Instead of answering her question, I grabbed his elbow and pulled him toward me. “She can see you? You said only I could see you here.”
“Leggo my arm, man. Can’t you see I’m eating? I told you, everything is screwed up today. Wait till you go outside and have a look. That’s why I came back here now. You’re going to need someone to protect your ass.”
“This is insane! How am I supposed to know what to do if the rules keep changing?”
“There are no rules, man. Get used to it. Why do you think I’m here, eating your eggs?”
“Frannie?” Normally shy Pauline’s voice had a sharp, demanding edge to it while she continued staring at him.
“Oh yeah, Pauline, this is my second cousin’s son, uh, Gee-Gee. Actually it’s Gary, uh, Graham, but we’ve always called him Gee-Gee.” Shocked that she could see him now, the only word I could think of was the ridiculous Foonta... geegee, so that’s who he became. He looked at me as if I had just pissed on his head.
“Hi, Gee-Gee. I’m Pauline.”
He gave her the patented McCabe million-dollar smile I knew very well. When it overwhelmed her enough to make her look away, he hissed just loud enough for me to hear “Gee-Gee?”
“Frannie never told us about you. I didn’t even know he had a second cousin.”
The new Gee-Gee nonchalantly twirled his fork around his fingers in a complete circle. A very cool little trick my friend Sam Bayer had taught me when we were thirteen. “Yeah well, you know Uncle Frannie.”
“Uncle? That’s what you call him? Where are you from?”
“LA. California.”
“I know where LA is,” she chided him but attached to that was a coquette’s smile that tipped the balance in his favor. Remember that this was the girl I had nicknamed Fade because from what I could see, she spent most of her life trying to. Yet now she spoke to Gee-Gee in a voice I’d never heard her use before. I would never have thought Pauline even capable of such a voice: It was coy and sexy. More than that, it was very knowing and that was the wildest part. Pauline? The too-timid computer-head was suddenly flirting like a bad blond actress on a TV sitcom. Not even getting into whom she was flirting with. For an instant I wondered if I would have liked this girl when I was his age?
No, I would not.
But Gee-Gee sure seemed to like her. He patted the chair next to him to encourage her. “You wanna sit down and have some breakfast with us, Pauline?”
“I don’t eat breakfast, but I wouldn’t mind some coffee.”
“What are you doing up this early, Pauline? You never get up at this hour.”
“I know, but I heard voices downstairs so I came. Anyway, my tattoo was hurting and I guess that’s what woke me.”
Thoroughly impressed, Gee-Gee gave a long low whistle. “Whoa, you got a tattoo? I don’t think I ever knew a girl who did that.”
I corrected him. “Pia Hammer had a tattoo.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but Pia’s a fuckin’ lunatic. She also counts her breaths. I’m talking about a sane human female.”
Pauline’s eyes moved slowly and seductively from me to Gee-Gee. I couldn’t believe her performance. I couldn’t believe it was she. Pausing for just the right amount of time for full effect, she hit him with the important detail. But her blase tone of voice said it was no big deal. “I got my ass tattooed. Or, just above my ass. You know, on the spine?” She stopped and checked to see how I was registering this new fact. Fortunately I already had seen her arsework so I was able to stay expressionless. When she saw I wasn’t going to fly out of the chair and spank her she continued. “Sometimes it still hurts. Anyway, I’m going to get dressed first but then I’ll be back. Would you make me an espresso, Gee-Gee?”
“Sure.” He got right up and went over to the machine. “Hey, you got a Gaggia. They’re the best machines around for espresso.”
Pointing at me, Pauline rolled her eyes. “It’s Frannie’s. He’s the world’s biggest caffeine snob. I’m completely happy drinking regular coffee but he’s got like this obsession about it.”
“Yeah well, once you taste good espresso it’s hard to go back to that canned shit,” Gee-Gee said while he fiddled with the machine, pretending to know what he was doing. I had to swallow a laugh watching him work to impress my normally shy-as-a-snail stepdaughter.
“Whatever,” Pauline said and left the kitchen, but not before one last long look over her shoulder at guess who.
When she was gone I put my hands behind my neck, crossed one leg over the other and crooned, “Check out Gee-Gee on that Gaggia.”
“Fuckin’ Gee-Gee! What kind of name is that?”
“Short for foontageegee.”
Even he had to laugh. “That was quick thinking. But it makes me sound like that French movie Gigi with Maurice Chevalier.’
“I don’t think anyone is going to mistake you for Leslie Caron. You want me to show you how to work that?”
“You gotta. I don’t want Pauline to think I’m a retard or something.”
I couldn’t resist asking in a tone of voice that was too dubious, “You really like her?” And then because I was embarrassed, I hurried to a cupboard for the coffee beans and grinder. Opening the bag of beans, I took a long, deep whiff. Ecstasy.
“Yeah, I like her. She really got a tattoo on her ass? Wow, I’d never do that. What happens if you change your mind in a few years? Or your taste in pictures? But she’s got to be gutsy to do it. And not bad looking. You don’t think so?”
I was both uncomfortable and embarrassed. How did I tell teenage me that I thought Pauline was extremely plain and I never would have been interested in her, tattoo or not. Yet he was me and vice versa, so why didn’t I understand his attraction to her?
“Show me how you make coffee on this thing. Hurry up – she might be back any minute.”
He was incredulous but I think also secretly impressed with all the preparation it took to make a single cup of black coffee. Along the way to its completion, we had three separate arguments. Why didn’t I buy preground beans and save myself the trouble? Why buy a machine that only made one cup at a time? When I deliberately told him how much it cost he almost had a convulsion. Don’t forget he was used to 1960s prices. The last round of our battle started when he asked why I was such a perfectionist about something so (fucking) trivial. I started out answering his questions calmly because I thought he was interested. But he didn’t listen to my answers—he only wanted to reinforce his own opinion about the silliness of what I was doing. When I refused to agree, he got short-tempered and belligerent. He was a thug with a temper and a nasty tongue. I remembered all too well what we had done with both over the years. Why had my parents put up with me? “Ape of my heart” was what my father had called me. Gangrene was my name for this rude twerp.
When I was finished and the holy smell of fresh coffee smoked up out of the small white cup, Gee-Gee took a sip. “It’s good, but too much trouble to make. Let me do the next one.”
I left for the bathroom while he ground more beans. A nice moment passed when I took a quick look at him as I was leaving the room. He had a handful of the beans pressed to his nose, his eyes were closed and he was smiling. I remembered! I remembered at his age never admitting to liking anything too much because any high emotion expressed in capital letters was uncool. Back then the overriding first male commandment was Always Keep Thy Cool. Show approval only with a shrug or at most a two-inch smile. Give nothing away, especially your emotions. Let girls go ahead and show their love, but you pretend you can’t be bothered. If you ever do anything nice for a girl either deny doing it or brush it off as no big deal. Commandment number two was never let anyone know you care too much about anything.
But seeing that secret smile on Gee-Gee’s face when he thought no one was looking was the clue to what later saved him, or rather saved me. For years he thought life’s goal was to be cool. One very important day he realized being curious was much better.