In Mike We Trust (8 page)

There were several racks of DVDs near the back of the store. He wandered over to them, and saw that one held porn and the others held regular movies with gay subject matter. He lingered in front of the porn rack until he felt Mike's hands on his shoulders, steering him away. “That's not why we're here, Mr. Minor.” He repositioned Garth in front of the regular movies, then wandered off to another part of the store.

Nearby, a man was sifting through a stack of T-shirts. A woman old enough to be his grandmother flipped through a bin of calendars. And standing just a few feet away from him, he now noticed, was a guy around his age. He was tall and had sandy hair, and he was beyond good-looking (“an uberhottie,” Lisa would have said).

Garth forced his gaze back to the movies. For lack of anything else to do, he selected one of the DVD boxes from the shelf and stared at it.

“Ugh,” Mike said, stepping over and looking down at the box. “Can you pick one that isn't violent? That looks like something your mom would conjure up in her nightmares.”

On the cover was a pair of guys in tank tops. One of them had a black eye and was holding his hands in the air. The other had a pistol leveled at the battered guy's face.

“Have you seen this one?”

The voice wasn't Mike's. Garth looked over and saw that the sandy-haired guy was holding out a copy of a DVD called
Beautiful Thing.

“N-no,” Garth said cautiously.

“It's not violent. At all. It's a great story—one of my favorites, in fact. I've probably seen it a dozen times.”

“Hmm,” Mike said. “May I?” He took the DVD case from the guy's hand and turned it over to read the back.

The guy offered Garth a slight smile. “You look familiar.”

Perfect. First time ever in a gay bookstore, and he was spotted, tagged, exposed. He had no idea how to respond and was afraid his voice would tremble if he spoke.

Thankfully, the guy answered his own question. “I know, we had Ms. Davis's humanities class together last year.”

“We did?”

“But they switched me into Mr. Alison's class after the first week—which is maybe why you don't remember me. Also, you're friends with Lisa Hogart, right?”

As soon as he heard Lisa's name, Garth realized that was where he'd seen him. In the cafeteria, at lunch, when Lisa held court every so often with her “fellow artists.”

“I'm Adam,” the guy said. He held out his hand. “Adam Walters.”

Garth shook the hand, hoping his palm wasn't sweaty. “Garth Rudd.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“And that old guy who's with me is my great-granddad,” Mike said.

“Oh—sorry.” Garth turned and said, “This is my uncle Mike.”

“Hi,” Adam said.

“How's it going?” Mike shook his hand, then said, “You a Richmonder?”

“Yeah. For the past couple of years, anyway. My family moved here from Seattle.”

Mike glanced down again at the DVD. “So this looks good. You said it's one of your favorites?”

“Top five,” Adam told them.

“That's a pretty solid endorsement. Look good to you?” he asked Garth.

“Sure,” Garth said.

“I'll be right back.” He walked away, leaving them alone in front of the movie rack.

“So…,” Garth said with a slight sense of panic, searching, “…Lisa.”

“Yeah. She's a trip, isn't she?”

“You must be an artist—what does she call those things she holds in the cafeteria? Séances?”

“Ha. Salons. I've sat in on a couple, but I wouldn't say I'm an artist; I just want to make films. I haven't done much about it yet because I can't afford any decent equipment, but I'm studying it.”

“Every time you watch a movie, I guess.”

“Pretty much. Or TV. Or even just walking around. I see everything in terms of shots.” He grinned, and Garth felt himself grinning back.

Aware of the fact that he didn't have anything to contribute to the conversation nearly as interesting as aspiring to be a filmmaker (“
I want to take care of sick animals?
”) he said, “So this is in your top five, huh?” Then he remembered that he wasn't holding the DVD anymore; Mike had it and everything else at the register, and was paying the woman behind the counter.

“There are actually a lot of great films here.” Adam laughed. “A lot of bad ones, too. You have to wade through the garbage to get to the gems. So how do
you
know Lisa?”

“I've known her for a while. We met, like, three years ago? She's pretty much my best friend.”

“She's intense.”

“So we're all set,” Mike said, approaching them, bag in hand. “I took your recommendation and bought the DVD.”

“You won't be disappointed,” Adam said. “I could watch it over and over again.”

“Do you live in the neighborhood?”

“Just west of the Boulevard on Colonial.”

Mike glanced at Garth. “That's close to us, right?” Then he looked back at Adam. “Why don't you come over sometime and watch the movie with us?”

Garth's mouth went dry. What the hell was Mike doing—playing matchmaker? He was beyond embarrassed, sure that Adam would hear the suggestion as some perverted invitation to an orgy. “He said he's already seen it a dozen times. He doesn't want to see it again.”

“I'd love to,” Adam said, laughing a little. “Maybe the thirteenth time will reveal a whole new subplot I've never noticed before.”

“Great,” Mike said.

There was a pause and they all just stood there, staring at one another.

“This is the part where one of you writes down his phone number and gives it to the other one, so that this might actually happen,” Mike prompted.

“Right!” Adam fumbled through his pockets, then spotted a mug of rainbow-colored pens on a nearby shelf. On a scrap of paper from his wallet, he wrote out his phone number for Garth.

Garth took the paper from him. “Thanks,” he said.

“Well.” Adam took a step to the side. His head dipped in a goofy—and adorable—way, and he offered
a little wave. “Nice meeting you both.”

“Yeah,” Garth managed.

“You, too,” Mike said. “We look forward to movie night.”

“Call…whenever.”

Adam walked out of the store, glanced once through the front window, and then was gone down the sidewalk.

“What did you do
that
for?” Garth asked Mike. “He probably thinks we're perverts!”

“Actually, what you just witnessed is how people meet. Get to know each other. Become friends. They open their mouths, form speech, and make plans to see each other again. I'm telling you, it's been happening for
years
.”

“Well, at the very
least
he thinks I'm after him.”

“Would you chill out? I'll play chaperone, if you want, ease the tension. He's not going to think you're ‘after him' if your boring old uncle's in the room. Anyway, consider today progress.” He hefted the bag. “You've got new shoes on your feet, a bag of…gay goodies…maybe even a new friend. It's not panic time.”

Mike was right. Garth didn't want to see it as panic time. He wanted to see it as the opposite, in fact. It was his mom who would do the panicking, if she found out.

“We can't tell Mom we were in here.”

“Well, you didn't break your promise, exactly, but I agree: she doesn't need to know about it. She'd be all over my case if she found out.”

True enough.

“So it's our secret, okay?”

Garth nodded. Just like when Mike had brought up Project Garth with his mom, he felt both thankful and uneasy.

“There's something else she can't find out about, too—something I've been working on that will have to be another secret.”

“What's that?”

“Come on, I'll tell you about it on the way to the car.”

 

Not that Garth had sensed anything
un
generous in his uncle's demeanor, but it came as a surprise to learn that Mike had done charity work in the past. After eavesdropping on the conversation with his mom about gambling and Mike's lack of interest in a real job, and hearing Mike talking on the cell phone to Marty and Stu about money they owed to someone named Phil, he'd assumed his uncle's line of work was more on the shady side of what
he
was used to—but nothing
too
shady, more the stuff of an old Hollywood
movie. So where did charity fit into Mike's picture?

“Charity work,” Mike told him as they were walking back through Carytown, “has saved my financial neck more than a few times over the past few years. I've done some work for an organization that's front-lining the fight against meninosis. Ever heard of it?”

Garth confessed he hadn't.

“That's part of the problem.” Mike went on to explain that almost
no one
had heard of the disease, which was affecting thousands of children all over the country, and the organization he'd worked for was devoted to increasing public awareness and raising money for a cure. Some charities operated solely through volunteers; others had enough backing to pay people to work their drives.

“They
pay
you to do charity work?”

“Exactly. And I know what you're thinking. Why pay people when you can get volunteers?”

“Actually, I was thinking the whole thing sounds a little weird,” Garth said.

“And why's that?”

“Well, if you're collecting money for some organization, and they don't know how much you take in, how do they know you're not stealing from them?”

“You're a sharp guy,” Mike said. “Remember I told you that. But think of it this way: assuming you're
not
robbing the organization, the cut actually functions as an incentive. The harder you work a crowd, the more you pull in. The more you pull in, the bigger your slice. And the best thing about it—other than the money, which can be good if you know what you're doing—is that it's temporary work, and that beats the heck out of a
regular
job.”

It still sounded a little strange to Garth. But then again, Mike seemed to know what he was talking about. In fact, he could have been reciting language from a training manual. And from what Garth knew about him, it made sense that Mike would go for temp work like this.

“So what does this have to do with us?”

“I'm thinking we should do it.”

“Here?”

Mike nodded. “Just temporarily. To generate some bucks for your college fund.”

Garth thought of how
some bucks
would be useful, in general. It might bring his mom a little peace of mind, for one thing. Still, he asked, “What do you need me for?”

“Hey, it's
your
college fund, not mine. Besides, when it comes to charity work, two people are always better than one.”

Garth tried to picture them approaching strangers,
asking for donations. “Isn't it just like begging?”

“Completely different. It's charity. It's for a cause.”

“So why couldn't Mom know we were doing it?”

Mike tsk-tsked out the side of his mouth and shook his head. “I just don't think she'd like the idea. She'd find
some
reason why you shouldn't do it—don't you think? I mean, how could she not, if she's such a worrier?”

Garth could easily imagine the frantic concern etching itself into her face. “Yeah.”

“So we'll just keep it under wraps until we're done.”

The idea of keeping such a secret from his mom didn't sit well with Garth. Then again, she was the one who'd made him promise to keep a
huge
secret from the entire world. And if Mike was right, this was something that could actually help them, whereas what she'd asked Garth to do was only making
him
miserable. “All right,” he said.

“Really? Aces,” Mike said. “I've still got some pamphlets in the trunk from the last time I did this. I'll call the organization tomorrow and make sure they're still current.” They'd reached the Camaro.

“What about my job? And the shelter?” Garth asked, suddenly remembering he still had a life to tend to.

“What about them?”

“Well, they take up time. We'd have to work around them.”

Mike thought about it. “I can't speak for the dogs, but as for the store—what's it called again?”

“Peterson's”

“You hate working there, don't you?”

“How could you tell?”

“Because it's written all over your face when you talk about it.”

“I do,” Garth confessed. “I
loathe
it.”

“What's that, fifteen hours a week? At minimum wage?” Mike drummed his fingers on the top of the car and did some quick calculations in his head. “Quit.”

“Quit my
job
?”

“The money we pull in will more than make up for your salary, I guarantee it. And I can front you whatever spending money you need.”

“But don't I have to give, like, two weeks' notice?”

“That's a myth created by bosses.”

“I don't know,” Garth said. Just thinking about the idea made his stomach clench with nervous excitement. “Mr. Peterson wouldn't be too happy about that. He's pretty cranky.”

“All the more reason. Don't be intimidated by him; just tell him you're out of there. And keep that a secret,
too.” Mike got in behind the wheel.

Garth felt himself grin as he pulled open the passenger door. The visit to the bookstore, Adam's phone number in his pocket, the prospect of being free of Peterson's,
and
bringing in some money…

Aces
, as Mike would put it.