Rediscovery (2 page)

“Ten dollars.”

Michael pulled out his wallet and paid for the book, looking back at Lee, bemused once more.

At the
hotel restaurant that night, Michael was standing at the hostess station when Lee walked in and requested a table for one. She told him it would be at least a thirty-minute wait. Lee nodded and left his name, looking tired, hungry, and more than a little frustrated. He had changed out of his leather vest and pants, Michael noticed, and in jeans and a soft T-shirt, he looked exactly like the kind of man Michael would go for. If it weren’t for the leather, Michael would have been all over him. Except that his experiences in college with the leather scene hadn’t included Lee’s silly humor, his patience with the kids, his willingness to help out the women at the book booth, or his clear enjoyment of the little ones’ antics and energy. On impulse, Michael took a step forward. “I’m two from the top of the list to sit down,” he said, catching Lee’s attention. “Do you want to join me? One or two, it’s only one table, and that leaves an empty table for them later, and you can eat sooner.”

“Are you sure?” Lee asked. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“You aren’t imposing,” Michael assured him. “I invited you.”

“Well then, yes, I’d like that,” Lee said. “I didn’t get your name earlier. I’m sorry.”

“It’s Michael. Michael Donovan.”

“Lee Mitchell,” Lee said, holding out his hand.

Michael took it, feeling the calluses on his palm as his hand was enveloped in a strong grip. Not a crushing one, but a confident one, the kind that made Michael weak in the knees. “Nice to meet you, Lee. You look different without all the leather.”

“I love leather,” Lee said as they waited for the hostess to call their table. “That’s why I work with it for a living, but it’s nice sometimes to wear soft cotton and jeans too.”

“So this is really what you do full time?” Michael asked. “Is there a lot of demand?”

“A fair amount,” Lee said. “There’s the bondage community, of course, but there are also a lot of guys who want a leather vest to wear to the honky tonk on Friday night. Or the girls who want a leather skirt for the clubs. Leather doesn’t have to be about kink.”

“I guess you get that assumption a lot, don’t you?” Michael said, recognizing the sound of defensiveness when he heard it.

“Donovan, party of one,” the hostess called.

“That’s us,” Michael said. “Party of two now,” he added to the hostess. “That won’t be a problem, will it? I ran into my friend, and it seems silly to sit at two tables.”

“Of course not,” the hostess said. “Let me get another menu.”

When she had seated them, Lee grinned at Michael. “Your friend?”

“Why not?” Michael said. “It’s not like I was going to tell her you were the guy I’d been staring at in the dealers’ room.”

“Were you?” Lee asked, his grin widening.

Michael felt heat climbing up his cheeks. “Maybe a little. Seeing you with the kids…. It surprised me.”

“I love kids,” Lee said. “I keep waiting for my sister to get married and give me nieces and nephews to spoil, but so far she’s resisting. Kelly and Nicole are great ladies, and the kids are adorable, but they’re kids. They have a lot of energy that needs to be channeled appropriately. When Nicole isn’t busy at the table, she keeps them occupied, but when there’s a rush like there was today, she can’t do everything. I like kids. Patricia and Edward like me. It seemed a logical solution.”

Michael
could
see the logic, but it didn’t make it any less surprising. “I didn’t see any of the other vendors offering.”

“They’re farther away,” Lee said. “It’s easier for me. Besides, I got there while they were setting up, before anyone else had arrived yet. I’d already offered by the time everyone else got there. If my booth gets busy, I send the kids back, and everyone’s happy.”

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the waitress said, interrupting their conversation. “I’m Holly. I’ll be your waitress tonight. Can I get you something to drink? A beer, a cocktail, a glass of wine?”

“I’ll have a Heineken,” Michael said.

“Just water for now,” Lee said.

“It’s a con and you aren’t drinking?” Michael joked. “What’s wrong with you?”

Lee laughed. “I don’t need alcohol to have a good time, and watching the drunks around me is always entertaining.”

“I’ll remember that,” Michael said. “Fortunately it takes more than one beer to get me drunk, but maybe I’ll switch after I finish this one.”

“Give it a try tonight,” Lee proposed. “Let me show you the world through a different lens.”

Michael hesitated a moment, remembering the things he had seen at clubs in college, but despite the leather earlier in the day and the fetish gear in the booth, Lee wasn’t giving off the dominant vibe Michael had gotten pretty good at picking up after he’d decided that life wasn’t for him. “Okay, you’re on. Can I drink the beer I already ordered?”

“You can do whatever you want,” Lee said. “Like you said, one beer probably won’t get you drunk. Then after dinner, we’ll paint the town red, my way.”

The last two words gave Michael pause, but he pushed the nerves away. Lee hadn’t given him any reason to be nervous other than making leather items, and his kindness to the children was plenty of reason to give him a chance. “We should look at the menus. The waitress will be back soon.”

Almost as if summoned by Michael’s comment, the waitress returned with their drinks. “Do you have any questions about the menu?”

“What’s the soup of the day?” Lee asked.

“Chicken tortilla soup,” the waitress said. “We also have an entrée special. This evening, we’re serving cocktail de camarones. If you’re ready, I can take your order now, or I can come back in a few minutes.”

“I’m ready if you are,” Michael said to Lee.

“We’ll go ahead and order,” Lee told the waitress. “I’ll have beef fajitas, please, with extra guacamole.”

“I’ll take the special,” Michael said. “That sounded really good.”

When she had left, Michael leaned forward. “So, do you have a shop somewhere?”

“I have a workshop where we do all the cutting and sewing,” Lee said, “and I do see customers there if they’re local and want to come in, but I do most of my business at shows like this one and online. That way I don’t have the overhead of a huge stock or the cost of retail space. I converted a barn on my family’s property into the workshop so the only cost is electricity and then the equipment and supplies, of course.”

“Of course,” Michael said, his own business background adding to his curiosity. “It seems like an odd profession to get into.”

“I learned from my grandfather,” Lee explained. “He was a leather worker, all the way from the tanning to the finished product. I don’t tan the hides myself. I always hated that part, but I learned to love the finished leather and everything that could be made with it. The problem is that fewer people use leather regularly these days than in my granddad’s day, so I have to be creative with the products I make. People don’t want to spend enough on wallets and purses these days to make that profitable, but when I was first starting out, an acquaintance referred me to a local BDSM club. Talk about a shock for a poor country boy, but once I got over that, I started looking at the gear in the room. Ninety percent of it was made of leather, so I looked a little closer, and it was all stuff I could make. Not stuff I knew how to make, but stuff I could learn how to make. So I asked the owner if he’d be willing for me to leave some cards on the bar or in the bathroom or somewhere. He agreed, and that’s how I got started.”

“So you aren’t into the leather scene?” Michael asked.

Lee shook his head. “Afraid not. I hope you’re not disappointed. I’m really rather vanilla.”

Michael smiled. “I’m not disappointed. Relieved might be the better word.”

“I still love leather, and I love wearing it,” Lee said, “so it was easy to put together outfits for cons like this or visits to clubs that draw attention and show off my workmanship. People see what they want to see. If it helps my business, I’m all for it.”

Michael could hardly argue with that when he had fallen into the same trap. “But if I wanted a leather wallet or satchel or something like that, you could make it too?”

“Sure,” Lee said. “I still have all my grandfather’s old patterns, and the satchels especially are popular because they’re smaller than a briefcase or a backpack without being as feminine in appearance as a purse.”

“Are most of your clientele men?” Michael asked.

“About half and half,” Lee said. “I’ve got the web site divided into two catalogues at this point, although there’s some overlap, obviously, for items that could appeal to either gender.”

The waitress interrupted once again with the meals, and they grew silent as they ate. When they finished, Michael said, “So what’s next?”

“That depends on you,” Lee said, “but my suggestion would be to start with a trip to Hermann Park.”

“Okay, why?” Michael asked.

“Because it’s a beautiful place to walk at night,” Lee said. “Shakespeare in the Park is going on this weekend.”

“You like Shakespeare?”

“What’s not to like?” Lee asked. “He’s a brilliant comedian, and his tragedies are heart-wrenching.”

“You’re full of surprises,” Michael said. “I keep thinking I have you figured out, and then you say something like that.”

Lee shrugged. “I’m a pretty ordinary guy, really. I own my own business. I work the occasional weekend, but for the most part, it’s weekdays nine to five. I like to read, pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I travel when I can afford it and surf the Internet for ideas of places to go next when I can’t.”

“And help out your fellow vendors at a con by playing with their kids,” Michael said. “That isn’t ordinary.”

“It is when you grew up in the country,” Lee insisted. “My mother’s friends would come to visit with their kids in tow. As the oldest, I ran herd on all of them, from the one two months younger than me to the baby, when I was sixteen. I’m not sixteen anymore, but the habit hasn’t faded.”

“You didn’t get tired of it?”

“Not yet,” Lee said. The waitress brought their checks. They paid and Lee led Michael to the door. “You said you’d let me show you the world through a different set of eyes. Will you come walking with me?”

“Why not?” Michael said, not really expecting much to come of it, but it couldn’t hurt. After all, drinking aside, how different could Lee’s view be from his own?

By the
time they reached Hermann Park, Michael had already started revising that opinion. Lee had chosen to drive down all the back streets instead of taking 59 like Michael would have done. They didn’t get there as quickly, but they saw so much more, with Lee pointing out a bungalow in Bellaire, the last one left on the street, and telling Michael about his mother’s parents who had lived in the area before it was fashionable and sharing his memories of visiting a little bungalow almost exactly like that one for years as a child. When his grandparents finally had to move into a nursing home, they had sold the house for nearly four times what they had paid for it. Within a week, the new owners had torn it down and started building one of the huge McMansions that now filled the lots almost completely. From there, he had taken Michael up Buffalo Speedway and shared the story of his sister, who as a child had always wanted to know where the buffalo were and why she never saw them speeding. Michael had laughed so hard at Lee’s recounting he could barely see. He’d driven by Buffalo Speedway hundreds of times without ever thinking twice about the name. Now he’d chuckle every time he passed by.