Authors: Etienne
“Eventually,” Steve said, “a joint would come loose, and an angry customer would call us to complain about water squirting out of the middle of their lawn.”
“Then we’d have to spend time and money digging up their lawn to fix what should have been done right in the first place,” Roger said.
“Tell me more about your business,” I said.
The boys launched into a long narration of their history in the lawn maintenance, landscaping, and irrigation business.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Mike said.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m thinking of two young friends of ours. They’re identical twins and are probably a year older than you guys, since they just finished their first year of community college up in Waynesville.”
“Right,” Mike said. “They’re spending the summer in Jacksonville because they’re crazy about the ocean. They’ve also been involved in management training at McDonald’s for the past couple of summers and plan to make a career out of the Golden Arches.”
“I think they might be interested in taking a page from your book,” I said, “and starting a business like yours in the Jacksonville area. They’ve made a good deal of money doing lawn work on the side over the past few years, and what you do sounds like a natural next step for them.”
“Are they gay?” Steve said.
“Yes, they are,” I said. “In fact, they’ve just acquired boyfriends for the first time.”
“When you live in the hills,” Mike said, “where things are kind of backward and old-fashioned, you’re very careful about talking to other guys about being gay. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that until they started working at Jacksonville Beach and spending their free time on the beach, they hadn’t had much opportunity to meet other gays.”
“Why don’t you invite them to Atlanta?” Charles said. “Maybe they could stop by here one weekend before school starts in the fall.”
“Do you think that could be arranged, George?” Philip said.
“We’ll certainly ask them,” I said. “They’re at our house this weekend taking care of our dog.”
“Speaking of taking care of people,” Mike said, “we probably ought to go check on Robbie. He’s been napping for a while.”
“Robbie?” Roger said.
“We just adopted a little boy,” I said, and I gave them the short version of the story.
We all got in the pool for a while to cool down from the Jacuzzi, after which we headed for the showers. Back in the house, we found Robbie sitting in the sunroom talking to Mrs. Barnett and sipping a glass of what appeared to be lemonade.
“Hi, there, big guy,” I said, ruffling his hair. “Sorry we weren’t upstairs when you woke up.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Mrs. Barnett said you were swimming.”
“That we were,” I said. “By the way, do you know how to swim?”
“No, Sir.”
“Well, we can’t have you living in a city near the ocean and not knowing how to swim,” I said. “We’ll take you to the Y the next time they have a class for kids your age.”
“Okay.”
Steve and Roger walked up to us, and I said, “Robbie, this is Steve and Roger. Steve, Roger, this is Robbie.”
They shook hands solemnly with Robbie and took seats in nearby chairs.
Mrs. Goodman appeared and said, “Dinner will be served in thirty minutes.”
“Good,” Steve said, “because we’re starved.”
“Ditto,” Roger said.
“Can we go up to the playroom?” Robbie said to no one in particular.
“You bet we can,” Steve said. “Let’s go.”
Robbie followed the boys out of the room, and Mrs. Barnett said, “That is one very bright child.”
“I’ve noticed that,” I said. “At times he is so withdrawn, and then, when you least expect it, he comes up with something that to me, at least, sounds way beyond his years.”
“He and I were having an interesting conversation when you came back from the pool,” she said. “He even volunteered the information that his parents were dead and that you boys were his new daddies.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s amazing. Moreover, it’s something that Lydia needs to know.”
“I thought so too,” she said, “and I’ll pass the information along to her. She’s really quite special in what she does.”
“So I gather,” I said.
“When Philip’s nephew came to us,” she said, “he had been beaten almost to death by his father for being gay. Lydia spent a lot of time helping him get over it.”
“It would appear that she succeeded,” Mike said.
“She helped him gather the courage to go back to Louisiana and testify against his father in court,” she said.
“What happened to his father?” Mike said.
“He was sentenced to a very long prison term,” she said, “and was stabbed to death in the prison some months later.”
“Inmates have a reputation for not liking child beaters and molesters,” I said.
“Just so,” she said.
“How did Steve take that news?” Mike said.
“Since he had already told his father in court that he wasn’t a father, but merely a sperm donor,” she said, “it didn’t seem to bother him.”
“Let’s get back to Robbie,” I said. “How did you get him to mention his parents?”
“I think he just blurted it out,” she said.
I gave her a steady look and smiled. Then I said, “Mrs. Barnett, you’re probably one of the most skillful interrogators I’ve ever met, and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order. You managed to somehow get him to talk, didn’t you?”
She smiled and said, “Guilty as charged. I had a very good mentor in Charles’s grandfather. He taught me how to work a room and casually elicit information from people, and it has been an extremely useful skill.”
“Well,” I said, “if you ever want a job, I’ll hire you in a heartbeat, despite the department’s mandatory retirement age. You’d have to spend a lot of time consorting with the criminal element… but it wouldn’t be boring.”
She laughed and said, “George, that’s just about the best offer I’ve had in years, but I’ll have to respectfully decline.”
“Too bad you didn’t have a tape recorder handy,” Mike said.
She smiled again, dug into the folds of her skirt, produced a microcassette recorder, and said, “You mean like this one? A few years ago, Philip persuaded me to write a book about life in Atlanta in the old days, and he even managed to get it published. Lately he has been after me to dictate the rest of my memoirs, so I’ve played with this thing for a few minutes every day for a few weeks now. I just happened to be using it when Robbie came downstairs looking for you.”
She pushed the rewind button, then, after a minute or two, pushed another button, and we listened to her conversation with Robbie. When the tape ended, she turned the machine off and said, “I’ll give this to Lydia after dinner.”
“You’re an amazing woman,” I said.
“She’s what?” Charles said from behind me.
“Your grandmother is an amazing woman,” I said, “and I’ve just offered her a job as an interrogator for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.”
“I can see the headlines now,” Mike said. “‘Sweet little old lady persuades hardened criminals to tell all.’”
Mrs. Barnett began to laugh, and I told Charles about the tape.
Philip said, “You’re not the only one who’s observed that skill in Gran.”
Mrs. Goodman appeared and told us that dinner was served in the dining room. It took a while for everyone to assemble, and Mrs. Barnett was still smiling when she sat down at the table. Steve and Roger came downstairs with Robbie in tow, and Grace brought Mark and Steven with her and got them settled in their high chairs. Mrs. Goodman produced a booster seat for Robbie, and Lydia showed up a minute before we were ready to dig in.
Charles opened a couple of bottles of Bordeaux. As he decanted them, he said, “I haven’t shown you the wine cellar yet. We’ll take a look at it after dinner.”
“Charles’s great-grandfather started the wine cellar,” Mrs. Barnett said, “and my late husband kept it going.”
“That he did,” Charles said as he began to pour. “For some reason, my father wasn’t all that interested. On the other hand, I started adding to the collection as soon as I could afford to do so.”
“Are you interested in fine wine, George?” Mrs. Barnett said.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Much of our social life revolves around impromptu wine tastings every Friday evening at our neighborhood wine shop.”
“Anywhere from four to as many as twelve or more of us gather at the shop,” Mike said. “We pick out a bottle we’d like to try, and the owner divides it between us. After we’ve sampled three or four wines, we pick a restaurant that has a reasonable corkage policy and take more wine with us to have dinner at the restaurant.”
“Philip and I certainly enjoyed the Friday we spent with your group,” Charles said.
“We enjoyed the Burgundy night Saturday at that steak house, also,” Philip said.
“Burgundy night?” Lydia repeated.
Charles explained that we’d had dinner with several other couples at the steak house, and every couple was required to bring—and share—a bottle of premier cru or grand cru Burgundy.
We had a great time at the dinner table, and the conversation went from wine to a number of other fascinating topics. Before we had dessert, Mrs. Barnett gave Lydia the tape recorder, and she excused herself to go and listen to the tape. Later she came back into the dining room, where we were still visiting over our coffee, and took Robbie up to the study to spend some more time talking to him. Charles led us down to the cellar and unlocked a door at one end of it. He stepped inside and flipped on the lights.
“Holy shit,” I said when I saw the wine cellar.
He led us around the various racks, pointing out a few treasures from his great-grandfather’s day that were still waiting to be sampled. “Some of this wine is reaching a point at which it absolutely must be drunk in the next several years,” Charles said, “and we’re hard at work trying to get to it before it goes bad.”
He and Philip told us about their involvement with the Atlanta Wine and Food Society.
“You ought to organize a group like that in Jacksonville,” Charles said.
“Actually,” I said, “there used to be one. It lasted for more than twenty years. The last man to be president of the group kept it going for more than five years, and when he retired and moved away from Jacksonville, he passed the torch to someone else. Unfortunately, after less than a year, that person had to shut it down for a number of reasons, so it’s history now.”
“What happened?” Charles said.
“Poor attendance, loss of an adequate venue, you name it,” I said. “I don’t know the whole story, but I’ve heard bits and pieces from others.”
Charles went back among the wine racks and returned a moment later with a bottle. “Let’s take this bottle of Port up to the library and sample it,” he said.
We went back upstairs to the library and Charles opened the bottle, passing it around so we could read the label. “W & J Graham Forty Year Old Tawny Port,” I read. “Sounds good.”
“That’s because it is good,” Philip said. “In fact, it’s more than good.”
Charles poured a small amount of Port into little glasses and passed them around. When he’d finished pouring, he raised his glass and said, “Cheers.”
We echoed him and took a sip.
“God,” I said, “this is way beyond smooth.” I felt the fiery liquid all the way down, and it was a wonderful feeling.
“What do you guys think, Steve?” Philip said.
“Not bad,” Steve said.
“Ditto,” Roger said.
“Not bad,” Charles said. “As someone once famously said, you’re damning it with faint praise.”
“Try rating it on a ten-point scale,” Philip said.
“Okay,” Steve said, “I’ll give it at least an eight and a half.”
“Ditto,” Roger said.
Charles laughed and said, “I’ll accept an eight and a half.” He refilled our glasses.
“What’s the plan for tomorrow morning?” I said.
“The race ends in Piedmont Park,” Charles said. “Early tomorrow morning I’m going to drive my car to Lenox Square and park it, and Philip will follow me in his car and bring me back to the house. Steve can drive us over to Phipps Plaza around seven fifteen in Philip’s car and drop us off. That’s only a block from where the race begins, and we can take MARTA back there from near Piedmont Park.”
We finished our Port and went upstairs. Lydia was still talking to Robbie, but he was clearly showing signs of being ready for bed, so Mike took him down the hall to supervise his bath, and I stayed in the study to talk to Lydia.
“What did you think of Mrs. Barnett’s tape?” I said.
“I was surprised,” she said. “She managed to extract an amazing amount of information in a very short time.”
“I offered her a job as an interrogator,” I said.
Lydia laughed and said, “She’s very good at it.”
“Did Robbie open up to you just now?” I said.
“A little,” she said. “Remember, I have to walk a fine line between digging for information and pushing too hard. As time goes on and he begins to trust me, it will get easier and I can push a little more. It’s almost like walking on eggshells.”
“Grant money aside,” I said, “we’re more than willing to start next weekend, if you can schedule the time.”
“I’ll make the time,” she said. “This kid interests me.”
“Great,” I said. “Before we leave Sunday, we can cobble a schedule together for the next few months.”
“Count on it,” she said.
“It sounds as though you’ve known the Barnetts for a long time,” I said.
“That’s true,” she said. “I’ve known Charles ever since he and my brother met when they were in college. They were partners almost from the day they met.”
“What happened?”
“My brother died of a brain tumor a number of years ago. Charles was devastated afterward and wasn’t in the best of shape for nearly three years—then he met Philip.”
I excused myself and went down the hall to the bathroom where Robbie was playing in the bathtub with Mike watching him. “He’s starting to get a bit wrinkled, isn’t he?” I said.
“Yep,” Mike said. “Time to stand up and rinse off, big guy.”
Robbie obediently stood up and allowed Mike to use the showerhead to rinse the soap off him. We dried him, got him into some shorty pajamas, and tucked him into bed with Andy.