Hanging Loose (4 page)

“Ooh!” My exclamation got Jez’s attention.

“What is it?”

“ArcLight Hollywood is playing
The Apartment
.”

Jez crunched his brows together. “Is that the one with Jack Lemmon?”

“Yeah. And Shirley MacLaine. It’s a great old black-and-white movie. It even won the Oscar. That rarely happens with comedies.”

“I think I remember. It has a scene where Lemmon drains pasta with a tennis racket.” Jez took a peek at the screen. “It’s playing tonight. We have to go. I’ve never seen it on the big screen.”

“Me neither.”

“That’s settled, then. We can have dinner afterward. I know a nice little place nearby. You buy the tickets; I’ll make the reservations.”

* * *

The restaurant was called the Hungry Cat. It was just a short walk from the movie theater, hidden in an unexpected courtyard. We were seated outside. It was dark with little ambient lighting, but there were lit candles on the tables.

“Young Shirley MacLaine was amazingly beautiful,” I gushed. I still had a buzz from having just watched such a classic on the silver screen. The TV screen really didn’t do it justice.

Jez nodded. “She and Jack Lemmon had great comedic timing together. I totally had a crush on him when Adelle made me watch
Irma la Douce
. It was very disappointing to learn that by then, he was an old man.”

“Lemmon? I wouldn’t call him classically handsome.”

“Mmm… Goofy, quirky humor, a touch of vulnerability. Just my type.” Jez flashed his eyes at me, then looked away.

“Did you have crushes only on movie stars? When you were young?” I asked, making an effort to be less of a hick.

“Oh no. At the very same time I also carried a torch for one of the lifeguards down at the beach. He had a great body. There was a birthmark on his left hip I couldn’t stop obsessing about.”

My ears burned. Fortunately Jez couldn’t have seen it in the candlelight.

Our waiter arrived to take our drink orders and tell us about the specials.

“One of us needs to be the designated driver. Nate, it’s your day. You choose,” Jez said.

“You mean you’d let me drive the Chevy?” I asked, disbelieving.

“Sure, why not?” He didn’t look concerned.

“I’ll just have water,” I said eagerly.

Jez ordered the drink special of the day at the waiter’s recommendation. After a few quiet moments spent studying the menu, Jez spoke again.

“So how about you? Any infatuations when you were young?” He grinned.

“Mmm… Buffy. The vampire slayer. I had a thing for assertive women. Probably that’s what attracted me to Jenny too.”

Jez’s drink arrived. It was full of tiny citrus fruits. I got a bottle of bubbly water. We ordered our food. The menu scared me a little, so I went with the safest bet: a burger. Even that had avocado and blue cheese. Jez went straight for the jugular and ordered grilled octopus.

“Do you miss her?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” I said, fidgeting with the napkin.

“You can tell me if it’s none of my business.”

“It’s not like that. We were more like friends than anything else, so there was no bad breakup and stuff. Jenny went off to grad school in Chicago and is doing really well. She’s smart and knows what she wants. I haven’t answered her last e-mail from a month ago. I don’t know what to write.”

Jez looked back at me in silence, but it was too dark for me to see his expression properly. The ice clinked in his glass as he lifted it to his lips.

“What about you? Are you seeing anyone?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Not interested in anything serious?”

“I am. Was. Bad breakup. I got trust issues, so I’ve been told. I date. Sort of.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You could, you know, bring someone home. I mean, it’s your house; you don’t need my permission. I’m just saying it wouldn’t bother me.”

I was tripping all over my words like a fool. I certainly felt like one. Truth was, the idea of Jez and another guy going at it like rabbits in the next room freaked the hell out of me, but there was no way in hell I was going to admit that. Especially since I wasn’t entirely clear about the reason why it freaked me out. It wasn’t like I was grossed out or something over the idea of two sweaty men going at it—and that was the point where I stopped myself.

“Same here,” Jez said.

“What?” I jumped a little. Had Jez read my thoughts?

“If you want to bring someone back to the house…”

“Oh, yeah. Okay.”

Our food arrived, and we dug in. My burger was really good, but I kept eyeing Jez’s octopus. Those tentacles with their suckers looked downright spooky. Finally Jez cut off a piece and placed it on my plate. I cautiously put it in my mouth, ready to spit. I expected it to be rubbery, but it was surprisingly tender and smoky. It was not bad at all, but I still preferred my burger. Eventually the conversation got back around to me somehow.

“My father is career military,” I explained. “When I was growing up, we never stayed more than three years in a place. I used to wish he’d get stationed overseas, but instead we were shuffled from one backwoods post to the other, all over the country.”

“That had to be tough.”

“After a while, I didn’t even try to make friends. Of all the places, I probably liked Indiana the least. It was just bad luck we happened to live there when my parents divorced. My father got stationed elsewhere soon after, but Mom and I stayed. Then she met Dave.”

“Your stepfather?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get along?”

While we talked, Jez made eye contact with our waiter and signaled for another drink.

“He’s an okay guy, and he was good for Mom—the last years of her marriage to my father were really hard on her—but to me, he was just a guy. He tried, but I was a sullen teenager, and once my sister was born, she became the center of the universe. We got along but weren’t close.”

My burger was gone, blue cheese and all, and I was working on the remainders of my fries. They came with great homemade ketchup.

“What made you move to LA?” Jez asked.

I took a moment to think about that.

“I just wanted to get the hell out of there, and LA sounded good. Mom and Dave never understood it. When I told them, they were stunned. My mother’s first reaction was, ‘But there are earthquakes there!’ Like the lack of earthquakes was a good reason to live in Indiana.” I gestured my incredulity with a piece of fried potato.

“Was it that bad?” he asked, smiling.

“Depressing, mostly. The land is flat as a pancake. The winters last forever. For months and months, there’s no sun. Just gray clouds, snow, slush, and freezing rain.”

“Sounds awful.”

“The summers are all right, if you like rain. Actually, big summer thunderstorms are the only thing I miss.”

“The first time I experienced one of those was when I was visiting my mother in Ohio. Freaked the hell out of me.”

I had to laugh at that. Jez’s new drink arrived. The waiter was good. Before we knew it, we’d ordered dessert, despite being stuffed.

“What about your parents?” I asked when we were left alone.

“Rob—my dad—lives in Hawaii. The waves are better there.”

“They are divorced too?”

“Never got married. He and my mother were just kids when she got pregnant. The way it was told to me, it was a summer romance that fizzled out before school started up in the fall. Mom finished high school and went off to college. You can figure out the rest.”

“You were raised by wild dolphins?” I suppressed a chuckle at the image—cherubic baby Jez and the dolphins. Like that Greek thing with the wolf, but soggier.

“Hah! Much crazier than that—Adelle. She was my mom’s mother. Rob was around, but he was more like an older brother than a father. He taught me surfing, loving the waves. He still calls, and we have long conversations about nothing. We’re friends. His one true love is the waves.”

“And your mom?”

“Married to a dentist, living in Duluth. They have three kids, a minivan, and a big house in the suburbs.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, I think she rebelled against Adelle by going conventional.”

Jez leaned back in his chair, his whole body a picture of relaxation.

“You didn’t.”

“It skips a generation.” He grinned.

“So how are you getting along?” I probed, not knowing if he wanted to talk about it. For some reason, I wanted to know. He didn’t seem to be bothered. His voice was as calm and even as ever.

“Me and my mother? We’re cool now. There was a time, back when I was a kid, when I was angry with her for abandoning me. She went off to college right out of high school and never moved back.”

“That must have been hard for you.”

Jez drew up a shoulder and let it drop. “A little. Maybe more. Eventually I understood how hard it must have been for her too. She was way too young to have a kid, and she was scared by all this stuff that just got dropped on her. Running away was the only way she could deal with it. She had a lot of guilt about it later. But we worked it all out in the end. I’ve been up there to visit them. They are good people, really. Just sorta boring. She likes it that way, though. She and Adelle had always been like oil and water.”

“So did you learn all the baking from Adelle?” I switched the subject.

Jez snorted like I said something funny. “Adelle? I don’t think I ever saw her turn on the oven. Nah, it was a guy in San Francisco. I learned the art of mixing drinks from Adelle, though.”

“Really?” My eyebrows must have hit my hairline.

“Yeah, she used to have all these parties with the other old-timers, back when they were still around, and I was always in charge of the cocktails. By the time I was fifteen, I knew as much as your average bartender, and more. It came in very handy later.”

“Jeez. Good thing Child Protective Services didn’t know about it,” I said half seriously.

A shadow passed over his face.

“Maybe it was the wrong thing for her to do. I don’t think it harmed me, though. There are much worse things people do to their kids.”

I quietly nodded, but I could tell something bothered him. After staring at the ice cubes in his glass for a moment, he started to talk again. For the first time since I’d known him, there was a tightness in his voice.

“I saw a protest the other day. Well, it wasn’t much of a protest—only three people. A man and a woman holding the usual placards about ‘God hates fags’ and how 9/11 was God’s punishment for the country not being homophobic enough.” The ice cubes in his glass made an angry rattle as he downed the last of his drink.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and I really was.

I’d seen those zealots myself before. That kind of bloodthirsty extremism always filled me with dread, but for the first time, I realized what it had to be like for someone like Jez.

“I’ll never understand why my sex life matters so much to them, but I don’t expect them to change. What got to me was that they had this little girl with them, six or seven years old, holding one of the signs. She was cute as a button. The sign was almost as big as her and full of that hateful drivel. There’s no way in hell she knows what any of it means, but by the time she grows up, she’ll be up to her neck in hatred. I call
that
child abuse. Adelle had her faults, but she never taught me to hate.”

For a moment there was a bleak look on his face, and I just wanted to give him a hug, say something to make it better. Instead I sat there like a big, useless lump. He shook himself, and his usual good cheer was back.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your birthday.”

“You didn’t.”

“People would spend less time obsessing about the lives of others if they took the time to enjoy what they had. Like this—having a nice meal and talking. You know, I’m really glad you moved in. It’s nice to have a friend close by.” He gave me a smile that was almost shy.

I think I blushed, but fortunately it was too dark out there to show.

“I’m sure you have a lot of friends.”

“I know a lot of people, but only a handful are real friends, and they’re scattered all over.”

Our dessert arrived, and we left the serious talk behind.

Chapter Five

On Friday at noon, Sandy skipped into the restaurant in an especially good mood. She had gotten a call from the casting director of that HBO show: they were thinking of bringing her character back for a few more episodes in the next season. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me hard. I didn’t protest, but pulled away before she could ask if that was a dinner roll in my pocket.

“I’m going to a party tomorrow. You must come with me!” she gushed. I assumed it would be an industry party, which in this town meant movie industry. Her invitation was a little out of left field. We were friends. Sort of. Was Sandy asking me out on a date? It sounded like it, but not exactly. Whatever. I’d take what I got, I decided.

“Wear something tight.” She winked before sashaying to table five.

The next evening I squeezed myself into the pair of jeans I’d had since high school and the black T-shirt I accidentally bought a couple of sizes too small and was too lazy to exchange. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror with embarrassment. I looked so…dunno. Generally I look all right, nothing special. Having spent every school break working for my step uncle, the roofer, left me wiry, but not in a showy way. I also had perfectly average features. My hair was getting too long, though. I had worn it short since I was five. My father thought long hair was too “sissy” for boys, so I got the military cut, and it became a habit. Every six weeks or so I shaved my head. But I hadn’t done it since I moved to Venice, and it was growing out in unruly dark curls. I huffed at my reflection and headed out.

Sandy pulled up in her mint green Beetle, soft top rolled down. She looked me over, grinning.

“You look good enough to eat,” she said.

I ignored that. Sandy looked fantastic. Her blonde hair, which she had always worn in a ponytail at work, was down, and she wore a slip of a dress that showed plenty of skin. Her nips poked through the thin fabric. I shifted in the seat and stared out the window instead—my jeans were tight enough as it was. We took the freeway through the city, Sandy chattering the whole way about her time on the HBO set and the people she had met. Eventually we got off the freeway and wound our way into the hills on narrow roads. From the look of things, we were somewhere you couldn’t even buy a doghouse for under a million.