Empty Nests (13 page)

He did take a quick glance at his phone to check the time.

“Are we late for the movie?”

“Nope, and the theater is just around the corner.”

Gabe paid the bill and led them outside, not to a Cineplex but to the grand art deco Paramount Theatre.

James looked up at the intricate gilding of the ninety-year-old building. “They still show movies here?”

“Classic films, in between the symphony, opera, and ballet. They’re showing
Casablanca
tonight.”

“I’ve never seen it on the big screen.”

“Well, this is a really big screen.”

An old friend had dragged him to see
Gone with the Wind
years earlier on the three-story-high screen. Their seats were in the balcony, and he took James’s hand as the theater went dark. Gabe couldn’t recall the last time he’d gone to a movie with a date, which said something sad about the time he put into most dates. It seemed like such a high school thing to do, but James was grinning as the opening credits bathed the theater in soft silver light. He had a feeling James hadn’t seen many movies in high school that weren’t produced by Disney.

It had been ages since Gabe had seen
Casablanca
, and he was soon caught up in how gorgeous it all was.

Only once did he break focus enough to lean over and whisper in James’s ear. “You know Louie wants Rick for himself.”

James snickered.

And after three thousand people whispered along to the last lines and the credits rolled, Gabe led them back out into the night.

“So, nice dinner and a nice movie.” James grinned. “Now as far as I’ve been told, the next step in all this is making out in the car?”

“I know just the spot.”

Gabe was thankful for the clear night as he weaved his way up into the hills and parked off a dirt access road under some electric pylons. In front of them was a panoramic view of San Francisco, lit up in her glory. He knew he was biased, but he did believe San Francisco was one of the prettier cityscapes you could get.

“When I was a teenager, I would park up here to make out. I never did appreciate the view at the time, but now I get why people pay a million dollars for homes in these hills.”

“I have no idea where kids in my school might have gone to make out.”

“Me neither. I never dated guys from my own high school. Too complicated.”

“Yeah, Dylan’s mother transferred just after he was born. I can’t even begin to imagine how weird that would have been.”

“Probably very.”

Gabe trailed his fingers along James’s arms. “There’s no need to worry about things like that now, and I hate to say it, but you have some catching up to do on the making-out front.”

“Well, then. We better not dawdle.”

Gabe slid over as far as he could and kissed James. James tentatively returned the kiss but soon relaxed into it, twisting so he could kiss Gabe deeper. He skimmed his hands across James’s body, then laced them in his hair. James moaned and his strokes along Gabe’s body became bolder.

Gabe tried to pull James as close as possible, quietly cursing the little voices of his better graces that had talked him out of getting a hotel room to ravish James in. He guided one of James’s hands south until it was warming Gabe’s thigh, each touch getting closer to the important area.

There was a sudden tap on the window. Gabe jumped, knowing exactly what the sound of a flashlight on fogged-up glass sounded like and meant.

He very slowly rolled down the window in case it wasn’t a cop. He shielded his eyes from the flashlight until he could see the uniform. “Evening, Officer.”

The cop flashed his light around the inside of the Mustang. “Aren’t you boys a little old to be making out in cars?”

“I have a teenager at home,” James blurted out.

“And I live in San Jose.”

“And you couldn’t just get a hotel room?”

“We’re taking it slow.” The interruption had Gabe on the defensive. “And… this is a sort of traditional spot for certain activities. At least it was?”

The cop laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but most of what goes on here these days are small-change drug deals.”

Gabe leaned his head on the steering wheel. “Thank you, Officer.” Gabe looked at James, who was shaking with silent laughter.

“It’s okay. I had a nice evening.”

Gabe sighed. He should have gotten a hotel room. “Thank you, Officer. I believe we’ll be calling it a night.”

The cop looked like he was trying not to laugh as well. “Drive carefully.”

J
AMES
ROLLED
another tamale to add to the growing pile in the middle of Mrs. Meza’s kitchen table. Around him the room was filled with the gossip of the women of the Hill View Estates as they added their own tamales to the pile.

James had been in the building almost a year before the women invited him to the monthly tamale marathons with promises he could take a couple dozen home. It was another year before he tuned in to the flowing Spanish accented in a dozen different ways. It had been two years before his tamales met with consistent approval.

The low rumble of boiling water heated the apartment and firmed up the tamales. After so many years, it was a comforting way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It was a
little
strange to reflect that the night before he’d been making out with Gabe in a classic car after a fancy date, when now he was back rolling tamales with the women like it was any other weekend.

“The Estrada boy down on second is the father,” Mrs. Maldonado stated with absolute certainty, the gossip of the day being an obvious, if unannounced, pregnancy. It was something James had a bit of sympathy for.

“Actually, he’s not.” Everyone turned to James. It wasn’t often he got the jump on gossip, but Dylan had a line to the other teenagers in the building and had let him in on the identity of the father of Maria Perez’s baby.

“Of course it is. Who else would it be?” There was a slight accusation in Mrs. Fernandez’s voice. Dylan had developed an unfortunate reputation.

“Ahmed Hami on first. He and Maria have been having ‘interfaith negotiations’ since Labor Day. Dylan told me.” James grinned as the women all started talking at once. He also had it on good authority—Dylan—the Estrada boy was gay, and Maria had somehow talked him into taking the blame once she started showing.

“But what kind of wedding would they have?” Mrs. Avila asked at full voice.

“Ahmed is fifteen, Maria is sixteen. I don’t think any wedding is going to be happening.”

That set off another flurry of debate. James knew there’d once been a time when the idea of sitting around a kitchen table, gossiping on a Sunday afternoon with a bunch of older women, would have filled him with a certain amount of embarrassment, but those years were long gone. Instead he’d spent the week itching for the right moment to share that one little piece of intel.

He knew Dylan would say this was why he needed to date and why he was on the road to crazy-old-cat-lady-dom, but these women were his friends, his support group, and really, some gossip was just way too good not to share.

G
ABE
LEANED
down and gave Margaret a kiss on the cheek and passed her a bottle of wine as she let him into the cozy, blond-wooded foyer of her and Nate’s home. Unlike a lot of the ’90s tech-bubble guys, neither he, nor Frank, nor Nate had gone
completely
overboard on their living situations. Not that Nate didn’t have an exquisite custom-built home on a large plot of land, but it wasn’t a gilded, fifty-room mansion.

The smell of a pork roast came from the kitchen and Gabe’s stomach rumbled. “Your roasts always smell so good.”

“Everything should be ready in about fifteen minutes. Nate’s in the living room with the kids.”

He followed the sounds of things getting hacked to pieces until he found his godchildren, Sarah and Harry, along with their father, plunked down in front of a large TV with game controllers in their hands.

He wasn’t sure what the game was, but there were a lot of swords and blood splatter. “Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Uncle Gabe,” the kids answered in unison, not taking their eyes from the screen.

“Hey, Uncle Gabe,” Nate parroted.

Gabe didn’t say anything else, as the game seemed to be coming to some sort of climax. There was a sudden splatter of digital blood across the screen. Nate and Harry threw down their controllers as Sarah jumped up and began an inspired victory dance. Nate reached for the controller again.

“You don’t have time for another round,” Margaret called from nearly the other side of the house.

There were some groans. “Okay, you heard your mother. Go help in the kitchen.” Nate shooed his kids from the room.

Gabe shook his head as they passed. “I swear to God, they keep getting taller.”

“They are at that age. Fourteen, and they will not stop eating. Especially Harry.”

“I guess we were all there once.” Gabe had turned to follow the kids to the kitchen when Nate grabbed his arm.

“Actually—” Nate’s voice was low. “—I was wondering if maybe you could talk to Harry at some point.”

“About?”

Nate cringed as if in pain, a deep red flush crawling across his pasty complexion. “Well, you see, his mother found some, um, photographic material in his room the other day.”

“You can say the word ‘porn,’ and I’m pretty sure giving that talk is your job.”

“Yeah, I would. Except it wasn’t quite the type of porn we were expecting, and I think he needs a slightly different flavor of talk.” Nate’s voice was still low, and he looked very close to “death by raw embarrassment.”

“Oh.” Gabe looked over his shoulder. “Really?” He’d never gotten any gay vibe off his godson, but then it wasn’t like he’d been looking.

“I don’t know, maybe he’s just curious or thinking experimentally, but every time I even think about bringing it up, my brain stutters and I have no clue where to start. I’d get Margaret to do it, but we made a deal a long time ago: she’d give Sarah the talk, and I’d give Harry the talk.”

Gabe was tempted to tell him to man up and go talk to his son, but his whole demeanor was one of pleading. “Look, I will tell him I’m here if he wants to talk about anything, but you’re his father, and you’ll have to talk to him at some point, and if he is heading in that direction, he’s going to need to know you love him no matter what.”

“Of course I do.” That seemed to snap Nate out of the embarrassment.

“He’s going to need to hear that at least once, and I will talk to him as long as I can ask you and Margaret for some advice later.”

“About?”

“Just… later.”

“Boys!” Margaret’s voice rang across the house again. “Come eat.”

G
ABE
LEANED
back in his chair, feeling overly full. He always did when Margaret decided to embrace the English half of her heritage by roasting large pieces of meat and root vegetables. There was little mystery as to why Nate never lost that last twenty pounds, but he never seemed too worried about it, especially when there was pork crackling on his plate.

“That was amazing, Margaret, as always.”

“Thank you. I think the pork might have been a little dry, though.”

Nate leaned over and gave his wife a kiss on the cheek. “It was perfect. I promise.” Gabe smiled. He always liked the time he spent with Nate’s family. He had good kids and a good marriage to a woman who could give him a hug and a kick in the ass simultaneously. “Okay, kids, help clear the table, then go finish your homework.”

Gabe pitched in as well. He’d moved from guest to family about two days after Nate and Margaret moved in together. The kitchen still smelled like roast pork, and Gabe’s stomach tried to talk him into picking a little more meat off the bone.

Margaret lightly smacked his hand. “That’s for soup tomorrow.” Gabe tried his puppy-dog face. “Okay, just a little.”

Gabe picked off a bit, pleased that after all these years that face still worked on Margaret. She was immune when it came from her husband and kids.

As the last dish was loaded into the washer, the twins were shooed upstairs to tackle homework.

Nate gestured with his head after them.

“Now?” Gabe said.

Nate put on his version of a puppy-dog face. “Please? I don’t want this to drag out.”

Gabe let out a long sigh. Unfortunately he
wasn’t
completely immune to Nate’s puppy face. “Fine. But you’re going to have to talk to him at some point. Both of you.”

“Thank you, Gabe.”

Gabe made a random grumbling noise and marched up the stairs. He’d always thought one of the good things about not getting around to having kids was he got to avoid things like having uncomfortable talks with teenagers.

He knocked on Harry’s door.

“Yeah?”

Gabe let himself in, then closed the door behind him.

“Hey, Uncle Gabe.”

“Hey.”

“What’s up?”

Gabe opened his mouth, then realized he had no more ideas as to how to start the conversation than Nate had. “Okay, I’m going to be blunt, and maybe this will be quick and painless, but I somehow doubt it. Your mom found gay porn in your room, and your dad wants me to talk to you in case you need to talk.”

Harry turned bright red. It was not a good color on him. “Oh. My. God.” He buried his face in his hands. “Fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck.”

He gave Harry a minute to use every swear word he knew several times over. “So…?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Probably. I’m still figuring it out.”

“That’s fine. You’re young. Plenty of time to work out what you want, what you’re interested in.”

“I guess.” Harry slumped in his chair.

“Tell you what. I’ll give you a quick version of the talk. That way you can save your dad some pain when it’s his turn. Don’t have unprotected sex. Don’t have anonymous sex. Don’t go to see anyone you meet on the Internet. Don’t do drugs. And if someone ever hurts you, come talk to me, because I still have some cousins in the neighborhood who are only on their first strike and are proficient in those sacred ancient weapons, the switchblade and bike chain. And you can pass that last one on to your sister.”