Grumble Monkey and the Department Store Elf (4 page)

T
HEY
TURNED
off the radio for a while. They were moving a little faster as well. The sleet was letting up after all. Nick didn’t drive fast, but he had moved it up to forty-five anyway.

Kit was humming the San Francisco song, singing only the part about “open your golden gates.” It was the only part he knew. He liked the song, and he still wanted to see the city despite the fact that Nick said it wasn’t as gay as it used to be.

And he had been right about Nick. He’d known almost immediately the man was gay. It was one of Kit’s gifts. He had the world’s best gaydar; at least that’s what all his friends said.

It was a shame about Nick’s mom and dad. “I’m sorry about your parents,” Kit said.

“It was a long time ago,” Nick said, his voice emotionless.

“How long?”

“Has anybody ever told you that you’re nosy?”

“All the time!” Kit laughed. “Ambrosia says it’s my worst fault.”

“Who’s Ambrosia?”

“My sister. The oldest. She also says it’s my biggest charm.”

“I don’t know about charm,” Nick said.

There was a long silence. Kit looked at Nick again. He really was very handsome. Grumble monkey or not. And maybe, just maybe, Nick wasn’t as big a poop as he liked to pretend he was. Still. Having your parents throw you out? That could turn anybody into a grumble monkey.

“Ten years,” Nick said very abruptly.

“Sorry?” Ten years what?

“Since they threw me out. Ten years tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Kit digested that for a minute. Then his eyes went wide. “They threw you out on Christmas Day? O.M.G!”

“Yeah,” he said. “I was staying the weekend at my parents’ house, and Gary, this guy I was seeing, called to wish me a Merry Christmas.” Nick snorted. “
Merry Christmas
! He was feeling guilty, is what he was doing. He cheated on me. That’s why I was at my parents’ house instead of with him. I caught him and I left.”

“You actually caught him with someone?”
How horrible!

“Well, not exactly
with
. But I found a condom behind the bed.” He gave another little grunt. “I’m always finding things behind the bed. Found some panties the other night.”

“Panties,” Kit asked. “Why would there be panties behind your bed?”

“Not my bed,” Nick answered. “It was behind the hotel bed.”

“Oh.”
Gross
. “Eeeww.”

“It was just some panties.”

Kit shrugged. “Still.”

Nick gave a shrug of his own. “Yeah. Still.” Nick gathered his thoughts, then continued. “Anyway, Gary was calling to try and make things right, I guess. Personally, I think he realized he’d fucked up a lot of money.”

“Money?” With every piece of information Nick was giving up, he was just making things more confusing.

“Yes.
Money.
The St. Georges are worth a lot of it. And I think he figured out fighting with me could put him back in cheap apartments and cheaper jeans. He liked our fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. He liked his Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. And that was the cheap stuff.”

“Wow. I bought me an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt once, and it cost me like thirty dollars. And it was on sale. And it was a woman’s.”

“Why am I
not
surprised?”

Kit raised his nose high, and in his best snooty voice, said, “They looked sick on me too!”

“Sick? Then why the hell…?”

“It means cool, Nick.”

“Ah. Yes. I guess I knew that.” There was a long pause again.

“So this guy was sucking up to you for more Abercrombie & Fitch?” Kit said. His curiosity was aroused, and once that happened, it was a fierce and ravenous beast.

Nick sighed. “Yes. And I was just starting to believe. In love. That he loved me, that is. That he was sorry and all that shit. And I said it back. I….” Kit actually heard Nick give a gulp. “Turns out Mom was listening in. She got an earful too. Got to hear all the ‘I love yous.’”

“Gosh. And she didn’t like it.”

Nick sighed.

Kit watched the tremor run through him. “Look, you don’t have to answer that—”

“No. She didn’t like it at all. That night, after we opened our gifts, they told me to leave. Told me I wasn’t to have a thing to do with the family until I had reformed myself. Kicked Gary out of my life. And was ready for a wife.”

“A wife?” Kit looked at him, wide-eyed. “They knew you were gay and they expected you to get married?”

“I am the only boy. It was my job to carry on the St. George name. I pointed out I had three male cousins that could do that, and Dad slapped me.”

Kit’s mouth fell open again. “He… he slapped you?” Kit couldn’t imagine it. His dad hadn’t given him so much as a swat on the butt since he was five. And those never hurt anything but his pride.

“Yes. Slapped me. It was a pretty good one too. I had the whole red palm print on my face and everything. I saw it in the mirror when I got back to my apartment. And that was an hour later. My ‘boyfriend’ went apeshit. But that was nothing compared to when we found out my parents really did it.”

“Did what?” Kit asked.

“Disinherited me. Totally. I would have been out in the streets if it wasn’t for the sizeable trust fund my grandmother left me. Fortunately, I withdrew all that money from the family bank and moved it the first thing the next morning. They didn’t know what I did with it, or they might have found a way to get that too.”

“But you were what? Twenty-two?”

“Yes.”

“How could they have—”

“They are St. Georges. They do whatever they want to do.”

“Golly.”

“And what’s with all this ‘golly’ crap? I mean it. Can’t you let out one single ‘shit’?”

Kit burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

Kit grinned from ear to ear. It
was
funny. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your seats….”

“What?” There was a long pause, and then suddenly Nick smiled, and a second later started to laugh himself. “Well, I guess not!”

And then their laughter filled the car.

“I’
M
SORRY
about that crack I made about your lesbian friend.” And Nick meant it. He felt like a complete shit.

“Huh?” Kit asked him.

“When I said she got what she deserved. That was wrong of me. I don’t even know why I said it.”

It was because he had reached the end of his rope. Literally.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kit bite his lip. Then Kit tilted his head and studied him. The admission hadn’t been easy, and it made him uncomfortable the way the young man was looking at him.

“It’s okay,” Kit said.

“No.” No it wasn’t. “I was an asshole to say such a thing. I don’t even know her.”

“It’s okay.” Kit nodded. “Forget about it.”

“How.… How is she doing now?”

“Oh!” Kit smiled. “She’s doing pretty good. She got a job in an art gallery.”

“Art gallery?” That jolted him.

“And her art is catching on too. That helped a lot.”

Art
?
Did he say art
? “Art?” he asked aloud.

“Yeah.” Kit nodded. “She’s a painter.”

“Really?” Nick turned to him, literally stunned by the coincidence. Art?

“Yeah.” There. Kit was doing it again. Studying him. Nick tried to clear his face. He was allowing his emotions to show. His inner emotions, and not the fake ones he showed the world. The problem was that art was his field. He wondered if Kit’s friend was any good. Most people
thought
their friend was a good artist. Most of the time they sucked sour socks. “Is she any good?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Kit smiled. “She’s
really
good. She works mostly in watercolors. She’s sort of a weird wonderful marriage of Georgia O’Keeffe and Claude Monet and Amedeo Modigliani, with a little Gerhard Richter thrown in.”

The comment surprised Nick. Not only because Nick had to really
think
to imagine such a marriage of styles, but also because Kit knew the names. “You do realize that Amedeo Modigliani did mostly portraits?”

Kit rolled his eyes. “Of course. Who doesn’t know
that?
”

“I will guarantee not the average person.” Nick turned his eyes back to the road. Tried to decide if he could pump it up another five miles an hour, and decided, for several reasons, to leave the needle right where it was. Safety
and
his interest in continuing this new conversation.

“How do you know about Gerhard Richter?” Nick asked.

“Well, shazam! His piece
Abstraktes Bild
sold for nearly twenty-one million dollars this year! I’m thrilled if I sell a piece for a hundred bucks!”

If
he
sells a piece? “You’re an artist?”

“Sure. I told you that.” Kit rolled his eyes again.

“You most certainly did
not
,” Nick barked, then forced himself to reel it in. “Sorry, Kit, but you didn’t.”

“Sure. I told you I was going to art school.”

“No. You said you were going to
school
. You never said it was art school.”

“Oh.” Kit shrugged. Grinned. “I’m going to art school. Almost done.”

Nick looked out the window. Interesting. Of course, Kit’s work could be for shit. Probably was. But still, the coincidence was pretty amazing. Him, an art dealer. Kit, an artist. And his lesbian friend too. An artist with the pretty damned diverse styles of Georgia O’Keeffe, Claude Monet, and Amedeo Modigliani. With a little Gerhard Richter thrown in. Hmmmm….

And while it was probably a waste of time, one never knew. He should check out Kit’s work. And the lesbian’s. One never knew. Sometimes you were
the
one to find the next Cui Ruzhuo or Jeff Koons. Someone had to be.

Bad timing, though, wasn’t it? A little late. Screw it. He
had
to know.

“Maybe when we get to your place, I can take a look at your work?” Nick asked.

“Sure. That would be sick.”

Sick. Cool. Not gross. Nick nodded. “Where do you go to school?” he asked.

“Art Institute of Chicago,” Kit answered.

“And you drove from there in this weather? When did you leave?”

“This morning,” Kit said.

“This
morning
?” That was hard to believe. Nick had been outside of Springfield, and it had taken him half the day to get this far. What should have taken him about three and a half hours had taken over eight. With the stops, that is.

“Well, I left pretty frakkin’ early,” Kit said by way of an explanation. “And it didn’t get bad until I got to Springfield.”

“You went through Springfield?”

Kit nodded.

“You must have left pretty fuckin’ early.”

“Frakkin’,” Kit said.

“What?”

“Frakkin’. Not that other word.”

“What does ‘frakking’ mean?” Nick asked, confused.

Kit grinned again, and “golly,” it was a cute smile. “Probably the same thing. But it’s a nicer way of saying it. ‘Frak’ is a word they made up for the show
Battlestar Galactica
. Except I like the original show instead of the new one. Even if it was before I was born, and it’s kinda corny.”

“I have no clue what you are talking about,” Nick confessed. Or did he? Images of Dirk Benedict were surfacing in his mind. Spencer had bought some DVDs and made him watch them. Yes. Now he remembered. Frak. He laughed.

Nick turned back to Kit. The young man was grinning from ear to ear. “You are a piece of work, do you know that?”

“You too, Nick. You too.”

And maybe he was. He nodded. “Maybe so.”

“So, how do you know about Richter?” Kit asked.

“Because I’m an art dealer. It’s my job to know.”

Kit goggled at him. “You’re an art dealer?”

Nick nodded. “That’s why I know who Richter is.”

Kit’s eyes bugged out even bigger. “And you’ve dealt Gerhard Richter?”

“No.” Nick shook his head. He
wished
! “Sorry to say, I haven’t been so lucky. But I did show a piece by John McAllister.”

“Really? Golly!”

Nick smiled. Kit certainly knew his artists. Nick felt his mood jump. There was something infectious about Kit. Nick had been fighting it for the last couple of hours, but there it was. Kit was making him smile. Even laugh. It had been a long time since he’d laughed.
Really
laughed, and not pretended to laugh so he could sell art. People always bought art from a man who could laugh. Nick had learned that. He’d started out his career being very serious. But that’s not what collectors wanted. They wanted him to be human. It hadn’t been easy.

But forget about that. He wanted to talk art! “I also showed a few pieces by the sculptor Paul McCarthy. Do you know him?”

“Oh yeah!” Kit exclaimed. “So fun and silly and…
fun!
”

Fun? Was McCarthy fun? Well, of course he was! How could a piece called
Gold Butter Dog
, which looked a lot like Disney’s Goofy,
not
be fun?

“And I’ve sold photographs by Thomas Ruff,” he bragged, really getting into it.

“
¡Ay, caramba!
” Kit wiggled in excitement. “His pieces have sold for seven to ninety-five thousand dollars. Can you imagine?
Ninety-five thousand!
”

“I know,” Nick crowed in delight. “I
really
know!” How delightful to talk with someone who was enthusiastic about the things Nick loved.

Then Nick froze for a moment. He almost gasped.

Things he loved?

How long had it been since he’d thought about art as something he loved?

It had been a while.

Hell! He had sold a Paul McCarthy, and he was just now realizing how much fun the man’s work was. Sure, he’d said such words to potential buyers. He knew the words. He knew what to say. But how long had it been since he’d really
felt
it? Wasn’t that why he’d chosen such a field? Because he loved it?

That, and because he could barely draw a stick figure. He couldn’t do it himself, but he recognized art. He could surround himself with it. He could sell it. And he had made a hell of a lot of money doing so.