Spencer Cohen Series, Book Three (The Spencer Cohen Series 3) (8 page)

About halfway up the CityWalk, at a particular restaurant, they stopped walking. There were tables out the front and we pulled a few together to fit all of us, and along with our drinks, the waiter dropped off wads of paper and pencils.

I looked at Andrew. “Um, colouring in contest?”

He laughed at me. “No. They hold drawing contests. It’s like a novelty restaurant.”

I looked up at the name in neon lights.
Draw Me Inn
. “Are you kidding me? I can see why you like it.”

He chuckled and picked up a notepad of paper. “We usually work in teams.”

“Oh, hell no,” I said. “I can’t even draw stick figures, and you guys are all artists.”

Emilio laughed and clapped his tattooed hands together. “Ah, finally something I can win at.”

I pointed around the table. “They’re all visual animators!”

Emilio grinned. “Don’t underestimate me, brother.”

Our food came, and the more we ate and drank, the more we drew and laughed. For my first attempt, I had to draw, and Andrew had to try and guess what it was. “What the hell is that?” he cried.

“Shut up! I can’t draw!” I laughed.

Andrew shook his head, flustered, but needed to guess before the few seconds ran out. “Um, God. A UFO trying to tractor-beam up two frying pans.”

Everyone roared laughing, and I buried my face in my hands. “It’s a bicycle!”

Andrew tilted his head and squinted at my drawing. “Oh.”

Emilio just about busted something, he was laughing so hard. “Okay, our turn.” Emilio read the prompt card, and Peter flipped the thirty-second eggtimer. He fluidly scribbled over the pad while Daniela looked on; her smile was beautiful.

“Statue of Liberty,” she said. He wasn’t even finished, but even in the few pencil strokes, the outline was easy to see. Perfectly proportioned, expertly done.

“Very cool,” one of Andrew’s friends said, nodding his head. Was it Steven?

After a while, we stopped using prompt cards and just called out random items. When the word dragon was said, everyone smiled. Andrew quickly outlined Toothless, as did a few other of his friends. Some drew other dragons from the movie, and they were all done with incredible likeness to the real thing. Then I realised they
were
the real thing, and I couldn’t believe just how incredible it really was. These people were the actual drawers of these characters, and it blew my mind how they came to life on scrap paper around the table.

After a few minutes of drawing, Lola and Gabe put in something that resembled a dog breathing fire; Yanni and Peter’s dragon looked like a duck breathing fire. I didn’t even attempt it, quite content to rest my hand on Andrew’s thigh and watch him recreate his favourite character in front of my eyes.

But then Emilio put his pencil down and pushed his pad of paper out for all to see.

“Oh wow. That’s amazing.” Other praises chorused around the table, and it was easy to see why.

Emilio’s dragon was no cartoon character. It was a life-like, perfectly drawn dragon, scales, teeth and tail, and gleaming eyes with its front foot clawing an egg. Even though it took him mere minutes to draw, it was good enough to be tattooed just as it was.

Everyone threw in their pencils and declared Emilio the winner. He laughed, pride and embarrassment colouring his cheeks. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him blush.

It was getting late though, and Gabe and Lola soon stood and made their apologies for leaving early. Emilio and Daniela scored a lift home with them, though they told me in no uncertain terms we were both required for our usual Sunday morning brunch. “Um, we’re busy tomorrow morning,” I told them. “Early lunch at Andrew’s parents.” I felt bad because we never missed our Sunday coffee and tea sessions.

Emilio simply shrugged. “Then we’ll make it dinner.”

When they’d left, Andrew put his hand on my thigh. “You okay?”

“I am.” I was smiling at him. “Your friends are pretty great.”

The grin he gave me made my heart squeeze. “Thanks.”

“So, Spencer,” Lien said cheerfully. She was a small Chinese girl, whose huge laugh made up for her lack of height. “You’re not a figment of Andrew’s imagination.”

Andrew groaned, and I laughed. “Nope. Real as I sit here.”

“You have to admit you sounded too good to be true,” Jace said with a wicked smile. “Andrew told us his new guy was this tall Australian, sweet, funny”—he batted his eyelids— “dreamy.”

Andrew cleared his throat. “I didn’t do the eyelid thing.”

Shell came to his defence. Kind of. “Even after I’d met you, Spencer, these guys just thought I was in on the whole Andrew’s-fake-boyfriend scheme.”

Fake boyfriends…

I laughed.
God, if only they knew
. Well, Shell
did
know, and the wink she gave Andrew was hardly discreet. Peter and Yanni looked on amused and thankfully remained silent. “I am flattered.” I smiled at Andrew, knowing my embarrassment was evident on my cheeks. “But yes, I’m real.”

“Oh, I can tell,” Yushi said. Her eyes danced with humour, though she clearly looked at Andrew fondly. “The way you two look at each other. Can’t fake that.”

I’m pretty sure I went bright red from my scalp to my toes. I tried to hide it by taking a sip of my drink, but that didn’t work. I looked at Andrew, and he was as embarrassed as me. He ducked his face into my shoulder, and thankfully Peter spoke up before either of us could die of a severe case of mortification. He asked about the latest something or other which caused a friendly debate around the table of cartoonographers, Andrew included. I glanced at Peter, and he gave me a knowing nod. I smiled at him, the both of us quite content to sit back and enjoy the banter and laughter.

I was just happy to see Andrew in his element. By the time we called it a night, he was grinning from ear to ear. “My sides hurt from laughing,” he said, as we crawled into bed.

“Your friends are pretty cool.”

“They think you’re great.”

“And now they know I actually exist.”

He snorted out a laugh. “I think I made you out to be too good to be true. You know, the perfect boyfriend. They thought I was full of shit.”

“But I am the perfect boyfriend.”

He laughed and rolled on top of me. “Yes, you are. And now they know that.”

I kissed him and ran my hands down his back, over the swell of his arse, and squeezed. It made him moan into my mouth and lift his arse for more. So, being the perfect boyfriend that I was, I gave him everything he begged me for.

Showered, hair brushed, and stomach butterflies in full flight, I got dressed and walked out to where Andrew was sitting at his piano. He stopped playing when he saw me. I wore my tan pants, a white shirt, and blue jacket. I looked down at my outfit. “This okay?”

He stood up from his seat and very deliberately looked me up and down. “Perfect.”

He wore charcoal pants I’d never seen on him before. They looked like they were tailored—the way they fit snug across his hips and thighs couldn’t have been an off-the-rack fluke. A simple T-shirt complimented the pale blue lines in his grey argyle vest.

I held out my arms. “Sleeves up or down?” I wasn’t sure what his parents would prefer their friends to see.

He didn’t hesitate. “Up.” When I was done rolling my sleeves to my elbows, he studied me for a long moment. “You look nervous.”

“Because I am nervous.”

“You’ve done a tonne of these things,” he said, fighting a smile. “Haven’t you? You know, on fake dates or gala events you didn’t really want to attend.”

“Those are different. Those are acting, kind of. This is not. This is real. And it’s your parents and their friends.”

“And you, me, and Sarah will be bored out of our brains together while my parents and their actor friends recap glory days and funny stories of backstage debauchery, not their own of course, all while trying to look classier than they really are.”

That made me laugh. “Okay then. Maybe we should have a code for immediate rescue. Like if I’m talking to someone and need saving, I’ll pull on my beard”—I pulled the whiskers on my chin—“and you and Sarah can come save me.”

Andrew grinned. “We already have codes in place. If Sarah plays with her earring, I need to bail her out. If someone insists I play the piano, I fake a cough and Sarah takes me into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Then we hide in the kitchen with the wait staff and eat all the canapés.” He nodded cheerfully. “Believe me, we’ve been doing this since we could walk. But I will inform Sarah of the beard manoeuvre.”

“Good.”

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He leaned in and kissed me. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“You’re more than welcome.”

* * * *

The lunch wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Andrew made it out to be. Actually, it was kind of fun. I had no clue who any of the guests were; famous Broadway actors or not, I’d never laid eyes on them. That worked in my favour because I had no idea who was more famous than the next person, and I met and spoke to everyone on equal footing.

It was easy to tell who thought they were more special than everyone else, and it was also very easy to see that Andrew’s parents’ mere presence commanded the most respect out of everyone else. I was adept at reading people, and I knew without even trying that every single person knew where Helen and Allan Landon were at all times.

They were very well respected and admired, yet so very down to earth. I had to wonder if that was why people loved them. Andrew and Sarah were funny though. They worked well as a team, dodging some guests, smiling politely at others. Years of being privy to these parties had taught them who was genuine and who was here merely to keep up appearances.

“Ugh, Gwendoline’s here,” Sarah whispered, hiding her mouth behind a glass of champagne.

Andrew scanned the room with covert ops precision but couldn’t supress the groan when he saw the woman Sarah mentioned.

“Who’s Gwendoline?” I asked quietly.

Sarah spoke like a ventriloquist. It really was remarkable how these two had this routine down pat. “The woman by the door.”

I didn’t turn around, sipping my drink instead, trying to be as discreet as they were.

Then Andrew said, “The one with the mouth like a cat’s ass.”

I snorted champagne up my nose.

Sarah coughed back a laugh. “Well, put it this way. If she got a role as an Egyptian mummy, swathed in gold and embalmed, she wouldn’t need props or makeup.”

Dabbing my nose with a napkin, I risked a glance and found the woman in question. Both Sarah and Andrew’s description was absurdly accurate. Wow.

Andrew added, “I’m sure she’s been dead since the 90s. Her body is running purely on the chemicals in tanning lotion and hairspray.”

I was fascinated. “Well, I should go introduce myself,” I announced.

“You what?” Andrew whisper-shouted. “She’s creepy. She was creepy when I was five. She’s creepy now.”

I chuckled. “I need to see with my own two eyes if her own skin is really that leathered or if she’s wearing a skin suit, like in
Silence of the Lambs
.”

He laughed and mimicked the film. “‘It rubs the lotion on its skin’.”

“‘Or it gets the hose again’,” I finished with a grin.

Sarah laughed. “Oh God. You two really are perfect for each other.”

So, off I went and introduced myself to Gwendoline. As it turned out, I quickly deduced she didn’t socialise much anymore because in ten minutes, I had her life story and what could only be described as a well-rehearsed list of stage performances. She spoke too loudly and her eyes were unfocused, but she was clearly far too vain to wear hearing aids or glasses. Shame really, because if she could actually see what she was wearing, she’d probably be horrified. Garishly outdated and infused with mothballs and lavender, she looked as good as she smelled.

“My first production was in 1948,” she told me.

Jesus Christ. I think Andrew might have been right. I patted her arm. “Were you carried on stage as a newborn?” I laid on the charm. “You look far too young to have been cast.”

“Oh, aren’t you a devil?” she cooed, smiling wistfully.

I slipped her hand onto my arm and led her toward the main crowd. “Let’s get you another drink,” I said. We found ourselves in a group of other guests, most were easily twice my age and half the age of Gwendoline. But we mingled and chatted politely with other guests, and we laughed because Gwendoline was funny as hell. When I scanned the room, I found Andrew and his mother both smiling fondly at me. Helen breezed over to me in that graceful, elegant way she did. “Spencer, may I have a moment?”

“Of course,” I answered. I offered to help Gwendoline onto a sofa, and when she was comfortable, I followed Andrew and his parents into the kitchen. There was a bunch of hired staff, all busy getting trays of canapés ready. I had no idea what this was about. Maybe they thought they were saving me from the sun-dried dinosaur in paisley purple polyester. “Gwendoline is a hoot,” I told them. “Three hundred years old, perverted, and very funny.”

Andrew laughed and slid his arm around my waist, but he looked to his mother. “Mom, what’s up?”

Okay, so Andrew didn’t know about this either.

“Spencer, I have a favour to ask you,” she said softly. “I know this is probably asking too much, but considering you found Yanni—”

“What’s wrong with Yanni?” Andrew interrupted. “We saw him last night and he was fine. Better than fine actually. He looked happy. I just assumed he was in his room.” Andrew looked at me for confirmation.

I nodded. “He was great last night. Is he okay? And it’s fine Mrs Landon. Whatever you need, just ask.”

She smiled at us both. “Yanni’s fine. He’s chosen to spend the afternoon with Peter. There was some silent film playing, and he didn’t fancy two days in a row of crowds.”

I was relieved to hear Yanni was fine, but Mrs Landon had mentioned how I’d found him. “What can I help you with?”

“Part of the Acacia Foundation is to give LGBTIQ abuse-survivors safe harbour,” she explained. “And we’ve had a case of a young girl who was doing well, but after an altercation with her father, she’s gone back to the streets. It’s not one of our usual cases, and when I was discussing the matter with my team, someone said ‘It’s a shame we don’t have liaison people on the street who can find them, approach them, and let them know where to get help.’ The police are too busy to look for kids who aren’t breaking the law or technically aren’t missing. They’re hiding. And I got to thinking of you, Spencer,” Helen said, looking directly at me. “You found Yanni.”

I blinked several times. “You want me to help find a missing kid?”

“She’s fifteen and hasn’t had an easy life. They’re not all teens, but yes. If they’re at-risk, we need to get them help.”

“Mom, that’s not what Spencer does,” Andrew said softly.

“I’ll do it.” I looked at them both in turn. “If I can help one gay kid in trouble, I’ll do it.”

Helen beamed at me, and she squeezed my forearm. “I hoped you would. We can discuss this in more detail later. I’m sorry to talk work at this party, but I wanted to catch you before Gwendoline propositioned you.”

“Mom!” Andrew hissed.

I just laughed. “She already did. I told her, very politely, I was here in the company of a man, but funnily enough that didn’t deter her.”

Helen laughed warmly. “She’s a wicked woman. Very brave. She helped me many years ago, and I’ve repaid her every year since by keeping her social calendar busy.”

Someone called Mrs Landon away, and when I turned to Andrew, he was staring right back at me with a look I didn’t quite recognise. “What?”

He shook his head slowly. “Do you know how remarkable you are?”

“I wasn’t ever going to take Gwendoline up on her offer,” I said jokingly.

He fought a smile. “You know what I mean.”

“I meant what I said. If I can help one gay kid, I will.”

“And that makes you remarkable.”

I inhaled deeply. “I do believe my cover edition of the magazine
Remarkable and Dapper Australians
is due out next month.”

He laughed at that. “Good to know.”

The wait staff carried the trays out of the kitchen and Allan, Andrew’s father, called for everyone’s attention. “Should we go out there?” I asked Andrew.

He looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “Good Lord, no.”

We could hear Allan as he addressed his guests with a smooth and funny and blessedly short dedication to his beautiful wife, family, and long-time friends, and of course, good food. Everyone replied with a “Cheers” or “Hear, hear,” while we stayed in the kitchen. Andrew commandeered a tray of various and fancy canapés, and he no sooner shoved one into his mouth than we got sprung.

“You two! You left me out there.” Sarah stalked into the grand kitchen. “We had a deal!” Then she inspected the tray Andrew was still holding before picking one. “Ooh, I love these.”

Andrew laughed around his mouthful; then he turned to me and offered the tray of food. “Mom specifically requested no shellfish when she planned the menu.”

I picked up a small square of what looked like cheese, sliced peppers, and balsamic vinegar. Man, it was so good. So me, Andrew, and Sarah spent the next hour or so hiding out in the kitchen, laughing and talking crap. Eventually we made our way back out to find the small guest list even smaller. Some had a champagne flute, some had coffee, but everyone was smiling, and it was pretty obvious to me that these people had been friends for a long time. I was almost disappointed to see Gwendoline had gone home. Then again, it was about four o’clock in the afternoon; she was probably already in bed for the night. Either that or she was first in line at Avalon Hollywood all set to take body shots from some go-go boy.

I found myself talking to an older, distinguished man by the name of Davis, discussing Australian literature, of all things. He was intrigued and, dare I say it, a little impressed. But his wife soon called him away, and it wasn’t long after that the only people left were us.

Allan fell into the sofa with a groan. “Promise me, my darling, we have no more ‘just a few friends over for lunch’ again for a while.”

“Oh, it was fun.” Helen laughed and collected an empty glass and handed it to the waitress. “Please bring out what canapés are left. Once I sit down, I won’t be getting back up.” But she walked over to the entertainment cabinet, and in the next few seconds, “Great Balls of Fire” started to play. “Oh, I love this song,” she said. Helen walked over to Allan and held out her hand, a silent invitation to dance.

He waved her off. “I’m too old!”

I offered her my hand instead. “May I?”

“Oh,” she swooned theatrically. “You may.”

I led her to a makeshift dance floor between the furniture, and turning to face her, I took a deep breath. Then we danced, 50s-swing style. I was a little rusty, but she was very forgiving. Mr Landon laughed along with us, Andrew looked stunned but happy, and Sarah could only laugh and clap along.

By the time the song ended, we were both a little breathless. “Where did you learn how to dance like that?” Helen asked me.

“My Aunt Marvie taught me.” I smiled at her. “I haven’t done it in years, though, as you could probably tell.”

“I haven’t had a man dance with me like that in years,” she said, giving her husband a mock glare.

Everyone laughed, and I knew Andrew said he didn’t dance, but I figured there was no one here he would be embarrassed in front of. I walked over to where he was playing wallflower with his father on the sofa and held out my hand. “If you would do me the honour.”