by Alexa Land
He managed to hold it in, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he said, “You look like the Grinch’s dog Max, when the antler is tied to his head. What happened?”
“I climbed under my Christmas tree to check if the lights were plugged in, and my hair got tangled on a pitch-laden branch. It was all downhill from there.”
“I see. Well, don’t feel bad. It could happen to anyone.” That was far from true, but I appreciated the fact that he was trying to make me feel like less of a blithering idiot.
He put down the plastic jug, fished around in his tote, and produced a large pump bottle of hand sanitizer. He squirted some onto my palms, and while I rubbed them together over the sink, he dispensed some onto his fingers and tried to apply it to the branch. I murmured, “You’re a genius,” as the pitch began to come off. When I washed my hands a minute later, they came out clean.
Beck just shrugged. “The credit goes to the random person on the internet who first thought to try this and then shared it with the rest of us. It’s not working very well on your hair though, and the prevailing wisdom seems to be that oil is the best way to go for that. I brought olive oil with me and I’ll try to be careful, but it might get on your clothes and probably won’t wash out.”
“No worries there. This is just grubby around the house stuff anyway.”
He found a towel to drape over my shoulders and had me lean over the sink, and then he poured a generous amount of oil onto the sticky tangle. He gave the branch an experimental tug, and then he wrapped my hair and the pine frond in the towel and said, “This needs to sit for twenty minutes, and then we should be able to comb it out. Fingers crossed.”
“Alright. Let’s move into the kitchen, so you have a place to sit while I marinate.”
He picked up his supplies and followed me out of the bathroom and down the hall. But he came to a stop on the way past the living room and murmured, “Uh oh.”
“That about sums it up.”
“We should probably fix that before the whole thing topples.”
With both of us wrestling it, we got the tree straight in about three minutes. When we stepped back and admired our handiwork, I said, “I’d offer to hire you to follow me around and fix everything as I mess it up, but I know you already have your hands full with the ranch. Speaking of which, has Gianni’s family started to arrive yet?”
“Just Dante. He got here early this morning to make sure everything was ready for the rest of the Dombruso clan. Everyone else should start arriving in an hour or two.”
Conveniently for us, most of Gianni’s enormous Sicilian-American family had decided to spend Christmas at Dante’s newest business venture. I wasn’t sure about the ranch’s long-term viability, though. It had been open (and failing miserably) for about three years, and Dante hoped to turn it around by throwing buckets of cash at it. But it was still empty most of the time.
On the plus side, it had become a home away from home for the Dombrusos. I’d felt guilty about taking Gianni away from his family when we went sailing around the world, so our proximity to the ranch was nice. We’d also been flying to San Francisco regularly to visit them, which was a short jaunt from southern California.
My son lived in San Francisco too, but he was a busy person, so our visits had been pretty infrequent since I’d returned to the west coast. That was one of the reasons I was really looking forward to Christmas this year. Christian and I hadn’t spent more than a few hours together in a very long time.
When we reached the kitchen, I offered Beck a beer and popped the lid for him while he settled onto one of the barstools at the marble island. A moment later, we both jumped at the sound of glass shattering. Beck started to get up to take a look at what happened, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t bother. You know as well as I do what we’ll find when we return to the living room.”
“I’m so sorry. I was sure we locked the tree stand in place.”
“Oh, it’s definitely not your fault, mate. That tree was doomed from the start. The good news is, I wasn’t a fan of those ornaments anyway, so the fact that they’re now shattered all over the floor isn’t a huge loss.”
“I’ll clean it up.”
“That’s not your responsibility. I’ll tell you what would help, though. Do you know the owner of that new Christmas shop in town?”
“I know just about everybody. That place is run by the woman who owns the kite store next door to it.”
“Could you call and ask her to pack up every red ornament she has in stock? I’ll message Gianni and ask him to pick them up when he’s finished with his writers’ group. Hopefully he’ll be able to carry them on his Vespa.”
Beck pulled his phone from his pocket and did as I asked, and when he disconnected the call, he said, “I’ll run into town with a golf cart and pick those up for you after we get your hair situation resolved. It might be too much to carry on a scooter.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry to be taking up so much of your Sunday like this. I’m sure you must be busy with the ranch. And Santa’s workshop.”
I grinned a little, and Beck’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at me. “I’m dressed like this because there was a kids’ event in town this morning. We offered pictures with Santa and a chance for the little ones to shop in a special store for their parents, where everything was free of charge.”
“You’re a good man, Beck.”
His smile widened. “I just like helping people.”
“Let me know next time something like that’s going on, will you?”
“Sure, but I thought you wanted to keep the fact that you were living here hush hush, so the paparazzi doesn’t track you down.”
“I do, but I can make an anonymous donation.”
“That’d be great.”
He started to say something else, but seemed to think better of it. As he took a sip from his beer bottle, I said, “You can ask me anything, Beck.”
“I was wondering if you were happy here, on Catalina. It’s just that you spend all your time either in this house or at the ranch, and it seems like you’d get bored, or go stir crazy, or both.”
“I’m used to being a hermit. For more than a decade, I didn’t leave my house in Marin County. That was mostly because my bipolar disorder was out of control and I’d developed agoraphobia, so I let myself become a shut-in. That’s actually how I met Gianni, by the way. He and my son are friends, and when Christian couldn’t come and take care of me, he hired Gianni to do it.”
I got myself a bottle of water and continued, “Compared to how I was back then, I’m actually doing great now. For one thing, I’ve got a handle on my mental health issues, thanks to the right doctors and medications. But even if I could go into town without being mobbed, I’m not sure I’d want to. I still feel best when I’m at home, either with just Gianni or with a very small number of people.”
Beck mulled that over before asking, “How did you stand being a pop star? At the peak of your career, you were selling out stadiums and performing for tens of thousands of people at a time.”
“I’m a different man when I’m onstage. Since I started performing when I was six years old, it feels quite natural to me.” I took a drink before adding, “Touring was something else entirely, though. I’m sure you heard about my very public breakdown before I disappeared from the public eye. Or maybe you’re too young to remember. Anyway, it really got to be too much, traveling from city to city for months on end and giving it my all onstage every night. I became exhausted, mentally and physically. My doctor’s solution was to give me loads of pills. There were some to wake me up, others to knock me out, and all sorts of things in between. Part of locking myself away from the public was to give myself a chance to detox from all of that. At first, my home was my safe place. Later, it became my prison. I went from not wanting to leave to not being able to.”
Beck asked, “How’d you turn it around?”
“I fell madly in lov
e with a gorgeous man named Gianni Dombruso. And I realized if I was going to have a shot in hell of making him mine, I had to get out of that fucking house and fix myself. That last part is still a work in progress.”
“Do you think you’ll ever go back to performing? As a career, I mean. I know you’ve done a few charity concerts in the last two or three years.”
“No chance. I still write and record songs, but that’s just a hobby now, a way to keep busy. I’ve toyed with the idea of releasing an album for the fans who’ve stuck with me all this time. But then there’d be the expectation of touring, and I just don’t have it in me.”
“Thanks for being so candid,” he said. “I have to admit, I find the whole fame thing fascinating, especially what public figures have to go through to maintain a semblance of privacy. It makes me wonder why anyone would ever choose a career that put them in the spotlight. But you obviously didn’t choose it at age six, your parents did.”
“My mum, specifically. My old man was never in the picture, at least not until the money started rolling in and he decided he was entitled to a piece of it.” I waved my hand as if to erase what I’d just said and told Beck, “But never mind that. I’m just a bit maudlin today. I suppose it’s the holidays. They tend to stir up a lot of emotions, don’t they?”
A shadow passed over Beck’s features. Since he always came across as positive and upbeat, it surprised me. But then I chided myself for the assumption that people who presented themselves as happy were that way all the time. He said softly, “Christmas always makes me miss my family.”
“I’m sorry, lad. Are they no longer with us?”
“Actually, they’re alive and well, but they want nothing to do with me. Aside from my Uncle Ren, that is. I made some big mistakes in my early twenties, but he stuck with me. The same can’t be said for my parents, or the rest of my relatives.” He smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I know you didn’t really want to hear about any of that.”
“Sure I did. We’re friends, aren’t we? Plus, I just made you sit through several minutes of the Zan Tillane show. An unfortunate side effect of fame and doing loads of interviews is that we get used to rambling on about ourselves.”
Beck said, “You have a fascinating life story, though. I’m surprised you haven’t written a book about it.”
“Gianni’s the writer, not me. Besides, the public aspects of my life are already well-documented, and the private bits, like my relationship with my boyfriend, are no one’s business.”
“You’re absolutely right. I do have a nosy question for you, though.”
“Go ahead and ask.”
“You obviously adore Gianni, and vice versa,” he said. “So why haven’t you two gotten married?”
“We talked about it a long time ago and agreed that the love we share and the commitment we’ve made to one another doesn’t require sanctioning by any sort of institution. I’ve been married before, more than once actually, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.” I considered that for a moment, then added, “Maybe that sounds jaded, and I suppose I am. But I don’t think it would add anything to our relationship. I’m deeply in love and fully committed to Gianni. I’ve also taken steps to ensure he’ll be set for life financially, since let’s face it, he’ll probably outlive me by decades, given our age difference and all the shite I’ve done to myself over the years.” A lump rose in my throat, and I turned my gaze to the view beyond the wall of windows.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said gently. “I’m a naturally curious person, and that means I tend to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s a question we get all the time, and usually I answer it with: fuck convention! I guess I’m not feeling particularly brash right now, though.”
“It’s nice that you and your boyfriend are on the same page,” he said. “I guess I just grew up with a different perspective on marriage. I was part of a big Catholic family and watched so many of my straight relatives get married when I was a kid. It made me want what they had.” That actually reminded me of Gianni’s family.
I told him, “Don’t let anything I say influence you. If you want to get married, you should do it! Do you have a boyfriend?”
He took a while to answer, as if he was considering the question. Finally he said, “No, I don’t, and marriage will never be in the cards for me.”
“Aren’t you a bit young to be saying never, mate?”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m the oldest twenty-six-year-old you’ll ever meet.” Beck slid off the barstool and changed the subject with, “Let’s see if the oil’s doing anything.”
I took off the towel, and Beck gave the branch an experimental jiggle before producing a wide-toothed comb from his bag. He spent the next several minutes meticulously working my hair free. It was a relief when he placed the branch on the counter. He kept combing out the pitch until it was all gone, and then he said, “You should go and shampoo your hair to remove all that olive oil.”
“Alright. I won’t be long. Can you stick around?”
“Sure thing.”
I went up to the master bathroom and shampooed my hair four times, and when I came back downstairs maybe fifteen minutes later, I found him sweeping up the broken ornaments around the face-planted tree in the living room. “You didn’t have to do that,” I told him.
He tilted the dustpan he was holding, and a mass of spiky shards slid into a lined trash bin. “I just couldn’t leave it. I think I got all of them, including the ones that were directly under the tree. I was afraid to try standing it up again, though.”
I walked over to him and peered into the bin, where several hundred dollars’ worth of Italian blown glass had been reduced to shrapnel. Then I said, “I know I’ve already asked a great deal of you, but will you do me another favor?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Would you please cut my hair?”
“But we got all the sap out, didn’t we? If not, we can do another round with the oil.”
“It’s all out,” I said, “but I’ve had it with this much hair. Today was the last straw. It’s nothing but a bother, and what am I trying to prove anyway? That I’m still twenty-two, or a pop star? Come on. I’m just some bloke who used to put out records, so hack it off and make me look like everyone else.”
“But you’re not everyone else. You’re Zan Tillane, and that means something!”
I grinned at Beck. “That’s a very kind thing to say.”
He chewed his lower lip for a moment, and then he said, “How about a compromise? We could trim it up without cutting it short. I can see how having hair to your elbows could be a pain, but if we cut it here,” he made a slicing motion at my shoulder, “and layer it a bit, it’ll look fresh and still retain the essence of what you’ve been doing up until now. Hopefully it’ll result in a lot less cutter’s remorse, too.”
“I can live with that.”
We moved back into the kitchen, and I sat on one of the barstools while Beck went to work with some clips and a pair of pointed scissors, which he’d brought with him. He shut his eyes and tensed up when he made the first cut and ten inches of hair cascaded to the floor. But after that, he was all business. Once he brought up the length, he added a few layers around my face, and then he pulled up the camera on his phone to show me the results. I peered at myself on the screen and murmured, “Well done, mate.”
“Really? You think it’s okay?”
“I think it’s damn good. Why didn’t you pursue a career as a barber? You clearly have a knack.”
“It was never really what I wanted. I tried out several different careers after high school, including that one. The good thing is, that left me with a pretty broad skill set. But none of them were right for me.” As he pocketed his phone, he said, “I’d better run into town for those ornaments, and then I should get back to Seahorse Ranch before the Dombrusos start rolling in.”
“Right. Hang on.” I fished a wad
of bills out of the pocket of my jeans and handed it to him. “I’m not sure how much the ornaments will be, but that should cover it.”
“I’m pretty sure you could buy the whole store for that.”
After Beck took off, I went into the third (or fourth?) of our bathrooms and studied my reflection. Then I dug around under the sink and produced a box that I’d kept hidden from Gianni. It had a smiling old geezer on the front, beneath the caption ‘Gray-Away Hair Color for Men’. I muttered, “Don’t do it, Alexzander. Don’t be one of those men. Just accept the fact that you’re getting older. Your thirty-three-year-old boyfriend already knows you’re middle-aged. It’s not as though he’ll forget, once the gray is gone.” I stared at the box for a few more moments, and then I tore it open.
*****
When Beck returned about half an hour later with a stack of boxes, he found me wearing a puffy, pink shower cap, with a bunch of dirt-colored goop on my hair and beard. I thought he’d comment on the dye, but instead he asked, “So…did you just happen to own that cap?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“I didn’t know you were planning to color your hair. You should have told me, and I could have helped with that, too.”
“It was a spontaneous decision. I’d bought this shite three or four months ago, then talked myself out of it. But today, with the new haircut and all, I thought I’d give it a whirl. It tastes bloody awful, though.” I dabbed the corner of my mouth with a fingertip and came away with a muddy dollop of goo. Then I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just stood there like an idiot with my finger raised.
“It probably wasn’t meant for facial hair. How long has it been on?”
“Twenty minutes maybe? I forgot to set a timer.”
“You should wash it off soon,” he said, as he went into the living room and put the boxes beside the toppled tree.
When he tried to hand me the change, I said, “Keep it.”
“This is a huge amount, Zan. You sent along far more than I needed.”
“It’s customary to tip barbers.”
