Maybe Travis was thinking it would somehow be more appropriate to be gay, to work at the Heartbreak? Peter had been trying to come up with a way to broach the delicate subject, to let Travis know that staff were not required to be any particular sexual orientation, that he could still work here no matter who he dated, but every time he tried to bring up the subject, his tongue twisted itself into knots and Travis looked desperate and managed to flee.
The rest of the guests were the Heartbreak's usual mix in this quiet spring season, lured by the hotel's name and a few well-placed ads on the gay travel network. Mike spent a lot of
time in his room, asleep or shoving his pain up his nose or trying to call someone who was not answering the phone. Jesse and Phillip were having exuberant make up sex that didn't hide how shaky they were feeling. Peter thought it must have been a close call, whatever happened that almost caused them to split. This was Casper's fourth year on the island, and Peter suspected he was thinking about staying. Casper would fit in well in Alaska. He was an enormous black guy with a shaved head, the scars of a professional warrior tattooed into his skin. Travis watched him with irritation and awe and lust, and Casper watched Travis with the tenderness and patience of a man who had spent years molding kids into men. They all looked up when Susan came walking into the dining room.
She was dressed for outdoor work in a dark green slicker and rain pants, Public Safety logo in gold on the back, and a fleece pullover and fleece hat with earflaps in bright yellow. Peter smiled at the hat. It made her look like there was a minor sun rising out of her dark hair. «Susan, come sit with us and have some breakfast. You haven't come on police business, have you? You're not about to take someone into custody?»
«I wouldn't do that until after breakfast was served, Peter.» She shrugged out of her jacket and pulled a chair up to the table. «I could probably eat a bite.» She looked the roomful of men over with the eye of a cop, and her gaze lingered on Jacob's dark head, still bent over the cello. Then she looked up at Casper. «It's good to see you back, Casper. You're early this year. Have you been out fishing yet?»
«Nope, but I'm going as soon as I can tear myself away. Between Peter's good food and Jacob's music, I'm gonna have a hard time getting out of my chair.» Jacob looked up at her and smiled. «Hello. I'm Jacob Klein.» «Hi, Jacob.»
Peter set a plate of sausage and egg casserole in front of her, then he moved back to the buffet and began filling a small bowl with blueberries.
«Thanks for the concert, Jacob,» Susan said. «This is a real treat for me. I live in a house full of boys, and they all like Big and Rich.»
Jacob laughed. «Hey, me, too! I can play 'Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)' on the cello!»
«Don't do it, kid! I'll arrest you in a New York minute.» She slipped a book out of her pocket and set it next to her plate – Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. «Thanks, Peter. This was really good. You got anything new and interesting from our friends at Amazon?»
Peter poured cream over the blueberries and set the bowl next to her plate. «Yes, they sent me a new tamale cookbook this week. But where am I going to find fresh masa in Alaska? I may have to grow my own corn and nixtamalate it.» Susan laughed and dug into the good food, and Peter looked over at Jacob. «What would you like, Jacob?»
Jacob smiled at him, and Peter felt the color rise in his face. «Was that real cream on those blueberries?» «Yes, it was.»
«I would love some blueberries and cream, Peter. I've never seen blueberries that were so fat and such a blue blue, if you know what I mean.» Jacob's cheeks flushed with color. «They're really beautiful, aren't they, swimming in a bowlful of cream?»
«Yes, they are. We have some blueberry bushes in the garden, though I have to fight the moose off. And the occasional bear.» «Bears? What do you do if there's a bear in the garden?»
«Nelson is supposed to run them off, but I usually call Susan. There isn't a black bear in Alaska with the balls to stand up to her.»
Peter went into the kitchen and got a blue-green pottery bowl from the cabinet that he thought Jacob might like. It was one of Sebastian's, a bowl with the wide-open shape of hands cupped together to catch the rain, a bowl made for Alaskan blueberries with a beautiful evergreen-colored matte glaze. Sebastian had told him once he was trying to make a glaze the same color as Peter's eyes, and this bowl was the closest he had ever come. Peter
carried it into the dining room, filled it and poured cream over the berries. «Do you want coffee or tea, Jacob?»
«Coffee,» he said, leaning the cello against the wall and pulling up a chair to the table. He ran a finger along the edge of the bowl. «Is this pottery? You know, pottery from a wheel?» Peter nodded. «My friend Sebastian made it.» «Sebastian?» Jacob's voice was teasing.
Peter smiled at him, but he could feel the color rise in his cheeks again. What could Jacob hear in his voice? «An old friend,» he said firmly. «Susan's his little sister.» And Jacob grinned back and tucked into his blueberries and cream.
«Tiny sent me, Peter,» Susan said. «He thought your radio was off, and he wanted to remind you about the contest tonight.»
«Oh, that's right! Thanks, I did forget, Susan.» He looked around the table. «I don't suppose any of you men are Elvis impersonators?» * * * * *
After breakfast Peter walked Susan outside to her truck. «Susan, have you heard from him?»
She shook her head. «That's really why I came by. The river started flowing up in Fort Yukon. It should get down to his camp in a week, maybe a little less. Supposed to be a lot of ice this year. You might try him on that fancy satellite phone you bought. Make sure he's okay. I don't know when he was planning to head down this way, but I suspect he's coming soon.» Peter wondered if he heard the faintest note of warning in Susan's voice.
When the Yukon River's ice broke up in the spring, and the river started flowing again, the great heavy chunks of river ice started flowing with it. Some years the ice compressed, piled up and flowed down over the land like a huge ice tsunami, ripping out homes and trees,
gouging deep divots of rich black earth from the river banks. Sebastian had a fish camp on the Yukon River, forty acres of wild land for himself and his dogs. He was a musher, a longdistance sled dog racer. The winter racing season was over, and Peter had heard through Susan that a couple of his best dogs were pregnant. Breeding and training sled dogs in Alaska made Sebastian enough money he could live alone in a cabin in the wilderness, alone with forty dogs and four hundred books and a tiny pottery studio. Peter and Sebastian had been lovers off and on for years. Lovers and housemates and partners and best friends, but they had a hard time living together. No, they had an impossible time trying to live together. And Peter was sick of it.
After Susan drove off, Peter looked over the garden. The garden paths were lined with black railroad ties and filled in with evergreen mulch, so they stayed dry and smelled good when you walked on them. The railroad ties edged the raised beds as well, making tidy green, geometric patterns that Peter loved. He'd wanted his kitchen garden to look like an Alaskan version of the pretty knot gardens he'd seen once in Williamsburg.
The herbs were already running riot. The heated beds he had put in last season were growing enough cilantro to make Mexican and Thai food for the entire island for a month. He pushed open the greenhouse door. It was like a rainforest in there, muggy and dripping hot. The tomato seedlings would never grow with this much humidity, but the eggplants were sprouting at a truly alarming rate. He cracked a window, walked back outside to see a moose calf chomping down on the blueberry bushes.
