Blame It on the Fruitcake

By Pat Henshaw

Fruitcake is the laughingstock of the holiday season. But can it be an aphrodisiac instead? Motorcycle mechanic Sam McGuire is surprised to find a gaily wrapped box on his doorstep with a piece of fruitcake accompanying an invitation to a holiday party.

Wondering if he’ll fit in, Sam attends the party—mostly to get more of the fruitcake he falls in love with—and meets Jay Merriweather, his new neighbor. The lure of Jay’s big family and its holiday tradition of enjoying Grandma’s fruitcake hook Sam, as does the sexy man himself.

But Sam can't imagine why handsome, college-educated Jay would want someone like him, who was raised in a children’s home and barely graduated high school. Maybe the magic of the holiday season can help two men who seem so different come together like the ingredients in a well-made fruitcake.

I
STARTED
to wipe my feet on the front door mat and just about stepped on a tiny package and note.

What the hell? Nobody gave me Christmas presents. Nobody. Ever. The Children’s Home had a pick-a-number gift system. Then the trading began. But gifts given directly to me? Never.

After wiping my feet on the mat, I opened the door to my loft apartment. I juggled the paperwork and the present with its envelope. I shucked my shoes by the door, put everything in my arms on the kitchen table, and got rid of the tie.

I don’t do ties unless something’s really important, like meeting with a loan officer to get money to build an addition to the garage. Mostly I’m a jeans, work boots, and ratty T-shirts kinda guy who makes his money without wearing a suit. I fix and modify bikes, mostly Harleys, since I’m one of their certified mechanics. These days, I’m catching the wave of weekend warriors who’re donning black leather jackets and forming clubs after their offices cough them out for two days.

Living in the central valley of California makes mine a year-round job. In fact, next year I’ll turn a corner into a bigger garage and two more actual employees. With Janene, our bookkeeper and resident Mama, we’ll be a full-time family of six and as many community-college interns as I can get.

I’d climbed out of the Children’s Home and was now a productive member of society, even though I probably didn’t look like one to the common guy on the street. I sure didn’t to any of the prospective mommies and daddies who periodically came by the Home when I was a kid.

Now I had my very first Christmas present just for me, nobody else. I didn’t even have to pick the right number for it or trade with someone else.

I poked the puffy bow. It sprang back and shouted, “Open me!”

I decided to tackle the envelope first. The handwriting was blunt lettering, a lot like Tim’s down at the shop.

Hello, Sam McGuire in Apartment 300. How are you? I’m your new neighbor in 303. Hope you’re not allergic to fruitcake because the piece in the box is my grandmother’s traditional recipe and the only way to start the holidays.

I’m holding a get-together on Saturday, December 1, 9:00 p.m. to whenever. You’re invited. If you can’t party here on Saturday, I promise to try to keep the noise down after 10:30. I’d like to meet you.

Happy holidays. Hope to see you soon.

Jay Merriweather

Huh. Jay had gone to a lot of trouble to be friendly in this converted warehouse where we all pretty much leave each other alone. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of another big, informal group. The Home was enough for me, thanks.

Still, he or she was trying to meet the neighbors in a happy, nonhostile way. Gotta give ’em points. Besides, I had nothing to do Saturday night, and I’d probably hear the music and laughter anyway. Why not meet the new neighbor when everyone else did?

I took off my suit and put on a pair of grease-stained sweatpants and a tank top. I hate cooking, so I took one of the frozen things out of the freezer and microwaved it. Instead of standing to eat like I usually do, I sat at the table and stared at the present. It looked so nice in its snug little wrapping paper. Seemed a shame to open it. I poked it with a clean finger.

My hands looked different today since I’d scrubbed them before I went to the bank. I couldn’t wash away the cuts and scratches, the scars of my trade, or the calluses, but despite all the signs of garage work, I’d gotten the loan. The present seemed to be the secret reward for five hard years becoming my own man.

I’d never had fruitcake, but I knew how everyone joked about it this time of year. It lasted forever and could pound nails into concrete. Then har, har, har, everyone laughs. So fruitcake couldn’t be any good, right?

I poked the box again. It didn’t talk back, didn’t even grunt.

Finishing dinner, I threw the plastic tray in the trash and the fork into the sink. It was time to face the fruitcake.

Carefully I unwrapped the present, not wanting to mar its beauty. If the fruitcake was really bad, I could rewrap the box and then imagine something else was in it. It was the only present I’d be getting, so why not?

Fruitcake, at least according to Jay Merriweather’s grandma, appeared to be a solid brownish mass with bits of fruit and nuts in it and smelled like a pint of Jim Beam. The thing reeked. This was holiday food? Shit, it should be served at the bar downstairs. It’d fit right in with the lushes who try to stay afloat all night.

I took out my pocket knife and cut off a thin slice. I figured the stuff probably wouldn’t kill me, since if it was lethal, it would’ve done in Jay Merriweather a long time ago. As I bit into it, I thought about the name Jay Merriweather. It sounded happy, merry like Christmas.

Then my mouth exploded.

Hot damn! Fruitcake was great. Shit. How’d it gotten such a bad rep? Talk about not fair. This stuff was deadly.

I picked up the rest of the piece and started to polish it off. Then I stopped. No, wait. If I ate it all now, I wouldn’t have any for tomorrow or the next day.

Course, if I went to the party Saturday night, maybe I could boost a few more pieces to take home with me.

With a plan firmly in place, I washed up from dinner, put on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt, and joined the lushes at the bar. I couldn’t decide whether I should share my great discovery or sit and listen like I usually do until my bullshit meter registered in the overload zone and I went back home.

O
N
S
ATURDAY
the noise started about eight, a whole hour before the invitation said the party began. I tried to decide if I’d go down the hall early. The memory of the fruitcake I’d polished off last night made my feet move before my mind decided what to do.

I got to the door just as a good-looking guy stepped up from the stairwell.

“Hey! You going to Jay’s?” he asked. He had a little poinsettia plant in one hand.

Oh shit. Was I supposed to bring something? As usual I blamed the Home for my social fuck up.

“Uh, yeah. Sam McGuire.” I nodded.

“Dave Myers. One of Jay’s coworkers,” he said as we stood at the door. He juggled the little plant, and we shook hands. I turned back to the door and knocked.

“I live down the hall,” I explained as we stared at the door.

We stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, waiting. The party noises pulsed around us. After a few minutes, when the music seemed to get louder and our silence quieter, I tried the doorknob. The door opened. I pushed it just as someone inside pulled.

I nearly landed on a slender short guy with styled hair, makeup, and the brightest red pants and green shirt I’ve ever seen. He put some of my designer bikes to shame.

“Oh good!” he screamed. “I forgot to put this up.”

He waved a piece of paper in front of us. “Don’t knock. Just come in” the sign read in multicolored block lettering with hand-drawn holly circling it. He slapped it on the door and slapped down the pieces of tape that were dangling from each corner.

“Hi! You are?” He was nearly dancing in front of me. Yeah, he definitely looked like what I thought a Merriweather would look like. He bounced and jiggled and exuded happiness.

“Uh, I’m, uh, Sam, from down the hall. The fruitcake was great.”

He beamed and said something I didn’t quite catch. All I heard was “…give it away ’cuz it’d be the only fruitcake anybody’d ever get from a fruitcake!” He laughed and looked behind me. “Dave! You came!” Then he about fell over himself giggling.

Yup, it was shaping up to be the same as every other party I’d been to not given by one of the guys in the shop. I was kinda hustled aside as the little guy and Dave cozied up. I had no clue what to do next. So I just stood there like a dumb fuck with a pop remix of Christmas tunes and some sort of loud club music wrapping me in suspended animation.

Dave slid by, still holding the poinsettia, when I felt a hand on my arm.

“Hi there. Did I hear you say you’re the neighbor from down the hall?” At my nod, the new guy added, “Let’s get you a drink and introduce you to a few people.”

Now here was my kinda man. Like me, on the street, nobody’d probably guess he was gay. Only not like me, since I looked like the bike mechanic I am, he looked like one of the bankers I’d talked to last week. He was a couple inches shorter than me, with conservative-cut hair, blue eyes, and a trustworthy face. He looked like he cared whether I was having a good time or not.

“Uh, sure. That’d be great.”

I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to act. If I wasn’t bullshitting with friends, my words usually dried up. Fortunately it hadn’t happened at the bank when I was presenting my case for a loan to a guy who looked like him, or I’d have been fucked.

So I let this guy lead me around, introducing me, telling me something about everyone, and letting them know I lived at the other end of the hall.

At one point he stared at me with a funny twinkle in his eyes and asked, “You’re not by any chance McGuire’s Bikes, are you?”

I managed to nod. I was stunned. It wasn’t like I was famous or anything.

He beamed. “No shit! Wow! I wanted to meet you after the Reno Roadshow. I loved your Loose and Wild Rainbow. Great bike.”

Ah, yes, L&WR, the winner of the Roadshow competition. I’d tricked out the bike for a buddy of mine who died of AIDS. He wanted the bike to be a memorial, but so far we couldn’t locate a cemetery or burial place where we could put his ashes and his machine. We were finding that burial laws by the ocean and in the mountains were pretty archaic and exclusive. If we wanted a bike cut into marble, no problem. But Harry hadn’t been a stone monument sorta guy.

“Uh, thanks. Yeah, it was a special kinda project,” I mumbled.

Even with the music, the shouting people, and the yelling when a couple were caught under the mistletoe, the guy still heard me.

He put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug. “Yeah, I know. He’ll be missed.”

Now my head was reeling. What the fuck? He knew Big Harry?

“I met Harry when I was a kid hanging around my buddy’s dad’s garage,” he said.

“Where’d you grow up?” I asked. After I’d had a couple drinks, the pumping music, the blinking Christmas lights, and the strangers laughing and yelling were making the night surreal. This handsome, clean-cut guy had known Harry? I must be dreaming. He and Harry looked light years apart.

“Little town outside Denver in the foothills. Deer Creek. You probably heard Harry talk about it. Not the place you want to grow up gay.” His laugh was short and dismissive.

“Yeah, so Harry always said.” I shifted to my other foot and looked down at the red plastic cup of punch. This was the last one for me tonight. I still hadn’t found the fruitcake. “So you go to bike shows?”

“Yup. The best part of my job.” He shrugged with a happy grin.

“Yeah? What do you do?”

We were bumped and separated by an incoming group. They exclaimed over my new friend, one of the women smothering him with kisses. He glowed with embarrassment and shot me a rueful glance. As the sea parted us, I drifted away looking for the food table and hoped it held enough fruitcake that I could steal some and not out myself as a thief.

I’d eaten three pieces and was busy wrapping up a fourth in napkins to take with me when my new nameless friend walked up and stood next to me.

“You like the fruitcake, huh?” He was smiling like I’d really pleased him.

“Yeah. I’d never tasted it until I got some with the invitation.”

He gave me a tiny smile and shook his head, his eyes twinkling as if laughing at some cosmic joke.

“Not many people like fruitcake and actually admit it.” He took a piece and divided it, giving me half.

I scarfed it down, and he laughed out loud.

“Well, shit. You really do like it.” He ate his piece and wiped his fingers on a napkin. Then he looked down and pointed at my little bundle. “What’s that?”

“Uh, midnight snack?” I could feel my face getting hot. I was blushing. Shit, I never blushed. Then again, I’d never been caught trying to make off with some fruitcake.