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If I Should Fall

AND NOW, THE END OF OUR VERY LONG CHAPTER


“Hey, Russell,” Chris Knapp said, almost offhandedly, “Whaddo you know about Cam Dwyer?”
It was true that Russell had called himself an outcast, but he had known Chris Knapp, the famous football player, since seventh grade. He was a guy who was so goodlooking that even when he went about with his Oxford blue shirt hanging out of his khaki’s and his sandy brown hair half combed and sticking up, you knew he was goodlooking. He had something of the wolf about him, always a little unshaven, his blue eyes ringed by dark long, lashes that almost made him pretty.
“Cameron,” Russell began, “is a friend.”
“Is your next door neighbor,” Gilead reminded him.
“Is she single?” Chris said.
“Well, that’s to the point.”
“I’m a to the point kind of guy, Gil,” Chris shut his locker.
“As far as I know,” Russell said, “Yes.”
“Great. When I see her at football cames I’ll speak then.”
“Are you alright?” Gilead asked Chris.
“No,” Chris said. “I’ve been fucked up and mad since Joe died and I had to bury someone my age who should live to be old because an asshole drove into him and Mark Young. And by the way, Mark is looking for you.”
“He is?”
“Or waiting for you.”
“Ok….”
“Gil,” Chris said.
“Yeah.”
“I know you won’t be able to tell, but Mark isn’t in a good way either. So give him some slack. Okay.”
Gilead opened his mouth.
“I’m not saying that because you’re a dick,” Chris explained. “I’m saying that cause you’re one of the good guys and Mark likes you and he needs a good guy right now so… I’m just letting you know. Alright.”
“Yes,” Gilead said.
Gilead Story, Russell Lewis, Nicholas Ballantine and Adam Daunhauer made a ragged line as they trumped down the hall their first class of their first class of the year, History of the Germans. It was Russell’s first mixed grade class and the first time he’d been in a class with Gilead.
“This is the first time I don’t want to throw up on the first day of school,” Russell discovered.
“Well, you went through all the bullshit last year,” Gilead said. “And then so much has happened since last year.”
Nicky had been reciting poetry, his floppy hair falling into his long face, and stating that this would be the best year of all of their lives, his two large blazer half falling off of him, not that anyone was required to wear the blazer in this head. But Gilead seemed strangely preoccupied.
“Not unhappy,” Russell stated. “Just… preoccupied.”
“Your problem, Lewis,” Gilead said, “is that you pay too much attention to too little.”
“Room 352,” Adam declared and they waltzed into a room with entirely too much sunlight and cheer to be at Our Lady of Mercy, and as they sat down, it was Russell who saw before Gilead a guy leaning goofily over his desk and smiling at them.
“Gil!” he whispered.
“Huh?”
It seemed that Gilead Story was almost resolutely looking away, but when he knew he could not he turned in the direction Russell had pointed to the goofey guy in rolled khakis and a mint green shirt.
“It’s Mark Young,” Russell said.
Gilead said, “Hey,” in a tone that was a little bit dead and Mark saluted him saying, “Heeyyyy, Study Buddy.”








“I came, my friend,” said Chuck Shrader to Jeffrey Cordino, “to congratulate you on getting your own classroom.”
Jeff bowed ostentatiously, and the departing boys in a motley array of ties and jackets eyed their history teacher.
“I have moved up in the world,” Jeff agreed.
“If they give me my own parking space I’ll enver be able to leave the place.”
Chuck Shrader looked around the large fluorescent lit classroom with the big windows that stared out over the soccer field and into the trees of the cemetery before saying, “Please never say that again.”
Jeff grinned.
“What’s up, man? That can’t be the only reason you came.”
“I wanted to see if you were free for lunch.”
“Yeah. And why else?”
Chuck looked at his friend and then grinned and said, “You’re good. And I hate you for it.”
“Thanks,”
“You’re welcome. I took Faye to dinner last night.”
“Dinner, but, isn’t she… She left.”
“She’s back.”
“Well!” Jeff said.
“Well, indeed. And I asked her what was going to happen to our relationship.”
Jeff stopped unpacking his briefcase and closed it up.
“And what did Dr. Mathisson tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” Chuck said as he preceded his friend to the door.
“I don’t know that it looks good.”
Jeff smiled sympathetically but said nothing which he always thought best.
They headed down the stairs and toward the parking lot at the side of the school.
“Jeffy, my dating life isn’t good. In the last year alone I’ve dated another man’s wife and a professor who lives eighteen hundred miles away. Maybe there’s something in me that really doesn’t want a relationship. Maybe there’s soemthing in me that—” Chuck stopped himself.
“What?” Jeff said. They were taking his car. He hopped in, leaned over, opened the door for Chuck. Chuck got in and stared at him.
“Something that clings to Jane,” Chuck muttered.
Jeff frowned, started up the car and they were on Lincoln Street, heading north before Jeff spoke again.
“You really believe that?”
“I dunno.” Chuck shrugged. “Where to for lunch?”
“Le Burger King?”
“Good enough.”
“Well the choice is simpler than it seems,” Jeff said. “Either she stays here—which I admit, isn’t likely. Or you go to Illinois, which isn’t likely either. And neither choice is very pleasant.”
“I know,” said Chuck.
They ordered and ate and turned to go back to school. They were silent the whole ride and Jeff didn’t want to speak. But as they neared the old stone behemoth of Our Lady of Mercy High School, he did.
“Chuck, you figured something, didn’t you?”
Chuck turned to Jeff as Jeff parked his car.
He sighed.
“Jeff, I know what I have to do.”

MORE TOMORROW!
 
That was a great portion! I am glad Russell and the guys are enjoying the start of school for the year. Sounds like Chuck has made a decision about his relationship and I am very interested to read what it is. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
Well, Chuck knows what he has to do even if we don't, and yes, the new school year is off to a fresh start. What happens next we will see soon.
 
“Gilead,” said Russell. “Gilead, watch.”
They were standing near his locker.
Gilead nodded wearily. The halls were congested as usual.
“Hey, Ralph,” Russell said, trying to inject some levity into his voice.
“Hey, Russ.”
Ralph was gone.
Russell waited to the count of three then turned to Gilead.
“See,” he said. “See. That’s the way he’s been acting toward me. He won’t even look at me? What did I do?”
“Could you vent while walking toward American Lit? We’ll be late.”
Russell grunted and slammed his locker.
“What did I do?” Russell demanded again. “You know what I’m tired of doing? I’m tired of letting other people call the shots. Treat me like shit. Then like me, then ignore me, and I’m supposed to just go—okay? If someone’s your friend they’re your friend, right? He told me. Just remember that. Ralph told me his secrets. And now it’s my fault he lost his virginity? And then,” Russell whispered, “had sex with Cody? And now he won’t talk to me anymore.”
Gilead remained silent until they reached Mrs. O’Neill’s room and stood at the entrance together. Before they went in Russell said, “Well, fuck Ralph Balusik. Fuck him completely.”


“So,” Mr Bukowski, who was in his first year of teaching and looked it, said, “we’re on Luke 13. Would someone read for me?”
At Our Lady of Mercy, there were some classes that were electives and then there were other classes which were mandatory, but which you could elect to take junior of senior year. For a variety of reasons, Russell was taking as many as possible this year, including New Testament which was not nearly as interesting as Old Testament had been with Father Branch two years earlier. All the boys shifted in their seats looking more hostile than nervous, a little bit like rangy wolves in ties and blazers.
“Peter, Mr Katz. Would you.”
Peter Katz who had the same hair as Russell’s, but dirty blond, gave a long almost theatrical sigh which verged on saying no, before he rolled into a lifeless reading of the text.
“ Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
That’s a good place to stop, Mr Bukowski said, and Russell, who found himself sitting next to Mark Young, wondered if this was where the teacher wanted to stop, or whaere he felt forced to stop because of the lifelessness with which Peter Katz was reading.
“What is Jesus saying here?”
Smacking his gum, Mark whispered, “You know this stuff, Lewis, why don’t you say something?”
Russell had sat next to Mark because he was intrigued by the boy that he thought of as Gilead’s not quite crush, but he understood why Gilead was unnerved. The track star with wavy the green eyes and the sometimes sarcastic look that might have been mocking you was unnerving.
“He’s saying watch out,” DL Murray’s voice boomed, “because if God got them he’ll get you too.”
It was so rare the Black kids talked and no one really argued with them, but Jeremy Bentham said, “Isn’t it just the opposite. I mean, isn’t it that there was no meaning, cause those folks weren’t any worse than anyone else.”
“So what’s its saying? “Kris Vane asked, “that nothing happens for a reason.”
“Or that nothing happens for a reasons because everyone’s bad.”
It was out of DL’s court, and someone thumped Russell in the back by Jim Karn, so he found himself saying: “Jesus is saying, you think those folks were more sinful than you, right? But you’re all sinners, so watch out? So… it’s sort of like, bad things happen to all of us cause we’re all bad, and don’t laugh at people when stuff happens to them, because if you don’t do the right thing…. Then bad stuff will happen to you.”
“That’s bullshit,” Jim Karn said.
“Mr Karn!” Mr Bukowski said.
“Not Russell,” Jim clarified, “what Jesus said. I mean, isn’t Jesus supposed to be nice. And good and everything? But so far he’s kind of a punk. I don’t like his ass.”
“I’.m giving you one more warning, Mr. Karn.
“But here’s the thing,” Jim said, and all you know it’s true—what if that’s how it is?”
Mark went on chomping his gum, stretching his long leg, trying to be disinterested.
“I mean, like they tell you God cares and stuff happens for a reason and….. but that’s not true. Look at Mark.”
For the first time Mark Young looked surprised, and Jim said, “He and Joe were just driving around minding their own business and then Joe’s dead and Mark was in the hospital. You know what I’m talking about, Mark.”
Mark looked, for the first time, like he wanted to punch Jim. Russell had never seen him so angry.
“It’s all bullshit,” Jim said. “God is a bunch of bullshit, and no one can say it cause half of are aftaid of going to hell,and the other half of us are building our careers on this fucking school that tells us how great Jesus is and that he died for your sins and so that you can get into Georgetown.”
While Jim was going off and Mark was clenching his fists, trying not to move. Mr. Bukowski went to his desk, took out a pad, wrote a pink slip, gave it to Jim and said, “Get out of my classroom.”


Decius Branch was dressed for a Big Day as he called them. While most days he wore anything from the standard black pants and black shirt of a priests, to a tired olf casual suit or even jeans and a dress shirt, today he sailed about the art room majestically with his usual scowl, but in a black robe and scapular, with billow sleeves and his silver cross hung from around his neck. Something must be going on. The boys of OLM knew as much about the running of a religious congregation as any group of high school boys would know or care about. They knew that over Dean Meriwether who was just an ordinary man, was the Principal, Father Lukas, or maybe he was under him, it was hard to tell. And then they knew that Father Branch cared to do nothing more than teach art, but that he was the superior of all the priests and brothers who ran the school so, quiet as it was kept, the boss of the boss of the boss.
“I’m just going to ask what’s wrong?” the priest demanded. “You all aren’t nearly as irritating as usual and that’s never a good sign.”
Some of the boys gave half hearted chuckles. They knew there were people who smiled and you could never trust them, whose smiles never lasted very long and whose tempers were short. Decius Branch was the opposite, always ferocious, often sarcastic and yet utterly trustworthy, all bark, and it was easy to imagine a lot of bite for the wrong people, but never for students. He was “the one who ran things” but never called it to attention.
The senior boys were almost embarrassed to talk about Mr Bukowski’s class, but Nate Turner did, and Father Branch, standing by an easel, nodded while they limply talked around their atheism in the presence of the priest they respected.
“I wish you all would stop looking at me,” Mark said.
“No one’s looking at—” Nate dropped that. It was a complete lie. The whole reason Jim had been sent away was because he’d brought up Mark and the car accident.
“He didn’t have to say that,” Mark said. “He didn’t have to call me out in front of the whole class.”
“No one’s calling you out.” Nate frowned. “You went through something and—”
“And you didn’t,” Mark said, and getting up, he walked out of the classroom.
Father Branch, eyebrow raised, braced himself when the door slammed.
“This,” he said, “may be a day when we talk instead of…. Paint.”
This did not have the usual loud applause, but head nods and Nate said, “Are you gonna check on Mark?”
“I’m going to let Mark sort himself out,” Father Branch said, “And then I’m going to check on Mark.”
The quiet hallway of the fourth floor, had nothing else but the chapel, a supply room, old offices and the balcony looking down four stories that watched the stairwell turn in ninety degree angles down to the main lobby. As Father Branch went out into it, he warned:
“Remember, I’m right on the other side of the door, and if it gets crazy I’ll have your bones for Communion bread.”
He swished out into the hall, closing the door and sat down beside the miserable Mark.
“I’m sorry for being such a jerk,” Mark said.
“You think I haven’t seen worse in twenty-five years?”
“I thought you’d been here thirty years?”
“Shut up, Mark.”
Then, Decius said, “Serious, talk to me.”
Mark would have almost been glad to shut up and had cracked a smile at the middle aged priest being his grumpy self.
He shrugged, more to make the words come up than anything else.
“I’m so mad, Father. And sometimes, sometimes I keep it under control. But… And why did Jim have to bring me up?”
“Because Jim is your friend. Because these boys are all your friends. Because you are one of the most popular boys in your class and everyone worries about you.”
“I don’t need anyone to worry about me. I’m alive.”
Father Branch knew better than to protest. He was quiet a while and then he said, “You went through a lot. We all went through a lot. But you went through so much. And I bet you haven’t even talked to anyone about it.”
Mark turned his face away. He started to talk, but stopped. He started again.
“You know why people like me?”
The priest said nothing.
“Cause I don’t call attention to myself. I smile. I laugh. I hold it together. I’m a good guy. That’s why people like me. I’m not trying to …” emotion overcame Mark, but he shook it off, “I’m not trying to do that.”
“You know one day you’re going to have to let down that golden boy mask and let someone in.”
“Joe,” Mark said shortly.
“Joe knew me, And Joe’s gone And….. fuck God. Fuck him”
Mark’s hand pounded the wall in a rage that caught him unaware.
“I’m sorry, Father—”
Decius Branch hugged Mark quickly, and Mark began to sob. It was hard and ugly and didn’t last long, and the priest patted the boy’s back and then he said:
“Look at the two of us, acting like we have emotions.”
Mark’s face was red and his eyes were too.
“Why don’t you go wash your face and….”
“Get my mask back on,” Mark wiped the back of his hand across his face, snuffling snot.
“Yes, Mark.
“You know, you can go home for the day. We’re between classes, no one in the halls. You can pack up and go and it’ll be alright.”
“I’m good,” Mark said, but his voice was still filled emotion.
“Fine, but if you’re not—”
“I’m good.”
Mark stood up, shaking himself. Still wrecked he turned around and said:
“I do take it off. The mask. For the right people. It does come off.”

Once again, Gilead Story found himself doing things that made him feel foolish because it seemed like those things were the right thing to do. Russell was waiting for him, and they were on their way to Chayne’s, but Gilead waited at his locker while Dan Soldener and all of his others friends were talking to Mark, and then, when they were gone—Gilead had feared that Mark would go off with them—he cleared his throat and went down the hall to his wavy haired, peat eyed study buddy.
“Stud-dy Bud-dy, what can I do you for?”
Gilead wondered if he looked as stupid as he suddenly felt.
“What?” Mark raised an eyebrow.
“I…. don’t want to overstep.”
“You’re Gilead Story, you overstep all the time. You’ve been overstepping since K through 8.”
“You didn’t know me in K through 8.”
“Of course I did, moron,” Mark smiled out of the corner of his small mouth. “Now, what’s up?”
“Uh… I heard about…. Things today, and… I just… Are you alright? Sorry, none of my business, you look plenty, alright I’ll be on my way.”
“Gil!” Mark said.
“Yes.”
“Gil,” Mark said, looking at him directly. “Thank you. Alright? Thank you. I’m…”
“Fine?”
“That would be a lie,” Mark grinned darkly, taking a hand through his hair.
“Gil.”
“Yes.”
“I… I’m not good with…”
“Feelings.”
“I’m not good with me,” Mark said frankly. “I’m not good with being me. I’m not good with having friends.”
“You have tons of friends.”
“Don’t act fifty IQ points dumber than you are,” Mark said, irritated. “You know what I mean. So… thank you, for being my friend. Okay? For asking. For… I honestly didn’t think it would matter to you.”
“Of course it…. I mean, you’re a person. And… Apparently I’m not good at being me, either.”
“No,” Mark said, shutting his locker and shifting his gym back over his shoulder.
“You’re actually very good at being you, and good at being a friend. I’ve seen it. I… am lucky if you think we’re friends to.”
Not looking at Gilead, but at his locker, Mark continued.
“I would like you to be patient with me and my awkwardness cause…. I let my guard down for not a lot of people, and I would like you to be one of those people.”
“Sure,” Gilead said. “I mean, if you can be patient with me.”
“Uh, you coming to the track mete this Saturday?”
“I’m not on the track team.”
Mark burst out laughing.
“God, Gil!”
“You’re inviting me. To… of course,” Gilead said. “Cause you’re on the track team. Yeah.”
“Yeah, Gil,” Mark said, nodding and smiling and feeling happy for the time that day, “Yeah, Gil, I’m on the track team.”
“I will get Russell and see if he wants to hang out with me and we can…. Cheer for you or…. Whatever.”
“Gilead Story, I think I would like that very much. I’ll even run a lap for you.”
 
Wow lots going on in this portion! Poor Mark I feel sad for him that he was called out like that with what he has been through. Hopefully Russell and Ralph can sort things out with each other. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
ELEVEN

THE RISE
AND FALL
OF
WILLIAM B. DWYER



THE DIARY OF LYNN MESSING


August 1st, 1999


I am getting pretty tired of pretending. When I moved here I thought that if you just smiled hard enough—and sometimes it really is hard, and you put enough thoughts out of your mind then, by sheer force of will, you could be a friend and make friends. But it’s not that easy. All these people are talking about how lonely they are, and that used to get to me because i’ll admit that I am lonely too. And then I noticed that none of these people wanted to even take the steps to be a friend. And what’s more, it seems like what people really want is romance. People really want sex.
Back in school it wasn’t any better, even though I try to pretend that it was. It wasn’t that everyone wanted to be loved. Everyone wanted to be convinced that they were worthy of being loved, and that’s completely different. No one was real.

Unreal City... Unreal City....

The curse of an English major is to bring up random lines from poems and not be able to remember what comes next.

What does come next?

I’m starting to think it’s all a tremendous joke. We all search for answers and now I’m becoming pretty sure that there are no answers. Maybe there aren’t even any real questions. Maybe it’s all a huge joke. Maybe there aren’t any real people either.
I’m starting to wonder if I’m even real. If this goes on much longer....
I started to say if this goes on much longer I’ll just... but then I didn’t know what I was just going to do, and so I.m sort of left at an impasse.

Every once in a while I see someone who I think might be thinking the same things I’m thinking, a person who sort of seems like a real person (Am I trying to insinuate that I’m real too? It would be nice to think I was). There was a bag boy at the Kroger who had to be abotu sixteen. His sideburns were shaggy and I thought that he was probably someone who thought deep thoughts. And then I thought what a shame that was since his deep thoughts were pretty much confined to stuffing plastic wrapped meat in a paper bag.
There is also this old lady that I always see walking around the Presbyterian church in Fort Atkins, and I always imagine asking her the big question.
I come up to her, and I open my mouth—myself not knowing the true question until it comes out—the question that will tell me everything about life. And then it comes, a gift from beyond.

“How many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

And she tells me, and life is good. In the end it all comes down to this.

And then there is someone else. My boss... Actually he’s like my boss’s boss. He doesn’t seem like everyone else, which probably means he’s a psychopath. But it might mean he’s a saint. I’ve never confessed this. I feel bad even writing it in my journal. But Mr. William B. Dwyer has the loveliest eyes and the most sensitive smile I’ve ever seen... How high school does that sound?





Anigel Reyes, aged twenty, sat in Sessions, trying and failing to ignore the music and the swirling red and blue lights. She was thinking of how she had been convinced that life ended with high school, and it was a life that couldn’t really bring herself to miss. She was thinking of how there just might be more to the world—the universe—than she’d thought. This thought, which scared her, gave her a little hope, too, as she pulled on her cigarette, craned her neck elegantly and exhaled. She was thinking that she hoped nothing untoward happened and stopped her friend Ross from coming at Thanksgiving, and thinking of Ross, she smiled.
She turned to Jill Barnard, sitting beside her, a drink in one hand, the other clutching the ring that hung from her necklace, and she followed the pretty girl’s eyes to the dance floor. She was thinking now that Robert Keyes was making a dreadful mistake. And really Rob should have known better.
Some anonymous ho was swinging from Rob’s pelvis and his hips moved in and out as if he was fucking her. In fact the look on his face was like he was fucking her. As if picking up on her thoughts, Jill said, “Do you think Rob’s a good guy?”
“He’s having fun out there,” Anigel said, that explanation sounding hollow in her own ears.
“How many girls do you think he’s fucked?” Jill said.
“On this floor tonight?” but Jill was in no mood to laugh.
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Anigel suggested. “About—” she look at Rob, “that.”



“Jill,” Rob said, at last, when they got to her house on Colum. “Are you mad at me?”
She cut her eyes at Rob in such a way that the question had an ample answer.
“Well, I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me,” Rob said reasonably.
“Could you dance with every girl in the club except me?”
“You didn’t want to dance.”
“Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re fucking me out on the dance floor, that’s like what?”
Rob looked a little shocked and then he said, “Jill, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the way—”
“It means something when you expect me to act like a slut.”
Rob tilted his head as if he’d just seen something, and then said, “Jill. I… I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just having a good time.”
“Well, that’s not my kind of good time.”
“That’s cool,” Rob said. “That’s cool.”
“If we’re going to date—” Jill began.
“Date?” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill said, impatient. “When a boy and a girl go out and…”
“Date,” Rob said again.
“Are we not…?” Jill shook her head.
“Well, fuck. I’ve been wrong before. Are we not dating?”
Rob stood straighter and looked, to Jill, cute than he ever had.
“Jill, I can’t date you. I’m dating someone else.”
“What the fuck?” Jill said. Then, impossibly: “Not Anigel.”
“Noooo,” Rob said.
“Rob, explain.”
“Jill, I’m gay.”
Jill looked immediately stumped.
“So,” she said, after a moment, “when you said I should think about talking to Shane again…”
“Yeah,” Rob said.
“Then… who are you with?”
“It’s new.”
“Russell?”
“He’s sixteen!”
“My brother? He’d go for that.”
“I hardly know Cody.”
“Hum,” Jill said. “You’re not gonna tell me are you?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Okay…” Jill murmured. “Well, well, if I’m not your girlfriend, what the fuck did you think I was?”
“I thought you were my comrade in arms.”
Jill blinked.
“How do you feel about that?”
Jill shrugged.
“I’ve never been a comrade before. I’m not really sure.”



When Jill got back to the 1421 Colum Street, Cody looked up from the sofa . His sister strode into the living room triumphantly.
“I’m a comrade in arms.”
“Goddamn right you are,” he drawled.
“And I’m going to get Shane back.”
Cody raised an eyebrow and nodded approvingly before speaking.
“It’s about time,” he said.
“You…. What about Rob?” Jill said.
“Oh,” Cody shrugged sinking back into the sofa and his magazine, “I figured sooner or later you’d figure out he was gay.”


“That must be Chuck!” Faye shouted and leapt up from her chair in Chayne’s study to leave her friend behind and answer the door.
“Chuck—I’ve decided to stay here—”
“—move out with you.”
“What?” the two of them looked at each other, and then stood staring at each other, Chuck in the warm late August evening, Faye in the light of the living room.
“I suppose one of us should say something,” Faye said.
“I suppose one of you should close the door,” Chayne said going into the kitchen.
Faye was beaming. “Come in. Come on in, Chuck.”
“Faye, I did some thinking, and I’m willing to move out with you. I won’t be able to do it until the end of this year but—what? Why are you flapping your hands around?”
“Because I did some thinking,” she said. “And I’m not free to move until May. But I was going to come here.”
The two of them looked at each other, then started laughing and when one of them looked ready to talk ,they burst into laughter again.
“Well,” said Chuck. “Where does that leave us now?”
Faye smiled at him, and kissed him on the cheek, taking his hand.
“With each other,” she said.





“Well,” Brad Long said, looking up at the clock on the wall, “it’s about time. And you, Ms. Dwyer, did not do a bad job.”
“Valedictorian here I come.”
“Anything’s possible,” Brad said in a voice that mean, anything but this is possible.
As Cameron carefully put away the math papers she’d been working on and reflected that, a year ago she would have stuffed them in her bag and pretended to forget about them, she said, “And now to pick up Niall.”
“You need a ride?” Brad asked, pushing her math book toward her.
“No,” Cameron said. “Dad’s letting me borrow the car.
“Thanks, Brad,” she hugged the tall, who looked like an El Greco painting and then headed into the living room and up the stairs.
“Bradley,” Bill Dwyer began, he had just come into the kitchen.
“Bill, I thought you were in Grand Rapids.”
“I had to drop Dave off and I am going right back.”
“Okay,” Brad nodded, waiting for Bill to say something. They were close in age, but for some reason Bill always seemed a lot older.
“Cameron says you’re seeing someone.”
“She does?”
“Oh,” Bill shook his head and smiled, “its none of our businss, I know. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” Brad said. “It’s fine.”
“It’s only that…. Are you happy? Are you all really happy?”
Brad blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that question.
“Well, yes… I mean. Really, yes. The truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”
“Well, that’s grand,” Bill said, sincerely. “Whatever you do, don’t settle for less than that. Okay.”
“Okay,” Brad nodded manfully, making sure he didn’t look like this whole episode was strange.


MORE NEXT WEEK

- - - Updated - - -

ELEVEN

THE RISE
AND FALL
OF
WILLIAM B. DWYER



THE DIARY OF LYNN MESSING


August 1st, 1999


I am getting pretty tired of pretending. When I moved here I thought that if you just smiled hard enough—and sometimes it really is hard, and you put enough thoughts out of your mind then, by sheer force of will, you could be a friend and make friends. But it’s not that easy. All these people are talking about how lonely they are, and that used to get to me because i’ll admit that I am lonely too. And then I noticed that none of these people wanted to even take the steps to be a friend. And what’s more, it seems like what people really want is romance. People really want sex.
Back in school it wasn’t any better, even though I try to pretend that it was. It wasn’t that everyone wanted to be loved. Everyone wanted to be convinced that they were worthy of being loved, and that’s completely different. No one was real.

Unreal City... Unreal City....

The curse of an English major is to bring up random lines from poems and not be able to remember what comes next.

What does come next?

I’m starting to think it’s all a tremendous joke. We all search for answers and now I’m becoming pretty sure that there are no answers. Maybe there aren’t even any real questions. Maybe it’s all a huge joke. Maybe there aren’t any real people either.
I’m starting to wonder if I’m even real. If this goes on much longer....
I started to say if this goes on much longer I’ll just... but then I didn’t know what I was just going to do, and so I.m sort of left at an impasse.

Every once in a while I see someone who I think might be thinking the same things I’m thinking, a person who sort of seems like a real person (Am I trying to insinuate that I’m real too? It would be nice to think I was). There was a bag boy at the Kroger who had to be abotu sixteen. His sideburns were shaggy and I thought that he was probably someone who thought deep thoughts. And then I thought what a shame that was since his deep thoughts were pretty much confined to stuffing plastic wrapped meat in a paper bag.
There is also this old lady that I always see walking around the Presbyterian church in Fort Atkins, and I always imagine asking her the big question.
I come up to her, and I open my mouth—myself not knowing the true question until it comes out—the question that will tell me everything about life. And then it comes, a gift from beyond.

“How many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

And she tells me, and life is good. In the end it all comes down to this.

And then there is someone else. My boss... Actually he’s like my boss’s boss. He doesn’t seem like everyone else, which probably means he’s a psychopath. But it might mean he’s a saint. I’ve never confessed this. I feel bad even writing it in my journal. But Mr. William B. Dwyer has the loveliest eyes and the most sensitive smile I’ve ever seen... How high school does that sound?





Anigel Reyes, aged twenty, sat in Sessions, trying and failing to ignore the music and the swirling red and blue lights. She was thinking of how she had been convinced that life ended with high school, and it was a life that couldn’t really bring herself to miss. She was thinking of how there just might be more to the world—the universe—than she’d thought. This thought, which scared her, gave her a little hope, too, as she pulled on her cigarette, craned her neck elegantly and exhaled. She was thinking that she hoped nothing untoward happened and stopped her friend Ross from coming at Thanksgiving, and thinking of Ross, she smiled.
She turned to Jill Barnard, sitting beside her, a drink in one hand, the other clutching the ring that hung from her necklace, and she followed the pretty girl’s eyes to the dance floor. She was thinking now that Robert Keyes was making a dreadful mistake. And really Rob should have known better.
Some anonymous ho was swinging from Rob’s pelvis and his hips moved in and out as if he was fucking her. In fact the look on his face was like he was fucking her. As if picking up on her thoughts, Jill said, “Do you think Rob’s a good guy?”
“He’s having fun out there,” Anigel said, that explanation sounding hollow in her own ears.
“How many girls do you think he’s fucked?” Jill said.
“On this floor tonight?” but Jill was in no mood to laugh.
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Anigel suggested. “About—” she look at Rob, “that.”



“Jill,” Rob said, at last, when they got to her house on Colum. “Are you mad at me?”
She cut her eyes at Rob in such a way that the question had an ample answer.
“Well, I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me,” Rob said reasonably.
“Could you dance with every girl in the club except me?”
“You didn’t want to dance.”
“Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re fucking me out on the dance floor, that’s like what?”
Rob looked a little shocked and then he said, “Jill, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just the way—”
“It means something when you expect me to act like a slut.”
Rob tilted his head as if he’d just seen something, and then said, “Jill. I… I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just having a good time.”
“Well, that’s not my kind of good time.”
“That’s cool,” Rob said. “That’s cool.”
“If we’re going to date—” Jill began.
“Date?” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill said, impatient. “When a boy and a girl go out and…”
“Date,” Rob said again.
“Are we not…?” Jill shook her head.
“Well, fuck. I’ve been wrong before. Are we not dating?”
Rob stood straighter and looked, to Jill, cute than he ever had.
“Jill, I can’t date you. I’m dating someone else.”
“What the fuck?” Jill said. Then, impossibly: “Not Anigel.”
“Noooo,” Rob said.
“Rob, explain.”
“Jill, I’m gay.”
Jill looked immediately stumped.
“So,” she said, after a moment, “when you said I should think about talking to Shane again…”
“Yeah,” Rob said.
“Then… who are you with?”
“It’s new.”
“Russell?”
“He’s sixteen!”
“My brother? He’d go for that.”
“I hardly know Cody.”
“Hum,” Jill said. “You’re not gonna tell me are you?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Okay…” Jill murmured. “Well, well, if I’m not your girlfriend, what the fuck did you think I was?”
“I thought you were my comrade in arms.”
Jill blinked.
“How do you feel about that?”
Jill shrugged.
“I’ve never been a comrade before. I’m not really sure.”



When Jill got back to the 1421 Colum Street, Cody looked up from the sofa . His sister strode into the living room triumphantly.
“I’m a comrade in arms.”
“Goddamn right you are,” he drawled.
“And I’m going to get Shane back.”
Cody raised an eyebrow and nodded approvingly before speaking.
“It’s about time,” he said.
“You…. What about Rob?” Jill said.
“Oh,” Cody shrugged sinking back into the sofa and his magazine, “I figured sooner or later you’d figure out he was gay.”


“That must be Chuck!” Faye shouted and leapt up from her chair in Chayne’s study to leave her friend behind and answer the door.
“Chuck—I’ve decided to stay here—”
“—move out with you.”
“What?” the two of them looked at each other, and then stood staring at each other, Chuck in the warm late August evening, Faye in the light of the living room.
“I suppose one of us should say something,” Faye said.
“I suppose one of you should close the door,” Chayne said going into the kitchen.
Faye was beaming. “Come in. Come on in, Chuck.”
“Faye, I did some thinking, and I’m willing to move out with you. I won’t be able to do it until the end of this year but—what? Why are you flapping your hands around?”
“Because I did some thinking,” she said. “And I’m not free to move until May. But I was going to come here.”
The two of them looked at each other, then started laughing and when one of them looked ready to talk ,they burst into laughter again.
“Well,” said Chuck. “Where does that leave us now?”
Faye smiled at him, and kissed him on the cheek, taking his hand.
“With each other,” she said.





“Well,” Brad Long said, looking up at the clock on the wall, “it’s about time. And you, Ms. Dwyer, did not do a bad job.”
“Valedictorian here I come.”
“Anything’s possible,” Brad said in a voice that mean, anything but this is possible.
As Cameron carefully put away the math papers she’d been working on and reflected that, a year ago she would have stuffed them in her bag and pretended to forget about them, she said, “And now to pick up Niall.”
“You need a ride?” Brad asked, pushing her math book toward her.
“No,” Cameron said. “Dad’s letting me borrow the car.
“Thanks, Brad,” she hugged the tall, who looked like an El Greco painting and then headed into the living room and up the stairs.
“Bradley,” Bill Dwyer began, he had just come into the kitchen.
“Bill, I thought you were in Grand Rapids.”
“I had to drop Dave off and I am going right back.”
“Okay,” Brad nodded, waiting for Bill to say something. They were close in age, but for some reason Bill always seemed a lot older.
“Cameron says you’re seeing someone.”
“She does?”
“Oh,” Bill shook his head and smiled, “its none of our businss, I know. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” Brad said. “It’s fine.”
“It’s only that…. Are you happy? Are you all really happy?”
Brad blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that question.
“Well, yes… I mean. Really, yes. The truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”
“Well, that’s grand,” Bill said, sincerely. “Whatever you do, don’t settle for less than that. Okay.”
“Okay,” Brad nodded manfully, making sure he didn’t look like this whole episode was strange.


MORE NEXT WEEK
 
That was a great portion! Lots of confusion about sexuality and some decisions were made. This portion has given me a lot to think about. Excellent writing and I look forward to more next week!
 
Cameron Dwyer parked the car, badly, in front of City Dance School on Bunting, just a a block away form Rosary. She went up the stairs where dance class was ending and found her brother reclined against the bar. Niall had his snap brim cap on backwards and Cameron could see that he was starting a goatee.
Niall caught his sister’s reflection before she was actually in the large, hardwood floored room and he smiled at her.
“Cam, I don’t need the car after all.”
“Great,” she said in a neutral tone.
“Me and and Sonia and a few folks from class are going out.”
“Be careful, Niall.”
Niall fought back the urge to say something harsh. Cameron only cared for him, which was something he lost sight of much of the time.
“We’re just a bunch of dance club geeks,” Niall said. In his leotard he did look like a dance club geek. But his smile was too studied. Cameron was able to pull a part of herself away from the Dwyer family she’d always known up close and realize that Niall was handsome, and a gifted dancer, and a boy, a man? a guy—someone with a secret life.
“Cam? You still there?”
“Yeah,” she nodded, then tried to make a joke out of it. “I was just thinking, now that I’m not letting you sneak around with the car, there goes my chance to make you teach me those steps.”
Niall put a finger to his nose and said, “Maybe if you’re an extra good girl... Imagine that,” he grinned broadly, “a cheerleader learning dance steps from her kid brother!”
“If Lourdes high school only knew the secret behind Rosary’s winning cheerleading squad,” Cameron shook her head.

“So,” Anigel said, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking her head while she put out plates, “you…. And Chayne?”
“Yup,” Chayne said, handing her the lemonade. “Now pour the drinks.”
“That was the shortest, most unheralded announcement I’ve heard about any relationship,” Gilead Story said.
“Well, I’m just glad it’s not because I wasn’t pretty enough,” Jill said.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Gilead asked. “Are we supposed to keep is secret, or should I tell Mom. Or what?”
“You can do what you wanna do?” Chayne shrugged. He looked to Rob who was tossing the salad and said, “That is what we decided, right?”
“I think so,” Rob, looked unbothered.
He brought the salad to the table and said, “Look, I’m not trying to make a statement. I’m just… I want to be with Chayne and we’re happy together.”
“I think that was your statement,” Anigel said, touching his hand.
Rob was red and even Chayne looked a little embarrassed, so Russell shouted, “Jason Lorry is my boyfriend.”
“What the fuck?” Anigel said.
“Thunder stealer,” Chayne said, though, as he went to the stove to take the last piece of chicken from the skillet, he was relieved the focus was no longer on him.
“I,” Russell said, slowly, “am with…. Jason…. Lorry.”
“That names sounds familiar,” Anigel said.
“He’s friends with your brother.”
“Not exactly friends,” Gilead said, “But—”
“Oh, the Indian boy.”
“Half Indian.”
“Whatever, he’s fine, Russell. Kind of dumb, but fine.”
“Thank you?” Russell said.
Not to be outdone, or embarrassed alone, Russell said, “And Gilead’s got Mark Young.”
“What!” Gilead and Chayne said together.
“He’s like a boyfriend.”
“No, he’s not.”
“He’s at least an admirer.”
Gilead scowled and took a drumstick.
“I don’t know what he is, but don’t you go starting rumors.”
“This is so exciting,” Jill said. “The nineties started out like bullshit, but by the time the new millennium comes, we’ll all be gay!”
They all looked at Jill doubtfully, and Russell said, “Well, I’m still in high school, and it’s not 2000 yet, so what I just said is pretty much staying in this kitchen, by which I mean, not on 1735 Breckinridge.”
“No,” Chayne decided, “that might not be a good idea at all.”
“I told Dad,” Russell said.
“Thom?” Chayne said, as if Russell had another.
“Yes. But… I want some things to be mine. For now.”
Chayne said, “Of course.”




“I’m going out Saturday?” Russell said.
“You’re staying at Chayne’s?” his father assumed.
“Eventually,” Russell said. “There’s a football game, so we’re all going to be out.”
“Since when did you like football?” Patti turned from the stove.”
“Russell doesn’t care about football at all,” Cameron Dwyer said. “But the football game is where everyone’s going to be.”
“Your dad said he’d be late,” Thom told Cameron who sat in the Lewis kitchen talking to Russell and Gilead. “I brought your uncle home. If you’re staying for dinner, you might want to call your mom.”
“She’ll be thrilled said Cameron as Patti handed her the cordless. “She won’t have to cook at all, cause Niall isn’t coming home either.”
“Which brings us back to Niall,” said Gilead.
“Which brings us back to Niall,” Cameron agreed. Then, “Hello, Mom? Is it alright if I stay over here—at Russell’s. No. I’m not putting them out.”
She looked at Patti to confirm this. Patti stood over the stove, smoking a cigarette and stirring the spaghetti sauce. She shook her head “no.”
“Dad won’t be home. He told you? Niall’s with friends. From dance class. Oh, okay. Alright. Bye.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, my mom says thanks.”
“Tell Dena she’s welcome,” Patti said.
Cameron always got the vibe that Patti didn’t care for her mother. She found this strangely comforting.
“Now, back to Niall,” Cameron sat down. “I wanted to say that I don’t know him anymore. But if I’m honest, I’m not sure that I ever knew Niall. I just never thought of him as anything but my little brother. The one Dad shouts at all the time. But now I start to worry about him. It’s like now that I know he has a life, it’s this secret life and I think that maybe it’s not a good one.”
Gilead looked to Russell and without speaking the two of them held the private debate to tell or not to tell Cameron that Niall sold dime bags in the bathroom of Our Lady and on the fields of Rosary. And just as quick as the issue was brought up, their eyes and their heads turned back to Cameron, dropped it.
“Guys have secret lives,” Gilead said. Russell always depended on Gilead to be around with words of wisdom. “And it always seems freaky to girls when they find out, because they think all there is to guys is what they see on the surface.”
At the stove Patti made a noise between a laugh and a grunt, and they all looked up, but all they saw was the back of her head.
“I wouldn’t worry about Niall,” Russell chimed in.

MORE TOMORROW
 
That was a well done portion! Lots of revelations about who was in a relationship which I like. Cameron is a very interesting character, I hope there is lots more of her. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
Well, to address your points, there is going to be a lot more of Cameron
for starters.

She is (literally) the girl next door, and you can probably tell that in this part of the book the Armstrongs and the Dwyers are coming to more importance and we're starting to focus on them.
 
THIS WEEKEND IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE'S GOT SECRETS

“I’m going out Saturday?” Russell said.
“You’re staying at Chayne’s?” his father assumed.
“Eventually,” Russell said. “There’s a football game, so we’re all going to be out.”
“Since when did you like football?” Patti turned from the stove.”
“Russell doesn’t care about football at all,” Cameron Dwyer said. “But the football game is where everyone’s going to be.”
“Your dad said he’d be late,” Thom told Cameron who sat in the Lewis kitchen talking to Russell and Gilead. “I brought your uncle home. If you’re staying for dinner, you might want to call your mom.”
“She’ll be thrilled said Cameron as Patti handed her the cordless. “She won’t have to cook at all, cause Niall isn’t coming home either.”
“Which brings us back to Niall,” said Gilead.
“Which brings us back to Niall,” Cameron agreed. Then, “Hello, Mom? Is it alright if I stay over here—at Russell’s. No. I’m not putting them out.”
She looked at Patti to confirm this. Patti stood over the stove, smoking a cigarette and stirring the spaghetti sauce. She shook her head “no.”
“Dad won’t be home. He told you? Niall’s with friends. From dance class. Oh, okay. Alright. Bye.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, my mom says thanks.”
“Tell Dena she’s welcome,” Patti said.
Cameron always got the vibe that Patti didn’t care for her mother. She found this strangely comforting.
“Now, back to Niall,” Cameron sat down. “I wanted to say that I don’t know him anymore. But if I’m honest, I’m not sure that I ever knew Niall. I just never thought of him as anything but my little brother. The one Dad shouts at all the time. But now I start to worry about him. It’s like now that I know he has a life, it’s this secret life and I think that maybe it’s not a good one.”
Gilead looked to Russell and without speaking the two of them held the private debate to tell or not to tell Cameron that Niall sold dime bags in the bathroom of Our Lady and on the fields of Rosary. And just as quick as the issue was brought up, their eyes and their heads turned back to Cameron, dropped it.
“Guys have secret lives,” Gilead said. Russell always depended on Gilead to be around with words of wisdom. “And it always seems freaky to girls when they find out, because they think all there is to guys is what they see on the surface.”
At the stove Patti made a noise between a laugh and a grunt, and they all looked up, but all they saw was the back of her head.
“I wouldn’t worry about Niall,” Russell chimed in.



“It’s fuckin; cold!” Simon Garrity declared passing the joint to Sonia.
“Well it’s September, moron,” Niall stated. He was one of six who sat in the circle under a fat, stooped oak by Lake Chicktaw.
“Open your mouth,” Sonia grinned.
Niall smiled and obeyed.
Sonia inhaled the joint. Pressed her mouth to Niall’s, blew, and Niall passed the joint to Aaron as he exhaled marijuana smoke through his nostrils.
“When’s your mom expect you home?” Niall whispered.
“She’s not home,” Sonia told him.
“Does that mean that I should come home?”
“I think it might,” she grinned. “What time does your mommy expect you home?”
“When I get there,” Niall said, stoutly, which was not at all what Dena would expect.
“Well,” Sonia rolled her eyes to look thoughtful and said, “I think that “when I get there’ is plenty of time to get anything done that... needs to get done.”
Niall got hard when she said that Sonia didn’t see it, but she knew it.
“Who’s got a whole day to waste?” Simon asked, taking the joint. He had a large nose and thick, black rimmed glasses.
“For what?” Without hitting it, Sonia passed the joint to Niall who took a large hit, and did to Sonia what she had done for him, passing the spliff negligently to Carol.
“My brother’s making magic brownies,” Simon declared as well as he was able to declare anything. Everything he said sounded like a question now, and it was getting dark. “They knock you on your ass a whole day.”
“Fucking yes!” Carol said. “That sounds sweet as fuck.”
Niall heard himself saying, “Yeah,” too.

“I had the strangest experience,” Brad said, while he took one shoe, and then the last off of Marissa Gregg’s feet and began to massage them as she stretched out on the sofa, her legs on his lap.
“Which was?” her eyes were closed and the flexed her toes a little and smiled at the pressure of Brad’s hands.
“Bill Dwyer brought you up.”
“Me?” her eyes opened.
“Well, not you per se. He said he heard I was in a relationship, and he asked me… if I was happy.”
“And you said you’re goddamned delighted, of course.”
“Well, yes,” Brad grinned at her, “I actually did.”
Marissa giggled, and said, “Well, good.”
“But then he said, make sure you’re happy. Don’t settle for anything less. He was so….”
“Wise?”
“Sad,” Brad said. “He sounded incredibly sad.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Lynn Messing told Bill Dwyer. They were in the conference room of the office, both at the end of the great long table.
“You said you needed the help,”
“But not everyone would have stayed.”
“Everyone’s not a friend, Lynn,” Bill told her. He touched her hand. It was so soft. Her eyes were so wide and brown and surprised and kind. “We’re friends, and that means I’ve got to help you when you need it. And I’ve got to fire Cormorant.”
“Don’t!”
Bill laughed.
“You’re cute when you laugh.”
Lynn corrected herself. “I mean, I like it when you laugh.”
Bill was silent for a time.
“I wasn’t really serious,” he was massaging her hand. Both their hands rested over the stack of papers. “But now I sort of am. Look at this work load he gives you. Half of which should have been done by him. All of it without explanation.”
Bill was quiet. To Lynn, it looked as if he were in some momentary pain. His large eyes were looking out on the darkening skyline.
“This room scares me,” he said at once. “I would hate to be in here by myself, spend the night working here.”
Laughter rushed up from Lynn. “Me too! That’s why I’m glad you stayed. That’s why I’m glad you’re here.”
Bill took up his ink pen. It was capped because he was just using it as a pointer. He was about to run over figures when he said, “Life scares me.”
“Bill?”
He turned to her, his nose quivering, his eyes wide.
“Lynn, life scares me. I feel like I can tell you that.”
“Because you think I get scared too—”
“No, because you don’t have to be afraid. You’re twenty-four. You’ve got a life ahead of you. You can—you can just grab it by the balls!”
He never said anything like that in front of a woman. He was feeling fierce now.
“You don’t have to be afraid. You’re beautiful and you’re fun and the only reason you don’t get other people—other people your age is because they’re like me—”
“But Bill—”
“I got Dena pregnant my senior year. I married her a few days after graduation in Saint Alban’s—my alma mater’s—chapel. Then I moved to her school. I got a job in that area. She was a sophomore. By the time she graduated we had Cameron and Niall. I have spent years just getting things together, just getting to the place where I can stop and breathe and I stop and breathe and I’m sorry I did because when I stop and breathe... I feel like collapsing.”
He was silent and tragic now. His eyes were not only wide, but shining. Lynn wanted to touch him. Bill turned away and slowly let his eyes narrow, stared out the window at the hard blue-grey of the oncoming night.
“I collapsed,” he said. “And I look up, and I hate my whole life. But what I look up and find... ” he was still looking out of the window, “is you.”
“I wish you weren’t married,” Lynn said frankly, and then Bill turned to her, and kissed her. He tried to pull back, but she hooked her hands in his hair. This is what it felt like. This is what his head felt like under the hair. This is what his mouth felt like, her nose against the nose that everyone talked about, that she liked. This is what his shoulders felt like. Don’t stop. If they’d stopped this could never happen again.
She murmured something. Bill, couldn’t hear. He couldn’t let go. Then he didn’t want to. Why? What was the point? Would Dena—no. It seemed perverted to even say her name.
While Bill was pushing away Dena’s name, Lynn was maneuvering herself onto the table. Bill was pushing away the papers. He worked at his belt, but then Lynn pushed his hand away and brought it to her thighs. It was warm under her skirt. He brought down her underwear. It was moist where he put his hand. She gasped. He was hard. He was a missile. Lynn’s hands had undone his slacks and they fell around his knees, she pulled down his boxers that trapped his thighs. Bill tried to throw off his jacket with a shift of his shoulders. It took a few tries.
He felt his shirt tail that went past his buttocks, he felt Lynn’s hands move from squeezing his pulsing penis to caressing the dimples of his ass, then his ass, and then he pushed himself in her with a surprised grunt, and she cried and he followed the cries as instruction, the louder she was, the deeper he went, the more frantic her hands on his ass, the quicker he was. He could hear his breathing, ragged. Then she said, “Slow… slow. Slow,” as if she knew he was about to come.
“Don’t let it end right now,” she pleaded.
For that small space he floated over her, glided in her, his eyes tearing, panicked to feel himself coming, please God, please don’t let it...
His body twisted, his face in her hands straining. She was already coming. He stiffened and shot into her. Bill heard himself groan, and then he collapsed against Lynn, still feeling his dick jump, still shaking as he shot over and over, sighing as the power of his orgasm drove him deeper into her arms.


MORE TOMORROW
 
Everyone does have secrets especially Brad and Bill! Sounds like Bill hasn’t been very happy with his current situation. I am fascinated to see what happens next and that’s all I really have to say. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
I thought you were still watching the Grammy's. I didn't know you'd read already. I'm glad you enjoyed, and are enjoying the Swyer family. As I always say: more tomorrow.
 
TONIGHT, BILL GETS EXTRA AND GRAHAM AND SHARON GET VISITORS


When he was twelve years old, Bill had learned an art that over the years he’d been able to perfect. He had been at the baseball plate in pee wee league when he learned to turn everything off and become a machine. It had gotten him through Freshmen year track in high school. It had gotten him onto the baseball team and onto an athletic scholarship at Saint Alban’s. On the baseball team alot of his walls had come down, but not outside of Lewis Hall, the baseball dorm. Back then things had pretty much been us and them and them was the rest of the college. After all these years, David was the one person he had really opened up to and there was no opening up to him on this. At one point in time he had been open to Dena. They had loved each other. And then when Cameron was born, without reserve he could pour out all his love on her, all of his heart. But, of course, he could not tell his daughter about the fears of an aging man.
Going on automatic pilot, David had once called it when Bill would turn himself off and go about his business. He did it now, from Grand Rapids all the way back to Geshichte Falls. He gripped the steering wheel very tightly and hoped he could be away from himself long enough. How long was long enough? What was he talking about? Pulling into the driveway, he shut off the car. He suddenly wanted to cry. He was more terrified than he had ever been. He had never felt this desperate in his life.
The lights were on in the white house, 1733 Breckinridge. The kitchen was empty but brightly lit. Blue light and noise issued from the den and Dena said, bored, “Dinner’s on the stove if you’re hungry.”
“I’m fine,” Bill said. “I just need a shower.”
“Alright.”
Going up the stairs he nearly ran into Cameron who was coming down the steps.
“Dad, I’m sorry! How was your day? You get everything taken care of?”
Bill was not able to answer. He stared full up into Cameron’s face and she tilted her head and said, “Dad, what’s wrong?”
Bill couldn’t talk, so he just shook his head and moved past her. He moved into the bathroom that was sectioned off so that a vanity and a linen closet was the first part of it. A sliding door hid another vanity and the toilet and the shower. Bill was reaching to open it, when he ran into Niall and heard the toilet flushing.
“Jesus Christ, watch it Niall!”
“Sorry Dad,”
“Sorry Dad,” Bill mimicked. “And quit muttering and hanging your head all the time.”
Niall went past him. Niall was a safe place for the rage. He always had been. Bill did not completely recognize it, but the small part of him that did felt worse having yelled at his son. He stripped, turned on the shower water and stepped in.
He did not immediately realize he was scalding himself. He began to lather up, the way they did on television because he hadn’t gotten a washcloth, and he was too lazy to step out of the shower for one. He kept soaping his hair and face. He felt that this couldn’t be his body, and when he came to his groin, he didn’t want anything to do with it, or what had happened. What he wanted to do is weep.
And so he did. Delicately he sat down in the shower, putting his back to the cold back of the tub and drew his knees to his chest, and burying his head between his knees he sobbed under the shower water.

“Dad,” Cameron said while Bill was brushing his teeth, and his hair was still standing up, the color of wet cinnamon.
Foaming at the mouth, he turned to his daughter. For the first time ever he just wanted Cameron to go away.
Bill spat and rinsed out his mouth.
“I just came to say good night. And Dad, something’s wrong.”
“Baby, it’s grown-up stuff,” he tried to smile, and a look came into Cameron’s eyes he’d never seen before.
“You’ve never had grown up stuff from me.”
“That’s not true, Cam.”
“Fine!”
The tone in her voice sent Bill into a rage and he came out of the bathroom clinging to the lentil.
“Nice tone! Don’t ever talk that way to me, Cameron Dwyer!”
“Nice tone yourself!” Cameron mimicked back, nastily. “I’m not Niall, remember?”
And then she slammed the door and Bill went for it, and Niall stuck his head out of his room to catch a peek of the rare sight of father and daughter fighting. But like an Israelite curious of the Passover, he soon closed the door and stuck his head back in.
“Open the door!” Bill shouted. Open the goddamn door!”
He pounded on it, reached for the handle, triumphed to see it wasn’t locked, and then marched in and he and Cameron looked directly at each other and he said: “Oh, my God!” and put a hand to his mouth.
His eyes had filled up for the third time in one night and he stood there in his pajama bottoms, a towel over his shoulder and put his hand to his mouth. Then he took it away. Cameron was transfixed by him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. Embarrassed, Bill ducked his eyes and closed the door behind him.
He stopped at Niall’s door and was getting ready to knock.
Niall opened the door.
“You know I’m sorry, don’t you?”
Niall looked down at the carpet, and then met his dad’s eyes and nodded.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I love you. You’re my son. You make me proud. Alright?”
Niall said, “Alright Dad.”
And then, because they were almost the same height, without bending, Bill reached out to embrace Niall, but was surprised by the door closing in his face. He found himself standing blankly in front of his son’s door in an empty hallway.


“Sharon! It’s white folks at the door!”
Before she was embarrassed, or they were embarrassed any more, Sharon ran out from the kitchen and saw that her husband was hosting Rob and some red headed girl.
“Robert,” Sharon said, delighted.
“I just came by to tell you everything that was going on he said, “I’ve got to be going to school. My first class is about in a half hour.”
“You’ll be late anyway,” said the girl.
“This is Jill,” Robert lifted her hand to indicate her, as if there were another possible Jill in the apartment.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
“Sharon’ll do,”
“Ma’am’s good,” Graham disagreed. “It builds manners.”
“Shut up, honey,” Sharon said, not ungently.
“She’s my comrade in arms,” Rob announced.
“I wish I had a comrade in arms,” Sharon said.
“What about me?” Graham said.
Sharon crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
“Chayne tells me you’re taking an English class.”
“It’s only comp,” he said.
“And Rob’s professor loves him.” Jill was saying. “One day I came by Soubirous and his professor was talking about what a good essay he wrote on the meaning of neighborhood—”
“Manhood.”
“That’s what I said. And I wanted to tell that professor—”
“Dr. Logan.”
“I wanted to tell him, if you read Rob’s real work, you wouldn’t be surprised. Rob’s going to be famous, and I don’t mean that Danielle Steel stuff. I mean people’ll be teaching him in college in twenty—no, ten years. Oprah’ll call him for her book club, but he’ll be too busy.”
Rob was blushing.
“That good?” Graham cocked his head, dubiously.
“How could you fail?” Sharon ignored her husband, and hoped the rest of them did too, “with a cheerleader like this behind you?”
“And I don’t cheer easily,” Jill said.
“She doesn’t Rob, agreed. “She’s like hell in a skirt, Sharon. She ripped into this one guy at a coffeehouse the other week. She made a complete idiot of him. It’s like watch out, here comes Jill Barnard. If I get famous writing, she’ll probably be the woman that walks up to the White House and says, ‘No, that’s alright, Mr. President, I’ll be Commander in Chief from now on.”
“Well,” said Jill levelly. “I always did say that if you just took up all the Palestinians, shipped them off to Belfast, and removed the Protestants and Catholics and threw them into Jerusalem, then most of the world’s problems would be taken care of in no time.”
“Castro?” Graham said.
“Let ‘em alone. He’ll be dead one day.”
“Magnanimous of you,” Sharon told her.
“What about China?” Graham demanded.
“Oh, enough is enough, we’ll just bomb them. Free Tibet. The Dalai Lama for the next Pope. I see it happening.”
Rob rolled his blue almond eyes at Jill and smiling said, “So you are gonna be the president now?”
“Sounds like a plan, doesn’t?”
Jill didn’t have to look up to him. They were matched in height.
“Will you take off for your period?”
“Graham!”
Jill was nonplussed, “Are you kidding, Mr. Kandzierski? That’s the only time I’ll do my real work. I’m on the war path!”

MORE TOMORROW
 
Well it looks like Bill’s home life isn’t going too well. He has a lot of conflict with his kids and clearly isn’t that happy with Dena anymore. The second part of the portion was good too. I am enjoying the focus on these characters, it’s different but a nice change. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow.
 
BOTH BILL AND PATTI HAVE TO FACE THEIR PAST DEEDS TODAY, AND DENA COMES OVER FOR A LITTLE BIT OF HELP. HOLD ONTO YOUR FORESKINS, FRIENDS! IT'S GONNA BE INTERESTING.


“Okay, so we need to get something settled?”
“Yes?” Patti Lewis said to Felice, letting her cigarette burn away as she sipped from the already old coffee.
“Who’s gon be the godmother to Jackie’s baby?”
“Oh, you can have the little bastard,” Patti said.
“You’re too gracious,” Felice rolled her pop eyes in her dark face.
“Well, shit, I had thought of the same thimg too,” Patti Lewis said. “The creature’ll be here any day now—”
“Boy or girl?”
“I don’t know. You know Jackie didn’t want to do any testing. But you’re interrupting.”
“Sorry,” Felice threw up her hands in mock rebuff.
“Anyway,” Patti went on, taking a hefty if not healthy drag on her cigarette until the cherry glowed, and then fell of the filter into the tray. She dragoned smoke.
“I realized, I’ll be the baby’s aunt twice over. You need to be something. And I thought I’d make the decision because Jackie would never know what to say. She’d just have us duke it out in front of the baptismal font at Saint Adjeanet’s.”
“What if?” Felice started, then stopped.
“What if what?” Patti wouldn’t let her get away with that.
“I was gon say,” Felice leaned in as if she had to whisper, “What if Jackie surprised us both and had Abby Devalara be the godmother?”
“That shit,” Patti said darkly, “would not fly.”
Patti was silent a moment, then she said, “Oh—gossip!”
“Okay, Pat, out with it?”
“Well, not much of it because it’s part of my job, but guess who is finally breaking down and coming to me in about—” Patti looked at her watch, “shit. One hour!”
Felice was not going to guess.
“Dena Dwyer.”
Impossibly, Felice’s eyes became even wider.
“The crazy bitch next door who married her brother?”
“She’s married to her brother’s best friend—and her brother is married to her husband’s sister.”
“Well, that shit still ain’t right. I caint believe she’s comin’. I thought you hated her. I thought she hated you!”
“Ditto and ditto, but money is money and skills are skill.”
“Tell me all the details.”
“Felice!”
And Felice knew better than to ask again.
“Still,” said Felice. “I say if people had more friends, we’d need less shrinks.”
“Well, ditto to that sister, but don’t put the word out, or I’ll be back to crying in my bathtub, smoking a pack a day, looking like shit and wishing I had something to do.”



“Good morning, Dena,” Patti made sure to sound full of courtesy. She was dressed well, professionally, but not like competition.
Dena nodded, and then remembered to say hello. Dena Dwyer must have been an attractive woman at one point in time, and after all, she did have a beautiful daughter. Now she was rat faced and hollow eyed.
“I’ve got coffee,”
“Oh, that’s alright.”
“No,” Patti put a confiding hand over Dena’s. “Have something to drink. I insist. You’ll feel much better once you do. And something in you. You probably haven’t eaten.”
“I had to drop Niall and Cameron off this morning.”
“You’ve been all over town,” Patti led her neighbor though the dining room and into the kitchen where she could smell new coffee percolating. It made her want to light up, but... she was being a professional, and a host.
“I bought rolls and buns just this morning,” Patti said. “Please don’t be impolite and not eat. People are always starving themselves,” Patti heard herself rambling on pleasantly, and wondered what the hell was going on. But the way how some people evacuated their minds and became robots when it was time to work, Patti turned on her intuition, and it ran like an engine without her accord, sitting the sad woman with her stringy hair—Patti knew all about that—down, pushing a sugary roll toward her, pouring the coffee, and getting the creamer and the sugar.
“Usually, when friends come for help they like the library. It’s very professional,” Patti said stirring her coffee, “It’s got my diplomas and everything. But the living room’s got the sofa if you’re feeling crazy. If you need a couch. And then there’s the sunlight, the sunlight alone has gotten me through many tough times.”
Dena was quiet, looking around the house, looking so mousy and frayed that Patti felt bad for always thinking of this woman as pretentious.
“But then, if you like the kitchen. The kitchen’s fine too. Thom won’t be home until six—which you know because he’s with Bill. Russell’s at school till three which means he’ll be home by six. So this whole house is sort of my office. Me casa is su casa, my couch is your couch.”
“Oh, God I am crazy!” Dena said suddenly.
Patti didn’t deny it. She just laughed and said, “Honey we’ve all been to the couch. The time I spent crying makes me a hell of a lot more qualified than any dissertation I ever wrote. Come to think of it, the dissertations were half the reason I was crying.”
Her pretty face frowned. It was still pretty, though.
“And you were married, with a child and a husband and you got your doctorate,” Dena said.
“Yes,” and then Patti said, “You were married with two children and you got your B.A.? Or am I wrong?”
“No,” said Dena in a voice that requested cheering up. But Patti did not cheer up, or at least, she was not in the habit of indulging.
“Well then what’s the problem?” she demanded. “There must be a problem or your wouldn’t be here, dear?”
Well, that was putting it baldly. But she was just as harsh on herself, when she analyzed her own life in a bathtub full of suds and oil with a full pack of Bensen and Hedges.
Dena didn’t say anything right away, then she shook her head and said, “I’m not sure if I know exactly what it is.”
“That’s alright,” Patti said. “Just start talking until you find out what it is. And it.. could be several things.”
“Well, I need to talk,” Dena admitted. “And I love Lee, I really do, but the thing is it’s hard to talk to her. When her brother’s the problem. It’s hard to talk to my brother. Because he’s my brother. And there’s really no one else, and even if I could talk to Lee, she wouldn’t understand. Eve wouldn’t either.”
Long ago Patti had kept a notepad with her to sketch down important things. Then she’d begun to hide it on her lap, or discreetly on an end table or a drawer of her desk no one could see. Now she hid it in her mind.
“Does it feel lonely?” Patti said.
“Yes,” said Dena. “I had gotten used to that, decided it must be a condition of life.”
“And are you happy?”
“No,” Dena didn’t even have to think about it. “Cameron... I can’t connect with my daughter. I wonder if I even want to. Bill—I don’t know him. I know I married to him. I know I must have been in love with him, but I don’t remember making those decisions. It’s just like someone wrote me up—the character to a book, and he wrote my whole life and I didn’t have an ounce—” she spoke with rage, “of input.
“I did, I know somewhere along the line I chose where I am, but I just don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember choosing this.”
“I know,” Patti said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Incongruously, Dena said, “Patti, this house is so beautiful.”
But when she said it, her eyes were shining and she was looking up and around, blinking back tears.
Patricia Lewis smiled and told her neighbor:
“Not always.”


Bill Dwyer had originally thought of calling in sick. But staying home with no one but Dena, who had a day off today, seemed worse than facing the monster. And Bill was not sure exactly who the monster was. Not Lynn. Not really.
They took Thom’s car this morning, and Bill was blessedly glad that Thom Lewis, unlike David, was a man willing not to ask questions and just drive. Bill found himself making light conversation, and laughing too loudly and it hurt to laugh. Though he was glad Thom drove, he wished it had been his turn so that he could just spend the day driving around Grand Rapids, not facing the office.
He took the long way, a long maze through cubicles to avoid Lynn’s, and he avoided wondering about what might be going through her head. He snuck into his office undetected and realized that this would have been funny if it weren’t so really pathetic.
It took Lynn Messing until eleven o’clock to walk into Bill’s office.
“Good morning,” she said.
Bill, flustered, looking chastened, said, “Good morning.”
“May I,” Lynn moved into the office, closed the door behind her, and sat in the chair in front of the desk, “sit down?”
Bill had the grace to realize it was not a question.
“I realize,” Lynn said, “that you feel terrible. I knew it from the moment it happened. I know you’re not a bad man, Bill. I know. You’re married with two children—whom you love. I—we need to clear the air. There’s no since in pretending that what happened didn’t happen.”
“It can’t ever happen again,” Bill said.
“Is there really a danger of that?” Lynn asked him. When her enormous eyes lifted to settle on him, Bill Dwyer realized she had not been looking at him at all this whole time. “The way you feel right now, is there really a danger of a repeat of last night?”
Bill sighed and shook his head. “No, I guess not.”
“And what do you think I am?” Lynn went on. Her tone was almost friendly. “I had—” She caught herself and turned the phrase, “I was with a married man last night. I never planned that.”
She got up, straightened her skirt and was moving to the door when she said: “Maybe I did plan it. Maybe since I met you I planned it. Maybe you planned it too, a little. But....”
“It’s over,” Bill said.
“Yes,” Lynn agreed. “It’s over.”


Patti loved the ritual of driving to the grocery store, down Ardmore Street the thick green leaves of the trees were just beginning to turn and the sky was very blue. She loved the smell of the bread aisle and she loved the food samples. She even loved the bag boys and bag girls and old people. There was something in the fluorescent light for her. Before she’d lost her teaching job, before she’d stopped leaving her home to work, she had never been able to admit this. Now she could admit how much fun it was to spend ten minutes going up and down the candy aisle before debating whether she should get a large Symphony bar, a Kit Kat or nothing at all.
She did not expect to see Chuck Shrader in the cereal aisle.
“Seems like we’ve been here before,” she said.
Chuck, startled, smiled at her.
“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Shrader? I sure hope not since I’m paying good money for you to educate my son.”
“Good morning, Patti.”
“Afternoon, really. Why are you here, Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“Well, Mom,” said Chuck. “this is my lunch hour and Jeff Cordino and his girlfriend are coming over to my place tonight, so I wanted to get everything right now.”
“I’ll be glad when they marry and get a place of their own so they can’t stop eating at everyone else’s,” said Patti.
“So,” Chuck did not comment on that, but lifted two glass jars, hefting them. “Prego or Ragu?”
“Neither. Tomato paste, garlic and water, bits of this and that.”
“I’m not handy in the kitchen.”
“Me neither, my PhD’s in psychology. But there are just things you pick up.”
“At the look on Chuck’s face, Patti said, “Okay, get Ragu.”
“Mushrooms or no?” Chuck raised an eyebrow.
“I’d say yes.”
“Then definitely no,” Chuck threw the mushrooms dramatically back on the shelf and Patti threw back ehr curly head and laughed.
“Chuck, I’ve missed you,” she said at last. “Why don’t I see you anymore?”
Chuck laughed at Patti now and looked incredulous.
“Patricia, you dumped me.”
“I was married! and still am. And happily.”
Unconsciously she touched her wedding band.
“And you’re not doing so badly yourself with Faye on a string and everything.”
Chuck raised an eyebrow.
“I heard that she was willing to give up university and come here for you.”
“This is a small town, indeed,” Chuck remarked.
“Yes, Chuck. Yes it is.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Chuck said, “I missed you too, Patti. I don’t know, I always thought that it would be really awkward talking to you.”
“And is it?”
“Well, aside from the fact that since the moment I met you, I’ve never known what to say to you... ” he let his sentence trail off, then said. “We should go to lunch sometime.”
“Sometime is always a bad date to make with people you’ve been estranged from. Let’s go now.”
“But, Patti, there’s no time! I’ve got to be back to school in forty minutes. We can’t even find a restaurant—”
Patricia Lewis took Chuck Shrader’s wrist and said in a confidential tone, “Charles, there is always time for lunch.”




BILL SAYS IT'S OVER. IS IT OVER? DON'T YOU FUCKING BE FOOLED! MORE TOMORROW NIGHT!
 
That was a great portion! I don’t think it’s over no matter how much Bill wants it to be. So much going on in this story at the moment! I feel bad for Dena. I am glad Patti reconnected with Chuck. Excellent writing and I am excited for more tomorrow!
 
At this moment, in this part of the story, I feel sorry for Dena too. She is a complicated character for me. i unabashedly love Patti and Thom. I cant exactly say the same for Bill and Dena.
 
EVERYONE IS CALLED TO FACE FACTS AND GROW UP A LITTLE TONIGHT

Patti Lewis hadn’t been born early enough for the Second Vatican Council to change her church practices, but she had grown up in a two flat in south Chicago with her mother, father and sister on the third floor, cousins on the second, and grandparents on the first, the whole place filled with mounted holy cards, angels, images of the Sacred Heart, portraits of Saint Rita with the thorn stuck in her head, Saint Anthony holding the Christ Child, the Blessed Virgin in a thousand woebegone poses and an altar in each apartment. All of this combined to make a girl not want to go near anything but fish on any Friday—forget that it was nowhere near Lent—and luckily the grocery store deli made excellent fried cod. That and a donut and a cup of coffee were heaven, and Chuck had commented that there was no time to stand in the long checkout line and pay for it, and then Patti wiping her hands on her old jeans, said that it was a good thing they’d eaten any proof that they needed to go through a eheckout line.
Which also necessitated a good confession.
And since she was feeling good, and since she was nearby, and since she didn’t really care for Father Jeff or Father Heinz, Patti rolled down the window and laughed as she drove toward Evervirgin.


Driving away from Evervirgin, Patti marked with a slight twinge of guilty satisfaction that if she needed a confessor, the priest had really needed a shrink.
“Or a change... or a cigarette,” she suggested to herself. The suggestion sounded so good, she decided to have one herself. There was another appointment at three, unusually late, but she only had two appointments on this Friday, which was a rarity. Often Patti was surprised by the number of unhappy people in this little town.
She stopped at the library, and it had been a while since her last visit, which made her feel illiterate. She was looking for the fiction and feeling stupid. This one and this one could not help her. If she stopped any of these women to ask them where the fiction section was, Patti was sure that they would look at her over their glasses and judge her with scorn. There was a man, but he was pale as a ghost and decked out in silver jewelry. He looked like he’d be attending a coven sometime soon.
Finally, when she had ended up in photography for the third time, Patti spotted a gangly young man in khakis with a little soul patch and a blue shirt hanging out of his trousers. Despite the darker rings about his green eyes that made him look like a Byzantine icon, he was blissfully shelving books, and Patti decided that he would be the perfect person to ask.
“Oh, we moved the section,” he said smiling at her. “Come on, let me show you where it is now.” He gestured to Patti congenially, and Patti marked his rangy walk, and his black goatee and thought that it would be nice if more people could be like this. He seemed like a very real person..
Unselfconsciously, as they approached the fiction section, he touched the small of her back and steered Patti toward the shelves.
“Here you go. Have fun. Leave some books for the other patrons.”
Patti realized just how little reading she had been doing, which was sort of alarming because she usually had enough free time on her hands to do nothing but read. She was in a mood to do so now, and took up a stack of novels that she could scarcely see over, taking the elevator to the main floor and the checkout stand. She dropped off her books to a serious looking blond woman who began to scan them and ask, though Patti noticed she really didn’t care, how her day was. Trying to put as much heart into it as possible, Patti said her day was very good so far.
Only when the young man, who gave Patti a full smile, slipped behind the blond woman and gave her a gentle caress, did she liven up, and Patti realized that they must be a couple. He was working with a cart of books behind the counter and whispered something to the woman who laughed, her face coming to life as she went on scanning books and then looked up and gave Patti an authentic, living smile.
“Ms. Lewis, these will be due back in twenty-one days, here’s your receipt.”
“Thank you,” the man had made her feel social, she looked at the woman’s badge, “Marissa.”
Walking away from the library, Patti briefly wondered what kind of lover that long, tal,l black haired, wild man was. The electric in her lit to thinking of Chuck, remembering his kisses and suddenly she was flooded with desire and knew she would give Thom the night of his life.
Thinking of the book shelver who had awakened her to desire, the red in the trees and the slight chill in the air, Patti murmured, “That man’s got the touch. He’s contagious.”


On the empty stage of the empty Noble Red, Nehru Alexander took Brad’s guitar and strummed as he sang:

“I don’t feel like talking to you right now
And I can’t be bothered with hearing.
I’m a little worried about all this not doing,
is there enough of being? My hands pick up the clay,
those hands have little to say as do my lips.
Sometimes this is enough.
So, I don’t talk to you, you, you, you
Oh, you! I just can’t talk these
Days”

Brad Long, in his baggy blue shirt, felt almost useless without a guitar, reached for a cigarette before realizing it was a prop for his hands, and listened as Nehru played. Nehru always did the singing, him the playing, that Nehru was good at the guitar was a revelation.




We have taken on the fullness of the morning which
became the fullness of the day
and now the deep dark golden evening comes slowly
on her way,
the next lines are all bad rhyme and sleep has more
to say than carefully crafted words.


So, I don’t talk to you, you, you, you
Oh, you! I just can’t talk these
Days”

“Is that about me?” Brad said when Nehru was done.
“No,” Nehru said, giving him that look, the look that was not of someone ten years younger, but someone infinitely older and amused and always ahead of you.
“I have better things to do than stand up on a stage and sing veiled words about someone else on that stage to a crowd. If I have anything to say to you, Bradley, I’ll say it direct.”
“You haven’t actually said anything direct in a while,” Brad stood up and took his guitar.
“No,” Nehru said, very direct, “I haven’t had sex with you. I’ve been as direct as ever.”
“You broke it off.”
“I broke it off,” Nehru repeated, nodding.
“I told you I love you.”
“And then you went right back to Marissa’s bed.”
“Do you want me to leave her?”
“I want you to figure yourself out.”
“Nehru!”
“If you figured yourself out, you wouldn’t even have the audacity to ask a question like that.”
Brad put down his guitar.
“Nehru Alexander,” he began.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting on my knees.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I love you. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” Nehru said, touching Brad’s cheek.
“But you know how when you were with Debbie, well, hell, even before that, you were looking for something, you were always discontent. You felt like you hadn’t found it—”
“What if I told you it was you?”
“Then,” Nehru thought for a moment, “I’d tell you part of it was me. But most of it is you. You still haven’t grown up.”
“Nehru!”
“If you were a grown up there would have never been a point where you were sleeping with me AND Marissa, but since you cannot be the grown up, then I have to be.”

MORE TOMORROW
 
Nice to get so much of Patti in this portion! I was glad Nehru called out Brad, he does need to grow up and pick someone. This was a great portion and I look forward to more tomorrow!
 
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