Chapter 22: Shaun
Part Two: False Hope
The following year:
It was an unexpected phone call. Whenever Bobby talked to Shaun he felt a strange twinge of guilt for not having kept in closer contact with him. Shaun lived on the coast, only 40 miles away as the crow flies, although the winding road that followed The River to the sea made it a trek that took almost three hours.
When he heard the news two years before, Bobby was pleased to learn that his former college roommate was moving to California. Bobby in chamber-of-commerce fashion had encouraged Shaun to make the move after hearing of his decision to leave Tennessee.
Shaun had come home with Bobby the Thanksgiving of their freshman year at Vanderbilt and Shaun had fallen in love with San Francisco during the holiday. He vowed to Bobby at the time that someday he would live there. Now Shaun did, almost, for he had found his own bit of heaven on the rugged windswept coastline 75 miles north of The City.
Bobby had met Shaun their first day in college. He had been late in arriving at the dormitory, having stayed at the ranch until the last moment to help Jeremy and Daniel prepare for Crush. Shaun was Bobby’s pot-luck roommate, and Bobby had thought his fellow resident was the stereotypical Tennessee native. Shaun was from a tiny town in eastern Tennessee, and with a single utterance from his lips, it was apparent he was Rural South. Bobby at first thought Shaun’s father was a coal miner or sharecropper because Shaun was so thin – almost emaciated.
Only on closer inspection at dinner that first distressful college evening did Bobby realize the complexity behind Shaun’s Huck Finn appearance. Shaun was tall – at least six-two – and attractive, yet his gangling movements and thatch of sun-bleached hair gave him the disposition of a boy not yet comfortable with his adult shell. But Bobby knew that a year or two in college would melt that outward impression.
Behind Shaun’s piercing blue eyes Bobby had found an intent mind and subtle wit, both tempered by the overriding trait of compassion. And it soon became apparent that Shaun was the more worldly of the two. His father was the banker and principal landowner in their little county in the southeastern corner of the state. And Shaun, not the California rancher’s son, was the one to have spent his summers in New York with an uncle, a well-known artist living in SoHo. Despite the Southern drawl, which slowly had disappeared in the seven years since they first met, it was Shaun who had spoken to Bobby of the mysterious East, of life in the Big Apple, of the Theater and the Arts. Shaun was the one who seemed to be the exchange student from another country.
After their first year in college, the two decided to live together in an off-campus apartment. Bobby had met Carin by this time and fallen wildly in love with her. So had Shaun, and Carin and Shaun became close friends. The three of them were for all purposes roommates Bobby’s second year, with Carin spending most nights at their apartment and storing more clothes there than Bobby and Shaun combined. The three went to plays and movies and dinner together. If Bobby had to study, the other two would hit the town without him. Shaun and Carin were so close that they were roommates that summer when Bobby had gone back to work at the ranch. It was fine with Bobby, although Carin had to hide the arrangement from her parents.
One night that summer, as the fall term approached, Carin called Bobby to tell him that he needed to find a new roommate when he returned; Shaun was moving out. Bobby was in shock. Carin explained that Shaun had found a new roommate, and that Shaun’s relationship with that person – with “him” – was to be more than just friends. Bobby wasn’t shocked anymore. He had finally “discovered” what he had long “suspected,” and that Shaun until then had not “admitted,” even to himself. Shaun was gay. The news would have had no effect on the trio’s friendship. Unfortunately, the first real relationship in Shaun’s life didn’t last long, and two months into the fall semester Shaun was living alone in a tiny efficiency.
Bobby and Carin both thought they were the losers in Shaun’s moving out because they dearly missed Shaun’s constant company, and they could no longer be tasters in his cooking experiments, for he was quite the budding chef. Where he found the time to fit in the hours needed to learn the skill was a mystery, although Bobby knew Shaun’s mother had passed down her considerable talent to her son. Shaun had found time between his endless activities – an internship for the local office of a Tennessee congressman, an assistant editorship of the student newspaper, second-chair cellist in the university symphony – to work two weekends per month in a local French restaurant under the chef. His hectic schedule made Carin once laughingly ask Shaun if he was trying to be a role-model for gays. Shaun was not the least bit amused by her comment, saying he had no desire to be either stereotyped or “packaged.”
After his first year in graduate school at Columbia, Shaun was sent on scholarship to the American University of Paris to study public affairs. While there he was able to work his way into a part-time apprenticeship to a renowned chef of Cuisine Nouveau. Upon returning and eventually completing his thesis, Shaun squirreled away his diplomas and moved himself and his belongings to San Francisco; the move coming only a short time after the death of his uncle, who had left behind a considerable nest egg to his favorite nephew. Shaun quickly tired of the wild scene in The City and located and purchased a tiny dilapidated café in the middle of several dozen lodges and inns scattered on the isolated coastline forty miles west of The Valley. Shaun’s tiny restaurant catered exclusively to the tourists who stayed in the rustic inns nearby, and to the few artist-types who made their homes in the clumps of sea dwellings of that picturesque coastal area.
Despite their collective past, and that Shaun and Bobby lived in the same county, the two had seen each other only three times since Shaun moved to the coast. Bobby tried to rationalize the infrequency of their visits. First, they were both so busy with their new respective careers. Bobby had been inundated since he had taken over full responsibility of the ranch. And Shaun’s restaurant continued to be a magnificent critical success. Second, Shaun and Bobby each had their own circle of friends. And finally, there was the drive.
