Shrimp. Part 11

"Buenas noches," Fernando said. Fernando said.

d.a.m.n IT!.

"It's not what you think," I told Fernando. "We just go to the twenty-four-hour IHOP on Lombard Street. I just don't want to wake Mom. You know how she's been having a hard time sleeping." My voice gushed with concern, some of it actually genuine.

"If that's the case," Fernando said, "why don't I just come along with you?"

"Why don't you just, then," I stated. That's how confident I am in my relations.h.i.+p with Shrimp since we got back together. I know I can haul Fernando along and Shrimp will be stoked instead of freaked. I'm almost scared by how good things are between Shrimp and me. Easing back into a relations.h.i.+p wasn't that hard after all--it was getting back in that was hard, but once back in, it's been smooth sailing, as Nancy might say, given enough wine. Well, mostly smooth sailing. Nancy is dealing well with Shrimp and I being an official couple again, probably because I'm not going on meltdown this time around if I'm not around Shrimp 24/7. I have other friends now, my own life going, I don't feel like I am going to suffocate if I'm not with Shrimp every second. But now that he and I are back together, it's not like he has an all-access pa.s.s to spend the night at my house either, and with the Fightin' Shrimps back at Ocean Beach-- Wallace and Delia versus Iris and Billy--his house is not the nicest place to hang these days. Here is the biggest disadvantage of being an almost-adult: you're having safe s.e.x with your boyfriend, you're in a committed relations.h.i.+p, 197.

everyone knows you are doing it, but you still have to sneak around to do it, even though you're doing it right! My senior slump this last semester of my high school career has not been about being tired of school (even though I am), as much as sometimes the only time Shrimp and I can be alone together, in privacy, is during the school day.

However, the middle-of-the-night meetings are not about tryst times. They are strictly about the award-winning old-fas.h.i.+oned b.u.t.termilk pancakes and hanging out with our friends before senior year ends and we all likely go our separate ways. So even though Fernando got into the Pinto with Shrimp and me, he still looked surprised when we arrived at our usual corner booth, where Helen, her new boyfriend, and Autumn were waiting for us. You know Fernando thought I was lying to him when I said IHOE and he thought he would be calling my bluff instead of getting a late-night carb feast.

"Yo, Ferdie, right on--gimme five!" Helen said when she saw Fernando. He actually high-fived her back, which made me kind of jealous, as he would never high-five me, the boss's daughter. Helen told her new love, "Move over, Eamon. Make some room for my buddy."

Helen finally moved past the Aryan thing and she's on to a new boy, one who may be a keeper. At least he's sweet, and he believes in relations.h.i.+p as much as reciprocity. Technically he's not a hand-me-down from me, because I never went through with kissing Eamon that night I first met Helen and we hung out at the pub on Clement Street to scope out the Irish soccer guys. She rediscovered him on New Year's Eve at that pub, the same one where no one bothers to ID her. After Eamon got past the initial moment of recognizing Helen and 198.

then saying, "Hey, didn't you and your friend give me and my mate the slip a while back?" the two spent the evening slugging back Guinnesses and discussing their mutual contempt for pop punk, Brazilian soccer stars, and the English royal family. Imagine a guy with spiky fire-engine-red hair, green eyes, and crooked teeth, death-pall pale skin; throw in a hot, unintelligible Irish accent along with soccer-dude rock-hard calves and a slight, not entirely unpleasant, postgame B.O., and you can understand why Helen was instantly smitten with Eamon. Boom, Helen is back to firm hetero roots, just like the black roots have finally grown over the once-copper hand on her formerly almost-bald head, now grown out to a most excellent s.h.a.g. Helen's a babe!

Shrimp sat down next to Autumn, with Fernando on his other side, as the rest of the group has proclaimed that Shrimp and I cannot sit next to each other anymore as apparently we have some PDA issues since we've gotten back together. That's what the bathrooms are there for anyway. I joined Helen and Eamon on their seat.

Autumn handed me a stack of brochures. "I ordered these for you. Have you ever thought about culinary school?" she asked me.

"No," I said. Culinary part--maybe. School part--blech. I handed her a bag of beads that Ash and I picked out for Autumn when we were shopping on Fillmore. Autumn is getting her shorter do un-dreaded and into braids, so Ash and I chose an a.s.sortment of crystal beads that we can't wait to see framing Autumn's face. Really, though, I suspect the only reason Autumn is getting her hair braided is because she's crus.h.i.+ng on the IHOP waitress whose sister owns the 'do salon.

199.

Helen asked Fernando, "What's it like to be old?"

All our forks stopped midmouth at Helen's question, not at the rudeness of the question--no pancake is worth waiting on for that--but at the fundamental importance of the question, one that our group had been pondering on a regular basis.

Fernando swallowed his pancake mouthful, let out a little burp, and then said, "I don't know. Ask me when I'm old."

Well, we had plenty of other questions, which is how our IHOP fest turned into an hourlong Fernando interrogation: What does Nicaragua look like? Who were the Sandinistas, anyway? Are grandchildren really so fun and cute, or are they overrated as a species? If you went on Survivor, Survivor, would you win by lying, cheating, and stealing, or strictly on the basis of s.e.x appeal? Just what are your intentions with Sugar Pie? would you win by lying, cheating, and stealing, or strictly on the basis of s.e.x appeal? Just what are your intentions with Sugar Pie?

I tell you, by the end of that meal, I can a.s.sure you Fernando will never again worry about me sneaking off to IHOP He will shove me out the door and beg me not to make him come along.

When we got back home Shrimp and Fernando stepped outside the car and had some words in private. I was still in the car, waiting for my last kiss with my boyfriend, when Shrimp popped back into the car and drove off before I could get out. He stopped and parked the car a few blocks away on Lyon Street, opposite the Presidio.

"What's this?" I asked.

Shrimp leaned into my face. "Fernando and I, we had a man-to-man chat about boundaries. He said so long as you're home in an hour, he'll be cool about it. But only on 200.

the condition that you tell your parents that we're having late-night munchie runs at IHOE He said they won't mind-- what they mind is secrecy."

Oooh, secrecy secrecy as a word coming from my boyfriend's mouth. SO HOT I pulled Shrimp's face to mine and said a silent prayer thanking Fernando for the extra hour on the DL. as a word coming from my boyfriend's mouth. SO HOT I pulled Shrimp's face to mine and said a silent prayer thanking Fernando for the extra hour on the DL.

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Chapter 29

The good news: news: danny is moving to san francisco! danny is moving to san francisco!

The bad news.- he's a no-good, cheating dawg who left his boyfriend, Aaron, for another man. Danny's new love is a lawyer (I hate him already) who works in The City, and Danny met him at a club where new lawyer man went one night while on a business trip in NYC, and where Danny had gone to shake off the sad news that he and Aaron's business, The Village Idiots, had failed. Danny and Aaron lost the lease on their cafe and couldn't afford a new s.p.a.ce so they closed up shop, and not long after that Danny met new lawyer man, putting a closing notice on Danny's relations.h.i.+p with Aaron.

True love may be a lie.

For a no-good dawg, Danny sure looked chipper when I picked him up at the airport. Danny looked exactly like I remembered him--like me, like Frank-dad, but shorter and sweeter, with an open face that had the gall to be glowing with happiness. At the airport curbside pickup he hopped into my car and kissed my cheek. "It's so great to be in California!" he said. "I just escaped the fourth snow storm this February. I thought if I saw one more snowflake, I would lose it. Ah, California suns.h.i.+ne and CC, too. How lucky am I? This change of scenery is just what I needed. I love it!"

I kissed his cheek back, but then had to say, "Don't look so happy. I am very cross with you."

202.

Danny smiled bigger. The nerve! "Who's looking pretty happy herself?" he teased. Danny lifted a piece of my hair. "Purple?" he asked. Apparently when I proclaimed I would never go for body art as a form of self-expression, I was lying. Shrimp and I were in his rooftop hammock at a rare time when we had the house to ourselves. He was explaining to me about dysentery, which he had in Papua New Guinea, while we were listening to a Prince CD. Then Shrimp and I shared, let's call it a lovely interlude (I told you it would get good again), while the Purple One sang "Erotic City," an interlude so inspired I had no choice but to celebrate it by going to Haight Street to get violet streaks highlighted into my long black hair. Some girls might get tattoos with their boyfriend's name--Johnny Angel or Stud m.u.f.fin or whatever--but I prefer a more wash-out-able form of branding to express my love for my man.

"Don't change the subject," I told Danny. "What's his name, anyway?"

Danny said, "Terry."

"That's a girl's name."

Danny did the whistle-snap. "There's nothing girl about Terry, let me tell you. I have never dated a man that beautiful in my life. Wait till you meet him!" The whistle-snap from Danny? Since when did he become a stereotypical Chelsea boy? Danny is the upstanding h.o.m.os.e.xual who wears wrinkled T-s.h.i.+rts and blue jeans from ten years ago, he has a scraggly mess of black hair and kind brown eyes with dark eyebrows so bushy he practically has a unibrow, and then there's also his avowed love of Pamela Anderson (don't ask me, I have no idea). Danny is the guy that if you didn't already know he was gay you would think he was a 203.

fence straddler at best, not a confirmed Friend of Dorothy. I am all for Chelsea boys, I have great appreciation for their beautiful bodies and exceptional fas.h.i.+on sense, and I, too, share their love for The Golden Girls, The Golden Girls, but that's not who Danny is. but that's not who Danny is.

"Well, where do you want me to drop you off?" I asked him. 'At Terry's house in the Oakland hills, or at the local intervention clinic for bad bad boyfriends who dump their true love just when the going gets tough for some shallow-vain he-man who probably shaves his chest and gets facials more frequently than my mother?"

Danny turned down the car radio and turned his body so he was facing me. "Listen, Ceece, I know this is hard. If you think you're taking it bad, you should know that lisBETH hasn't spoken to me since Aaron and I broke up. She's been too busy helping him find a job and a new apartment, like Aaron is her brother, not me. Dad's freaked out. He's never been comfortable with the gay thing anyway, although he always puts on a PC show about how it's all fine, but at least with Aaron he knew what to expect with me. Aaron is a great person--don't think I am not fully aware of that. We had some great years together, but we'd gotten to be more like friends than mates. Aaron and I were over long before Terry came along. The spark had died. So now I am unemployed and treading in dangerous territory. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now that The Village Idiots is gone, and I'm so insecure with Terry, I'm sure I'm gonna blow it. I could really use some support. Help me out here, okay, Ceece?"

Faux-wanna-be Chelsea boy or not, he's still my Danny, the half-brother who made my summer in Manhattan 204.

worthwhile, the only person clever enough and who would care enough to give me a nickname like Ceece. "Okay," I said.

"So when do I get to meet the famous Shrimp?" Danny asked.

"He's out in the East Bay scouting a new Java the Hut location with his brother this afternoon, but he wants us to get together tomorrow. Maybe we could go get coffee and breakfast together or something."

Danny laughed. "I know your tricks. I am not enabling you to skip school on my account. Let me talk with Terry and maybe all of us can get together this weekend."

'Are you moving in permanently with Terry?"

"No. We're gonna see how it goes--no commitments as of now. I needed to get out of New York for a while, and what better place to escape than the Bay Area? I hardly got any time with you last summer, and it would be great to see Uncle Sid again too. Terry has a huge house with a great kitchen, so I can keep myself occupied just fine while he's working during the day."

Because Danny is a relatively new discovery in my life, I forget that other people besides me, Josh, and Ash have a claim to "Uncle Sid." Sid-dad was a doting G.o.dfather to lisBETH and Danny when they were kids, because he and bio-dad Frank were old college roommates and best friends, until Nancy came between them. As I looked at Danny through the corner of my eye, I felt proud to call him brother, and couldn't wait to introduce him to Shrimp and my friends--Helen, Autumn, Sugar Pie--but I can't say I was cool with the thought that Danny planned to hang with "Uncle Sid" during his time in San Francisco.

Weirder than the thought of Danny interacting with 205.

my parents would be Danny interacting with Nancy's mourning period. Mrs. Vogue hadn't been to yoga in a month, and she spends most of her days moping around the house wearing Sid-dad's plush old Ritz-Carlton hotel robe. Neiman-Marcus may possibly go out of business for how long since Nancy has shopped there. While Nancy's cooking skills haven't improved, she has mastered the art of the Duncan Hines mix. We no longer have to sneak sweets into the house because Nancy herself is making them and eating them. I found it hard to imagine how the Danny-Nancy chemistry could mix, especially since they were both at such strange intervals in their own lives.

The good news still was Danny had arrived in San Francisco and planned on staying a while, but the queasy news was having Danny in my Left Coast world may mean the separation gap between the two families can no longer be kept separate. Danny's presence could cause the vortex separating the old friends, and me from my other family and them from me, to close permanently, in a way my short summer Manhattan fling never had.

206.

Chapter 30

True love may be making a comeback. be making a comeback.

Helen's eighteenth birthday has pa.s.sed, but that doesn't mean she's legally sanctioned to bring Eamon upstairs to her room. I feel her pain, so I am doing what I can to help her out. Originally I started hanging out in the kitchen at Helen's mom's Chinese restaurant on Clement Street because my work-study job had ended. Then it turned out I actually missed the restaurant environment, and I was looking for a way to get back at Helen for proclaiming Mrs. Vogue to be the "coolest mom ever." Helen's mom refuses to hire me for a regular s.h.i.+ft--she said if her own daughter won't work in her restaurant, neither shall I--but she has been teaching me how to make her most excellent dumplings in exchange for occasional early-evening a.s.sistance with vegetable peeling and chopping. Helen's mom would also like me to encourage Helen to get rid of her new copper-spotted tiger-print eyebrows, and she'll throw in noodle lessons if I can convince Helen that proper ladies do not draw action-hero cartoon series about dirty old men with names like Ball Hunter.

The pot stickers Helen's mom makes are so good I have composed a love song to them: "Oh, pot stickers you are so yummy and juicy, so porky and full, love that ginger flava whateva..." That's the extent of my song so far, but I am working on a new, international tribute song in celebration 207.

of the new delicacy in my repertoire--steamed shrimp dumplings--and inspired by the minor language lessons the kitchen crew at the Chinese restaurant have been giving me: "Hen hao chi de hsia long bao, "Hen hao chi de hsia long bao, delicious, yummy dumpling, delicious, yummy dumpling, hsia ren hsia ren hsia ren, hsia ren hsia ren hsia ren, shrimp, shrimp, shrimp." shrimp, shrimp, shrimp."

I was singing my pot sticker song while I stuffed a stack of gyoza wrappers with meat filling when I looked up to see Helen waving at me from the window at the back door of her family's flat, the back door that opens into a hallway leading upstairs to the apartment, or through which the restaurant kitchen can be entered. She must have jumped a dozen backyard fences to get to that back entrance without coming through the front. I saw the spikes of Eamon's fire-red hair behind Helen's head. Got it. I spilled the bowl of vegetable filling onto the floor, causing Helen's mother, who is crazy for cleanliness, to join me p.r.o.nto under the work table to help clean up the mess. I looked up from underneath the table to see Helen leading Eamon by the hand as they creeped up the back stairs. "Thanks!" she mouthed at me. Ah, chu lian, chu lian, young love. young love.

Helen's sneak reminded me that my restaurant time was over for the day. Shrimp was due to pick me up in his Pinto, as my Betty Boop car does not do Clement Street, because Clement Street does not do parking. We were going to a fancy restaurant in the East Bay to meet Danny and Terry, the first time Shrimp would meet Danny, and I would meet Terry, like a double date. When I got outside, The Richmond fog spread a cold mist over my face while I scanned for Shrimp's car on Clement Street. I was especially excited to see him because he hadn't shown up at school for 208.

two days, and I missed seeing him live and in the flesh something bad. Two whole Shrimpless days equaled a veritable drought. I thought: I am the luckiest girl in the world. I live in the coolest Jog city, I have a boss boyfriend, and we're going to meet my new best half-brother and his lover for dinner, all adultlike and fancy. Life is good. I am the luckiest girl in the world. I live in the coolest Jog city, I have a boss boyfriend, and we're going to meet my new best half-brother and his lover for dinner, all adultlike and fancy. Life is good.

It would be reasonable to expect some doomsday prospect at this point, just for the sake of irony and all. There I am, standing on my favorite street in San Francisco, life is peachy, I'm in luuuuv, blah blah blah, and then, you know, Shrimp's Pinto bolts down Clement Street and smashes into a fog-covered, double-parked UPS truck. Tragedy ensues; Shrimp is either dead or in a coma, and I spend the rest of my life believing it was my fault for starting to believe in the universe's grand scheme to bestow true love and a good life on me after some really f.u.c.ked-up years.

The reality wasn't that bad but it wasn't pretty either. When I got into Shrimp's car he didn't kiss me. He announced, "Once we get to Oakland, I can only come inside to meet your brother for a minute. I have to go over to Berkeley to see about a room at some guy's house."

I couldn't go into a tirade about how dare Shrimp bail on the dinner with Danny and Terry, how many times have I sat through dinner the last few months with the Fightin' Shrimps, it's called being a supportive girlfriend and getting to know the important people in your partner's life, because I first had to know, "What do you mean, a room at some guy's house?"

"I'm gonna move over to the East Bay for a while. Now that Dee is pregnant, she wants Iris and Billy out of the bedroom 209.

they've been using so she can start the remodel to turn it into a baby room. But Iris and Billy, you know," here Shrimp mumbled low, "they don't, like, have enough cash for a new pad. So they're gonna move into my room for a while, lay low by spending some time up north with their friends up there, and since I am going to help start up Java's new store in the East Bay, I oughta just live over there for a while."

Where should I begin with this bombsh.e.l.l? I said, "How are you going to manage living and working in the East Bay and going to school in The City?" To say nothing of girlfriend time--when did he plan to fit that into this new schedule? What--and who--were his priorities, anyway?

Shrimp played with the dial on the radio station before settling on the news radio station with the traffic report. He is obsessed with hearing the traffic on the :08 every ten minutes. To p.i.s.s him off I turned down the radio right as the traffic report started.

"Why'd you have to do that?" he griped.

"You haven't answered my question."

We were stuck in inch-along traffic on the freeway entrance toward the Bay Bridge, so it's not like Shrimp could escape my line of questioning. He said, "If you have to know, I'm failing out. I lost my scholars.h.i.+p, and Wallace doesn't want to pay the tuition if I'm failing or just not showing up because I can't catch up no matter what I do. The school was basically gonna kick me out anyway. So I dropped out this week. It was, like, a mutual decision all around."

It certainly was not a mutual decision all around because I'd never been consulted and wasn't I the girl for 210.

whom he painted Blitzkrieg CC, Blitzkrieg CC, the one whose cell phone he called at home every night to rap love songs into her ear before she went to sleep? And what about those other so-called important people in his life, the ones called the one whose cell phone he called at home every night to rap love songs into her ear before she went to sleep? And what about those other so-called important people in his life, the ones called parents! parents!

"Iris and Billy signed off on this?" I asked.

"Sure." He shrugged. "They're cool with it. They know I'll get my G.E.D. eventually."

I turned the radio volume back up and changed the station to the pop music station, which was spinning the latest puke-pop princess's saccharine hit. Shrimp gave me a dirty look and changed the station to the alternative music college station playing a morose Radiohead tune. I met his dirty look and changed the radio station back to the pop princess number. Sometimes Shrimp is just too hipper-than-thou. Sometimes I just want to be a geek and listen to bad pop music and not care whether that's pathetic.

"WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?" The Artist Formerly Known as Mr. Don't Harsh My Mellow yelled at me. "I hate that s.h.i.+t music. What's the look for? Don't tell me you're mad about me dropping out of school. You hate school. What do you care?"

"I care enough to know I ought to just finish it," I said. I also care enough to know that parents who were "cool with it" were less than cool themselves. I certainly care enough to know that he should have brought all these issues up with me much, much earlier. We'd been sleeping together, talking about our dreams together, a.s.suming we had a future together, for months now, and this was the first I was hearing about all this? Now I felt like all the time we'd spent together since becoming a couple again was a lie, because he had been holding out this crucial piece of 211.

him all that time--and I had let him, wanting to bask in the glow of true love.

We settled on the hip-hop radio station and rode in silence the remaining journey to the East Bay. When we reached Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, Shrimp slowed down to look for a parking s.p.a.ce as we neared the restaurant. Shrimp said, "I can only come in for a second to meet your brother. Then I'm gonna head over to Berkeley." The car was not quite at a full stop, but I opened my door and hopped out of it. "Don't bother," I said. I slammed the pa.s.senger's door behind me. The Pinto came to a complete stop, as if hesitating on how to proceed, then pulled an illegal U-ey and bolted down Piedmont Avenue in the opposite direction.

Danny was waiting for me outside the restaurant. "Terry's getting our table. Where's Shrimp? Parking the car? I can't wait to meet him at last!"

"He's not coming," I murmured. "I don't want to talk about it." I felt stiff in Danny's embrace, wanting to go home, get in bed, and throw the covers over my head.

'Ah," Danny said in my ear as I let go of his hug. "The elusive Shrimp remains elusive."

My h.e.l.lacious mood didn't help, but it was not the reason I hated Terry. As expected, Terry was a shallow-vain he-man, only worse--he's married to his job instead of his looks. And he's old, like at least forty, though his fake tan, blond looks, and runner's body gave him the appearance of a much younger man. How could I get to know him, try to like him, if he answered cell phone calls from his office every two minutes? Danny explained to me during our appetizers, while Terry excused himself for a good fifteen minutes to take a call, that Terry is a lawyer, a partner at a 212.

big SF law firm, and he was in the middle of closing an important deal. I couldn't imagine Danny's ex, Aaron, even owning a cell phone, much less using it during an awesome meal that a noted Bay Area chef had prepared. I mean, show some respect.

"I'm bored," Danny sighed halfway through his entree, a fabulous cut steak cooked to perfection. Terry was back outside again on the phone, his salmon untouched on the table.

"Bored with Terry?" I asked, hopeful. That didn't take long.

"You wis.h.!.+" Danny said. "No, the Terry part, when I get to see him, is great. And I saw you lunge for his phone the last time it rang, and it's a good thing Terry's reflexes are quicker than yours because I know what you were planning on doing to that phone." Danny looked toward the shrub outside the open window behind our table. My brother is truly psychic. "No, I'm living-bored. The 'burbs are killing me. I hate being dependent on a car, but I have to use Terry's car to go out during the day because everything is so far apart, and there's always traffic. And it's so quiet at night at his house up in the hills. I'm a New Yorker. I need energy and noise, subways and cabs, dirt and grime, diversity. I'm actually missing snow and cold--real cold, not this bogus California cold! Every day the weather in the Oakland hills is the same.- perfect. Everybody looks the same: perfect. It's boring. Boring, boring, boring."

Maybe my brother, not Shrimp, is my soul mate.

Terry returned to the table, but I caught him checking out the waiter's tight behind as the waiter refilled a winegla.s.s at the next table. In fact, Terry had yet to look me 213.

straight in the eyes, because the little time he was in my presence his eyes scanned the room, like he was looking for someone better to mingle with. He must be from L.A. Terry turned to me. "So, kiddo," he said, like he hadn't spent the majority of our dinner away from the table and thereby, in my opinion, forfeited his right to rejoin our conversation. "College in your plans?"

I almost spit out the water I was gulping, because that was when it hit me: Terry was just like bio-dad Frank! These were almost the exact words Frank had asked me last summer, on the one day he'd grudgingly given me some time and we went strolling through Central Park together. Like Frank, Terry was great-looking but with a wandering eye, a deal maker and workaholic, probably incapable of being in a committed relations.h.i.+p--it couldn't be a coincidence that a guy as old and successful as Terry lived in a big house in the hills by himself. Poor Danny and his Oedipal-whatever thingy! Please let this horrid relations.h.i.+p be over soon, I prayed, before Danny's therapy bills grew higher than the debt left over from The Village Idiots' failure.

Before I could answer Terry's question, his cell phone rang. Again. This time my reflexes were quicker, and I grabbed the phone from the table before Terry's hand reached it. I tossed the phone out the window into the shrubs.

Men. Sometimes they just need to be taught a lesson.

214.