Magic Hour, page 20
“Then let’s go now!” I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward his office.
He didn’t shake me away, but he didn’t follow me either. “Henry… I don’t… I don’t know if I can… it’s been so long…”
I collapsed to the ground and wrapped my arms around his legs. “Dad, please…” The tears came fast. I let them. “Three people have gone missing… four, actually…”
He brought his hands to my shoulders. “Four?”
“Technically, yeah. If we don’t get them back, it’s gonna be all my fault…”
“How can it be four? I thought you said it was only—”
“Maberly’s pregnant, Dad,” I whispered for his ears only. “And it’s my baby.”
“It’s your what?” he screamed.
I glanced back at the other two with an awkward smile, then I turned back to my dad. “You can’t tell Mom. At least not right now.”
He brought his fingers to his forehead. His face was noticeably drenched with sweat. “I… I won’t. Holy shit, Henry. But how… I thought you were…”
I shook my head. “It’s a long story. And I’ll tell you about it soon. But right now, we need to get them back.”
He pursed his lips and gave me a determined look. “Okay.” When he stepped toward his office, I let go of his legs.
“What’d he say?” Chloe walked toward me.
I stood back up. “He’s gonna help. Oh thank God, he’s gonna help!”
“Of course he will,” she said. “He’s your dad.”
My dad re-emerged from his office. In barely two minutes, he had stuffed a giant black bag to the brim. It was so full of props and gadgets that he hadn’t been able to zip it closed all the way.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Everything.” He placed his top hat on his head. “It’s everything I need.”
My mom appeared behind me. I grabbed Chloe by the hand.
My dad opened the door to the garage and turned back toward the three of us. “Now who’s coming with me?”
We all jumped in his car, and I took the back seat with Chloe. Nobody said much as my dad sped out of the driveway onto the nearest neighborhood street that would take us downtown.
I crossed my arms, gazing out at the darkening sky. The Reno air appeared unusually foggy, almost smoggy. Just like Los Angeles.
I leaned my head back. Closed my eyes.
And thought of Donavin.
CHAPTER 26
He caught my eye at the most inopportune time.
It was my final night in Los Angeles after a long weekend of scouting four colleges with my mom. We looked at Chapman University (too small), Loyola Marymount University (too lavish), USC (too scary). We ended that Sunday by taking a tour of UCLA, which was just right. I loved the vibe of Westwood, all the cute shops and restaurants and one-screen movie theaters. The size of the campus was intimidating, but the film program had a fantastic roster of cinematography classes. Before my mom and I even sat down for dinner, I knew UCLA was the school for me.
For dinner my mom picked a cute Italian bistro called Pannelli’s, which was toward the back of a restaurant-packed lane that had every kind of food known to man—burgers, sushi, peanut butter doughnuts. We waited, she more patiently than I, for one of her old college friends to join us. When the lady showed up with her fiancée and started yakking on and on about the good old days, it was clear I was in for a long night.
I just had no idea how long.
“So Henry, forgive me if I’m prying into your social life…” my mom’s attractive but obnoxious friend Deidra said after taking a sip from her third glass of wine, “but your mom tells me you’re gay.”
I slammed my lips together and made a pouty fish face. I hoped I could have at least been served my chicken piccata before that subject reared its head. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, that’s right.”
“I find that so interesting that you already know your sexual identity at such a young age.” She pushed her long, curly blonde hair back and leaned toward me against the table. “But good for you. My first husband Clarence? It took him until he was fifty to figure it out.”
Everyone at the table laughed, but I only managed a forced smile.
“Deb, please,” my mom said, who kept rubbing my back like a skilled masseuse, “don’t embarrass him.”
“I’m not!” she shouted, shrill enough to almost shatter her glass. “I’m just curious. And I think it’s great, Henry, because Los Angeles is perfect for you. Perfect! It can’t have been easy growing up in a small conservative town like Reno, where the only gay bar is probably some whorehouse out in the desert, am I right?”
She continued her inane chatter, but I stopped paying attention. My gaze shifted to my left at a table where two guys had just been seated.
“No way,” I whispered.
My mom moved her hand from my back up to my left shoulder. “What was that, honey?”
I clasped my hands together. “Nothing.”
I didn’t plan on getting up or saying anything. We were in a small, intimate restaurant, and I predicted my mom would have grounded me for a month if I stood up from the table prematurely.
I waited another minute. And then another. This Deidre character was still talking, now about how she experimented in college with older women. I needed an escape.
“Sorry, excuse me,” I said. I pushed my chair back. “I need to use the bathroom.”
The men’s room was at the back of the restaurant, but I headed toward the front. I tried to appear calm and suave, even though I was shaking with fear.
I stopped. “Donavin? Is that you?”
He looked away from the menu and up at me. “Henry? Small world. What are you doing in L.A.?”
“Just touring colleges.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Are you applying to UCLA?”
“Yep! Already did last week, actually.” He pointed to the guy in front of him. He looked like Donavin, but older. “Henry, this is my cousin, Nick. Nick, Henry.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. When an awkward silence ensued, I started to turn around. I figured I’d already overstayed my welcome. “Well, I should probably—”
“Hey, you want to hang out later?” Donavin asked. “Nick and I might catch a movie after this.” When I hesitated, Donavin glanced over at my mom. “Unless… you already have plans. Are you flying back to Reno tonight?”
The surprise of his invitation threw me for a loop—a good loop. “Oh, uhh, no. We don’t leave until tomorrow.”
“Same here. You want to meet us out front when you’re done with dinner?” He shot me his signature smile.
“Sure. Sounds like fun.” I tried to downplay my enthusiasm, when in reality I wanted to start bouncing off the walls. “I’ll see you in a bit!”
“See you in a bit,” he repeated.
I returned to the table to find my ridiculously large helping of chicken piccata waiting for me, as well as my mom’s friend still talking. I only had a few bites of the food. I was too nervous to keep anything down.
After we finished dinner, my mom allowed me to go to the movies with Donavin as long as I promised to keep my phone on at all times and to be back to the hotel by midnight at the latest. I told her I would.
Donavin and his cousin met me on the sidewalk, and we headed down to the Majestic Crest to see the newest Dwayne Johnson action flick. Afterward I enjoyed Pinkberry yogurt for the first time, and then we headed to his cousin’s tiny but adorable one-story home on South Bentley Avenue a few streets west of UCLA.
I didn’t know how it happened, how Donavin and I wound up alone together on the guest bed. His cousin had an early morning call time for some teacher’s conference, so he went straight to bed, but I wasn’t about to depart anytime soon just to make my mom’s silly curfew. I was terrified, bewildered—beyond exhilarated—to be in a room with Donavin, let alone a bedroom, let alone just the two of us. My hands were shaking. I gripped them against the side of the bed and tried not to hyperventilate from the excitement.
He lay back, shoved his head against two fluffy pillows, and curled his feet over the edge of the mattress. I sat beside him, and it took my full control to not start caressing his chest.
Even scarier, I started to wonder if he wanted me to.
“So UCLA, huh?” I asked, after too much agonizing silence. “I guess that makes sense. They have a good drama program, right?”
“The best.” He moved his foot and brushed it against my back.
“Their film program is great, too. It sucks you have to wait until you’re a junior to get started, but it’ll be worth the wait, I think.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice suddenly low and sultry. “A lot of things in life are worth the wait. You know?”
He sat up and gazed into my eyes. He was mere inches away.
I blinked a few times. Was this a dream? Did I need my mom to slap me in the face and wake me up?
“So you didn’t bring Maberly out here, huh?” I asked.
His fingers found my palm. He ran his pinky all the way down to my wrist. “No. She hates L.A.” He wrapped his hand around my neck and pulled me close. “You should really stop talking.”
He didn’t just kiss me; he slammed his lips against mine with the force of a steamroller. I almost lost my balance at the end of the mattress, but I pushed myself back and found my balance. I wasn’t going to let anything mess this up.
I ran my hands through his blond curls and pressed my chest against his. He was the better kisser than I, for sure—but I didn’t mind having him lead the way.
“Lay on your back,” he said.
I did as Donavin asked, and within seconds, he was on top of me, pressing his lips against mine ever harder and caressing my tongue with his. He hadn’t shaved in a few days so the stubble on his chin tickled me.
When he started kissing my neck, he took my hand and pressed it against his crotch.
“Whoa…” I moaned.
He ran his tongue against my earlobe, then whispered, “You like that?”
“Uh huh,” I said. What a dumb question.
He undid his belt and drew my hand under his pants. “How about that?”
“Oh… oh Jesus…” I gripped his hard-on. “Oh wow.” I opened my mouth wide and started breathing harder and harder. “Donavin… oh my God. Should we stop?”
“Do you want to stop?”
“No. Do you?”
He kissed my chin, then found my lips again. “What do you think?”
He dipped his tongue into my mouth, only for a second, then he crashed onto his back and pulled his jeans down. I watched with a mix of delight and terror.
“Donavin… I don’t think… I don’t think I can…”
He kicked his jeans to the hardwood floor, then brought my hand back toward his boxers. “Don’t worry, Henry. This is as far as we’re going.”
When we both finished, I expected him to pull his pants back up and tell me not to let the door hit me on the way out. Instead, he got under the covers and patted his hand against the open spot next to him.
“Will you sleep with me?” he asked in an innocent tone.
I narrowed my eyes. “But… I thought you said we weren’t…”
“No, dummy,” he said, and he kissed me again, this time on the cheek. “I mean, sleep with me.”
I grinned and got under the covers. I didn’t know which way to turn, but Donavin guided the way. He grabbed my hands and pulled me toward him. Our foreheads nearly touched. He closed his eyes, but I kept mine open. I didn’t want to fall asleep. I didn’t want the night to ever end.
“You’re cute,” I whispered. I slid two of my fingers over his chin to make sure he was still there, that he wasn’t an illusion.
Donavin gripped my hand in his. He sighed and said, “So are you, Henry.”
I wanted to wrap my arms around him, kiss him over and over again, rest my head against his chest for all of eternity.
Instead I blurted out, “This is just for tonight, isn’t it?”
He brought my palm up to his mouth. He kissed it sweetly, then set it above his head on the pillow. “I just need a year. I need to get out of Reno.”
“And Maberly?”
“She’s a good person, I care about her… but I’m not in love with her.”
Donavin kept his mouth open, then hesitated. For a second I thought he was going to say he loved me—but that would have been too much for me to handle.
He wrapped my arms in his and said, “Thanks for hanging out with me tonight.”
I kissed him one more time between his closed eyes and said, “Are you kidding? I’m definitely coming to UCLA now.”
“That would be nice,” he said. “That would be… that would…”
Donavin’s head tilted down as he drifted off to sleep.
I lay there quietly for a few minutes until my phone beeped. It was my mom, wanting to know where I was.
My feet touched the cold hardwood. I brought my hands to my knees and turned back to Donavin. He was sound asleep. He looked so peaceful, so serene.
At that moment, unlike any other, he was perfect.
#
My eyes opened. I was back in the car. My mom was screaming at my dad to slow down as he took a sharp turn on McCarran Boulevard going at least twenty miles over the speed limit.
“We’ll be late!” my dad shouted. “This is our only chance!”
“Wally! Killing us before we get there won’t help!” my mom responded.
“But if the audience is already gone when we get there, then we’ll be—”
“Hey!” I screamed, louder than both of them. “Mom! Dad!” I leaned against the armrest and said, “Just calm down, take a breath. It’s gonna be okay.”
When I sat back, Chloe clasped her hand against my shoulder. “What makes you so confident this’ll work, Henry?”
I smiled at her. “Because. It’s meant to be.”
“What is?” she asked.
I stopped short of an answer. I leaned my head back. Something big and heavy was making a teetering noise in the back seat.
I turned around and looked down at the brown box.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“What is this?” I touched the top of the box. It was sealed shut. “Dad, is this your new book?”
“Yes!” he said. “But please, don’t open it—”
Too late. I pulled it open with a rough, painful tug, and out spilled all the little pieces of Styrofoam. I grabbed the top copy and raised it to my face.
The cover was of my dad standing at the end of a Lake Tahoe pier, colorful fireworks covering the night sky.
I glanced at the title at the bottom. Magic Hour: A Memoir.
“You wrote a memoir, Dad?”
“Yep! But I’m starting to think I wrote it too early,” he said. “I might have more material to put into it after tonight.”
“You might be right about that,” I said, and then I opened the book to the inside cover. I turned the page to the dedication.
The small print read, TO MY SON, HENRY. THE GREATEST MAGIC IN MY LIFE HAS BEEN YOU.
I brought my hand to my chest as the car started slowing down.
“All right, get ready to run!” my dad shouted. “We’ve arrived!”
I set the book down and landed back in my seat. I tried not to cry. I was not going to cry.
“Okay,” my dad said as he pulled up to the valet parking at the Eldorado Casino. “Here we go!”
CHAPTER 27
We raced through the casino, my dad the fastest of all. We all hurried to keep up with him as we passed the steakhouse, sushi bar, and seemingly thousands of Wheel of Fortune slot machines. I grabbed hold of Chloe’s hand as we headed down the escalator and bypassed about a dozen standing tourists. We made a left at the bottom and headed down the center aisle toward the massive Eldorado Showroom.
The entrance area was empty, like everyone had already gone home for the night, including the ticket taker. My dad opened the entrance door and bounded into the large theater. He held his bag of goodies over his right shoulder like Santa Claus with his toys for Christmas, then handed it to my mom. We all approached the top balcony and looked down. A young man with a pigeon on his shoulder bowed to the audience and walked off stage as a bald emcee walked to the center.
“Everyone, give it up for Chance Jackson!”
The mostly sold-out crowd clapped with varying amounts of enthusiasm. Adults were scattered throughout the audience, as were children of all ages.
“There’s so many kids,” I said to Chloe.
“I know.” She surveyed the room. “It’s pretty late on a Sunday. What are they all doing here?”
“To see me,” my dad said, and he hustled to the booth in the back. My mom and Chloe stayed put, but I wasn’t about to leave my dad alone. I followed him.
“And now,” the emcee said, “let’s see the judges’ scores for Mr. Jackson!”
I peered back toward the stage. Three judges—two sickly old men and one young woman awkwardly stuck in between them—put their scores up in the air. She gave the boy a 9, while both men gave him an 8.
“And that makes for a score of 25! Nice job, Chance!” The emcee’s enunciation of every other word annoyed me already, and we’d only just arrived. “And now, for our final contestant, everyone please welcome Kassandra Klein!”
“Oh shit,” I said. “It’s already the last contestant!”
I picked up the pace and followed my dad into a booth. He’d been inside for barely three seconds, yet he was already arguing with someone. My dad sat down in a chair and crossed his left leg over his right. His beard had become so thick it nearly covered his eyes.
“I have no interest in winning the competition,” my dad said, not turning to look at me when I entered the tiny room. “Can’t you just announce me as a special guest or something? I’ll only be a minute.”
“Wally, it’s too late, I’m sorry. I mean, I’m a big fan and all, but—”
“Earl, you wanted me here. You sent me that invitation!”
“Yes, as a judge.” The show director, a middle-aged man with black Elvis hair, crossed his arms as he stared politely at my dad. “Look, it doesn’t matter. The show’s almost over.”
