by E. F. Mulder
“If I could magically grow four inches and lose thirty pounds, we could be twins.” Gideon often cracked jokes when nervous.
They could have been siblings, maybe, the high school jock everyone liked and his weird, nerdy brother who sometimes embarrassed him. They would have had some turbulent years as teens, Gideon remembered thinking, if one got into a lot of trouble like he had, and one was always a good boy. As adults, they’d be closer than ever, though. No one could tear brothers apart. That was how he always imagined it.
“My brother and I don’t really look like each other,” he’d ended up saying, with his eyes fixed down on his own shoes. “I look like my dad. My brother looks like my mom.”
Neither the cop nor the “victim” had really cared about any that.
“Both parents must be real proud of what you’ve become,” one of them had said.
With no money to pay the fine, Gideon had been left with no choice but to serve out his sentence. Short as it might have been—though celebrities were getting less time for more serious crimes just about then—he’d decided to only buy shoes from that day forward, mostly at Saving Soles, the secondhand shoe section at the local Goodwill. He hadn’t purchased any new footwear for a while, though, not until he went after the pair on BuyBay.
This handsome stranger’s, his were at least a size twelve, Gideon figured. They were dressy, shiny, and black, not the type of footwear one was used to seeing in an establishment with a whip on the wall, chains and dog collars hanging on the front of the bathroom doors—blue for men, pink for women—and ménage a trois handcuffs attached to the bar rail. A taxidermy bear stood in one corner at Elvis’s Sing-Along Bar, a gumball machine in another. A pink Christmas tree lit up the third, and a piano took up the fourth, nearly blocking the door to the storage room. There was no rhyme nor reason to the style, no particular ambiance. The color scheme was purple, red, orange, yellow, blue, and black, and because it was Christmas, every other color in a box of sixty-four crayons was represented in lights, tinsel, or some other gaudy holiday doodad. It was kind of a mismatched mess.
“I’m Brett,” he said, offering his hand to the tall, upscale newcomer. “What can I get you?”
“Rudy. Nice to meet you. And beer in a bottle’s good.”
Every blinking, flashing, phasing, steady light in the place reflected off Rudy’s glasses and made the green eyes behind them dance. His thin, scruffy beard was sexy, and his curly hair was close to golden. Reminiscent of a halo, it was almost shiny under the tacky, overdone Christmas wattage. A few light-colored wisps also peeked through the top of his ecru dress shirt where two buttons were undone. Gideon got to wondering how much more fur the guy might have lower down, like on his toes, maybe, and what color it was.
“You the Elvis people sing with?” Rudy asked him.
“Ecru?”
“Excuse me?” Rudy smiled—this man who Gideon was making a fool of himself in front of.
“Your shirt…the color…Ecru…I suddenly can’t remember if that’s a real word and if it is, if it’s off-white.”
Brett rolled his eyes as he set down Rudy’s beer. “Smooth.”
“Oh.” Rudy touched his cuff. “I…guess.”
“Cool. Yeah. I’m…I’m Elvis. What tipped you off, the green sequin jumpsuit, the wig with fake side burns, or the paunch? The last guy was movie star Elvis. I’m the pudgy version.”
“You’re not.”
“I don’t own the place. I just…work here. The owner…his name really is Elvis. Was. I think he’s dead, but that’s how we get away with not being sued for copyright infringement or something.”
“Ah.”
There were only five other people in the bar. It was kind of early. The place didn’t usually start hopping until at least nine. Gideon was hoping Brett might jump in, maybe draw some more information out of Rudy, like whether he slept with socks on. It seemed unlikely, because Brett just stood there, and that wasn’t the kind of thing that usually came up in conversation anyway.
“You, uh, sing?” Gideon asked.
“Some,” Rudy said. “Is it all Elvis?”
“Nah. I mean, I’m stuck in the costume, but we can sing anything you want. Or I can just play and you can sing.”
“Giddy-Up can play almost anything by ear. It’s amazing. You bring up a tune on your phone he’s never heard of, within a minute, he can pick it right up.”
“Giddy-Up?” Rudy asked.
“Something some people call me.”
Brett had come up with the nickname pretty quickly, and all on his own. He was almost old enough to be Gideon’s father. Almost.
“My birth certificate says Gideon.” He wiped his palm on his sequins before putting it out for Rudy. “And there are no rules, really. This isn’t school or church.” He nodded toward the upright. “We got the piano…or I can bring out my guitar. It’s all pretty chill. You can even kick your shoes off, if you want.”
Brett offered a sideways glance.
“I doubt it will come to that,” Rudy said, “but get enough beers in me, you never know.”
“Bring him another one, Brett—on me.”
“I assume there’s a songbook…?” Rudy asked, hopping down from his stool.
“There is.” Brett handed over the laminated collection of sheet music they kept behind the bar.
“‘Blue Christmas…’” It was currently page two. “One of my favorites.”
“Depressing as hell, but fun to sing.” Gideon led the way to the piano. “Want to give it a go?”
“I’m game.”
Gideon sat and played the intro. Rudy started to sing. A nice, rich baritone, half a measure in, he quit. “What?” Gideon asked.
“You, uh, weren’t singing. Wasn’t this supposed to be a duet?”
“Oh. You didn’t specify. I try not to step on people’s shoes, so to speak.” Gideon cringed. “Toes…step on…people’s toes.”
“I definitely need backup. I haven’t sung for a while.”
“No?”
Rudy tugged at his ecru collar. “Just in the car and the shower. I’m not even sure I can do it anymore.”
“Would it help if we were naked and wet?”
Rudy’s chin nearly landed on the keys.
“Joke. Sorry.”
“No. It was…funny.”
“Yeah.” Gideon’s sequins made noise when he squirmed. “I could tell by your raucous laughter, there. So…in a while, you said. You haven’t sung in a while. Why’s that?”
“I used to. All the time…in school and at home. Then I was told singing isn’t…you know…manly.”
“Shit. Tell Springsteen that…Blake Shelton…Elvis was pretty macho.”
“You’re right.” Rudy sat up a little straighter.
“I’ve always thought part of being a man is doing whatever the hell you want,” Gideon said.
“Right again.”
“Or a woman…an adult…as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else…or break any laws.”
“Sure. You’re a wise man, Elvis. I should have come in here sooner.”
“I thought we were going to have some music,” Brett said loudly from the bar.
“Hit it again, Gideon.”
Over the next hour or so, the regulars all trickled in to gather beside the old Steinway. Sometimes they sang along, and sometimes they just listened, as Gideon and Rudy harmonized their way from the front of the songbook to the back, from Elvis to Bing Crosby, Burl Ives to Rosemary Clooney. The second to last song in the binder was “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
“I like this one.” Rudy licked his lips.
“You need a drink?”
“Maybe.”
Gideon nodded at Brett and held up two fingers.
“You’re not going to put anything in it, are you?” Rudy’s head tilt was cute.
“Because of the line in the song, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Nah. I’m hoping my company is intoxicating enough.”
Gideon tried the cute head tilt himself.
“Your neck getting sore?”
“Nah.” Epic fail. “I’m good.”
Brett brought their beers over. “Excuse me.” Only when he had to reach past some regulars—Michelle, Rex, Andrew, Denise, Eileen, Corrine, and Stefan—did Gideon remember he and Rudy weren’t alone.
“Gideon used to look at me like that when he sang,” Eileen said, giving her snow-white hair a seductive flip, squinting sexily, which enhanced the deep creases around both eyes.
“You want my seat?” Rudy stood.
“No!” Gideon startled the poor guy. “No,” he said more softly. “She’s happy where she is, right, Eileen?”
“I haven’t been happy since 2009, but I’ll pass. You two sing it.”
The sultry rhythm Gideon chose had the piano bench creaking like an old set of box springs during some intimate grinding and writhing. Rudy slurred “it’s” and “cold” into one word every time he sang it. Either he was feeling the two beers he’d had, or else he was feeling the spirit of the lyrics. He put his head on Gideon’s shoulder—just kept it there—for the last thirteen measures, forty-some notes and a bunch of rests. Snuggled in as if it really was cold, his vibrato against Gideon’s neck brought shivers like a bitter Oregon wind he recalled from childhood. Rudy’s breath was warm, though, and each one tickled, not just where they landed, but deep in Gideon’s gut.
The last long F and A notes blended into a perfect cloud of sound in the air. Rudy lifted his head once he’d rested. Gideon turned to him once he’d finished at the keys. He could smell Rudy’s no doubt pricy cologne and was close enough to see every separate blond whisker and gold flecks in Rudy’s green eyes. “That was good,” Gideon muttered. “I feel like I might need a cigarette.”
Then applause rang out from the appreciative audience. They hooted and hollered like the riffraff they were. Even at the Kennedy Center or Carnegie Hall, they’d offer wolf whistles and dog barks at the end of Mendelson or “Madame Butterfly,” Gideon figured—Tina, Jacob, Andrew, Brigitte, and Dot were there now, too, right at the piano, which had never been so crowded. All ages, all shapes and sizes, different ethnicities, personalities, socioeconomic backgrounds, they all had one thing in common, the bar.
“Keep going!” Brigette yelled.
Rudy shrugged. “I’m game if you are.”
Gideon nodded with a smile, then started “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
“I love this song,” Brigitte said.
Rudy, apparently, did not. Eighteen beats in, his hand came down on top of one of Gideon’s, causing a dissonant mash of seven notes.
“Not that one.”
Gideon turned to face him. “No?”
“Nah.”
“Okay. There’s a problem, though.”
“What’s that?” Rudy’s hand still rested on Gideon’s.
“I think we’ve exhausted the collection.”
“Oh.” Rudy chewed the inside of his cheek. “That kind of sucks.”
It kind of did. Gideon was enjoying the way Rudy came closer during anything schmaltzy and mellow. The up-tempo songs were pretty awesome, too, because they made Rudy tap his foot, the right one, which caused his laces to bounce and his heel bone to flex. When the cuff of his dressy trousers danced along, some sock even showed, a black one, with little green Christmas trees embroidered onto it. Rudy had the spirit, and also a bit of whimsy. That was right up Gideon’s alley.
“No. Don’t stop.” Denise exaggerated her frown. Her arm was linked with Eileen’s. The mother and daughter duo had been rocking slowly to the quieter tunes and rocking out to the fast ones. Stomping and clapping all through “Run, Run, Rudolph,” they’d shimmied so enthusiastically in their low cut silky tops they’d almost shimmied right out of them.
“There’s a million fucking Christmas songs!” Eileen hollered. “Surely you haven’t played them all.”
They were quite the bawdy pair. Like something out of Days of Our Lives, they’d even been married to the same guy—not at the same time, thankfully, but years apart. Somehow, they’d managed to maintain a relationship with each other through all that. Gideon figured the family bond could withstand just about anything.
“One more song! One more song!” Rex started the demonstration. He was quiet most of the time. With the look of an accountant on the surface, under his button-upped façade, he was ripped and covered with tattoos. In actuality, he was a veterinarian, who Gideon used to call almost daily.
“My goldfish is swimming a little slow today.”
“Priscilla won’t come to the side of the bowl.”
“Is she too orange?”
Rex never charged Gideon a penny, even before becoming one of the gang at Elvis’s Sing-along Bar.
The rest of them joined in the chant, which quickly grew louder and louder.
“We ran out.” Gideon tried to yell over it.
“Do ‘Christmas Kiss’ again,” Tina shouted, and suddenly the proverbial pin would have sounded like an anvil had someone dropped one. Tina, the only waitress in the place, was normally more timid than Rex looked. She never spoke loudly, and rarely talked at all.
“I think we have to,” Rudy said.
Gideon had expected him to skip over that one earlier. Back before the head on the shoulder move during “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” it had seemed a bit intimate for two guys sharing a piano bench, side by side, ass cheek to ass cheek. Sure, Gideon’s first thought had been “I could fuck this guy.” Well, that was his second thought, after the shoe thing, but even though the attraction had been instant, any indication Rudy might be into dudes took a while to show—if nuzzling into Gideon’s neck could be taken as that.
“Alright.” Gideon put up his hands to quiet the murmuring rabble. “We’ll sing it again.”
A couple lines in, Gideon dropped out. He just played, and this time Rudy didn’t object. He looked right at Gideon, singing the hell out of the flirty ballad, whispering the word “kiss” every time he got to it, exhaling in the direction of Gideon’s ear. Rex took Tina’s hand. Aww. Who knew? They’d be a great couple, Gideon thought.
At the end, Denise—damn her—started tapping her glass with a twizzle stick. It didn’t take long for the others to join her, pinging barware with anything they could get their hands on.
Gideon felt himself blushing. “Knock it off,” he said.
Rudy sat there grinning a moment, and then leaned in. “You want to?”
“Kiss? I…I hadn’t thought about…kissing.”
“What have you been thinking about?”
“Your shoes.”
Rudy furrowed his well-groomed brows. “My shoes?”
“Less talking, more kissing!” Michelle was usually the singer. She looked like a young operatic diva, and had the pipes, too.
“Getting them off of you.” Her words barely registered with Gideon, he was so focused on Rudy.
“Just my shoes?”
With Rudy’s lips almost on his, Gideon suddenly shied away. He was only bold in his mind. “No. Yes. I don’t…” He picked up the binder from the music rack and stood. Rudy grabbed for the sheet of paper that fell out.
“Don’t go. We haven’t done this one.”
“That’s not a song.” Gideon snatched it back.
“It’s got notes and words.”
“Sounds like a song to me.” Jacob was the youngest member of the Elvis Sing-Along crew. He was a freckled redhead, barely even legal, and looked like he wasn’t, partially because of his lack of height, but especially when smirking like Dennis the Menace.
“It’s not finished.” Gideon held it to his chest.
“Oh,” Jacob said. “It’s the song.”
Rudy looked to Gideon for explanation.
“Just something I’m…messing around with.”
“You write songs?” Rudy asked.
“Start them is more like it.”
“Can I see?” Rudy’s expression made it hard to tell h
im no.
“I’ll show you the song if I can try on your shoes.” Gideon didn’t say that, but he wanted to. He closed his eyes and dug deep for his outgoing Elvis persona. “I guess. I’m not that good.”
“I bet you are. I can tell…just by how you play.” Rudy had to tug pretty hard to release Gideon’s grip. “‘Walking with You.’”
“Yeah.” Gideon took it back. “It’s kind of sad. I keep waiting for inspiration to get to the happy ending part, but…” He scooched past Rudy and around to the front of the piano. “Disperse,” he said to his audience. “Ten minute intermission. I need a smoke break.”
It was only after rushing out the door that Gideon remembered he’d quit smoking right about the same time he’d gone to jail for four days just out of high school. Fortunately, he had other oral vices. He was on to his thumbnail, chewing it down to skin when Rudy came out.
“Goodnight, Elvis.” Rudy waited for Gideon to look at him. His eyes were even greener in the bright glow of the streetlight. His shoes were shinier, his hair more golden, his teeth whiter when he smiled. Yes. He smiled. “The…uh…music…the holiday…It all has such an effect on me. I’m sorry if maybe I got a little carried away.”
“Rudy…”
He turned back. “Yeah, Gideon?”
“There’s still two weeks ‘til Christmas, and, what…a couple billion songs in the world?”
“So there are. Maybe I’ll be back.” Rudy took a step.
“Wait!”
Guys like Rudy showed up at Elvis’s Vegas Sing-Along Bar for one thing only—and it wasn’t to sing. If Gideon wanted to bag him, he had to get a grip. He could keep their one-night secret from the societal elite if that was a condition, and he certainly wouldn’t try to steal Rudy’s shoes. The socks maybe, but not the shoes. “Didn’t you come in with a jacket?”
“Oh, yeah.” Rudy touched Gideon’s arm again, like he’d done a dozen times singing beside him. “You’re a lifesaver.” He looked down, his fingertips still against Gideon’s flesh. “Maybe I can stay a while lo—” Rudy’s phone buzzed. He checked it. “Shit.” One swipe had changed his mood.
“Problem?”
Rudy gave his screen the bird, poking it with the middle finger. “BuyBay bullshit. I won an item, and now the yahoo I was bidding against claims it should have been his. According to the website’s legal team, he’s threatening to file a complaint.”
