Ravenous

Chapter 2

Couldn’t get Kevin out my head. Tried to. Just couldn’t. I attempted to get some work done in my home office (a modern kitchen with all the proper ins and outs of a professional chef) for Ravenous, which involved testing recipes. Padington Cookbooks subcontracted Ravenous to test all of the three-hundred and twenty-six recipes created by author/chef Milo Dickerson. Passing recipes would end up in Dickerson’s new cookbook titled Milo’s Kitchen Tales.

I currently tested recipe twenty-nine, a rose water tea cookie formula. Most people considered my job easy, but I always disagreed with those verbal rats and haters. I paused at the counter, baffled in silence, inactive and thinking of the homeless man on Lincoln and Dise.

Kevin. Who was he? Where did he come from? What was his life’s story? Everyone had a personal story, right? Right. What did his entail?

Curiosity burned within me. Did his days regularly consist of drug use, thievery, and starvation like some homeless? Where did he sleep at night, and with whom? How did the guy survive day in and day out among Channing’s streets and chilly weather? How long did he live among the rats, other homeless, and…

The landline in my kitchen rang; a vintage, fire hydrant red AT&T phone from 1978 in the shape of a box with a plastic wheel and numbers on its front. Surprisingly, the thing still worked. Vintage. So old. I loved it.

Between the first ring and second, I lifted the receiver off its cradle and said, “Hello.”

“Hatch…we need to talk,” Jay Manson, one of my oldest friends, blurted into my right ear. Always hyper and a little too much to handle.

“Why do we need to talk?”

“Put your spatula and icing down and listen.”

Although Jay was almost forty, a handsome thirty-eight-year-old with blue eyes and blond hair, he acted as if he were twenty: immature, foolish, and wild, always looking for a good time with anyone. The guy had never grown up, and never would. Living off his tycoon daddy’s money from Mason Beer, Jay pretty much did nothing with his life except drink, eat, and enjoy night after night of random s*x with a variety of men, most of whom he didn’t know their names. Loose, funny, and demanding, I couldn’t believe he and I were friends of the same circle since we were so different. Friendship could be like that, though: unconditional, confusing, and nothing average.

“I’m listening,” I told him.

I pictured his handsome grin of all-white teeth and narrow lips as he said on his end of the line, probably at a bar, somewhere in downtown Channing by Lake Erie, “I’m seeing the Boulder twins tonight.”

I rolled my eyes, smiled, unsurprised. Robby Bold and Kent Herr owned and operated their own contracting company, Boulder Boys. Both were gay, players, and studs. Some believed they were twins—Jay included—with their molten brown eyes and cinnamon-colored hair. Both were six-three, muscular, and sported clefts in their chins. Rumor had it in Channing’s small gay community they were a couple. Another rumor suggested the two picked up guys like Jay, using the “somebody” for his handsome skin, ultimate pleasure, and then got rid of the man by morning; game over.

“Just be careful, Jay. Don’t do anything unsafe. Do you hear me?”

“Everything about my life is unsafe. We both know that.”

Right again. Damn. Even I couldn’t get him to settle down, grow up, and become serious about life. Once he nailed the Boulder guys, he’d move onto his next s****l feat, new drugs, and dangerous whatnots.

If Florence, Jay’s mother, called me and said, “Jay’s in trouble, Hatch. Can you help me?” I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least. And I would have helped Jay, as best I could.

Jay chuckled, paused, and added, “Some dude’s giving me the f**k-eye, and I have to go.”

The “f**k-eye” was his way of saying someone was attracted to him. It meant that the dude solidly stared at him, started to visually eat him up and down, and probably wanted to sleep with him, unwilling to learn his name.

“Have fun, Jay. Like I said, just be careful.”

“Will do, man. Call you later.”

Of course, he would, with scathing details about his s****l adventures, his fun, binge drinking, drugging, and whatnots of his active world with the Boulder guys. Jesus, we really were different, weren’t we? Of course, we were.

* * * *

I gave the rose water tea cookies recipe an approval and high rating, turned in my positive report to my boss, Regina Bliss, at Ravenous, boxed the two dozen cookies in an aluminum tin, and set the box aside.

I took the call when Michael Risk, another friend, phoned. He was in tears, heaving.

“Calm down…calm down. What’s the problem?”

“Everything’s ruined, Hatch. Everything. I can’t make things better.”

“Are you okay? What are you talking about? Michael, tell me what’s going on.”

He sounded rushed, panting, and beaten. “Just come over. Please, be a friend and just please come over.”

My heart dropped, and panic came over me at the possibilities of his emergency: his husband could have had a heart attack, or Mitzy, his yappy little dog of one hundred and fourteen years, could have taken a stroke on the kitchen floor. Maybe his mother, Melinda, found out she had breast cancer? Or maybe Michael had learned that his hubby had lost his job and they were s**t broke.

“I’ll be right over,” I hurriedly answered and ended the call.