Belonging Read Free

at him. “Is that what we’ll
be doing?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “I doubt he’s gay. He’s always being
photographed with some beautiful supermodel or another.”
    “Maybe they’re just his
beards.”
    “Well hell, let’s go tonight and find
out.”
    Yosh beamed at me.
“Awesome.”
    “Want to hang out with me while I
babysit? That way, we can go straight to the party when Mikey gets
home.”
    “I could, but maybe you should get
someone else to watch your nephews. What if your brother gets lucky
and spends the night?”
    “He won’t.”
    My friend chuckled at that. “Mikey’s a
really good-looking guy, you know. It could happen.”
    “Well sure, it could . But he’s a dad
first and foremost, so he won’t be spending the night anywhere. Now
are you actually going to lift those weights, or just pose with
them? I do actually have to work today so we need to get moving.” I
made air quotes with my fingers when I said the word
‘work’.
    Yosh configured his weights, then got
on the bench as he asked, “How is your quote-unquote job, anyway?
That guy still driving you insane?”
    “Utterly.”
    “Well, we’d better hurry up and finish
our workout. We know how you are about being late.” Yosh smiled at
me as I rolled my eyes.
     
    *****
     
    About the only thing Zan Tillane
didn’t routinely complain about was my punctuality. He undoubtedly
would have, if he actually owned a clock and if my job description
said anything about me being there at a certain time. Absolutely
everything else in the world was complaint fodder, after
all.
    The door to the den where Zan spent
almost every minute of his life was closed when I let myself into
his huge house in Marin. I deposited five canvas grocery sacks on
the kitchen island, then went back out to the car, taking two
triple-bagged sacks of trash with me. Those I stuck in my trunk
before returning with three boxes of books that I’d mail-ordered
for him. He wouldn’t actually tell me what he wanted to read, but
he told his son Christian, who passed the information along to me.
It was such an eye-roller.
    Up until a few months ago, Christian
had been doing all of that for his dad. But my friend had had
surgery to remove a brain tumor and was undergoing chemotherapy, so
he’d hired me to do the job. To say his father resented my
intrusion into his life was putting it mildly.
    I’d just about finished putting away
the groceries when the door to the den finally swung open.
Sometimes, Zan didn’t come out at all. Usually when he did, it was
to complain about something.
    “You bought the wrong kind of tuna
last time,” he announced, pushing his long, dark hair over his
shoulder.
    “I know. I had to, because of the
worldwide shortage.”
    He looked surprised at that. “Of
tuna?”
    “No, of douchebags pretentious enough
to spend six bucks on a can of fish. That brand you insisted on
went under, so now you’re stuck with pedestrian two dollar
tuna.”
    “Are you sure it went under? Did you
call the company? Maybe the store just stopped carrying
it.”
    “I did actually, and then I was pissed
off at myself for buying into that doucheyness. There’s no
difference between the discontinued brand and the stuff I got for
you. It’s a fucking fish in a fucking can!”
    “Which is, by definition, not
pretentious! It isn’t as if I asked for a bleedin’ fifty dollar
nugget of Ahi on a bed of twenty dollar bills.” As he became more
agitated, his English accent started taking a turn for the cockney.
I always found that entertaining.
    “Normally, no. Canned tuna is the
exact opposite of pretentious, until you slap on a fancy label and
charge six bucks for it.”
    Zan spotted something on the kitchen
island and frowned as he changed the subject. “What is
that?”
    “A fruit.”
    “I gathered that. What kind of
fruit?”
    “A tangelo.”
    “What’s a tangelo?”
    “It’s a cross between a tangerine and
a....” I paused to consider that, then admitted,