St. Nacho's (12 page)

“I see,” I said, watching Jordan out of the corner of my eye.

“You know, Jordan told me about the accident that led to his imprisonment,” he said. “I understand you left shortly afterward.” His eyes seemed intense and penetrating. I had no idea what story he’d heard.

“I went to Hazelden for rehab,” I told him.

“Yes, he mentioned that. I wonder if you’d like to get together sometime and talk about the difference between moving on and running away?” He looked concerned, with just the right note of pastoral caring.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, thinking that he was someone I didn’t want to alienate if he was helping Jordan.

“You just let me know. Maybe we can slow down that rolling stone, huh?” I smiled. “Maybe.”

Jordan came up behind me. “Isn’t he great?” he gushed, looking at Stan. “Stan has been my rock, Coop. He helped me to see that we could get out from under the sin we’ve been living in and find our way to good things. I promised him I’d be faithful, and he promised he’d guide me once I got out. He helped me find this place.”

“I like to have my parishioners close by,” said Stan. “It helps me keep an eye on my little flock.” He had a wide white smile and uncomplicated brown eyes. I thought he probably cared about Jordan, and that was good enough for me.

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“I am so grateful to have this second chance,” said Jordan sincerely, and I put my hand on his arm to give it a squeeze. He smiled at me then, the same smile he used to give me when we were kids and found three dollars in change under the couch cushions to buy candy.

“I’m going to make lemonade,” I said, retreating to the kitchen. I wanted something to do. I was cutting lemons when the phone rang. “Hello?” I answered.

“Yay! You’re in, aren’t you?” My sister, Julie.

“Jules, how’s it going?”

“Better now that my brother’s got a place to live in town.” She paused. “Have you got any idea what you’re going to do?”

“You mean like a job?” I asked. The noise from the living room was filtering in and I found it hard to hear her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Dad hoped you’d work at the firm, I guess, if music didn’t work out.”

“I’m no accountant,” I told her. “I couldn’t be any more useless at anything than that. I thought I’d go see the manager at Mama Lina’s. I’ve waited tables and I’ve played for tips in a lot of Italian places.”

“You’re going to play for tips? You got into Juilliard, Cooper, surely that must mean…”

“I’ll go back to school as soon as I can, Jules, I’ve thought about it. But it takes time and cash I don’t have yet. In order to do anything with music I need a graduate degree.”

“Maybe you can teach violin,” she suggested.

“Maybe,” I said, but privately I didn’t think anyone in this small town would let me near their kids.

“You’ll look into it?”

“Yes, of course I will.” I scooped powdered sugar into a pitcher of water and added lemon juice and zest. “I’d planned to all along.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

“Cooper?” she asked quietly.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t do wrong, giving Jordie your number, did I?” She hesitated. “That was okay, right?”

I leaned my head against the wall, which felt cool and soothing against what was becoming a monster headache. “Sure, Jules, I needed to make this right. I’m glad you gave him my number.” How many lies would I have to tell, I wondered, before I believed them myself?

* * * * *

64 Z. A. Maxfield

The doorbell rang and as soon as I brought the pizza boxes in and paid, everyone fell on the food. Stan cleared his throat and said a nice long prayer, during which I thought I saw Jordan pinching off bits of his toppings and eating them. I smiled. Some things never changed. After I got my pizza, I poured everyone lemonade. We all sat around, eating and talking quietly together.

At the end of the evening, Jordie and I said good-bye to his friends. He closed the door behind Stan, who was the last to leave.

“Hey,” he said shyly.

“Hey.” I smiled. Crap, I was tired. I started to pick up paper plates, napkins, cups, and trash from the living room floor. Jordan leaned against the wall, watching me.

“This is weird, huh?”

“Yeah, a little. But it’s just us, Jordie, like always.” I tossed some things into the tiny plastic trash bin under the sink. “We’ll need a bigger trash bin for the kitchen, I think.”

“Have you ever lived in a place like this?” he asked.

“No,” I answered truthfully. “I’ve pretty much lived on the streets for the last three years.”

“Oh, Coop.” Jordan sat down on the couch.

I went to sit next to him. “I mostly roamed around, you know? I’d find places to play for tips, then go to cheap motels when I had enough cash. Otherwise, I slept in parks and camped on the beach. The last month or so I’ve been staying in a room above a bar.”

“A bar?” he asked. “Wasn’t that hard? All that booze?”

“No.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Anyway, they let me stay there in a studio apartment, and I helped in the kitchen and played for people during peak times in the restaurant. It was a good place.” I felt myself falling into the memories a little. Into the warmth that even now I felt when I thought of St.

Nacho’s.

“I see,” he said. “Did you live with your guy then?”

“No,” I said. “It was a studio; I lived alone.”

“So this is your first time living with someone?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Since I lived at home.”

He put his head on the back of the couch and chuckled. “I promise I won’t welcome you the way I got ‘welcomed’ in prison.”

“Jordie,” I breathed. It was as if I could feel my heart breaking.

“No, it’s nothing.” He shook his head. “Nothing I didn’t already do, right?”

“Jordan, I --”

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“Really,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “It’s all in the past, Cooper. You want the first shower?”

“No,” I said. “You go on.”

He hesitated. “I hope you won’t think… I want to ask you for a favor. I’m not used to being alone at night. I wondered if you’d come and sleep… I mean, just sleep, okay? In the bedroom with me.”

“Jordie,” I said, not knowing what the hell to do.

“I won’t be, like, you know… I won’t expect anything. I just want to be close. You know, a warm body. I wake up scared a lot.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. “Okay, I guess.”

Jordan’s face was transformed by a bright smile. “Thanks, Cooper. I love you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. He held his fist out for me and I punched it. “I know. I’m here for you, okay?”

“Yes.” He got up to take his shower. “I know, Coop.” I got up, moved my four boxes to the bedroom, and hung up my clothes with his. I worried then that we’d be living together in every way that counts as soon as he could find a way to rationalize it and convince me. I knew that I was basically weak and more than a little lonely.

Jordie was my best friend; he’d been my lover from the first second I’d realized I was gay. My lover, my best friend, and my “partner in crime.” I’d have been less than honest if I said we’d been exclusive. We’d roamed the streets of tiny River Falls at the top of the food chain, taking whomever and whatever we’d wanted. Our partnership had been so solid that when I’d left for Juilliard I knew Jordie would always be there for me, whenever I needed him. I left and never looked back. I hadn’t known that someday I would want something different.

I didn’t expect to see Shawn again. A guy like Shawn could move on, and Jordie offered warmth and security and the press of human flesh. I knew it wouldn’t take me too much time succumb to him, because I’d learned long since to take what comfort life offered and live with it.

I wondered at the time, though, what Jordan had learned.

66 Z. A. Maxfield

Chapter Eleven

The small city of River Falls, Wisconsin, where I grew up had grown considerably since my childhood. Once a tiny town that boasted a state normal school for teachers, it was now a bedroom community of St. Paul, a short drive across the border from neighboring Minnesota.

It still had only two stoplights, one at the beginning of Main Street, and the other, predictably, at the end. While it now had more suburban tract houses, and a number of chain fast-food restaurants, Mama Lina’s Ristorante Italiano, unchanged since my grandparents’

courting days, still occupied its cavernous place on Main Street between the movie theater and what was once the Sears Catalog store.

I entered the front door during the lull between lunch and dinner and was told to wait until Jefferson, the grandson of the original Mama Lina, was ready to speak with me.

I remembered Jefferson from high school, primarily because Julie once had a crush on him. He hadn’t been interested though, and had taken some other girl out for most of his days as an RFHS Wildcat. I hadn’t heard anything about him since. Julie had moved on to college and older boys who liked her just fine.

“Cooper Wyatt,” said a voice from the hallway behind the bar. “Come back here, if you don’t mind, to my office.” Jefferson had changed little, his boyish face passive as he ushered me into a small room with a desk. Framed photos of notables dining in Mama Lina’s red vinyl booths, including Minnesota’s famous governor, Jesse Ventura, hung on the walls. “I hadn’t heard you were back in town.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t suppose anyone cared whether I was back in town enough to actually talk about it. “I haven’t been back long.” St. Nacho’s

67

“I see,” he said. “I see Julie around every now and then,” he added, and I wondered if he regretted blowing off my sister’s crush. More than one man in this town had eyes for my beautiful, and now very successful, sister.

I genuinely smiled when I thought of Jules. “It’s been good to be with her.” She’d sent someone to Mama Lina’s the day before to get me an application to fill out.

“I think her coffeehouse is just about the hippest place to be in River Falls,” he said.

“You can’t get near it on a Friday night. Folks come from a ways away. Are you working there?”

“Uh, no. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” I said. I refused point blank to work for my sister. If my past in this town was going to embarrass my family, the least I could do was not take it to their doorstep. “I wondered, since I have culinary arts training, if you might have a place for me here?”

“Oh. Here?” he asked. I could see his brows come together in the middle. “Well.”

“The last job I had, at Nacho’s Bar in California, I did food prep in the kitchen until the peak hours, and then played the violin from table to table for tips. People seemed to think…” I pushed the application, which I’d painstakingly filled out, toward him. “It’s all there, restaurants I’ve worked in, places I’ve played.” He did a double take when he saw my cramped writing. “Wow, you’ve moved around a lot. What kind of music did you play?” He seemed at least a little interested.

“I played customer requests. Love songs, “Happy Birthday,” mariachi music, Irish folk songs. Whatever. You know, I was there to amuse the crowd. They liked me.”

“I see.” He steepled his fingers. “You know lots of songs, I presume?”

“Yes,” I said. “And a lot of classical music.”

“It’s going to be hard. People have long memories.”

“I know.”

“It might not be the best thing that you returned, you know? Jordan Jensen is back as well.”

“I know.” I held my breath.

“Is that why you’re here?” he asked. “Because Jordan got out?” I hesitated. It wouldn’t do to prevaricate about something that would so quickly become small-town gossip. “Yes, he and I are staying together.” Jefferson shook his head. “People hate him for what he did. You would be wise to distance yourself.”

“I was there, Jefferson,” I said. “I can’t.”

“It’s not the same. No one thinks it’s the same.” 68 Z. A. Maxfield

I remained silent. Jefferson drummed his fingers on the table and for some absurd reason it reminded me of the first Godfather movie. I waited for him to tell me I owed him a favor in the future.

“If you want, you can start in the kitchen tomorrow, the four until closing shift.” He shuffled some papers on his desk. “It’s up to you whether you want to try to play the violin for tips, but the people of this town haven’t forgotten or forgiven Jordan, and as soon as they’re aware of your current association you will be held similarly in contempt.” I sighed. “I understand.”

“I like your family, Cooper. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“It’s all right. Maybe it would be best if I stayed in the kitchen, but frankly, I get good tips when I play the violin, and I could use the cash.”

“That’s fine. However, if there’s trouble, I’ll ask you to leave.”

“Certainly.” I stood and shook hands with Jefferson. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. I can always use good kitchen help. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He saw me to the door of his office, and I left feeling better than I had since I’d gotten to River Falls. And worse. I was running out of money, and the prospect of a job buoyed my sagging spirits. But if my association with Jordan was a problem, I wasn’t likely to solve it by walking down Main Street playing my violin.

I got home to the apartment and tossed my keys on the kitchen counter next to the tiny, old microwave Julie had found for us when we moved in. I heated water to make tea, and when I had it made took it to the balcony where I could smoke.

The sun was beginning to slip over the building and by dinner it would beat down fully on the small plastic table and chairs Jordan and I had purchased. Already the heat and humidity wilted me, and at dusk the mosquitoes would eat me alive. Morning was the best time of the day, and Jordan enjoyed it most when I cooked breakfast and set it out on the wobbly little picnic table.

I discovered that prison had done nothing for Jordan’s cooking skills, so I did most of that. I liked it. I’d never had that before, the homely duty of seeing meals on the table for myself and someone else. Often friends from church would drop by and bring casseroles or a salad and bread, and we’d share. I thought I would have liked it, but for the fact that I missed Shawn and my friends in California.