Candy Hearts, Vol. 2

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

A BEAUTIFUL WINTER SOLSTICE DAY

Do they know already, Dale wonders, here on the first day in his new home? Has his reputation preceded him yet again? And does it really matter? There’s no way he can change. This is who he is. Even without luck on his side, he’ll just make the best of it.

“Welcome to the neighborhood!” There’s a middle-aged straight couple standing on Dale’s porch, all smiles. It’s a beautiful day. California is so different from his previous life in a shabby New York apartment, and even now, in the dead of winter, the sun is shining and a gentle breeze wafts through the doorway. A perfect day for a new start.

The wife, looking cheery in a print dress, holds out a flat plastic container. The husband, a wiry hipster fellow with a bushy beard and slouchy knit hat, extends a hand, saying, “Marsha and Bob. We live four doors down.”

Dale steps forward to take his hand, but a passing car flashes a sudden glare of sunlight, blinding him. This is no big surprise. There’s always something. He loses his balance and bumps into the doorjamb, and in the scuffle, he misses the man’s waiting hand and instead veers over to knock Marsha’s container to the floor. The hand goes unshaken, but miraculously the container says shut. Maybe, Dale dares to think with dim hope, his luck is turning around.

“Sorry about that,” Dale says by reflex, fully expecting to say it at least a dozen times before the day ends. “I’m Dale.”

“Not a problem,” Marsha says, and there it is: Dale sees her share a fleeting smile with her husband. Bob smiles back with the barest nod of his head, a tiny gesture that reveals all. Dale would bet anything that her handsome hubby will take another stab at that handshake.

She retrieves the container from the porch and dusts it off, handing it to Dale more slowly. “My famous oatmeal cookies.”

“Sounds wonderful,” he says, hoping they don’t have nuts. He learned the hard way about that as a child. “Please come in.”

He backs away to let them enter and trips backward over the boxes he has parked by the door, ending up flat on his butt on the hardwood floor. Before moving here, he had an easy truce with his last place, but he’s still negotiating with this house, trying to decide if it’s going to be friend or foe. The boxes, however, are completely his fault. By now he should know to tuck them safely out of the way in a corner.

“Let me help you up,” Bob offers, extending his hand. “Are you hurt?”

“Sorry about that,” Dale says as he levers himself back to his feet. “Thanks, but it might be best if I do it myself. Don’t want to drag you down too.”

This is a real concern because Dale is easily twice the size of this cute little fellow. Dale is thick and wide, swarthy dark and hairy with Italian blood. Nobody would ever use the term wiry to describe Dale.

Bob tries again for that handshake, the true prize of the visit, after Dale is standing and looking stable. Dale takes his hand, confirming what he already guessed: they’ve heard all the rumors about his Uncle Lucas, now unfortunately deceased. They’re hoping the new occupant of this rickety Victorian has inherited the same fortunate misfortune, and they want to be the first to try out a piece of it.

“It looks just the same as when Lucas was here!” Marsha gushes. “I always liked those curtains.”

Dale agrees. The curtains are indeed something special, with an interesting deco-ish botanical pattern, but like the rest of the house, the remorseless march of entropy has had its way with them. Those unfortunate rips at the hem must have stories to tell.

“Yes, Uncle Lucas left me the house and all the contents,” Dale says, gesturing to the ill-placed boxes. “I still need to unpack all my stuff. Can I offer you a drink?”

“Thank you, but no,” Marsha says. “We just wanted to drop in and say hello. Please let us know if we can help with anything.”

Dale sets down the cookies, leaving both of his hands free for eventualities, and follows them out, tripping only slightly over the doorsill. Score another point for the house.

“So nice to meet you,” she says, extending her hand. It looks like a tiny doll hand in Dale’s huge palm. As soon as they touch, a bee flies up from the overgrown garden and stings him on the cheek. He flinches, gripping her hand more tightly than is polite.

“Sorry about that,” Dale says, releasing her hand and watching for other perils in the tangle of rose thorns framing the porch. Spiders, scorpions, centipedes, wasps—he’s no stranger to any of them. “That bee came out of nowhere. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope to see you again.”

He walks them out to the peeling picket fence, taking full advantage of the rails on the front stairs to mitigate the inevitable stumbles on the uneven steps. He puts a hand on one of the beautifully carved fence posts, imagining how it will look with a fresh coat of paint. The house, he’s certain, will like that.

As they’re saying their goodbyes, the postman arrives and hands Dale his mail. “Welcome! You must be Dale Bleak. Unfortunately, nothing but bills for you today, but Marsha, you have an official-looking letter.”

He hands Marsha the letter and Bob says, “Marsha is waiting on news about a job interview she did a few weeks ago. She’s up for a new position as Provost at the University. Hopefully, this is good news.”

“I’m sure it is,” Dale says with weary certainty as they wander away down the street.

Dale closes the door, keeping his fingers carefully clear of the jambs, and heads to the bathroom to tend to the sting. He hasn’t unpacked his prodigious collection of first aid gear, but there’s plenty left over from his Uncle Lucas. He’s lost count of the times he’s been stung by honeybees, so he expertly extracts the stinger and dabs on some disinfectant from one of his uncle’s ancient bottles.

He wanders back to the front, puts his hands on his hips, and surveys the room. The house is filled to bursting with his uncle’s furniture, memorabilia, and day-to-day necessities. He doesn’t quite know where to start. He wanders over to the mantle and picks up a small photograph of two men. One is obviously his uncle in his younger days—he could be Dale’s twin—and the other is a dapper blond gent with a rakish grin. They make a handsome pair.

Dale has very few personal memories of his uncle. He remembers a holiday meal, probably Thanksgiving, and a tumble down the stairs. The memory is tinged red with a lot of blood and the faces of friendly paramedics, so he must have split a lip or knocked his forehead. But he remembers almost nothing else about his uncle. That must have been the time when the family finally faced the bad news: the young Dale had inherited the rare family trait that hounded their family tree, just like his Uncle Lucas, and it was safest to keep them apart.

Maybe it’s genetics or coincidence or the unsmiling gaze of the Fates, but Dale still doesn’t know for certain why it all happens. Recently, he’s been looking to numerology for clues and quickly found that his numbers are all wrong. He hasn’t tracked down his uncle’s birth numbers, but his birth name Luca adds up to thirteen in Chaldean numerology. Ugh, Dale thinks, no wonder he called himself Lucas. His own name also sums to thirteen and his family name—Bleak—is even worse: it’s thirteen along with the literal meaning. On top of that, his birth numbers are miserable, his natal horoscope is a disaster, and naturally, he was born on Friday the 13th.

Dale replaces the picture carefully, exactly where it was, vowing to stop this dark wallowing on things he can’t change. He has a new house to explore! The glass in the old-fashioned picture frame is a surprise, as it’s the only glass in the room, apart from the windows. The room, and indeed the entire house, has all the signs of a perpetually unlucky inhabitant, but one who was well aware of his own misfortune. Dale approves. There are almost no interior doors and not a throw rug in sight. Every surface has a rounded edge with no sharp corners, and there are only soft tapestries on the walls. Dale can’t fathom how other people have actual glass mirrors hanging in heavy frames by a single nail on their walls. How could anyone tempt the Fates so recklessly? These preventive measures are probably the only thing that kept his Uncle Lucas alive for so long, and hopefully they'll do the same for him.

Since arriving, Dale hasn’t had a free moment to poke around his new place, but now that he finally has some time to slow down and look, he realizes he loves the house completely and without reservation. Already, he can see it’s a perfect reflection of himself—sturdy but rough around the edges—and he’s certain, with some loving attention, that they’ll soon be fast friends. For example, he noticed that the multicolored gingerbread on the porch is faded and peeling. “Pink and sea green,” he announces to the room. “Maybe with a few accents of pale blue. That will be a perfect combination for your beautiful face.”

He still has no idea how to fit his meager collection of belongings into the complex ecology of the house, so he shifts one of his uncle’s overstuffed chairs and soon the boxes are stacked safely away in the corner. He can deal with them later, after he and the house have gotten to know each other better.

Entering the kitchen, he admires the elegant gooseneck spout in the sink, caressing the enamel handles before filling one of his uncle’s plastic cups with water. He’s happy to see that the chipped porcelain sink is still perfectly serviceable. “We’ll give you a scrub and you’ll be good as new.”

As he takes his first sip, he catches his reflection in the window. Dale has always spent an inordinate amount of time with his body, weightlifting and caring for his skin to make the best of what he’s been given. Grooming, however, has always been a challenge, given that razors are completely out of the question. “Yes,” he agrees with the windowpane. “I’m looking shaggy. I’ll trim my beard as soon as I get unpacked, but the chest hair stays. Manscaping is not on the table.”

Ever since he arrived, the house has been taunting Dale with a seemingly insurmountable hurdle: the house has a second story. For the obvious reason, he’s always chosen places with simple, ground level plans. He’s still skeptical about the upstairs, and if he’s honest, a bit afraid. But if Lucas could do it, so can he. Downing his cup of water, he decides it’s time to face the problem head on, summoning his courage and walking to the foot of the stairs. He’s chosen to do the move on a day with auspicious numbers, so hopefully that will provide some measure of protection. He puts a hand on the peeling wallpaper and the house is silent, hopefully approving, so he takes the plunge.

The ascent goes off without a hitch, and he quickly finds that the second story is filled with treasures: clothes that are old enough to be coming back into fashion, acres of books, and all of his uncle’s papers and correspondence, neatly filed away. He opens a window in the upstairs bathroom and the house breathes a sigh of relief. There’s a cozy little guest room on the east side and a full painter’s studio on the west, filled with easels and canvases and brushes. “You’re just full of surprises,” Dale says, speaking both to the house and to his departed uncle.

He flips through the dozens of unframed paintings leaning against the walls, and announces, “The old man was rather good!” In particular, there are some renderings of a handsome blond hunk lounging by a pool that have a Hockney-esque brilliance.

“I think we should put some of these downstairs,” he says. “Your walls are looking lonely.” It should be safe enough as long as he doesn’t add any heavy, sharp-edged frames. After all, how much damage can a stretched canvas do?

Sorting through his uncle’s belongings, the remnants of his life, Dale ponders his own life ahead, or at least the near future. The house needs loads of work. The garden alone will be a full-time job, and he simply doesn’t know where to begin. A little voice whispers in his head: but when the yard is tamed, there will be plenty of room for a pair of dogs. “Great idea,” he laughs. “But first I need to find a cute garden boy to help wrestle the thicket to submission.”

The house must be amenable. A breeze blows in from the direction of the bathroom, telling him that the studio is too hot and stuffy, so he pries open the dusty studio window. Looking out, he sees that the house next door is the exact opposite of his new inheritance. It needs not a single speck of work. The garden on the other side of the fence is tidy, with a precisely mown lawn surrounded by rose bushes. Tidy is too weak a word for it; the garden is immaculate . The lawn is uniformly green, without a single blemish, surrounded by a dazzling carpet of multicolor blooms. The house is a mid-century modern marvel, perched in the middle of the defined geometry of the yard, all sleek lines and gleaming angles.

There’s also a pool out back, sparkling with crystal blue water. “A pool,” Dale wistfully ponders. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” There’s plenty of room in his yard for one, once the weeds are cleared, but he doesn’t dare. A pool plus an unlucky man is certain to equal something unpleasant, both for the pool and for the man.

The owner is by far the most arresting feature of the house next door. He’s perfection personified. As Dale watches through the open window, he surfaces and pulls himself up from the edge of the pool. Somehow, the roses bloom more brilliantly and the sunlight gets fractionally brighter, spotlighting the glittering water as it flows from his body, a body with exactly the ideal shade of tan to complement his model-perfect golden blond hair.

Dale lets his eyes rove. Square jaw and dimpled chin, check. Swimmer-body pecs, defined but not overwhelming, check. Precise, symmetrical abs, neatly stacked, check. And those eyes, the bluest blue, bluer than the water in the pool. Dazzling. He searches up and down, looking for a single imperfection. There’s nothing.

His sexy neighbor levers himself out of the pool, powerfully cording his arm and shoulder muscles, and time slows as he shakes his head, scattering water everywhere and leaving his precisely cut hair in a perfectly artful tangle. His red Speedo is wetly straining, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, revealing that his perfection continues massively to the less public territories of his perfect physique. “Not that I’m a size queen or anything, given my own nub of a cock,” Dale gently chides the house for steering him to this vision of masculinity. “But it doesn’t hurt to look.”

When Dale finally tears his eyes away from the spectacle, the breeze is ruffling a small envelope tucked on a table between scattered brushes and tubes of paint. It’s addressed to him in a shaky, hand-written script, and inside is a letter:

Dearest Dale,

Bravo! I knew you would find the courage to attempt the stairs. Please know that the railings are sturdy and the risers have been doubly reinforced, so with care, I hope this second story will also be a place of refuge for you.

I am leaving you a comfortable sum, which I’m hoping will allow you to make this grand old house your own, and give you some breathing room as you find your place in this friendly community (I imagine that the neighbors are already knocking at your door). I suggest that you spend some time exploring the nooks and crannies of the office. As you might expect, I’ve never had the slightest luck with banks and investments, so you might find something of interest in the office sofa. I’ve also left detailed information on the computer about everything from the local Farmer’s Market to contractors you can trust. In particular, there is a local physician who has been most expert in patching me up after my many misadventures.

Finally, since you have found my studio, you must have noticed my attention, or rather, my obsession, with my neighbor David. We have had a friendly relationship over the years, but I never found the opportunity to share my artwork with him. He passed several years ago, but his nephew Aaron has recently moved into the house. I hope that you could do me the kindness of presenting one of my paintings to him.

I find it a terrible pity that I’m only meeting you now, after I’m gone, but I suppose it was the most prudent decision, keeping us apart these many years. I hope that you have found ways, as I have been forced to do, to manage the gift that we have been given. And truly, I have come to realize that it is a gift, watching, through my own petty misfortunes, so many people move on to better lives.

With much affection,

Luca

“It is indeed a pity,” Dale tells the house. His uncle may have been a kindred spirit, with much to share. With that thought, he makes a resolution for the upcoming New Year: like his uncle, it’s time to shed his negativity about his luck, or lack thereof. Maybe it is a gift, providing a unique way of moving through the world. It’s time to embrace a new life of cautious optimism.

Glancing around the studio, Dale realizes that the man in the paintings, David, is undoubtedly related to his handsome neighbor, who must be Aaron. Aaron , he thinks, and does a quick calculation. The name is master number 22 in Pythagorean numerology. David too, a perfect 22. Lucky guys, their parents chose names with great numbers.

A sudden breeze blows through the window and knocks one of the leaning paintings to the floor. Dale retrieves it and finds that it’s drawn from this exact view, from this window. The pool looks just the same, and the young David of this particular painting could be the twin of the Aaron he just spied out the window. “Thanks,” he says to his new home. “Great choice. This painting will be the perfect icebreaker.”