St. Nacho's 4: The Book of Daniel Page 4

  “What?”

  “Open it. Or throw it out. Whatever it is, it probably doesn’t matter. I couldn’t care less. You won’t find anything sensational enough in some hand-delivered letter to break our prenuptial agreement, and I think you know that.”

  I almost hung up, but I heard paper rustling. At last she said, “It’s from your father.”

  Chapter Five

  “Wait. What?” I asked. “My father?”

  “It’s a letter from your father. And there’s a postscript from someone named Joyce.”

  Shit. “That’s my father’s daughter’s name,” I replied slowly. “She’s about…nineteen?”

  “How should I know? I only corresponded with him. It seems he’s still living in the Long Beach area, and he’d like you to contact him. It says he’s sick, or he’d come to you. Oh. Apparently Joyce is the one who left it in my mailbox.”

  I can’t think about this now. I rubbed my eye with the heel of my hand. “Can you overnight that to me?”

  “Is it urgent?” Bree asked.

  For a moment I forgot we were supposed to be at daggers drawn and I confided in her. “It might be. Jake’s getting married, and I don’t want him to be blindsided by this. He doesn’t really know—”

  “Jacob is getting married? I thought he was gay?”

  “He is. He wants to commit to his lover, JT.”

  “That is the most repulsive—”

  “We don’t need your opinion, Bree.”

  “Fine,” Bree said, shrilly. “Then how about I just throw this letter into the backyard barbecue while I’m cooking Jim some steaks?”

  “You won’t do that.”

  “Oh, won’t I?”

  “No.” I sighed. Damn. Was this the woman I’d considered my partner for twelve long years? “You won’t do that, because it’s in your best interest to play ball at this point. Things can get uglier.”

  “Oh, all right.” BreeAnna’s voice was tiny. Fragile. “I’ll overnight it.”

  “Thank you very much, BreeAnna.”

  She hung up before I could wish her a pleasant evening. I was so absorbed in my thoughts I didn’t hear Jake jog over.

  “Something wrong?” He peered at my face. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine. Bree called.” I put my phone back into my pocket. “Something stupid.”

  “When will that woman let go?” Jake frowned. “Isn’t she supposed to do everything through your lawyers?”

  “Yes. It’s fine. It was just a quick question, but anger can boil up over nothing. I honestly don’t know how it gets this way. We used to be friends, if nothing else.”

  “Did you like the food?” Jake’s expression was closed, and I realized—too late—that he might be sensitive to hearing about other people’s shipwrecks as he prepared to embark on his own voyage.

  “It was great, thanks.” I shot him a sincere smile. “You made all my favorites. I guess you weren’t so mad at me after all, huh, Yash?”

  “Maybe not, Danilo. The game’s about to start, so I’ve got to go. You going to be okay here?”

  “I’m good. I like soccer.” I wouldn’t have minded refereeing a game myself sometime, but the mere thought of jogging and jarring my arm with each step caused me to break into a cold sweat. “Who’s playing?”

  “Orange jerseys are the Crush, and in the black we have the Bandits.”

  “Should I have a preference?”

  “Ken Ashton’s kid brother is playing for the Bandits.”

  “Go Bandits.” My PT was Ken’s partner, so Ken’s kid brother was therefore part of my new and very convoluted St. Nacho’s family. That would make him my brother’s business partner’s son’s brother-in-law…whatever. Everyone in Nacho’s was interconnected somehow; that’s how it is in a small town.

  At halftime I passed around salad, sandwiches, pickles, and peppers. The boys ate frozen grapes and chugged water and sports drinks. I listened to parents talk about how the season was shaping up while we watched the boys gambol around on the field. We could all see a worrisome plume of black smoke billowing toward a fairly clear sky. As the boys played, it changed color and stretched and flattened, pushed toward the east by the breeze from the ocean.

  The acrid scent—smoke and sulfur—that perfumed the air was particularly bad around the time the game finished up. I had to admit, the game was exciting—a come-from-behind squeaker decided when the Bandits scored on a goal kicked in by the one Jake had identified as the Ashton boy. Despite that, by the end of the game, we were all looking nervously at the sky.

  I stood when Jake came toward me. Very real worry clouded his features. “It’s probably nothing,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Jake nodded and pulled his black-and-white shirt over his head. Underneath, his own T-shirt was soaked through with sweat. “That’s exhausting, huh?”

  “They keep me hopping.”

  “There are some awesome players. That Ashton kid is really something.”

  “I think he’ll make baseball his sport. He might like soccer better, but I think he feels like he has to play baseball because his brother never got his chance.” All this and Jake still kept his eyes on the sky.

  “Let’s go by the firehouse and see if JT is there before we go home. He can tell us what happened.”

  Jake grinned at me. “Thanks. I know I’m being paranoid, but—”

  “But people you care about put it on the line every day. And it will make you feel better. I’m not an insensitive asshole, Jake. Maybe I just lost my faith. That doesn’t mean you have to lose yours.”

  “Thanks, man.” Jake very nearly brushed my shoulder with his, but I saw it coming and couldn’t help flinching out of the way.

  “Oh, sorry.” His brows drew together. “I didn’t think.”

  “It’s fine. I forget all the time. Especially just for a few seconds when I wake up in the morning. Just long enough to try to slap the Snooze button on the alarm clock or get a grip on my dick. I realize what I’ve done when—” I stopped abruptly, realizing that I’d made a promise to myself that I’d stop sharing shit like that. When would I learn?

  There’s no point in discussing chronic pain. It doesn’t make the pain go away, and people just get more uncomfortable being around you. The last thing I wanted was to be that guy, the one people avoid because they can’t stand to hear him chirp along brightly about what it’s like to live with pain.

  I was not only in pain. I was becoming a fucking pain in the ass. From what I could see the only remedy was solitude, and when forced into the company of friends, the judicious use of alcohol and lies.

  We got to my car, and Jake drove back. When we arrived—when Jake finally parked in the Bêtise parking lot, the guys were still out on the call.

  Jake put on coffee, and we shared small talk and some sweet rolls. It was another hour before the big trucks rolled back into the station, and we gave the firefighters time to get their gear off and clean up before we went over. When we did, it was obvious that all was not well.

  I’d had the chance to observe the local firefighters firsthand since Bêtise had opened. I secretly believe that was one of the reasons Jake had picked that particular location. From the tables by the front window, patrons could watch the firefighters work to maintain their equipment, toss around a football, or—since a number of them smoked—spy on them while they fed their habit. They laughed and joked among themselves—often engaged in some inevitable roughhousing. Firehouses are homes, and the crew is family. That night, that’s how I could tell that something had gone spectacularly wrong.

  Three firefighters stood silent and separate in the area they usually used to smoke and play. They stood hunched over, eyes downcast, so still their motion-sensing security lights had shut off, surrounding them with darkness. All three focused on their feet. They looked tired, but worse than that, they looked beaten. Jake stepped into the shadows with them, and the lights once again flared to life. “Is JT here?” />
  One of the men, I think his name was Chad, shook his head.

  “Is he…? Are you guys okay?”

  “We’re fine.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the ground, then picked up the butt. “It was just a tough call is all.”

  Jake nodded.

  “JT’s rig transported a victim. He’ll be back after he’s done at the hospital.”

  Silence closed in on us again. The image of Cam came to me as he’d been that morning: solid, reassuring, unashamedly gentle.

  My heart tightened inside my chest. “Where’s Cam?”

  Chad tilted his head toward the firehouse, and before I even knew what I was doing, I’d taken several steps in that direction. I stopped and turned, meeting my brother’s surprise.

  “I’ll be back.” I didn’t think he’d go anywhere without seeing JT in the flesh first, anyway. He nodded that I should go on.

  I went in through the garage, past the trucks, past the rec room and the card table where most evenings you’d find a lively poker game. I turned right at the kitchen where some men sat drinking coffee because I could hear the rhythmic clink clank of free weights, and instinctively I knew I’d find Cam in the weight room.

  I got to the door and took in the sight. Cam was shirtless—wearing a pair of those breakaway workout pants with a stripe down the side. His bare feet looked oddly vulnerable. Gloved hands gripped the barbell as he bench-pressed what seemed to be enormous iron wheels of weight. With each push—clink—his muscles stood out, straining and sweaty, bulging, stretching…reaching the limit of their ability before Cam grunted and brought the bar back to the cradle. Clank.

  I didn’t have to be a personal trainer to know that what he was doing wasn’t advisable or safe to do alone.

  “Whoa there,” I said, and instead of spotting him—because, how could I?—I placed my left hand over his and said, “Stop.”

  When he stilled, I let him go and looked for something to sit on. The only thing I found was a massive exercise ball, so I rolled it over. When I sat down, it squeaked like a fart, and I thought again that the day could surely have gone better than it had. The barest lift of his mouth in a half-smile told its own story.

  “What happened?”

  “Bad call.” His tone was clipped.

  I hardly knew him; I knew he didn’t want to tell me what happened. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I put my hand on his again. My feelings about St. Nacho’s, about small towns, about my divorce, my brother, and my life in general were complicated. Taking Cam’s hand was nothing of the kind. He was basically good, a mischievous boy-man with a tough job, and he was hurting. A broken Cam was an awful, awful thing.

  “Will you tell me?” I asked.

  His eyes opened, and I realized I’d never really looked into them before. Cam’s irises reflected the blue of alpine skies, brilliant and clear with a smudgy charcoal circle around the outer edges. The pupils were surrounded by what appeared—in that light—to be silver starbursts. The whites of his eyes were red, and his lashes damp from crying.

  “Kids and fireworks.”

  Ah, shit. I wondered if I really wanted to hear the rest.

  “We were called to a single-family home containing a cache of illegal fireworks. Kids found them and lit them in an enclosed space. Things got out of control before they could stop it. The rest of the house went up in just minutes. Four boys. Two brothers and two neighborhood kids. The house was fully involved when we got there. JT transported one of them.”

  Oh… that meant…

  “Some days I can’t do my job worth a fucking damn.” He sat up and discreetly wiped his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  I had to open my mouth to breathe without making a noise, but maybe even that was a kind of embarrassed sob.

  “Daniel?” he glanced up at me. How wrong was that? To be so glad to hear him say my name when his heart was breaking.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think kids die for a reason? Like…does God really need them for something?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “What reason could there be for three kids losing their lives like that? It can’t be a lesson. That’s too cruel. But it can’t be random.”

  “Ah, Cam. Please don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  Why was I even there? What could I say to help Cam, with whom I normally lived in a state of friendly détente and unrequited lust? I had followed my feet and my instincts, but now he needed something, and I was absolutely out of my depth.

  I leaned over and wrapped my arms around his neck, and it was like grabbing on to a bull. Muscles rippled as his arms slipped under mine and banded tight around me, crushing me. He held on to me as though I was the only solid thing left on earth. He pressed his face into my neck, and I felt the wetness of tears there.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said stupidly.

  He shook his head. He was openly crying, and I was acutely aware that there were probably ten people, most of whom were only meters away, who understood what he was going through better than I ever could. I felt his grief like a hot wind all along the place I stuff my inconvenient emotions, and it blew away anything trivial I had ever stored there.

  “I’m so sorry, Cam. You did your best, right? You guys…you always do your best. And you have to face that you can’t…that sometimes there are no miracles. Sometimes the fight is over before you get there.”

  Cam’s big head nodded against my skin, and I wanted more. I wanted to pull his body into mine, maybe even kiss away his pain. I’d have done anything to make it better, but he asked nothing further of me than to be held.

  “I’m sorry.” My own eyes burned. “It takes guys like you to bear that, and I know it’s hard. But only you can. None of the rest of us could shoulder a burden like that.”

  I heard footsteps approach the door behind me, but I didn’t turn. After a second, whoever it was walked away.

  * * *

  I slept poorly the night of the fire. At about five a.m. I gave up and started coffee because there was no hope that I would go back to sleep. If I did by that time I’d just waste the day, and I had things to do.

  I went outside for the paper before the sun had even cracked the horizon and sat down with coffee and a leftover roll from the bag Jake had given me the night before.

  The fire story had made the front page of the newspaper. There were pictures of the brothers who died, interviews with the parents. They reported the current condition of the boy JT had transported, who held on to life by an ever-thinning thread. Someone had snapped a picture of Cam and the rest of the crew as they packed up their equipment after putting out the fire.

  Cam stood in the foreground, grimy and wet with sweat as he pulled off his helmet. The photographer caught him looking back at the house with naked regret.

  Seeing that picture brought home to me how painful Cam’s job could be and what an extraordinary thing it was that any firefighter could roll out on each new call with fresh determination in his heart. It was no wonder they had all come home silent and exhausted.

  I’d interrupted Cam in his private grief and seen the man he hid from the world. And I’d discovered I had much more than a passing attraction to him. I wanted to take away his pain, even if it meant bearing it myself.

  Since I had nothing better to do that early, the beach beckoned. I changed and took off for a walk to the pier. There was no one out yet, just some seabirds and a light mist of fog. It was time to consider my own dilemma.

  My father, Elton Livingston was trying to get in touch with me.

  This was no surprise to me, but it would shock the hell out of Jake. I’d never told him our father had written to me; I’d never found a good way to work it into a conversation. Now I worried how he would feel if he knew.

  Jake probably only remembered our father as an abusive man who came home disappointed every night—- only to get drunk and take it out on us. My mom stood up to him on our behalf and got the w
orst of it, but I took more than one beating to protect Jake, who was so much younger.

  It all ended the day I was finally big enough to put a stop to it. That physical confrontation left my father lying on the ground with a broken nose, looking up at me with fear in his eyes. The image of his frightened face is burned into my memory as the single most conflicted moment of my life.

  I hadn’t wanted to win. But I couldn’t bear to lose anymore either.

  The next day our mother’s father took us to the beach, and when we came home, all the mementos, the photographs, the letters and postcards—every last trace of my father—had disappeared. For the rest of my childhood it was as if he’d never existed at all. For my part, I’d always thought good riddance.

  By the time I heard from him again, I was in graduate school and Jake was in Israel with our grandfather—our zeyde—doing his mandatory service in the Israeli army.

  Our father wrote me to tell me he had a new family, and all I could think was…good luck with that.

  Fuck my father anyway.

  He should have been the one to tell Jake about them, because I could never do it. And now Jake would think I’d kept it from him for some private, selfish reason of my own. Maybe I had. Maybe I didn’t want to see him hurt again.

  Our father had burdened me over the ensuing years with apologies, requests for financial assistance, and news I’d rather not have gotten. Photos I wish I’d never seen of a boy who looked like me and a girl who looked a little bit like Jake around the eyes.

  I had siblings I didn’t know. Siblings I didn’t want to know. And they were trying to find me to tell me that a man I had hated for most of my life was sick.

  I didn’t want to know that either.

  It was while I was on the boardwalk that I happened to spot Jake and JT along the seam of the sea—where the rush and foam of water met a line of damp brown sand. They’d taken off their shoes and carried them while they walked with their arms wrapped around each other. Jake wore his white chef’s coat and apron as though he’d left the shop midbake, and JT wore his uniform under a navy blue windbreaker with SIFD on the back.