Margaret glanced at him as they passed Kossol’s Kosy Korner. Even there, in the dim glare of the diner on a sober Saturday afternoon, people seemed to be watching them through the streaky glass, including old Kyle Kossol himself. “Did you like your birthday present?” Margaret asked him.
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought you’d like those colors.”
“I did. Yeah.” His face was aflame with mortification and unarticulated gratitude.
“You can’t tell your mama, Andy.”
“I know.” This was not news to him. There was not much of anything he could tell Mama these days. Sometimes he wondered if Margaret actually preferred it that way, since it made him more like her own son and less like Mama’s. In that sense it felt like a betrayal of Mama—a form of desertion, even—but there was nothing he could do about it; his very nature, after all, was the ultimate betrayal.
Margaret had a customer back at the Blue Moon, so she left Andy at Eagle Drugs with the remains of their milkshake. He was stalling for time now, drawing petroglyphs on the frosty canister until the Basque boy showed up for work.
“Want another one?” asked Mr. Yee. He was wearing the same garnet bolo tie he had worn since Andy was a little boy. Andy figured it was to prove he was a cowboy, even if he was an old Chinaman who ran the Rexall. When Mr. Yee was a boy there had been lots of Chinamen in Winnemucca—thousands, even, according to Mama—but now his kind was rapidly dwindling, and that meant he had to fit in.
Andy waved away the offer of a milkshake.
“Hunky-dory, huh?”
“Yes sir.”
“He should be here pretty soon.”
Rattled, Andy pretended not to understand.
“Lasko,” said Mr. Yee, explaining himself. “Your buddy, right? He’s got baseball practice until four. You’re welcome to stay.”
“Oh, right . . . thanks.” Andy’s heart was thumping with anxiety and hope. He wondered if Mr. Yee, through canny oriental powers, had detected his infatuation with Lasko, or if Lasko himself—and here’s where the hope came in—had told Mr. Yee that he and Andy were buddies. In either case the jig was up. Andy poured the rest of the milkshake into his glass and stared at a postcard taped to the mirror.
Lasko. It suited him perfectly—exotic and roughneck at the same time. While his name was officially Belasko (Andy had seen it on a roster at school), the shortened version was all he ever used. Lasko’s father was Mexican, but his mother (a cook at the Martin Hotel and the daughter of a sheepherder) had insisted on Basque names for their children. Lasko had been extremely lucky in that regard; there were no awkward intrusions of x’s and z’s in his name. He had a brother who’d been saddled with Xalbador, and even worse, a sister named Hegazti, which sounded less like a name to Andy than some sort of muttered gypsy curse.
The summer before, Lasko had danced in Pioneer Park at his grandfather’s birthday in traditional Basque garb. (Only foreigners were described as wearing “garb,” Andy realized, never Americans.) Lasko was as much of a local boy as Andy, but seeing him that day, dashing in his black beret and red-sashed white pajamas, Andy felt every gallant, grueling mile of the journey that had brought Lasko’s people from the Pyrenees to Chile and, finally, to the high desert of Nevada. Andy had not been invited to the birthday party, of course—he didn’t know these people, and his mother was widely known to run a whorehouse—but he watched, entranced, from a blanket spread under a nearby cottonwood tree. It was hot as the hinges that day. Lasko was dancing hard, so his white pajamas had turned gray in the places where sweat had stuck them to his strong, hairy legs.
“That’s the Rexall train!”
Andy nearly fell off the stool when Lasko’s voice broke his reverie. Then a hand landed on his shoulder, firm as an accusation and warm as a caress. “Pretty snazzy, huh?” Lasko’s other hand was pointing to the postcard on the mirror, but Andy still wasn’t seeing it. All he could see was their reflection: one of them seated, the other standing, both looking straight ahead, like a couple in an old daguerreotype.
All too soon the hand abandoned Andy’s shoulder, and Lasko was behind the counter, wrapping an apron around his gabardined loins. He yanked the strings so tight he might have been a wonderful Christmas parcel in need of extra protection. “It’s gonna be a big deal,” he said. “She’s comin’ through every state in the union.”
The train, thought Andy, trying to concentrate. The train on the postcard.
“Why is she doing that?” he asked feebly.
Lasko shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “To let folks know about Rexall. Spread the word. The Depression is over. Ain’t she a beaut?”
The train on the postcard was a streamlined cylinder that seemed to stretch on forever, the horizontal cousin of a Buck Rogers rocket ship.
“She’s stopping in Winnemucca next month. For a whole day.” Now Lasko was wiping the counter with a towel, his naked forearms circling hypnotically.
“But . . . why?”
“So folks can come on board and look at it. See all the Rexall products.”
Andy still didn’t get it. There were plenty of Rexall products to be seen right here: corn plasters, enema bags, mysterious-looking trusses for old people.
“And it’s air-conditioned,” Lasko added. “All twelve cars.”
Now that was something. Nothing in Winnemucca was air-conditioned, not even the movie house. Andy had experienced that supernatural coolness only once in his life: when Mama took him on a trip to Reno so she could interview a blackjack girl named Irene. They had dined on chicken salad sandwiches and cherry pie in an air-conditioned coffee shop next door to the casino. He had never forgotten the sensation, that instantaneous release from the blast furnace of summer.
“Do you have to get tickets?” he asked Lasko.
“Not if you’re a Rexallite.”
“What’s a Rexallite?”
“He’s a Rexallite,” Mr. Yee piped up from over at the pharmacy counter. “You talk nice to him, I bet he’ll pull some strings.”
Lasko laughed. “He’s a Rexallite, too. And you don’t have to talk to nobody.”
But I want to, thought Andy. I want you to pull strings for me. I want you to take care of everything.
“When is it coming?” he asked. “I mean she.” Trains had a gender, apparently, so Andy thought it best to follow Lasko’s lead.
“We ain’t got the schedule yet, but I could let you know. I could show you.”
Andy knew better than to give him the phone number for the Blue Moon. Mama had always been clear about that. It interfered with business, she said. “Maybe at school,” he said. “I sit two rows behind you in Geography.”
“I know,” said Lasko. “You brought in that book one day.”
Andy nodded, exhilarated by the knowledge that he’d been remembered. “Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels.”
“With the pictures of the new bridge in San Francisco.”
“Yep. That’s the one.” Andy almost never said yep, but he knew how boys were supposed to talk to each other, especially boys like this one.
Lasko, scrubbing a glass with a brush, looked over at Andy. His nose was indelicate, broken-looking, his eyelashes so long and luxuriant they might have been painted on, like Robert Taylor’s on the cover of Screenland magazine.
“Could I look at that sometime?” asked Lasko.
“Uh . . . what?”
“The book.”
“Oh . . . You bet. . . . I could loan it to you, even.”
“I liked those pictures,” said Lasko. “And the ones with the Panama Canal.”
“Yeah, me too. Pretty nifty.”
Nifty. Something else he never said.
“I could bring it by tomorrow,” he added, barely able to breathe.
Lasko shook his head. “Sundays I help my mama out.”
/> “At the Martin Hotel? I could bring it to you there.”
“Okay . . . sure. Swell.” Lasko’s dark brows furrowed. “How did you know where she works?”
Andy panicked for a moment, then shrugged. “Everybody knows where she works. Her roast lamb is world-famous.” This was laying it on thick, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances. “World-famous lamb” was actually painted on the side of the Martin Hotel, so it seemed a safe enough choice. And it was better than telling the truth, that Lasko had been under polite surveillance ever since Andy had seen him dancing in the park in those sweaty pirate pants.
Lasko nodded, acknowledging the fame of his mother’s lamb. “Come after dinner,” he said. “We can eat something in the kitchen.”
“Sure. Swell.”
An awkward silence followed while Lasko washed spoons. Andy wondered if either of them had a clear understanding of what had just been negotiated.
Finally Lasko said, “Scorcher today, huh?”
Andy whistled—whew—and tugged on his shirt collar, a gesture that didn’t come off nearly as natural—or as manly—as he had planned.
“Want some shaved ice?” Lasko asked. “No charge.”
“Sure.”
In one practiced movement Lasko yanked a paper cone from a dispenser, slapped it into a chrome holder, and filled it with shaved ice, glancing briefly in the direction of Mr. Yee, who was occupied with his ledger. Then, as if to say This is our secret, Lasko pressed a finger to his lips before hitting a tap and squirting cherry syrup into the cone. Andy smiled as the nectar bloomed in the ice like a rose.
He left the Eagle as soon as he had finished the shaved ice. It wouldn’t do to hang around. Lasko was popular, and popular boys always knew when other kids were over-eager for their company. Besides he seemed to like Andy (or at least his book), and Andy had just been invited to dinner at the Martin Hotel. Well, sort of invited, if eating in the kitchen counted. The invitation to the train was less clear-cut, since it could have been done to impress Mr. Yee, but an afternoon of air-conditioning with Lasko, whatever the reason, was nothing to sniff at.
By five o’clock Andy was hitchhiking home on Jungo Road. A breeze had rolled down from the mountains, warm and velvety. Andy felt buoyed by nature and a wondrously unthinkable thought: I have a date tomorrow. He may not know it, and he may not even know my name, but I have a date for the first time in my life.
A beat-up Packard pulled over and stopped, so Andy ran to catch up with it. The driver was a skinny bald man in an old brown suit.
“Where you headin’, son? Jungo?”
“No. Just a mile or two down the road.”
The man squinted at him. “The Blue Moon Lodge?”
Andy hesitated, then uttered the all-important “Yep.”
“Ain’t you too young for that place?”
No, thought Andy, I’m too old for it.
“You ever been there?” asked the man.
“I live there.”
A slow nod. “You’re Mona’s boy.”
“Yes sir.”
“Get in.”
Andy did as he was told, and the car sped off down the road.
“You’re growin’ up like a weed,” said the man.
“Yes sir,” said Andy. “I am.”
Chapter 7
THE STUFF OF HOME
This house, thought Shawna as she passed through the rose-heaped gate at the crest of Noe Hill, feels like the family seat now. There was a mature garden here, and curling brown shingles, and an air of tatty antiquity that evoked her childhood home at 28 Barbary Lane. Shawna’s new home (a crisp bamboo-floored condo near the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Valencia) was handy to her life—well, her nightlife, at any rate—but it still felt more like a base camp. Mrs. Madrigal’s flat in the Duboce Triangle was no more than a charming last stop on her journey, and Shawna’s dad’s RV was a journey in itself, hardly the stuff of home if you didn’t actually live in it.
But this house, oddly enough, this cluster of “temporary” shacks built for refugees of the 1906 earthquake, felt steeped in permanence. On the nights when she joined Ben and Michael on the sofa for takeout burritos and Boardwalk Empire, the lights in the valley below seemed designed to twinkle for all eternity. They had made it that way, the two of them, with their reverence for domestic detail.
Including, of course, this dog, this big Muppet of a Labradoodle galumphing toward her down the garden path. As usual, when she was wearing a flowy skirt, he made her feel merry and girlish, like Heidi coming home from the hills. Right up to the moment he stuck his big Muppet nose between her legs.
“Stop that, Roman!” Michael was yelling from the front door.
“Please,” she said. “I can use the attention.” (Not true. That particular part had received plenty of attention the night before, and she was pretty sure Roman already had the scoop on that.) “He’s the one I’m worried about,” she added. “One day he’ll get his nose stuck on my vajazzling, and it won’t be pretty.”
“Be stern with him,” said Michael. “Push him away. He took classes to learn not to do that.”
“I remember,” she said. “Labial aversion therapy.”
Michael kissed her on the cheek as she reached the front porch. “Not just for that. He’s an equal opportunity sniffer.”
“Hey, I can dig it.” She found herself sounding strangely retro whenever she was around Michael. It wasn’t something he actually required of her, so it was possible she just liked doing it. Maybe, in fact, that was what having a “gay uncle” was all about for her: to take the sting out of having missed the 1970s.
“I was half expecting a fashion show,” he said, leading the way into the house.
“Why?”
“I dunno. You mentioned Burning Man on the phone. I thought maybe you were gonna model an outfit.”
She could see why he’d think that. Their living room looked like backstage at Fashion Week. There were bolts of fabric everywhere, a veritable planetarium of EL wire on the table, some fuzzy shit on the floor like shrapnel from a lime-green bomb.
“Actually,” she said, “I haven’t started on my outfit.”
Michael just shrugged. “You don’t need to, do you? You’ve already got a closet full of costumes.”
She loved that he knew that. That he had actually seen the whorish snarl of scarves on the back of the door. Not to mention the mysteries within: the tutus and bustiers, the baseball uniforms, the Catholic schoolgirl fetish wear. He knew her as well as anyone, this dude in the white mustache and untucked Pendleton.
“It’s all Ben’s doing,” said Michael, looking around the room. “You’d think sewing had just become another event in the decathlon.”
She smiled—partially because that was funny, and partially because she had just pictured Ben, tanned and gleaming and yoga-sculpted, running out of the waves to grab a seat behind a sewing machine.
“That is so cool,” she said. “Is there anything he can’t do?”
Michael widened his eyes at her. “Guess not.”
There was a brief squirmy silence between them. She had not meant the question as a leading one, and he almost certainly hadn’t taken it that way, but she was still uncomfortable. She scrambled, tellingly, to back away from the subject.
“Dad’s new Facebook bride is awesome,” she said.
“Isn’t she? At least she used to be. I’m glad to hear she still is.”
“So down-to-earth, you know. A real broad.”
“You know they called her ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Fat Woman’?”
“Mmm. I checked her out on YouTube.”
“She really was a knockout.” He chuckled suddenly at a surfacing memory. “Brian told me he had already jerked off to her before we met her up at the river.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; “Am I oversharing, little one?”
“Of course not! Where? On the Internet?”
He rolled his eyes with a sigh. “A picture. In a book. It was something we had back then. A bunch of pages you could turn.” He flopped on the sofa like a flung-aside teddy bear, then motioned for her to follow suit. “Is she still hot?”
She took a seat, curling her legs under her ass. “Would I fuck her, you mean?”
“No, I did not mean that.”
“Well, I would—I mean, I wouldn’t, of course, but I would . . . if I met her at a Litquake party, say, and she asked me out for a drink or something.”
He arched an eyebrow. “My, aren’t we getting specific!”
Shawna shrugged. “She liked my book. She said so when I met her. I was just putting it into a believable context.”
He smiled. “Everybody liked that book.”
She reached over and patted his denimed knee. “Thanks for tweeting about it, by the way.”
“Sure. I meant it. I couldn’t put it down.”
“Still . . . thanks for spreading the word.”
“To all seventy-six of my followers. You don’t need my help, sweetie. I just saw your picture in USA Fucking Today.”
Oh God, that picture. And even worse, that dress: a short high-waisted number intended as a friendly nod to Lena Dunham in Girls. Huge mistake. The end result had been more like Little Lulu. Note to self: dress like self.
“Actually,” she said, curling up on the sofa, “I’ll be glad to stop being everywhere for a while.”
“Burning Man,” he said without much enthusiasm. “Why is that not part of being everywhere?”
“No cell phones. No cars. No airplanes. No schedules.” The litany was already lulling her. “It’s the opposite of a book tour.”
“I guess so,” he murmured. “How about sofas?”
“What?”
“Do they have sofas?”
She chuckled. “They do, actually. Lots of them. In the strangest places.”
“Good. I have a feeling I’m gonna need ’em.”
She was relieved to see the rueful twinkle in his eye. He was starting to get with the program. It was vital to her agenda that Michael feel fully connected to this grand adventure. “That should be your playa name,” she said. “Sofa Daddy!”