ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes, their friendship is blossoming a lot, and that's good because in many ways it was as if they were both lonely. Things are about to get very interesting.
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Here, In This Place
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
“Hello. Hello, excuse me.”
The three of them, the hot Brad, his hot partner, and Dan Rawlinson turned to him.
The show had ended, or at least Two and the Band’s part, and it was apparent that David was not going to pursue Dan Rawlinson. It was also apparent that Sunny could not make a scene of doing it himself. So he excused himself for a piss break, and went the long way around to stand before the three of them at the bar.
“Hey,” Brad waved, exchaling smoke from his nostrils and taking a suck on his cigarette, “Sunny, right?”
“Right. I just wanted to say you were great up there.”
“Thanks a lot,” Dan said, shaking his hand. His face full of that same brightness Brad’s had. “Not often I get a male admirer…. Which makes me doubt my talent, if not my looks.”
“Well, you look great too.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Dan pointed to Brad and his partner.
“This is my husband, Nehru,” Brad gestured,
Well, now he had a name, which was better than The Black Guy.
“Nehru Alexander,”
“I’m an Alexander,” Sunny said. “That’s my real name. Alexander Kominsky. But that’s not my point. My point is I’m with a friend and he wants to talk to Dan. He wants to talk to you,” Sunny pointed at him, “You all went to school together. And he didn’t want to disturb you, But he’s right over there.”
As Sunny pointed, he now saw David seeing him, and looking flustered.
“That’s Dave Lawry!” Dan laughed, and Sunny noticed he was still holding his guitar.
“Yes it is.”
“The last time I saw him he was… well, he was busy not giving me a parking ticket.”
“Oddly enough,” Sunny said, “That was not the last time he saw you.”
“What’s that?”
Until now, Sunny had forgotten Dan was supposed to be a vampire.
“Go over and give him a holler.”
Dan nodded.
“Is that a Stratacaster 326?”
“If you know what this is,” Dan said, “then you can hold onto it while I go talk to my old schoolmate.”
Dan shoved the guitar into Sunny’s hands and poked him in the arm.
“Well, look at you,” Nehru said to Sunny, “bringing old friends together.”
Brad said, “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinned at him and shrugging, said, “Or anywhere else.”
David saw Dan Rawlinson approaching him, and tried to make himself look professional.
“Your friend told me you were here,” Dan pulled out a chair and straddled it.
“Yes. We actually came to see you. Heard you were playing here.”
“Yeah. Three nights a week.”
“That’s what the sign said,” said David.
“The sign.”
“I mean the sign online. On the webpage.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Right,” Dan said.
“So, the music’s really great,” David continued. “I mean, I’m really impressed.”
“That means a lot,” Dan said. “That means a whole lot. I’ve been trying to do this thing since… well, since high school really. You remember Myre Keller.”
“I remember the Kellers,” David said. “And the Strausses. Money, right?”
“Well, they’re not poor,” Dan admitted. “But me and Myron have been doing this since high school. I mean, there were a few times when it petered out, and things got rough about a year ago.”
“A year ago?” David said, sitting up.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Really about the same time you saw me.”
“OK.”
“In fact it was that very day I caught my fiancé cheating on me. And it sent me into a tailspin. I did some bizarre things. Well, not bizarre, but not exactly me.”
David nodded.
He looked up and he saw Sunny, who was talking to Brad and Nehru, strumming Dan’s guitar. Sunny had stopped talking, and was looking directly at David and so he said:
“Dan.”
“Yeah?” Dan raised an eyebrow.
“Here’s the thing,” David said. “And I guess I’m going to start out of order. Cut to the chase.”
“That’s always best,” Dan said, looking harmless, looking like someone who couldn’t imagine a bad cutting to the chase.
“You know how you say the last time you saw me was on the road, when I stopped your car.”
“Yeah? I mean, and at the funeral for a bit. When Cody died.”
“Yeah,” David allowed. “Well, that wasn’t the last time I saw you.”
“Yes,” Dan said. “Your friend over there said something like that too.
”Well?”
“Huh?”
“When was the last time you saw me?”
“Uh…. This is going to sound crazy. Sitting right across the table from you it’s definitely crazy. I… But I was there. I…. We found your dead body in the Midland Hotel. In an expensive suite. You were fucking dead. Dead dead with a crushed windpipe. You weren’t the first. There had been other people—all guys—that this was done too. But they were bloodless. We were calling them the Vampire Killings.”
Dan’s face had changed while David was speaking. He had, in fact, begun to look a little bloodless, and David continued, his voice slower, his eyes on Dan.
“They all died with puncture wounds in their throats, as if they had been bitten. The same with you. But you were not… bloodless. And we brought you to the morgue, and then before you could be properly autopsied or your family informed, you were gone. A little later on my—my partner—came here and saw you, alive as you are right now, playing and singing. She showed me the tape—the video—and I lost my mind. Literally. Other things helped me lose it, too, but… I would not be here except that persistent guy over there, holding your guitar, came all the way from California because one of his best friends was one of the guys killed before you, and he decided to come down here so we could see you in the flesh, know the truth. And now that I am looking at you, seeing you, the whole story sounds mad.”
But Dan’s face was strangely calm, and he said, “Actually… it’s not as strange as you think.”
Dave nodded. He felt serious now too. Not afraid, but serious.
Dan took out his cigarettes, and placing one in the corner of his mouth, he said, “I don’t want to talk about this here.”
David nodded.
“You’re friend’ll be safe with Brad and Nehru. Come with me.”
“I remember the hotel room,” Dan said.
They were outside of the Blue Note and they could hear the Reavers playing. One or two people had come out for a smoke, and Dan gave David a cigarette which David was surprised to inhale with gusto.
“I remember the hotel and when I woke up, I was… Well, I don’t remember anything about the police station or a morgue. And here’s the thing, when I say I woke up, what I really mean was… was when I returned from the dead.”
David had not been looking at Dan, but now he did, because Dan, whom he had never really known to be serious, was looking serious for the second time tonight.
“I want you to tell me you’re pulling my leg,” David said.
“It had crossed my mind.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yeah.”
“You were dead.”
“Clearly. You saw it. I woke up in…. God, it’s one hell of a story. It’s a hell of a story. I don’t really want to talk about it. I wrote about it, wrote it all down and there’s nothing safer than a grown man’s journal, especially if he has shitty handwriting.”
“But…. You were dead,” David said. “Then… Is it true? I mean… You can’t be… That crap is in the movies… You’re not.”
“I’m a vampire,” Dan said in an embarrassed breath of a voice. “I am, as of a year ago, an immortal, blood drinking vampire.”
Dan murmured, ashing, “It’s so fuckin’ stupid.”
Suddenly David remembered being asleep and having a ridiculous dream, a commercial on TV, only it hadn’t been a dream, had it? Somehow he had seen something he shouldn’t have seen.
“Is your failure to age startling your mortal friends and making it difficult to stay in one place very long? Is your constantly youthful appearance making a rift with your lovers as they begin to grey? From the makers of Nutra Negative and your favorite drink, Hemogoblin comes, Garden of Eden’s Aging Cream.”
“Dave, you alright?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” David said.
Then he said, “Not of you…. Of everything, I mean. I’m very confused.”
“That’s how I felt,” Dan said. “Still do, sometimes. If I didn’t have friends—”
“Do they know?”
“Brad? Nehru? Myron? No,” Dan shook his head. “I mean, that’s a world shattering thing. But there are other friends. The people who did this to me are the ones who killed all those guys you were talking about, that your friend is looking for. But I’ve got other friends who look out for me. Who… The world is bigger than you think it is. There’s more out there than you think. And that’s a good thing, and it’s a bad thing. I got wound up in this shit by sheer accident. Though sometimes it seems like there aren’t accidents. But I’m in it now.”
“Let me help you!” David said, suddenly.
“Help me, how?” Dan looked at him, smiling. “What are you going to do?”
“Those people…. Who did this to you—”
“I’m actually fine with it. Now,” Dan said. “It took a while, but—”
“But what about what they did to the others?”
The grin left Dan’s face and he looked old, as if the jokey young man David knew was a disguise, and the vampire had put him away, gesturing with what was left of his cigarette.
“Dave, those fuckers are going to get dealt with. But not by you. Not by the LPD. Or the FBI for that matter. What they’ve done they’ll pay for. But you can’t get tangled up in this. Promise me. You’ve seen what these assholes do. They’ll kill you.”
When David failed to respond, Dan said, firmly, “Kill you.”
“Then whaddo you want me to do.”
“I just told you,” Dan Rawlinson, becoming calm again and taking out another cigarette said.
“Nothing. “
“That guy I’m with, the one who went up to you and told you I was looking for you—he’s not going to let things go. That’s not what he’s like.”
“Then he’ll die.”
“Dan—”
“Look,” Dan said, “come with me. Both of you. He’s already hanging out with Brad and Nehru. I’m staying with them, upstairs. Stay with us. I’ll…. I’ll talk to your friend. See if I can give him something to keep him busy and not have him running around peering into shit that will end his life.”
WE'LL BE BACK WITH MORE IN A FEW DAYS
The three of them, the hot Brad, his hot partner, and Dan Rawlinson turned to him.
The show had ended, or at least Two and the Band’s part, and it was apparent that David was not going to pursue Dan Rawlinson. It was also apparent that Sunny could not make a scene of doing it himself. So he excused himself for a piss break, and went the long way around to stand before the three of them at the bar.
“Hey,” Brad waved, exchaling smoke from his nostrils and taking a suck on his cigarette, “Sunny, right?”
“Right. I just wanted to say you were great up there.”
“Thanks a lot,” Dan said, shaking his hand. His face full of that same brightness Brad’s had. “Not often I get a male admirer…. Which makes me doubt my talent, if not my looks.”
“Well, you look great too.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Dan pointed to Brad and his partner.
“This is my husband, Nehru,” Brad gestured,
Well, now he had a name, which was better than The Black Guy.
“Nehru Alexander,”
“I’m an Alexander,” Sunny said. “That’s my real name. Alexander Kominsky. But that’s not my point. My point is I’m with a friend and he wants to talk to Dan. He wants to talk to you,” Sunny pointed at him, “You all went to school together. And he didn’t want to disturb you, But he’s right over there.”
As Sunny pointed, he now saw David seeing him, and looking flustered.
“That’s Dave Lawry!” Dan laughed, and Sunny noticed he was still holding his guitar.
“Yes it is.”
“The last time I saw him he was… well, he was busy not giving me a parking ticket.”
“Oddly enough,” Sunny said, “That was not the last time he saw you.”
“What’s that?”
Until now, Sunny had forgotten Dan was supposed to be a vampire.
“Go over and give him a holler.”
Dan nodded.
“Is that a Stratacaster 326?”
“If you know what this is,” Dan said, “then you can hold onto it while I go talk to my old schoolmate.”
Dan shoved the guitar into Sunny’s hands and poked him in the arm.
“Well, look at you,” Nehru said to Sunny, “bringing old friends together.”
Brad said, “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinned at him and shrugging, said, “Or anywhere else.”
David saw Dan Rawlinson approaching him, and tried to make himself look professional.
“Your friend told me you were here,” Dan pulled out a chair and straddled it.
“Yes. We actually came to see you. Heard you were playing here.”
“Yeah. Three nights a week.”
“That’s what the sign said,” said David.
“The sign.”
“I mean the sign online. On the webpage.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Right,” Dan said.
“So, the music’s really great,” David continued. “I mean, I’m really impressed.”
“That means a lot,” Dan said. “That means a whole lot. I’ve been trying to do this thing since… well, since high school really. You remember Myre Keller.”
“I remember the Kellers,” David said. “And the Strausses. Money, right?”
“Well, they’re not poor,” Dan admitted. “But me and Myron have been doing this since high school. I mean, there were a few times when it petered out, and things got rough about a year ago.”
“A year ago?” David said, sitting up.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Really about the same time you saw me.”
“OK.”
“In fact it was that very day I caught my fiancé cheating on me. And it sent me into a tailspin. I did some bizarre things. Well, not bizarre, but not exactly me.”
David nodded.
He looked up and he saw Sunny, who was talking to Brad and Nehru, strumming Dan’s guitar. Sunny had stopped talking, and was looking directly at David and so he said:
“Dan.”
“Yeah?” Dan raised an eyebrow.
“Here’s the thing,” David said. “And I guess I’m going to start out of order. Cut to the chase.”
“That’s always best,” Dan said, looking harmless, looking like someone who couldn’t imagine a bad cutting to the chase.
“You know how you say the last time you saw me was on the road, when I stopped your car.”
“Yeah? I mean, and at the funeral for a bit. When Cody died.”
“Yeah,” David allowed. “Well, that wasn’t the last time I saw you.”
“Yes,” Dan said. “Your friend over there said something like that too.
”Well?”
“Huh?”
“When was the last time you saw me?”
“Uh…. This is going to sound crazy. Sitting right across the table from you it’s definitely crazy. I… But I was there. I…. We found your dead body in the Midland Hotel. In an expensive suite. You were fucking dead. Dead dead with a crushed windpipe. You weren’t the first. There had been other people—all guys—that this was done too. But they were bloodless. We were calling them the Vampire Killings.”
Dan’s face had changed while David was speaking. He had, in fact, begun to look a little bloodless, and David continued, his voice slower, his eyes on Dan.
“They all died with puncture wounds in their throats, as if they had been bitten. The same with you. But you were not… bloodless. And we brought you to the morgue, and then before you could be properly autopsied or your family informed, you were gone. A little later on my—my partner—came here and saw you, alive as you are right now, playing and singing. She showed me the tape—the video—and I lost my mind. Literally. Other things helped me lose it, too, but… I would not be here except that persistent guy over there, holding your guitar, came all the way from California because one of his best friends was one of the guys killed before you, and he decided to come down here so we could see you in the flesh, know the truth. And now that I am looking at you, seeing you, the whole story sounds mad.”
But Dan’s face was strangely calm, and he said, “Actually… it’s not as strange as you think.”
Dave nodded. He felt serious now too. Not afraid, but serious.
Dan took out his cigarettes, and placing one in the corner of his mouth, he said, “I don’t want to talk about this here.”
David nodded.
“You’re friend’ll be safe with Brad and Nehru. Come with me.”
“I remember the hotel room,” Dan said.
They were outside of the Blue Note and they could hear the Reavers playing. One or two people had come out for a smoke, and Dan gave David a cigarette which David was surprised to inhale with gusto.
“I remember the hotel and when I woke up, I was… Well, I don’t remember anything about the police station or a morgue. And here’s the thing, when I say I woke up, what I really mean was… was when I returned from the dead.”
David had not been looking at Dan, but now he did, because Dan, whom he had never really known to be serious, was looking serious for the second time tonight.
“I want you to tell me you’re pulling my leg,” David said.
“It had crossed my mind.”
“You’re serious.”
“Yeah.”
“You were dead.”
“Clearly. You saw it. I woke up in…. God, it’s one hell of a story. It’s a hell of a story. I don’t really want to talk about it. I wrote about it, wrote it all down and there’s nothing safer than a grown man’s journal, especially if he has shitty handwriting.”
“But…. You were dead,” David said. “Then… Is it true? I mean… You can’t be… That crap is in the movies… You’re not.”
“I’m a vampire,” Dan said in an embarrassed breath of a voice. “I am, as of a year ago, an immortal, blood drinking vampire.”
Dan murmured, ashing, “It’s so fuckin’ stupid.”
Suddenly David remembered being asleep and having a ridiculous dream, a commercial on TV, only it hadn’t been a dream, had it? Somehow he had seen something he shouldn’t have seen.
“Is your failure to age startling your mortal friends and making it difficult to stay in one place very long? Is your constantly youthful appearance making a rift with your lovers as they begin to grey? From the makers of Nutra Negative and your favorite drink, Hemogoblin comes, Garden of Eden’s Aging Cream.”
“Dave, you alright?”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” David said.
Then he said, “Not of you…. Of everything, I mean. I’m very confused.”
“That’s how I felt,” Dan said. “Still do, sometimes. If I didn’t have friends—”
“Do they know?”
“Brad? Nehru? Myron? No,” Dan shook his head. “I mean, that’s a world shattering thing. But there are other friends. The people who did this to me are the ones who killed all those guys you were talking about, that your friend is looking for. But I’ve got other friends who look out for me. Who… The world is bigger than you think it is. There’s more out there than you think. And that’s a good thing, and it’s a bad thing. I got wound up in this shit by sheer accident. Though sometimes it seems like there aren’t accidents. But I’m in it now.”
“Let me help you!” David said, suddenly.
“Help me, how?” Dan looked at him, smiling. “What are you going to do?”
“Those people…. Who did this to you—”
“I’m actually fine with it. Now,” Dan said. “It took a while, but—”
“But what about what they did to the others?”
The grin left Dan’s face and he looked old, as if the jokey young man David knew was a disguise, and the vampire had put him away, gesturing with what was left of his cigarette.
“Dave, those fuckers are going to get dealt with. But not by you. Not by the LPD. Or the FBI for that matter. What they’ve done they’ll pay for. But you can’t get tangled up in this. Promise me. You’ve seen what these assholes do. They’ll kill you.”
When David failed to respond, Dan said, firmly, “Kill you.”
“Then whaddo you want me to do.”
“I just told you,” Dan Rawlinson, becoming calm again and taking out another cigarette said.
“Nothing. “
“That guy I’m with, the one who went up to you and told you I was looking for you—he’s not going to let things go. That’s not what he’s like.”
“Then he’ll die.”
“Dan—”
“Look,” Dan said, “come with me. Both of you. He’s already hanging out with Brad and Nehru. I’m staying with them, upstairs. Stay with us. I’ll…. I’ll talk to your friend. See if I can give him something to keep him busy and not have him running around peering into shit that will end his life.”
WE'LL BE BACK WITH MORE IN A FEW DAYS
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! I am glad Dan talked to David and was truth with him. I feel like David needed to hear the truth from Dan himself. I think Dan is right that Sunny won’t give up as easy. I hope he doesn’t get hurt or killed. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Yes, truth unhidden, they've all finally met up, and now we just have to wait to see what comes next.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WELCOME BACK
It was getting late, and folks were starting to leave. On the stage, Sunny was playing Dan’s guitar like an expert, blond hair in his face, and he had commented, “I miss this.”
David felt outside of it, not part of the music at all, and here were all of these, Brad and Nehru, Dan’s band, and the members of some others, playing together this late at night. And the Reavers asked Sunny if he’d play ‘House of the Rising Sun’ with them as folks were leaving and chairs were being set up. Dan played with them. He’d borrowed one of Brad’s guitars, and Brad came out of the kitchen where he and the last of the dish washers was wrapping up.
Nehru had been stacking chairs after he’d cleaned the taps, and now he was sitting on the stage when Dan said, “Sing for us.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “Just one.”
Nehru nodded, and then he threw back his head. The man had a clear voice, more than tenor, almost transsexual, it could have been a boy’s or a woman’s and like a bell, he declared:
I fell in love with an Oxford girl
She had a dark and a roving eye
But I feeled too ashamed for to marry her
Her being so young a maid
I went up to her father's house
About twelve o'clock one night
Asking her if she's take a walk
Through the fields and meadows gay
It seemed to David, an eerie song to sing, especially in light of what he now knew. But then what could he say about music? And Nehru’s voice was plain and lonely, as it rose and continued:
I took her by the lily-white hand
And I kissed her cheek and chin
But I had no thoughts of murdering her
Nor in no evil way.
David was aware of being slightly drunk, and he wondered if Dan had done something to him, blunted his memory, made him forget. But he hadn’t forgotten, so maybe Dan had made him not care.
Sunny, for his part, had tied his abundance of hair into a bun, and was smoking pot with Dan, and he seemed unfazed by what Dan was telling him.
“I don’t want to tell you everything. I don’t want to tell you anything because it feels weird and raw, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I wrote stuff down, and you can have it if you like.”
“I would like,” Sunny said.
“You’re not gonna let this go,” Dan said.
“Huh?” Sunny was caught off guard by the way Dan said it.
“You’re like me, I think. I mean you are, but you aren’t. When you read what I have you’ll understand, Sunny, But some people are sort of called to stuff like this, stuff past what most people know.”
“And you think I am?”
“I think you crossed the country to find something.”
“I crossed it to find my friend?”
“I think that’s part of why you did it. I think you won’t stop until you find something amazing.”
“I’m sitting across from you,” Sunny said. “So, maybe I’ve found it.”
“Maybe,” Dan said, reflectively, but he didn’t buy it, and as much as he had warned David to stay away from all this, he saw there was not point in saying it to Sunny.
Sunny felt thoroughly alive for the first time since he’d come back from across the world. He had enjoyed his friends and liked school enough, but hanging in the club, and being with Brad and Nehru was the first time he’d felt actual joy. There had been the joy of making love to Jack before he left, but that had pretty much been it.
Brad had two kids and the oldest was with his one time girlfriend back in Michigan while the one he and Nehru had was staying with friends. Tonight they stayed up long into the night, smoking and drinking and Sunny asked, “What do you usually do when the kids are here?”
“The same thing,” Nehru confessed, “only a little quieter and with less pot.”
Now things were hazy and Sunny felt like he should go to bed, but he didn’t want to. It was either David or Dan who had said something about voting and democracy and Nehru said, “Voting is more or less useless. You do it to remind yourself not about what the country is, but about what you are.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Your little tiny vote doesn’t even matter, and during a presidential election it definitely doesn’t matter. But it’s a reminder that we should be free, that what we do should matter. Even though everything in society wants to make us a cog and we are subjects and not citizens, the vote is what reminds us to not be cogs, to be people, to do what we can.”
“Subjects not citizens,” Sunny murmured.
Dan had passed him the joint and he took a long hit while Dan said, “That sounds bleak.”
“It sounds bleak,” Nehru said, “But isn’t it just the truth? You see this inflation. A gallon of milk is three times as high as it was. The rent in Ohio has turned to Chicago rent, Chicago rent has turned to Miami rent. Miami rent has turned to San Francisco rent, and in San Francisco, half the goddamn city is homeless. Meanwhile, this one building in downtown Lassador… it was bought by out of town folks. They jacked up rents, and half ass made repairs. So you know what the fuck the city does? It gives them a grant! It could give its own citizens a grant to be able to afford their rent, but it gives rich out of town people a grant to keep being greedy, and that’s democracy, councils giving corporations of rich people more wealth. Individual people struggling and being told what to do, how much they’ll pay, how much more they’ll pay.”
“So you’re saying democracy doesn’t work,” David said, his floppy hair in his face.”
“And it’s not just that,” Brad said. He sounded sage and mellow. He had taken a shower and smelled like bergamot, and somewhere in this night, Nehru had gotten up and showered as well. “It never worked. Or maybe it worked perfectly. In Athens where they had the mother of democracies every citizen had a vote, but everyone in the city wasn’t a citizen. Women couldn’t leave the house. They ran a slave state. Democracy coincided with Athens building an empire and going to war with Sparta, both things which turned out badly. The Netherlands had a democracy before us, but of course it and we were slave states.”
“We’ve basically been a slave state longer than we haven’t,” Nehru noted.
“And we’ve always been a democracy.”
“So you’re saying democracy doesn’t work?”
Sunny felt like David had already said that.
“It does if you’re rich,” Brad said, stashing a cigarette behind his ear and against his silver hair.
“But if you’re rich, every system works.”
Even Brad was yawning his head off now. It was still summer, and outside Sunny could see the night take on that particular blue that warned of approaching morning.
“No one’s driving back to anywhere,” Dan said, decisively. “Dave can stay with me across the hall.”
“And Sunny can stay with us,” Nehru said, yawning, but Sunny felt Nehru’s hand on his thigh under the card table.
“If he’d like,” Brad said, standing up stretching so that his tee shirt lifted and Sunny could see his flat belly, see the navel and the hair that went down to the snap of his jeans. The bed under the window was big, and Sunny remembered his feelings for Brad when he first saw him, his admiration for Nehru’s beauty and his mind. He remembered when Dan had left him with the guitar, and as Dan and David departed, he remembered Brad saying: “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinning at him, shrugging. “Or anywhere else.”
So, his body thrumming, his penis going firm in his jeans while Nehru rubbed his thigh, Sunny said, “I would like.”
TOMORROW, THE WEEKEND PORTION
It was getting late, and folks were starting to leave. On the stage, Sunny was playing Dan’s guitar like an expert, blond hair in his face, and he had commented, “I miss this.”
David felt outside of it, not part of the music at all, and here were all of these, Brad and Nehru, Dan’s band, and the members of some others, playing together this late at night. And the Reavers asked Sunny if he’d play ‘House of the Rising Sun’ with them as folks were leaving and chairs were being set up. Dan played with them. He’d borrowed one of Brad’s guitars, and Brad came out of the kitchen where he and the last of the dish washers was wrapping up.
Nehru had been stacking chairs after he’d cleaned the taps, and now he was sitting on the stage when Dan said, “Sing for us.”
“Yeah,” Brad said. “Just one.”
Nehru nodded, and then he threw back his head. The man had a clear voice, more than tenor, almost transsexual, it could have been a boy’s or a woman’s and like a bell, he declared:
I fell in love with an Oxford girl
She had a dark and a roving eye
But I feeled too ashamed for to marry her
Her being so young a maid
I went up to her father's house
About twelve o'clock one night
Asking her if she's take a walk
Through the fields and meadows gay
It seemed to David, an eerie song to sing, especially in light of what he now knew. But then what could he say about music? And Nehru’s voice was plain and lonely, as it rose and continued:
I took her by the lily-white hand
And I kissed her cheek and chin
But I had no thoughts of murdering her
Nor in no evil way.
David was aware of being slightly drunk, and he wondered if Dan had done something to him, blunted his memory, made him forget. But he hadn’t forgotten, so maybe Dan had made him not care.
Sunny, for his part, had tied his abundance of hair into a bun, and was smoking pot with Dan, and he seemed unfazed by what Dan was telling him.
“I don’t want to tell you everything. I don’t want to tell you anything because it feels weird and raw, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I wrote stuff down, and you can have it if you like.”
“I would like,” Sunny said.
“You’re not gonna let this go,” Dan said.
“Huh?” Sunny was caught off guard by the way Dan said it.
“You’re like me, I think. I mean you are, but you aren’t. When you read what I have you’ll understand, Sunny, But some people are sort of called to stuff like this, stuff past what most people know.”
“And you think I am?”
“I think you crossed the country to find something.”
“I crossed it to find my friend?”
“I think that’s part of why you did it. I think you won’t stop until you find something amazing.”
“I’m sitting across from you,” Sunny said. “So, maybe I’ve found it.”
“Maybe,” Dan said, reflectively, but he didn’t buy it, and as much as he had warned David to stay away from all this, he saw there was not point in saying it to Sunny.
Sunny felt thoroughly alive for the first time since he’d come back from across the world. He had enjoyed his friends and liked school enough, but hanging in the club, and being with Brad and Nehru was the first time he’d felt actual joy. There had been the joy of making love to Jack before he left, but that had pretty much been it.
Brad had two kids and the oldest was with his one time girlfriend back in Michigan while the one he and Nehru had was staying with friends. Tonight they stayed up long into the night, smoking and drinking and Sunny asked, “What do you usually do when the kids are here?”
“The same thing,” Nehru confessed, “only a little quieter and with less pot.”
Now things were hazy and Sunny felt like he should go to bed, but he didn’t want to. It was either David or Dan who had said something about voting and democracy and Nehru said, “Voting is more or less useless. You do it to remind yourself not about what the country is, but about what you are.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Your little tiny vote doesn’t even matter, and during a presidential election it definitely doesn’t matter. But it’s a reminder that we should be free, that what we do should matter. Even though everything in society wants to make us a cog and we are subjects and not citizens, the vote is what reminds us to not be cogs, to be people, to do what we can.”
“Subjects not citizens,” Sunny murmured.
Dan had passed him the joint and he took a long hit while Dan said, “That sounds bleak.”
“It sounds bleak,” Nehru said, “But isn’t it just the truth? You see this inflation. A gallon of milk is three times as high as it was. The rent in Ohio has turned to Chicago rent, Chicago rent has turned to Miami rent. Miami rent has turned to San Francisco rent, and in San Francisco, half the goddamn city is homeless. Meanwhile, this one building in downtown Lassador… it was bought by out of town folks. They jacked up rents, and half ass made repairs. So you know what the fuck the city does? It gives them a grant! It could give its own citizens a grant to be able to afford their rent, but it gives rich out of town people a grant to keep being greedy, and that’s democracy, councils giving corporations of rich people more wealth. Individual people struggling and being told what to do, how much they’ll pay, how much more they’ll pay.”
“So you’re saying democracy doesn’t work,” David said, his floppy hair in his face.”
“And it’s not just that,” Brad said. He sounded sage and mellow. He had taken a shower and smelled like bergamot, and somewhere in this night, Nehru had gotten up and showered as well. “It never worked. Or maybe it worked perfectly. In Athens where they had the mother of democracies every citizen had a vote, but everyone in the city wasn’t a citizen. Women couldn’t leave the house. They ran a slave state. Democracy coincided with Athens building an empire and going to war with Sparta, both things which turned out badly. The Netherlands had a democracy before us, but of course it and we were slave states.”
“We’ve basically been a slave state longer than we haven’t,” Nehru noted.
“And we’ve always been a democracy.”
“So you’re saying democracy doesn’t work?”
Sunny felt like David had already said that.
“It does if you’re rich,” Brad said, stashing a cigarette behind his ear and against his silver hair.
“But if you’re rich, every system works.”
Even Brad was yawning his head off now. It was still summer, and outside Sunny could see the night take on that particular blue that warned of approaching morning.
“No one’s driving back to anywhere,” Dan said, decisively. “Dave can stay with me across the hall.”
“And Sunny can stay with us,” Nehru said, yawning, but Sunny felt Nehru’s hand on his thigh under the card table.
“If he’d like,” Brad said, standing up stretching so that his tee shirt lifted and Sunny could see his flat belly, see the navel and the hair that went down to the snap of his jeans. The bed under the window was big, and Sunny remembered his feelings for Brad when he first saw him, his admiration for Nehru’s beauty and his mind. He remembered when Dan had left him with the guitar, and as Dan and David departed, he remembered Brad saying: “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinning at him, shrugging. “Or anywhere else.”
So, his body thrumming, his penis going firm in his jeans while Nehru rubbed his thigh, Sunny said, “I would like.”
TOMORROW, THE WEEKEND PORTION
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I did enjoy that portion, you were right. It’s good to spend time with these friends new and old. Sunny is a welcome addition to the group and it’s good that at least in my opinion that David is better off not being so alone. Great writing and I look forward to the weekend portion tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I'm glad you enjoyed tonight;s passage.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WEEKEND PORTION
Even Brad was yawning his head off now. It was still summer, and outside Sunny could see the night take on that particular blue that warned of approaching morning.
“No one’s driving back to anywhere,” Dan said, decisively. “Dave can stay with me across the hall.”
“And Sunny can stay with us,” Nehru said, yawning, but Sunny felt Nehru’s hand on his thigh under the card table.
“If he’d like,” Brad said, standing up stretching so that his tee shirt lifted and Sunny could see his flat belly, see the navel and the hair that went down to the snap of his jeans. The bed under the window was big, and Sunny remembered his feelings for Brad when he first saw him, his admiration for Nehru’s beauty and his mind. He remembered when Dan had left him with the guitar, and as Dan and David departed, he remembered Brad saying: “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinning at him, shrugging. “Or anywhere else.”
So, his body thrumming, his penis going firm in his jeans while Nehru rubbed his thigh, Sunny said, “I would like.”
Nehru began turning off lights, blowing out candles, and Brad began opening up windows and lifting shades. The early morning air came in and the deep blue of dawn painted the semi dark room. Theirs did not look toward the street, but behind the building to a stretch of land ending at a fence of trees,
With no self consciousness, Brad stretched, yawned, lifed up his shirt and then unbuttoned his pants and was naked underneath. In the semi dark he was tall and beautiful and hairy, and the hair of his head stuck up. His penis rose a little, and he moved to the bed, turning back covers. Nehru had undressed in fluid movements and was smooth and brown and young looking and he waited for Sunny to climb into bed before him. No one told him to strip and no one told him not too, but Sunny felt foolish leaving his clothes on, and he felt free when he was naked as them both and climbed into bed between them.
As easily as they went from guitar to philosophy and sipping Scotch to smoking, they went to fitting themselves together. Of course a husband and a husband who made way for this would have figured something out, and maybe Nehru knew that Sunny had seen Brad first, been curious about him the whole night, for in the not morning he turned his back and pressed his buttocks to Suuny, not so much in invitation as to press him to Brad. Sunny was a little afraid, less bold that he thought he was. He’d been with boys like him, even Mitch, slight and smooth. Brad’s tallness, his sureness, his hairiness almost alarmed Sunny, the hardness of his cock, that friendly, winking, philosophical man, unnerved him, and he realized the nerves were thrills, and that he could not turn back from a thrill as he embraced Brad under the covers and Brad embraced him, belly, to belly, hands running along flesh, mouths tinged by cigarette smoke and Scotch met, lips and tongues pressed, the fire stoked all night rising. It was only now that Nehru turned and pressed himself to Sunny, stroking him tenderly, like a parent in the dark, kissing the back of his neck, running hands through his hair. Brad’s kisses went from Sunny to Nehru, to Sunny again, and Sunny turned to reach for Nehru as well, pressing on him kisses.
The respect which had made initial shyness was replaced by a reverential need, and in the heat of this love, Sunny went to his hands and knees. He knew they would have what they needed. He felt a finger with something slick expertly swipe through his ass, a brown bottle was pressed to his nose, and Nehru directed, “sniff,” and his head and his body went giddy with the fumes as suddenly he felt Brad pressing inside him, and he opened up his mouth and almost shouted with the relief of it, the knowledge that he’d wanted this man to fuck him since he’d seen him. The sky went from rich blue to pale pink and grey while that room was filled with the sounds of the creaking bed and the outcries of sex, while Brad held onto his hips and, grunting, swearing, pushed into him. Sunny pressed back like an expert, and they fitted themselves together There was, as the sun rose, no personality, just feeling, just essence, just being, As Sunny lay down for him, and Brad slammed into him, they both exhausted themselves until the moment when Brad rose up, screaming with the force of his ejaculation, and Sunny felt his back showered by slick heat.
Quietly, unsteady on his long feet, Brad rose and returned, wiping Sunny down and the three of them lay in the bed, and Brad looked shy and exhausted, his temples damp, his face flushed.
They were contented and innocent, but not shy, and Sunny was harder than he’d ever been. His assholed ached. The sun was coming from the east, but they had no east window here, so the light was inoffensive. Quietly, sniffing from that dizzying brown bottle, reaching into his pocket for a condom because he couldn’t trust himself to pull out, massaging the lube from the tube he saw, Sunny fitted himself inside Nehru, and they both sighed. As Brad rose and went about the apartment, as the smell off coffee brewing came to his nose, Sunny and Nehru picked up a rhythm and as the bed went heavy with the weight of Brad lying back down, Sunny’s neck and back arched with the surprise of orgasm, and his cock jumped as his balls drained, and in a forceful shower he was coming, body shaking, he was coming.
There were cups of coffee around the bed and cigarettes smoked, and the room with open windows and air coming in smelled faintly of the striving bodies of men, A text had come from David saying he and Dan were just waking up and would come over at eleven, and Sunny vaguely wondered why they would text first. He wondered if they knew what was happening here. In the new morning, while Brad and Nehru lay on their backs in bed, Sunny rose from one to the other, riding them hard, his eyes and mouth wide open, sometimes looking down in determination, sometimes staring up at the slowly twirling ceiling fan. Toward the end, Nehru groaned and turned him over and plowed him harder than Brad ever had. He felt Nehru coming in him, and as if it was too much seed, Nehru’s explosion in him, triggered a staggering explosion in Sunny. Fucked, ejaculated in, he fucked the pillow under him and spilled his seed all over those linens.
Even Brad was yawning his head off now. It was still summer, and outside Sunny could see the night take on that particular blue that warned of approaching morning.
“No one’s driving back to anywhere,” Dan said, decisively. “Dave can stay with me across the hall.”
“And Sunny can stay with us,” Nehru said, yawning, but Sunny felt Nehru’s hand on his thigh under the card table.
“If he’d like,” Brad said, standing up stretching so that his tee shirt lifted and Sunny could see his flat belly, see the navel and the hair that went down to the snap of his jeans. The bed under the window was big, and Sunny remembered his feelings for Brad when he first saw him, his admiration for Nehru’s beauty and his mind. He remembered when Dan had left him with the guitar, and as Dan and David departed, he remembered Brad saying: “You wanna show us what you got?”
“On this guitar?”
Brad grinning at him, shrugging. “Or anywhere else.”
So, his body thrumming, his penis going firm in his jeans while Nehru rubbed his thigh, Sunny said, “I would like.”
Nehru began turning off lights, blowing out candles, and Brad began opening up windows and lifting shades. The early morning air came in and the deep blue of dawn painted the semi dark room. Theirs did not look toward the street, but behind the building to a stretch of land ending at a fence of trees,
With no self consciousness, Brad stretched, yawned, lifed up his shirt and then unbuttoned his pants and was naked underneath. In the semi dark he was tall and beautiful and hairy, and the hair of his head stuck up. His penis rose a little, and he moved to the bed, turning back covers. Nehru had undressed in fluid movements and was smooth and brown and young looking and he waited for Sunny to climb into bed before him. No one told him to strip and no one told him not too, but Sunny felt foolish leaving his clothes on, and he felt free when he was naked as them both and climbed into bed between them.
As easily as they went from guitar to philosophy and sipping Scotch to smoking, they went to fitting themselves together. Of course a husband and a husband who made way for this would have figured something out, and maybe Nehru knew that Sunny had seen Brad first, been curious about him the whole night, for in the not morning he turned his back and pressed his buttocks to Suuny, not so much in invitation as to press him to Brad. Sunny was a little afraid, less bold that he thought he was. He’d been with boys like him, even Mitch, slight and smooth. Brad’s tallness, his sureness, his hairiness almost alarmed Sunny, the hardness of his cock, that friendly, winking, philosophical man, unnerved him, and he realized the nerves were thrills, and that he could not turn back from a thrill as he embraced Brad under the covers and Brad embraced him, belly, to belly, hands running along flesh, mouths tinged by cigarette smoke and Scotch met, lips and tongues pressed, the fire stoked all night rising. It was only now that Nehru turned and pressed himself to Sunny, stroking him tenderly, like a parent in the dark, kissing the back of his neck, running hands through his hair. Brad’s kisses went from Sunny to Nehru, to Sunny again, and Sunny turned to reach for Nehru as well, pressing on him kisses.
The respect which had made initial shyness was replaced by a reverential need, and in the heat of this love, Sunny went to his hands and knees. He knew they would have what they needed. He felt a finger with something slick expertly swipe through his ass, a brown bottle was pressed to his nose, and Nehru directed, “sniff,” and his head and his body went giddy with the fumes as suddenly he felt Brad pressing inside him, and he opened up his mouth and almost shouted with the relief of it, the knowledge that he’d wanted this man to fuck him since he’d seen him. The sky went from rich blue to pale pink and grey while that room was filled with the sounds of the creaking bed and the outcries of sex, while Brad held onto his hips and, grunting, swearing, pushed into him. Sunny pressed back like an expert, and they fitted themselves together There was, as the sun rose, no personality, just feeling, just essence, just being, As Sunny lay down for him, and Brad slammed into him, they both exhausted themselves until the moment when Brad rose up, screaming with the force of his ejaculation, and Sunny felt his back showered by slick heat.
Quietly, unsteady on his long feet, Brad rose and returned, wiping Sunny down and the three of them lay in the bed, and Brad looked shy and exhausted, his temples damp, his face flushed.
They were contented and innocent, but not shy, and Sunny was harder than he’d ever been. His assholed ached. The sun was coming from the east, but they had no east window here, so the light was inoffensive. Quietly, sniffing from that dizzying brown bottle, reaching into his pocket for a condom because he couldn’t trust himself to pull out, massaging the lube from the tube he saw, Sunny fitted himself inside Nehru, and they both sighed. As Brad rose and went about the apartment, as the smell off coffee brewing came to his nose, Sunny and Nehru picked up a rhythm and as the bed went heavy with the weight of Brad lying back down, Sunny’s neck and back arched with the surprise of orgasm, and his cock jumped as his balls drained, and in a forceful shower he was coming, body shaking, he was coming.
There were cups of coffee around the bed and cigarettes smoked, and the room with open windows and air coming in smelled faintly of the striving bodies of men, A text had come from David saying he and Dan were just waking up and would come over at eleven, and Sunny vaguely wondered why they would text first. He wondered if they knew what was happening here. In the new morning, while Brad and Nehru lay on their backs in bed, Sunny rose from one to the other, riding them hard, his eyes and mouth wide open, sometimes looking down in determination, sometimes staring up at the slowly twirling ceiling fan. Toward the end, Nehru groaned and turned him over and plowed him harder than Brad ever had. He felt Nehru coming in him, and as if it was too much seed, Nehru’s explosion in him, triggered a staggering explosion in Sunny. Fucked, ejaculated in, he fucked the pillow under him and spilled his seed all over those linens.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Alexander Kominsky tilted his face to the beat of the hot shower water. Nehru was scrubbing his back and shoulders, his lower back, going lower, then Sunny opened his mouth for water, spat it out and turned around, moving Nehru to the shower and washing him. Before they moved to let Brad through, Nehru washing his back, Sunny his front. Now and again washing turned to tasting and fooling around, but they came out one by one, drying vigorously, dressing and going for new cups of coffee and cigarettes. Nehru brought out a coffee cake they were halfway through when David and Dan arrived.
They were all together till it was near noon, and Brad stood up and swore, cigarette dangling from his lip, “I gotta pick up the kid.”
“I have to go check on the lunch crowd,” Nehru said.
“Well, then,” Dan decided, “it’s time to part ways for a time.”
He took Sunny aside and handed him a clutch of spiral notebooks, old and worn, Along with them was a much better looking new journal and Dan said, “This will tell you more than you are asking. Be careful.”
“Is this all about…” After the joy of last night, this particular subject seemed strange and unreal. Sunny whispered, “Them?”
“It’s mostly about me. You’ll get to know me. But they are in it. You can skip ahead to… the good part if you wish.”
Sunny nodded, his golden curls falling in his face.
“Be careful,” Dan said again. Then he said, “Dave, I’ll see you soon,” and was out the door.
“Will we see you again?” Nehru asked. He and Brad looked at Sunny more levelly than anyone ever had.
“Soon?” Brad raised an eyebrow.
Sunny’s body flooded with heat.
“Yes.”
The day was hot and full of sun, and as David drove them back to Glencastle on the freeway, Sunny said, “You all have a good night?”
“Yeah. We caught up with sutff, and went and dug up those notebooks.”
“You’re not going to go digging any further?”
“You’ve dug enough for the both of us, and if what Dan says is true, then that digging is above my pay grade… Above my every grade.”
“It was good of you to not come early,” Sunny said.
“Yeah.”
“And text ahead of time.”
“Yup.”
“Did you think something was going on?”
“I think you just told me you were gay and you kept looking at that Brad all night, and he and his husband were looking at you. And they seemed to want to keep you. That’s all I know.”
Sunny relaxed into his body. He could still feel Brad and Nehru throbbing in him, their fingertips, their kisses pressing gently on him, their limbs sliding over his. His body remembered the movements of sex, flesh fitting flesh.
“What people do when doors are closed is personal,” David said. “It’s their business. You might even say it’s sacred.”
“I like you, Dave Lawry.”
David grinned from the corner of his mouth and switched lanes.
“I like you too, Alexander Kominsky.
“What are you plans now?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sunny said. “I should have some plans. I think I’m going to stay here for a bit.”
“Well,” David said, almost blandly, “We’re glad to have you.”
Once it was established Sunny was staying in town, David told him, “You should pull your shit out of that motel and stay with me till you find a place.”
David had been a supremely lonely human being back in Lassador, and last night was the first time he’d felt like a human being in a while. Having someone like Sunny around would do him good, and Sunny agreed to it.
“If you drive straight through Lassador, how far is Rawlston from Glencastle?”
“More than it takes on the expressway. Rawlston’s on the eastern edge of Lassador, and that’s barely Lassador at all.”
Sunny nodded. He wanted to learn what had happened to Blake. He wanted to read these journals. He wanted to go back to the apartment and sleep in Brad and Nehru’s bed.
“Should we get Chinese tonight?” Sunny wondered.
“Uh, we could. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, since we’re roomies and all…”
“We’re temporary roomies,” David said.
“But roomies all the same. Anyway, if I want to learn more about these folks—“
“Did Dan not give you a talking to?”
“I think the talking to Dan gave me is not the same talking to he gave you.”
David did not ask what that meant, but already Sunny was picturing himself getting a job at the Blue Note and perhaps now and again staying with his new friends while he tried to learn the truth. It wasn’t impossible.
“Do you want to read with me?” Sunny asked, opening up Dan’s notebooks?
“What?” David belched lightly, beer in hand, and stretched out on the couch in jeans and a tee shirt. He wasn’t bad looking. Sunny sort of wished Dave was bi.
“No,” Dave said. “That would be weird for me.”
Sunny, crunching on an egg roll, opening up the last of the notebooks. He had numbered them, and he was reading Dan’s surprisingly neat handwriting….
“We are in a mortuary,” the man said simply. “Stenger and Stenger’s. Germantown.”
Dan turned his face in horror from the man who lay on the tray not far from him, and Carter said, “Why are you horrified? A few moments ago you were as dead as he is. You were not merely sleeping. You were a corpse, my good Daniel. Have been one for the better part of a day.”
I nodded. There was no time to be scared. There was only time to learn.
“Who made me?” I asked. “Who is she?”
Carter said, “Rosamunde Court.”
Sunny slammed shut the notebook.
“Wha?” David turned to him, looking down his long sharp nose in concern.
“Rosamunde Court.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Rather than answer, Sunny continued reading:
“And you are part of her court now. She will tell you all. She has come to the land of Ohio to meet her uncle and his court and defeat them. You have been enlisted to her side and, I believe, you will make a very good soldier.”
“A soldier,” Sunny murmured. He almost believed it and more than believed it at the same time. He looked at the other notebooks before him and knew that, despite his desire to know the end, there was one accurate place to begin, and it was the beginning.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
They were all together till it was near noon, and Brad stood up and swore, cigarette dangling from his lip, “I gotta pick up the kid.”
“I have to go check on the lunch crowd,” Nehru said.
“Well, then,” Dan decided, “it’s time to part ways for a time.”
He took Sunny aside and handed him a clutch of spiral notebooks, old and worn, Along with them was a much better looking new journal and Dan said, “This will tell you more than you are asking. Be careful.”
“Is this all about…” After the joy of last night, this particular subject seemed strange and unreal. Sunny whispered, “Them?”
“It’s mostly about me. You’ll get to know me. But they are in it. You can skip ahead to… the good part if you wish.”
Sunny nodded, his golden curls falling in his face.
“Be careful,” Dan said again. Then he said, “Dave, I’ll see you soon,” and was out the door.
“Will we see you again?” Nehru asked. He and Brad looked at Sunny more levelly than anyone ever had.
“Soon?” Brad raised an eyebrow.
Sunny’s body flooded with heat.
“Yes.”
The day was hot and full of sun, and as David drove them back to Glencastle on the freeway, Sunny said, “You all have a good night?”
“Yeah. We caught up with sutff, and went and dug up those notebooks.”
“You’re not going to go digging any further?”
“You’ve dug enough for the both of us, and if what Dan says is true, then that digging is above my pay grade… Above my every grade.”
“It was good of you to not come early,” Sunny said.
“Yeah.”
“And text ahead of time.”
“Yup.”
“Did you think something was going on?”
“I think you just told me you were gay and you kept looking at that Brad all night, and he and his husband were looking at you. And they seemed to want to keep you. That’s all I know.”
Sunny relaxed into his body. He could still feel Brad and Nehru throbbing in him, their fingertips, their kisses pressing gently on him, their limbs sliding over his. His body remembered the movements of sex, flesh fitting flesh.
“What people do when doors are closed is personal,” David said. “It’s their business. You might even say it’s sacred.”
“I like you, Dave Lawry.”
David grinned from the corner of his mouth and switched lanes.
“I like you too, Alexander Kominsky.
“What are you plans now?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sunny said. “I should have some plans. I think I’m going to stay here for a bit.”
“Well,” David said, almost blandly, “We’re glad to have you.”
Once it was established Sunny was staying in town, David told him, “You should pull your shit out of that motel and stay with me till you find a place.”
David had been a supremely lonely human being back in Lassador, and last night was the first time he’d felt like a human being in a while. Having someone like Sunny around would do him good, and Sunny agreed to it.
“If you drive straight through Lassador, how far is Rawlston from Glencastle?”
“More than it takes on the expressway. Rawlston’s on the eastern edge of Lassador, and that’s barely Lassador at all.”
Sunny nodded. He wanted to learn what had happened to Blake. He wanted to read these journals. He wanted to go back to the apartment and sleep in Brad and Nehru’s bed.
“Should we get Chinese tonight?” Sunny wondered.
“Uh, we could. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, since we’re roomies and all…”
“We’re temporary roomies,” David said.
“But roomies all the same. Anyway, if I want to learn more about these folks—“
“Did Dan not give you a talking to?”
“I think the talking to Dan gave me is not the same talking to he gave you.”
David did not ask what that meant, but already Sunny was picturing himself getting a job at the Blue Note and perhaps now and again staying with his new friends while he tried to learn the truth. It wasn’t impossible.
“Do you want to read with me?” Sunny asked, opening up Dan’s notebooks?
“What?” David belched lightly, beer in hand, and stretched out on the couch in jeans and a tee shirt. He wasn’t bad looking. Sunny sort of wished Dave was bi.
“No,” Dave said. “That would be weird for me.”
Sunny, crunching on an egg roll, opening up the last of the notebooks. He had numbered them, and he was reading Dan’s surprisingly neat handwriting….
“We are in a mortuary,” the man said simply. “Stenger and Stenger’s. Germantown.”
Dan turned his face in horror from the man who lay on the tray not far from him, and Carter said, “Why are you horrified? A few moments ago you were as dead as he is. You were not merely sleeping. You were a corpse, my good Daniel. Have been one for the better part of a day.”
I nodded. There was no time to be scared. There was only time to learn.
“Who made me?” I asked. “Who is she?”
Carter said, “Rosamunde Court.”
Sunny slammed shut the notebook.
“Wha?” David turned to him, looking down his long sharp nose in concern.
“Rosamunde Court.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Rather than answer, Sunny continued reading:
“And you are part of her court now. She will tell you all. She has come to the land of Ohio to meet her uncle and his court and defeat them. You have been enlisted to her side and, I believe, you will make a very good soldier.”
“A soldier,” Sunny murmured. He almost believed it and more than believed it at the same time. He looked at the other notebooks before him and knew that, despite his desire to know the end, there was one accurate place to begin, and it was the beginning.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was an excellent portion! It seems like Sunny had a great time with Brad and Nehru and I am glad he is sticking around. I am also glad that Dan shared his notebooks. As was said at the end this is just the beginning and I am looking forward to seeing what happens. Great writing and I look forward to more after the weekend! I hope you have a nice weekend too!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, Sunny got fucked by Brad and Nehru, which seems like an intense time and the beginning of some things. Meanwhile, the beginning of thigns also seems the notebooks given by Dan, so we will see what hapens, or at least we will learn more about Dan very shortly.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WELCOME BACK. NOW WE BEGIN CHAPTER FIVE AND THE JOURNAL OF DAN RAWLINSON...
The first time Dan Rawlinson saw the house, he was feeling lonely. It was Halloween. He was fifteen and he and his friends had driven down to Glencastle in Will Bonney’s dad’s car. They left from the south end of Lassador, traveling about forty five minutes southwest, a tang in the blue air, when they rolled down the windows, and now they were on a street lined in flame colored October trees.
The house with its turrets and large diamond shaped windows, its wrap around porch and the great cupola looking down on him was deep purple and green, shuttered, and no one else seemed to notice it. He and all his friends leapt out of the car with their bags and their half assed costumes, and Jack said, “This rich old neighborhood is the best candy in town.”
“And we’re not really even in town,” Will Bonney said.
“Divide and conquer and beat up kids if you have to,” Jack said. “See you guys in… synchronize watches… two hours.”
As they split up, Jack suddenly turned around and said, “I was joking about the whole beating up kids thing. You know that… right?”
They just looked at him, plastic bags hanging from their hands, and then they all split up to see how much of the candy of Glencastle, Ohio they could make their own. The looks on peoples’ faces often implied, “Aren’t you kind of old to be trick or treating?” and one Black woman simply said it, but she gave Dan candy anyway. They were right of course. It would have actually been ten times easier to go to the store, buy candy and just eat it. So it must not have been about the candy. It must have been about something else. The sky was going that strange bruised color that only happened in October, and Dan was standing at the top of a hill. seeing the river, wide and silver blue threading through the trees that were losing their leaves, and from this point he looked down on the block they had come to and saw that house.
` “That’s what I’m looking for. That’s the different thing I’m looking for.”
He made his way to the street where the car was. Dan noticed that, among the old Victorians there were a few houses where kids did not go. And why didn’t they go? But he would go. He would go to that very house he had first seen. There was no gate, and he just went up the brick path and to the great wrap around porch, and he came to the large wooden door with lights shining through the cut glass window and the lace curtains, and he knocked.
It was opened by a Black woman, and Dan hoped she wouldn’t say something withering like the woman he’d seen before. But any sort of hope didn’t matter because she was so beautiful, and so strange. Her eyes were blue as her skin was dark, and black hair fell down her back like, he felt stupid for thinking it, an Indian princess. She was exactly as tall as he was, and would always be that way, and he wondered if she wasn’t in a costume, for she stood in a red dress with a great dark blue shawl around her shoulders.
And she was still looking at him.
“Trick or treat!” he said.
“Who is it?” a voice came from down the hall.
The woman opened the door, turned around and called, “Trick or treaters! One,” she modified, “Trick or treater.”
There was silence, and then laughter, and then the voice said, “Well, then you have to bring him in.”
The woman nodded and did so, closing the door behind Dan.
The foyer was of paneled and polished wood, and he could see a large old timey living room off to his right. Dan sniffed the air. “Is that coffee?”
“We’re just getting up,” the woman said. “Would you like a cup?”
“I…” Dan looked at his watch.
“You will not be late to meet your friends again,” she said, gently. “Come. I am Tanitha.”
“I’m Dan.”
“We’ve been waiting for you,”
“Really?”
She threw back her head, laughing, and Dan was convinced that she was not only the most beautiful woman in the world, but the lightest and happiest woman he’d ever seen.
“Of course not! Sit, I’ll cut the coffee cake.”
In a moment, a man came down the stairs, and he was dressed well and looked like he could have been Tanitha’s brother except that he did not have the blue eyes. They were dark, but Dan could not tell if they were brown or black because that would have entailed staring. The man well dressed, and everytime Dan tried to look at him closely he took in vest, good trousers, tie, a ring with a green stone on a long brown finger. But his eye was almost compelled to slide away before looking too long.
“We have a guest,” the man said, and his voice was elegant, but again, Dan could not say how, could not place the accent. It wasn’t foreign, but it wasn’t exactly American. As the man smiled broadly at him, Dan gave up trying to figure these things out. He knew it would be rude to ask.
“Happy Halloween,” the man said. “I guess that’s why you came by?”
“Yes,” Dan said. As he spoke he was surprised by the disappearance of teenage haltings, the “ums” and the “likes”. In the presence of these strangers, even as Tanitha cut the warm coffee cake and handed him a slice. he was possessed of a maturity, and evenness of voice he’d never known.
“Thank you,” Dan said, and the man poured him coffee and said, “It’s never been a big night for us. Cream is over there. I suppose it’s a big night for witches, though, but not for us.”
Dan gave a half laugh because he was only half sure this man was joking, and he spooned a great deal of sugar into his coffee.
“I am Kruinh by the way,” the man said, extending his hand. It was a long hand, but Kruinh was not a large man, as tall as Tanitha, and as tall as Dan. Dan looked around this kitchen with its hanging herbs and copper pans looking so peaceful and old timey and not old timey, but…
Out of time.
He said, “Are you married?”
Kruinh laughed and Tanitha shook his head.
“Kruinh is my father,” Tanitha said.
Dan looked quickly at Kruinh and tried to assess how that could be possible. There were, to be sure, well preserved adults, and everyone had heard the phrase “Black don’t crack.” But this man was visibly young, not youthful or youngish, but young, and his daughter was a full grown woman.
“I think,” Kruinh said, sipping his coffee, “that you have questions.”
“None of them are really polite,” Dan said.
“Daniel Rawlinson, you are a very polite young man,” Kruinh said.
Dan nodded, and then even as something came to his mind, Kruinh continued, “And of course, at this moment you are wondering how I knew your name, and so I will tell you mine. I am Kruinh Kertesz and this is my daughter Tanitha. Sometimes she is Kertesz, but sometimes she is Tzepesh. You are welcome into our home anytime you can find it. I am a great believer in fate, in things being…. Meant. I believe in destiny.”
And Dan found himself asking, found himself because it seemed like he had been meant to ask it, and he wanted to resist this, “Why is that?”
Kruinh said, cheerily, “You would never have found this house otherwise.”
Dan blinked at him.
“No one else did,” Kruinh said. “Did you see anyone running to this door asking for candy? Did any of your friends even see it? No. You were meant to find us.”
“Are you witches?”
“Well, you already know we aren’t,” Tanitha said.
“Then…” Dan felt at a loss, “what are you?”
“You are the one who came here and knocked on our door with that lame line,” Tanitha said, “knowing full well there’d be no candy here tonight. And yet you came, so the better question is who are you? And what did you come here for?”
“I…” Dan started. “I… Came to find… I dunno.”
“You do know,” Kruinh said, softly.
“Something more,” Dan said. “I came to find something more.”
Kruinh nodded.
“That is what we are,” he said. “We are that something more. Or part of it.”
Dan did not say anything else because he didn’t know what else to say. He had a strong feeling that whatever came out of his mouth might be foolish, and there was a consciousness in him that had never been present before, and it was saying Enjoy this moment. Enjoy these people, this cake, this coffee. This is one of the only times you’ve had coffee. This is one of the only times you have been…
There was no worry about meeting his friends on time. He knew that he would. He knew that in this moment he was in an alright place, that he would never have been here if he wasn’t supposed to be.
MORE TOMORROW
The first time Dan Rawlinson saw the house, he was feeling lonely. It was Halloween. He was fifteen and he and his friends had driven down to Glencastle in Will Bonney’s dad’s car. They left from the south end of Lassador, traveling about forty five minutes southwest, a tang in the blue air, when they rolled down the windows, and now they were on a street lined in flame colored October trees.
The house with its turrets and large diamond shaped windows, its wrap around porch and the great cupola looking down on him was deep purple and green, shuttered, and no one else seemed to notice it. He and all his friends leapt out of the car with their bags and their half assed costumes, and Jack said, “This rich old neighborhood is the best candy in town.”
“And we’re not really even in town,” Will Bonney said.
“Divide and conquer and beat up kids if you have to,” Jack said. “See you guys in… synchronize watches… two hours.”
As they split up, Jack suddenly turned around and said, “I was joking about the whole beating up kids thing. You know that… right?”
They just looked at him, plastic bags hanging from their hands, and then they all split up to see how much of the candy of Glencastle, Ohio they could make their own. The looks on peoples’ faces often implied, “Aren’t you kind of old to be trick or treating?” and one Black woman simply said it, but she gave Dan candy anyway. They were right of course. It would have actually been ten times easier to go to the store, buy candy and just eat it. So it must not have been about the candy. It must have been about something else. The sky was going that strange bruised color that only happened in October, and Dan was standing at the top of a hill. seeing the river, wide and silver blue threading through the trees that were losing their leaves, and from this point he looked down on the block they had come to and saw that house.
` “That’s what I’m looking for. That’s the different thing I’m looking for.”
He made his way to the street where the car was. Dan noticed that, among the old Victorians there were a few houses where kids did not go. And why didn’t they go? But he would go. He would go to that very house he had first seen. There was no gate, and he just went up the brick path and to the great wrap around porch, and he came to the large wooden door with lights shining through the cut glass window and the lace curtains, and he knocked.
It was opened by a Black woman, and Dan hoped she wouldn’t say something withering like the woman he’d seen before. But any sort of hope didn’t matter because she was so beautiful, and so strange. Her eyes were blue as her skin was dark, and black hair fell down her back like, he felt stupid for thinking it, an Indian princess. She was exactly as tall as he was, and would always be that way, and he wondered if she wasn’t in a costume, for she stood in a red dress with a great dark blue shawl around her shoulders.
And she was still looking at him.
“Trick or treat!” he said.
“Who is it?” a voice came from down the hall.
The woman opened the door, turned around and called, “Trick or treaters! One,” she modified, “Trick or treater.”
There was silence, and then laughter, and then the voice said, “Well, then you have to bring him in.”
The woman nodded and did so, closing the door behind Dan.
The foyer was of paneled and polished wood, and he could see a large old timey living room off to his right. Dan sniffed the air. “Is that coffee?”
“We’re just getting up,” the woman said. “Would you like a cup?”
“I…” Dan looked at his watch.
“You will not be late to meet your friends again,” she said, gently. “Come. I am Tanitha.”
“I’m Dan.”
“We’ve been waiting for you,”
“Really?”
She threw back her head, laughing, and Dan was convinced that she was not only the most beautiful woman in the world, but the lightest and happiest woman he’d ever seen.
“Of course not! Sit, I’ll cut the coffee cake.”
In a moment, a man came down the stairs, and he was dressed well and looked like he could have been Tanitha’s brother except that he did not have the blue eyes. They were dark, but Dan could not tell if they were brown or black because that would have entailed staring. The man well dressed, and everytime Dan tried to look at him closely he took in vest, good trousers, tie, a ring with a green stone on a long brown finger. But his eye was almost compelled to slide away before looking too long.
“We have a guest,” the man said, and his voice was elegant, but again, Dan could not say how, could not place the accent. It wasn’t foreign, but it wasn’t exactly American. As the man smiled broadly at him, Dan gave up trying to figure these things out. He knew it would be rude to ask.
“Happy Halloween,” the man said. “I guess that’s why you came by?”
“Yes,” Dan said. As he spoke he was surprised by the disappearance of teenage haltings, the “ums” and the “likes”. In the presence of these strangers, even as Tanitha cut the warm coffee cake and handed him a slice. he was possessed of a maturity, and evenness of voice he’d never known.
“Thank you,” Dan said, and the man poured him coffee and said, “It’s never been a big night for us. Cream is over there. I suppose it’s a big night for witches, though, but not for us.”
Dan gave a half laugh because he was only half sure this man was joking, and he spooned a great deal of sugar into his coffee.
“I am Kruinh by the way,” the man said, extending his hand. It was a long hand, but Kruinh was not a large man, as tall as Tanitha, and as tall as Dan. Dan looked around this kitchen with its hanging herbs and copper pans looking so peaceful and old timey and not old timey, but…
Out of time.
He said, “Are you married?”
Kruinh laughed and Tanitha shook his head.
“Kruinh is my father,” Tanitha said.
Dan looked quickly at Kruinh and tried to assess how that could be possible. There were, to be sure, well preserved adults, and everyone had heard the phrase “Black don’t crack.” But this man was visibly young, not youthful or youngish, but young, and his daughter was a full grown woman.
“I think,” Kruinh said, sipping his coffee, “that you have questions.”
“None of them are really polite,” Dan said.
“Daniel Rawlinson, you are a very polite young man,” Kruinh said.
Dan nodded, and then even as something came to his mind, Kruinh continued, “And of course, at this moment you are wondering how I knew your name, and so I will tell you mine. I am Kruinh Kertesz and this is my daughter Tanitha. Sometimes she is Kertesz, but sometimes she is Tzepesh. You are welcome into our home anytime you can find it. I am a great believer in fate, in things being…. Meant. I believe in destiny.”
And Dan found himself asking, found himself because it seemed like he had been meant to ask it, and he wanted to resist this, “Why is that?”
Kruinh said, cheerily, “You would never have found this house otherwise.”
Dan blinked at him.
“No one else did,” Kruinh said. “Did you see anyone running to this door asking for candy? Did any of your friends even see it? No. You were meant to find us.”
“Are you witches?”
“Well, you already know we aren’t,” Tanitha said.
“Then…” Dan felt at a loss, “what are you?”
“You are the one who came here and knocked on our door with that lame line,” Tanitha said, “knowing full well there’d be no candy here tonight. And yet you came, so the better question is who are you? And what did you come here for?”
“I…” Dan started. “I… Came to find… I dunno.”
“You do know,” Kruinh said, softly.
“Something more,” Dan said. “I came to find something more.”
Kruinh nodded.
“That is what we are,” he said. “We are that something more. Or part of it.”
Dan did not say anything else because he didn’t know what else to say. He had a strong feeling that whatever came out of his mouth might be foolish, and there was a consciousness in him that had never been present before, and it was saying Enjoy this moment. Enjoy these people, this cake, this coffee. This is one of the only times you’ve had coffee. This is one of the only times you have been…
There was no worry about meeting his friends on time. He knew that he would. He knew that in this moment he was in an alright place, that he would never have been here if he wasn’t supposed to be.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was an excellent portion! Dan’s journal is very interesting and it’s cool to see him meet some characters familiar to us in his past. I hope there is at least a fair amount more of this. Dan’s history is fascinating to me. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, yes. Dan has a very large history. He's such an important part of the story.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WE RETURN TO DAN'S FIRST MEETING WITH KRUINH AND TANITHA AS SUNNY CONTINUES TO READ DAN'S JOURNAL
This is one of the only times you have been…
“This is a good… dinner,” Dan started.
“You know it isn’t that,” Kruinh said without raising his eyes.
“Laurie brought a frittata,” Tanitha noted. “We could have that.”
“Um,” Kruinh began, swilling coffee, “I thought you’d made it.”
“You most certainly did not,” Tanitha said.
“Tanitha does not have,” Kruinh began, “should we say, cooking skills.”
“That’s what the servants are for,” Tanitha said, grandly, and though she laughed, Dan thought she was only half joking.
“This is breakfast for you?” Dan said.
“That it is,” Tanitha answered, “and you should be glad that we woke up early tonight. I don’t know,” she turned to her father, “Maybe there is something about this night. For all of us. I can feel it.”
This is one of the only times you have been… Yourself.
Tanitha rose to take the frittata out of the oven, and Kruinh, taking out a silver case and pulling up a cheroot, lit it. As the sweet smoke drifted to Dan’s nostrils, Kruinh said, “And tell us about Dan Rawlinson.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“No?”
“Maybe,” Tanitha said, setting the frittata on the table, “there isn’t much to tell… yet.”
“I hope there is,” Dan said. “One day. Eventually. Me and my friends are trying to start a band. It never comes together.”
“Maybe you should get better friends,” Kruinh suggested.
The frittata was delicious, and Dan said so. He said, “You all can’t… predict the future or anything?”
“Not anything like that,” Kruinh said. “We are distinctly unmagical.”
“Then why does this night feel magical?” Dan said.
Tanitha said, “A witch would say the whole world is magical.”
“But—” Dan began.
“I am no witch,” Kruinh said. “And rarely have I met one.”
“A meeting with their kind is rare,” Tanitha said, and then she looked at Dan’s empty plate and looked to the clock.
“It’s time. Your friends must be on their way back to the car.”
She rose, pulling on the shawl that had fallen from her shoulder and Dan, after shaking Kruinh’s hand, left with Tanitha through the great living room that was filled with old sofas and fat chairs looking from the yard onto the street, homely tables and a great lamp with an old stainglass shade. There, on the other side of the hedge and past the trees was Will’s Dad’s car with Will leaning against it, tapping his foot, and here were Jack and Riley coming up from the right with plastic bags swinging.
“Thank you so much,” Dan said. He did not say her name. It seemed too forward.
“Be safe, Daniel Rawlinson,” Kruinh called as Tanitha led him to the door.
At the heavy door, suddenly Tanitha took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead.
“That’s a protection,” she said. “And in the end, it will guide you back.”
“Wha?” Dan began, but Tanitha opened the door and shoved him out saying, “Go, before they leave you.”
Dan ran off the porch steps. At the bottom he stopped and memorized the metal numbers 4848. 4848 Brummel Street. Well, then. And he ran down the walk and onto the sidewalk, and Will looked up and said, “Where were you?”
When Dan opened his mouth, Will said, “Never mind. We need to be heading back.”
The moon was fat and white, and the street was lit by few lamps. When he hopped in the backseat and took one last look at the house of Tanitha and Kruinh, he could not tell which one it was. Was it that one, or the one next to it? But hadn’t there been a cupola? Ah, but there was no time to look. He would look again. He would return, but for now they were headed back to town.
Dan Rawlinson was not a fighter. He was not confrontational, and he had never expected to find himself in the dean’s office of Saint Ignatius High School. Sitting across from him with a bruised cheek was the silliest boy in this school, Myron Keller, and what a stupid name was that?
Dan still doesn’t know how the fight happened. Jack had gotten involved and then Kris Strauss had gotten involved, though reluctantly, and Dan had to get involved once Will did. You had to be loyal, and it wasn’t really that big of a deal, but Myron did get hit in the face with a tray and Dan had punched Mike Linder, though by accident, and it hardly mattered because in the end the ones that Dean Shep had seen were him and Myron and so here they sat.
Myron crossed his arms over his chest. He was an annoying kid, tall and skinny. He wore a turtleneck all the time and a blue blazer, and had a bulging Adam’s apple along with a big nose bordered by eyes like headlamps in a big round head that sported a shitty page boy haircut.
“You should have stayed out of it,” Myron told Dan, his big eyes now forming blue slits.
“You shouldn’t have started it.”
“I didn’t start it.”
“But here we are.”
“Here we are,” Myron echoed.
Then Myron screwed his face up and said, “Why did you paint your fingernails black last year?”
“Why did you parents name you Myron?”
“It’s a family name, and no one calls me that.”
“Yeah they do.”
“My friends call me Myre.”
“The friends who you ended up in this office because of?”
“Same way you ended up here.”
“Maybe,” Dan said.
Then he said, “You all walk around like you’re so stuck up. Swim team, polo and all that.”
“I’m not stuck up,” Myron said. “It doesn’t make you stuck up to know your own worth.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means—”
“It means you’re rich,” Dan said.
“I am not rich.”
“That’s not true. Your family owns Schiller Beer, and a bunch of other stuff.”
“They own it. I don’t. Myron said.
“But you do have money,” Dan said.
“So what?” Myron turned red and looked visibly upset.
“I think Mike and Jeff and all those assholes you hang out with use you cause you’re rich and you buy them shit. That’s what I think.”
“You sure do have a lot of opinions for someone who doesn’t really know me.”
“I don’t have that many opinions,” Dan said, “but I’ve got that one.”
“Well,” Myron said. “You know I’m not stupid, right?”
“I guess.”
“I know why some people hang out with me. I’m not dumb.”
Dan shrugged.
“It’s just not right,” Dan finally said.
“Why do you care?”
“Because your friends should stick by you and be your friends because of you, not… use you.”
“Well, maybe I’m not lucky as you with friends.”
“Maybe you should make better friends and tell everyone else to fuck off.”
Myron looked at Dan, and then he burst out laughing.
Dan tried to stop himself, but as Myron continued laughing, Dan laughed too.
“That’s not like me,” Dan said. “That’s not the kind of thing I say.”
“Is it true you’re starting a band?”
“I’ve been trying to start a band all year,” Dan said.
“Me too,” Myron said.
“Oh?”
“Well, not starting so much as thinking. I’ve been trying to get my cousins in on it.”
“That’s lame,” Dan said.
“I know, that’s what they think too.”
“A band,” Dan said.
“Yep,” Myron said. “A band.”
MORE IN A FEW DAYS
This is one of the only times you have been…
“This is a good… dinner,” Dan started.
“You know it isn’t that,” Kruinh said without raising his eyes.
“Laurie brought a frittata,” Tanitha noted. “We could have that.”
“Um,” Kruinh began, swilling coffee, “I thought you’d made it.”
“You most certainly did not,” Tanitha said.
“Tanitha does not have,” Kruinh began, “should we say, cooking skills.”
“That’s what the servants are for,” Tanitha said, grandly, and though she laughed, Dan thought she was only half joking.
“This is breakfast for you?” Dan said.
“That it is,” Tanitha answered, “and you should be glad that we woke up early tonight. I don’t know,” she turned to her father, “Maybe there is something about this night. For all of us. I can feel it.”
This is one of the only times you have been… Yourself.
Tanitha rose to take the frittata out of the oven, and Kruinh, taking out a silver case and pulling up a cheroot, lit it. As the sweet smoke drifted to Dan’s nostrils, Kruinh said, “And tell us about Dan Rawlinson.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“No?”
“Maybe,” Tanitha said, setting the frittata on the table, “there isn’t much to tell… yet.”
“I hope there is,” Dan said. “One day. Eventually. Me and my friends are trying to start a band. It never comes together.”
“Maybe you should get better friends,” Kruinh suggested.
The frittata was delicious, and Dan said so. He said, “You all can’t… predict the future or anything?”
“Not anything like that,” Kruinh said. “We are distinctly unmagical.”
“Then why does this night feel magical?” Dan said.
Tanitha said, “A witch would say the whole world is magical.”
“But—” Dan began.
“I am no witch,” Kruinh said. “And rarely have I met one.”
“A meeting with their kind is rare,” Tanitha said, and then she looked at Dan’s empty plate and looked to the clock.
“It’s time. Your friends must be on their way back to the car.”
She rose, pulling on the shawl that had fallen from her shoulder and Dan, after shaking Kruinh’s hand, left with Tanitha through the great living room that was filled with old sofas and fat chairs looking from the yard onto the street, homely tables and a great lamp with an old stainglass shade. There, on the other side of the hedge and past the trees was Will’s Dad’s car with Will leaning against it, tapping his foot, and here were Jack and Riley coming up from the right with plastic bags swinging.
“Thank you so much,” Dan said. He did not say her name. It seemed too forward.
“Be safe, Daniel Rawlinson,” Kruinh called as Tanitha led him to the door.
At the heavy door, suddenly Tanitha took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead.
“That’s a protection,” she said. “And in the end, it will guide you back.”
“Wha?” Dan began, but Tanitha opened the door and shoved him out saying, “Go, before they leave you.”
Dan ran off the porch steps. At the bottom he stopped and memorized the metal numbers 4848. 4848 Brummel Street. Well, then. And he ran down the walk and onto the sidewalk, and Will looked up and said, “Where were you?”
When Dan opened his mouth, Will said, “Never mind. We need to be heading back.”
The moon was fat and white, and the street was lit by few lamps. When he hopped in the backseat and took one last look at the house of Tanitha and Kruinh, he could not tell which one it was. Was it that one, or the one next to it? But hadn’t there been a cupola? Ah, but there was no time to look. He would look again. He would return, but for now they were headed back to town.
Dan Rawlinson was not a fighter. He was not confrontational, and he had never expected to find himself in the dean’s office of Saint Ignatius High School. Sitting across from him with a bruised cheek was the silliest boy in this school, Myron Keller, and what a stupid name was that?
Dan still doesn’t know how the fight happened. Jack had gotten involved and then Kris Strauss had gotten involved, though reluctantly, and Dan had to get involved once Will did. You had to be loyal, and it wasn’t really that big of a deal, but Myron did get hit in the face with a tray and Dan had punched Mike Linder, though by accident, and it hardly mattered because in the end the ones that Dean Shep had seen were him and Myron and so here they sat.
Myron crossed his arms over his chest. He was an annoying kid, tall and skinny. He wore a turtleneck all the time and a blue blazer, and had a bulging Adam’s apple along with a big nose bordered by eyes like headlamps in a big round head that sported a shitty page boy haircut.
“You should have stayed out of it,” Myron told Dan, his big eyes now forming blue slits.
“You shouldn’t have started it.”
“I didn’t start it.”
“But here we are.”
“Here we are,” Myron echoed.
Then Myron screwed his face up and said, “Why did you paint your fingernails black last year?”
“Why did you parents name you Myron?”
“It’s a family name, and no one calls me that.”
“Yeah they do.”
“My friends call me Myre.”
“The friends who you ended up in this office because of?”
“Same way you ended up here.”
“Maybe,” Dan said.
Then he said, “You all walk around like you’re so stuck up. Swim team, polo and all that.”
“I’m not stuck up,” Myron said. “It doesn’t make you stuck up to know your own worth.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means—”
“It means you’re rich,” Dan said.
“I am not rich.”
“That’s not true. Your family owns Schiller Beer, and a bunch of other stuff.”
“They own it. I don’t. Myron said.
“But you do have money,” Dan said.
“So what?” Myron turned red and looked visibly upset.
“I think Mike and Jeff and all those assholes you hang out with use you cause you’re rich and you buy them shit. That’s what I think.”
“You sure do have a lot of opinions for someone who doesn’t really know me.”
“I don’t have that many opinions,” Dan said, “but I’ve got that one.”
“Well,” Myron said. “You know I’m not stupid, right?”
“I guess.”
“I know why some people hang out with me. I’m not dumb.”
Dan shrugged.
“It’s just not right,” Dan finally said.
“Why do you care?”
“Because your friends should stick by you and be your friends because of you, not… use you.”
“Well, maybe I’m not lucky as you with friends.”
“Maybe you should make better friends and tell everyone else to fuck off.”
Myron looked at Dan, and then he burst out laughing.
Dan tried to stop himself, but as Myron continued laughing, Dan laughed too.
“That’s not like me,” Dan said. “That’s not the kind of thing I say.”
“Is it true you’re starting a band?”
“I’ve been trying to start a band all year,” Dan said.
“Me too,” Myron said.
“Oh?”
“Well, not starting so much as thinking. I’ve been trying to get my cousins in on it.”
“That’s lame,” Dan said.
“I know, that’s what they think too.”
“A band,” Dan said.
“Yep,” Myron said. “A band.”
MORE IN A FEW DAYS
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Dan is certainly an important part of this story and I am glad we are getting to hear some of his history. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
glad you enjoyed it !
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WELCOME BACK, FRIENDS
WE HAVE HAD OUR very first gig. Sort of. Myron comes in and tells us he has commissioned us for his older cousin Marabeth’s twenty-first birthday.
Actually it turns out that what really happens is a lot more like this: her parents were telling her she needed to have a party because twenty-one is an important birthday and it’s not like she’d having a graduation or anything like that anytime soon. She doesn’t seem very interested at all. I go over to their house. It’s pretty fucking huge. It’s a townhouse, but it’s almost like a mansion, and there’s this girls whose all in black with black hair and black eye shadow, and she’s chewing her gum and she looks kind of bitchy, but she’s nice enough. This is Kris Strauss’s sister. We know Kris cause he goes to Saint Ignatius with us and plays the oboe in the band, He’s really smart and shit, but he got some type of depression the same time Myron did, and now they both take medication for it.
Anyway, Myron goes into this long speech to Marabeth about graduation parties and band and music and she’s kind of nodding her head and smoking a cigarette, which I think is amazing because she is smoking in her parents’ house and does not give a solitary fuck. Like, all her mom said was, “That’s so foul,” to Marabeth, but she didn’t care.
So anyway, Myron just keeps on talking and talking and finally Marabeth says, “What were you saying?” and then Myron sighs and says, “Can we be one of the bands that plays at your graduation party?’
“One of them?” Marabeth raises an eyebrow. “What kind of heiress do I look like? You can play as much as you want.”
We are so excited about this that Marabeth reminds us, “You’re gonna wanna get paid, though. I mean, what’s the point in being in a band that doesn’t get paid? Talk to Mom and Dad about it. Tell ‘em I said I chose you and I’m really excited.”
Marabeth did not appear very excited. She appeared busy with whatever she was drawing, but there was our gig.
The party is full of Kellers, and it’s also a lot of older kids from the junior college where Marabeth goes. I was surprised she had that many friends. I mean, she doesn’t seem like someone who would care too much about friends. Kris is there with his friends and when he says the same thing, Marabeth says, “I don’t know who half of these people are.”
She doesn’t seem sad about it. It’s just a matter of fact thing.
Between sets, Marabeth comes up to us with a tall, kind of cool looking guy. I mean, I don’t know that he’s cool but he looks like cool people are supposed to look, you know, shades and gelled hair and self confidence and stuff, and he says, “There’s open mic night as Nicola’s on Wednesday, and you know Rubio’s on the east side is auditioning for a house band.”
“Can we stay up that late?” Nick says.
“Did you seriously just say that?” Marabeth says to him.
When Nick opens his mouth, Marabeth says, “They’re being ironic. They’ll be there.”
“Follow your fucking dreams,” she says.
“What’s your dream?” Myron ask her.
She smirks and looks at a tall mixed guy who’s waving at her and says, “To make out with Jamal Perkins before the night is over.”
She winks, lowers her shades, and then strides away.
“Your cousin is so fucking cool,” Jack declares to Myron.
Kris just makes a face.
But I agree.
At Nicola’s the guy asks us, “Does any of you even know how to drive a car?”
We say yes, and don’t sink down to his asshole level, and then start to play This is a kind of pub place, and we do a few Irish songs and some covers. Nicola’s is where middle aged people come to escape their lives is what Myron say, and I’m not sure why we’re even here, but Myron says, “Because we need the practice and it’s good to stand up in front of people.”
The microphone sucks, and it keeps on making that reverb sound when Myron’s speaking into it. We’ve been pretty safe for three songs, decent, as good as anyone else, and then suddenly Myron announces that we’re going to do “I Know You’re Married, But I Love You Still.” And it’s not that many people who know it, and we’ve only done it a couple of times, but just then Myron begins to twang his banjo and his voice rises to a country octave, and out comes that voice of his that he’s been saving, and Rick is amazing at harmonizing with him, and their voices are desperate and oh Rick’s guitar is clear and country and you can just tell everyone is coming out of their seats as Myron wails
You know I love you and I always will
I know you're married but I love you still
The day I met you my heart spoke to me
It said to love you through eternity
Now knowing that you were another's bride
I vowed I'll always be close by your side
You know I love you and I always will
I know you're married but I love you still
Later that night, when that asshole who asked us if we were old enough to be here asks us if we’re coming back next week, Myron just shrugs and says, “We’ll see if we can.”
Myron looks real serious, and a pen is hanging out of his mouth like a cigar. He says, “Well, boys, it’s summer, and we better get serious. Are we going to spend all out time working in a grocery store as bag boys and cutting lawns, and forget about the music, or are we going to try to make some money as a band?”
Nick points out that realistically they would probably do both, and Jack says that he doubts Myron has ever been a bag boy, but Myron just sort of glares at them, and then we say we’ll knock it out of the park when we get to Rubio’s.
At Rubio’s they don’t seem to care how old we are. We have stopped cutting our hair for the most part, even Myron, and his mom is talking about that. They say we were good, but not quite what they’re looking for.
“Have you tried The Grey Note?”
“The Grey Note?” Myron says
“Up in Rawlston.
Rawlson’s not that far. It’s the next town to the north.
Myron says, “Here’s our schedule. We’re gonna go up tonight and see what kind of music they like.”
“And then we’re going to do the opposite?” I say because Myron’s really cagey like that.
“No,” Myron looks at me like I’m stupid. “Then we’re going to do it. But better.”
It’s some shitty cover band. We’re better. They’re older. Myron says I’m a way better guitarist. We decide to do two covers and two originals when we go up on Wednesday. Dad says I can have the old car he’s getting rid of if I get a job to pay for the gas. I tell him I’m going to get a job playing at the Grey Note.
He does not look impressed.
O Splendor and Joy! We will be paid to play at the Grey Note three Nights a week
O reality, when it is explained what the money is and how it looks split four ways.
O fuckery when I figure in the money from working at the store and the cost of gas driving to Rawlston to play at the Grey Note.
“I always work for my uncle Grange,” Myron says brightly. “I’m a runner in his office downtown.”
“Well how lucky for you,”
Myron smacks me on the head.
“I’m not saying it to show off. I’m saying it cause you can too.”
I look at him and Myron says, “I didn’t think you’d want to be the one to beg for a job, so I just asked if you could work with me too. Granger said he expects us both there at ten. Ten! We get to sleep. And we leave at four. Everyday. This’ll be awesome. He says he always needs good workers.”
Later, when I ask Myron about this he says that what his uncle really said was, “We always have jobs to hand out to cousins so they feel like they’re doing something.”
Everyday we dress like we’re going to school, except we always wear white shirts and roll our sleeves up. No jackets, and we spend all morning running errands from office to office, or driving across town to get stuff. We’re assistants. There are a lot of people in the office and that’s when Myron says, “It’s a lot of family members, and they need jobs. You know.”
Myron’s uncle is rich as fuck. Or at least his family is, and he says it’s not right for people to just sit around all day and do nothing, or else everyone would be depressed and snort coke. So instead they get dressed, come here and work till five. Some of them look really exhausted. Peter, Myron’s cousin, is here for the summer, and he’s always with his dad and I say, “He actually looks like he is working.”
Actually we’re all working. You can always find something to do, but Myron says, “Yeah. He’s sort of going to inherit all of what Uncle Grange does, so he’s learning it.”
“Your uncle looks pretty healthy, I’d say. Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere anytime soon.”
Between the job and the band we are doing pretty decently, and Rick and Jack say they’re going to stay in Rawlston. Rick is working at a music store, and Jack is working in this store up the street from the Grey Note. They’re going to get a loft. Jack says, “You guys can even stay when you want. It’s great up here, and there’s so much music!”
There is so much music. There’s the college, and everyone being hip and shit, and you can really make some money up here, and so we are.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said to Myron.
“Huh?’
“I’m thinking of just not going to college and staying here working on my songs.”
Myron just looks at me.
“That’s really stupid.”
MORE TOMORROW
WE HAVE HAD OUR very first gig. Sort of. Myron comes in and tells us he has commissioned us for his older cousin Marabeth’s twenty-first birthday.
Actually it turns out that what really happens is a lot more like this: her parents were telling her she needed to have a party because twenty-one is an important birthday and it’s not like she’d having a graduation or anything like that anytime soon. She doesn’t seem very interested at all. I go over to their house. It’s pretty fucking huge. It’s a townhouse, but it’s almost like a mansion, and there’s this girls whose all in black with black hair and black eye shadow, and she’s chewing her gum and she looks kind of bitchy, but she’s nice enough. This is Kris Strauss’s sister. We know Kris cause he goes to Saint Ignatius with us and plays the oboe in the band, He’s really smart and shit, but he got some type of depression the same time Myron did, and now they both take medication for it.
Anyway, Myron goes into this long speech to Marabeth about graduation parties and band and music and she’s kind of nodding her head and smoking a cigarette, which I think is amazing because she is smoking in her parents’ house and does not give a solitary fuck. Like, all her mom said was, “That’s so foul,” to Marabeth, but she didn’t care.
So anyway, Myron just keeps on talking and talking and finally Marabeth says, “What were you saying?” and then Myron sighs and says, “Can we be one of the bands that plays at your graduation party?’
“One of them?” Marabeth raises an eyebrow. “What kind of heiress do I look like? You can play as much as you want.”
We are so excited about this that Marabeth reminds us, “You’re gonna wanna get paid, though. I mean, what’s the point in being in a band that doesn’t get paid? Talk to Mom and Dad about it. Tell ‘em I said I chose you and I’m really excited.”
Marabeth did not appear very excited. She appeared busy with whatever she was drawing, but there was our gig.
The party is full of Kellers, and it’s also a lot of older kids from the junior college where Marabeth goes. I was surprised she had that many friends. I mean, she doesn’t seem like someone who would care too much about friends. Kris is there with his friends and when he says the same thing, Marabeth says, “I don’t know who half of these people are.”
She doesn’t seem sad about it. It’s just a matter of fact thing.
Between sets, Marabeth comes up to us with a tall, kind of cool looking guy. I mean, I don’t know that he’s cool but he looks like cool people are supposed to look, you know, shades and gelled hair and self confidence and stuff, and he says, “There’s open mic night as Nicola’s on Wednesday, and you know Rubio’s on the east side is auditioning for a house band.”
“Can we stay up that late?” Nick says.
“Did you seriously just say that?” Marabeth says to him.
When Nick opens his mouth, Marabeth says, “They’re being ironic. They’ll be there.”
“Follow your fucking dreams,” she says.
“What’s your dream?” Myron ask her.
She smirks and looks at a tall mixed guy who’s waving at her and says, “To make out with Jamal Perkins before the night is over.”
She winks, lowers her shades, and then strides away.
“Your cousin is so fucking cool,” Jack declares to Myron.
Kris just makes a face.
But I agree.
At Nicola’s the guy asks us, “Does any of you even know how to drive a car?”
We say yes, and don’t sink down to his asshole level, and then start to play This is a kind of pub place, and we do a few Irish songs and some covers. Nicola’s is where middle aged people come to escape their lives is what Myron say, and I’m not sure why we’re even here, but Myron says, “Because we need the practice and it’s good to stand up in front of people.”
The microphone sucks, and it keeps on making that reverb sound when Myron’s speaking into it. We’ve been pretty safe for three songs, decent, as good as anyone else, and then suddenly Myron announces that we’re going to do “I Know You’re Married, But I Love You Still.” And it’s not that many people who know it, and we’ve only done it a couple of times, but just then Myron begins to twang his banjo and his voice rises to a country octave, and out comes that voice of his that he’s been saving, and Rick is amazing at harmonizing with him, and their voices are desperate and oh Rick’s guitar is clear and country and you can just tell everyone is coming out of their seats as Myron wails
You know I love you and I always will
I know you're married but I love you still
The day I met you my heart spoke to me
It said to love you through eternity
Now knowing that you were another's bride
I vowed I'll always be close by your side
You know I love you and I always will
I know you're married but I love you still
Later that night, when that asshole who asked us if we were old enough to be here asks us if we’re coming back next week, Myron just shrugs and says, “We’ll see if we can.”
Myron looks real serious, and a pen is hanging out of his mouth like a cigar. He says, “Well, boys, it’s summer, and we better get serious. Are we going to spend all out time working in a grocery store as bag boys and cutting lawns, and forget about the music, or are we going to try to make some money as a band?”
Nick points out that realistically they would probably do both, and Jack says that he doubts Myron has ever been a bag boy, but Myron just sort of glares at them, and then we say we’ll knock it out of the park when we get to Rubio’s.
At Rubio’s they don’t seem to care how old we are. We have stopped cutting our hair for the most part, even Myron, and his mom is talking about that. They say we were good, but not quite what they’re looking for.
“Have you tried The Grey Note?”
“The Grey Note?” Myron says
“Up in Rawlston.
Rawlson’s not that far. It’s the next town to the north.
Myron says, “Here’s our schedule. We’re gonna go up tonight and see what kind of music they like.”
“And then we’re going to do the opposite?” I say because Myron’s really cagey like that.
“No,” Myron looks at me like I’m stupid. “Then we’re going to do it. But better.”
It’s some shitty cover band. We’re better. They’re older. Myron says I’m a way better guitarist. We decide to do two covers and two originals when we go up on Wednesday. Dad says I can have the old car he’s getting rid of if I get a job to pay for the gas. I tell him I’m going to get a job playing at the Grey Note.
He does not look impressed.
*
O Splendor and Joy! We will be paid to play at the Grey Note three Nights a week
O reality, when it is explained what the money is and how it looks split four ways.
O fuckery when I figure in the money from working at the store and the cost of gas driving to Rawlston to play at the Grey Note.
*
“I always work for my uncle Grange,” Myron says brightly. “I’m a runner in his office downtown.”
“Well how lucky for you,”
Myron smacks me on the head.
“I’m not saying it to show off. I’m saying it cause you can too.”
I look at him and Myron says, “I didn’t think you’d want to be the one to beg for a job, so I just asked if you could work with me too. Granger said he expects us both there at ten. Ten! We get to sleep. And we leave at four. Everyday. This’ll be awesome. He says he always needs good workers.”
Later, when I ask Myron about this he says that what his uncle really said was, “We always have jobs to hand out to cousins so they feel like they’re doing something.”
Everyday we dress like we’re going to school, except we always wear white shirts and roll our sleeves up. No jackets, and we spend all morning running errands from office to office, or driving across town to get stuff. We’re assistants. There are a lot of people in the office and that’s when Myron says, “It’s a lot of family members, and they need jobs. You know.”
Myron’s uncle is rich as fuck. Or at least his family is, and he says it’s not right for people to just sit around all day and do nothing, or else everyone would be depressed and snort coke. So instead they get dressed, come here and work till five. Some of them look really exhausted. Peter, Myron’s cousin, is here for the summer, and he’s always with his dad and I say, “He actually looks like he is working.”
Actually we’re all working. You can always find something to do, but Myron says, “Yeah. He’s sort of going to inherit all of what Uncle Grange does, so he’s learning it.”
“Your uncle looks pretty healthy, I’d say. Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere anytime soon.”
Between the job and the band we are doing pretty decently, and Rick and Jack say they’re going to stay in Rawlston. Rick is working at a music store, and Jack is working in this store up the street from the Grey Note. They’re going to get a loft. Jack says, “You guys can even stay when you want. It’s great up here, and there’s so much music!”
There is so much music. There’s the college, and everyone being hip and shit, and you can really make some money up here, and so we are.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said to Myron.
“Huh?’
“I’m thinking of just not going to college and staying here working on my songs.”
Myron just looks at me.
“That’s really stupid.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Interesting to hear about some characters we have not seen on a while. I hope they do give their band a chance to develop. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Hello, Matthew. A new week is starting here, and I hope you've enjoyed your Sunday. Thank you for reading, and of course there will be more tonight.... by which I mean tomorrow night.