Talker's Graduation

job perk, because
    she was the local social worker in charge of foster children in the
    area.
    “Hi, JoEllen. How are you doing this morning?”
    “Fine, baby—how’s Brian? Is he a wreck yet?”
    “Naw—you know Brian. He puts that stuff out and acts like he
    didn’t throw his heart and soul into it, yanno? He’s a rock.” Until
    after the show. This was his fourth show, his third in Petaluma, and
    each time was the same—Brian was all serenity and Zen until
    everyone went home, and then the shakes took him over and he
    needed Talker with an intensity that would have frightened anyone
    else on the planet.
    “Well, good. I came yesterday and set up the kids’ work, did
    he tell you that?”
    “Yeah—he said it looked real good.” Brian had actually praised
    Tate until he’d told him to shut up and fuck off, because he was
    never good at taking a compliment, but Brian had kissed him
    senseless.
    “Well, baby, that’s good. You know why I’m calling, right?”
    Tate sighed. He was a big boy—he told himself that
    repeatedly, but it didn’t stop his voice from getting gruff. “Shelley’s
    parents got custody again, didn’t they?”
    “Yeah. And the last place they’re going to take her is to an art
    gallery. I’m sorry, sweetheart. She won’t be there tonight. I thought
    you’d want to get that out of your system before the show.”
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    Tate nodded and swallowed hard, feeling achy all sorts of
    places and not just his throat.
    “Yeah, okay. Thank you.”
    “Hey, Tate—we talked about this, right? We talked about how
    people get attached, but they’ve got to be ready….”
    “I can take it, Jo, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”
    “Yeah, sweetheart. I’ll see you tonight, and the other kids will
    be with me.”
    “I can’t wait.”
    He hung up the phone and walked toward the back, where his
    wet suit and surfboard waited, and tried to pretend his eyes weren’t
    stinging with disappointment.

    TATE found a job at a local bar almost immediately after they
    moved. It wasn‟t a gay bar, but it wasn‟t a redneck bar either, and it
    was small enough that pretty soon they had him serving drinks and
    then pouring drinks and „bar backing‟ was no longer his profession.
    As he‟d told Brian, it was really all sort of the same thing, but it just
    sounded cooler to say „bartender‟. He liked studying drinks and
    making up combinations; he wasn‟t big on drinking, per se, but
    then, he‟d noticed most of the bartenders didn‟t like to drink for
    more than just taste. It was like they went to a school of object
    lessons, and Tate, who had fallen asleep as a child on a whiskey-
    soaked blanket and woken up a freakshow of scars, didn‟t have to
    be told twice.
    So Tate had a job, but he was used to working and going to
    school, and even though he helped Brian set up the gallery at first,
    his normal butterfly mind was making him bored.
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    He‟d been walking to the gallery after work one night when he
    saw a flier stapled to a telephone pole. It was asking for volunteers
    at a craft fair for foster kids.
    He ran the flier into Brian, babbling incoherently, and when
    Brian finally got him calmed down, he grabbed his worry-stone,
    pulled all of his brain fish into one pond, and said, “Brian, it‟s like I
    looked at this and heard chimes.”
    Brian looked at it and smiled gently. “Yeah. You‟ll be good at
    this. What do we have to do?”
    Talker smiled shyly. “Well, I guess I just show up—I know
    where the place is. I‟m all on record and printed because I grew up
    in the system. I guess, like it says, I just show up and help on
    Thursdays. You think?”
    “Absolutely. I think you‟ll be great.”
    JoEllen had met him at the door when he walked in. He‟d been
    diffident and uncertain about whether or not a state agency would
    let someone who looked like him actually work with foster kids, but
    JoEllen had spent her entire life looking beyond the shells that kids
    presented to the world. She saw past Tate‟s tattoos to the scars
    they hid in half a heartbeat.
    “What can I do for you, baby?” she asked kindly, and for a
    moment he almost forgot that he was twenty-two and grown.
    “I, uhm… well, I saw this… you were looking for volunteers….”
    Suddenly he started babbling. “I can help. And my boyfriend gave
    me a big block of clay so they can sculpt, and some out-of-stock
    pencils and pastels