Aloha, Candy Hearts (17 page)

“So when were you planning to tell us?” This from Anthony.

My tongue grew thick and my mouth dry. Never has that sentence been uttered with something good coming after it.

“What do you mean?” I asked, wishing I were somewhere else.

“Alex called last night. Apologizing—again—that he can’t be here for the wedding. Such a considerate, sweet man. Don’t you think?”

Suddenly what had gone into my mouth as a perfect, oven-grilled ham and gruyere wrap perfumed with cinnamon and sweet petunia petals, became a meat and cheese hockey puck shooting goals against the walls of my stomach. “Of course,” I croaked. “Alex is the best.”

“Russell,” Anthony eyed me over his chilled glass of rosé. “You put Jared and me in a most awkward position.”

“Oh?” I glanced about, hoping I knew someone I could wave over to join us. But there was no one. I gazed over at Sereena, hoping for respite. She was studying me like a bug under a micro-scope, wondering whether she should squash me. Oh gawd, this wasn’t going to be good.

“Nothing to tell us then?” Anthony asked. His Brit-flavoured voice was saucy, the heavy, serious kind of sauce that smothers game meat, not the light and restrained kind that subtly enhances subliminal flavours.

“Oh, you mean about the engagement?” I went for light-hearted coy.

No replies from either of my lunch mates. As I sat there, feeling like a bad little boy who forgot to mention to his parents that he’d just failed math, I realized that seldom was I ever solely in the company of these two. Anthony and Sereena, both such important people in my life. Both so potent. Both so intense.

It was too much. I had the urge to run for my life.

But lunch was far from over. The next best thing was to lie. I DD6AA2AB8

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turned to Anthony and said, “I didn’t want to steal your and Jared’s thunder. I couldn’t announce my engagement the same week as your wedding. This week is about the two of you. Not me and Alex.”

“I was just wondering,” Sereena asked, the words ominously sweet as they fell off her tart tongue, “exactly which turnip truck you think the two of us just fell off?”

“The one in front,” I tried for cutesy. Which of course never works with these two.

“What happened, Russell?” Sereena asked in her most dulcet of tones.

And suddenly it just poured out. “So there we were in Hawaii.

We were having such a great time. We were playing in the water.

Sitting on the beach. Eating, drinking, and generally being merry and gay. And suddenly, out of nowhere, he’s got this ring in his hand, and he’s asking me to marry him. In a restaurant. With all these people watching us. I felt like I was on the final episode of The Bachelor, with a million people tuning in, hoping for a happy ending that I alone was responsible for. It all happened so fast.

We’d never talked about this. He’s never even hinted he wanted to get married. But there he was. With this ring. And all those eyes watching us. I didn’t feel like it was about what I wanted at all. I didn’t have time to think. I was just…stunned.”

“So you said yes,” Anthony said.

“I had to! What else could I do?”

“Could you have said no?”

It was such a simple question, powerful in its bluntness, it struck me dumb.

Anthony laid a hand over mine. “What is it, puppy? What is it?”

“We can see you’re in love,” Sereena stated, “but not with Alex Canyon.”

With the effort it took to budge my head in reluctant agreement, I’m sure I could have moved a mountain.

“It’s Ethan,” Anthony said it as if he was revealing the obvious.

“You’re in love with Ethan.”

I nodded.

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“How long have you known?”

This I could answer with words. “From the first time I saw him.”

Anthony smiled with sparkling eyes. “That’s a wonderful answer. I’m so happy for you, m’boy. I can see it in you too. You are truly in love.” He patted my hand and added, “And it’s about damn time too.”

“And Alex?” Sereena wondered, not unkindly.

My heart flip-flopped. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. When I’m with him it feels so good. I’m worried.”

“About what?”

“That I feel this way about Ethan only because Alex isn’t around. What if Alex lived here? What if we were together every day? Maybe I would never have developed these feelings for Ethan.”

Sereena’s lively eyes were warm and non-judgmental as she regarded me. “You’ve told me the long-distance arrangement worked for you. That you enjoyed having both your independence and a boyfriend at the same time. Has that changed?”

“It’s true. It did work. It does work.”

“Maybe you believe ‘marriage’ would be something different than that? That if you get married you’d have to give up your independence, and, in a way, having a ‘boyfriend’?”

“No. It’s not that. I don’t think it’s that.” Now I was getting confused.

“So if Alex said that after the wedding he’d spend all his time in Saskatoon, that there’d be no more traipsing around the world, would that change your feelings for Ethan?”

I had to admit that it would not.

“And to be completely accurate,” Anthony said, “from what I can see, you and Ethan haven’t spent much more time together over the past couple of years than you and Alex have, even though he does live in the same city.”

“That’s true.”

“Do you love Alex?”

“I think I do. It’s jus…”

“Do you love Ethan?”

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“Yes.”

“There’s your answer.”

“No. It’s not that simple. I feel something different when I’m with Alex.”

“Russell,” Sereena spoke softly, “I can tell you exactly what that something different is.”

Thank goodness. I really needed to know. “What?” I almost shouted it.

“Less love.”

I was crestfallen. And I knew without a doubt, that she was right.

I did love two men. But I loved one more, and in many more ways, than the other. But how can you fall in love with someone you’re not in a relationship with? Alex and I were a couple. We were getting to know each other very well. We were figuring out all the little ins and outs of what made each other work. I knew how to make him feel good. He did the same for me. I knew his favourite colour, how he liked his steak done, what kind of movies made him cry (no kind!), how he liked to spend a day off. I knew this man. But Ethan. What did I know about him? I knew he liked to laugh. I knew he was a caregiver. He was a parent. He was a hard worker. But what really made him tick? What side of the bed did he like to sleep on? Was he hotdog or hamburger? Pop or rock?

Mandals or flip-flops?

There was one more very important and undeniable thing: Ethan was taken.

Alex loved me. He gave me a ring for Van Cleef and Arpels’s sake. Sex was great. The feel of his hand caressing my skin still gave me chills. And he wanted to make a life with me. He’d offered me his. All I had to do was give him mine. Yet I was about to throw it all away for someone I’d never even been on a date with. Someone who could have no desire for me whatsoever.

Someone who might wear black socks with sandals. The decision should have been a no-brainer.

So why wasn’t it?

“What will you do?” Sereena wanted to know.

I had nothing to tell her.

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I had a lot of thinking to do and nowhere to do it. I couldn’t go home or to work, just in case White Truck would be there. And I certainly couldn’t go back to Ash House. Not after lunch with Anthony and Sereena. Not after last night.

I hadn’t told Anthony and Sereena about the kiss. I didn’t know what it meant. Other than that alcohol truly does lower inhi-bitions. And that Ethan Ash’s touch had set my skin on fire.

I sat in the parking lot of The Ivy for a long time, letting my thoughts wander. This seemed to get me nowhere, and blasting rays of sun on my already hot head weren’t helping. I needed to cool off. I needed distraction. There was one perfect spot. I used my cellphone to find what I was looking for, then sped off.

The lineup for snacks at the downtown movie theatre was sparse. Good sign. I wasn’t even sure what was playing; probably some summer blockbuster with things blowing up. I didn’t care.

“What can I get for you?” the greasy-haired attendant with a painful looking cheek piercing asked me as I bellied up to the counter.

“Can I get a…”

She gave me a strange look. I didn’t blame her. I had simply stopped talking and moving. I’m sure it must have looked as if my batteries had just conked out.

But it was way better than that. I had it!

“Nothing, thanks!” I told her with plenty more enthusiasm than the situation called for. I handed my ticket to a teen coming through the entrance, and raced out of the complex, back to my car.

For the second time that afternoon, I purchased a movie ticket.

This time for the first showing of a second-run movie at the Roxy.

A few blocks on the wrong side of Idylwyld Drive, the old movie house is a curious place. Built just before the Depression, the Roxy is famous for its unique and fanciful interior, reminiscent of a DD

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Spanish village. The larger of the two theatres boasts built-in balconies, whimsical towers, and charming window boxes overflow-ing with fake flowers. The ceiling is dark blue, with twinkling lights set into plaster, an eternal starry night. It was the starry night that did it for me. That and the popcorn.

When the concession attendant at the other movie place had asked me what I wanted, the first thing that was going to come out of my mouth was what most people say when asked the same question: popcorn.

Popcorn!

Ever since I’d found it, I’d been stumped by the popcorn in the tin buried under the tree at the San site. Why popcorn? Maybe I was wrong to think it was simply packing material. What if the popcorn itself was the clue? Using the old word association game, you say popcorn, I think movies. I repeated the last stanza of the treasure map poem in my head.

And finally it does hide,

Below sparkling sky,

Within a golden urn

Treasure you will find.

I wasn’t sure about the golden urn, but I knew of a movie theatre with a sparkling sky: The Roxy.

It was worth a try. If I was wrong, all it would cost me was the price of admission…well, two admissions. But as soon as I entered the darkened cavern of the theatre, I knew I was right. In an alcove above the exit near the stage, below the twinkle-lights-in-plaster sky, was a golden urn. I was ecstatic with my discovery. If I was reading the poem correctly, what I was after was in that urn! I’d finally made it to the end of the treasure hunt!

However, one big problem remained. How the heck was I supposed to scale the faux Spanish wall, climb into the alcove, reach into the urn, and claim my prize, all without being seen? Even if I waited until the lights were lowered and the show began, regardless of how good the movie up on the screen was, I was betting my unusual behaviour would surely attract some unwanted attention.

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Or would it? Sunk deep in my seat, I swivelled my head to study the other patrons in the theatre. There weren’t any.

Fortunately, matinees on warm summer Tuesday afternoons are not hot ticket events.

By the time the lights dimmed and the reels began to roll, only three other people had arrived to join me in the massive, dark space. Two were teenage girls who were too excessively engrossed in their own selves to pay me much attention. The third was a woman who sat front and centre with an extra large bag of popcorn, a bag of gummi bears, and a super-sized drink the size of a pail. I was hoping her location would not only keep me out of her line of sight, but meant she was there for the movie and couldn’t care less about what was happening behind and just to the right of her.

Next, I put my brain to work on how I was going to get to the urn. The bottom edge of the alcove had to be fifteen to twenty feet off the ground. Now, if I were Indiana Jones or Zorro, this wouldn’t be an issue. But I was fresh out of whips and ropes and mighty steeds on whose back I could stand on. I needed something a little less swashbuckling and a little more efficient: a ladder. I needed a ladder.

Pink Panther-like, I snuck out of the theatre to check the hallway. Certainly a place like this would have ladders all over the place.

Not so.

I returned to the theatre, this time taking a seat near the rear. It struck me that if I couldn’t come at this thing from the bottom, perhaps I could from the top. I studied the space, front to back, looking for an easy way—I’d even take a not-so-easy way—to make my way up to the Spanish villa rooftop. But that too seemed impossible. And even if I could get up there and make it to the alcove, by leaping rooftop to rooftop (which looks pretty simple in all those James Bond movies), I saw that the distance from roof line to urn would be simply too great for me to reach down and grab whatever was inside. I’d have to hop down into the alcove from the roof, but then I’d be stuck there, with no conceivable way to get away, unless I suddenly developed the powers of Spider-Man. I DD6AA2AB8

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slunk low into my seat, dejected. So close, yet so far. I had to wonder if I was making a big mistake. If I couldn’t get to the urn, how could anyone else have done it? And if no one else could get to the urn, that meant the treasure wasn’t in it.