Merry Random Christmas (14 page)

“You gave my chicken a
sweater
?”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“
I can’t put that on her!” Paul buttoned his jeans, looking at Joe like he was nuts.
 

Trevor’s expression deflated. “Why not?”

Paul rotated the green and orange sweater in his hands, his fingers tracing the logo’s words. “Popsicle is a Rhode Island Red. She looks terrible in orange. It’s not her color.”

“It’s like the chicken version of
What Not to Wear
,” I whispered to Joe, whose expression hardened.

“But thank you. It’ll be great for keeping my balls warm in January,” Paul said.

“Is that a special problem?” Trevor asked, clearly trying to change the conversation.

“It is if you’re sleeping on cardboard and don’t have much cushion. I’m a back sleeper, so if I open my legs at all, the balls sink, you know?”

Trevor nodded.

Why in the hell was Trevor nodding as if he knew all about ball sinking?

“And the sac rests against the clothes, which rest against the cardboard, and without insulation you wake up with a cold, dead feeling between your legs.”

Joe winced. “Really?”

Paul smacked his upper arm. “No. I’m just pulling your leg. I’ll put the chicken sweater on my cock because it’s a great irony. Chicken. Cock. Get it?”

Paul was fucking weird.

“Right.” Joe raised his eyebrows and looked at me like he needed to escape. “So, we should get going. My mom said eleven. You’re invited,” he said to Paul, the words reluctant and unsure. “And so is Popsicle.”

“You
r
mom
really
owns a chicken sanctuary?”
Paul asked, eyes wide.
 

“
Something like that,” Joe answered, grabbing his coat and shrugging into it. “Let’s go.”
 

“Wait! We have two more presents to unwrap!” I said, scrambling to catch up.

“We’ll have to do them later,” Joe said, looking at his phone. His eyes cut over to Paul. “I think we need to take care of this now.”

T
revor and Joe shared an uneasy look.

Paul grabbed his backpack and Popsicle. That was all he had. He took a good look at the apartment.
He
let out a sigh of contentment.

He gave Joe a nod, then followed along, unquestioning.

“Joanne know we’re coming?” I asked Trevor as we walked out into the hallway and down to the stars.

“I hope so. I’m not sure which will be the bigger surprise: Tortilla, or Popsicle.”

T
urns out the biggest surprise was something no one saw coming.

Darla

Herb answered the door with a beer in one hand and a sprig of mistletoe in the other. Beer at eleven a.m. on Christmas Day?

Now
that
was a tradition I could get behind.

He pointed to his cheek. I kissed him, giggling. He wrapped me in a bear hug and I saw Joe’s eyes blink rapidly, his surprise turning to a gentle pleasure as his dad made me feel welcome.

“Herb Ross,” he announced to Tortilla, handing me the mistletoe as he shook hands.

“Dad, this is Paul,” Joe began.

“My friends call me Tortilla,” Paul said, shifting Popsicle into his left arm so he could shake Joe’s dad’s hand.

One eyebrow cocked, making Herb look exactly like Joe for a second. “Nice to meet you, Tortilla.”

“Are they here?” Joanne called out from behind Herb. Her face appeared behind his shoulder, tiny little taut legs carrying her across the sleek wood floors. “Just on time, too! I’m please
d
you’re punctual, Joey, even if—”

Her words cut off at the sight of Tortilla and Popsicle.

“And who are
you
?”

“Mom, this is a new friend of ours. Paul.”

She reached out and shook his hand.

“My friends call me Tortilla,” Paul said.
As he blinked, slowly, his Star of David tattoo showed.
 

Joanne dropped his hand like it turned into a poisonous snake. Peering intently at his face, she
then
looked at me in abject horror.

“
Tortilla? TORTILLA?
Not the
same
homeless man you serviced last night?”

Herb was taking a big swig of his beer to finish it off. As J
o
anne’s words sank in, he let out an enormous spray of Jack’s Abbey
Lashes Lager, the red label screaming Christmas like everything else in MetroWest Boston. It’s like the city color coordinated for the season.
 

“Jesus, Herb, we just had the curtains dry-cleaned with non-toxic chemicals!” Joanne screeched, smacking his arm. He patted the front of his shirt, swiping the droplets off.

Herb’s eyes turned to me, so soulful and dark like Joe’s. “You ‘serviced’ this man? He’s the one you were accused of blowing behind the vegan restaurant last night?”

I whipped around to Joanne and got in her face. “You
told
him?”

“Of course I told him! He’s the one
who
made
some of
the phone calls for you!”

“
Wait.
Herb
pulled strings to get me off?”
 

“That sounds really dirty,” Paul said.

“SHUT UP.” All three Rosses told him off in unison.

“Anyone want some cheese-stuffed jalapeños?” Gene asked from the kitchen. Trevor and Paul made a beeline for the out. Gene gave me a commiserating look of sympathy.

I needed it.

“First of all, I didn’t service anyone last night,” I declared.

Joe cleared his thro
a
t and holy shit, did he just
blush
?

“Technically, that’s not true,” he demurred.
A flash of sex last night, hot and comforting, made me flush a little, too.
 

Herb snorted.

Joanne glowered. “
New family rule: no talking about your sex life.”
 

“Unless it involves blowing Santa Claus,” Herb whispered.

“Anyhow,” I said archly, looking at Herb, “I didn’t do anything to Tortilla. But thank you.” Relief swept over me like a perfect spring breeze right before a much-needed rainstorm. “I appreciate everything you did to get the charges dropped.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “It was nothing. A few phone calls.”

“I helped,” Joanne added. “Edie didn’t like the idea of having her precious grandson the assistant district attorney know about her...recreational activities.”

“You mean,
like
when her friends took up a collection to watch Joe and Trevor have live sex in front of them?”

Good thing Herb didn’t have another beer on him. He growled at Joe.

“Excuse me?”

Joe looked like he was ready to kill me, his face like angry, hot granite. As he struggled to control his emotions, Herb added,

“How much?”

“How much
what
?” Joanne interrupted, livid.

“How much is the going rate for that?”

“They raised nearly five grand,” Joe began to explain.

“You had sex with Trevor in front of your grandmother’s best friend for five thousand dollars!” Joanne screeched.

“I’d French kiss him for
five grand
,” Herb mused. “Not sure I’d go all the way.”

Herb deftly stepped back from Joanne, predicting the blow she threw at him.

“We didn’t actually have sex.
T
he church organists gave us the money anyhow,” Joe started to explain.

Herb folded his arms across his massive chest. “This story gets better and better. Church organists?”

Joanne looked like a humming
bird on crack. “Can we move this conversation to the kitchen? I need a shot or nine of whisky to continue.”
 

W
e migrated into the giant cook’s kitchen, which looked like something out of
To
p
Chef
. Tortilla was stuffing bacon-wrapped jalapeños in his mouth like they were going extinct, chewing in between drinking from a huge glass of milk.

“God, you people eat well,” he mumbled around a full mouth. At some point, he had set Popsicle down on the ground and she lingered at his feet.

Gene was dressed in a white button-down oxford shirt, navy blue casual pants, and a gorgeous moss-green cashmere V-neck sweater that looked like it could carpet a golf course. I wanted to give him a hug just so I could feel the wool against my cheek. Gene was friendly, but physically very reserved, so I settled for a smile and a wave.

“
The chicken?” Joanne asked, her voice filled with a kind of polite loathing that was an art form of linguistic gymnastics that I could only aspire to develop by the time I was fifty.
 

“I’m sorry. I should introduce Popsicle,” Paul said, swallowing a huge lump of food, then wincing. “This is Popsicle.” He looked at Joanne. “Popsicle, meet your new foster mommy.”

J
oe and Herb lost it. Just...lost it, folding in half, bent in two, whooping and braying like donkeys with their dicks caught in a car door.

I actually saw that happen, once, back
home
in Peters. That’s how I know the sound.

“We were hoping,”
T
revor piped up
over the commotion
, “that Popsicle could stay here with your other chickens, just for a week or so. While Paul gets settled in.”

“
You’ve added a
third
man?” Joanne asked me, her face wavering between disgust and admiration.
 

“No! He’s not—we’re not—
no
. I can barely handle two men. What in the hell do I need a third for?”
 

Joanne breathed a sigh of relief.

“Besides,” Tortilla added, “three on one is no fun for me, because I always get stuck with the wrong hole.”

Gene, who was about as expressive as my stepdaddy the taxidermist, gave Herb one hell of a look before turning to Tortilla and asking, “There’s a
wrong
hole?”

Joanne pinged him in the head with a flying K-cup.
An organic, fair-trade K-cup.
 

“Gene!” she shouted.

Tortilla opened his mouth to answer Gene’s question. I shoved a bigass piece of cinnamon bun in his mouth.
His face exploded into an expression of sheer delight, a groan of culinary ecstasy coming out full-throated.
 

I’d found the right hole.

Joe

When had this become my life?

And why had I clung so hard to the old, uptight, repressed one?

M
aybe I’d been the repressed one, because here was my dad, talking to my girlfriend about blow jobs and asking me about how much women were willing to pay to watch me put my cock up Trevor’s ass.

For the record, if
Trevor and I
did have gay sex, I would be the top. Period. End of discussion.

“I want to get back to the whole getting paid to have sex with Trevor at a stripper party topic, Joe,” Dad said just after I’d shoved a bacon-wrapped jalapeño in my mouth.

Gene’s eyes widened and he gave me a look, then added a thumbs’ up.

I started choking.

Maybe, if I let this hot-as-hell appetizer fill my throat, I could just lose consciousness slowly as my oxygen-deprived brain shut down, and I would never have to resume a conversation with my mother, father, and Gene about having sex with Trevor in public.

That would be the easy way out.

But no.

I chewed.

“I would just like to state,” Trevor declared, holding a beer that matched my Dad’s, “that if Joe and I ever did have sex
with only each other
—and we haven’t—he’d be the catcher.”

His phone buzzed, and he left that statement hanging in the kitchen like a nasty, wet fart. While Trev took his phone call, I looked at the amused eyes of a group of people I hated to the core right now, and said:

“No fucking way. That’s
not
how it would go.”

Darla tilted her head and studied me. “I could see you going either way.”

“NEW RULE! No talking about sex!” Mom said through clenched teeth. Then she poured three-finger
s
of whisky and chugged it down.

“
I
t’s okay to gril
l
Darla about a blow job that never happened, but we can’t talk about an actual sexually-charged event between me and Trevor?” I challenged Mom.

“Exactly.” She gave me a smile that said,
I’m pretending you understand, but really making you obey my command
.

“As long as we know the ground rules,” Darla whispered.

“You’re just glad we’re not talking about you blowing Tortilla any more.”

“
Imagining y
ou ass fucking Trevor is way more interesting.”

“No, it’s not!”
I gave her a dirty look. “Unless that’s some kind of turn on for you...”
 

“NEW RULE!” Mom barked, walking away from me and Darla, who now snuggled against me and whispered exactly how it turned her on to imagine me and Trevor going at it.

Which was, to say,
not
.

“I have no desire for you
and Trevor to start sleeping with each other
,” she hissed.

“Why not?”

“Because then I’m just the third wheel.”

“You’re
the
what
? You’d never be a third wheel.”
 

“Look, you got a stick. He’s got a hole. If you two start sleeping with each other, I’m kinda the extra. Like a vestigial limb. I’m your appendix.”

“Huh?”

“I’m the thing that gets all infected and inflamed, causes you tons of pain and belly-aching, and just when you think you can’t stand it, I either burst or someone has to surgically remove me.”

Darla really needed to work on her metaphors.

“Don’t sleep with each other,” she finished.

“I don’t want to fuck Trevor! He doesn’t want to fuck me!” I shouted.

“NEW RULE!” Mom bellowed from the hallway just as Trevor came into the room, off the phone now and looking a little pensive.

P
opsicle walked by.