by A. E. Wasp
When Troy’s grinning face popped up through the neck hole in the t-shirt, Dmitri figured he hadn’t been very successful at keeping in the whimper. “Well,” Troy said. “How ‘bout one day I take you up for a drive, and if you like it, we can stay a spell?”
“That sounds great.”
Troy surreptitiously checked his watch, and Dmitri realized he had to let the man get to work. What type of goodbye should they have for a first date? Hug? Kiss? Handshake? Manly back pat? “I guess you have to go.”
“It is that time.” Troy stood up, shoved his hands in his back pockets, and studied the ground, and then he looked up at Dmitri. “I had fun. Thanks.”
“Thanks,” Dmitri repeated. “I mean. Me, too. I had fun.”
“So, uh, I told you I haven’t dated in a long time.”
“Never with a guy, if I recall correctly.”
Troy rolled his eyes, a blush staining his cheeks. “You remember correctly. So I’m not really sure what, uh, proper protocol is for ending the date.”
Dmitri stepped closer, hand reaching for Troy’s hip. “So, I’m your first,” he said, voice low.
Troy trapped Dmitri’s hand with his. “First date. Not first anything else. Let’s be clear.”
“Mmm hmm. Well, soldier. I can show you the protocol for this occasion.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He leaned in.
Troy tilted his head up, smiling.
Dmitri kissed him, his fingers curling over Troy’s hip.
As far as first kisses went, it was short, sweet, and the best thing Dmitri had felt in a long time. He pulled away, licking his lips, fingers hooked in Troy’s front pocket.
They stood there, smiling at each other like total fools.
“Well?” Dmitri asked.
Troy nodded, wiped his mouth with his hand. “I think I can get behind that.”
A big Cadillac that had to be forty years old if it was a day crunched over the gravel in the parking lot and both men backed up to avoid getting run over by the eponymous Vincent D’Amico.
Vincent rolled to a stop near them, and the power window slid down with a purr. Cold air flowed from the purple crushed velvet interior. “Hello, boys.”
“Hey, Vinny,” Dmitri greeted him.
Troy pulled away from Dmitri. “I’ll be in, in a minute, Mr. D.”
Vincent waved a hand at Troy. “Take your time. I think I can hold down the fort for a few minutes. As you were.” His smile took ten years off his face, despite the gray beard and fringe of white hair. He pulled the Caddy into his spot under the cottonwood tree.
Dmitri and Troy waited until he’d gone into the bar.
“I really have to go.”
“Yeah. So. We should do this again, right?”
Troy ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Dmitri wished he could run his hands through Troy’s hair. Soon, if today was any indication.
“I’ll call you,” Troy was saying when Dmitri brought his attention back to the present.
Well, that sounded a lot more tentative than that kiss had felt. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
“It’s fine. I just have to go to work. I’ll call you soon. I promise.”
“Okay.” Dmitri wasn’t sure what else to say. It wasn’t as if he could go back in for another kiss; that moment had passed. So, he just gave a little half wave as Troy walked slowly into the bar, hands in his pockets, head down.
What was that all about? Dmitri knew he wasn’t the best at reading people, but Troy was giving him emotional whiplash. He needed to talk to Angel and he really could use a drink but going into Vincent’s would be awkward. This was why he didn’t date. Sighing, he walked down the alley towards the coffee shop and his car.
chapter six
Troy kept his eyes on the floor when he walked into the bar, barely nodding to Vincent when he passed. He grabbed his apron, went to the employee bathroom, and shut the door firmly behind him.
The adrenaline drained out of Troy’s bloodstream, leaving him shaken and tired. He splashed some cold water on his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked fine, a little pale maybe, but nothing too bad. After all, Dmitri hadn’t run screaming into the night, so most of Troy’s freaking out must have been internal. Nobody had noticed.
As his heartbeat slowed and his breathing came down to normal, he told himself he was just overreacting. The doc had mentioned something about this kind of thing during his exit interview, but he’d been mind-numbingly bored by the end of the out-processing. Besides, he’d be okay; he was young, he was strong, nothing really bad had happened to him. He’d survived without major injury. He’d be fine. He’d just gotten out, a few more months adjusting back to civilian life and he’d be fine.
There was knock on the door and Vincent’s deep voice asked, “You okay, kid?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Be out in a second. Sorry.”
“No rush.”
Troy waited until Vincent’s footsteps moved down the hallway. Taking a deep breath, he wiped his face, tied his apron on, and went out to start his shift.
A heavy dragging sound caught his attention. The new barback was dragging a keg of one of the most popular IPAs from the backdoor to the cooler.
Troy grabbed the hand truck from behind the bar and jogged over to him. “Hey, Danny, you’re going to hurt yourself. Use this.” He swung the hand truck around, and together they loaded the keg.
“Thanks, man. I didn’t know we had that.” He pushed the keg towards the walk-in cooler.
“Why are you doing this instead of the guys from the truck?”
Danny struggled to roll the keg back off the truck, and Troy gave him a hand. “They did most of it, but one of the guys got an emergency call. His wife is in labor or something. So I told him not to worry, I got it.” He straightened up, wiping his forehead with his bar apron. “There’s another four kegs outside. I know you’re short on set up. I was just getting to that when the delivery came.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll do that. Can you handle the rest of the kegs yourself?” He eyed Danny’s string-bean shaped form.
“No problem.” Danny struck a pose, wiry muscles popping up under his white t-shirt. “I swear my biceps have grown in the week I’ve been here. I can’t keep the ladies away.”
Troy laughed. “I bet. Okay, finish up here. I can cut my own fruit this once.”
“You got it, boss.” Danny rolled the hand truck out of the cooler. Troy checked the levels of beer in the kegs hooked up to the draft systems. Looked good, nice and full for a Saturday night, but maybe not full enough for the Saturday before the Fourth of July. Red Deer could be a heavy drinking town, and a lot of the locals and college students had no problem with some day drinking on a nice summer weekend. He did a quick count of the most popular drafts. He should be fine. Vincent knew what he was doing.
Troy wasn’t wrong about the day drinking, and by six o’clock, business was already booming. And it wasn’t the only thing. Faint background thuds of distant fireworks snuck in under the music and chatter of the bar, keeping Troy on edge.
Danny danced around him, magically keeping the wells filled, the glasses clean and the ice flowing, all without getting in Troy’s way. The kid was going to go far.
“I got those,” Troy said, grabbing a stack of clean pint glasses from Danny’s hands. “Can you empty the bar bins?”
“On it.” Danny whirled away.
The icemaker kicked in with a high-pitched whine, and a firework exploded with a barrage of sound just outside the door. Troy dropped to the floor, heart pounding. The stack of glasses shattered and rolled away. The chattering voices nearest the bar stopped for a second and then continued.
Troy crouched behind the bar. Logically, he knew he could get up, knew the building wasn’t going to explode in a deadly rain of metal and wood shrapnel. In his head, however, he heard the harsh, insistent screaming of the siren and the big voice booming across the base. Incoming, incoming, inco
ming. He screwed his eyes shut.
Someone crouched down next to Troy. “Hey, Troy. You’re okay, son.” The calm voice carried under the mutterings of the crowd and the music. “Troy. It’s all right. You’re at the bar, okay? It’s Vincent. I’m here with you. It’s okay. Just breathe. In and out. In and out.”
Troy did, following the rhythm of Vincent’s voice.
“Good. You’re doing great. Now tell me what you can see. Right now, what are you seeing?”
Troy pried his eyes open. Intricately tooled turquoise cowboy boots that could belong only to Vincent filled his field of view. “I…I see boots. Your blue boots.” The shakiness of his voice surprised him, and he realized he was trembling. He drew in a deep breath.
“Good, good. Okay, Troy. What do you hear? Can you hear the music? Do you know the song?”
Troy concentrated. The sounds of somewhere he’d thought he’d left far behind him started to fade and be replaced by the sounds of a busy bar. He could hear two older-sounding guys arguing over something. He heard the scuffling of feet as Danny shifted behind him. And he heard the song. Yeah, he knew it. Everyone knew that song. “American Pie. It’s American Pie.”
“That’s right. A classic. Okay. What d’you say we get up now? My old knees can’t take this much longer.”
“Yeah, okay.” He wanted to get up, really, he did, but humiliation kept him crouched behind the bar.
“Is it alright if I give you a hand up? And don’t worry. No one is paying us the least bit of attention. I told Larry that Fran called Lady Gaga a no-talent Madonna wannabe. That should keep them busy for a while.”
Troy chuckled. “I didn’t know you knew who either of them was.” He reached a hand up to the bar and pulled himself upright, shaking off Vincent’s offered hand. He ran his hands through his hair, exhaling harshly. He couldn’t make eye contact with Vincent. He’d probably get fired now. His housing allowance would keep a roof over his head, but he needed a little more to get by. And he loved this job; he’d be devastated to have to leave.
“You look like you could use a drink.” Vincent pulled two bottles of Troy’s favorite local beer out of the well and nodded towards the back door. “Let’s go get some fresh air.”
Troy followed Vincent over to his truck. He ran his hand along the warm metal. The truck was his only connection to the person he had been before. He’d gotten it in high school, saved up every penny, worked some of the price off in trade, doing some handyman work at Mr. Delvechio’s house. It hadn’t been new then, but newer than most. This century at least. She’d been garaged the whole time he’d been deployed, much to his little brother’s displeasure.
With a pat on the top of the cap, he dropped the tailgate so they could sit. The shocks groaned with their combined weight, the truck bouncing a little.
“Nice truck,” Vincent said, looking inside. “Got her set up for camping?”
“Yeah.”
Vincent popped the top off a beer and handed it to Troy, clinking the necks of the bottles together in a toast. “To the end of all wars.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They did, enjoying the colors and breeze of the sunset.
“I was in Vietnam, you know. Two tours, back to back.”
“I didn’t know that. You don’t look old enough.”
“Well, thank you kindly for that. But I was just a baby when I got drafted. We all were. I was just eighteen when they shipped me over.”
“I was nineteen, almost twenty.”
Vincent shook his head. “Old men sending kids off to kill and die. Just doesn’t seem fair.” He groaned, shifting his weight and scratching through the white beard on his face. It made him look a little like Santa Claus. “Theirs is not to reason why…”
“Theirs is but to do and die,” Troy finished.
“Tennyson wrote that in 1854. The more things change…”
Troy nodded and finished his beer. He let it dangle from his fingers, swinging between his knees. “So am I fired?”
“What?” Vincent actually looked insulted. “Son, I know you’re kind of new around here, but do you really think I’d fire someone for having to deal with leftover crap from a shit war?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I won’t. You’re new out, right?”
“Yeah, a couple of months.”
“Do you have anyone to talk to here? A counselor, veteran’s groups, anything?”
Troy shook his head. He hadn’t been able to plan further than one step at a time since he got out. He did one thing, and then the next, not even daydreaming about the future. Just plodded along, mind blank between steps. They only thing he’d looked forward to lately was his date with Dmitri. And look how that had turned out. “No sir. But I’m fine. I’ll be over it soon, I promise.”
Vincent looked skeptical..
“Really. It’s no big deal.”
“It wouldn’t hurt for you to talk to someone.” Vincent patted him hard on the knee. “Just give yourself some time. Fourth of July is hard for a lot of vets. Why don’t you take the next few days off? Take this truck of yours up into the mountains, get away from everything.”
It sounded like heaven. “But what about the bar? I hate leaving you short-handed.”
“We’ll be okay. You deserve some time off anyway. I know we’ve been working you a little hard. You’re just so damned good at it. But Holly’s been asking for some weekend nights, and this will give me a chance to test her out. I’ll put Angel on with her as a backup.”
“And Danny. The kid’s good. I like him.”
“Me, too. So, take off. Come back on the fifth.” Vincent slid off the tailgate with a groan. “You got any family or friends here? Besides us, obviously.” He smiled.
Troy smiled back. It had only been a short time, but he’d bonded strongly with the old man. He felt like a combination of Sargent and Uncle and Mentor. Vincent being both gay and a vet only added to Troy’s admiration of the man. “No. Just you guys.”
“We’re a motley crew, for sure. But we got your back. So, when you decide where you’re going, text me and let me know, okay? Text me a picture of this truck’s license plate, too. Just in case. If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to sic Rock Hudson on you.”
Troy laughed at the idea of Vincent’s old pug gathering enough energy to run across the room, let alone attack anyone. “It’s a deal.”
“Great. And when you get back, why don’t you come over to the house. Kevin and I would love to have you.”
“Okay. I will. That would be nice.”
With a hearty slap on the back, Vincent left. Troy rubbed his shoulder absently. Vincent was a toucher, probably the Italian in him. Troy had a bunch of Italian friends in West Virginia, and they were all like that. With a start, Troy realized that Vincent was the last man to touch him since he’d left home. He thought of Dmitri again and felt a flicker of something almost like hope. The date had been fun; they’d never run out of things to say, and Dmitri hadn’t been too scared off by Troy’s little freak-out. Vincent was right. Troy just needed a little time off, a little rest, and everything would be fine.
chapter seven
Dmitri spent the hour after he’d left Troy puttering around in the house, folding laundry, reorganizing his bookshelves, and pretending he wasn’t trying to figure out the stop and go signals he’d gotten from Troy. Eventually, he gave in and did what he’d wanted to do the second Troy had disappeared behind the bar door; he texted Angel.
The phone rang ten seconds after he’d sent the text. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes,” she’d said. And she had been, bringing two bottles of strawberry wine with her.
They’d sprawled out on the huge cabbage rose print couch his parents had left behind, and in between glasses of cheap too-sweet wine, Angel proceeded to lay out a thorough examination of his emotionally stunted personality and tragic sexual history, starting at the age of sixteen when the nineteen-year-old brother of one of his friends, home from co
llege over Thanksgiving break, had pushed him up against a wall, kissed him breathless, and jerked him off under the gray November skies.
“But he kissed you, right?” Angel repeated, referring to Troy, not the long-gone college boy, as if they hadn’t just gone over that a hundred times.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s good.” She swiped her finger over the screen of her phone and Kiss by Tom Jones streamed from his speakers.
Dmitri bopped his shoulders to the beat. “Then he said he would ‘call me.’”
Angel hung her head over the arm of the couch, hair trailing down the side. “How did he say it?”
“Like he wouldn’t call me.” Dmitri pushed up from the couch and stood unsteadily.
“Tragic,” Angel said, pulling her head up.
He picked up the wine bottle and shook it. “Empty.” How’d they finish two bottles already?
“Doubly tragic. Got anything else to drink?”
Dmitri shook his head. “Forgot to pick something up on the way home.”
“Thrown off by hot man love.” She nodded. “Understandable. Hooch hutch?”
“Hooch hutch.”
They both turned towards the imposing ornately carved wooden armoire commandeering a corner of the living room.
When Dmitri’s grandmother had downsized and moved to a two-bedroom condo in Florida, she’d left the farmhouse and most of the contents to his father. When Dmitri’s parents had moved up into the mountains, they’d passed the house and the infamous booze cabinet on to Dmitri.
Dmitri crossed the room and threw open the double doors with a flourish. Inside, liquor bottles of every shape and size imaginable filled all four shelves. The top shelf held the most special ones.
Over the years, the favorite bottles – the giant-headed angel, the trio of cowboys - had been emptied and refilled countless times with God only knew what kind of alcohol. You had to sniff, try to guess, and hope for the best. New bottles were occasionally added to the collection as an intrepid shopper familiar with the hooch hutch tradition spotted a novelty bottle with the right level of kitsch and snatched it up regardless of what kind of liquor might wait inside.
