King Perry (19 page)

I kiss his lips, my thumb on his jawline. His lips are warm, and through my chest, I feel his heart pound faster than normal. When we finish, I put a few fingers on the back of his skull and tip him into me, our foreheads touching.

Perry says, “I tried to be a bear, Vin. I did try.”

“Best. Bear. Ever.”

He shrugs, a smallish lifting of his shoulders, actually. But standing in each other’s space, we feel each gesture magnified, and I understand what this small gesture says about his vulnerability.

My goatee scratches the square of skin right in front of his ear, and I say, “King Richard the Bear Walker would have been proud of you.”

His body tenses, and his face immediately follows suit; I feel his cheek contract—as if tears almost form, but promptly flee back to their place of origin. He unclenches immediately. I don’t know if he noticed the Bear Walker shares the same name as his father. Maybe not. Something tells me he got the message anyway. I would guess Perry’s brain is exhausted: so much wasted worry last night, confusion and misfiring, all the weekend’s tension accruing interest. It’s getting hard to tell whether Perry is being led by his head or heart.

I take his hand. “C’mon.”

We’re off again.

Eight

I
CAN
’
T
believe I saw a guy who looked exactly like Billy. Why does he keep showing up? I can’t think about this right now. Later. I will give it some thought when there’s a break.

Two blocks away, I steer us into a side alley. Puddles of bubbling liquid we trudge through might be stale beer or greasy dishwater runoff, dumped from any number of nearby restaurants. Up the alley, there’s no mistaking the chunky liquid spray over there, but we’re far enough away that we can’t smell it. Near us, an older woman with frizzy black and gray hair has settled into a painted black door frame and sleeps through the midmorning light, undisturbed by the buses honking, pedestrians chattering, and every random crash or clang enveloping us. Halfway up the alley, I point to a white van parked ten feet away.

“We’re gonna take this.”

Perry stops. “No way. We’re not stealing a van.”

As he protests, I pull a keychain from a side pocket of the backpack. When I click it, the van’s headlights flick on and off and it chirps.

After a few seconds, he exhales. “This is yours?”

“Rental.”

Perry looks at me with amusement. “My first reaction was, ‘How did Vin get the keys to that van he’s going to steal?’ What does that say about you, Vin?”

“Oh, please. You spent the night on Alcatraz too. Now you’re an ex-con.”

We both snicker and shove each other loosely, just fucking around.

“Did you do that intentionally? Act like we were gonna steal it?”

“Sorta.”

“Asshole,” he says, laughing.

I think he’s delighted to call me an asshole. And what the hell? I deserve it.

We meet at the back of the van and lean in for a slow kiss.

I push him away. “You smell like bacon.”

He says, “I’m fairly confident my breath smells
nothing
like bacon.”

I open the back doors to stow the Alcatraz gear. Thick tarps cover half the back, concealing lumpy piles.

“What’s under those?”

I shake my head as if I’m baffled.

“You’re not going to answer that, are you?”

“Nope.”

“I can’t believe you’re so secretive about all this.”

I slam the doors closed and say, “I can’t believe you’re still asking me questions after I told you
twice
that I wouldn’t tell you anything.”

I head to the driver’s side and climb in.

He hops in his side and says, “You are a total control freak.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You can stop saying that; I get it.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Hey, did King Aabee’s flute ever sound like an investment banker’s blood vessels bursting in his skull?” he asks. “Did his flute ever make that sound?”

“Technically, it wasn’t a flute.”

“I ate a bacon-shaped piece of shoe for you, Vin. You can answer a question or two without ruining your precious weekend.”

“You’re probably right.”

“God, you’re irritating.”

“You’re definitely right.”

As I ease the van onto Polk Street, Perry relaxes again, sensing a reprieve. He’s figuring out that sometimes we’re in king story mode and perhaps other times it’s just us, two buddies hanging out, learning bits and pieces of each other’s lives.

He’s wrong, of course; we’re never out of king story mode, for I am always putting my love into him, listening, shaping the details of our weekend based on his responses, preparing him for the next hurdle and filling him up, stacking the deck in our favor. We are going to win this.

I chatter about my favorite parts of San Francisco, things I have eaten that tasted worse than the bacon, while plying him with subtle questions. I can’t alter any of the big stuff this weekend, but I may tailor King Aabee’s story to make sure it fits better. Perry is a foodie and asks me questions about San Francisco restaurants, places we both may have eaten.

We drive only a few minutes when I ask Perry to look sharp for street parking. It’s not easy finding a spot for this big van. At the end of a long street, Perry spots Alcatraz, and he barks out a sharp laugh.

A moment later, he says, “I keep thinking about how we ran across that prison yard holding hands. That was cool.”

Perry says this almost with sadness.

He reaches across the seat and takes my hand.

A lump comes to my throat.
My Alcatraz King.

Checking the dashboard clock, I see that we have plenty of time. In fact, I pretend to miss a parking spot he points out, because we’re ahead of schedule. I drive around the block, and when we return, the parking spot is gone. Good.

We finally park two blocks away from our next destination, so we have a little time to window shop on our way to the nondescript bakery. I announce to the baker that we’re here to pick up a cake and give him my last name. It’s a big cake, one of those massive sheet cakes with plywood underneath to keep it from crumpling under its own weight. I imagine it’s the kind you get for a high school graduation party. I’ve never been to a high school graduation party, so really, I have no basis for that comparison. But if I had graduated high school, I would have celebrated with a cake this big.

Through the rectangular plastic lid, I delight in the finished product, thrilled by its kitschy perfection: blue frosting swirls of a gushy waterfall cascade down a green-frosted island, dumping into a sugary blue ocean. Our Hawaiian-themed cake sports plastic hula girls and plastic men with ukuleles. Perfect.

Across the frosted ocean, thick green letters shout “HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY.” The second line reads “MARIE N. GRYPN.”

“Is that Irish?” Perry asks.

“Korean,” says the lady shopkeeper, punching the register buttons without making eye contact. “Grypn is common Korean name.”

Her husband says something to her in Cantonese, and she responds to him in a few sharp words. She looks at us without smiling and presents me the total due.

Perry puzzles over the frosting while they count out my change and asks, “Who is this for?”

I say, “I’ll explain in the van.”

Our cake mistress inclines her head slightly to let us know we are done here. She speaks again to her husband, and he replies. I like their sharp tones with each other. He brushes something invisible off her shirt sleeve and she slaps his hand away, which makes him smile, and he looks me in the eye for a split second.

They hold the front door wide open, guide us halfway down the block because they worry our van is far away. They argue more in Chinese, and I love listening to their banter though I don’t understand a word.

Her husband interrupts their conversation, pointing to warn us, “Sidewalk pee! Sidewalk pee!”

His wife shakes her head and walks back into the shop, continuing the conversation until the closing door cuts her off.

I feel hilarious, because this scene is comedy gold, like that 1980s San Francisco movie with Goldie Hawn where an enormous plate glass window is constantly threatened in an extended car chase scene. All around us, San Franciscans have to maneuver around our cake dance, and I chirp out apologies each time.

“So sorry,” I say, using a stiff British accent.

“Quit it,” Perry says with a big smile. “I’m not kidding, Vin. Don’t make me laugh and drop this.”

“Sworry. I’m sworry.”

He laughs, so I have to continue.

“Apologies, mate,” I offer to the next person. “G’day. Cheers.”

“It’s not even a good accent,” Perry says, trying to hide his mirth.

“Your turn. Apologize with an accent. Any accent.”

He apologizes in Spanish twice, and I switch to a Monty Python approach.

Once we gingerly deposit the cake into the back of the van, I grope under the tarps, never lifting them. Perry watches, amused and then pleased when my hands emerge with bungee cords. We fuss over the cake, secure it, hop in the front, and buckle up.

I explain that our destination is St. Anne’s homeless shelter.

I say, “When I stopped by to find out about their Saturday breakfast hours, they were discussing a birthday party for this girl, Marie. They had already decided on a Hawaiian theme. She’s particular about her name, I guess, because there’s another homeless girl also named Marie, so she tells everyone she’s ‘Marie N’. Every Saturday afternoon, they offer computer training or something, and her mom goes. Marie N. has been advertising her upcoming birthday, so today, they’re going to have a party. Didn’t you see the “Happy Birthday” signs near the serving tables?”

He says, “No. I dunno, maybe.”

“They hadn’t taped them up; they were just sitting on the table. Didn’t you see the green and pink plastic leis curled up into balls? A bunch of them.”

“I was preoccupied. Why didn’t you tell the serving ladies that we were coming back?”

I shoot him a smile. “It’s a surprise. I like surprises.”

“That so?” He pulls out his sunglasses from an inside coat pocket. “Hadn’t noticed.”

As we wind our way back through the streets toward St. Anne’s, Perry softens even further to the whole breakfast affair, his bacon jokes freer, and he offers a few comments regarding Francine and other tablemates.

“I hope I spelled her last name right,” I say, worried. “I usually print neatly, but I smeared the ink on the note I took. It could be wrong; the last name looks to me like it’s missing a vowel.”

We work out a plan of investigating the girl’s name before she sees the cake and fixing the icing with a knife if necessary. Perry suggests, worst-case scenario, that we scrape her last name off the cake. After all, the part that matters is the “MARIE N.”

Miracle of miracles, the alley parking spot we vacated a while ago remains available, so we ease right back in. I guess it’s not that surprising in a grubby alley sporting dried vomit stains. Maybe it’s not such a desirable parking spot.

I meet Perry in the back, where he opens the van doors and we pick sides.

“Don’t go apologizing to people on the street,” he warns me. “All your accents end up sounding messy British.”

“You get that end out first, and I’ll slam the door shut with my foot. I can kick it closed.”

Perry looks at me quizzically but doesn’t contradict me.

We ease the cake out, tossing a few admonishments back and forth like “Gently” and “Careful.”

I ask, “Got it now? Got your arms under it?”

It’s heavy and bulky, and Perry looks from me to the van door. He says, “We could set it on the bumper while you—”

I say, “Relax, I got it.”

I kick the door closed with my foot and it slams shut. But the door bounces back open because I have slammed the wrong one first. Its impact propels my body away from the van, my arms falling low. Perry pushes the cake toward me, and I throw my arms up high to counterbalance, but it’s too high, and by the time my other foot gets to the ground, the cake is already upside down, hurtling toward the pavement. We watch its disastrous final seconds in slow motion, unable to prevent the inevitable.

The impact doesn’t sound like you’d think it would: a crinkling instead of a squish, the plastic lid crunching against blacktop like a plastic bumper in a car accident.

I hate the way they make cars now, plastic and—
goddamn it you moron, focus up! This is it!

Perry’s arms fling straight out, straight toward the ground where the cake splats, as if pointing out the disaster with a flourish. Electricity almost flies out his fingertips, he’s so instantly furious.

I wait for a second to see if he makes eye contact with me, but he does not. He cannot. Instead he focuses his attention on the cake wreck.

When we cautiously turn it upright, our worst fears are confirmed: Hawaii exploded, leaving smears of green and blue earth everywhere. Ocean frosting spurted free during the explosion, neon blue splatting over the uneven pavement into a puddle of dirty water.

“Crap,” I say, looking for survivors within the crumpled dome. “It’s ruined.”