Heart of the Holidays

“Well, now. Isn’t that a sight to behold?” I leaned against the side of the garage doorway. Charlie sat, as he usually did in the mornings, smack dab in the middle just inside the opening like every other oldster in the world. His ratty brown coat helped ward off the early morning chill. The cold during the night was slowly dissipating in the morning sunshine. Our little town stood close enough to the snow line that even a beautiful day in August wouldn’t reach the scorching temperatures of California’s central valley. As the summer turned into fall, we could expect cooler days. Still, we were a ways away from winter blowing in and stopping us in our tracks. For the next few months or so, our summer weather promised to be constant and entirely bearable. Charlie and I were stationed at our morning posts and watched as the village baker unloaded huge bags of flour. He stacked them on a dolly as we supervised from across the way. The muscles in his arms and back bulged and glistened in the cool of the morning. His t-shirt, gloves, and jeans got whiter as a thin layer of flour clouded around him. Both Charlie and I sighed as he finished and waved the driver on his way. We sighed again as he toed the dolly and rolled it back between the buildings, probably to the employee entrance. Just before he vanished, he stopped. He turned. He looked our way. He waved in our direction. On its own, my hand raised and waved back. Then he and the dolly disappeared. My hand dropped to eye level. I examined it. I was thirty-two years old living with an elderly companion named Charlie, who was easily my grandpa’s age. Where had my adolescent shyness come from? My hand had actually waved back at him. He had waved at me. I was hard. My heart beat raced. Drops of sweat dotted my forehead. I felt sixteen again. I gulped. I had to get myself under control. I glanced at Charlie. He was looking across the street, a smile on his face. We sat in silence a minute until I felt Charlie’s eyes on me. The scent of the nearby pines wafted our way. I hoped I could sidestep it, but I couldn’t deflect Charlie’s scrutiny. “Don’t you start with me.” I looked his way over my shoulder. I gestured with my coffee cup. “I’m not comfortable making the first move. And don’t you dare remind me I’ve been saying that for a year or so now. We don’t even know if he’s gay.” I could feel Charlie busting to say that the baker, probably the Rick of Rick’s Rack, had made the first move and that he’d been testing the waters to see if I was gay. Charlie wanted to remind me if I cared so much, then I should go ask one of our neighbors at the café or at the general store if the baker had a wife or a boyfriend. They’d be happy to tell me all about him. No matter what Charlie said, I wasn’t about to ask other people around town and actually find out. I was okay as I was. My social calendar amounted to me and Charlie sitting around watching television almost every night, occasionally going camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but essentially keeping ourselves to ourselves. I was happy—no, content—with the way things were. Five years ago, fed up with the hustle and bustle of the urban hive and having thrown out my boyfriend, Charlie and I had packed up everything we owned and had driven East out of San Francisco until we found somewhere we could tolerate. As had I, Charlie cut ties with everyone he knew in the city. Sidetrack, California, The Track to the natives, had looked one step away from a ghost town at the time. The three-block downtown strip surrounding a tiny town square stood as still as the Old West Main Streets before a gunfight. The former shops with mostly boarded up windows and dusty brick facades stood with stoic faces around a tiny town square. The Track was one of those places where travelers stopped, scratched their heads, and muttered, “Where the hell am I?” Only GPS or a good sense of direction got them back toward I-5 to Los Angeles or up to Redding. To us, Sidetrack had immediately looked like home. Charlie had been ill at the time. No surprise since he was eleven and a half in dog years. I am amazed when I think about the drive out with him looking like he wouldn’t make it. Nowadays, I can still hear him laughing at me, “Dog years! I wasn’t anywhere near eleven or twelve then, youngster. Besides, was you counting them in large or small breed years? You coulda given me a hella lot more years to go if you compared me to a chow.” Well, let’s just say Charlie wasn’t a chow at the time. Moving out of the city and finding us a better home wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity. We found a small abandoned auto garage with an attached office on Main Street, tracked down the realtor, who’d said it came with the house and lot behind it, and made a deal. The house, a two bedroom bungalow on one floor with a rose-covered front yard and weed-infested back, faced First Street. A driveway skirted the house and lot, ending at the back of the garage on Main. I could get my Fit and my Suzuki into the house’s miniscule garage and had the public garage’s one bay for my bicycle repair and sales business. For six months, my new home was a nostalgic resting place in small town America. Charlie and I could sit in the doorway of the garage and imagine Fourth of July parades, farmers’ markets, and Christmas decorations. Charlie dreamed of running wild and free with kids waving sparklers or slipping and sliding along ice-covered sidewalks. Then about a year ago in the spring, one of the big city network stations did a feature on the “best little towns in California” that were affordable and ready to be developed into “livable bits of romantic nostalgia” whatever that meant. To Charlie and me, it meant new neighbors from the city. And lots of them. Suddenly, we had a thriving five and dime on Main Street, along with a branch bank, a couple of trendy coffee shops, a refurbished grocery store, an expanded pharmacy, and a lot of other shops that had been closed for decades, including Rick’s Rack, the bakery across the way. Charlie had moved his base of operation back a few feet to get out of the sun, so I was blindsided by the baker walking up to me. Usually Charlie would cough or alert me instead of making me look like the village i***t. “Hey, uh, hi. Daniel?” He was staring at me strangely, like I had two heads or something. I didn’t blame him. My other head was lifting to greet him, since I seemed to be tongue-tied. I straightened, started to stick out my hand, noticed he hadn’t raised his, and instead stood taller. “Yeah, uh, call me Dan or Danny.” I cleared my throat and willed my second head to shut up and keep down. “What can I do for you?” “You sell bikes? Motor bikes as well as, um, peddling bikes?” “Yup, that’s me.” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at the pile of bicycle strays waiting to be repaired and either sold or given away to charity. “I deal mostly in used bikes, but you can even buy a brand new one from me if you’re so inclined.” Shit. I sounded older than Charlie. I’d definitely been spending too much time with him. “Oh, yeah, good.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “I’ve got a niece and nephew who are coming to, uh, visit, maybe move here to live. I’d like to get them bikes so they can get some exercise.” I nodded. There was something big he wasn’t telling me, but I let it slide. We didn’t really know each other. “So when do you need these bikes?” “Uh.” He reddened. “This afternoon?” Charlie barked a laugh. I turned to shush him. He looked back innocently, like he hadn’t made a peep. “No problem.” I gestured over my shoulder. “Want to come see what I’ve got?” I could sense Charlie holding back another hoot of laughter, but fortunately for him, he stayed quiet. The two motorcycles for sale were to his left, the rack of bicycles to the right. He knew we’d be walking his way, so he sat up a little straighter and watched us with a twinkle in his eye. “Oh, yeah, and another thing?” The baker hesitated after I nodded. He drew in a lungful. “I’m Rick. I don’t think we’ve ever really met. You don’t come into the bakery very often.” I couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or a complaint. Was he saying I looked fit and he was attracted to me? Or was he saying I thought I was too good to eat his buns? Sixteen took over and I almost giggled out loud. Charlie cleared his throat, and we turned to him. “Oh, yeah, and this is Charlie.” Rick nodded to Charlie, who grinned back. As I herded Rick toward the bike rack, Charlie got up stiffly and moved away, like he was shy or something. I was shocked. I would have thought he’d have been excited to check out Rick. Maybe he was feeling off. I’d have to make sure he was okay at lunch. Chatting with Rick while smirking should have been one of the highlights of Charlie’s day. Rick looked over the array of bikes, glanced at me, and then shrugged. “Yup,” I agreed. “You should wait for the kids to get here. Bring them over whenever. The bikes aren’t going anywhere. By the way, I loan them out as well as sell them. But they’ve got to stay in town or on the dirt bike trails outside.” “Thanks. Good to know.” He took a deep breath and turned to me. “How about going out to dinner with me sometime?” I stood with my mouth open, ready to say “No problem” about the bikes, but backtracked quickly. No problem? Yeah, okay. No problem. “I’d, uh.” Where’d the frog in my throat come from? I cleared it away. “I’d like to have dinner with you. Anytime. Just call. Or walk across the square. Or I should shut up. Dinner sounds good.” We grinned at each other’s sixteen-year-old awkwardness. We were both red faced and hard dicked. He turned and walked away. He was humming. I turned to go find Charlie. He’d missed the highlight of my day. I, too, started humming with happiness.