what bug had crawled up Emil’s ass today. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to chase it. No way, no how.
“I’ll bring you some lunch.” Emil batted his eyelashes at me and wiggled his fingers.
“No.”
I heard Riley’s approving snort and turned to glare at him.
“No? What do you mean, ‘no’?” Emil squealed.
He took a few steps forward, and we were suddenly up close and personal, face-to-face.
“No, Emil, I won’t give you the keys. Last time you got a flat tire and you scraped the fender. The sheriff said if there’d been traffic along the farm road, you would have caused a real problem instead of just banging up my truck like you did.” I was trying to stay calm.
I hated when people tried to push me around, and Emil’s modus operandi had grown from polite deference in the past to push and poke nowadays until I was ready to bite his hand off. I took a couple of deep breaths, reminding myself that Emil was nothing but a fly in my Darling day.
“The accident wasn’t my fault, Frankie.”
I hadn’t realized Christopher and Henry were still in the store until Christopher appeared in the archway to the workroom.
“Frank, is there a problem? If you can’t go to lunch today, we can make it another time.”
I turned to him with my mouth hanging open. He’d rescued me. Incredible. I didn’t even know the guy, and he’d thrown me the proverbial lifeline. Christopher was looking at me like he expected an answer. I shook myself.
“What? Oh, yes, it’s time to eat. Hold on. I’ll be there in a second.” Then I turned back to Emil. “Christopher, I’m not sure if you’ve met Emil. Emil’s my tenant.”
Emil’s eyes turned to slits—now like a cat rather than a doe—as he watched Christopher walk toward us.
I was a little surprised Emil wasn’t panting over Christopher, since he embodied the kind of beauty Emil drooled over in men’s fashion magazines, usually with a comment about how I’d never look like any of them. Then I remembered how Emil hated children, especially teenagers. Maybe the sight of Henry, who’d followed his father into the back room, had soured Emil on Christopher’s handsomeness.
“You didn’t tell me you had a date.” Emil smiled a lips-over-teeth grimace and shook hands with Christopher.
“Did you forget about me, Frank?” Christopher teased, and I grinned back at him in surprise.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind today.” Talk about understatements. The pull between us, however, was loud and strong.
I hustled Emil out the door, past a smirking Riley. I assured Emil he’d be able to find a ride with one of his friends. Over Riley’s quick cough, I even suggested Emil might want to go talk to Gus over at the Old Town garage and see if Emil’s Camry was fixed yet. I suspected Emil didn’t have enough—or wouldn’t spare enough—money to get it out of hock and found it cheaper to ride to work and back with me. I was tired of being his chauffeur, and Emil knew it.
He left, grumbling and unhappy.
“Good riddance. You should evict him. That one’s up to no good.” Riley’s mumble made me shake my head.
I didn’t wish Emil ill while he was trying to get himself together. I just wanted him to be less needy and clingy around me.
As I shut the door behind him, I held back a sigh of relief and looked at the time. I had a little over an hour to eat and get back to the store.
When I glanced at Christopher and Henry, they were staring at me. Christopher had concern written all over his face, but Henry seemed like a normal fifteen-year-old.
“I’m hungry. Where are we going?” Henry might have picked up on the discord around him, but he wasn’t going to let a little uneasiness keep him from f
ood.
I was buoyed by his cheerfulness.
We ended up at the newly refurbished Limelight Diner, once a bar and now a breakfast and lunch place. We found a table for three in the back corner, where we wouldn’t be jostled by the steady stream of people buying takeout sandwiches and chips.
I noticed a few unfamiliar faces among the folks standing in line to order and realized the summer onslaught might already have begun. I had to get myself and the store ready ASAP.
After Henry got up to retrieve our order and bring it to the table, I leaned in toward Christopher.
“Thanks for the invitation to lunch.” It was awkward, but I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t grateful for what he’d done.
“Anything I can do to help. You’re a kind man, and sometimes kindness gets taken advantage of.”
How right he was. Still, I appreciated his stepping in. As I let his words settle, he blushed.
“Look, Frank, I might have a problem, and I’d appreciate it if you’ve got a minute after Henry’s test to check it out. I need some advice. Some house advice.” He looked both concerned and worried. “Oh no, and now I’m coming across as taking advantage.”
“Not really. I’ll be happy to help.” After the way he’d saved me from being hounded to death by Emil, giving Christopher a few minutes later this afternoon wouldn’t be a hardship. Besides, it gave me more time to ogle him.
Henry plunked platters with sandwiches and bagged chips in front of each of us. Then he sat and dug in with teenage gusto.
“We just moved into the Adams-Scott House. Do you know it?” Christopher ripped open his chips bag and dumped the contents next to his sandwich.
Both the Darlings ate like they hadn’t seen food in a while. As I do everything, I eat slowly, savoring every bite. They attacked food like greyhounds on the run.
“Doctor Adams died a couple of years back, and a parade of Adamses and Scotts have lived in his house ever since. I heard the last group was doing some heavy remodeling.”