Salvation (2 page)

“But it’s a
wedding
,” River
persisted. “What if we mess up? I’d feel terrible if I ruined their big day.”

Nana turned and scanned the apartment,
pointed to Christopher and Kieran, and said, “Look at those two.” They were
curled up on the couch with their arms around each other and their foreheads
touching, deep in conversation and totally oblivious to the rest of the party.
“You see how in love they are? Nothing you do could possibly spoil their
wedding day. Hell, you could serve ‘em soup that tasted like gym socks and I
don’t think they’d notice or care.”

“Well, that’s sort of reassuring, I
guess,” River said as he started combining two half-empty trays of sandwiches.
“But I’m really going to try not to serve ‘em gym sock soup.”

“We got three whole weeks to practice
recipes,” she said. “You're coming to my house Monday, remember? I'm gonna help
you. Also, I’ve arranged it so you can go to Bellacorona a couple days early.
That way, you can do your prep at a leisurely pace and get the lay of the
land.”

The wedding was going to be held at the
home of one of Nana’s relatives. Apparently it was some big mansion on a cliff
overlooking the Pacific about three hours south of San Francisco, a house so
fancy it actually had a name. “That’s a good idea to go early,” I said. “I’ll
ask for the time off from work.” I bussed tables at an Irish sports bar and
grill called Nolan’s, with the hopes of moving into the kitchen when a job
opened up.

“Alright, I gotta go mingle. You boys
are doing a bang-up job.” She started to head back into the living room.

“Nana,” I called after her, “who was
that guy in the black suit that you were talking to a couple minutes ago? The
one that left.”

She turned to me and said, “That was my
grandson Vincent. Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” I started rearranging the
buffet table, which really didn’t need rearranging.

“He didn’t look like he was having a very
good time,” River chimed in.

“I don’t think my grandson knows how to
have a good time. Sometimes it's hard to believe he's only twenty-six, he's so
uptight! He’s been staying with me, so I was able to corner him and force him
to come along. I told him he had to at least give it a chance, but there was no
point if he was just going to stand in the corner and brood, so I sent him on a
couple errands.” Nana grabbed one more stuffed mushroom before breezing back
into the heart of the festivities.

“You just
had
to ask,” River
teased once she’d gone.

“I wanted a name for him besides Silent
But Deadly.”

River burst out laughing. “Oh man. You
named your dream man after a fart?”

“Did I say he’s my dream man?”

“I’m just assuming, based on how much he
flustered you.”

I was spared further teasing by the
arrival of Hunter in the kitchen. He and his boyfriend Brian had spent almost
the entire party glued to each other off in a corner, watching the festivities
with amused expressions. It was his apartment, but Nana was throwing the party.
I got the impression she hadn’t actually told him about it ahead of time, but
he was being a good sport about the impromptu home invasion.

Hunter tucked a strand of his
shoulder-length blond hair behind his ear, grabbed a plate and started scooping
a mountain of potato salad onto it as he said, “I’m back for seconds, this
stuff is like crack. Oh, and this isn’t all for me. I’m sharing a plate with
Brian.”

“That’s actually my secret ingredient,”
River said. “Crack. It’s what’s for dinner.”

Hunter chuckled at that as he crammed a
couple big sandwiches onto his plate. To me he said, “Are you working at Lunch
with Love this week, Trevor?” We both volunteered at a charity that delivered
meals to shut-ins.

“Yeah, I’ll be there Wednesday.”

“Cool, me too.”

“Do you know what’s up with the
Halloween-in-June thing?” River asked him, indicating one of Nana’s little old
lady friends in a witch hat that had just breezed past us.

“Right before the party, Nana brought a
Wiccan soccer mom here to do some kind of cleansing ritual. She said she wanted
to get rid of the ‘bad juju’ from when my apartment was broken into,” Hunter
explained as he heaped some carrot sticks onto the plate.

“So where’s your witch hat?” River asked
with a grin.

“I chose to conveniently misplace mine
once the ritual was over,” Hunter told him with a smile as he arranged some
sliced fruit on the already overflowing plate.

“Gotta love Nana,” I said.

“You really do,” Hunter agreed as he
topped off his arrangement with a big handful of chips. He looked at the food
pyramid he’d created and said, “Well damn, I got completely carried away. I
probably should have gone with two plates. Let’s see if I actually make it
across the apartment without spilling this all over myself.” He stuck a fork in
his pocket, shot me a playful wink and gracefully weaved his way back through
the crowd to his waiting boyfriend.

River's phone rang, and he answered it
by saying, “What is it, Skye?” After listening for a moment, he muttered,
“Seriously?” Following another pause, he sighed dramatically and said, “Fine.”
He recited the address of the party, then exclaimed, “Would you shut up
already? You’re about to run over a minute!” With that, he quickly punched the
off button and put the phone away.

“What was that about?”

“My brother needs his truck back. It’s
going to be super interesting getting all our trays and equipment home on the
bus.”

“Your brother’s name is Skye?”

“Yeah. And since you’re probably about
to comment on the whole Skye and River thing, because everyone always does, let
me just head you off by saying yes, our mother
is
a total hippie, and I
was in fact raised in a commune.”

“Wow. That’s—”

“Kind of insane. But whatever.”

“What was that thing about going over a
minute?”

“Skye and I can’t afford cellphone
plans. He’s a starving student, and I’m just starving. So we got these cheap
pay-as-you go phones with sixty minutes on them, and we’re trying to make the
minutes last at least a month. That’d be easier if Skye wasn’t so damn chatty.
Sometimes I just have to hang up on him, otherwise he’d burn the whole sixty
minutes by talkin’ about some awesome piece of crap he found in a dumpster.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. He’s a sculptor. Or, you know, he
will be if he ever finishes art school. He goes to Sutherlin on a full
scholarship, because he won a national competition when he was seventeen. One
of his classmates is Christopher, the guy who owns that art gallery. That’s how
I got my first catering gig actually, because Skye put in a good word for me.”

“So, he sculpts using stuff he finds in
dumpsters?”

“Not just dumpsters. He needs his truck
back because he has to get to a junkyard in Oakland before they close.
Apparently some guy who works there called him, because they had some rusty
piece of crap come in that they knew Skye couldn’t live without.” River rolled
his eyes and carried an empty tray to the sink.

“That’s kind of cool, actually. I mean,
that he’s an artist.”

“You won’t think it’s cool once you see
our apartment. Make sure you’re up on your tetanus shots before you come over,
since it’s jam-packed with all sorts of rusty hunks of metal that he’s
scavenged from all over the place. It gets old, lemme tell ya. I just hope this
latest piece of crap is smaller than a refrigerator, otherwise I’m probably about
to get bumped out into the hallway.”

“Doesn’t he have a studio on campus
where he can keep all that stuff?”

“He does, but it’s completely full, too.
There’s barely enough room in the studio to do his welding. But does that stop
him from accumulating more crap? Hell no. You should see him. He’ll find some
bent-up hunk of iron and just go on and on about how beautiful it is, and
‘doesn’t it look just like a giraffe, or a perfect wave, or an enchanted pixie
wand, River?’ Uh, no. It looks like a rusty piece of garbage!”

I chuckled at that. “An enchanted pixie
wand?”

“Okay, I’m exaggerating about that part,
but only slightly. That’s kind of Skye’s thing, though. He sees beauty in
everything, including stuff that’s actually butt-ugly.”

“He sounds sweet.”

River frowned and said, “He is. He
reminds me of a puppy, he gets so excited about things. But puppies are way
less cute when you live with them and can barely make it to the bathroom
without falling over their crap.” That made me laugh, and River asked, “What?”

“Your analogy was kind of funny, a puppy
with crap big enough to fall over. That’d be one colossal canine.”

He grinned too. “Well, this one’s not
exactly Clifford the Big Red Dog. Just Skye, the Small Blue Pain.”

I had no idea how the word ‘blue’
entered into the picture until Skye arrived at the apartment a few minutes
later. He was about my age and really cute, with big blue eyes, a pierced lip,
and shaggy hair that he’d dyed a deep royal blue. It actually really suited
him, somehow. His baggy t-shirt, jeans and sneakers were also blue. Apparently,
he had a whole theme to go with his name.

“Skye, this is Trevor, my business
partner.”

“Business partner?” his brother echoed
with a teasing grin. “Is that a euphemism for something?”

River shot him a look. “Yeah, it’s a
euphemism for
business partner
.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Trevor,” Skye
said. “Is my brother driving you insane yet?”

“Not yet. But then, I haven’t known him
very long,” I replied with a smile.

“Give it time.” Skye turned to his
brother. “It doesn’t look like this party’s wrapping up any time soon, so how
about if I pick you up on the way back from Oakland? I really don’t know how
you’ll get your stuff home otherwise.”

River grinned a little. “I’m surprised
you’re actually thinking about anything beyond that rusty hunk of junk that’s
waiting for you in the East Bay.” Skye rolled his eyes, then quickly stole an
olive from a nearby bowl and popped it in his mouth. “Knock it off!” River
exclaimed. “That food isn’t ours, it was paid for by my client.”

“Dude, it’s one olive.”

“It’s still really unprofessional for
the caterer’s younger brother to show up and start eating stuff.”

“
Unprofessional
. River, you’re
wearing swim trunks,” Skye pointed out.

“Well, it was that or going balls out.
You know my jeans got stolen from the Laundromat. After this job though, I can
afford a trip to the thrift store. Unless you get me fired before I get paid!”
Skye had stolen a couple more olives while River was talking.

“Okay, I’m going,” Skye said. “I need to
make it to the junkyard in less than an hour, because they won’t hold this
thing overnight. But there’s a problem.”

River handed over a set of keys and
raised an eyebrow. “Do I even want to hear this?”

“Um, I’m a little short. They’re asking
a hundred dollars for this piece, but I only have sixty-seven. I can probably
haggle them down a bit, but do you think I could borrow a few bucks? I swear
I’ll pay you back.”

I was sure River would say no, since I
knew he was broke. But instead, he sighed and pulled out his wallet. He took
out all his cash and counted it, then handed it to his brother as he said, “I
have nine bucks. You can have it, since I already put enough away to make rent
this month.”

Skye pocketed the money and grabbed his
brother in a hug. “You’re the best, River.” When he let go of him, he added,
“Actually, there’s one other problem, too.”

“What now?”

“Well, apparently this object is really
heavy. Do you think you can skip out of here for a while and help me? I don’t
think I can lift it on my own.”

“Won’t the guy at the junkyard load it
with you? I can help you get it out of the truck when we get home, but no way
can I leave in the middle of a job.”

“No. Elvis has a bad back, he refuses to
help with loading and unloading.”

“Elvis?” River asked. “Seriously?”

“I can go with him,” I chimed in. “You
have the food under control, so you’ll really only need me when it’s time to
clean up. We’ll be back by then.”

“If you actually want to accompany my
crazy brother to a junkyard in Oakland, knock yourself out. Just watch out for
giant, disgustin’ rats, mice and other vermin. And for the love of gawd, make
sure whatever you drag home isn’t infested with anything!”

“That only happened one time,” Skye told
him.

“And I’m still havin’ nightmares!” River
exclaimed.

“We’ll be careful. Come on Trevor, we’d
better get going. We might hit traffic.”

I gave my friend a little wave goodbye
and his brother and I turned to leave. But then River called after us, “Skye,
have you actually eaten anything today besides those olives?” His brother
turned toward him and shook his head no. River knit his brows at that, then
asked, “What about you, Trev? You eaten anything?” I also shook my head.