The Distance (15 page)

Now it was my turn to stammer. “We…what?”

She picked up a couple bottles of booze and told me, “Grab that tray on the counter behind us, the one that’s full of shot glasses. We’re gonna start off with a quick, easy cocktail. Kai, take these bottles and fill each of the glasses with equal parts butterscotch schnapps and Irish cream. Then top each one with a dollop of whipped cream. There’s one of those spray containers in the fridge. That’s all you need to make a cum shot, easy peasy.”

I brought over the glasses, and as Kai got to work I asked Nana, “Okay, what’s next?”

“I gotta get these appetizers going. It’s real simple to make crab cakes. Now look here.” She started pointing to bowls on the counter. “I got some crackers that I ground up in the food processor, they’re tastier than just using bread crumbs. I also got some eggs and mayo for binder, and a few veggies, nothing fancy, just a little finely chopped green onion and red bell pepper. Not everybody puts veggies in their crab cakes. If you don’t like it, leave it out! What the fuck do I care? You’re not gonna hurt my feelings if you don’t put ‘em in there. Jessie, start dumping everything into a big mixing bowl, will you? Oh, but first, slide that cooler down here.”

“Is this the crab meat, Nana?” I asked as I picked up the surprisingly heavy Styrofoam cooler and brought it to her.

“Yeah, I thought we should keep it on ice,” she said as I put the cooler down in front of her. “You can never be too careful when handling your meat.”

“Safety first,” I said with a grin.

She peeled off the packing tape holding the lid to the cooler as she explained, “I told the guy on the phone at the gourmet market to send enough crab to feed thirty people. This looks like an awful big cooler, but I’m guessing there’s a lot of ice in here to keep the crab meat fresh. I got this bowl here,” she said, sliding a large serving dish closer to her. “Let’s just dump everything out real careful-like, instead of trying to fish through a bunch of ice.”

Nana tossed the lid aside. The cooler was filled to the top with ice, and she and I tipped it over gingerly. At first, nothing but ice cubes fell into the bowl. “Fucker’s heavy,” she said. We tilted it just a little more, and all at once, a huge mass of live blue crabs fell onto the counter. A few landed on their backs, legs and claws waving in the air, and the rest started skittering in every direction. “Holy shit!” Nana yelled. “Look at all these fuckin’ crabs!”

Everyone in the kitchen jumped up and started talking at once as several crabs fell off the counter. It didn’t seem to harm the crustaceans in the slightest, and they darted off sideways across the floor. All the teens and Zachary climbed up on the kitchen table while Trevor and Vincent tried and failed to herd the crabs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mario kept filming the whole spectacle like a reporter in a war zone, zooming in on Nana as she tried to keep a little crab with a cracked shell from falling off the counter. When it almost pinched her, she grabbed a thin knife with a wooden handle, held it by the blade and prodded the crab. “What are you doing, Nana?” I asked her, dancing around to avoid the crabs on the floor.

“I don’t want to stab the fucker, that’d be inhumane,” she said, poking it again with the handle. “I’m just trying to discourage it from jumpin’ off the counter and joining its comrades. We gotta keep this shit contained!” She poked it once more, and the crab grabbed the handle with one of its claws. Nana let go of the knife and yelled, “Sweet baby Jesus, the fucker’s armed!” The crab skittered sideways, waving the knife as it rushed across the kitchen island.

I turned to look at Kai. He held a crab in each hand and was right in the path of the armed crustacean. As soon as he and I made eye contact, we both burst out laughing. He hurried to the doorway and tried to keep the crabs in the kitchen by blocking them with his sneakers, but half a dozen or so were already dashing across the foyer.

Mr. Mario turned his attention to the crab with the knife, coming in for a tight shot with his camcorder. He climbed onto the island and leaned over to get a better angle, ignoring the other crabs around him. When one of them latched onto the front of his pants, Mr. Mario was up like a shot, yelling, “
Madre de Dios
, it’s got me by the
cojones
!” For some reason, he decided to run from the crab that had attached itself to his family jewels, and Kai stepped out of the way as he bolted from the kitchen and out the front door.

Nana and Ollie’s dogs dashed into the kitchen, alerted by all the commotion. They started barking excitedly, lunging at the crabs and jumping out of the way of their pinchers, and Ollie went into superhero mode. He dove into the fray and grabbed his Chihuahua with one hand, then plucked Nana off the stepstool in a fireman’s carry as he bellowed, “Tom Selleck! Come!” Surprisingly, the big mutt actually listened and followed Ollie as he bustled out the back door.

Mr. Mario had left the front door open as he retreated, and ten go-go boys in colorful briefs ran into the house to see what was going on. I gingerly grabbed a couple crabs by their shells, pointing the claws away from me, and noticed Trevor’s son Josh had taken over filming. He was standing on a chair and shaking with laughter as he panned the kitchen with his dad’s video camera. This episode of the cooking show was going to go viral, no question.

In all the mayhem, the Styrofoam cooler had cracked in two when it got dropped and stepped on, so I didn’t quite know what to do with the crabs I was holding. I tried putting them in the sink, but one climbed on top of the other and started to haul itself out. I picked them up again and thought for a moment, then told Kai, “Let’s put them in the bathtub.”

He and a long procession of go-go boys with crabs all rushed down the hall with me. I put the creatures in the big claw-foot tub in the mint green downstairs bathroom, plugged the drain and ran a shallow pool of cool water for them. The dancers added their crabs to the tub, and Vincent and Trevor followed. Trevor held one crab at arm’s length, and his husband was reading from an invoice he must have found in the kitchen. “There are thirty crabs in all,” Vincent said. “How many do we have here?”

Kai counted and said, “Nineteen.”

“Oh man,” Josh exclaimed from behind the video camera, “Ocean’s Eleven are still on the lam.” The kid pushed his thick, black-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose and grinned.

Josh’s friend Emma, a pretty thirteen-year-old with glasses, appeared behind him with three crabs in an ice bucket and carefully slid them into the tub. “This is why I’m a vegetarian,” Josh said, shuddering a bit as his friend gently tugged a reluctant crab out of the bucket by one of its legs.

“This is fun,” Emma exclaimed, straightening up and swinging her long, brown hair behind her shoulder. “The crabs are finding all kinds of interesting hiding places, so it’s like a big game of hide and seek. Let’s go get Colt and Elijah off the table and find some more. Team Teen versus Team Go-Go Boy, whoever finds the most crabs wins!”

“Oh, it’s on,” a smiling, red-haired dancer named Patrick exclaimed, hiking up his tiny, neon-yellow briefs. He told his teammates, “Fan out, boys! Let’s go catch some crabs!” The kids and dancers hurried out of the bathroom with excited woops and yells while I washed my hands, which smelled decidedly crabby.

Kai washed his hands too, and then we sat on the edge of the tub and looked at the teeming crustaceans. “They’re kind of cute,” I said.

“Kind of.”

“I feel bad for them, all crammed in the cooler like that. They were in there a long time, too. I wonder if they’re hungry. I also wonder what the hell blue crabs eat.” I pulled out my phone and did a quick internet search, then said, “Oh, ew.”

“What is it?”

“Well, they eat clams, mussels, oysters and dead fish, but they’ll also eat smaller blue crabs.” I jumped up and said, “I’m going to get them something to eat before they go all Donner party in there.”

I hurried to the kitchen, grabbed a bag of clams I found in the refrigerator and a small knife, and hurried back to the bathroom. I held a clam with a wash cloth and forced the knife between the shell halves with some effort. As I slowly and awkwardly worked on prying it open, Kai said, “You know that’s the rest of tonight’s dinner, right?”

“I know, but I feel sorry for the crabs. They need these more than we do.”

Kai watched me for a moment, then asked, “Do you have any more of those knives?”

“They’re in the drawer beneath the microwave.”

He left the bathroom, returned a few moments later with a second knife and a hand towel, and sat beside me again as we both concentrated on shucking the clams. Nana and Ollie appeared in the doorway a couple minutes later. “They’re probably hungry,” I told her when she asked what was going on. “Let’s not eat them, okay? They’ve already had a rotten day.”

“We won’t eat ‘em, Sweet Pea,” Nana said, patting my shoulder. “We can always order pizza for dinner.”

Ollie found a couple more knives and towels, then sat on the lid of the toilet while Nana perched daintily on a chair at the vanity, and they helped us shuck. I finally got one clam open and dropped it into the tub, and the crabs fought over it. “They’re totally starving. Poor things,” I said.

We put the opened clams in the sink as we worked so we wouldn’t cause a feeding frenzy, and Ollie asked Kai as they both knit their brows and worked on prying the shells open, “How’d you boys meet?”

“We belong to the same street racing club,” Kai said.

Ollie glanced up with a sparkle in his dark eyes. He might look like the little old man from the movie Up, but he had the enthusiasm and energy of a kid. “I used to love motorsports back in the day. Motorcycles were my thing. For a while, I even was part of a motorcycle stunt show while I worked my way through college. What do you race?”

“A ‘73 Mustang. It was my dad’s. He raced it when he was my age,” Kai said.

Ollie and Kai chatted about racing for a while, and when he finally got his clam open, Ollie yelled, “Ha!”

A moment later, I jabbed my palm. The towel protected me, but I still sharply drew in my breath. Kai dropped everything he was holding and grabbed my hand as he asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It didn’t break the skin.” He pushed the towel aside and ran his thumb over my palm, and seemed relieved when he saw I was uninjured. It was pretty obvious sometimes that he was a parent, and I thought his concern was incredibly sweet.

“When are you going to start racing again, Jessie?” Nana asked. She was shucking clams like a pro, doing five for every one of mine.

“I actually did already, over Valentine’s weekend,” I admitted.

“Oh, that’s where you went during the party. I thought maybe you met someone and snuck off to, you know, plow the back forty. Or get your back forty plowed. Either way.” Nana smiled at me while I colored a little. It occurred to Kai and me at about the same time that we actually had slept together for the first time that night, and we glanced at each other, then quickly looked away. Nana noticed, of course, and said, “So there was some plowing after all!”

A short, African-American dancer named Levi saved us from further embarrassment by running into the bathroom, depositing a crab in the tub and asking, “How many are still out there?”

“Seven, I think, counting the one that rode out of here on Mr. Mario’s lap,” I said.

“Damn, those things have gone into stealth mode,” Levi said.

I asked, “Did anyone disarm the one with a knife?”

“No, that tricky little bastard fell off the counter and made a break for it. We think it’s still armed. I better get back, the losing team is buying ice cream for everyone.” He smiled and ran from the room.

I looked into the tub and pulled out the new addition, then spread a towel on my lap and put a shucked clam in front of the crab. When Kai glanced at me, I said, “None of them are very big, but this one’s even smaller than the rest. His shell’s not even the size of my palm. I don’t want him to end up on the cannibal crabs’ menu.” The little creature started picking at the clam and feeding himself with his claws. “I’m going to name him Virgil.”

“Why?” Kai asked.

“Because he looks like a Virgil.” I rubbed the crab’s shell with a fingertip.

A moment later, Zachary and Elijah came in. Both of them were wielding long-handled tongs, and were holding one crab between them like it was made of uranium. They carefully deposited the crab in the tub, and I grinned and said, “Good job, guys.”

Elijah looked happy. He tucked a strand of blond hair behind his ear as he asked, “Who’s winnin’?” Normally, Colt’s boyfriend was painfully shy and really reserved, so it was nice to see him enjoying himself.

“It’s tied, one apiece. I only started counting after the official start of the competition to keep it fair. If you find the crab holding a knife, he counts double.” I turned to Zachary, who also looked like he was having fun, and asked, “Are you on Team Teen?”

“I’ve been declared an honorary teenager for this contest, since the go-go dancers outnumber the kids,” he said. “Vincent and Trevor are honorary teens, too. Skye, Dare, and Haley have declared themselves neutral, claimed the kitchen table for Switzerland, and are sitting on it out of crab range, having cocktails.”

Emma ran in with the ice bucket and a spatula and slid two crabs into the tub. She’d tied a sash around her forehead and was in full warrior woman mode. “The teens are winning,” I said.