Italian Dinner

Italian Dinner
Chapter Two

~*~

Before I left the station to go and meet Julian for our dinner-date, Swanson demanded that I go wearing a wire, which I strongly protested about. I told him that it wasn't very likely we would learn anything significant about him on this one little outing we were taking, specifically because he and I had just met, and he looked trusting, but not stupid. He wouldn't let anything slip about his family to someone he had only known for about a day.

Swanson went red in the face and jabbed a fat finger in my face. "Well you had better find out something or you'll be doing this little gay-parade charade of yours until you do!"

You could tell he was an absolute homophobe, when I told him about my plan to act as a homosexual marital lawyer out to seduce Julian Consolata for his family secrets, Swanson gave me a fierce, detestable look and waved his hand at me as if to assure me good luck, but not in a sincere way. The other guys thought that it was a good plan, but they also mentioned they felt sorry for me, having to go out and seduce a guy and all. I only shrugged, told them that a job's a job, and set out to my date with Julian.

It was eight o'clock that we agreed on. It was just about pitch dark outside and the Consolata building glimmered with its fluorescent lights on all floors. Despite the fact that it was still somewhat early, the building was just about empty, so the guard at the front said. I asked if Mr. Consolata was in, he said that Mr. Santo Consolata had a meeting in the penthouse, Mr. Matteo Consolata had gone to Palermo with his wife the previous day, but Mr. Julian Consolata was still upstairs awaiting for a gentleman of my description, so he should let me straight up. I thanked him, and headed for the elevators to the 15th floor.

Like before, the secretary was gone. The desk was tidy, so I assumed she left for the day. I looked to my left and right when I got off the elevator, the halls to the rest of the offices were dark, everyone must have gone. I went up to the double oak doors and knocked solidly, until I heard someone say, "come in".

The window on the far wall of Julian's office was lit with the lights of the Los Angeles downtown skyscrapers. It would have been a nice place to look for stars, if the lights weren't so blinding. Julian was sitting at his desk, writing something, but when I came in he looked up and smiled. "Hi, how are you?"

I shrugged, stuffing my hands in my pockets. "Good, you?"

He sighed slightly. "I'm a little tired, but I'll be glad to get out for some dinner." he looked at me, smiling, his brown eyes were shining like perfect polished chocolate simply too good to eat. "Could you just give me one second?"

I nodded. "Sure."

I wandered over to observe his fishtank while he signed a few more of the papers that were scattered all over his desk. But I also noticed that he had picked up the phone and dialed a short number. I put my finger up to the glass, pointing to a bright blue fish, pretending that I wasn't eavesdropping, but I really was.

"Santo?" He had his uncle on the phone. His tone was quiet, as if he was tired. "I'm going out now, I'll be back around 9." he paused to listen. "Just for dinner." he said, half-heartedly, and paused again. "All right, bye." I heard him hang up, but I continued to look at the fishtank as though I hadn't noticed.

"Ready?" Julian asked within a moment, and I turned around and nodded, providing a small smile and shoving my hands in my pockets.

"Ready. Where would you like to go?"

Julian shoveled the papers on his desk into the drawer. "Well there's a great steakhouse on the corner, if you're in the mood for steak."

Steak actually sounded pretty good; since I had moved here I hadn't had a real Los Angeles steak, and now that he mentioned it I was craving it. "Yeah I could eat a steak."

We left his office; he closed the doors behind us and locked them, and then began to wrestle his arms into his suede jacket. It was at this moment I noticed he was wearing a black suit, really nice, he looked more the lawyer-type than I did. He also looked tired, I was sure that he had had a long day. Maybe a nice dinner out would revitalize him a bit.

When we rode down in the elevator Julian looked up at me with a smile. "So tell me, did you talk to that lawyer friend of yours?"

I looked down at him in confusion. "What?" I was serious, I didn't know what he was talking about.

"When Alice told me you were on the phone I thought for sure that it was good news." He sighed. "It would be the first piece of good news I'd heard in awhile."

Oh...shit.

I cleared my throat. He was still looking at me with that cute little boy innocent look and I didn't know what to tell him. "I uh...I didn't talk to him, actually."

I guess it was kind of hard to explain a legal situation to a lawyer friend who didn't exist.

Julian's expression faltered for a moment, as though he wasn't disappointed - yet - but thought that perhaps I had done something else to make up for it. "Oh, did you change your mind about the offer?"

Fuck! ><

I cleared my throat...again. Suddenly it seemed as though the seconds just crawled by likes hours in this five minute elevator ride. He was still looking up at me and I still hadn't answered him; what was wrong with me? Hadn't I anticipated that he would ask these questions? I couldn't just assume that he'd think I was taking him out for dinner because I thought he was cute. Goddamn it, I was smarter than this, really I was, why hadn't I foreseen this?

Well...there were too many lies to keep track of already, so I told him the truth about asking him for dinner. I couldn't look at him. One look into those eyes was going to make me spill the beans. "Julian let me be honest with you...I didn't ask you out to talk about business."

"No?"

I shook my head. "No, I just...want to get to know you a little better. I didn't...really know what to say on the phone."

There was a short silence until I looked down at Julian. He didn't look angry, he seemed interested in what I had just told him. Oh, that was promising.

Then his eyes widened, and right before my eyes his cheeks became bright red. "Ohh..." he murmured, and then cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, I didn't think you were..." he paused, as though he didn't know the right word for it. Ah, sweet little sheepish Julian.

I smiled down at him again. "Gay? Just came out, actually."

Oh, what a lie.

"And I just...enjoyed your company so much yesterday that I wanted to have a chance to talk to you about stuff outside work. But I just...I got kind of nervous. I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me outside of work for anything but...well, work."

One of those darling little smiles began to stretch over his lips, and his big brown eyes began to shine. I wanted to assume that he had never been asked out in such a way. Actually by the way Henderson told me about that story yesterday, I was positive that most of the guys Julian had gone out with had marched right up to him, swept him off his feet, and whisked him off to bed.

Maybe I was a breath of fresh fag air.

I was beginning to get nervous about the silence, but when I looked down at him he was still blushing, and he was smiling very sweetly. "Adrian...I'm really, really flattered."

I waited for a "but". It didn't come.

I wanted to fall back again the wall of the elevator and let out a deep breath of relief.

~*~

It was pitch black outside when we walked out the doors of the building to the steakhouse on the corner that Julian had mentioned. He said he didn't want to go too far from the office, there were still some things he should do before he left. When we arrived at the front door, the host took one look at Julian and said that he had a table ready in two minutes, so we waited patiently at the front. I observed the place quickly; it was packed and full of low murmured chatter. From what I could see the food looked really good.

"This place looks great," I said, wanting to break the silence that had settled between us since we had come in the door.

"My uncle knows the manager," Julian remarked. "Sometimes we have business lunches here, they're really good to us. And the food's amazing."

I looked down at him. He still had that sweet smile that he had given me in the elevator. It made me smile too. So far so good, right?

The host came back and sat us in a booth towards the back of the dining room, which was good because it was quiet but I was worried that we were going to be overlooked by our waitress due to the fact we were tucked so far back. But Julian was optimistic; still smiling when he took off his coat, and even as the waitress finally came to take our drink order.

"So how have things been at the office today?" I asked. At the moment I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Oh," Julian sighed. "It wasn't so bad. We had meetings all morning, and my uncle just hired the seventh lawyer for the lawsuit." He began to rub his face in his hands. "It really would have been nice to have you join our team. You're probably the nicest lawyer in Los Angeles, you know."

I laughed. "I don't doubt it."

"And with Matteo gone to Palermo, it's up to me to deal with our team of lawyers when my uncle's busy. I'm not really any good at telling people what to do." Again he sighed, and instantly I knew what he was talking about. Matteo seemed the type to be real cold and hard when it came to business, knew to give people orders and make them follow direction; Julian was just the opposite. I wondered if they were really related.

The waitress brought our drinks. We ordered a bottle of the house red, and then when she took our order for steak and pasta, we were left alone again and I felt an opportunity to jump into a conversation that would hopefully reveal some of Julian's family secrets.

"So aside from Matteo," I said after taking a drink from my wine. "Do you have any other siblings?"

Julian smirked into his wine glass. "Yeah, Matteo actually has a twin, my sister Iniga. They're the oldest ones. And then there's my older brother Michele."

My eyebrows rose. "That's a big family."

He nodded. "I know."

"How often do you see them all?" I asked this because my ex-wife had two other sisters and I remember the battles between them, and eventually before we divorced they hadn't seen each other in four years.

Julian's answer surprised me. "Everyday."

I blinked. "Everyday?"

He nodded again. "We all live together, my uncle owns a mansion up on the hill and we all live there. He likes having a full house."

Ah, the mansion on the hills. That famous Consolata mansion, beautiful and isolated. So that was where Julian resided; how very interesting.

"What about you?" Julian asked, after taking a sip of his wine. "Any brothers? Sisters?"

"Yeah, a little brother, Jackson. He and his wife own a deli in Seattle." I hadn't really thought about Jackson and his wife Tiffany since I left Seattle; I imagined that Tiffany hadn't had her baby yet, or else I surely would have heard about it. For a moment I envied Julian for being able to see his siblings every day; it would have been nice if I could do the same with them.

I shook the thought away. "What do your siblings do?"

Here we go. This would probably give some incentive. I knew Matteo worked at this homebuilding corporation, but maybe the brother was a druglord who liked to get high and murder people who were quietly enjoying their dinners in a remote diner in Santa Monica. You never know.

Julian looked a little less intrigued. "Well Iniga used to model, but then she had a phase where she thought she was pregnant." He sighed heavily as though it was something he didn't care to think back to it. "So she was laid up at home for awhile and has been home ever since we found out she really wasn't pregnant. And Michele, well..." he paused for a moment. "Michele doesn't work, he's more of a scholar. He's at home all day usually."

I felt my shoulders sag in defeat, but I hoped to god Julian hadn't noticed. That was it? An assumably gorgeous older sister who sleeps around at a party and thinks she's pregnant when she's really had alcohol poisoning, and a brother who did nothing but sit around the house stroking his penis and picking his nose. Did we have the wrong Consolatas? Were there two of the big families in LA?

I had to hide my disappointment. "So you're the youngest?"

He nodded. "Yes."

I thought of something to say, suddenly. But I wondered if it was too forward. I thought that if I was going to play the part of the homosexual fake lawyer, then I might as well say something that might actually make Julian believe I was gay.

So I leaned forward a little and smiled. "I bet you're the cutest, too."

He opened his mouth to say something but only pressed his lips together and smiled. The bright red blush spread itself over his cheeks yet again.

We were talking when our food came, and despite the fact that we were both really hungry, we hadn't taken the time to really chow down on our food. Instead we cut, chewed, swallowed, and stopped to talk a little before going for more steak. We had a couple of laughs, drank a few glasses of wine, and finished everything on our plates in an hour. When I next looked around, half the dining room was empty.

After we had ordered dessert, Julian leaned forward. "I hope this isn't just a horrible thing to ask...but, could you tell me about how you came out?"

I paused.

...Shit! He knew, didn't he? That's why he was asking, he was waiting to see if my answer actually sounded gay. I sat back and frantically tried to think. What could I tell him? What, what, what? That I made a trip to San Francisco and had a one-night stand? That I made out with the guy who fixed my dishwasher in Seattle? That I had had a sexy dream involving a naked Russell Crowe on the ship in "Master and Commander"? What, what? WHAT?!

After awhile, without meaning to carry on for so long in silence, I went with the truth, and told him about my wife. Truth was that woman was enough to make any man become gay. "I was married before I moved here. And I...discovered I had married her for all the wrong reasons, and everything I was looking for in a marriage with her wasn't something she could offer me. And..." I sucked in a breath, thinking up a quick lie. "Towards the end of the whole thing I started to think about men while we had sex...and I started to visit the clubs routinely instead of going to work. We just...decided it would be best to break it off."

I looked at Julian, and just when I thought he would have been looking very suspicious about my entire ridiculous story, I was surprised to see that he was regarding me with quite a bit of sincerity, his eyes were wide and full of...sympathy? Was that what it was?

"I'm sorry it didn't work out." He said softly.

Maybe Julian really was as sweet as he looked.

I waved my hand at him. "It was inevitable, really. And Lenae was..." I sighed, thinking back to my cowly ex-wife who I promised to never see again. "Lenae was not the easiest woman to live with, she didn't make my decisions...any easier, if you know what I mean."

He nodded. "Did you represent yourself? In the divorce, I mean."

I shook my head. "No, it's not wise to be your own lawyer." Or was it? Ah, how should I know?

"What made you want to practice marital law?" Julian asked curiously.

Crap. More lies to more questions. "Oh I don't know...maybe it was because my parents divorced when I was little, I don't know..." And then, for some weird reason, I can't decide why...I asked him if his parents had gotten divorced.

Julian shook his head. "No, they were a perfect match right to the end."

A lightbulb went on inside my head. "The end?"

"Yeah," Julian murmured, fingering the neck of his wineglass again, looking down into the empty glass. "They passed away a long time ago. A car crash."

"Oh..." I paused. I had never been the kind to give real comforting words, one of the things my ex-wife had only been too happy to point out as one of my many flaws. All I could do was apologize. "I'm sorry about that, Julian."

He shook his head. "It's all right. It was a long time ago, and my uncle raised us. At least we had each other, right?" he looked up at me and gave me a radiant smile.

All I could possibly do was smile back. "That's right." I said.

~*~

One of the nice things about taking Julian for dinner, especially to that particular restaurant, was that the manager of the place knocked 20% off the bill, compliments of the management and as a token of respect towards Julian and his family, which made me extremely happy. It cut a considerably expensive bill down a bit, which pleased me so much that after dinner we went straight for the nearest Starbucks and got lattes.

It was almost 10:00 by the time we moved back towards the Consolata building. It was a warm, quiet night and the buildings that loomed all around us provided a soft light to guide the way. Our night of getting to know each other had turned out rather well, I thought. We had had some laughs and some heart-to-hearts, there was definitely enough ground in which to ask him for another date.

We stopped outside the doors to the building. From outside I could see the night watchman sitting at the desk reading a magazine of some sort. I turned to Julian who was holding his empty Starbucks cup in gloved hands and looking both nervous and very happy. "Thank you for dinner and for the coffee." He looked up at me and his eyes were bright and beaming. "I had a nice time tonight."

I smiled down at him. Despite the fact that half of the evening had been spent worrying that Julian had me all figured out, I had had a pretty good time too. So I nodded. "Me too. Back to work?"

Julian looked up at the building. "Yeah, for a little while." Then he looked back at me. "Can I...can I see you tomorrow sometime maybe?"

I thought for a moment. If I told Swanson that my time away from the office was used in dedication towards the case, I didn't see how he could refuse me. So I smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that. My afternoon's free tomorrow."

"Lunch?" he suggested.

I smiled. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'll give you a call."

He nodded, and then there was a moment where we paused and neither of us said or did anything but look at our hands. I faltered, trying to think of something to say.

Then I realized that on all those dates I had had with women, those first dates...this little bit of silence before parting ways was always reserved for a kiss. A quaint good night kiss. But...I didn't know if I was prepared to do that just yet.

It was then that I really realized what I was getting myself into.

I guess Julian pretended that the moment hadn't happened. He just smiled up at me, just as he had done the entire evening. "Well good night Adrian. Thanks again."

I nodded. "I'll call you tomorrow."

I watched him go into the empty lobby and stop to check in with the security guard, and then I saw him get into an elevator and he disappeared.

I went home, and the entire time getting there and taking a shower before going to bed I discovered that I had started this little game, and I was going to have to play it right to the finish. Even if that meant kissing Julian, and even if that meant sleeping with Julian...

Before falling asleep I tried to imagine what it would be like to...lay in this same bed with that darling Consolata boy, the youngest Consolata boy, who smiled at me warmly through the entire evening and shared enjoyable conversation with me.

Maybe it would take some effort...but maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

~*~

Next chapter: Adrian does a little research and gets a little closer to Julian.