Salvation (15 page)

As soon as I made up my mind, a sense of
wellbeing settled over me and I relaxed. Maybe it was kind of like fighting
against a rip current, then finally realizing you should just go with it, that
that was the way to survive. The moment I stopped battling my attraction to
Vincent and decided to just let it carry me was the moment I finally felt okay.

*****

I woke abruptly, sitting up with a gasp
when one of my neighbors came stomping down the stairs, shooting me a
questioning look on his way to the front door. For a moment I was disoriented,
trying to figure out what I was doing in the lobby, but then the fog lifted. I
swung my legs off the couch and stood up, noticing a business card on the
coffee table. It was one of Vincent’s. On the back he’d written, his
handwriting tight and controlled:
I’m sorry for last night. I shouldn’t have
come here when I was drunk. It won’t happen again. V.

I was going to Nana’s house this morning
to practice a couple recipes for the wedding (hopefully without the presence of
a camera crew this time). He’d probably be there, and I planned to ask him out
when we were face to face. Hopefully I hadn’t already blown my chances with
him. I went upstairs to shower and change, nervous excitement brewing in me.

Chapter
Nine

“What do you mean he left?”

Nana shrugged her skinny shoulders and
said, “Vinnie called me this morning and said he needed some time to himself,
so he was going to get out of the city for a few days.”

I sank disappointedly onto the barstool
beside her kitchen island and mumbled, “Oh.”

“He’ll be back, Trevor,” she said, tying
an apron around her waist.

“I know. I just...I thought he’d be
here.” I didn’t mention my plans to finally ask him out.

“Trevor still has a crush on your
grandson,” River told Nana. “He’s been tryin’ to fight it. He even went so far
as gluing himself to my brother for most of the past week to distract himself,
but I can tell by that booboo face that he’s smitten as ever.” I shot him an
oh-my-God-shut-up look, but he just grinned at me. “What? You know Nana is
fully supportive of us
gay homosexuals
, she’s not gonna judge you for
havin’ the hots for Vincent.”

“Is it true, Trevor?” she asked. “Do you
have the hots for my grandson?”

“I…I mean, I—”

“That’s a yes,” River interjected. “Any
idea where ol’ Vinnie went or when he’ll be back?”

“Hard to say.” She scooped a pair of
huge glasses off the counter and stuck them on her face, which instantly made
her look like an owl. “The longest he was ever gone was two months, but he
always comes back sooner or later.”

“He’s kind of the brooding sort,
wouldn’t you say, Nana? Maybe that’s what he’s doing, brooding somewhere.”
River winked at me as he stepped up to a cutting board and began deftly
chopping vegetables into perfect little cubes.

Nana considered that for a moment, then
said, “He was quiet and serious right from the beginning, even before his
parents and sister were murdered. But then that event changed him. It made him
withdraw from just about everything and everyone, and it made the light go out
in his eyes. I think their deaths were a big part of why he got so heavily into
drugs when he was a teenager. He just never could figure out how to move past
it and that helped dull the pain.”

River’s knife had stopped in mid-air,
his expression stricken. “I’m so sorry Nana, I had no idea.”

She patted his hand and said, “I know,
sweetie. It’s good to talk about this. If Trevor really is considering getting
involved with my grandson, he should hear these things, so he knows what he’s
dealing with. Heaven knows he’ll never hear it from Vincent!”

“They were murdered?” I repeated, a knot
in my stomach.

Nana nodded. “My son Paulie, his wife
Ellie, and their baby daughter Sophie were shot in their beds while they were
sleeping, God rest their souls. It was done by members of the Natori family,
who had a feud with us Dombrusos going back generations. They’d planned to kill
the boys too, but my oldest grandson Dante heard them and went to his brothers’
room to protect them. He held the men off with a shotgun while Mikey, Johnnie
and Vincent escaped out a window. What a terrible night.” She made the sign of
the cross, her brown eyes going misty.

“Oh God,” I whispered.

She pulled herself back to the present
and took off her glasses, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her thumbs.
“You know, it was strange how each of the four brothers dealt with that loss in
their own way. Dante, who was seven when it happened, he grew stronger and got
focused on revenge. He was finally able to track down the bastard that killed
his parents and sister, just last year as a matter of fact, and since then,
he’s managed to get some of that, you know, closure.”

Nana continued, “Mikey, the baby, he was
only three, I don’t think he even remembers his parents or sister. He got
married right out of high school and started a family of his own. I always felt
like maybe that was to replace the one he lost. He’s a widower now, poor thing,
with lovely little boys of his own. And his brother Johnnie was four at the
time. Ach, that boy.” She shook her head. “He’s a wild child, acts like he
doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s always on the go, like if he stopped
moving for even a moment, he might actually feel something. I guess that’s his
way of coping.”

She climbed up on a barstool and leaned
forward, her thin arms resting on the granite countertop. “That brings us to
Vincent, who was five years old. He got his younger brothers out the window while
Dante held off the men that had come to kill them, and ran with them to the
neighbor’s house. He asked the neighbor to call 911, and as far as I know, that
was the very last thing Vincent said that night. He stopped talking entirely
for the next two years. I was so worried, I thought some kind of permanent
damage had been done. But then, one day when he was seven, he started talking
again, just like that, with no warning. It was the damnedest thing.”

“What did he say when he started talking
again?” River asked.

“He said, ‘Please pass the corn.’
Nothing for two solid years, and then that, around the table one Sunday during
dinner! After that, he started talking again like there had never been a gap. I
don’t know what was going on with him those two quiet years, he won’t discuss
it. Actually, he won’t discuss anything. That’s how he is. He just takes
everything in and lets nothing out.”

I mulled that over for a long time.
Eventually I asked, “Do you have any idea what Vincent’s mixed up in these
days?”

“It’s not Dombruso business, I can tell
you that much,” Nana said. “His cousins are running the family’s affairs now
and keeping it legit. But Vinnie, he’s gone rogue, I guess you could say. I
don’t know any particulars, of course he won’t tell me a damn thing. Maybe if
you end up as his honey he’ll tell you what’s going on, and then you can tell
me.”

“I’ll bet our boy Trevor here could
rehabilitate him,” River said, trying to lighten the mood. “He’s one of these
good Samaritan types. After a week together, I bet Vinnie would be walking the
straight and narrow. He’d probably even volunteer with you at that soup
kitchen, T.”

“It’s not a soup kitchen, they deliver
meals to shut-ins. You should come volunteer with me. I’m going again before
work on Wednesday,” I said.

“See what I mean? Total do-gooder,”
River said with a smile.

“Out of curiosity,” I said, “are you
trying to push Vincent and me together because you know Skye’s interested in
me, and you don’t think I’m good enough for your brother?”

He looked guilty. “It’s not like that,
T. If anyone was good enough for Skye, it’d be you. I just don’t think he
should be dating right now, he needs to focus on other things.”

“For the record, your brother asked me
out yesterday, and I turned him down.”

River’s brows creased with concern. “How
did he take it?”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Maybe I should call him....”

“River, he’s fine.” I came around the
counter and started transferring the vegetables he’d been chopping into a big
metal bowl. “Jeez, I need to conduct a seminar for you and Christian. It’s
going to be called
Why You Don’t Need to Worry Obsessively about Competent,
Intelligent Twenty-One-Year-Olds
.”

“And the subtitle of that is
Unless
They’re Skye
.”

“Alright boys, time to focus,” Nana
chimed in. “We got six recipes to get to today, so we’d better get cracking.”
She pulled a huge skillet out of the cabinet and put it on the stove, then
turned the heat on under it.

“What’s the pan for, Nana?” River asked.

“The gazpacho.”

“But, you don’t cook gazpacho.”

“Sure you do.”

“Um, you really don’t.”

“You do the way
I
make it,” she
insisted, and the two began arguing. I grinned and stayed out of it.

*****

On my way to the bus stop after leaving
Nana’s house a couple hours later, I pulled out my phone and dialed Vincent’s
number. It went straight to voicemail. “Um, hi. It’s me. Trevor,” I stammered.
“Call me, okay?” After that brilliant message, I didn’t know what else to say
so I disconnected.

I dialed Skye’s number next, and he
answered with an exuberant, “Hey!”

“Hi. How are you?”

“Okay, but I feel stupid for making
things weird between us.”

“You didn’t at all.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Awesome. In that case, do you want to
hang out after work? I won’t try to lock lips with you, I promise,” he joked.

“Love to.”

We spoke for a couple more minutes, and
after we said goodbye I dropped my phone in my pocket and stepped under the
roof of the bus stop. A moment later, someone grabbed me by my throat and
slammed my head against the glass wall. “Hey there, Trevor,” a familiar voice
said.

Pain radiated from the point of impact
and my heart raced as I looked up,
way
up, into the face of Bo Millen,
my cousin Melody’s abusive, steroid-guzzling ex-boyfriend. I was absolutely
terrified, but tried to hide my fear. “Let go of me,” I managed to choke out.

“Sure. Right after you tell me where
that little bitch and my baby are.”

“Gone. She met some guy and took off to
Montana,” I lied, maintaining eye contact.

His brows knit. “Why should I believe
you?”

“Why would I lie?”

After a long moment, he let go of me. He
was obviously thinking about what I’d just told him, which was clearly an
effort for Bo. I could practically see the hamster running around on its
squeaky wheel inside his brain, trying to generate enough intelligence to process
that information.

“How did you find me?” I asked, rubbing
my sore neck.

“You’re all over the internet, dumbass,”
he said. “My buddy Mick found out who the old lady in that cooking video was,
then tracked down her address for me. I been watching her house for a couple
days, figuring you might come back here. Is she a relative of yours? She must
be loaded, that house is a fuckin’ mansion.” Bo was a petty criminal, and
apparently he was trying to generate enough brain power to figure out how to
rip Nana off.

“When you found out where she lived, did
you also find out who her family is?” I asked him. “Her last name is Dombruso.
You mess with her and you mess with the
mafia
, Bo. Cross them once and
you’re dead, end of story. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Bo actually scratched his head, like a
cartoon character trying to figure something out. It was all I could do not to
roll my eyes. After a minute he glared at me and said, “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You have to be. How would a dumbfuck
like you, a nobody from fuckin’ Sacramento, get in with the mafia?”

“You don’t have to believe me, just ask
around. A lot of people in San Francisco know who the Dombrusos are.”

The hamster wheel was turning again, I
could almost hear it squeaking. After a moment, Bo came up with, “Well, if you
can get in with the mob, then I can, too. I bet there’s all kinds of money to
be made there. You’re gonna introduce me to the head of the family.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Bo, they
don’t let outsiders in. Mafia is all about family.”

“Then how’d you get in with them?”

The real answer was too complex for Bo,
so I just went with, “I’m dating Mrs. Dombruso’s grandson.”

A disgusted expression replaced his
usual blank one. “I always suspected you were a faggot.” He actually took a
step back from me, as though being gay was contagious.

“You were right.”

All of this was a little too much for Bo
to process, so he said, “You ain’t heard the last of me, you fuckin’ queer. I’m
gonna find out if you’re lying about the mafia, and if you’re lying about your
bitch cousin. And if you are, you’re fucking
dead
. You got that,
faggot?” To make his point, he lunged forward, grabbed me by the neck again and
bashed my head against the wall of the bus stop one more time. Instead of
waiting for a reply, he turned and sauntered down the street.

My vision blurred for a moment, but then
I steadied myself and took a couple deep breaths. For the first time, I was
glad Melody had taken off with that tattoo artist. Bo was really dangerous,
even if he was dumber than a bag of marshmallows. I hated to think what would
happen if he ever found her and the baby.

The bus pulled up and I held on to the
handrail as I boarded, fishing my wallet out with shaking hands to display my
Muni pass. The driver glared at me, and I wondered what I looked like to
generate that kind of reaction. Maybe he thought I was drunk or something.
Whatever. I made my way unsteadily to the back of the bus, ignoring the stares
of the other passengers.

When I finally got to work, I sat in the
empty employee locker room for a few minutes, trying to steady myself as my
head pounded. The encounter with Bo had left me shaken. I knew what he was
capable of, he had an arrest record a mile long and was a thug to his core. I’d
warned Mel about getting involved with him, but she hadn’t listened. She never
did.