by Pat Henshaw
Xavier’s shaking eased up, but I didn’t let him go.
“He looked like he was scared as hell. Did you see how fast he was running away? Then he got trapped by the four of us. He knew he was in deep shit.”
Xavier had stopped crying and was now snuffling and probably felt embarrassed.
“There was a time,” I said, taking the edge of my T-shirt and wiping his face and making him blow his nose, “when David and I were homeless, and we were given a tiny room behind a bar. Shit, talk about rats and every other kind of vermin.” Now he was still, listening. “I remember how fucking freaked I was. I got a trap and caught one. Then I didn’t know what to do with it. It was on the floor squealing and crying, and I was standing nearby, afraid to touch it. I remember the old man who’d given us the room coming in. When he figured out what was going on, he spent a few minutes laughing at me. Then he said since I was taking math in school, he wanted me to calculate how much bigger I was than the rat.” I sighed. “I couldn’t do the math, but I understood his point.”
Xavier pulled back and looked at me. He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.
“I know it’s stupid as shit, but I’m still afraid of rats. Go figure.”
His mouth snapped shut, and he hugged me.
“Thanks,” he whispered softly, “even if what you’re saying isn’t true.”
I was laughing ruefully when David and John returned, David shirtless. Damn. He might as well have stripped for me. I shook off my libido. Not the time. Not the place.
“Yo, Dave! Am I or am I not afraid of rats?” I shouted to him.
His grin was huge. “Deathly,” he shouted back. “I’m going upstairs to steal a T-shirt from you.”
As he turned, I looked down at the mess on mine. “Hey, bring me one too.”
A few minutes later, the health inspector turned up, and I called Abe to deal with him. At least we didn’t have a rat running around the place when the inspector arrived.
After he left, we told Abe about the coincidence of the rat showing up right before the inspector.
“Like I told you,” Abe humphed with a shake of his head, “the town fanatics aren’t happy that another queer business is downtown ready to take over.”
I protested, but Abe told me to watch my back. Then he let himself out.
As John and Xavier left, David stopped me.
“Uh, I ran into Melissa the other day.”
I nodded.
“She wants me to come eat at Tommy’s steak house.” He nodded toward the front windows and across the street, where Tommy’s place was. “I’d like you to go with me.”
“Why does she want you to eat at Tommy’s?”
David shrugged.
“Sure. When do you want to go?”
“Tonight?”
As if today hadn’t been enough of a fucking roller coaster.
“Sure. Come by and get me when you’re ready.”
He nodded. I could feel the relief rolling off him. What? He thought I’d turn him down? Not a chance. I was more than ready to let the fucking begin. It was past time for us to be together again. My body was lined up at the starting gate and ready to go.
SOME PLACES I’ve discovered look like trouble, no matter how benign they want to appear. Far as I was concerned, Tommy Thompson’s Genuine Roadhouse could win a prize for most innocuous thing on the block. The building dominated the middle of Main Street, a fixture since his grandfather established it as the only fine dining eatery in Stone Acres. The building cast a baleful glare like an infamous gunfighter spoiling for a victim.
I suspected nobody would eat there if any other choices were available on Main Street. Oddly, none were. In the Old Town business district, Tommy’s was the only game. You had to go to the new mall or the few tiny strip malls out of town or even up into the foothills to find somewhere else to eat. My Silver Star might turn out to be the David to its Goliath.
David, John, Stone, Jimmy, and I knew the score. We anticipated the fight since we all smelled one coming. Eating at Tommy’s place was like bearding the lion. Or maybe it would be seen as throwing down the gauntlet. Either way, I knew it wouldn’t be an easy night.
As we walked up, we could see Tommy at the maître d’ desk through the window. His frown as he looked down boded no good. As we opened the door, his face smiled up to greet us, then soured back into its frown, then settled into a scowl. We didn’t seem to be the customers he was expecting.
“Adam. Jason.”
Before he could continue, David broke in. “David. I’m David Fairbanks.”
Tommy’s brows hunkered in closer. “What? You’re not Jason?”
David shook his head.
Melissa Thompson, Tommy’s wife, came bouncing out of a door marked Office.
“David! Adam! You came! Welcome!” She walked around Tommy, who stood there gaping. “I picked out the perfect table for you! Follow me.”
Okay, now I was fucking freaked. Was she going to seat us in the middle of the damned place where we could be ogled by everyone? No. Absolutely not. Not even for David.
I turned to him, and he put a hand on my back.
“It’ll be okay. Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’ve got this.”
Suddenly, I remembered the old days, when we first hit the Bay Area and he was making contacts with the rich and famous and getting us invitations to swanky parties. He’d say the same thing to me before he’d introduce me to restaurant owners as his boyfriend, Chef Adam de Leon.
Usually the person would ask what I cooked, and I was off about new food and building on the Alice Waters concept, only incorporating more of the organic foods grown locally. My first jobs on the line in highly rated kitchens came about because of David’s introductions. After a while, when he told me not to worry, I didn’t. I’d trusted him until he slid into drugs.
By this point, Melissa had led us to a corner table next to a street-side window. I’d spaced out on everything she’d been saying.
She hovered after we sat down.
“Adam, welcome to town. Tommy and I can’t wait to eat at your new place,” she gushed. As far as I could remember, they hadn’t ever eaten at my old place.
Behind her, Tommy glared. She turned and glanced at him.
“Don’t mind Tommy. He thinks you’ll put us out of business.” She laughed a light tinkling giggle of disbelief. Then she sobered and shifted her feet as if she were embarrassed. “Look, I was wondering if I can tell people they can talk to you and get your autograph.”
Her face was as red as if she’d asked me to strip in front of everyone.
“No problem. If anyone wants to talk, we’re here.”
David looked up from his menu in surprise. “We?” he mouthed.
I nodded.
He grinned, shook his head, and went back to the menu.
“So what’s good tonight?” I asked.
Before she could answer, Kenny Steiner made a grand entrance from the kitchen like a game show host after his gushing introduction. Nobody applauded. In fact, as I looked around me, I noticed most of the diners were staring at our table, not at him.
“Adam, Adam, Adam. Long time no see.” Kenny swept up to us like a matador, his checkered pants rustling around his legs and his toque perching jauntily on his head.
“Hi ya, Kenny. I thought you were still in that place in Santa Cruz. What happened?”
You would have thought I’d slapped him. The Santa Cruz place wasn’t bad. What had happened? David kicked me under the table. I turned to him. “What?” I mouthed. He shook his head. Maybe I’d been on the mountain too long. I hadn’t heard anything about Kenny.
The lull in the conversation had given Kenny enough time to get himself together. He looked at Tommy fuming on the sidelines and answered, “Tommy made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
I grunted and David nudged me again. Okay, okay, all right, already. I could be civil.
“That’s great, Kenny. So how do you like Stone Acr
es? Nice and quiet after the city, huh?”
Kenny stood back, his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked into his pits. “Not as quiet as you’d think.” He glared at me. “I hear you might be my competition.”
I shrugged. “I like to think of it as my restaurant complementing yours. Maybe we can have a little friendly competition. Bring something different to Stone Acres. Move out of the twentieth century.” I looked around at the 1960s décor as David kicked me again.
I turned to him. “What?” I whispered.
“Be nice,” he whispered back.
“Yeah, maybe.” Kenny leaned in a little after a glance at his boss. “If you open.”
“What do you mean?”
Tommy took Kenny’s arm. “Better get back to work. I’m sure we have people waiting.”
Kenny nodded and strutted toward the kitchen.
Melissa pulled Tommy away, and David and I were by ourselves. The other diners turned back to their food, and a thin, worried-looking waiter scurried up to our table.
“Uh, I’m, uh, Rick, uh, and I’ll be your waiter tonight.” Rick took a huge breath, let it out, and finished, “Can I get you, uh, gentlemen, uh, something to drink?”
“Do you have Total Eclipse?” The waiter nodded. “Bring me one of those. David?”
“Okay, if we’re going to order local Hoppy beers, then I’ll have Liquid Sunshine.”
The waiter nodded again. “Okay. Be right back.”
“What do you think he’s afraid of?” I asked.
“Tommy and losing his job.” David still had his head down, shielded by the menu.
Before the waiter returned with our drinks, Melissa was back. She sat down, leaned in, and put her hands on the tabletop.
“It’s so good to see you both here,” she gushed. “I’m glad Stone Acres could lure you away from the big city!” She sat back. “So tell me all about it. What was it like working in San Francisco and being on television and writing the books?”
She was kidding, right? She hadn’t read the almost minute-by-minute celebrity reports about my rise, then David’s meltdown, and finally our breakup and my quitting everything cold turkey? C’mon. I couldn’t believe it.
Before I could respond, probably sarcastically, David jumped in with what sounded like canned patter about what it was like being in the limelight and the stress involved. He had names and places and famous quips and stories. He was smiling and twinkling and acting completely like someone I not only didn’t know, but didn’t think I wanted to know. Melissa was eating it up.
Waiter Rick returned with our beers and eyed Melissa cautiously as he set them in front of us, me first, then David. She nodded to him.
“So what are you thinking about eating?” she asked. “I can recommend all of the beef dishes, and the chops are good too.”
I shrugged and turned to Rick. “I don’t care. Why don’t you tell Kenny to surprise me?”
Melissa beamed, David kicked me, and Rick’s eyes grew big and round and he swallowed. David and Rick knew what I’d done. I’d challenged Kenny to come up with something off menu that would knock my socks off. In a roundabout way I’d told him the menu items sucked and I was too good to choose one of them.
Since there weren’t very many people in the restaurant tonight—the dining room was about a quarter filled—I figured I’d given Kenny something to think about other than slinging another slab of meat on the grill and slathering it with butter or whatever he usually used.
David ordered the four-ounce steak and an entrée salad to be served together, holding the potato and asking for a double portion of vegetables.
“Do you mind if I bring a couple of people over?” Melissa asked.
When I muttered, “No problem,” she scurried away.
“So it’s all veggies, all the time now, huh?” I razzed David. Four ounces of steak didn’t count as a carnivore meal.
“Yeah, rabbit food has made me the man I am today,” he answered. No blush and no apology.
I nodded as Melissa brought up the first couple. I felt like I should be wearing a fucking papal ring or something. The wife was effusive, asking about the big names I knew, especially the chefs. The husband asked only one question about whether I’d played in any celebrity golf tournaments. When I answered in the negative—I don’t play golf—he turned away, looking bored and a little disgusted.
David, however, deflected his pissy attitude by talking about some of the celebrities he’d played with in Vegas and around the LA area. The guy was in seventh heaven listening to stories about some of his favorite celebs. Every once in a while David would turn and wink at me. I must have looked stunned each time because he’d give me a cheeky grin and fall back into chitchat without missing a beat.
After Mr. Golf and his gushy wife, Melissa brought over a couple who wanted me to talk them through all the recipes in my first book, the one the missus owned and evidently didn’t know how to use properly. When I clammed up because I was so pissed, David again saved the day. He chatted about times he’d made some of the dishes they mentioned and the little changes he’d figured out to make some of the recipes easier.
What the hell? What the fuck was he talking about? When I turned to him, he smoothly whipped me into the conversation as he gave one outrageous fix after another that I had to correct. When I turned to David after the couple left, all I got was a fucking wink. What was he doing?
Our meals coming out of the kitchen saved us after four or maybe five shorter “talks” with “fans” and more autographs.
“You did good,” David murmured under his breath. Good at what? I was confused and starving by then.
I didn’t answer because I was staring at the slab of rare prime rib nearly drooping over the sides of the plate. Not only was it bleeding, but it seemed soft and flabby, not the kind of beef anyone should be subjected to. I poked it with my finger. It was mushy. The beef had been artificially tenderized within an inch of its life. It was completely inedible, and Kenny had to fucking know that.
In the middle of it, a glob of horseradish and a dollop of some sort of steak sauce compote sat like two sad, tired toads. A gnarled baked potato oozing runny sour cream and separated butter with a sprinkling of chives and a dish of limp, overcooked asparagus blushed as the sides. A piece of soggy Texas toast drooped like a piece of wilted spinach.
David’s salad was a separated wedge of iceberg lettuce, two cherry tomatoes, three slices of unpeeled cucumber and a slathering of French dressing. His four-ounce steak could have been made into a tiny saddlebag.
Tommy strode over and leered at us after surveying our plates. “Enjoy!” he chirped.
David looked at me in dismay. “What the hell?” He turned to me as if I had a plan to get us out of this dilemma. Neither of us had picked up a fork. My stomach grumbled as if to ask, “What have you gotten us into now, you cretin?” David snapped a photo of the plates with his phone.
I’d been in enough of these awkward situations in the Bay Area that I immediately pulled out Plan B, the answer when Plan A, eating a decent meal, failed. I snuck my hand into my pants pocket, ran my thumb over the face of my phone, and pressed the upper corners around the edges. My ring tone erupted loudly.
I made a show of pulling the phone from my pants and answering. I guess I did a good enough job of looking alarmed—even David looked concerned. Melissa, who’d been talking to a couple at another table, came running.
“Sorry, Melissa. There seems to be a problem at the restaurant. That was my security system.”
David turned to her and asked, “Can we get to-go boxes?”
Melissa hustled around getting us fixed up as David started to ask me what happened. I waved him off, and after laying enough twenties on the table, we escaped.
Outside as we hustled across the street toward the Silver Star, David turned to me, but I waved him on.
“Hurry up! We gotta go.”
“Okay, okay.” He was huffing and puffing next to me.
When we got to the old sheriff’s office, we hustled in.
“Oh my God. What happened?” David puffed.
“I thought you wanted to leave,” I answered.
“You lied?”
“Yeah. So? Now we got to get those containers into the trash and see if there’s anything edible in the kitchen.”
David had stopped and was facing me when I turned. I grabbed his hand and tugged, leading him through the restaurant, stopping long enough to dispose of our to-go boxes in the trash. Then we ran up the back stairs into my apartment kitchen, where no one could see us through the street-side windows.
I pulled him into a kiss, and my world finally reset.
I’d been a few beats off since I’d left him in the city, and now I was back on track, in step with the rest of the world. With happy tears falling from my soul, we made it to the new bed, the new lube, the new condoms, and a new bliss.
10
I WOKE feeling like Sleeping Beauty, awake as I hadn’t been in years. My arms were around David, and all was right with the world. He was curled around me, one leg between mine.
My stomach grumbled and I had to piss. I’d never been happier.
I’d stocked up on ingredients for a stuffed omelet, thick-cut bacon, and Southern cast iron pan biscuits in the hopes I’d persuade him to spend the night sometime this week. Not only had I gotten lucky last night, I’d fucking fucked the man. Not only was I in synch with the world, karma had finally fallen my way.
David woke with a purr, a stretch, and a sigh.
“Damn, I feel good,” he whispered in my ear. “How about you? Regrets?”
“Fuck no!”
He sighed and purred again, then ran his hand over my scar. His hand stilled.
“I’ve always felt so guilty. You were almost killed,” he whispered as his fingers skimmed over the scar.
“What? Guilty? Why? It wasn’t your fault.” He felt guilty? Shit, no. “Besides, it was only a few cuts. Nothing lethal.”
