CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! I am glad Melissa and Brad had lunch together. It was good for them. I am interested to see where this leads and look forward to more tomorrow!
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If I Should Fall
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THESE SIMPLE ECSTASIES
CONCLUSION
Brad’s mouth was on her throat, on her shoulder, burning everything he touched, moving to the brassiere where he became gentler, laughing as he tried to unhook her bra, rejoicing as she, taking pity, did it for him, gently sucking each nipple, pulling, his mouth going down and down while his hand pulled away her underwear. She was nude while he guided her own soft hands to his waistband. He was naked now and she was sheltered in the glory of warm arms and legs and the narrow hot torso. What entered first was his fingers. These were the first things to awaken Marissa, and she was shamed to think how long she had been asleep. Then her breasts longed for his tongue, and he knew without knowing and his tongue danced on them, his lips gently suckled them again. Brad’s mouth again went down and down her belly. He stopped over her naval, looking up at her, his green eyes hooded and predatory.
“You’re satin, you know?” he said, and for a moment paused to rest his face on her belly. She could feel the stubble of his cheek and he could feel the smoothness of her flesh. Then, where his fingers had been was his mouth. She felt his tongue shocking her more than his hand had. His hands were now caressing her hips and he was speaking tongues rapidly, darting inside of her, thirsty for her pussy.
Marissa planted her hands on Brad’s undulating head then, as he snaked up, the hands went down his back to hold him at his hips. He rose over her, but did not enter. He only kissed her mouth over and over. Her lips were like tangerine slices to him, her body was the world. He slipped inside her quietly, almost unnoticed. And then began the movement inside of her. It was like... the candy! The sweetness that first touched one part of her before filling all of her until it became part of her and she moved with it. The gentleness became a steady rhythm, a steady burrowing. Slowly Brad lifted her a little, slowly they began rocking as he found the touchstone in her, and when he did he began to pound it over and over again. He rested his goateed chin on her shoulder, then, as the hammer persisted inside of her. It was like he could rest now that he’d completed his quest. Her hands at his shoulders descended to his smooth back and splayed there, and then she moved him, judging by his own outcries where his own touchstone lay, until they moved with a single rhythm.
Brad had always thought that to refer to the orgasm as the moment of crisis was stupid. Now, in that last moment, he knew why this was called crisis. The crisis was in knowing it was time to let go, and not wanting it to end, but knowing that this end would carry him into Marissa. In the end he had to let go, and find joy in the surrender. Marissa was on his lap and he was out of himself. His body was utterly still, and it was the most violent rocketing he’d ever felt. He grunted through clenched teeth once—twice—he did not count how many times before it ended, and shuddering, he collapsed into her arms.
The little house on Indragal Road was filled with the dark smell of tobacco. Most people found cigars repulsive and Marissa had to admit that up until now she had as well.
They had finished. Brad had made her come in his arms several times before he came himself, and Marissa was locked in his struggling body, the arms that clenched her, the torso pressed to her breast, the chin clamping down on her neck, the cock, thick, brown, round headed, deep inside of her. That one moment she’d almost been embarrassed to be with Brad when he was totally vulnerable to her. And then they’d lain together truly silent.
At last he leaned out of bed so that she saw the cleft of his ass as he turned his back to her and reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled out a lighter and a long cigar, and clamping it between his teeth, puffed and sucked on it until the first dark odor of burning tobacco touched her nostrils. The grey smoke rose from the cigar, as his penis, like brown loaf, rose from the cloud of damp dark hair under his belly, and Brad lay on his back with a look of intense concentration, then turning to her, offered the cigar with its wet base.
This, too, was intimacy, and when she took her first few puffs, Brad lay on his side, propped up by an elbow, smiling at her.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she confessed in a small voice.
“It is just your first time,” Brad told her, taking it back, puffing himself. “Like many a first time, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But in the end you’ll find that cigars are very sexy. Better to smoke a cigar than a cigarette after making love. I think.” He passed it back to her.
She accepted.
“When I woke up a few days ago I didn’t even know you,” Brad said. “And then I wanted to go out with you and when I saw you on Main Street, with that candy, in that dress, I wanted to be with you, right here in this bed. I wanted to be part of you and smoke with you and ask you questions and make love to you.”
There was a long silence, and then Marissa said, “I’m four years older than you.”
“My last girlfriend was nine years younger.”
“And I have a job. A regular, steady paying job.”
“Who are you trying to talk out of this relationship: me or you?” Brad reached over to take the cigar and was now puffing on it.
Marissa was semi alarmed that Brad had quite quickly taken for granted the existence of a relationship.
“Shall I weave for you a picture?” Brad asked.
She nodded, comfortable and quiet. “Sure.”
“I’m better at stories than reality. Part of me kind of hopes these stories can become reality.
“We go to sleep and wake up. I practice with the band, you join me in the pizza place, at the Noble Red. After that we come on back here and spend the night, and the next day and the days after that together. We love out all the bad stuff that ever happened, and make something new.”
“Then I’ll work at the library, a lowly shelver who, hopefully, will become someone one day. I’ll be like a poor page, and you’ll be the unattainable queen, the queen of the library and... and.... one day my Chilli Comet Sundae will strike gold—no, platinum—”
“Chilli… What the hell is that?”
“My band,” Brad said.
“This is madness!”
Brad grinned wildly, and she felt the wildness within her as he shook his head.
“This is living.
“Just listen,” Brad said. Marissa raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll all—ALL be millionaires.” Brad laughed to himself. “How’s that sound?”
He rocked Marissa a while, and looking down, saw she was asleep. Then, squeezing close to her, he followed suit.
As Marissa Gregg stirred from sleep, she rolled over to press herself deeper into Brad, and came to what she found was more mattress, sheets and softness warm with memory of Brad.
“Brad?” since she was just waking up, Marissa’s voice was not loud. Initially she was not terribly concerned. Perhaps he had gone to look for food in the refrigerator or use the bathroom.
“Or maybe...” Marissa sat up in bed. Ironically, now that she was alone, she was aware of her breasts, her buttocks, of the rising of her nipples for the first time that whole afternoon. Maybe, having gotten his “piece,” he’d left.
Immediately, Marissa rose out of bed and found her housecoat. She needed to be clothed. This had never happened to her, ever. She’d heard about it, surely. She’d known victims of the one night, one afternoon, one morning, stand. She’d known them as whores. They got laughed about. But oh, God, hadn’t she just been one?
How empty the house was right now.
Hadn’t she brought this sweet talking man with no job, no future, really with nothing physically attractive about himself to her home? She could still feel him over her, around her. Yes, inside of her. And the feeling was that of stupidity, of frustration. Not since Stan and his coldness and lies and a lust unlike Brad’s, an Ivy League, white collar, five minute lust that Marissa thought was so dignified it had to be love, had she let a man inside. But then, with the end of Stan, she’d stopped letting anyone inside... And then Brad had come, and what was she now?
Entering the kitchen in the midst of her raving, after a circular pace about the tiny living room, she found the ripped out sheet of notebook paper magneted to the refrigerator door.
Dear Marissa,
had to go to Nehru’s to practice with the Band.
Chilli Comet Sundae is performing at Noble Red’s Pizza
Parlor at 8:30 tonight. I didn’t want to wake you, You’re
so cute asleep!
Meet me there. I want you to meet everyone.
Love,
Brad
P.S. I called the library and told them you wouldn’t be in for
the rest of the day. I would’ve woken you up, but it looked like
you needed your rest.
Marissa was at once relieved and irked by the letter. There was something touchingly childish in it. Not so much as a “please come” or an “I’ll pick you up” But then he couldn’t very well pick anyone up. He didn’t own a car. But how arrogant of him to just expect her to meet him. But arrogance was something else. This was innocence.
When Nehru and Shane finished, Shane said, “I wish I’d sung that to Jill—when I had her.”
Brad was chatting with Leon, but looking again and again at the door to the Noble Red. The door swung open. It was only Anigel, followed by Chayne. Ordinarily they would not have been a disappointment.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Nehru lied gently to his friend.
Brad could hear Anigel saying to Chayne and Rob, “Well, it should be a comfort to you to know that if you don’t get it—whatever it is, nobody else does either.”
“Well, it’s not a comfort,” Shane interrupted. “Shit, someone ought to get it.”
“That’s how I feel about sex,” Anigel said, lighting a Marlboro, “Just because I’m not getting it doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be getting it.”
“Well,” murmured Nehru to his friend, “at least that’s one thing you are getting.”
“Shut up,” Brad muttered, taking time to swat his friend on the back of the head as he strummed his guitar and they began the lead in to the next song.
Marissa had passed, but never been inside of Noble Red’s. It was out near the highway, and bigger than she expected, on the first floor of an old brick building on a strip of old brick buildings with shops on their lower levels. Standing outside, looking through the glazed pane, Marissa saw several tables, all filled, and then how the floor lowered to a larger area where Marissa was touched to see so many people, toasting each other, stretching slices of pizza apart, lighting cigarettes, all having a great time that Marissa somehow felt she could be a part of if only she went through that door.
And on the stage was a boy singing at the microphone and behind him there were four others. Marissa’s heart lightened to see Brad, strumming his guitar, lean into the microphone, tall and pale against the smaller, darker one that must have been Nehru.
Marissa walked in.
How
will
I wake
tomorrow?
Can
laughter
come from
soo—row?
Well, I’ve been waiting,
for a feeling,
and I’ve waited a long time!
Nehru sang as Marissa walked in. She weaved her way through the crowded tables, not wanting to look at anyone, coming closer and closer to the stage.
Well, I’ve been around the world
and i ain’t seen none
like
you!
Brad, behind Nehru, lifted his eyes long enough to meet hers, and they twinkled. Even while playing, he nudged Nehru so that the younger man looked up and smiled, and then shoved Brad to the microphone so that it was his voice, younger and less sure than Nehru’s actually, a little rough and timid that took up the lead vocal.
Well, I’ve been around the world,
and I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you he declared, gaining strength
I ain’t seen none
like
you
And Marissa stood there, an appreciative smile crossing her face, because the one thing she had learned in thirty-five years is that there was really nothing that declared true love like a man who could hardly sing, attempting to do so.
TOMORROW: THE BOOK OF THE BURNING
CONCLUSION
Brad’s mouth was on her throat, on her shoulder, burning everything he touched, moving to the brassiere where he became gentler, laughing as he tried to unhook her bra, rejoicing as she, taking pity, did it for him, gently sucking each nipple, pulling, his mouth going down and down while his hand pulled away her underwear. She was nude while he guided her own soft hands to his waistband. He was naked now and she was sheltered in the glory of warm arms and legs and the narrow hot torso. What entered first was his fingers. These were the first things to awaken Marissa, and she was shamed to think how long she had been asleep. Then her breasts longed for his tongue, and he knew without knowing and his tongue danced on them, his lips gently suckled them again. Brad’s mouth again went down and down her belly. He stopped over her naval, looking up at her, his green eyes hooded and predatory.
“You’re satin, you know?” he said, and for a moment paused to rest his face on her belly. She could feel the stubble of his cheek and he could feel the smoothness of her flesh. Then, where his fingers had been was his mouth. She felt his tongue shocking her more than his hand had. His hands were now caressing her hips and he was speaking tongues rapidly, darting inside of her, thirsty for her pussy.
Marissa planted her hands on Brad’s undulating head then, as he snaked up, the hands went down his back to hold him at his hips. He rose over her, but did not enter. He only kissed her mouth over and over. Her lips were like tangerine slices to him, her body was the world. He slipped inside her quietly, almost unnoticed. And then began the movement inside of her. It was like... the candy! The sweetness that first touched one part of her before filling all of her until it became part of her and she moved with it. The gentleness became a steady rhythm, a steady burrowing. Slowly Brad lifted her a little, slowly they began rocking as he found the touchstone in her, and when he did he began to pound it over and over again. He rested his goateed chin on her shoulder, then, as the hammer persisted inside of her. It was like he could rest now that he’d completed his quest. Her hands at his shoulders descended to his smooth back and splayed there, and then she moved him, judging by his own outcries where his own touchstone lay, until they moved with a single rhythm.
Brad had always thought that to refer to the orgasm as the moment of crisis was stupid. Now, in that last moment, he knew why this was called crisis. The crisis was in knowing it was time to let go, and not wanting it to end, but knowing that this end would carry him into Marissa. In the end he had to let go, and find joy in the surrender. Marissa was on his lap and he was out of himself. His body was utterly still, and it was the most violent rocketing he’d ever felt. He grunted through clenched teeth once—twice—he did not count how many times before it ended, and shuddering, he collapsed into her arms.
The little house on Indragal Road was filled with the dark smell of tobacco. Most people found cigars repulsive and Marissa had to admit that up until now she had as well.
They had finished. Brad had made her come in his arms several times before he came himself, and Marissa was locked in his struggling body, the arms that clenched her, the torso pressed to her breast, the chin clamping down on her neck, the cock, thick, brown, round headed, deep inside of her. That one moment she’d almost been embarrassed to be with Brad when he was totally vulnerable to her. And then they’d lain together truly silent.
At last he leaned out of bed so that she saw the cleft of his ass as he turned his back to her and reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled out a lighter and a long cigar, and clamping it between his teeth, puffed and sucked on it until the first dark odor of burning tobacco touched her nostrils. The grey smoke rose from the cigar, as his penis, like brown loaf, rose from the cloud of damp dark hair under his belly, and Brad lay on his back with a look of intense concentration, then turning to her, offered the cigar with its wet base.
This, too, was intimacy, and when she took her first few puffs, Brad lay on his side, propped up by an elbow, smiling at her.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she confessed in a small voice.
“It is just your first time,” Brad told her, taking it back, puffing himself. “Like many a first time, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But in the end you’ll find that cigars are very sexy. Better to smoke a cigar than a cigarette after making love. I think.” He passed it back to her.
She accepted.
“When I woke up a few days ago I didn’t even know you,” Brad said. “And then I wanted to go out with you and when I saw you on Main Street, with that candy, in that dress, I wanted to be with you, right here in this bed. I wanted to be part of you and smoke with you and ask you questions and make love to you.”
There was a long silence, and then Marissa said, “I’m four years older than you.”
“My last girlfriend was nine years younger.”
“And I have a job. A regular, steady paying job.”
“Who are you trying to talk out of this relationship: me or you?” Brad reached over to take the cigar and was now puffing on it.
Marissa was semi alarmed that Brad had quite quickly taken for granted the existence of a relationship.
“Shall I weave for you a picture?” Brad asked.
She nodded, comfortable and quiet. “Sure.”
“I’m better at stories than reality. Part of me kind of hopes these stories can become reality.
“We go to sleep and wake up. I practice with the band, you join me in the pizza place, at the Noble Red. After that we come on back here and spend the night, and the next day and the days after that together. We love out all the bad stuff that ever happened, and make something new.”
“Then I’ll work at the library, a lowly shelver who, hopefully, will become someone one day. I’ll be like a poor page, and you’ll be the unattainable queen, the queen of the library and... and.... one day my Chilli Comet Sundae will strike gold—no, platinum—”
“Chilli… What the hell is that?”
“My band,” Brad said.
“This is madness!”
Brad grinned wildly, and she felt the wildness within her as he shook his head.
“This is living.
“Just listen,” Brad said. Marissa raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll all—ALL be millionaires.” Brad laughed to himself. “How’s that sound?”
He rocked Marissa a while, and looking down, saw she was asleep. Then, squeezing close to her, he followed suit.
As Marissa Gregg stirred from sleep, she rolled over to press herself deeper into Brad, and came to what she found was more mattress, sheets and softness warm with memory of Brad.
“Brad?” since she was just waking up, Marissa’s voice was not loud. Initially she was not terribly concerned. Perhaps he had gone to look for food in the refrigerator or use the bathroom.
“Or maybe...” Marissa sat up in bed. Ironically, now that she was alone, she was aware of her breasts, her buttocks, of the rising of her nipples for the first time that whole afternoon. Maybe, having gotten his “piece,” he’d left.
Immediately, Marissa rose out of bed and found her housecoat. She needed to be clothed. This had never happened to her, ever. She’d heard about it, surely. She’d known victims of the one night, one afternoon, one morning, stand. She’d known them as whores. They got laughed about. But oh, God, hadn’t she just been one?
How empty the house was right now.
Hadn’t she brought this sweet talking man with no job, no future, really with nothing physically attractive about himself to her home? She could still feel him over her, around her. Yes, inside of her. And the feeling was that of stupidity, of frustration. Not since Stan and his coldness and lies and a lust unlike Brad’s, an Ivy League, white collar, five minute lust that Marissa thought was so dignified it had to be love, had she let a man inside. But then, with the end of Stan, she’d stopped letting anyone inside... And then Brad had come, and what was she now?
Entering the kitchen in the midst of her raving, after a circular pace about the tiny living room, she found the ripped out sheet of notebook paper magneted to the refrigerator door.
Dear Marissa,
had to go to Nehru’s to practice with the Band.
Chilli Comet Sundae is performing at Noble Red’s Pizza
Parlor at 8:30 tonight. I didn’t want to wake you, You’re
so cute asleep!
Meet me there. I want you to meet everyone.
Love,
Brad
P.S. I called the library and told them you wouldn’t be in for
the rest of the day. I would’ve woken you up, but it looked like
you needed your rest.
Marissa was at once relieved and irked by the letter. There was something touchingly childish in it. Not so much as a “please come” or an “I’ll pick you up” But then he couldn’t very well pick anyone up. He didn’t own a car. But how arrogant of him to just expect her to meet him. But arrogance was something else. This was innocence.
When Nehru and Shane finished, Shane said, “I wish I’d sung that to Jill—when I had her.”
Brad was chatting with Leon, but looking again and again at the door to the Noble Red. The door swung open. It was only Anigel, followed by Chayne. Ordinarily they would not have been a disappointment.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Nehru lied gently to his friend.
Brad could hear Anigel saying to Chayne and Rob, “Well, it should be a comfort to you to know that if you don’t get it—whatever it is, nobody else does either.”
“Well, it’s not a comfort,” Shane interrupted. “Shit, someone ought to get it.”
“That’s how I feel about sex,” Anigel said, lighting a Marlboro, “Just because I’m not getting it doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be getting it.”
“Well,” murmured Nehru to his friend, “at least that’s one thing you are getting.”
“Shut up,” Brad muttered, taking time to swat his friend on the back of the head as he strummed his guitar and they began the lead in to the next song.
Marissa had passed, but never been inside of Noble Red’s. It was out near the highway, and bigger than she expected, on the first floor of an old brick building on a strip of old brick buildings with shops on their lower levels. Standing outside, looking through the glazed pane, Marissa saw several tables, all filled, and then how the floor lowered to a larger area where Marissa was touched to see so many people, toasting each other, stretching slices of pizza apart, lighting cigarettes, all having a great time that Marissa somehow felt she could be a part of if only she went through that door.
And on the stage was a boy singing at the microphone and behind him there were four others. Marissa’s heart lightened to see Brad, strumming his guitar, lean into the microphone, tall and pale against the smaller, darker one that must have been Nehru.
Marissa walked in.
How
will
I wake
tomorrow?
Can
laughter
come from
soo—row?
Well, I’ve been waiting,
for a feeling,
and I’ve waited a long time!
Nehru sang as Marissa walked in. She weaved her way through the crowded tables, not wanting to look at anyone, coming closer and closer to the stage.
Well, I’ve been around the world
and i ain’t seen none
like
you!
Brad, behind Nehru, lifted his eyes long enough to meet hers, and they twinkled. Even while playing, he nudged Nehru so that the younger man looked up and smiled, and then shoved Brad to the microphone so that it was his voice, younger and less sure than Nehru’s actually, a little rough and timid that took up the lead vocal.
Well, I’ve been around the world,
and I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you he declared, gaining strength
I ain’t seen none
like
you
And Marissa stood there, an appreciative smile crossing her face, because the one thing she had learned in thirty-five years is that there was really nothing that declared true love like a man who could hardly sing, attempting to do so.
TOMORROW: THE BOOK OF THE BURNING
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great end to the chapter! I feel good about Brad and Melissa and hope things work out for them. Excellent writing and I look forward to The Book Of The Burning tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I like it too. I've liked every version of this story. There may be another version of it one day, and I hope you like it too.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
IF I SHOULD FALL
THESE SIMPLE ECSTASIES
REDUX PART ONE
“I AM SUCH AN IDIOT! Do you know what I told her? Do you know?”
Nehru put down his cup of ice cream and opened his eyes wide to indicate he was paying attention.
“She told me that she didn’t think I was meant for this job. She said it was so unfulfilling, right? Then I told her that if her job didn’t fulfill her she should get out. I told her that, to just get out.”
“Oh my—” Nehru was torn between laughter and absolute shock. Then he realized that he had broken his standard rule by losing his poker face when dealing with others, even—no, especially—friends.
But since he’d broken the rule, already...
“Let me get this straight: you told this woman to quit her job—”
“Because it didn’t fulfill her.”
“Well...” Nehru grew quiet, picked up his ice cream, and resumed licking it, “What you said does make since. In a way... I mean, if she doesn’t like where she’s at, and she’s half the pill she sounds like—”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Sounds like a bitch to me.”
Nehru saw the look on Brad’s face when he said this.
“What, Brad?” said Nehru seeing him.
“Don’t tell me you like her. Please, don’t fuck her. But I’ve interrupted myself. I was going to say that what you said did make since.”
“But what the hell right do I have telling her anything! Look at my life! People I went to school with have wives and good kids—”
“I believe we’ve been through this, already!”
“And we’ll go through it again. They have good jobs and, shit, look at me!”
“And some people who you went to school with are now either dead or in prison or living out of trash cans. It does cut both ways.”
Nehru was twenty-one, and had met Brad at a college function. Chilli Comet Sundae had lost its lead singer, and Nehru was performing with another group when Brad first heard him. By the time Nehru knew that Brad was a decade older, they’d known each other too long for it to matter.
Brad spoke:
“When I got out of high school—”
“Back when I was in third grade—”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Brad made a wry face and with sarcasm, Nehru nodded a ‘you’re welcome’.
“But when I graduated, I didn’t go into college right away because I didn’t want to be like my parents and a lot of the people I knew and just rush right through life until I was in my thirties, looking back and wondering where all the years had gone.”
“But that makes the most sense in the world.”
“So now instead of being in my thirties with a degree and wondering where all the time’s gone, I’m in my thirties living in my parents’ basement with three degrees, still wondering where all the time has gone!
“And you know what else?”
“What?”
“On top of it all, I keep on thinking about that Marissa Gregg—”
“And you want to fuck her.”
Brad looked straight at Nehru, his dark green eyes wide with surprise.
“I want….” Brad said, “to do something.”
Nehru said nothing.
“I want to want something.”
Nehru had learned that the more silence he kept, the wiser her looked. Also, Brad seemed capable of arriving at things onhis own.
“I want to fuck… I want to fuck something. And I want to want to fuck her.”
Nehru’s brown eyes bore through his glasses straight back at Brad.
“Philosophical.”
The older man blushed and drew a hand across his scraggy chin muttering, “Philosophically fucked. Shit!”.
“If only it could all be math,” Cameron Dwyer lamented as Brad closed the literature book..
“Don’t worry, honey,” Bill Dwyer was saying as he came into his living room where Brad was tutoring his daughter. “You’ll get to some excellent school where you’ll be the envy of everyone because you’re one of the five people on campus who’s a math whiz.”
Politically, Brad kept his opinions to himself and only said, “Cameron, usually people like you are all about poetry and stories.”
“You mean girls?” she looked up at Brad with a raised eyebrow, as he stood up and pulled his grey sweatshirt over his tee shirt.
“No, I meant smart people.”
Cameron, who was prepared to be surly, suddenly blushed.
The phone rang. Bill jumped to answer it, then said, “It’s for you, Cameron. It’s Russell.”
“Say hi for me,” said Brad.
“It’s a small town,” Bill reflected.
Dena came in and said, “Here’s the check for this week, Bradley,” and then, as he was saying thank you, Bill’s pager rang and he quickly answered.
“Oh, hi,” he said gently. “It’s a colleague,” he informed Dena and Brad, “I’ll take it in the den.”
Dena looked after her husband strangely. Brad felt like he belonged to a whole different generation from the Dwyers. They had it all so together, and yet, this little glimpse of oddness reminded him that they were only a few years older than him.
“Russell wants to know if you all are going to be at the Noble Red on Thursday?” Cameron looked up from the phone, pushing back her golden hair.
“Yeah.”
“Can I come?” she asked.
“Ask your parents,”
For once, Brad did not envy the Dwyers.
Marcia came in smiling the next morning.
“There’s a friend of yours who wants to see you,” she told Marissa who looked up and murmured, “A...”
Marissa didn’t know who it could be, could admit to really having no social life.
“Send her in.”
“Her?” Marcia raised a comic eyebrow, chuckled to herself, and raising a finger to signal her to wait a moment, left.
“Oh, my Go—” Marissa started. It was Brad Long again, this time again in his jeans and tee shirt. “Mr. Long, I told you about the job, that—”
“I came to ask what time your lunch break is.”
She looked straight at him, bewildered.
“Librarians don’t go to lunch?” He’d asked that same question the other day. “Oh, that’s right. It’s one. You already told me.”
When Brad stretched, Marissa was amazed by how tall he was.
“Let’s you and me grab something. Today I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“Today,” Marissa thought about telling him this for a while before deciding on honesty, “I am actually leaving for the day at one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Then… what should I say?”
“You should say,” Marissa told him, “that you will be waiting downstairs for me in the reference section.”
He grinned quickly at her and said, “I’ll be waiting downstairs in the reference section.”
“Do you know,” he began as they walked out of the large building into the sunlight of downtown, “that when Constantine built Constantinople it was already ancient? I mean he filled it with stuff from all over the world. Picture an Egyptian obelisk here, and Greek statuary there, and a few Persian lamassu?”
“Lamassu?”
“Lions with bird heads,” he shook his head. “No, they’re Assyrian. Well, they didn’t really have lamassu in Byzantium anyway. I was just using that as an example. I mean, the guy really threw the city together.”
“So, what do you want to eat?” Marissa said. If she had to be with this man, the conversation might as well be stirred to something normal—If not meaningful.
Brad took her to the hot dog stand.
“This is the closest Geschichte Falls can come up with to a street cafe,” he said, escorting Marissa to one of the little tables shaded by red and yellow umbrellas. The hot dogs were loaded with grilled onions and smelled of steamed beef and Chicago, Marissa thought, and she bit into hers and felt a glob of mustard touch her chin, and an onion slithered off of Brad’s dog onto the foil wrapper. He reached over to wipe the mustard from Marissa’s chin. She grinned, and he laughed. Marissa realized that it had been the first time she’d seen him laugh though he seemed to always be happy.
“So, where do you usually eat lunch?” he asked her, sucking on the straw of his Coke.
“Not here,” she grinned, and wiping her mouth, looked around at the other tables.
“I mean, usually I’ll eat in the lounge of the library. Occasionally I’ll get to eat with Marcia when we have the same break.”
“The lounge,” Brad made an exaggerated face, “How nasty.” He picked one of the onions off of her hot dog.
“I know. I’m actually glad you dragged me out of there.
“Brad?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you do?.... When you’re not applying to work at libraries?”
“Primarily? Primarily, I’m with my band.”
“You have a band!”
He guessed the look on her face and grinned knowingly.
“We all need a hobby, don’t we?”
“I don’t have a hobby,” Marissa said reflectively.
“I bet you do.”
“No.” Then, in a tone of wonder, “No.”
“Well,” Brad was wiping his hands off on his jeans.
“It wasn’t much of a band. I didn’t start it. I’m not even responsible for it. A friend of mine is. His sister was lead singer. But then she went to enter the real world. So one night, I’m at this college function, a talent show of sorts. Someone I knew was teaching there, and this student starts singing. Just blows the roof off of everything. So I hear him again. He never does original music, but he really knows how to blow the roof off of everyone else’s. I talk to him about it. He says he can’t write. I show him my lyrics—which I can’t sing.”
“So he’s your new lead singer.”
“He is.”
“How old is he?”
“You have an obsession with age,” Brad said.
“Do I?”
When he didn’t answer, Marissa thought, then said, “Maybe it’s because I’m feeling my own.”
Brad confessed, “I feel mine too.”
They were both quiet before Brad added, “He’s twenty-one. Academic, completely given over to college. Possibly my opposite.”
“Not really,” by now Marissa had finished the hot dog and she was balling up the wrapper which she put into Brad’s outstretched palm.
“What do you mean?” he asked her when he’d returned from the trash drum.
“I mean, that was you, right? Given over to education and all.”
Brad laughed and shook his head. “But I couldn’t sing. I mean, it took me years to become the disrespectable nobody standing before you.”
They left the hot dog stand and walked downtown. It wasn’t a huge downtown, nor was it a busy one. There were card shops and book stores and drug stores and doctors’ offices and only the banks and hotels exceeded six stories.
“You were telling me, earlier,” she said, “how I ought to just quit my job if it didn’t fulfill me. Do what made me happy. The way you did.”
For the first time Brad blushed and he ran his hand over his unshaven face.
“That was out of line.”
“No,” said Marissa quietly. “But seriously, would working in the library make you happy? Would it content you?”
“Marissa, I don’t know. What I know is that the whole time I was growing up I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and then... thing’s changed. Now the one thing I know is that I don’t have what I want.”
She asked Brad to take her somewhere he knew and he brought her to the fudge shop that was only a block from the library.
“Since the first week I started at the library, I’ve been wanting to come here,” Marissa told Brad when they bought the two blocks of fudge. They were little and heavy and brown, wrapped in slick plastic and Marissa could smell the sweetness through the cellophane.
“How long ago was that?”
“Six years ago.”
“You should have come. See, if you had, then I would have met you sooner,” he told her walking out, to hold the door for her, the bell tingling behind Marissa as she followed him onto the street. “But I’ve met you now after all, so maybe fate is real.”
Marissa began unwrapping her fudge, and as she did, Brad took it from her.
She looked up at him, startled.
“We eat the block together. Like finding the forbidden fruit. You’re Eve and I’m Adam. Only there’s no condemnation and… neither one of us is naked.”
Marissa laughed at the analogy, and then smiled widely, and Brad did too. He peeled a bit of the fudge off and put it to her mouth, then he bit some off himself, lifting his finger.
“Just savor.”
The fudge had a grainy consistency that began to melt into a cocoa sweet mud and the mud melted into her tongue into all of her mouth. Marissa felt, and this sounded foolish, as if she were a part of the sweetness, and of the sun that was red and orange through her eyelids. Only now did she realize she’d been standing on Main Street with her eyes closed, sucking on fudge.
When she opened them it was to Brad who was smiling down at her. His green eyes seemed darker and bluer and deeper like the sea.
“I am convinced,” he said, “that life is composed of a series of these simple ecstasies.”
Brad’s dick was hard. He was aware of it’s swell, its firmness the way he had been as a high school aged boy when, mesmerized, he would take it out of his jeans and, in the same basement where he slept now, polish it till it shone and stroke it to ecstasy. He’d been this hard, this constantly and almost unconsciously hard since he’d broken up with Debbie.
Brad became aware of all this when Marissa asked:
“What made you ask me to lunch?”
It was a whisper. Marissa believed what Brad said, and did not want to disturb this small life the two of them had just entered.
He started to give her a hooked grin, but when her cheeks reddened, so did his.
He only said, “You’re beautiful.”
Marissa was five-six and blue eyed with curly blond hair and dressed in a floral print. Cute, yes. But no one had called her beautiful in... she couldn’t recall when.
Brad Long’s eyes were not five inches from her. He was all around her.
“Where do you live?” he asked her.
The world was composed of these simple ecstasies.
So she told him.
THE REST TOMORROW
THESE SIMPLE ECSTASIES
REDUX PART ONE
“I AM SUCH AN IDIOT! Do you know what I told her? Do you know?”
Nehru put down his cup of ice cream and opened his eyes wide to indicate he was paying attention.
“She told me that she didn’t think I was meant for this job. She said it was so unfulfilling, right? Then I told her that if her job didn’t fulfill her she should get out. I told her that, to just get out.”
“Oh my—” Nehru was torn between laughter and absolute shock. Then he realized that he had broken his standard rule by losing his poker face when dealing with others, even—no, especially—friends.
But since he’d broken the rule, already...
“Let me get this straight: you told this woman to quit her job—”
“Because it didn’t fulfill her.”
“Well...” Nehru grew quiet, picked up his ice cream, and resumed licking it, “What you said does make since. In a way... I mean, if she doesn’t like where she’s at, and she’s half the pill she sounds like—”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Sounds like a bitch to me.”
Nehru saw the look on Brad’s face when he said this.
“What, Brad?” said Nehru seeing him.
“Don’t tell me you like her. Please, don’t fuck her. But I’ve interrupted myself. I was going to say that what you said did make since.”
“But what the hell right do I have telling her anything! Look at my life! People I went to school with have wives and good kids—”
“I believe we’ve been through this, already!”
“And we’ll go through it again. They have good jobs and, shit, look at me!”
“And some people who you went to school with are now either dead or in prison or living out of trash cans. It does cut both ways.”
Nehru was twenty-one, and had met Brad at a college function. Chilli Comet Sundae had lost its lead singer, and Nehru was performing with another group when Brad first heard him. By the time Nehru knew that Brad was a decade older, they’d known each other too long for it to matter.
Brad spoke:
“When I got out of high school—”
“Back when I was in third grade—”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Brad made a wry face and with sarcasm, Nehru nodded a ‘you’re welcome’.
“But when I graduated, I didn’t go into college right away because I didn’t want to be like my parents and a lot of the people I knew and just rush right through life until I was in my thirties, looking back and wondering where all the years had gone.”
“But that makes the most sense in the world.”
“So now instead of being in my thirties with a degree and wondering where all the time’s gone, I’m in my thirties living in my parents’ basement with three degrees, still wondering where all the time has gone!
“And you know what else?”
“What?”
“On top of it all, I keep on thinking about that Marissa Gregg—”
“And you want to fuck her.”
Brad looked straight at Nehru, his dark green eyes wide with surprise.
“I want….” Brad said, “to do something.”
Nehru said nothing.
“I want to want something.”
Nehru had learned that the more silence he kept, the wiser her looked. Also, Brad seemed capable of arriving at things onhis own.
“I want to fuck… I want to fuck something. And I want to want to fuck her.”
Nehru’s brown eyes bore through his glasses straight back at Brad.
“Philosophical.”
The older man blushed and drew a hand across his scraggy chin muttering, “Philosophically fucked. Shit!”.
“If only it could all be math,” Cameron Dwyer lamented as Brad closed the literature book..
“Don’t worry, honey,” Bill Dwyer was saying as he came into his living room where Brad was tutoring his daughter. “You’ll get to some excellent school where you’ll be the envy of everyone because you’re one of the five people on campus who’s a math whiz.”
Politically, Brad kept his opinions to himself and only said, “Cameron, usually people like you are all about poetry and stories.”
“You mean girls?” she looked up at Brad with a raised eyebrow, as he stood up and pulled his grey sweatshirt over his tee shirt.
“No, I meant smart people.”
Cameron, who was prepared to be surly, suddenly blushed.
The phone rang. Bill jumped to answer it, then said, “It’s for you, Cameron. It’s Russell.”
“Say hi for me,” said Brad.
“It’s a small town,” Bill reflected.
Dena came in and said, “Here’s the check for this week, Bradley,” and then, as he was saying thank you, Bill’s pager rang and he quickly answered.
“Oh, hi,” he said gently. “It’s a colleague,” he informed Dena and Brad, “I’ll take it in the den.”
Dena looked after her husband strangely. Brad felt like he belonged to a whole different generation from the Dwyers. They had it all so together, and yet, this little glimpse of oddness reminded him that they were only a few years older than him.
“Russell wants to know if you all are going to be at the Noble Red on Thursday?” Cameron looked up from the phone, pushing back her golden hair.
“Yeah.”
“Can I come?” she asked.
“Ask your parents,”
For once, Brad did not envy the Dwyers.
Marcia came in smiling the next morning.
“There’s a friend of yours who wants to see you,” she told Marissa who looked up and murmured, “A...”
Marissa didn’t know who it could be, could admit to really having no social life.
“Send her in.”
“Her?” Marcia raised a comic eyebrow, chuckled to herself, and raising a finger to signal her to wait a moment, left.
“Oh, my Go—” Marissa started. It was Brad Long again, this time again in his jeans and tee shirt. “Mr. Long, I told you about the job, that—”
“I came to ask what time your lunch break is.”
She looked straight at him, bewildered.
“Librarians don’t go to lunch?” He’d asked that same question the other day. “Oh, that’s right. It’s one. You already told me.”
When Brad stretched, Marissa was amazed by how tall he was.
“Let’s you and me grab something. Today I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“Today,” Marissa thought about telling him this for a while before deciding on honesty, “I am actually leaving for the day at one.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Then… what should I say?”
“You should say,” Marissa told him, “that you will be waiting downstairs for me in the reference section.”
He grinned quickly at her and said, “I’ll be waiting downstairs in the reference section.”
“Do you know,” he began as they walked out of the large building into the sunlight of downtown, “that when Constantine built Constantinople it was already ancient? I mean he filled it with stuff from all over the world. Picture an Egyptian obelisk here, and Greek statuary there, and a few Persian lamassu?”
“Lamassu?”
“Lions with bird heads,” he shook his head. “No, they’re Assyrian. Well, they didn’t really have lamassu in Byzantium anyway. I was just using that as an example. I mean, the guy really threw the city together.”
“So, what do you want to eat?” Marissa said. If she had to be with this man, the conversation might as well be stirred to something normal—If not meaningful.
Brad took her to the hot dog stand.
“This is the closest Geschichte Falls can come up with to a street cafe,” he said, escorting Marissa to one of the little tables shaded by red and yellow umbrellas. The hot dogs were loaded with grilled onions and smelled of steamed beef and Chicago, Marissa thought, and she bit into hers and felt a glob of mustard touch her chin, and an onion slithered off of Brad’s dog onto the foil wrapper. He reached over to wipe the mustard from Marissa’s chin. She grinned, and he laughed. Marissa realized that it had been the first time she’d seen him laugh though he seemed to always be happy.
“So, where do you usually eat lunch?” he asked her, sucking on the straw of his Coke.
“Not here,” she grinned, and wiping her mouth, looked around at the other tables.
“I mean, usually I’ll eat in the lounge of the library. Occasionally I’ll get to eat with Marcia when we have the same break.”
“The lounge,” Brad made an exaggerated face, “How nasty.” He picked one of the onions off of her hot dog.
“I know. I’m actually glad you dragged me out of there.
“Brad?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you do?.... When you’re not applying to work at libraries?”
“Primarily? Primarily, I’m with my band.”
“You have a band!”
He guessed the look on her face and grinned knowingly.
“We all need a hobby, don’t we?”
“I don’t have a hobby,” Marissa said reflectively.
“I bet you do.”
“No.” Then, in a tone of wonder, “No.”
“Well,” Brad was wiping his hands off on his jeans.
“It wasn’t much of a band. I didn’t start it. I’m not even responsible for it. A friend of mine is. His sister was lead singer. But then she went to enter the real world. So one night, I’m at this college function, a talent show of sorts. Someone I knew was teaching there, and this student starts singing. Just blows the roof off of everything. So I hear him again. He never does original music, but he really knows how to blow the roof off of everyone else’s. I talk to him about it. He says he can’t write. I show him my lyrics—which I can’t sing.”
“So he’s your new lead singer.”
“He is.”
“How old is he?”
“You have an obsession with age,” Brad said.
“Do I?”
When he didn’t answer, Marissa thought, then said, “Maybe it’s because I’m feeling my own.”
Brad confessed, “I feel mine too.”
They were both quiet before Brad added, “He’s twenty-one. Academic, completely given over to college. Possibly my opposite.”
“Not really,” by now Marissa had finished the hot dog and she was balling up the wrapper which she put into Brad’s outstretched palm.
“What do you mean?” he asked her when he’d returned from the trash drum.
“I mean, that was you, right? Given over to education and all.”
Brad laughed and shook his head. “But I couldn’t sing. I mean, it took me years to become the disrespectable nobody standing before you.”
They left the hot dog stand and walked downtown. It wasn’t a huge downtown, nor was it a busy one. There were card shops and book stores and drug stores and doctors’ offices and only the banks and hotels exceeded six stories.
“You were telling me, earlier,” she said, “how I ought to just quit my job if it didn’t fulfill me. Do what made me happy. The way you did.”
For the first time Brad blushed and he ran his hand over his unshaven face.
“That was out of line.”
“No,” said Marissa quietly. “But seriously, would working in the library make you happy? Would it content you?”
“Marissa, I don’t know. What I know is that the whole time I was growing up I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and then... thing’s changed. Now the one thing I know is that I don’t have what I want.”
She asked Brad to take her somewhere he knew and he brought her to the fudge shop that was only a block from the library.
“Since the first week I started at the library, I’ve been wanting to come here,” Marissa told Brad when they bought the two blocks of fudge. They were little and heavy and brown, wrapped in slick plastic and Marissa could smell the sweetness through the cellophane.
“How long ago was that?”
“Six years ago.”
“You should have come. See, if you had, then I would have met you sooner,” he told her walking out, to hold the door for her, the bell tingling behind Marissa as she followed him onto the street. “But I’ve met you now after all, so maybe fate is real.”
Marissa began unwrapping her fudge, and as she did, Brad took it from her.
She looked up at him, startled.
“We eat the block together. Like finding the forbidden fruit. You’re Eve and I’m Adam. Only there’s no condemnation and… neither one of us is naked.”
Marissa laughed at the analogy, and then smiled widely, and Brad did too. He peeled a bit of the fudge off and put it to her mouth, then he bit some off himself, lifting his finger.
“Just savor.”
The fudge had a grainy consistency that began to melt into a cocoa sweet mud and the mud melted into her tongue into all of her mouth. Marissa felt, and this sounded foolish, as if she were a part of the sweetness, and of the sun that was red and orange through her eyelids. Only now did she realize she’d been standing on Main Street with her eyes closed, sucking on fudge.
When she opened them it was to Brad who was smiling down at her. His green eyes seemed darker and bluer and deeper like the sea.
“I am convinced,” he said, “that life is composed of a series of these simple ecstasies.”
Brad’s dick was hard. He was aware of it’s swell, its firmness the way he had been as a high school aged boy when, mesmerized, he would take it out of his jeans and, in the same basement where he slept now, polish it till it shone and stroke it to ecstasy. He’d been this hard, this constantly and almost unconsciously hard since he’d broken up with Debbie.
Brad became aware of all this when Marissa asked:
“What made you ask me to lunch?”
It was a whisper. Marissa believed what Brad said, and did not want to disturb this small life the two of them had just entered.
He started to give her a hooked grin, but when her cheeks reddened, so did his.
He only said, “You’re beautiful.”
Marissa was five-six and blue eyed with curly blond hair and dressed in a floral print. Cute, yes. But no one had called her beautiful in... she couldn’t recall when.
Brad Long’s eyes were not five inches from her. He was all around her.
“Where do you live?” he asked her.
The world was composed of these simple ecstasies.
So she told him.
THE REST TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great part one to this redux! I may have to read a few times to see all the changes but I am enjoying it so far. It’s good to get more of an insight into Brad. Excellent writing and I look forward to the rest tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
IF I SHOULD FALL
THESE SIMPLE ECSTASIES
REDUX CONCLUSION
entered first were his fingers. These were the first things to awaken Marissa, and she was shamed to think how long she had been asleep. Then her breasts longed for his tongue, and he knew without knowing and his tongue danced on them, his lips gently suckled them again. Brad’s mouth again went down and down her belly. He stopped over her naval, looking up at her, his green eyes hooded and predatory.
“You’re satin, you know?” he said, and for a moment paused to rest his face on her belly. She could feel the stubble of his cheek and he could feel the smoothness of her flesh. Then, where his fingers had been was his mouth. She felt his tongue shocking her more than his hand had. His hands were now caressing her hips and he was speaking tongues rapidly, darting inside of her, thirsty for her pussy.
Marissa planted her hands on Brad’s undulating head then, as he snaked up, the hands went down his back to hold him at his hips. He rose over her, but did not enter. He only kissed her mouth over and over. Her lips were like tangerine slices to him, her body was the world. He slipped inside her quietly, almost unnoticed. And then began the movement inside of her. It was like... the candy! The sweetness that first touched one part of her before filling all of her until it became part of her and she moved with it. The gentleness became a steady rhythm, a steady burrowing. Slowly Brad lifted her a little, slowly they began rocking as he found the touchstone in her, and when he did he began to pound it over and over again. He rested his goateed chin on her shoulder, then, as the hammer persisted inside of her. It was like he could rest now that he’d completed his quest. Her hands at his shoulders descended to his smooth back and splayed there, and then she moved him, judging by his own outcries where his own touchstone lay, until they moved with a single rhythm.
He had needed this. He had been stiff as a board and half crazy for days. It was like this when he’d lost his virginity somany years ago. It was like this is some experiences, experiences like the last few with Debbie, when he left the sex and floated above it, almost see himself, watching Brad Long play the lover, sway is hips in the right way, clench his buttocks, kiss breasts. There had been times when sex carried him into something entirely different, a strange revelation. There were times when orgasms did not end in joy, and now as he rode to his climax, he saw on the edge of it, on the vision of what brought him there, the greatest surprise, before he grunted in surprise. Marissa was on his lap and he was out of himself. His body was utterly still, and it was the most violent rocketing he’d ever felt. He grunted through clenched teeth once—twice—he did not count how many times before it ended, and shuddering, he collapsed into her arms.
The little house on Indragal Road was filled with the dark smell of tobacco. Most people found cigars repulsive and Marissa had to admit that up until now she had as well.
They had finished. Brad had made her come in his arms several times before he came himself, and Marissa was locked in his struggling body, the arms that clenched her, the torso pressed to her breast, the chin clamping down on her neck, the cock, thick, brown, round headed, deep inside of her. That one moment she’d almost been embarrassed to be with Brad when he was totally vulnerable to her. And then they’d lain together truly silent.
At last he leaned out of bed so that she saw the cleft of his ass as he turned his back to her and reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled out a lighter and a long cigar, and clamping it between his teeth, puffed and sucked on it until the first dark odor of burning tobacco touched her nostrils. The grey smoke rose from the cigar, as his penis, like brown loaf, rose from the cloud of damp dark hair under his belly, and Brad lay on his back with a look of intense concentration, then turning to her, offered the cigar with its wet base.
This, too, was intimacy, and when she took her first few puffs, Brad lay on his side, propped up by an elbow, smiling at her.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she confessed in a small voice.
“It is just your first time,” Brad told her, taking it back, puffing himself. “Like many a first time, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But in the end you’ll find that cigars are very sexy. Better to smoke a cigar than a cigarette after making love. I think.” He passed it back to her.
She accepted.
“When I woke up a few days ago I didn’t even know you,” Brad said. “And then I wanted to go out with you and when I saw you on Main Street, with that candy, in that dress, I wanted to be with you, right here in this bed. I wanted to be part of you and smoke with you and ask you questions and make love to you.”
There was a long silence, and then Marissa said, “I’m four years older than you.”
“My last girlfriend was nine years younger.”
“And I have a job. A regular, steady paying job.”
“Who are you trying to talk out of this relationship: me or you?” Brad reached over to take the cigar and was now puffing on it.
Marissa was semi alarmed that Brad had quite quickly taken for granted the existence of a relationship.
“Shall I weave for you a picture?” Brad asked.
She nodded, comfortable and quiet. “Sure.”
“I’m better at stories than reality. Part of me kind of hopes these stories can become reality.
“We go to sleep and wake up. I practice with the band, you join me in the pizza place, at the Noble Red. After that we come on back here and spend the night, and the next day and the days after that together. We love out all the bad stuff that ever happened, and make something new.”
“Then I’ll work at the library, a lowly shelver who, hopefully, will become someone one day. I’ll be like a poor page, and you’ll be the unattainable queen, the queen of the library and... and.... one day my Chilli Comet Sundae will strike gold—no, platinum—”
“Chilli… What the hell is that?”
“My band,” Brad said.
“This is madness!”
Brad grinned wildly, and she felt the wildness within her as he shook his head.
“This is living.
“Just listen,” Brad said. Marissa raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll all—ALL be millionaires.” Brad laughed to himself. “How’s that sound?”
He rocked Marissa a while, and looking down, saw she was asleep. Then, squeezing close to her, he followed suit.
As Marissa Gregg stirred from sleep, she rolled over to press herself deeper into Brad, and came to what she found was more mattress, sheets and softness warm with memory of Brad.
“Brad?” since she was just waking up, Marissa’s voice was not loud. Initially she was not terribly concerned. Perhaps he had gone to look for food in the refrigerator or use the bathroom.
“Or maybe...” Marissa sat up in bed. Ironically, now that she was alone, she was aware of her breasts, her buttocks, of the rising of her nipples for the first time that whole afternoon. Maybe, having gotten his “piece,” he’d left.
Immediately, Marissa rose out of bed and found her housecoat. She needed to be clothed. This had never happened to her, ever. She’d heard about it, surely. She’d known victims of the one night, one afternoon, one morning, stand. She’d known them as whores. They got laughed about. But oh, God, hadn’t she just been one?
How empty the house was right now.
Hadn’t she brought this sweet talking man with no job, no future, really with nothing physically attractive about himself to her home? She could still feel him over her, around her. Yes, inside of her. And the feeling was that of stupidity, of frustration. Not since Stan and his coldness and lies and a lust unlike Brad’s, an Ivy League, white collar, five minute lust that Marissa thought was so dignified it had to be love, had she let a man inside. But then, with the end of Stan, she’d stopped letting anyone inside... And then Brad had come, and what was she now?
Entering the kitchen in the midst of her raving, after a circular pace about the tiny living room, she found the ripped out sheet of notebook paper magneted to the refrigerator door.
Dear Marissa,
had to go to Nehru’s to practice with the Band.
Chilli Comet Sundae is performing at Noble Red’s Pizza
Parlor at 8:30 tonight. I didn’t want to wake you, You’re
so cute asleep!
Meet me there. I want you to meet everyone.
Love,
Brad
P.S. I called the library and told them you wouldn’t be in for
the rest of the day. I would’ve woken you up, but it looked like
you needed your rest.
Marissa was at once relieved and irked by the letter. There was something touchingly childish in it. Not so much as a “please come” or an “I’ll pick you up” But then he couldn’t very well pick anyone up. He didn’t own a car. But how arrogant of him to just expect her to meet him. But arrogance was something else. This was innocence.
When Brad had come, he came in sorrow. This almost did not bother him. So many orgasms with so many women had ended in a sort of sadness, a missing of something. And Marissa was great. She was just great. He would start something new with her.
He dressed quickly and left her the note. She must come again, but right now he had to be alone. How strange. He had wanted to be with her so much, and now it having happened, he needed to stroll and smoke. He needed to see Nehru. It was time for practice, and he was always early. Chili Comet Sundae was theirs. He was the father, Nehru the mother. Simple as that.
When he entered Noble Red, Nehru was already at the piano, and Ruth was sweeping the floor. She waved at him and kept on.
Brad vaulted the stage, feeling suddenly energetic, and sat on the bench beside Nehru and as Nehru played, he harmonized. Nehru switched to an old rock song, and Brad joined him. He switched to “You’re So Vain.” Brad joined him too. He played Mozart and Brad joined him in this too. They grinned at each other and laughed, bumping shoulders.
When they were done and Nehru finished with a flourish, they sat on the stage of the Noble Red alone, and Nehru said, “You fucked her!”
“Nehru!”
“You’re glowing!”
“I’m glowing to see you.”
“That’s partially true.”
“Truthfully, I always feel weird after sex. I was almost depressed.”
“Poor Marissa.”
“She’s coming by tonight.”
“Is she?”
“I left her a note.”
“You didn’t invite her?”
“She was asleep.”
“So, wait,” Nehru stopped. “You left her asleep after sex and then wrote a note.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a test.”
“It’s not a test.”
“It’s a bit of a test,” Nehru said.
Brad’s shoulder’s slumped. He didn’t look sad, just as if he were relaxing.
“I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know about myself these days.”
Then he said, “Nehru, we’re friends?”
“Asking or stating?”
“A little of both. Would you be super offended if I tried something?”
“Uh…. I’m super nervous,” Nehru said. “But… shoot your shot.”
Brad looked down at Nehru consideringly. When Brad looked at him Nehru wasn’t sure what had passed through him, but it had passed through him before. They were best friends because of the electric between them, but even while he noticed this, hidden from view by the large piano they sat at, in the Noble Red with no one to view anyway, Brad swooped down and pressed his mouth to Nehru’s.
It was short. It was expert. Nehru opened his mouth and Brad’s smoky tongue wrapped with his. Brad’s hand touched his cheek and he touched the rough stubble of Brad’s and then they separated, so quickly and sat side by side not looking at anything.
“That’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done in a long time,” Brad said.
Nehru touched his mouth.
“Me too,” he said.
“What the fuck do we do about it?” Brad said.
Nehru said, “I don’t know.”
“Should we go out and have a cigarette?” Brad asked.
Nehru said, “Yes.”
When Nehru and Shane finished, Shane said, “I wish I’d sung that to Jill—when I had her.”
Brad was chatting with Leon, but looking again and again at the door to the Noble Red. The door swung open. It was only Anigel, followed by Chayne. Ordinarily they would not have been a disappointment.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Nehru lied gently to his friend.
Brad could hear Anigel saying to Chayne and Rob, “Well, it should be a comfort to you to know that if you don’t get it—whatever it is, nobody else does either.”
“Well, it’s not a comfort,” Shane interrupted. “Shit, someone ought to get it.”
“That’s how I feel about sex,” Anigel said, lighting a Marlboro, “Just because I’m not getting it doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be getting it.”
“Well,” murmured Nehru to his friend, “at least that’s one thing you are getting.”
“Shut up,” Brad muttered, taking time to swat his friend on the back of the head as he strummed his guitar and they began the lead in to the next song.
Smoking cigarettes outside the Noble Red, Brad had said, “What will I do if she comes?”
“Do what you would have done.”
“But we just—”
“I know. I was there.”
“I always knew I was bi,” Brad said. “Deep down.”
“I knew I was something. I don’t know what to do with it, though.”
“Business as usual?” Brad said.
Nehru’s eyes tightened. He was actually, at that moment, almost violently frightened of being more than friends with Brad.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”
Marissa had passed, but never been inside of Noble Red’s. It was out near the highway, and bigger than she expected, on the first floor of an old brick building on a strip of old brick buildings with shops on their lower levels. Standing outside, looking through the glazed pane, Marissa saw several tables, all filled, and then how the floor lowered to a larger area where Marissa was touched to see so many people, toasting each other, stretching slices of pizza apart, lighting cigarettes, all having a great time that Marissa somehow felt she could be a part of if only she went through that door.
And on the stage was a boy singing at the microphone and behind him there were four others. Marissa’s heart lightened to see Brad, strumming his guitar, lean into the microphone, tall and pale against the smaller, darker one that must have been Nehru.
Marissa walked in.
How
will
I wake
tomorrow?
Can
laughter
come from
soo—row?
Well, I’ve been waiting,
for a feeling,
and I’ve waited a long time!
Nehru sang as Marissa walked in. She weaved her way through the crowded tables, not wanting to look at anyone, coming closer and closer to the stage.
Well, I’ve been around the world
and i ain’t seen none
like
you!
Brad, behind Nehru, lifted his eyes long enough to meet hers, and they twinkled. Even while playing, he nudged Nehru so that the younger man looked up and smiled, and then shoved Brad to the microphone so that it was his voice, younger and less sure than Nehru’s actually, a little rough and timid that took up the lead vocal.
Well, I’ve been around the world,
and I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you he declared, gaining strength
I ain’t seen none
like
you
And Marissa stood there, an appreciative smile crossing her face, because the one thing she had learned in thirty-five years is that there was really nothing that declared true love like a man who could hardly sing, attempting to do so.
TOMORROW WE BEGIN CHAPTER SEVEN
THESE SIMPLE ECSTASIES
REDUX CONCLUSION
entered first were his fingers. These were the first things to awaken Marissa, and she was shamed to think how long she had been asleep. Then her breasts longed for his tongue, and he knew without knowing and his tongue danced on them, his lips gently suckled them again. Brad’s mouth again went down and down her belly. He stopped over her naval, looking up at her, his green eyes hooded and predatory.
“You’re satin, you know?” he said, and for a moment paused to rest his face on her belly. She could feel the stubble of his cheek and he could feel the smoothness of her flesh. Then, where his fingers had been was his mouth. She felt his tongue shocking her more than his hand had. His hands were now caressing her hips and he was speaking tongues rapidly, darting inside of her, thirsty for her pussy.
Marissa planted her hands on Brad’s undulating head then, as he snaked up, the hands went down his back to hold him at his hips. He rose over her, but did not enter. He only kissed her mouth over and over. Her lips were like tangerine slices to him, her body was the world. He slipped inside her quietly, almost unnoticed. And then began the movement inside of her. It was like... the candy! The sweetness that first touched one part of her before filling all of her until it became part of her and she moved with it. The gentleness became a steady rhythm, a steady burrowing. Slowly Brad lifted her a little, slowly they began rocking as he found the touchstone in her, and when he did he began to pound it over and over again. He rested his goateed chin on her shoulder, then, as the hammer persisted inside of her. It was like he could rest now that he’d completed his quest. Her hands at his shoulders descended to his smooth back and splayed there, and then she moved him, judging by his own outcries where his own touchstone lay, until they moved with a single rhythm.
He had needed this. He had been stiff as a board and half crazy for days. It was like this when he’d lost his virginity somany years ago. It was like this is some experiences, experiences like the last few with Debbie, when he left the sex and floated above it, almost see himself, watching Brad Long play the lover, sway is hips in the right way, clench his buttocks, kiss breasts. There had been times when sex carried him into something entirely different, a strange revelation. There were times when orgasms did not end in joy, and now as he rode to his climax, he saw on the edge of it, on the vision of what brought him there, the greatest surprise, before he grunted in surprise. Marissa was on his lap and he was out of himself. His body was utterly still, and it was the most violent rocketing he’d ever felt. He grunted through clenched teeth once—twice—he did not count how many times before it ended, and shuddering, he collapsed into her arms.
The little house on Indragal Road was filled with the dark smell of tobacco. Most people found cigars repulsive and Marissa had to admit that up until now she had as well.
They had finished. Brad had made her come in his arms several times before he came himself, and Marissa was locked in his struggling body, the arms that clenched her, the torso pressed to her breast, the chin clamping down on her neck, the cock, thick, brown, round headed, deep inside of her. That one moment she’d almost been embarrassed to be with Brad when he was totally vulnerable to her. And then they’d lain together truly silent.
At last he leaned out of bed so that she saw the cleft of his ass as he turned his back to her and reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled out a lighter and a long cigar, and clamping it between his teeth, puffed and sucked on it until the first dark odor of burning tobacco touched her nostrils. The grey smoke rose from the cigar, as his penis, like brown loaf, rose from the cloud of damp dark hair under his belly, and Brad lay on his back with a look of intense concentration, then turning to her, offered the cigar with its wet base.
This, too, was intimacy, and when she took her first few puffs, Brad lay on his side, propped up by an elbow, smiling at her.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she confessed in a small voice.
“It is just your first time,” Brad told her, taking it back, puffing himself. “Like many a first time, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But in the end you’ll find that cigars are very sexy. Better to smoke a cigar than a cigarette after making love. I think.” He passed it back to her.
She accepted.
“When I woke up a few days ago I didn’t even know you,” Brad said. “And then I wanted to go out with you and when I saw you on Main Street, with that candy, in that dress, I wanted to be with you, right here in this bed. I wanted to be part of you and smoke with you and ask you questions and make love to you.”
There was a long silence, and then Marissa said, “I’m four years older than you.”
“My last girlfriend was nine years younger.”
“And I have a job. A regular, steady paying job.”
“Who are you trying to talk out of this relationship: me or you?” Brad reached over to take the cigar and was now puffing on it.
Marissa was semi alarmed that Brad had quite quickly taken for granted the existence of a relationship.
“Shall I weave for you a picture?” Brad asked.
She nodded, comfortable and quiet. “Sure.”
“I’m better at stories than reality. Part of me kind of hopes these stories can become reality.
“We go to sleep and wake up. I practice with the band, you join me in the pizza place, at the Noble Red. After that we come on back here and spend the night, and the next day and the days after that together. We love out all the bad stuff that ever happened, and make something new.”
“Then I’ll work at the library, a lowly shelver who, hopefully, will become someone one day. I’ll be like a poor page, and you’ll be the unattainable queen, the queen of the library and... and.... one day my Chilli Comet Sundae will strike gold—no, platinum—”
“Chilli… What the hell is that?”
“My band,” Brad said.
“This is madness!”
Brad grinned wildly, and she felt the wildness within her as he shook his head.
“This is living.
“Just listen,” Brad said. Marissa raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll all—ALL be millionaires.” Brad laughed to himself. “How’s that sound?”
He rocked Marissa a while, and looking down, saw she was asleep. Then, squeezing close to her, he followed suit.
As Marissa Gregg stirred from sleep, she rolled over to press herself deeper into Brad, and came to what she found was more mattress, sheets and softness warm with memory of Brad.
“Brad?” since she was just waking up, Marissa’s voice was not loud. Initially she was not terribly concerned. Perhaps he had gone to look for food in the refrigerator or use the bathroom.
“Or maybe...” Marissa sat up in bed. Ironically, now that she was alone, she was aware of her breasts, her buttocks, of the rising of her nipples for the first time that whole afternoon. Maybe, having gotten his “piece,” he’d left.
Immediately, Marissa rose out of bed and found her housecoat. She needed to be clothed. This had never happened to her, ever. She’d heard about it, surely. She’d known victims of the one night, one afternoon, one morning, stand. She’d known them as whores. They got laughed about. But oh, God, hadn’t she just been one?
How empty the house was right now.
Hadn’t she brought this sweet talking man with no job, no future, really with nothing physically attractive about himself to her home? She could still feel him over her, around her. Yes, inside of her. And the feeling was that of stupidity, of frustration. Not since Stan and his coldness and lies and a lust unlike Brad’s, an Ivy League, white collar, five minute lust that Marissa thought was so dignified it had to be love, had she let a man inside. But then, with the end of Stan, she’d stopped letting anyone inside... And then Brad had come, and what was she now?
Entering the kitchen in the midst of her raving, after a circular pace about the tiny living room, she found the ripped out sheet of notebook paper magneted to the refrigerator door.
Dear Marissa,
had to go to Nehru’s to practice with the Band.
Chilli Comet Sundae is performing at Noble Red’s Pizza
Parlor at 8:30 tonight. I didn’t want to wake you, You’re
so cute asleep!
Meet me there. I want you to meet everyone.
Love,
Brad
P.S. I called the library and told them you wouldn’t be in for
the rest of the day. I would’ve woken you up, but it looked like
you needed your rest.
Marissa was at once relieved and irked by the letter. There was something touchingly childish in it. Not so much as a “please come” or an “I’ll pick you up” But then he couldn’t very well pick anyone up. He didn’t own a car. But how arrogant of him to just expect her to meet him. But arrogance was something else. This was innocence.
When Brad had come, he came in sorrow. This almost did not bother him. So many orgasms with so many women had ended in a sort of sadness, a missing of something. And Marissa was great. She was just great. He would start something new with her.
He dressed quickly and left her the note. She must come again, but right now he had to be alone. How strange. He had wanted to be with her so much, and now it having happened, he needed to stroll and smoke. He needed to see Nehru. It was time for practice, and he was always early. Chili Comet Sundae was theirs. He was the father, Nehru the mother. Simple as that.
When he entered Noble Red, Nehru was already at the piano, and Ruth was sweeping the floor. She waved at him and kept on.
Brad vaulted the stage, feeling suddenly energetic, and sat on the bench beside Nehru and as Nehru played, he harmonized. Nehru switched to an old rock song, and Brad joined him. He switched to “You’re So Vain.” Brad joined him too. He played Mozart and Brad joined him in this too. They grinned at each other and laughed, bumping shoulders.
When they were done and Nehru finished with a flourish, they sat on the stage of the Noble Red alone, and Nehru said, “You fucked her!”
“Nehru!”
“You’re glowing!”
“I’m glowing to see you.”
“That’s partially true.”
“Truthfully, I always feel weird after sex. I was almost depressed.”
“Poor Marissa.”
“She’s coming by tonight.”
“Is she?”
“I left her a note.”
“You didn’t invite her?”
“She was asleep.”
“So, wait,” Nehru stopped. “You left her asleep after sex and then wrote a note.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a test.”
“It’s not a test.”
“It’s a bit of a test,” Nehru said.
Brad’s shoulder’s slumped. He didn’t look sad, just as if he were relaxing.
“I don’t know. There’s so much I don’t know about myself these days.”
Then he said, “Nehru, we’re friends?”
“Asking or stating?”
“A little of both. Would you be super offended if I tried something?”
“Uh…. I’m super nervous,” Nehru said. “But… shoot your shot.”
Brad looked down at Nehru consideringly. When Brad looked at him Nehru wasn’t sure what had passed through him, but it had passed through him before. They were best friends because of the electric between them, but even while he noticed this, hidden from view by the large piano they sat at, in the Noble Red with no one to view anyway, Brad swooped down and pressed his mouth to Nehru’s.
It was short. It was expert. Nehru opened his mouth and Brad’s smoky tongue wrapped with his. Brad’s hand touched his cheek and he touched the rough stubble of Brad’s and then they separated, so quickly and sat side by side not looking at anything.
“That’s the most satisfying thing I’ve done in a long time,” Brad said.
Nehru touched his mouth.
“Me too,” he said.
“What the fuck do we do about it?” Brad said.
Nehru said, “I don’t know.”
“Should we go out and have a cigarette?” Brad asked.
Nehru said, “Yes.”
When Nehru and Shane finished, Shane said, “I wish I’d sung that to Jill—when I had her.”
Brad was chatting with Leon, but looking again and again at the door to the Noble Red. The door swung open. It was only Anigel, followed by Chayne. Ordinarily they would not have been a disappointment.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Nehru lied gently to his friend.
Brad could hear Anigel saying to Chayne and Rob, “Well, it should be a comfort to you to know that if you don’t get it—whatever it is, nobody else does either.”
“Well, it’s not a comfort,” Shane interrupted. “Shit, someone ought to get it.”
“That’s how I feel about sex,” Anigel said, lighting a Marlboro, “Just because I’m not getting it doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be getting it.”
“Well,” murmured Nehru to his friend, “at least that’s one thing you are getting.”
“Shut up,” Brad muttered, taking time to swat his friend on the back of the head as he strummed his guitar and they began the lead in to the next song.
Smoking cigarettes outside the Noble Red, Brad had said, “What will I do if she comes?”
“Do what you would have done.”
“But we just—”
“I know. I was there.”
“I always knew I was bi,” Brad said. “Deep down.”
“I knew I was something. I don’t know what to do with it, though.”
“Business as usual?” Brad said.
Nehru’s eyes tightened. He was actually, at that moment, almost violently frightened of being more than friends with Brad.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”
Marissa had passed, but never been inside of Noble Red’s. It was out near the highway, and bigger than she expected, on the first floor of an old brick building on a strip of old brick buildings with shops on their lower levels. Standing outside, looking through the glazed pane, Marissa saw several tables, all filled, and then how the floor lowered to a larger area where Marissa was touched to see so many people, toasting each other, stretching slices of pizza apart, lighting cigarettes, all having a great time that Marissa somehow felt she could be a part of if only she went through that door.
And on the stage was a boy singing at the microphone and behind him there were four others. Marissa’s heart lightened to see Brad, strumming his guitar, lean into the microphone, tall and pale against the smaller, darker one that must have been Nehru.
Marissa walked in.
How
will
I wake
tomorrow?
Can
laughter
come from
soo—row?
Well, I’ve been waiting,
for a feeling,
and I’ve waited a long time!
Nehru sang as Marissa walked in. She weaved her way through the crowded tables, not wanting to look at anyone, coming closer and closer to the stage.
Well, I’ve been around the world
and i ain’t seen none
like
you!
Brad, behind Nehru, lifted his eyes long enough to meet hers, and they twinkled. Even while playing, he nudged Nehru so that the younger man looked up and smiled, and then shoved Brad to the microphone so that it was his voice, younger and less sure than Nehru’s actually, a little rough and timid that took up the lead vocal.
Well, I’ve been around the world,
and I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you
I ain’t seen none like you he declared, gaining strength
I ain’t seen none
like
you
And Marissa stood there, an appreciative smile crossing her face, because the one thing she had learned in thirty-five years is that there was really nothing that declared true love like a man who could hardly sing, attempting to do so.
TOMORROW WE BEGIN CHAPTER SEVEN
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
So Brad is bi? A very interesting and cool change! I liked this redux and I am glad you posted it. It was great to see a better insight into what is going on with Brad. Excellent writing and I look forward to Chapter Seven tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
You were the one that got me there. It wasn't an insight until you made it one, and I saw what was goin on. I can't remember if I thought about it a long time ago, but you certainly made me think about this.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
SEVEN
THE CLOSE
Chayne Kandzierski had read that the millennium would not begin in 2000, but in 2001. In graduate school he had run across the concept of a Long Century, meaning a century began not at 00 or even the 01, but at whatever time the things defining it started to happen. For instance, the Long 19th century had begun with the French Revolution in 1789 according to some, and it had made Chayne wonder when centuries and millennia really did meet their close. But after this summer he was sure that the new age began one night in the late part of summer when he awoke to find a treasure standing before him, and understanding the treasure, at last understood himself.
Later, when he knew more, Chayne would know that the old millennium, which had started all the way at the Battle of Hastings and brought the Middle Ages, witch trials, anti-Semiticism and slavery, but not the Second Coming of Christ, ended the night Jill Barnard stood on a stage and told her truth, but her truth began weeks earlier, when the summer was at its hottest and Jill was at her most lonely.
“Is it always this hot during summer?” Leon Dixon asked.
They were inside his ‘78 Impala, parked under a large elm tree whose roots had erupted from the sidewalk on Colum Street.
“Have you lived here your entire life?” Jill Barnard asked.
“Yep. Except for a year in Nevada.”
“Well, then don’t be stupid. It’s always hot here.” Jill felt she’d been a little rude, and then laughed because she was drunk.
“You said you wanted to dance with me.”
She was a pretty girl, on the tall side with reddish tea colored hair and brown eyes in an ivory face.
“I said I wanted to dance with you, but the music was shitty at that wedding.”
“You were the DJ,” she hadn’t meant to sneer at him. She saw by the look on his face she was. Oh, well.
“Let’s dance now.”
“This is where you wanna dance?”
“Yeah,” said Leon, enthusiastically. “And by the way—I didn’t choose the music I played. Not like real DJ’s. If I could get the fuck out of this town I’d be a real DJ.”
He turned on the radio in the Impala and blasted it up, but Jill turned it down and shushed him.
“You’ll wake the whole neighborhood! You’ll wake my mother.”
The radio was playing low now.
“Sorry. This is good enough. For talking, and dancing.”
“Where are going to dance?”
“You know,” said Leon Dixon. “From the moment I saw you, I knew you were special. I knew you were it. Now I know for sure.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I feel like I do,” he began, running his hands over her pantyhose, trying to find an entry.
“Oh, stop that,” she slapped his hand and laughed. For a moment it flashed into Leon’s mind that Jill was simple. But Jill wasn’t being simple. She was making a simpleton out of him.
“This has been such a special night,” Leon insisted. A pick up truck sped down Colum. It’s taillights flashed red as it made a left turn disappearing up Moringham. The crickets were making a louder chirping, a wall of chirrups almost, and the air smelled like the pods fallen from the tree that were thick and green about the car.
“Hasn’t it been special?” he whispered to Jill.
“It’s been alright,” she shrugged, reluctantly.
Leon leaned into her and whispered. “It would be the perfect night if you let me fuck you.”
Jill burst out laughing.. She was ashamed for shaming him, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Right here?” she covered her mouth and pointed to the interior of the car. “Now?”
Undaunted, Leon Dixon said, “Yes.”
“No,” Jill replied. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive. Jill was almost drunk enough to say yes. He was tall enough and he had high cheek bones and what her brother would call an aquiline nose, and she remembered that in the light he had green eyes and thick black hair. When she was downing champagnes at Tara’s wedding and feeling sorry for herself and a little bit horny, she’d allowed herself to fantasize, which had ended up in letting Leon drive her home. The reality was sitting in a rented tux in a ‘78 Impala promising five minutes of fuck, and she wasn’t really as impressed as she thought she should have been. If she had this much discernment when she was two sheets to the wind, Jill wondered, how would she feel about this guy if she was totally sober?
“Well,” Leon said, at last, “Could I hold your hand?”
Jill shrugged and said, “What the fuck?”
Leon Dixon’s hand was clammy. They sat together in a Ford under a shedding elm on a hot summer night on the 7800 block of Colum Street in Geschichte Falls, Michigan.
And I don’t want the world to see me
cause I don’t think that they’d understand
when everything seems to be broken
I just want you to know who I am...
Finally Leon spoke over the radio.
“Jill?”
“Yes?” she sounded a little wearied.
“Would you jack me off?”
And she gave him her hand, and he undid his zipper and she reached for his penis. It was warm and clammy all at once, remarkably hard, but throbbing. And it was small—at least smaller than what she thought it should be. She began, non committally, to stroke it, to let Leon make use of her hand. He shifted in the seat beside her, and after a while said:
“You’re not getting it right.”
“It’s not like I do this shit ev’ryday.”
“Com’on, just try,” he sounded anxious. She took pity on him. She actually did try her best. But Jill wasn’t lying. She didn’t do this shit everyday.
“Hold on,” Leon said in a slightly strangled voice.
“Jake Waltman said you had a tight pussy and liked to fuck.”
“He what? I… never.”
Leon worked open his trousers, brought his cock out some more, and then spat on his palms. He was too involved in himself to realize that he could have slapped her with that news. That she still stung from the lie. And if she thought about it, this wasn’t the first time a man had lied about her, or another one had revealed it to spite her.
She watched Leon massage himself and she watched his penis grow, and she watched the purple head enlarge, and then she watched his face, his handsome face—he was handsome—grow earnest, serious, like he was praying, and then suddenly contort. He gave a little strangled cry. Jill’s eyes flew open, and she watched semen shoot out over the steering wheel and the dashboard. As Leon groaned and leaned forward like someone gut punched, Jill noted, with a pang of despair, that this was actually the best date she’d had in a year.
“There’re—” Leon started over again. “There’re wet naps in the glove compartment.”
He gestured to it.
Jill thought of saying something snide, but refrained, and brought out three. One for Leon, one for his steering wheel and speedometer, and one for her own left hand.
“Do you think you need another one?” Jill asked.
“For what?”
“For your speedometer? For the wheel? Is that going to cover everything? I mean...” Jill tried to find a good way to put it, “you had... quite a lot to get out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen than much before.”
Leon almost beamed. It was the closest thing to a comment on his sexual prowess he was going to get tonight. It had been a good night. He’d taken a girl home. He’d gotten some in his car. The specifics did not matter.
“I better go,” Jill said at last.
“Can I call you?”
“You can. But you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“No,” said Jill. “You won’t.”
“Give me your number. Write it down.”
Leon fumbled for a pen and a scrap of paper. Jill rattled off her number. Leon made a great show of writing it down and then, prominently, stuck it in the rearview mirror.
“See,” he said, as if this proved something.
“When I call can I say dirty things?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll leave them on the answering machine. I’ll whisper them when the phone gets picked up. Do you have your own private line?”
“No.”
“Does that mean your mother’ll hear me?”
“Probably. And my brother too. Good night.”
She got out of the car, maneuvered past the tree and went up the crooked walk of buckling and broken sidewalk into the little dingy white house. She noticed that the son of a bitch hadn’t even bothered to wait until she’d got into the house safely. He just drove off. His taillights were already disappearing around the two story clapboard on the corner of Moringham.
There was one light on in the corner of the sparsely appointed living room. Cody was sitting on the old brown and gold plaid couch, reading.
“How was the wedding?” he asked his sister.
“I hate my life,” said Jill Barnard.
MORE TOMORROW
THE CLOSE
Chayne Kandzierski had read that the millennium would not begin in 2000, but in 2001. In graduate school he had run across the concept of a Long Century, meaning a century began not at 00 or even the 01, but at whatever time the things defining it started to happen. For instance, the Long 19th century had begun with the French Revolution in 1789 according to some, and it had made Chayne wonder when centuries and millennia really did meet their close. But after this summer he was sure that the new age began one night in the late part of summer when he awoke to find a treasure standing before him, and understanding the treasure, at last understood himself.
Later, when he knew more, Chayne would know that the old millennium, which had started all the way at the Battle of Hastings and brought the Middle Ages, witch trials, anti-Semiticism and slavery, but not the Second Coming of Christ, ended the night Jill Barnard stood on a stage and told her truth, but her truth began weeks earlier, when the summer was at its hottest and Jill was at her most lonely.
“Is it always this hot during summer?” Leon Dixon asked.
They were inside his ‘78 Impala, parked under a large elm tree whose roots had erupted from the sidewalk on Colum Street.
“Have you lived here your entire life?” Jill Barnard asked.
“Yep. Except for a year in Nevada.”
“Well, then don’t be stupid. It’s always hot here.” Jill felt she’d been a little rude, and then laughed because she was drunk.
“You said you wanted to dance with me.”
She was a pretty girl, on the tall side with reddish tea colored hair and brown eyes in an ivory face.
“I said I wanted to dance with you, but the music was shitty at that wedding.”
“You were the DJ,” she hadn’t meant to sneer at him. She saw by the look on his face she was. Oh, well.
“Let’s dance now.”
“This is where you wanna dance?”
“Yeah,” said Leon, enthusiastically. “And by the way—I didn’t choose the music I played. Not like real DJ’s. If I could get the fuck out of this town I’d be a real DJ.”
He turned on the radio in the Impala and blasted it up, but Jill turned it down and shushed him.
“You’ll wake the whole neighborhood! You’ll wake my mother.”
The radio was playing low now.
“Sorry. This is good enough. For talking, and dancing.”
“Where are going to dance?”
“You know,” said Leon Dixon. “From the moment I saw you, I knew you were special. I knew you were it. Now I know for sure.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I feel like I do,” he began, running his hands over her pantyhose, trying to find an entry.
“Oh, stop that,” she slapped his hand and laughed. For a moment it flashed into Leon’s mind that Jill was simple. But Jill wasn’t being simple. She was making a simpleton out of him.
“This has been such a special night,” Leon insisted. A pick up truck sped down Colum. It’s taillights flashed red as it made a left turn disappearing up Moringham. The crickets were making a louder chirping, a wall of chirrups almost, and the air smelled like the pods fallen from the tree that were thick and green about the car.
“Hasn’t it been special?” he whispered to Jill.
“It’s been alright,” she shrugged, reluctantly.
Leon leaned into her and whispered. “It would be the perfect night if you let me fuck you.”
Jill burst out laughing.. She was ashamed for shaming him, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Right here?” she covered her mouth and pointed to the interior of the car. “Now?”
Undaunted, Leon Dixon said, “Yes.”
“No,” Jill replied. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive. Jill was almost drunk enough to say yes. He was tall enough and he had high cheek bones and what her brother would call an aquiline nose, and she remembered that in the light he had green eyes and thick black hair. When she was downing champagnes at Tara’s wedding and feeling sorry for herself and a little bit horny, she’d allowed herself to fantasize, which had ended up in letting Leon drive her home. The reality was sitting in a rented tux in a ‘78 Impala promising five minutes of fuck, and she wasn’t really as impressed as she thought she should have been. If she had this much discernment when she was two sheets to the wind, Jill wondered, how would she feel about this guy if she was totally sober?
“Well,” Leon said, at last, “Could I hold your hand?”
Jill shrugged and said, “What the fuck?”
Leon Dixon’s hand was clammy. They sat together in a Ford under a shedding elm on a hot summer night on the 7800 block of Colum Street in Geschichte Falls, Michigan.
And I don’t want the world to see me
cause I don’t think that they’d understand
when everything seems to be broken
I just want you to know who I am...
Finally Leon spoke over the radio.
“Jill?”
“Yes?” she sounded a little wearied.
“Would you jack me off?”
And she gave him her hand, and he undid his zipper and she reached for his penis. It was warm and clammy all at once, remarkably hard, but throbbing. And it was small—at least smaller than what she thought it should be. She began, non committally, to stroke it, to let Leon make use of her hand. He shifted in the seat beside her, and after a while said:
“You’re not getting it right.”
“It’s not like I do this shit ev’ryday.”
“Com’on, just try,” he sounded anxious. She took pity on him. She actually did try her best. But Jill wasn’t lying. She didn’t do this shit everyday.
“Hold on,” Leon said in a slightly strangled voice.
“Jake Waltman said you had a tight pussy and liked to fuck.”
“He what? I… never.”
Leon worked open his trousers, brought his cock out some more, and then spat on his palms. He was too involved in himself to realize that he could have slapped her with that news. That she still stung from the lie. And if she thought about it, this wasn’t the first time a man had lied about her, or another one had revealed it to spite her.
She watched Leon massage himself and she watched his penis grow, and she watched the purple head enlarge, and then she watched his face, his handsome face—he was handsome—grow earnest, serious, like he was praying, and then suddenly contort. He gave a little strangled cry. Jill’s eyes flew open, and she watched semen shoot out over the steering wheel and the dashboard. As Leon groaned and leaned forward like someone gut punched, Jill noted, with a pang of despair, that this was actually the best date she’d had in a year.
“There’re—” Leon started over again. “There’re wet naps in the glove compartment.”
He gestured to it.
Jill thought of saying something snide, but refrained, and brought out three. One for Leon, one for his steering wheel and speedometer, and one for her own left hand.
“Do you think you need another one?” Jill asked.
“For what?”
“For your speedometer? For the wheel? Is that going to cover everything? I mean...” Jill tried to find a good way to put it, “you had... quite a lot to get out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen than much before.”
Leon almost beamed. It was the closest thing to a comment on his sexual prowess he was going to get tonight. It had been a good night. He’d taken a girl home. He’d gotten some in his car. The specifics did not matter.
“I better go,” Jill said at last.
“Can I call you?”
“You can. But you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“No,” said Jill. “You won’t.”
“Give me your number. Write it down.”
Leon fumbled for a pen and a scrap of paper. Jill rattled off her number. Leon made a great show of writing it down and then, prominently, stuck it in the rearview mirror.
“See,” he said, as if this proved something.
“When I call can I say dirty things?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll leave them on the answering machine. I’ll whisper them when the phone gets picked up. Do you have your own private line?”
“No.”
“Does that mean your mother’ll hear me?”
“Probably. And my brother too. Good night.”
She got out of the car, maneuvered past the tree and went up the crooked walk of buckling and broken sidewalk into the little dingy white house. She noticed that the son of a bitch hadn’t even bothered to wait until she’d got into the house safely. He just drove off. His taillights were already disappearing around the two story clapboard on the corner of Moringham.
There was one light on in the corner of the sparsely appointed living room. Cody was sitting on the old brown and gold plaid couch, reading.
“How was the wedding?” he asked his sister.
“I hate my life,” said Jill Barnard.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Poor Jill. Sounds like she had a pretty shitty end to her night. Leon kind of seems like a dick. I look forward to seeing what happens with her next. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Like all people who only think with their dicks, Leon certainly is one. Jill is very much at a deadly moment in her life, so numb she can barely feel or care. I'm sorry I missed you. I thought we'd talk about this, but I laid down my head to rest, and when I woke up it was the morning.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
2.
Russell Lewis and Robert Keyes had been talking animatedly when suddenly Rob and the station wagon stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Russell asked after a while.
Just for ceremony’s sake, Rob turned the key in the ignition again. The engine coughed.
“The car’s dead,” Rob said.
“Well shit,” Russell murmured. “Engine shot?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes the station wagon does this. It just stops.”
The air conditioning was meager at best, but now the heat of late summer began to fill the car with a sullen humidity.
“Gil’s car does that too. We always pray when that happens. Wait a few seconds and pray.”
So they sat on the desolate stretch of Thompson Street, by the river and not near anything even remotely safe, and Russell chanted over and over again. “Come on, Jesus! Come on Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Jesus. Hit the ignition now, Rob.”
The engine coughed at Rob’s command.
Jesus was not forthcoming.
“Com’ on, Jesus!” Russell urged, a little miffed at his savior now.
On the fiftieth “Com’on, Jesus,” Rob said, “Maybe we should just walk home.”
“Rob, you don’t even know how unsafe or impractical that is. Com’on, Jesus!” Russell demanded again, but instead of Jesus the lights of the first vehicle they’d seen on this stretch of Thompson Road rolled unsteadily up the gravel. Country music was blaring from the truck, and over it, out the window, a woman’s voice was screaming in the thick night,
Ooooooooooooooh!
Ooooooooooo
oooooo
AH!
I’m a happy girl!
Then, as Martina Mc.Bride died down, the girl screamed out into the hot, cricket song filled night:
“I’m a happy girl, goddamnit!”
And the enormous truck stopped beside the station wagon and the two mystified young men.
It was a tow truck.
The red headed girl who had been singing looked down at them. Beside her head popped the face of a dark haired guy that Russell almost mistook for his father.
“Yawl need some help!” he shouted.
“Thanks, Jesus,” said Russell.
While Loretta Lynn was threatening to send a certain young woman to Fist City for not staying away from her man, Cody and Jill Barnard shouted above the air conditioning to introduce themselves.
“We were feeling in a country mood tonight,” Jill told Russell and Rob as they rumbled out of the belly of Geschichte Falls, and onto midnight Main Street. “As evidenced by my brother’s use of the word yawl.”
“We went to see a tractor pull down in East Sequoya,” Cody was telling them. He no longer had any accent.
“My brother loves tractor pulls.”
“You didn’t hesitate to go.”
“I don’t have a life. It was the best thing to do in Lothrop County on a Wednesday night. What brought you guys to Thompson Road—?” Jill asked Russell and Rob, “at midnight?”
“Or at any time,” muttered Cody.
“We just got back from Noble Red’s.” Rob told Jill. They were all sitting together in the wide front seat.
“Some friends of ours have a band that plays there.” Russell added.
“I forgot all about Noble Red,” Jill smiled, bemused. Rob noticed that she was very pretty. He wanted her to toss her red brown hair no matter how impossible that would have been in such a cramped space. They had turned onto Kirkland now.
“What band plays there?” Jill said.
“Chilli Comet Sundae.” Russell felt stupid saying it.
Jill’s eyes widened, and Cody turned to his sister and muttered.
“Isn’t that...?”
“Yeah,” Jill looked a little depressed.
“What?” Rob asked her.
“That’s my ex’s band. Shane Meriwether.”
“You know Shane?” Russell marveled.
` “I just said he was my ex. Fuck, this town is too small. And Brad is the only other one I know. I didn’t know the band well.”
“Brad Long?”
“Yes,” Jill said.
“And then there’s Hale Weathertop and Leon Dixon.”
Jill’s eyes went wide and turned hazel.
“Leon who?”
“Leon Dixon,” Russell repeated.
Jill looked mystified and then muttered, “Oh, my God.... Oh, my God.”
And Rob Keyes watched the woman he wanted to be his new friend throw her head back like a madwoman and laugh.
Once his sister had stopped laughing, Cody said, “So you live on Curtain?”
“Yeah,” Rob said. Then. “Well, I’m staying there, but Russell lives a couple of more blocks down on Breckinridge.”
“That’s cool,” said Cody. “We’ll drop you off and then Russell.”
“Russell might want to stay with me,” Rob said. “He’s friends with my roommate. She—”
“She?” Jill began.
“She’s a poet. She’s like a philosopher.”
“I’ve never met a girl philosopher,” Jill said. “Or any philosopher, really.”
“You’re pretty philosophical,” Cody told her.
“That’s kind,” Jill said.
She said, “I always wanted to so something. Hear good poetry and writing and be someone. An artist or something.”
Rob opened his mouth to speak, but Russell said, “Oooh, here we are.”
And Cody thanked Russell and said, “I almost missed the turn. So this is Curtain Street?”
“Never been here?”
“You’d think that having grown up in a town this small I would have been everywhere,” said Cody.
“That’s it,” Rob, who was in the middle, squished between Jill and Russell pointed at the green house with the wrap around porch. They couldn’t park because there were two other trucks parked on the brick street.
“Say,” Rob said, “It seems like the house is awake. Do you guys wanna come in? Meet Ani?”
“Your roommate?” Jill said.
Cody said sure and Jill thought it was so nice to be a man, to be so sure that someone would want to meet you.
“She might want to go to sleep. Or something.”
“Lights are still on. Caroline’s car is here.”
“Caroline?”
“Her sister,” Russell said. Then Russell said, “Just come on in.”
They attempted to park the tow truck with the station wagon dangling from its back end on the other side of Curtain and then, stepping into the humid night, crossed, pushing back the iron gate and entering the garden kept up by Robert. Rob was about to tell this to Jill when the door flew open and out came a very pregnant, black haired woman breathing rapidly and supported by a calm, not pregnant young woman who had her same honey coloring and black hair.
“Anigel,” Rob began, “this is Cody Barnard, and this is his sister Jill. They brought us back home after a spot of misfortune, and we thought to invite them over for some hospitality.”
Anigel’s black eyes regarded Rob as if he was mad. Caroline screamed. Anigel swallowed, then said, “Cody, Jill. I’m pleased to meet the both of you, and if the two of you would like, you can come with us to the hospital. I’m afraid my sister is in labor. Again. Aren’t you, Care?”
Caroline Balusik looked at her sister and frowned.
“Do you need a cup of coffee... Or anything?” Rob asked as they paced around the waiting room.
“I’m not the one in labor,” said Anigel.
“And the coffee tastes like shit, anyway,” Russell chimed in.
“Amen to that.”
John Balusik came bustling out of the elevator, looking this way and that before Anigel caught him by his tee shirt.
“I just left Mom’s—”
“She’s fine,” Anigel said. “Cara’s waiting for you.”
“Well, hell,” said John, “let’s go.”
The elevator opened again and Jill saw two high school aged boys run out, one with a summer tan and off blond hair, but the other definitely Indian or Arab.
“What the hell?” Anigel looked at them.
“Are we on time?”
“On time for what?” Anigel said before John could speak. “You’re not having a baby.”
Russell leaned in and told Jill. “That’s my friend Ralph. John is his brother. And that other one—”
“The hot Indian?”
“Is Jason Lorry,” Russell said, going pink.
Anigel, who had heard none of this, followed John into the delivery room down the hall.
Ralph said, “Oh my God, Russell. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why?” Russell started.
Jason said, jamming his hands into his shorts, “Russell wouldn’t let anything happen to anyone.”
But Jill noted he wasn’t looking at Russell, and Russell seemed as confused by the pretty boy’s remarks as Jlll was. Jason looked up suddenly at Russell, and laughed, and Russell laughed too.
There was the sound of scuffling for a few moments, and then a bit of shouting. Then Russell, Rob, Cody, Jason, Ralph and Jill, standing in the dim lit waiting room, saw the doors fly open and Anigel march out of the delivery room in high dudgeon.
“Well, shit on you, anyway!” Anigel declared in the direction of the swinging doors, then told everyone, “Apparently I’m one too many people in the delivery room. But it looks awful in there. You don’t ever want to go through that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to entertain you good people the way I should have,” she told Jill and Cody.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Jill, crossing one leg over the other. “This is entertainment enough.”
“I’ll make sure not to share that with Caroline.”
“GET—IT—OUT OF ME!!!” they heard on the other side of the door.
“Oh, God!” Jason gripped Russell’s hand quickly, and when Russell looked at him, Jason suddenly grinned, then let his hand go.
“So....” Anigel let the word hang in the air. “How did you guys end up with,” she looked to Russell and Rob, “these guys?”
“Their station wagon broke down. And we happened to come along with our tow truck. I have a little shop,” said Cody.
“Serendipity,” Anigel remarked.
“Or maybe it was God,” Ralph suggested innocently.
“The two don’t have to be exclusive,” Anigel said.
“And then we were dropping Rob and Russell off,” said Cody.
“And Rob asked if we wanted to meet you,” said Jill, eyeing Rob the same time Anigel eyed Rob, and the younger man ducked his head and blushed.
“Russell said you should come too,” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill agreed, though Russell did not react. “Russell did say you’d be glad to meet anybody.”
“And then instead of drinks and refreshment,” said Anigel, “I had childbirth lined up for you. You all don’t have to stay,” Anigel said.
“I think we do,” Cody disagreed, rolling over on his side. “We drove you all. Remember?”
“Oh, Ralph’s here now,” Anigel said. “We could find a way back.”
Jill looked to the young man. He was handsome, actually. He had been in the middle of talking to Jason and Russell and when he’d heard his name called and Anigel volunteer him, something had changed in his face when Anigel said this and Jill observed, “I don’t think he wants to go driving you around town. I think he had other plans.”
“Teenagers usually do,” Cody said.
“We were going to drive around,” Jason said, hopefully. “See what happens.”
He turned to Cody courteously and said, “You could come too.”
He seemed to remember something and said to Jill, “And you-”
“Do not belong with a bunch of teenage boys and a Cody,” Jill said, “and am glad to stay here.
“So,” Jill turned to Anigel, “unless you’re deliberately trying to get rid of us—”
“No, no. Just trying to be courteous.”
“I think Jill doesn’t want to be cheated out of her chance to meet a poet,” Cody said. “And Rob said you were a philosopher.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Anigel demanded.
“You know, Ani,” Rob said. “You’re deep and shit. Always writing. Always doing stuff. And now you’re going to college and everything, after being all off on your own.”
“Rob told me—” Jill began.
“Rob elaborates.”
“And I was impressed,” Jill continued. “I admire anyone who’s up and doing things.”
“And what are you up and doing, Jill?” Anigel said. “I know I can’t be the only one.”
Jill looked uncertain. She hadn’t expected to be asked questions, certainly not by this direct woman, roughly her age. Rob looked between the two of them.
“Right now all I do is want to be an artist… or a philosopher. Or something,” Jill said. Then she said, “Actually, right now, all I do is want.”
TOMORROW NIGHT
THE BOOK OF THE BURNING
Russell Lewis and Robert Keyes had been talking animatedly when suddenly Rob and the station wagon stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Russell asked after a while.
Just for ceremony’s sake, Rob turned the key in the ignition again. The engine coughed.
“The car’s dead,” Rob said.
“Well shit,” Russell murmured. “Engine shot?”
“I’m not sure. Sometimes the station wagon does this. It just stops.”
The air conditioning was meager at best, but now the heat of late summer began to fill the car with a sullen humidity.
“Gil’s car does that too. We always pray when that happens. Wait a few seconds and pray.”
So they sat on the desolate stretch of Thompson Street, by the river and not near anything even remotely safe, and Russell chanted over and over again. “Come on, Jesus! Come on Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Jesus. Hit the ignition now, Rob.”
The engine coughed at Rob’s command.
Jesus was not forthcoming.
“Com’ on, Jesus!” Russell urged, a little miffed at his savior now.
On the fiftieth “Com’on, Jesus,” Rob said, “Maybe we should just walk home.”
“Rob, you don’t even know how unsafe or impractical that is. Com’on, Jesus!” Russell demanded again, but instead of Jesus the lights of the first vehicle they’d seen on this stretch of Thompson Road rolled unsteadily up the gravel. Country music was blaring from the truck, and over it, out the window, a woman’s voice was screaming in the thick night,
Ooooooooooooooh!
Ooooooooooo
oooooo
AH!
I’m a happy girl!
Then, as Martina Mc.Bride died down, the girl screamed out into the hot, cricket song filled night:
“I’m a happy girl, goddamnit!”
And the enormous truck stopped beside the station wagon and the two mystified young men.
It was a tow truck.
The red headed girl who had been singing looked down at them. Beside her head popped the face of a dark haired guy that Russell almost mistook for his father.
“Yawl need some help!” he shouted.
“Thanks, Jesus,” said Russell.
While Loretta Lynn was threatening to send a certain young woman to Fist City for not staying away from her man, Cody and Jill Barnard shouted above the air conditioning to introduce themselves.
“We were feeling in a country mood tonight,” Jill told Russell and Rob as they rumbled out of the belly of Geschichte Falls, and onto midnight Main Street. “As evidenced by my brother’s use of the word yawl.”
“We went to see a tractor pull down in East Sequoya,” Cody was telling them. He no longer had any accent.
“My brother loves tractor pulls.”
“You didn’t hesitate to go.”
“I don’t have a life. It was the best thing to do in Lothrop County on a Wednesday night. What brought you guys to Thompson Road—?” Jill asked Russell and Rob, “at midnight?”
“Or at any time,” muttered Cody.
“We just got back from Noble Red’s.” Rob told Jill. They were all sitting together in the wide front seat.
“Some friends of ours have a band that plays there.” Russell added.
“I forgot all about Noble Red,” Jill smiled, bemused. Rob noticed that she was very pretty. He wanted her to toss her red brown hair no matter how impossible that would have been in such a cramped space. They had turned onto Kirkland now.
“What band plays there?” Jill said.
“Chilli Comet Sundae.” Russell felt stupid saying it.
Jill’s eyes widened, and Cody turned to his sister and muttered.
“Isn’t that...?”
“Yeah,” Jill looked a little depressed.
“What?” Rob asked her.
“That’s my ex’s band. Shane Meriwether.”
“You know Shane?” Russell marveled.
` “I just said he was my ex. Fuck, this town is too small. And Brad is the only other one I know. I didn’t know the band well.”
“Brad Long?”
“Yes,” Jill said.
“And then there’s Hale Weathertop and Leon Dixon.”
Jill’s eyes went wide and turned hazel.
“Leon who?”
“Leon Dixon,” Russell repeated.
Jill looked mystified and then muttered, “Oh, my God.... Oh, my God.”
And Rob Keyes watched the woman he wanted to be his new friend throw her head back like a madwoman and laugh.
Once his sister had stopped laughing, Cody said, “So you live on Curtain?”
“Yeah,” Rob said. Then. “Well, I’m staying there, but Russell lives a couple of more blocks down on Breckinridge.”
“That’s cool,” said Cody. “We’ll drop you off and then Russell.”
“Russell might want to stay with me,” Rob said. “He’s friends with my roommate. She—”
“She?” Jill began.
“She’s a poet. She’s like a philosopher.”
“I’ve never met a girl philosopher,” Jill said. “Or any philosopher, really.”
“You’re pretty philosophical,” Cody told her.
“That’s kind,” Jill said.
She said, “I always wanted to so something. Hear good poetry and writing and be someone. An artist or something.”
Rob opened his mouth to speak, but Russell said, “Oooh, here we are.”
And Cody thanked Russell and said, “I almost missed the turn. So this is Curtain Street?”
“Never been here?”
“You’d think that having grown up in a town this small I would have been everywhere,” said Cody.
“That’s it,” Rob, who was in the middle, squished between Jill and Russell pointed at the green house with the wrap around porch. They couldn’t park because there were two other trucks parked on the brick street.
“Say,” Rob said, “It seems like the house is awake. Do you guys wanna come in? Meet Ani?”
“Your roommate?” Jill said.
Cody said sure and Jill thought it was so nice to be a man, to be so sure that someone would want to meet you.
“She might want to go to sleep. Or something.”
“Lights are still on. Caroline’s car is here.”
“Caroline?”
“Her sister,” Russell said. Then Russell said, “Just come on in.”
They attempted to park the tow truck with the station wagon dangling from its back end on the other side of Curtain and then, stepping into the humid night, crossed, pushing back the iron gate and entering the garden kept up by Robert. Rob was about to tell this to Jill when the door flew open and out came a very pregnant, black haired woman breathing rapidly and supported by a calm, not pregnant young woman who had her same honey coloring and black hair.
“Anigel,” Rob began, “this is Cody Barnard, and this is his sister Jill. They brought us back home after a spot of misfortune, and we thought to invite them over for some hospitality.”
Anigel’s black eyes regarded Rob as if he was mad. Caroline screamed. Anigel swallowed, then said, “Cody, Jill. I’m pleased to meet the both of you, and if the two of you would like, you can come with us to the hospital. I’m afraid my sister is in labor. Again. Aren’t you, Care?”
Caroline Balusik looked at her sister and frowned.
“Do you need a cup of coffee... Or anything?” Rob asked as they paced around the waiting room.
“I’m not the one in labor,” said Anigel.
“And the coffee tastes like shit, anyway,” Russell chimed in.
“Amen to that.”
John Balusik came bustling out of the elevator, looking this way and that before Anigel caught him by his tee shirt.
“I just left Mom’s—”
“She’s fine,” Anigel said. “Cara’s waiting for you.”
“Well, hell,” said John, “let’s go.”
The elevator opened again and Jill saw two high school aged boys run out, one with a summer tan and off blond hair, but the other definitely Indian or Arab.
“What the hell?” Anigel looked at them.
“Are we on time?”
“On time for what?” Anigel said before John could speak. “You’re not having a baby.”
Russell leaned in and told Jill. “That’s my friend Ralph. John is his brother. And that other one—”
“The hot Indian?”
“Is Jason Lorry,” Russell said, going pink.
Anigel, who had heard none of this, followed John into the delivery room down the hall.
Ralph said, “Oh my God, Russell. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why?” Russell started.
Jason said, jamming his hands into his shorts, “Russell wouldn’t let anything happen to anyone.”
But Jill noted he wasn’t looking at Russell, and Russell seemed as confused by the pretty boy’s remarks as Jlll was. Jason looked up suddenly at Russell, and laughed, and Russell laughed too.
There was the sound of scuffling for a few moments, and then a bit of shouting. Then Russell, Rob, Cody, Jason, Ralph and Jill, standing in the dim lit waiting room, saw the doors fly open and Anigel march out of the delivery room in high dudgeon.
“Well, shit on you, anyway!” Anigel declared in the direction of the swinging doors, then told everyone, “Apparently I’m one too many people in the delivery room. But it looks awful in there. You don’t ever want to go through that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to entertain you good people the way I should have,” she told Jill and Cody.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Jill, crossing one leg over the other. “This is entertainment enough.”
“I’ll make sure not to share that with Caroline.”
“GET—IT—OUT OF ME!!!” they heard on the other side of the door.
“Oh, God!” Jason gripped Russell’s hand quickly, and when Russell looked at him, Jason suddenly grinned, then let his hand go.
“So....” Anigel let the word hang in the air. “How did you guys end up with,” she looked to Russell and Rob, “these guys?”
“Their station wagon broke down. And we happened to come along with our tow truck. I have a little shop,” said Cody.
“Serendipity,” Anigel remarked.
“Or maybe it was God,” Ralph suggested innocently.
“The two don’t have to be exclusive,” Anigel said.
“And then we were dropping Rob and Russell off,” said Cody.
“And Rob asked if we wanted to meet you,” said Jill, eyeing Rob the same time Anigel eyed Rob, and the younger man ducked his head and blushed.
“Russell said you should come too,” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill agreed, though Russell did not react. “Russell did say you’d be glad to meet anybody.”
“And then instead of drinks and refreshment,” said Anigel, “I had childbirth lined up for you. You all don’t have to stay,” Anigel said.
“I think we do,” Cody disagreed, rolling over on his side. “We drove you all. Remember?”
“Oh, Ralph’s here now,” Anigel said. “We could find a way back.”
Jill looked to the young man. He was handsome, actually. He had been in the middle of talking to Jason and Russell and when he’d heard his name called and Anigel volunteer him, something had changed in his face when Anigel said this and Jill observed, “I don’t think he wants to go driving you around town. I think he had other plans.”
“Teenagers usually do,” Cody said.
“We were going to drive around,” Jason said, hopefully. “See what happens.”
He turned to Cody courteously and said, “You could come too.”
He seemed to remember something and said to Jill, “And you-”
“Do not belong with a bunch of teenage boys and a Cody,” Jill said, “and am glad to stay here.
“So,” Jill turned to Anigel, “unless you’re deliberately trying to get rid of us—”
“No, no. Just trying to be courteous.”
“I think Jill doesn’t want to be cheated out of her chance to meet a poet,” Cody said. “And Rob said you were a philosopher.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Anigel demanded.
“You know, Ani,” Rob said. “You’re deep and shit. Always writing. Always doing stuff. And now you’re going to college and everything, after being all off on your own.”
“Rob told me—” Jill began.
“Rob elaborates.”
“And I was impressed,” Jill continued. “I admire anyone who’s up and doing things.”
“And what are you up and doing, Jill?” Anigel said. “I know I can’t be the only one.”
Jill looked uncertain. She hadn’t expected to be asked questions, certainly not by this direct woman, roughly her age. Rob looked between the two of them.
“Right now all I do is want to be an artist… or a philosopher. Or something,” Jill said. Then she said, “Actually, right now, all I do is want.”
TOMORROW NIGHT
THE BOOK OF THE BURNING
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was an excellent portion! It was very cool to see a lot of characters together even if it was by accident. I am glad Jill has some new people to be around and talk to, I think she needs it. Great writing and I look forward to more of The Book Of The Burning tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Jill needed new people. I think that's definitely the cure to a life that's gone deadly, and in my experience this meeting is almost always be accident. Thanks for reading. Prepare to be surprised tomorrow night.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
AT LAST WE RETURN TO THE END OF CHAPTER SEVEN....
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to entertain you good people the way I should have,” she told Jill and Cody.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Jill, crossing one leg over the other. “This is entertainment enough.”
“I’ll make sure not to share that with Caroline.”
“GET—IT—OUT OF ME!!!” they heard on the other side of the door.
“Oh, God!” Jason gripped Russell’s hand quickly, and when Russell looked at him, Jason suddenly grinned, then let his hand go.
“So....” Anigel let the word hang in the air. “How did you guys end up with,” she looked to Russell and Rob, “these guys?”
“Their station wagon broke down. And we happened to come along with our tow truck. I have a little shop,” said Cody.
“Serendipity,” Anigel remarked.
“Or maybe it was God,” Ralph suggested innocently.
“The two don’t have to be exclusive,” Anigel said.
“And then we were dropping Rob and Russell off,” said Cody.
“And Rob asked if we wanted to meet you,” said Jill, eyeing Rob the same time Anigel eyed Rob, and the younger man ducked his head and blushed.
“Russell said you should come too,” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill agreed, though Russell did not react. “Russell did say you’d be glad to meet anybody.”
“And then instead of drinks and refreshment,” said Anigel, “I had childbirth lined up for you. You all don’t have to stay,” Anigel said.
“I think we do,” Cody disagreed, rolling over on his side. “We drove you all. Remember?”
“Oh, Ralph’s here now,” Anigel said. “We could find a way back.”
Jill looked to the young man. He was handsome, actually. He had been in the middle of talking to Jason and Russell and when he’d heard his name called and Anigel volunteer him, something had changed in his face when Anigel said this and Jill observed, “I don’t think he wants to go driving you around town. I think he had other plans.”
“Teenagers usually do,” Cody said.
“We were going to drive around,” Jason said, hopefully. “See what happens.”
He turned to Cody courteously and said, “You could come too.”
He seemed to remember something and said to Jill, “And you-”
“Do not belong with a bunch of teenage boys and a Cody,” Jill said, “and am glad to stay here.
“So,” Jill turned to Anigel, “unless you’re deliberately trying to get rid of us—”
“No, no. Just trying to be courteous.”
“I think Jill doesn’t want to be cheated out of her chance to meet a poet,” Cody said. “And Rob said you were a philosopher.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Anigel demanded.
“You know, Ani,” Rob said. “You’re deep and shit. Always writing. Always doing stuff. And now you’re going to college and everything, after being all off on your own.”
“Rob told me—” Jill began.
“Rob elaborates.”
“And I was impressed,” Jill continued. “I admire anyone who’s up and doing things.”
“And what are you up and doing, Jill?” Anigel said. “I know I can’t be the only one.”
Jill looked uncertain. She hadn’t expected to be asked questions, certainly not by this direct woman, roughly her age. Rob looked between the two of them.
“Right now all I do is want to be an artist… or a philosopher. Or something,” Jill said. Then she said, “Actually, right now, all I do is want.”
“You think we’ll get a breeze anytime soon?” Jill asked as they walked along Finnalay Parkway in front of the hospital.
“I hope so,” Rob said. “Something should change.”
“You know,” Jill said. “For a moment—and this sounds vain—I thought you were hitting on me.”
“It’s not vain,” Rob said. “You’re very pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“Beautiful, really,” Rob said, and before Jill could say anything else, he said, “But no, I was not hitting on you.”
“You’ve got someone,” she guessed.
He gave her a smile that said nothing.
“You have someone in mind even if you don’t actually have them.”
Rob sighed and said, “That’s more like it.”
“I’m so tired of this hot air.”
At the corner the lights were flashing yellow. No cars came though at this early time.
“You’re right,” Jill said.
“Huh?
“Something should change. Lots of things should change.”
Then Jill said, “Anigel really likes you.”
“Not in that way!” Rob protested.
Jill laughed.
“No, not in that way. She’s a take no prisoners sort, I think. But she does like you, and I think with someone like her, it counts. Don’t knock that. It’s not everyday we can find someone to like us. And I don’t think she likes everybody.”
Rob rolled his eyes and laughed. “She’s hospitable to everybody. But she’s not nice to everybody. Anigel’s usually not nice to anybody, come to think of it. But I think you’re right. I think you’d get on. I think we’d all get on.”
The hospital doors swung open and they heard feet running out of the emergency room door.
“You wanna see a new baby?” Ralph invited, and Jason stood at his side, panting and smiling.
Rob looked at Jill and she said, “I’m all about seeing new babies.”
“It’s a boy,” Ralph said. “My first nephew.”
Past the emergency room entrance, Russell and Cody were at the elevator, making sure it stayed open, and they all went up four flights while Jill said, “I thought you guys were gone.”
“We were gone,” Cody said. “And then we weren’t. And then we looked for you, and then Anigel came out and said the baby was here, and you were outside.”
Jill didn’t think this woman she had never met, Anigel’s sister, would let a lot of random people into her room to see her baby, and whether she would have or not, by now the baby was with all the others in the nursery and it was very much asleep and not worried about any of them.
“Is that baby white?” Ralph wondered.
“No, fool,” Anigel said tenderly, her fingers pressed to the glass, looking blissfully on the young cheeks and shut eyes.
“It looks white,” Ralph judged.
“Please shut up.”
“It looks new,” Jason said, tenderly. “It looks new, and it makes you want to sort of be new too. Not be the same dummy you always were.”
Then the black haired boy said in his soft voice. “I’m talking about me, of course, but—”
“I think it applies to all of us,” Jill said.
Jill said, “I think I used to expect the world to change, something to happen. And then I stopped expecting anything. I kind of just stopped living. And I’m too young for that. And that’s got to change.”
She kept looking at the pale baby whose eyes moved under its thin lids, and whose fat, puckered lips pursed and unpursed.
“A man told lies about me,” she said to Anigel.
“What woman hasn’t been lied on by a man?”
“I let it slide,” she said. “And I thought I had to. I thought, in this world we get called all sorts of things. And if we turn the tables… all sorts of things can happen to a girl. Things you shouldn’t say over a newborn baby.”
“Yes,” Anigel said. “But if we don’t make things right, then when the newborn babies are grown like us, what kind of world will there be?”
“So when do you start at Soubirous?” Rob asked Anigel.
“I think it starts back up the week after next. Or next week or something,” she said, vaguely, screwing up her face. “Why, are you going?”
“Think I have a chance?”
“If they’ll take me they’ll take anyone. I’m pretty sure it’s an open door kind of thing. It’ll be nice going in with a friend. If college is anything like high school then i’m terrified.”
“And now I’m terrified,” Rob said. “That I’ll try to get in and it’ll be too late.”
“It’s Soubirous, not Yale,” said Nehru the next day in the guidance office. “They’ll take anyone. You have to fill out an application slip and mail it...” Nehru made ink swirls across and application, “and then it comes to the guidance office. They take your application, call you and have you tested—”
“Tested,” Rob looked nervous.
“Relax,” said Nehru. “And then the Friday before school starts you stand in a line with a hundred other hopefuls and get your schedule made out.”
“But I haven’t done an application yet—” started Rob.
Nehru hit a button on the phone and said, “Robert Keyes here to see you. He’s the ones who’s application got lost in the mail.”
Rob and Russell stared at Nehru. who said nothing, but waited for a reply, his eyes tilted angelically toward the ceiling.
“Send him in,”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Nehru said and shut off the intercom. “I love this job even if it’s only for the summer.
TOMORROW, CHAPTER EIGHT: MILLENIUM.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to entertain you good people the way I should have,” she told Jill and Cody.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Jill, crossing one leg over the other. “This is entertainment enough.”
“I’ll make sure not to share that with Caroline.”
“GET—IT—OUT OF ME!!!” they heard on the other side of the door.
“Oh, God!” Jason gripped Russell’s hand quickly, and when Russell looked at him, Jason suddenly grinned, then let his hand go.
“So....” Anigel let the word hang in the air. “How did you guys end up with,” she looked to Russell and Rob, “these guys?”
“Their station wagon broke down. And we happened to come along with our tow truck. I have a little shop,” said Cody.
“Serendipity,” Anigel remarked.
“Or maybe it was God,” Ralph suggested innocently.
“The two don’t have to be exclusive,” Anigel said.
“And then we were dropping Rob and Russell off,” said Cody.
“And Rob asked if we wanted to meet you,” said Jill, eyeing Rob the same time Anigel eyed Rob, and the younger man ducked his head and blushed.
“Russell said you should come too,” Rob said.
“Yes,” Jill agreed, though Russell did not react. “Russell did say you’d be glad to meet anybody.”
“And then instead of drinks and refreshment,” said Anigel, “I had childbirth lined up for you. You all don’t have to stay,” Anigel said.
“I think we do,” Cody disagreed, rolling over on his side. “We drove you all. Remember?”
“Oh, Ralph’s here now,” Anigel said. “We could find a way back.”
Jill looked to the young man. He was handsome, actually. He had been in the middle of talking to Jason and Russell and when he’d heard his name called and Anigel volunteer him, something had changed in his face when Anigel said this and Jill observed, “I don’t think he wants to go driving you around town. I think he had other plans.”
“Teenagers usually do,” Cody said.
“We were going to drive around,” Jason said, hopefully. “See what happens.”
He turned to Cody courteously and said, “You could come too.”
He seemed to remember something and said to Jill, “And you-”
“Do not belong with a bunch of teenage boys and a Cody,” Jill said, “and am glad to stay here.
“So,” Jill turned to Anigel, “unless you’re deliberately trying to get rid of us—”
“No, no. Just trying to be courteous.”
“I think Jill doesn’t want to be cheated out of her chance to meet a poet,” Cody said. “And Rob said you were a philosopher.”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Anigel demanded.
“You know, Ani,” Rob said. “You’re deep and shit. Always writing. Always doing stuff. And now you’re going to college and everything, after being all off on your own.”
“Rob told me—” Jill began.
“Rob elaborates.”
“And I was impressed,” Jill continued. “I admire anyone who’s up and doing things.”
“And what are you up and doing, Jill?” Anigel said. “I know I can’t be the only one.”
Jill looked uncertain. She hadn’t expected to be asked questions, certainly not by this direct woman, roughly her age. Rob looked between the two of them.
“Right now all I do is want to be an artist… or a philosopher. Or something,” Jill said. Then she said, “Actually, right now, all I do is want.”
“You think we’ll get a breeze anytime soon?” Jill asked as they walked along Finnalay Parkway in front of the hospital.
“I hope so,” Rob said. “Something should change.”
“You know,” Jill said. “For a moment—and this sounds vain—I thought you were hitting on me.”
“It’s not vain,” Rob said. “You’re very pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“Beautiful, really,” Rob said, and before Jill could say anything else, he said, “But no, I was not hitting on you.”
“You’ve got someone,” she guessed.
He gave her a smile that said nothing.
“You have someone in mind even if you don’t actually have them.”
Rob sighed and said, “That’s more like it.”
“I’m so tired of this hot air.”
At the corner the lights were flashing yellow. No cars came though at this early time.
“You’re right,” Jill said.
“Huh?
“Something should change. Lots of things should change.”
Then Jill said, “Anigel really likes you.”
“Not in that way!” Rob protested.
Jill laughed.
“No, not in that way. She’s a take no prisoners sort, I think. But she does like you, and I think with someone like her, it counts. Don’t knock that. It’s not everyday we can find someone to like us. And I don’t think she likes everybody.”
Rob rolled his eyes and laughed. “She’s hospitable to everybody. But she’s not nice to everybody. Anigel’s usually not nice to anybody, come to think of it. But I think you’re right. I think you’d get on. I think we’d all get on.”
The hospital doors swung open and they heard feet running out of the emergency room door.
“You wanna see a new baby?” Ralph invited, and Jason stood at his side, panting and smiling.
Rob looked at Jill and she said, “I’m all about seeing new babies.”
“It’s a boy,” Ralph said. “My first nephew.”
Past the emergency room entrance, Russell and Cody were at the elevator, making sure it stayed open, and they all went up four flights while Jill said, “I thought you guys were gone.”
“We were gone,” Cody said. “And then we weren’t. And then we looked for you, and then Anigel came out and said the baby was here, and you were outside.”
Jill didn’t think this woman she had never met, Anigel’s sister, would let a lot of random people into her room to see her baby, and whether she would have or not, by now the baby was with all the others in the nursery and it was very much asleep and not worried about any of them.
“Is that baby white?” Ralph wondered.
“No, fool,” Anigel said tenderly, her fingers pressed to the glass, looking blissfully on the young cheeks and shut eyes.
“It looks white,” Ralph judged.
“Please shut up.”
“It looks new,” Jason said, tenderly. “It looks new, and it makes you want to sort of be new too. Not be the same dummy you always were.”
Then the black haired boy said in his soft voice. “I’m talking about me, of course, but—”
“I think it applies to all of us,” Jill said.
Jill said, “I think I used to expect the world to change, something to happen. And then I stopped expecting anything. I kind of just stopped living. And I’m too young for that. And that’s got to change.”
She kept looking at the pale baby whose eyes moved under its thin lids, and whose fat, puckered lips pursed and unpursed.
“A man told lies about me,” she said to Anigel.
“What woman hasn’t been lied on by a man?”
“I let it slide,” she said. “And I thought I had to. I thought, in this world we get called all sorts of things. And if we turn the tables… all sorts of things can happen to a girl. Things you shouldn’t say over a newborn baby.”
“Yes,” Anigel said. “But if we don’t make things right, then when the newborn babies are grown like us, what kind of world will there be?”
“So when do you start at Soubirous?” Rob asked Anigel.
“I think it starts back up the week after next. Or next week or something,” she said, vaguely, screwing up her face. “Why, are you going?”
“Think I have a chance?”
“If they’ll take me they’ll take anyone. I’m pretty sure it’s an open door kind of thing. It’ll be nice going in with a friend. If college is anything like high school then i’m terrified.”
“And now I’m terrified,” Rob said. “That I’ll try to get in and it’ll be too late.”
“It’s Soubirous, not Yale,” said Nehru the next day in the guidance office. “They’ll take anyone. You have to fill out an application slip and mail it...” Nehru made ink swirls across and application, “and then it comes to the guidance office. They take your application, call you and have you tested—”
“Tested,” Rob looked nervous.
“Relax,” said Nehru. “And then the Friday before school starts you stand in a line with a hundred other hopefuls and get your schedule made out.”
“But I haven’t done an application yet—” started Rob.
Nehru hit a button on the phone and said, “Robert Keyes here to see you. He’s the ones who’s application got lost in the mail.”
Rob and Russell stared at Nehru. who said nothing, but waited for a reply, his eyes tilted angelically toward the ceiling.
“Send him in,”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Nehru said and shut off the intercom. “I love this job even if it’s only for the summer.
TOMORROW, CHAPTER EIGHT: MILLENIUM.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Great to get back to this story and an excellent end to the chapter. I love these characters so much! It’s good to see some who don’t know each other at all get to talking. Wonderful writing and I look forward to chapter eight tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
It is good to get back to town, and back to Jill. As you said, all sorts of people are getting to know each other and even need to knwo each other, Jason and Jill and Ralph and Cody all in the same place, and Anigel's sister with a new baby. I'm glad you enjoyed them, and more than that: love them. More tomorrow
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
SEVEN
MILLENIUM
“Is it still nice? Do you still like it?”
“Yes,” Nehru said, truthfully. “I do. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure,” Brad said.
They were in his basement, sitting on his bed, the guitar to Brad’s left and the cigarettes to Nehru’s right. Before them both was a crate with beers and from the stereo Aretha Franklin was singing:
“Don't play that song for me
'Cause it brings back memories
Of days that I once knew
The days that I spent with you.”
“How are things with Marissa?”
“Good,” Brad said. “She’s coming to the show tonight.”
“That’ll be great. I really like her.”
“She’s something.”
Brad felt confident on this bed. He had only been with Marissa in her bed, in her house. This was the place of many fuckings of Debbie, and Sara before her.
“That girl was looking at you,” Brad told Nehru.
“I don’t know what girl you mean.”
“You don’t pay any attention to them,” Brad said, taking a sip of warm beer.
“Not that you really pay any attention to anyone.”
“I’m happy as myself,” Nehru said.
“I know. I wish we all could be.”
“I didn’t even think about sex till I was eighteen. Not really.”
Nehru sipped from his own beer.
“I remember on our first date
He kissed me and he walked away
I was only seventeen
I'd never dream he'd be so mean.”
Nehru said in his very sure way, the way he’d always been so sure and Brad, ten years older, had always envied, “Can we do it again?”
Almost as soon as he asked, Brad put down his beer and leaned down, tilting his head expertly to kiss Nehru. While Aretha sang on, they embraced and made out together rubbing each other through their shirts, locking blue jeaned thighs and it was so nice, so secure, better than sex. They’d been doing this on and off again for the last few weeks caressing each others hair and faces tenderly, pressing mouths together, locking tongues like teenagers. Brad had never been a teenager. He’d come to sex too early and in a way he didn’t like, and Nehru had been a virtual eunuch until he was twenty, which wasn’t that long ago. Neither one of them had ever had someone to experiment with to hold and pet and make out with to do all those things that went short of sex.
Brad’s heart beat so fast. All the feeling in him welled up from his toes, rained down from his head and joined in the unfoldening stiffening of his penis. When he kissed Nehru, his dick went so hard it hurt and that was a pleasure too. He never touched Nehru there, as if they were still teenagers and it was too special. Aretha Franklin changed to Diana Ross and then Percy Sledge and went on to Marvin Gaye and still they made out slowly on Brad’s bed. When Nehru said it, Brad though it:
“I could do this all day.”
Anigel Reyes was curled up on the uncomfortably new sofa in the lounge of Soubirous College when she felt two thumps on either side of her and looked up from the book of basic algebra to see to her right Nehru Alexander and to her left, Robert Keyes.
“What’s shakin’ peoples?”
“We were just coming to ask you the same thing,” said Nehru. “How’s college treating you?”
Anigel sighed and put down the algebra book. “I was afraid it would be like high school all over again. But it’s nothing like it. I feel like I’ve started a whole new life. I’m kind of liking it. Everything but the math,” she gestured disdainfully to the book.
“Everything I should have learned in high school coming back to haunt me in adulthood. Makes me want a cigarette.”
Robert laughed and Nehru said. “Have you heard the band before?”
“What band?” Anigel asked.
“Nehru’s,” said Rob. “Well, he’s lead singer. They’re really good.”
“You can do our press releases,” Nehru murmured, crawling up on the other end of Anigel’s sofa.
“Chilli Comet Sundae’s their name,” Rob went on.
“Chilli what?” Anigel looked at Nehru who said.
“Hence the reason I refer to it as ‘The Band’. I didn’t make it, I just joined it.”
“Well, yeah,” Anigel sat up. “I’m all for a little fun. All algebra and no play makes Anigel a real bitch. Where’ yawl perform?”
“Here,” Nehru pointed to the ground—which was a slight fabrication. “In the chapel basement. Wednesday nights. Be there or be your mama.”
As the boys got up, Anigel resumed working out equations and muttered,. “That literally made no sense.”
On their way off the field, Anigel asked them. “Are you all coming to Soubirous tonight?”
“Why?” Gil said.
“The bands performing. Nehru says. I think it should be fun. Just wondered if you all were going.”
Russell looked at Gil who said, “I guess we are.”
The phone rang.
“Shit,” Rob hit save on Anigel’s computer, and picked up the cordless.
“Hello?”
“Is this Anigel Reyes’s place?”
“Well, yes it is. But she’s not home. May I take a message? This is her... companion, Robert.”
“Rob!” the voice laughed, and then Rob recognized her and said, “Jill! Jill, hey.”
“Hey, yourself. The hearse is ready.”
“Great,”
“Most people don’t think of that as good news,” Jill quipped. “And... me and Cody wanted to know if you and Anigel and Russell wanted to come over to dinner tomorrow night... or some night? We’d like to see you all again.” And then Jill said. “I’d like to see you again.”
Jill thought she heard Rob grunt, give something like a hoot.
“What was that?” Jill asked, concerned.
“No, nothing,” Rob said quickly. “That’s great. Oh, by the way, we’re going to the college to listen to your—to Chilli Comet Sundae play at the coffee shop, so—”
“What time?”
“About eight.”
“We’ll be there.”
“I thought you’d say no. With your ex being there.”
“I can’t be hung up on that shit,” Jill said. “Not anymore.”
“You know what?” Rob said. “You’re fierce. I mean, you’ve got a hardness. But you don’t play games. In some ways you’re kind of easy,” Rob said.
Jill shrugged, forgetting Rob couldn’t see it.
“Why should everything be hard?”
“It’s a shame Chayne couldn’t come,” Jill said.
“This is for young folks,” Russell impersonating a gruff old voice that was nothing like Chayne’s, but very much like Chayne’s.
A change had come over Russell, but Rob could not pinpoint it. He had always been full of confidence, but there was something different now. At any road, best not to ask because at least he was here tonight, and most nights he had been out with his younger friends and especially that Jason Lorry.
“I don’t think Chayne’s old at all,” Rob said, fiddling with his expensive wristwatch.
“He’s not,” Anigel said, “but then he’s not twenty, either.”
“Well, neither am I,” said Rob.”
“You’re not thirty.”
“No, but I’m old than the rest of you,” Rob said. “As I’m sort of reminded whenever I go shopping.”
“I went shopping for underwear,” Cody said. “And I saw thong underwear for men. Who wears that stuff?”
Rob put up a hand.
“You wear thong underwear?”
“Yeah. You hardly know you have it on, and... It advertises the merchandise.”
Cody raised a dark eyebrow toward Rob.
“See?” Rob stood up in his white trousers, and bent over.
“I can see your ass,” Jill stated.
“That’s the point,” Rob uprighted himself and sat down. “So you’ll be at a party and a girl’ll be like, Um, he looks really cute. But what she means is, ‘He has a nice ass.’ And that’s everything.”
“It’s good to know,” said Jill in a flat voice, pulling a hand through her reddish hair, “that you feel comfortable enough with us to share that.”
“Oh, I always feel comfortable around you guys,” Rob said, smoothing down his trouser legs as he sat back down, and if he had heard the irony in Jill’s voice and simply chosen to ignore it, none could tell.
“Well,” Anigel Reyes noted, “for what it’s worth, you have a very nice ass, Robert.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What about my ass?” Gilead asked.
“Well that just goes without saying.” Anigel took out her cigarettes.
“You smoke Reds,” Cody exclaimed, and at the same time he took his out so did Russell and they both winked at each other.
“Must be a sign,” murmured Jill, and Anigel smirked.
“I can be a crabby bitch,” Jill reflected.
The last notes of the song were playing.
There's a little black spot on the sun today
It's the same old thing as yesterday
There's a black hat caught in the high tree top
There's a flag pole rag and the wind won't stop
I have stood here before inside the pouring rain
With the world turning circles running 'round my brain
I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign
But it's my destiny to be the king of pain.
They applauded for the band and Cody turned to his sister saying, “You don’t have to be a crabby bitch.”
“No,” said Jill. “I think I do. Oh, shit, there’s Leon Dixon. And there’s Shane.”
Gilead Story did a double take from Shane Meriwether in his jeans and tee shirt to Rob before Russell said, “Separated at birth, right?”
“Damn, right.”
“Hey guys,” Shane said. Then, turning to Jill as if he were not surprised to see her. “How are you?”
“Good.” she nodded. “And you, Shane?”
“Great.”
“You sounded great up there,” she could afford to be gracious,. “despite your little friend, Leon.”
“Oh,” Shane nodded. “He told me you all had... met.”
He tried to sound politic, but Jill’s hazel eyes lit on the last word and she said. “He told you what?”
“You all went out on a date,” said Shane.
“Like hell we did. He brought me home in his ratty ass Impala and tried to score.”
“He what?”
“Shane Meriwether, are you deaf?” Then she said. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” Shane lied.
Jill got up and threaded her way through the coffee house to the stage. She climbed up the steps to stare at Brad Long who smiled half nervous and half happy to see her again and said, “Hey, Jill?”
“What did this thing,” she, gestured to Leon, “say about me?”
Nehru Alexander, who had been talking to Anigel, suddenly broke off and looked to the stage. Leon’s eyes widened.
Nobody answered Jill.
“Did he say he fucked me?” she asked.
“Well, did he?” This time she looked at Brad and Brad looked at Nehru and Nehru looked away so Brad didn’t dare to lie. He just nodded dumbly.
“Oh,” said Jill, and smiled. And now Jill did one of those… Cody would call them Jill Things. She took the microphone that was begging to be used and turned around to address the crowd.
“Boys and girls of Soubirous College—”
With a bit of startled stirring and staring, the audience turned to look up at her.
“Hello,” Jill said to them. “Welcome to Jill Barnard’s one woman show, featuring the dumber drummer over here—Leon Dixon.”
“Oh, shit,” Anigel murmured.
In unison, Cody, Anigel and Russell crushed out their cigarettes to give full attention to whatever Jill was about to do.
“Here is the story of a girl bored and tired of life who gets drunk at a party and sees a guy who—well—he’s good looking, I’ll give him that. And he asks if he can take her home. She’s twenty-one and feeling almost adventurous, and so she says, yes, and hops into his old Ford. She listens to his lame jokes.”
There are bits of laughter, but Jill notes that the laughter is somewhat uncomfortable. She turns to Leon, and she can’t read the expression on his face. No, she realizes, nothing like this has ever happened to him before.
She goes on.
“And then we get to my house. We get to that old elm tree. Cody, you know it. And we sit there listening to his bad music and suddenly he says, I’m the right package. I’m the perfect girl, and who doesn’t want to hear that? And then he says, you know what would make this the perfect night?”
Anigel guesses: “A kiss.”
“You’d think,” Jill says. “But no. He asks can he can fuck me. In his car. To top off his night.”
The startled noises, Jill thinks, must be from hearing her tell the story, not from the story itself. She isn’t old, but she is old enough to know Leon Dixon isn’t the first tactless man or the only low life fuck in this audience.
She continues: “And I said NOOOO!”
Jill grew quiet before turning to him.
“Didn’t I? Leon?”
“Well—”
“Didn’t I?”
At last, as if the truth was being pulled out of his stomach: “Yes.”
Jill smiled. “And so here’s the story of a girl in a car with a guy who—because he couldn’t get any, gave himself some. and jacked off in front of her—”
Hale looked witheringly at Leon. Leon turned red and tried to space out.
“The only thing I provided was a wet nap.”
“Aren’t you leaving out a part?” Leon asked.
She was about to deny it, but then thought, What the hell? And said, “Well, he jacked himself off because he asked me to... And I wasn’t good enough. That’s the part I’m leaving out. He preferred himself.”
Jill got off the stage, and was two steps back into the crowd, before she turned around, took the microphone from Brad Long and added:
“And... by the way, ladies and gentlemen.... He was smaaaallll.”
MORE TOMORROW
MILLENIUM
“Is it still nice? Do you still like it?”
“Yes,” Nehru said, truthfully. “I do. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure,” Brad said.
They were in his basement, sitting on his bed, the guitar to Brad’s left and the cigarettes to Nehru’s right. Before them both was a crate with beers and from the stereo Aretha Franklin was singing:
“Don't play that song for me
'Cause it brings back memories
Of days that I once knew
The days that I spent with you.”
“How are things with Marissa?”
“Good,” Brad said. “She’s coming to the show tonight.”
“That’ll be great. I really like her.”
“She’s something.”
Brad felt confident on this bed. He had only been with Marissa in her bed, in her house. This was the place of many fuckings of Debbie, and Sara before her.
“That girl was looking at you,” Brad told Nehru.
“I don’t know what girl you mean.”
“You don’t pay any attention to them,” Brad said, taking a sip of warm beer.
“Not that you really pay any attention to anyone.”
“I’m happy as myself,” Nehru said.
“I know. I wish we all could be.”
“I didn’t even think about sex till I was eighteen. Not really.”
Nehru sipped from his own beer.
“I remember on our first date
He kissed me and he walked away
I was only seventeen
I'd never dream he'd be so mean.”
Nehru said in his very sure way, the way he’d always been so sure and Brad, ten years older, had always envied, “Can we do it again?”
Almost as soon as he asked, Brad put down his beer and leaned down, tilting his head expertly to kiss Nehru. While Aretha sang on, they embraced and made out together rubbing each other through their shirts, locking blue jeaned thighs and it was so nice, so secure, better than sex. They’d been doing this on and off again for the last few weeks caressing each others hair and faces tenderly, pressing mouths together, locking tongues like teenagers. Brad had never been a teenager. He’d come to sex too early and in a way he didn’t like, and Nehru had been a virtual eunuch until he was twenty, which wasn’t that long ago. Neither one of them had ever had someone to experiment with to hold and pet and make out with to do all those things that went short of sex.
Brad’s heart beat so fast. All the feeling in him welled up from his toes, rained down from his head and joined in the unfoldening stiffening of his penis. When he kissed Nehru, his dick went so hard it hurt and that was a pleasure too. He never touched Nehru there, as if they were still teenagers and it was too special. Aretha Franklin changed to Diana Ross and then Percy Sledge and went on to Marvin Gaye and still they made out slowly on Brad’s bed. When Nehru said it, Brad though it:
“I could do this all day.”
Anigel Reyes was curled up on the uncomfortably new sofa in the lounge of Soubirous College when she felt two thumps on either side of her and looked up from the book of basic algebra to see to her right Nehru Alexander and to her left, Robert Keyes.
“What’s shakin’ peoples?”
“We were just coming to ask you the same thing,” said Nehru. “How’s college treating you?”
Anigel sighed and put down the algebra book. “I was afraid it would be like high school all over again. But it’s nothing like it. I feel like I’ve started a whole new life. I’m kind of liking it. Everything but the math,” she gestured disdainfully to the book.
“Everything I should have learned in high school coming back to haunt me in adulthood. Makes me want a cigarette.”
Robert laughed and Nehru said. “Have you heard the band before?”
“What band?” Anigel asked.
“Nehru’s,” said Rob. “Well, he’s lead singer. They’re really good.”
“You can do our press releases,” Nehru murmured, crawling up on the other end of Anigel’s sofa.
“Chilli Comet Sundae’s their name,” Rob went on.
“Chilli what?” Anigel looked at Nehru who said.
“Hence the reason I refer to it as ‘The Band’. I didn’t make it, I just joined it.”
“Well, yeah,” Anigel sat up. “I’m all for a little fun. All algebra and no play makes Anigel a real bitch. Where’ yawl perform?”
“Here,” Nehru pointed to the ground—which was a slight fabrication. “In the chapel basement. Wednesday nights. Be there or be your mama.”
As the boys got up, Anigel resumed working out equations and muttered,. “That literally made no sense.”
On their way off the field, Anigel asked them. “Are you all coming to Soubirous tonight?”
“Why?” Gil said.
“The bands performing. Nehru says. I think it should be fun. Just wondered if you all were going.”
Russell looked at Gil who said, “I guess we are.”
The phone rang.
“Shit,” Rob hit save on Anigel’s computer, and picked up the cordless.
“Hello?”
“Is this Anigel Reyes’s place?”
“Well, yes it is. But she’s not home. May I take a message? This is her... companion, Robert.”
“Rob!” the voice laughed, and then Rob recognized her and said, “Jill! Jill, hey.”
“Hey, yourself. The hearse is ready.”
“Great,”
“Most people don’t think of that as good news,” Jill quipped. “And... me and Cody wanted to know if you and Anigel and Russell wanted to come over to dinner tomorrow night... or some night? We’d like to see you all again.” And then Jill said. “I’d like to see you again.”
Jill thought she heard Rob grunt, give something like a hoot.
“What was that?” Jill asked, concerned.
“No, nothing,” Rob said quickly. “That’s great. Oh, by the way, we’re going to the college to listen to your—to Chilli Comet Sundae play at the coffee shop, so—”
“What time?”
“About eight.”
“We’ll be there.”
“I thought you’d say no. With your ex being there.”
“I can’t be hung up on that shit,” Jill said. “Not anymore.”
“You know what?” Rob said. “You’re fierce. I mean, you’ve got a hardness. But you don’t play games. In some ways you’re kind of easy,” Rob said.
Jill shrugged, forgetting Rob couldn’t see it.
“Why should everything be hard?”
“It’s a shame Chayne couldn’t come,” Jill said.
“This is for young folks,” Russell impersonating a gruff old voice that was nothing like Chayne’s, but very much like Chayne’s.
A change had come over Russell, but Rob could not pinpoint it. He had always been full of confidence, but there was something different now. At any road, best not to ask because at least he was here tonight, and most nights he had been out with his younger friends and especially that Jason Lorry.
“I don’t think Chayne’s old at all,” Rob said, fiddling with his expensive wristwatch.
“He’s not,” Anigel said, “but then he’s not twenty, either.”
“Well, neither am I,” said Rob.”
“You’re not thirty.”
“No, but I’m old than the rest of you,” Rob said. “As I’m sort of reminded whenever I go shopping.”
“I went shopping for underwear,” Cody said. “And I saw thong underwear for men. Who wears that stuff?”
Rob put up a hand.
“You wear thong underwear?”
“Yeah. You hardly know you have it on, and... It advertises the merchandise.”
Cody raised a dark eyebrow toward Rob.
“See?” Rob stood up in his white trousers, and bent over.
“I can see your ass,” Jill stated.
“That’s the point,” Rob uprighted himself and sat down. “So you’ll be at a party and a girl’ll be like, Um, he looks really cute. But what she means is, ‘He has a nice ass.’ And that’s everything.”
“It’s good to know,” said Jill in a flat voice, pulling a hand through her reddish hair, “that you feel comfortable enough with us to share that.”
“Oh, I always feel comfortable around you guys,” Rob said, smoothing down his trouser legs as he sat back down, and if he had heard the irony in Jill’s voice and simply chosen to ignore it, none could tell.
“Well,” Anigel Reyes noted, “for what it’s worth, you have a very nice ass, Robert.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What about my ass?” Gilead asked.
“Well that just goes without saying.” Anigel took out her cigarettes.
“You smoke Reds,” Cody exclaimed, and at the same time he took his out so did Russell and they both winked at each other.
“Must be a sign,” murmured Jill, and Anigel smirked.
“I can be a crabby bitch,” Jill reflected.
The last notes of the song were playing.
There's a little black spot on the sun today
It's the same old thing as yesterday
There's a black hat caught in the high tree top
There's a flag pole rag and the wind won't stop
I have stood here before inside the pouring rain
With the world turning circles running 'round my brain
I guess I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign
But it's my destiny to be the king of pain.
They applauded for the band and Cody turned to his sister saying, “You don’t have to be a crabby bitch.”
“No,” said Jill. “I think I do. Oh, shit, there’s Leon Dixon. And there’s Shane.”
Gilead Story did a double take from Shane Meriwether in his jeans and tee shirt to Rob before Russell said, “Separated at birth, right?”
“Damn, right.”
“Hey guys,” Shane said. Then, turning to Jill as if he were not surprised to see her. “How are you?”
“Good.” she nodded. “And you, Shane?”
“Great.”
“You sounded great up there,” she could afford to be gracious,. “despite your little friend, Leon.”
“Oh,” Shane nodded. “He told me you all had... met.”
He tried to sound politic, but Jill’s hazel eyes lit on the last word and she said. “He told you what?”
“You all went out on a date,” said Shane.
“Like hell we did. He brought me home in his ratty ass Impala and tried to score.”
“He what?”
“Shane Meriwether, are you deaf?” Then she said. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” Shane lied.
Jill got up and threaded her way through the coffee house to the stage. She climbed up the steps to stare at Brad Long who smiled half nervous and half happy to see her again and said, “Hey, Jill?”
“What did this thing,” she, gestured to Leon, “say about me?”
Nehru Alexander, who had been talking to Anigel, suddenly broke off and looked to the stage. Leon’s eyes widened.
Nobody answered Jill.
“Did he say he fucked me?” she asked.
“Well, did he?” This time she looked at Brad and Brad looked at Nehru and Nehru looked away so Brad didn’t dare to lie. He just nodded dumbly.
“Oh,” said Jill, and smiled. And now Jill did one of those… Cody would call them Jill Things. She took the microphone that was begging to be used and turned around to address the crowd.
“Boys and girls of Soubirous College—”
With a bit of startled stirring and staring, the audience turned to look up at her.
“Hello,” Jill said to them. “Welcome to Jill Barnard’s one woman show, featuring the dumber drummer over here—Leon Dixon.”
“Oh, shit,” Anigel murmured.
In unison, Cody, Anigel and Russell crushed out their cigarettes to give full attention to whatever Jill was about to do.
“Here is the story of a girl bored and tired of life who gets drunk at a party and sees a guy who—well—he’s good looking, I’ll give him that. And he asks if he can take her home. She’s twenty-one and feeling almost adventurous, and so she says, yes, and hops into his old Ford. She listens to his lame jokes.”
There are bits of laughter, but Jill notes that the laughter is somewhat uncomfortable. She turns to Leon, and she can’t read the expression on his face. No, she realizes, nothing like this has ever happened to him before.
She goes on.
“And then we get to my house. We get to that old elm tree. Cody, you know it. And we sit there listening to his bad music and suddenly he says, I’m the right package. I’m the perfect girl, and who doesn’t want to hear that? And then he says, you know what would make this the perfect night?”
Anigel guesses: “A kiss.”
“You’d think,” Jill says. “But no. He asks can he can fuck me. In his car. To top off his night.”
The startled noises, Jill thinks, must be from hearing her tell the story, not from the story itself. She isn’t old, but she is old enough to know Leon Dixon isn’t the first tactless man or the only low life fuck in this audience.
She continues: “And I said NOOOO!”
Jill grew quiet before turning to him.
“Didn’t I? Leon?”
“Well—”
“Didn’t I?”
At last, as if the truth was being pulled out of his stomach: “Yes.”
Jill smiled. “And so here’s the story of a girl in a car with a guy who—because he couldn’t get any, gave himself some. and jacked off in front of her—”
Hale looked witheringly at Leon. Leon turned red and tried to space out.
“The only thing I provided was a wet nap.”
“Aren’t you leaving out a part?” Leon asked.
She was about to deny it, but then thought, What the hell? And said, “Well, he jacked himself off because he asked me to... And I wasn’t good enough. That’s the part I’m leaving out. He preferred himself.”
Jill got off the stage, and was two steps back into the crowd, before she turned around, took the microphone from Brad Long and added:
“And... by the way, ladies and gentlemen.... He was smaaaallll.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Glad to see Brad exploring his sexuality with Nehru. I am also glad that Jill got to confront Leon. What a dick he is. You were right I really enjoyed this part of the story and I look forward to more tomorrow!
