Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 28

"All or nothing."

"Yes"

"Okay," Carmen sighed. "Let's do this thing."

***

Shane stood in front of the hardware store where they'd agreed to meet, lighting up a cigarette and looking around for the man who was supposedly her father. Oregon City, Oregon, was a small town of about 30,000 people nestled in the northwest corner of the state on the Willamette River right below its fork with the Clackamas River. The air was cool and crisp, and Shane could see people's breath in the air as they exhaled.

And then all of a sudden there he was at her shoulder, startling her. He was a tall man in his late forties, wearing jeans, a white Shetland sweater, and over top of it a waist-length fleece-lined buckskin jacket. He wore dark sunglasses and had a full head of shaggy hair. His face was weathered and creased in a manly Western kind of way.

"It's all right," he said, touching Shane's arm. He stepped back, and then stepped one step forward again. He had an amused smirk on his face. "You were thinking about ditching on me, weren't you?"

"No, I—" Shane tried to begin.

"Yes, you were, I saw it in your eyes," Gabe said, again vaguely amused. He put his hand on the small of her back and guided her down the street. "Come on, it's okay," he said. Shane heard a lot of roaring in her head, and said nothing. She was still busily processing.

Gabe took them to a small restaurant and sandwich shop down the block. They seated themselves at the table near the front window, and ordered coffee.

"So you're a hairdresser at a skateboard shop," Gabe said, making conversation. "I might need an explanation."

"Don't really have one, it's just what I do," Shane said, not making eye contact with him.

"Okay!" he said, friendly and trying to be charming. "Have you always wanted to do that?"

Shane didn't know what to say, and just sat silent.

"Did you go to school for it?"

Yes, Dad, See, I was a street whore and one of the faggot johns I gave handjobs to on Santa Monica Boulevard took me in and paid for my education after three assholes sodomized me so bad I couldn't sit down for a week. "I just kinda picked it up along the way," Shane said, looking out the window.

Gabe leaned in. "You're not giving me a lot to work with here," he said gently. "You don't like answering questions, huh? Well, I don't, either. So go ahead. Ask me something." He sat back, getting out of her space and tapping his knuckle on the table.

Shane looked up from her own hands, and looked him in the eyes for the first time. "Why'd you want to meet me?"

Gabe thought about it for a minute, deciding what to tell her. "I didn't," he finally confessed. "My wife Carla made me."

"At least you're honest," Shane said.

He leaned in again, conspiratorily. "When I saw you out there on the street, when I saw you deciding if you were gonna ditch me ... I was thinking the exact same thing."

Shane was tucked in, in full tortoise mode, giving away nothing, and trying to ignore the roar in her head. "I bet you were," she said quietly, not looking at him again. Then she looked up and let him have it. "Kinda like when I was little, right?"

He sat back slowly, only mildly wounded. "Kinda sorta," he admitted.

***

"I was an assistant poleman at the pulp mill until I hurt my back," Gabe said, sipping at his coffee. "Now I drive a truck for a beverage distributor."

"How'd you hurt your back?" Shane asked as the waitress came by and refilled their cups.

"We McCutcheons have these long backs, you, know, and we tend to hunch forward and slump our shoulders," Gabe said, rounding his shoulders to show Shane what he meant about the McCutcheon gene pool's posture and physiques. "You always did as a kid. I used to come watch you, I'd see you on the playground at the church school, and you always looked--" he searched for the words thoughtfully, "--so pissed off." He gave her a small laugh.

She still looked that way. "You never talked to me," Shane said, with a look that stopped just this side of a glare.

Gabe looked away, looked back. "I wouldn't have been much good to you back then. All I cared about was getting high. Getting laid." He shrugged. "I'd probably still be doing it if my friend Chuck hadn't OD'ed."

"I'm sorry," Shane said quietly.

"As strung out as I was, it really shakes you hard when you lose someone that you were really close to," he said.

Shane wouldn't look up, but she nodded her head. "Yeah." She knew about that. She sat forward. "I, ah ... I just lost a really close friend recently, so ... yeah."

Gabe took Shane's right hand in his big hands. "So," he said. Then he released her, sat back, and regarded her thoughtfully.

"Why don't you come home with me for dinner? Be a good time to meet Carla and Shay."

"Shay?"

He leaned forward, smiling. "We almost called him 'Shane' because I loved the name so much." He reached out his roughened hand to hers. "I named you that, you know," he said.

Shane looked at him. The noise level in her head was as loud as a pulp mill. She didn't know what to say.

***

"Dinner was phenomenal," Shane said. She was sitting around the kitchen table with her new-to-her stepmother, Carla, and the younger half-brother, Shay, whom she'd never met and had only ever heard about as a rumor. "Thank you."

"That's okay," Carla.

Shane sat next to Shay, and they played a miniature electronic hockey game at the table while Carla relaxed and Gabe did the table clearing and clean-up. "Score!" Shay exclaimed.

"Good shot! You got past my goal. Good job," Shane said.

"I knew you were his daughter, and not just because of the name," Carla said a bit awkwardly, referring to the magazine article she'd read that led to their meeting. "It was the picture. You have his genes. His very strong genes." She laughed. "I mean, look at all three of you."

"Hey, Shay," Gabe said, leaning over Shay and putting a refilled glass down in front of him. "Shane has a skateboard shop."

"You skateboard?" Shay asked, his eyes shining.

"I do, I do," Shane said, smiling. "We have a half pipe at the store."

"Cool!"

"Looks like you're doing real well there," Carla said. "You have your own line of hair products, and everything. 'Shane for Wax,' I love that."

"Thank you, that was my partner Chase's idea."

"Is he the boy with the red T-shirt?"

"Yeah," Shane said. "That's him in the picture."

"Are you two ...?" Carla asked.

"Oh, no, no, no," Shane held up her hand, shaking her head emphatically, no, there was no relationship there.

"Oh," Carla said, and then turned to Shay. "Come on, finish your dinner, or I'll take the game off the table."

During the following silence, Shane came to a decision. "I'm actually ... getting married next week," she said.

Gabe and Carla both looked at her in surprise, then looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

"Wow!" Carla said. "Wow, that's wonderful! Gabe!"

"Wow," Gabe said, "getting married. Who knew?"

"Mmm, not me," Shane said, and Carla laughed.

"Well, just because it took you forty-five years to settle down, Gabe," Carla said. She turned to Shane. "Everywhere we went, women just threw themselves at him," Carla added, having no idea she had just done a triple back flip off the high dive into the like-father-, like-daughter McCutcheon gene pool. Gabe preened. "He never even had to do anything. No one ever thought he'd settle down."

"And look at me now," Gabe said.

"Well, looks pretty good," Shane said.

Gabe nodded his thanks for the compliment. "So what's he do, your guy?"

Shane paused, and thought. "She's a DJ," she answered matter-of-factly. "She also is a production assistant. She works on movies and TV shows, and CD video shoots. Her name's Carmen."

There was silence around the table. Gabe nodded his head.

"Well, see," Carla finally said, smiling and breaking the tension. "I told you," she said to Gabe. To Shane: "I looked at your picture and I said, 'I bet she's gay.'" She laughed.

"She did, she nailed that," Gabe confirmed, nodding and smiling.

"Yeah?" Shane said, returning to the hockey game with Shay.

"Yes!" Shay exulted as he scored another goal.

"Hey, you won," Shane said.

"My dad always lets me win," Shay said.

"So," Gabe said. "Where are you getting married?"

"In Whistler."

"Canada?" Gabe said.

"Right, you can do that up there." Carla said. She seemed happy and delighted with the news.

"Yes, you can," Shane said.

"Hey, we should go!" Carla turned to Gabe, excited. "I mean, it's so close, we ... " She stopped.

"Honey, we haven't exactly been invited," Gabe said in a stage whisper.

"Uh, um," Carla, mumbled, now embarrassed and realizing what she'd said.

"No, you're invited," Shane decided. She looked at Gabe and then Carla, then Gabe again. "I'd like for you guys to be there ... if ... ya know ... if you'd like."

Gabe seemed to be smiling and nodding. He seemed to like Shane. He seemed proud of her.

***

Alice toyed with the string wrapped around her fingers, making yet another cat's cradle. The studio lights were turned down, the way Alice liked when she did her show at KCRW, the public radio station at the campus of Santa Monica College. Calmly she began her monolog to her nighttime audience out there in radioland.

"I want to believe, my friends. Believe me, I do. 'Cause my friend Shane is getting married this weekend, and I wanna believe for Shane, and I wanna believe for all the rest of us who are flailing around in this abyss, tryin' to feel what we're supposed to feel in order to connect in meaningful ways. I wanna believe that real, true connection among human beings is actually possible. And supposedly ... marriage connects us. I mean, supposedly it improves our moral fiber, and all. Which begs the question: Why do these crazy, creepy, defending-the-family crusaders think it's a bad thing for gays? I mean, why can't they just wish us well? Hypocrites. 'Cause we're goin' to Canada, people! Whether you like it or not, to take our best shot at this connection. And if we fail, it is not because we are less wholesome than you are. Pleeeze. I mean, you guys have been failing at this miserably since the beginning of recorded history. And if we succeed, and our love connections actually flourish ... and there's a little less loneliness in the world, then even I might start believing in miracles."