ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
No, it's not love at all, and Russell is a very confused soul.. You're right. I was glad to return to Chayne and Rob and get some love time between the two of them, too.
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Nights in White Satin
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
RUSSELL, CODY AND RALPH TRY TO GET THROUGH THEIR FEELINGS AS THE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS REVEAL ALL MANNER OF THINGS
Ralph Balusik was not impressed by wealth, but he did find it interesting. Willowbrook had made a name for itself, but it was just a subdivision. It wasn’t like the Breckinridge with its brick houses, white colonials and English Tudors. Every house was one story. There was nothing beautiful here.
Houses were empty here. He was always surprised by this. Vanessa’s parents were never home, which is why she screamed while he fucked her. He liked the sounds of clapping, his hips to her ass as he shuttle fucked her. He loved feeling like a man and not some confused and vulnerable boy, not like he did so often, When he tugged her hair and she shouted he felt powerful, like when he fucked girls on the football field. He only wished that he wasn’t on a first floor. Everything here was only one story, maybe two squashed stories, and this dull winding road that ended in a cul de sac. He wished he was fucking her in some tall house on Brigham Street, looking out over the bridge onto the water.
He’d been fucking her a while now, knew she was probably ready for it to stop, knew he wanted to make her come, make himself come, knew how to do it by now, but he had to be excited. He let his mind drift to what he wanted, Little Poland, fucking while he looked out of the window, grabbing her hips while she shouted, bending his knees and entering her just… yes… just so, hitting her clit like that again and again, gentle now, quickly shallow pumps, pretending her ash colored hair was red, surprising himself by the violent knock-you-off-of-your feet of his coming as he stopped himself from shouting, “Russell!”
Cody Barnard did not like Jake Gillespie, but then there was lots he didn’t like, lately. He couldn’t put his finger on what wasn’t great about him, but if he had been asked to describe the tall guy who always wore prescription sunglasses, had a narrow face and an eternal five o’ clock shadow, he would say he lacked soul.
And did that mean he lacked soul too? Cody hated hypocrisy, and when he found himself engaged anywhere near it, he took a step back, took out a cigarette and reflected.
But there has been no time to reflect until now, and this was not the time for it. Business was slow in the garage now, and this was why, in the back office, Cody had sat down, taken down his jeans, and let Jake Gillespie suck his cock. On his hands and knees the other mechanic said very little, just slurped away, tugging with his mouth, lavishing with his tongue and working Cody with his hand. It was only when he stopped, mouth partially full of cock, and marveled, “Its so fucking big,” that he spoke, and that was enough.
Cody knew his cock was big. He knew it was hard. It had been throbbing all night. He knew when he looked down and saw that red head snaking back and forth as that tight mouth sucked on him, he could have a moment of respite from this new torture. He buried his hands in Jake’s red hair and began rhythmically fucking his mouth, as he would never have done to the person he so desperately needed Jake to be.
When he woke in the morning, the covers were cocooned about him, and Mark was asleep on his back, naked. Gilead was glad the curtains were drawn, but surprised at how upset he was at himself, how much he cared about the boy sleeping beside him. Mark seemed exposed, too vulnerable. His mouth was open a little, and his hands were palm up, his chest rising and falling as Gilead’s eyes traveled to his sex, coral in a thicket of soft blackness. He climbed out of bed, and as Mark snored, covered him quickly, as if something would happen to him unless he was blanketed. They were drawn to each other. Mark was his equal, gallant, polished, whip smart, and Gilead admitted how much he had fallen for him, but when they undressed, when he saw Mark’s body, which was strong, and muscled like a young runner’s, he was not filled with lust, but love and the desire to protect him, The Mark sleeping beside him seemed so vulnerable, and Gilead imagined he would do whatever he had to protect him if it ever came to that.
He remembered coming to Joe Smith’s funeral, and he remembered now why he had. Gilead had heard of Mark Young, running half naked and streaked in sweat on the hottest day of the year, and picturing him that way, which, because he had seen Mark in a pair of shorts with no shirt, should have been stunning, but instead made him feel stunned, protective.
He felt a slight cuff on his chin and looked down to see Mark grinning up at him in that goofy way.
“Why so serious?” he croaked.
“Your breath is gross,” Gilead said.
Mark turned from him and laughed.
“I’m about to go to the bathroom,” he said, “or else something else gross is going to come out of me.”
Without ceremony, Mark climbed over him and went into the little bathroom, and while he was in there, Gilead thought about how he wished he had gone first, and he hoped that Mark wasn’t stinking up the fucking place, and he was relieved when the toilet flushed a few minutes later and Mark came out, still looking sleepy, some of the wavy black hair sticking up and he kissed Gil.
“In my haste I forgot my toothbrush, but I rinsed my mouth out.”
“For later reference, you can use my toothbrush,” Gilead told him. “Unless you don’t want to. Which is—”
“I wasn’t sure if we were close like that.”
“We’re naked in the same bed,” Gilead said.
“Well, then yes I will use your toothbrush.”
“I’m going to the bathroom, and I can’t promise to be as quick as you were.”
“I thought the same,” Mark said, “But it was a false alarm. For any sounds or smells that happen after I go back to sleep, I apologize.”
As Gilead climbed out of bed, he looked at Mark snuggling under the covers.
“We’re talking about sharing toothbrushes and bodily functions. We’re together not, aren’t we?”
Mark made a contented sound under the covers and belched loudly.
Gilead Story, who felt the pang of nature calling, said, “I’m gonna take that as a yes.”
Gilead was gone, and home seemed strange. The Christmas tree was bigger and more beautiful than ever, and tomorrow, starting with Aunt Kristin and the new baby, family would arrive. But he was not the same, and he felt like part of him could not be home right here. Cody would come over the holidays, and everyone would embrace him and welcome him into the family, and they would look at each other and make up strange things to say.
Russell had not explained to Thom and Patti where he was last night or where he had come from this morning. He picked up the phone and called Chayne before he could tell himself not to.
“Hello,” Rob picked up.
“Rob, I need you or Chayne to call over here. I need you to call and say you need me for something.”
“What?”
“Mom and Dad think I was there last night.”
“But where were you last night?”
“Rob?”
“Yeah.” Rob said in a voice that clearly stated the conversation would go no further until Russell told him.
“I was with Jason.”
“I see.”
“Trying to get back to normal.”
“So you think if you tell your parents you’re coming here because they think you just left here, that would be suspicious. So you want us to call and say we need you to come back.”
“Yes.”
“Had it occurred to you to just tell them you were going to Jason’s, and then come here?”
“You’re really difficult, today,” Russell said.
“Nevermind. I’ll call.”
Rob hung up, and a few minutes later the phone rang and then there was a tap on the door. When Russell said come in, Thom entered and said, “Chayne told me he needs you.”
“It was Chayne?” Russell was surprised at this, and Thom said, “Yeah. I could drive you.”
“I’m gonna walk. I need the air. It keeps me from being a depressed teenager.”
“Alright,” Thom nodded.
“Say, Russ, we should talk about this whole Cody thing.”
For a moment, Russell had the strange sensation that Thom knew about him sleeping Cody.
He thought about saying, “There’s nothing to say,” but then thought better of it.
“Whaddo you wanna talk about?”
“Uh…”
There it was, when parents said, maybe we should talk about something, just shift that shit on them.
“How do you feel?” Thom asked.
And now he’s shifting that shit on me.
“I love Cody,” Russell said, honestly.
He added, “How does Mom feel?”
Ah, there we go.
“She’s… fine.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to her, then,” Russell said.
“That might not be a bad idea,” Thom said.
Suddenly, Russell hugged his Dad, who smelled like Marlboros and cologne, and he said as he squeezed him, “We’re only human, right?”
Thom looked at his son, his dark eyes grinning, and said, “Yeah, Russ.”
“Now let me get my coat and go over to Chayne’s.”
TOMORROW: KING OF ALL THESE RUINEE
Ralph Balusik was not impressed by wealth, but he did find it interesting. Willowbrook had made a name for itself, but it was just a subdivision. It wasn’t like the Breckinridge with its brick houses, white colonials and English Tudors. Every house was one story. There was nothing beautiful here.
Houses were empty here. He was always surprised by this. Vanessa’s parents were never home, which is why she screamed while he fucked her. He liked the sounds of clapping, his hips to her ass as he shuttle fucked her. He loved feeling like a man and not some confused and vulnerable boy, not like he did so often, When he tugged her hair and she shouted he felt powerful, like when he fucked girls on the football field. He only wished that he wasn’t on a first floor. Everything here was only one story, maybe two squashed stories, and this dull winding road that ended in a cul de sac. He wished he was fucking her in some tall house on Brigham Street, looking out over the bridge onto the water.
He’d been fucking her a while now, knew she was probably ready for it to stop, knew he wanted to make her come, make himself come, knew how to do it by now, but he had to be excited. He let his mind drift to what he wanted, Little Poland, fucking while he looked out of the window, grabbing her hips while she shouted, bending his knees and entering her just… yes… just so, hitting her clit like that again and again, gentle now, quickly shallow pumps, pretending her ash colored hair was red, surprising himself by the violent knock-you-off-of-your feet of his coming as he stopped himself from shouting, “Russell!”
Cody Barnard did not like Jake Gillespie, but then there was lots he didn’t like, lately. He couldn’t put his finger on what wasn’t great about him, but if he had been asked to describe the tall guy who always wore prescription sunglasses, had a narrow face and an eternal five o’ clock shadow, he would say he lacked soul.
And did that mean he lacked soul too? Cody hated hypocrisy, and when he found himself engaged anywhere near it, he took a step back, took out a cigarette and reflected.
But there has been no time to reflect until now, and this was not the time for it. Business was slow in the garage now, and this was why, in the back office, Cody had sat down, taken down his jeans, and let Jake Gillespie suck his cock. On his hands and knees the other mechanic said very little, just slurped away, tugging with his mouth, lavishing with his tongue and working Cody with his hand. It was only when he stopped, mouth partially full of cock, and marveled, “Its so fucking big,” that he spoke, and that was enough.
Cody knew his cock was big. He knew it was hard. It had been throbbing all night. He knew when he looked down and saw that red head snaking back and forth as that tight mouth sucked on him, he could have a moment of respite from this new torture. He buried his hands in Jake’s red hair and began rhythmically fucking his mouth, as he would never have done to the person he so desperately needed Jake to be.
When he woke in the morning, the covers were cocooned about him, and Mark was asleep on his back, naked. Gilead was glad the curtains were drawn, but surprised at how upset he was at himself, how much he cared about the boy sleeping beside him. Mark seemed exposed, too vulnerable. His mouth was open a little, and his hands were palm up, his chest rising and falling as Gilead’s eyes traveled to his sex, coral in a thicket of soft blackness. He climbed out of bed, and as Mark snored, covered him quickly, as if something would happen to him unless he was blanketed. They were drawn to each other. Mark was his equal, gallant, polished, whip smart, and Gilead admitted how much he had fallen for him, but when they undressed, when he saw Mark’s body, which was strong, and muscled like a young runner’s, he was not filled with lust, but love and the desire to protect him, The Mark sleeping beside him seemed so vulnerable, and Gilead imagined he would do whatever he had to protect him if it ever came to that.
He remembered coming to Joe Smith’s funeral, and he remembered now why he had. Gilead had heard of Mark Young, running half naked and streaked in sweat on the hottest day of the year, and picturing him that way, which, because he had seen Mark in a pair of shorts with no shirt, should have been stunning, but instead made him feel stunned, protective.
He felt a slight cuff on his chin and looked down to see Mark grinning up at him in that goofy way.
“Why so serious?” he croaked.
“Your breath is gross,” Gilead said.
Mark turned from him and laughed.
“I’m about to go to the bathroom,” he said, “or else something else gross is going to come out of me.”
Without ceremony, Mark climbed over him and went into the little bathroom, and while he was in there, Gilead thought about how he wished he had gone first, and he hoped that Mark wasn’t stinking up the fucking place, and he was relieved when the toilet flushed a few minutes later and Mark came out, still looking sleepy, some of the wavy black hair sticking up and he kissed Gil.
“In my haste I forgot my toothbrush, but I rinsed my mouth out.”
“For later reference, you can use my toothbrush,” Gilead told him. “Unless you don’t want to. Which is—”
“I wasn’t sure if we were close like that.”
“We’re naked in the same bed,” Gilead said.
“Well, then yes I will use your toothbrush.”
“I’m going to the bathroom, and I can’t promise to be as quick as you were.”
“I thought the same,” Mark said, “But it was a false alarm. For any sounds or smells that happen after I go back to sleep, I apologize.”
As Gilead climbed out of bed, he looked at Mark snuggling under the covers.
“We’re talking about sharing toothbrushes and bodily functions. We’re together not, aren’t we?”
Mark made a contented sound under the covers and belched loudly.
Gilead Story, who felt the pang of nature calling, said, “I’m gonna take that as a yes.”
Gilead was gone, and home seemed strange. The Christmas tree was bigger and more beautiful than ever, and tomorrow, starting with Aunt Kristin and the new baby, family would arrive. But he was not the same, and he felt like part of him could not be home right here. Cody would come over the holidays, and everyone would embrace him and welcome him into the family, and they would look at each other and make up strange things to say.
Russell had not explained to Thom and Patti where he was last night or where he had come from this morning. He picked up the phone and called Chayne before he could tell himself not to.
“Hello,” Rob picked up.
“Rob, I need you or Chayne to call over here. I need you to call and say you need me for something.”
“What?”
“Mom and Dad think I was there last night.”
“But where were you last night?”
“Rob?”
“Yeah.” Rob said in a voice that clearly stated the conversation would go no further until Russell told him.
“I was with Jason.”
“I see.”
“Trying to get back to normal.”
“So you think if you tell your parents you’re coming here because they think you just left here, that would be suspicious. So you want us to call and say we need you to come back.”
“Yes.”
“Had it occurred to you to just tell them you were going to Jason’s, and then come here?”
“You’re really difficult, today,” Russell said.
“Nevermind. I’ll call.”
Rob hung up, and a few minutes later the phone rang and then there was a tap on the door. When Russell said come in, Thom entered and said, “Chayne told me he needs you.”
“It was Chayne?” Russell was surprised at this, and Thom said, “Yeah. I could drive you.”
“I’m gonna walk. I need the air. It keeps me from being a depressed teenager.”
“Alright,” Thom nodded.
“Say, Russ, we should talk about this whole Cody thing.”
For a moment, Russell had the strange sensation that Thom knew about him sleeping Cody.
He thought about saying, “There’s nothing to say,” but then thought better of it.
“Whaddo you wanna talk about?”
“Uh…”
There it was, when parents said, maybe we should talk about something, just shift that shit on them.
“How do you feel?” Thom asked.
And now he’s shifting that shit on me.
“I love Cody,” Russell said, honestly.
He added, “How does Mom feel?”
Ah, there we go.
“She’s… fine.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to her, then,” Russell said.
“That might not be a bad idea,” Thom said.
Suddenly, Russell hugged his Dad, who smelled like Marlboros and cologne, and he said as he squeezed him, “We’re only human, right?”
Thom looked at his son, his dark eyes grinning, and said, “Yeah, Russ.”
“Now let me get my coat and go over to Chayne’s.”
TOMORROW: KING OF ALL THESE RUINEE
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
The days before Christmas are certainly eventful. Mark and Gilead are good together. I enjoy seeing them get some alone time. Russell, Cody and Ralph seem very lost at the moment, hopefully they can sort things out eventually. Great writing and I look forward to King Of All These Ruins tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
So, as you said, Cody and Ralph and Russell seem quite lost, but Mark and Gilead are coming together and forming a real relationship. It's fun to get back to Chayne and Rob. I really enjoy them, the older couple and newer one while everyone else sorts through their shit.
Nehru and Brad arent in it, but I this as them finally getting to take a break and be sane together.
Nehru and Brad arent in it, but I this as them finally getting to take a break and be sane together.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
RUSSELL COMES TO CHAYNE AND CHAYNE DELIVERS MORE COMMON SENSE THAN RUSSELL WAS READY FOR
He needed to be at this old house on Curtain Street that smelled like coffee and cake and hand rolled cigarettes, and it would take more than a hug and some understanding words to get past Chayne who sat in the kitchen where he had dragged out the tower and the monitor of his computer and was artfully moving between, smoking, typing and drinking from his coffee mug.
“Coffee’s in the pot. Pie is in the fridge,” Chayne said.
“I have so much to tell you,” Russell said.
“Is it so much?”
“It feels like it.”
Chayne kept typing until he got to the end of his paragraph, stopped, and turned to Russell.
Looking at him, Russell said, “You know.”
“Of course I know.”
“How long?”
“I’m not magic,” Chayne said with almost irritation. “I’m not Odin. Rob told me cause Cody told him, and I assume you told Gilead.”
“Yeah.”
“Well then that Mark knows.”
“Gilead wouldn’t tell Mark.”
“Of course he would,” Chayne said. “Don’t be stupider than you already have been. But,” Chayne said, not paying attention to how he had mildly offended Russell, “Mark is a vault. That boy will keep everything to himself.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the way that Gil is your best friend, Gil is his. The only person he’d tell a deep secret to is Gilead, and Gilead already knows.”
“you know a lot about people.”
“I know some about some people.”
Then Chayne said, “He’s twenty-three.”
When Russell said nothing else, Chayne said, “Before everything, he’s twenty-three.”
“I know.”
“Patti would kill him.”
Russell said nothing and Chayne continued: “Your father would be beside himself.”
“What about you?” Russell said.
Before Chayne could answer, Russell said, “I didn’t tell Cody how old I was… when it happened.”
But he didn’t want to lie to Chayne, and so he added, “When things happened the first time, he didn’t know how old I was. I didn’t know how old he was either.”
“But you had some idea,” Chayne said. “And so did he.
“So… if there was a first time…. There was a second time.”
“It was when we first met,” Russell said. “And then… the other night.”
Chayne’s face was Buddha calm. He waited for Russell to continue.”
“It was the same night we found out. Right before we found out.”
“Oh,” the breath came from Chayne like a popped tire.
“Yeah,” said Russell, who realized he was still standing up.
Now Russell went to make a cup of coffee. He took off his great coat and his scarf and sat at the table.
“I tried to ignore my feelings, and then Jason came over, trying to apologize—“
“Really?”
“Yes. And I went straight to Cody, and that’s how everything happened. Please don’t judge…. I don’t care if you judge me. I know you won’t. Please don’t judge him.”
Chayne took a sip from his coffee and said, “I don’t like it when you don’t tell me things.”
Russell sat back in his chair, for the first time looking ashamed.
“Every since this summer, you’ve been having this life for yourself that you keep to yourself. I understand that, but I don’t like that you think you can’t tell me things.”
“I can tell you things,” Russell said. “But I can’t tell you everything”
“Why?”
“Because I’m honestly surprised by some of the things I’ve done… and I’m not always sure if I’m embarrassed by them.”
“You can always come to me.”
“I know that.”
“Are you sure?”
When Russell didn’t answer, Chayne got up and went to the refrigerator, and as he pulled out the half eaten cake, Russell answered.
“Yes. Yes, I know. But sometimes I need to NOT tell. Do you understand? I need some things to just be mine until I’ve figured them out.”
“That’s fine. That’s growing up. But there’s a fine line between keeping your own council and hiding your life away.”
“Yes,” Russell said. “I’m starting to see that.”
“Thom, I’m glad you took off work today, cause I know I wasn’t going to be able to go in,” David Armstrong said when he came over that afternoon.
“Dave, I could have just driven myself, like I used to.”
“True, but the carpool saves the environment, and quite frankly, it’s good having you around.”
The tall man with his round black glasses and shaven blond head always carried a nervous energy, but now he looked flat out distracted.
“Dave,” Thom said, “You need to talk?”
“That’s suppose to be my line,” Dave said.
Then he said, “Thom, it was awful. I… I fought with Bill. Bill and me never fight. But if you had been there Saturday night… The things he said to Niall. The way he was… And Dena’s left him. And Cameron. Thanks for keeping her.”
Thom made a face, and only said, “You’re welcome.”
“Yeah,” Dave continued, trying to wave everything off with one of his long hands. “This is terrible. It’s just terrible.”
David shook his head as he folded his large hands together and Patti, entering the kitchen, said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Ah, no. Thanks, Patricia. I mean, I need to talk to my brother. Well, brother-in-law, but Bill is a brother to me. Did he ever get home? Do you know?”
Thom spread his hands out and shrugged and Patti said, “Sorry, David. We haven’t seen anyone go in that house except Cameron stopped for a few things.”
Dave nodded his head and said, “It’s almost Christmas and everything’s wrong. Well, maybe they’ll be some good news soon.
“Uh,” Thom volunteered. “Over the weekend I got a son.”
Bill left his office and went through the large area of cubicles, until he was past the coffee machine and the water cooler and then he walked past the restrooms and the elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell. Here, the concrete steps and the blue painted metal railings took him down to a landing almost hidden in darkness that led to the next floor. He had barely gotten there when Lynn pulled him to her, and he lifted her up, kissing her.
Her legs were about his waist and she lifted her throat to let him kiss her hungrily.
And then she reached for his belt and he blinked at her, surprised for only a moment. She undid his belt and pushed down his trousers and he pulled panties away and in a moment, he was inside of her. His eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the feeling of entry, at the incredible badness of what they were doing. Bill Dwyer from a year ago would never have done this, not even Bill from a week ago. When he came it wasn’t violent, but it was in a sudden umph, as if he were a tube of toothpaste and someone had simply come along and pushed everything out of him. It happened all together, in one surprising spurt, and he lay against Lynn, his head on her shoulder.
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
He needed to be at this old house on Curtain Street that smelled like coffee and cake and hand rolled cigarettes, and it would take more than a hug and some understanding words to get past Chayne who sat in the kitchen where he had dragged out the tower and the monitor of his computer and was artfully moving between, smoking, typing and drinking from his coffee mug.
“Coffee’s in the pot. Pie is in the fridge,” Chayne said.
“I have so much to tell you,” Russell said.
“Is it so much?”
“It feels like it.”
Chayne kept typing until he got to the end of his paragraph, stopped, and turned to Russell.
Looking at him, Russell said, “You know.”
“Of course I know.”
“How long?”
“I’m not magic,” Chayne said with almost irritation. “I’m not Odin. Rob told me cause Cody told him, and I assume you told Gilead.”
“Yeah.”
“Well then that Mark knows.”
“Gilead wouldn’t tell Mark.”
“Of course he would,” Chayne said. “Don’t be stupider than you already have been. But,” Chayne said, not paying attention to how he had mildly offended Russell, “Mark is a vault. That boy will keep everything to himself.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the way that Gil is your best friend, Gil is his. The only person he’d tell a deep secret to is Gilead, and Gilead already knows.”
“you know a lot about people.”
“I know some about some people.”
Then Chayne said, “He’s twenty-three.”
When Russell said nothing else, Chayne said, “Before everything, he’s twenty-three.”
“I know.”
“Patti would kill him.”
Russell said nothing and Chayne continued: “Your father would be beside himself.”
“What about you?” Russell said.
Before Chayne could answer, Russell said, “I didn’t tell Cody how old I was… when it happened.”
But he didn’t want to lie to Chayne, and so he added, “When things happened the first time, he didn’t know how old I was. I didn’t know how old he was either.”
“But you had some idea,” Chayne said. “And so did he.
“So… if there was a first time…. There was a second time.”
“It was when we first met,” Russell said. “And then… the other night.”
Chayne’s face was Buddha calm. He waited for Russell to continue.”
“It was the same night we found out. Right before we found out.”
“Oh,” the breath came from Chayne like a popped tire.
“Yeah,” said Russell, who realized he was still standing up.
Now Russell went to make a cup of coffee. He took off his great coat and his scarf and sat at the table.
“I tried to ignore my feelings, and then Jason came over, trying to apologize—“
“Really?”
“Yes. And I went straight to Cody, and that’s how everything happened. Please don’t judge…. I don’t care if you judge me. I know you won’t. Please don’t judge him.”
Chayne took a sip from his coffee and said, “I don’t like it when you don’t tell me things.”
Russell sat back in his chair, for the first time looking ashamed.
“Every since this summer, you’ve been having this life for yourself that you keep to yourself. I understand that, but I don’t like that you think you can’t tell me things.”
“I can tell you things,” Russell said. “But I can’t tell you everything”
“Why?”
“Because I’m honestly surprised by some of the things I’ve done… and I’m not always sure if I’m embarrassed by them.”
“You can always come to me.”
“I know that.”
“Are you sure?”
When Russell didn’t answer, Chayne got up and went to the refrigerator, and as he pulled out the half eaten cake, Russell answered.
“Yes. Yes, I know. But sometimes I need to NOT tell. Do you understand? I need some things to just be mine until I’ve figured them out.”
“That’s fine. That’s growing up. But there’s a fine line between keeping your own council and hiding your life away.”
“Yes,” Russell said. “I’m starting to see that.”
“Thom, I’m glad you took off work today, cause I know I wasn’t going to be able to go in,” David Armstrong said when he came over that afternoon.
“Dave, I could have just driven myself, like I used to.”
“True, but the carpool saves the environment, and quite frankly, it’s good having you around.”
The tall man with his round black glasses and shaven blond head always carried a nervous energy, but now he looked flat out distracted.
“Dave,” Thom said, “You need to talk?”
“That’s suppose to be my line,” Dave said.
Then he said, “Thom, it was awful. I… I fought with Bill. Bill and me never fight. But if you had been there Saturday night… The things he said to Niall. The way he was… And Dena’s left him. And Cameron. Thanks for keeping her.”
Thom made a face, and only said, “You’re welcome.”
“Yeah,” Dave continued, trying to wave everything off with one of his long hands. “This is terrible. It’s just terrible.”
David shook his head as he folded his large hands together and Patti, entering the kitchen, said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Ah, no. Thanks, Patricia. I mean, I need to talk to my brother. Well, brother-in-law, but Bill is a brother to me. Did he ever get home? Do you know?”
Thom spread his hands out and shrugged and Patti said, “Sorry, David. We haven’t seen anyone go in that house except Cameron stopped for a few things.”
Dave nodded his head and said, “It’s almost Christmas and everything’s wrong. Well, maybe they’ll be some good news soon.
“Uh,” Thom volunteered. “Over the weekend I got a son.”
Bill left his office and went through the large area of cubicles, until he was past the coffee machine and the water cooler and then he walked past the restrooms and the elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell. Here, the concrete steps and the blue painted metal railings took him down to a landing almost hidden in darkness that led to the next floor. He had barely gotten there when Lynn pulled him to her, and he lifted her up, kissing her.
Her legs were about his waist and she lifted her throat to let him kiss her hungrily.
And then she reached for his belt and he blinked at her, surprised for only a moment. She undid his belt and pushed down his trousers and he pulled panties away and in a moment, he was inside of her. His eyes nearly rolled back in his head at the feeling of entry, at the incredible badness of what they were doing. Bill Dwyer from a year ago would never have done this, not even Bill from a week ago. When he came it wasn’t violent, but it was in a sudden umph, as if he were a tube of toothpaste and someone had simply come along and pushed everything out of him. It happened all together, in one surprising spurt, and he lay against Lynn, his head on her shoulder.
MORE TOMORROW NIGHT
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! I am glad Chayne had that talk with Russell. I think he needed that and more. Thom seems to be coming to terms with the surprise of another son. Bill continues to be the worst. Excellent writing and I look forward to reading more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
"Bill continues to be the worst." A great quote for the night. Yes, I feel like if you can remember how very close Russell and Chayne were, and how very solitary and different Russel is becoming, it is a good thing for Chayne to sit him and down and have this talk.Meanwhile, Thom and Patti get used to living with what simply is.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
TONIGHT, FOUR SCENES OF LOVE
As Cameron placed her head on Chris’s shoulder, she said, “So, are we together or not?”
“Huh?”
“I mean people must be asking,” Cameron said.
He looked down at her. He was in a grey sweatshirt, his hair sticking up, and they were in the den of his family’s house not paying attention to the television.
“Are you asking?” he said.
“I guess I am,” she said.
“Well, I mean. We could be. It’s a good idea. I just didn’t want to force anything.”
“Great,” Cameron said. “I mean, I didn’t want to force anything either. I just like being with you, and—”
“I love being with you,” Chris said, sincerely, turning so that Cameron had to lift her head.
“I like it a lot. And I like being there for you, and I don’t need anything else. Like, I didn’t want to say anything, because I didn’t want you to think I’d pressure you into, you know… stuff.”
“Sex.”
“Yeah,” Chris said lamely. “Yeah, that.. stuff. I know people say stuff about me, and… I didn’t want you to think I was like that.”
People did say stuff, or rather they raised eyebrows. Chris Knapp was one of those people who you knew there was a story floating around about, but you weren’t quite sure what the story was. He was fast. He was a bad boy. He knew his way around the girls, though Cameron couldn’t remember knowing a girl who had dated him. Or anything elsed him.
“I didn’t really think about it,” Cameron said. And she was almost serious.
“Besides, you hang out with Mark Young. How bad could you be?”
“You drunk yet?” Mark urged.
Gilead took another sip from the bottle and shook his head, though his mouth was burning and his eyes had bulged out.
“Not as drunk as I wanna be.”
“Drink some more.”
Gilead swigged from the brandy bottle again and passed it to Mark, who took a huge gulp.
“We’re not going home tonight, are we?” Gilead said.
“Well, now, I’m not driving,” Mark said, holding the bottle aloft, “and I feel like you aren’t either. So I’m going to camp down on a no.”
Mark had stopped in the liquor store on a dare, and when the man at the counter had asked them, “You strapping lads home from college?” Mark had said they were and ordered two bottles of bourbon and one of honey brandy. They had no time for beer, and they might never have this kind of luck again. All the way back to the motel they had laughed, Mark honking on his horn and then rolling down the window to yell at the dunes.
“Let me,” Mark held out his hand for a cigarette.
“What about track?”
“Fuck you. What about it?”
Gilead handed him one and tossed him the lighter, and while Gilead watched the orange glow against Mark’s face, Mark said, “You’re just trying to hog your fucking cigarettes.”
He sat back against the wall, his knees apart and exhaled smoke, merrily.
He had thought of saying, “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time,” but he didn’t. They just drank themselves silly.”
“Now,” Gilead lifted a finger, “I want to drink till I’m silly, but not till I’m sick, cause that shit isn’t fun.”
“Hey Gil.”
“Yeah?”
“Hey Gil.
“Yeah?”
“Hey Gil.”
“Goddamn, Mark.
Mark chuckled, reached for Gilead, trying to hook one of his fingers with his own fingers.
“Don’t be so fucking far away from me.”
“You mean knee to knee?”
“Get closer.”
Gilead scooted so that he was side by side with Mark, and Mark touched his chin and pulled him down and kissed him.
“You feeling what I’m feeling?” Mark said.
The first time they’d slept together, that is, slept side by side in Mark’s house, Gilead felt Mark for the first time, the boy who was always a little distant in the way that most lovers are, he could feel his breathing, his heartbeat, smell his breath, touch his hair for that first time.
In the night, against his back he had felt Mark’s erection, and it neither embarrassed nor titillated him. It made Gilead feel tender toward this boy sleeping beside him with his arms loose around him in the cover. The things about Mark that should have sexually excited him, which did sexually excite him, also moved him on a deeper level. Now, Gilead Story’s body was buzzing with alcohol and he felt open, his mood changed as it had never been.
He slipped his hand between Mark’s legs and Mark laughed and his eyes lit up as Gilead held him.
“Yes… I think I do know how you’re feeling.”
The dark, under the covers, was a haven for them where they did things that they did not dare in day light. For the first time Gilead looked at Mark while he touched him, while he undid his jeans. Mark sighed, and putting down the bottle lifted his tee shirt and did something between a laugh and a moan. Gilead leaned forward to kiss him, and Mark’s arm hooked him in so that they stumbled and fell together, catching the bourbon before it spilled. As they undressed, making love in the midst of liquor, Gilead realized he did not feel like an adult. He had felt adult all of his life. Right now he felt, and realized he’d been feeling that way since he’d begun his life with Mark, as light as a child.
Rob turned over in bed that morning and looked out of the window.
“Pull these cover back down,” Chayne demanded, half asleep. “And my God, where is the heat?”
“I’ll check,” Rob said.
Chayne Kandzierski’s great dread was that the furnace would die in winter, and Rob jumped out of bed naked, ran into the hall and sprinted back into bed, reporting. “We never took it off of the timer. I just turned it up to seventy.”
Chayne leaned out of bed long enough to grab the comforter and pull it over them.
“This is going to be a three blanket morning,” he declared.
Rob chuckled and shivered under the covers, turning on his stomach to look out the window: “Chayne, it’s Christmas Eve.”
“I know. I have to be at the church at five for choir practice.”
“And it looks like it’s going to be a white Christmas.”
“And that excites you?”
Rob smirked at Chayne and said, “Stop being such a grumpy old man.”
“I am a grumpy old man.”
“I don’t know if thirty-six makes you old.”
“Older than you,”
“Well, Rob slipped back into the covers, “It’s a good think you have me to keep you young.”
“And warm.”
BRAD LONG SPEAKS
I can’t remember how I met you, but I remember how we became this. I remember the afternoon by the black piano in summer in the quite of the Noble Red when I bent toward you or you bent toward me, and the whole world bent between us and I kissed you. I discovered what had terrified me. In the tenderness of your lips the whole world ended.
I did not plan to be anything or anybody, I did not plan to be unusual or take a stand. I do not want parades. Maybe there should be parades. I don’t want to go on marches. I do not want to be without you. This is the only thing I want, the press of more forehead to yours, our lips to each others in bed, or on the street.
In bed we press feet to feet, knees to knees, knead the palms of our hands into each other. Lock legs, Lock arms, lock tongues. We are like living sticks rubbing together for that greater heat.
I am not political. I mean, I was a very little political. I had sentimental leanings toward the hippies. I had a semi longing for the Sixties. But if telling the world I love you is political, then I am political. It is winter, but I picture spring in Jefferson Park where the cherry blossoms are all on the tree, and there is that bridge, and we are standing on it and the little stream shoots under us, the one that leads to the river, and I lean down and press my head to yours, press my hands into yours. I look into your eyes so you know me, know how I feel.
I am silent long enough for you to talk. You say nothing. Good, say nothing, you’ve earned that right so that I can say there is a real moment, one I can’t remember, and then a realer than real moment when I think of how I met you. You are in those white linen pants and that white dress shirt, and Lake Michigan looks almost Caribbean so that, even though you are the color of caramel or of a good cup of coffee you seem gloriously black against the electric blue of water, the glowing blue of sky. You are coming to me from the sea, or am I coming to you?
“Coming, coming, coming, like that first time. Fuck, we were kids together, weren’t we? I was thirty, you were twenty three, and like teenagers we lay on the bed in jeans and tee shirts, making out and holding back, not going here, not going there, and you know what? I felt just like a virgin, and I think I wanted to be a virgin for you. I wanted to be your baby. I didn’t want to fuck and fuck it up. Make it like all of those other times with all of those others, where I wanted to be touched and never quite was.
So I say, “Let’s live here, together. Let me find out, in time, how much it would cost, look into a lease?” And you say, “We can do that today.”
I say I wanna make a home with you, and you say you wanna make a home with me too, and after all the waiting, why wait any longer?
Sentimentally, I want to make love to you again in my old bed, or in your old bed in your parents’ house, like that very first time when I was as eager to undress as someone in a heated room on a summer day when they see a pool. I wanted to be real for the first time with you, not to hold anything back, to give you everything. That first time I was in you, there was the miracle of stupid old me, six foot three, someone inside of you, the best thing in my life, the miracle of me, squeezing through a line of seed, joy made liquid, rejoicing ejaculation, love, the surrender of orgasm, us in each others arms, the formless at last with form.
God forgive me. I want to be a virgin for you. God forgive me. You are everything, and some of the things I took you through were unworthy of you. We came together in a strange kind of heaven. It can’t be hell unless Cody was the devil. He was tempting, you were tempting, we were coming together. I longed for…. I was full of longing. I would killed myself if you hadn’t taken me in that night. I know it now. If we had gone our separate ways I would have driven off a bridge. Now I understand the fragile line between choosing life and choosing death. Every moment, but especially that moment I loved to drive into you. That night, pot and poppers, liquor and infinite arms, infinite embraces, endless love and absolutely mercy came to me under twinkling amber lights in form of sex. You and Cody were my fucking guardian angels, fucking angels. Fucking… And in the end, like a good angel, there is Cody, hair like chocolate, leaning there, pointing to you, telling me, so stupid, and you so stubborn, “This is home. This is your home.” Like a golden angel he did it, and like a golden angel, in the grey and white morning he leaves us alone, and he is gone.
In the morning we repeat what we began. Every time we come together, face to face, lips to lips, hands closing on hands, touching belly to belly, is like what they used to say in church. How do you call it? A sacrament. And this last moment is the first moment, is the first moment as we come together on the second floor in that old apartment, making love, as the winter sun shines across us hot as summer, and we simmer together, my love, my one, my Jawarhalal Nehru Alexander.
MORE TOMORROW
As Cameron placed her head on Chris’s shoulder, she said, “So, are we together or not?”
“Huh?”
“I mean people must be asking,” Cameron said.
He looked down at her. He was in a grey sweatshirt, his hair sticking up, and they were in the den of his family’s house not paying attention to the television.
“Are you asking?” he said.
“I guess I am,” she said.
“Well, I mean. We could be. It’s a good idea. I just didn’t want to force anything.”
“Great,” Cameron said. “I mean, I didn’t want to force anything either. I just like being with you, and—”
“I love being with you,” Chris said, sincerely, turning so that Cameron had to lift her head.
“I like it a lot. And I like being there for you, and I don’t need anything else. Like, I didn’t want to say anything, because I didn’t want you to think I’d pressure you into, you know… stuff.”
“Sex.”
“Yeah,” Chris said lamely. “Yeah, that.. stuff. I know people say stuff about me, and… I didn’t want you to think I was like that.”
People did say stuff, or rather they raised eyebrows. Chris Knapp was one of those people who you knew there was a story floating around about, but you weren’t quite sure what the story was. He was fast. He was a bad boy. He knew his way around the girls, though Cameron couldn’t remember knowing a girl who had dated him. Or anything elsed him.
“I didn’t really think about it,” Cameron said. And she was almost serious.
“Besides, you hang out with Mark Young. How bad could you be?”
“You drunk yet?” Mark urged.
Gilead took another sip from the bottle and shook his head, though his mouth was burning and his eyes had bulged out.
“Not as drunk as I wanna be.”
“Drink some more.”
Gilead swigged from the brandy bottle again and passed it to Mark, who took a huge gulp.
“We’re not going home tonight, are we?” Gilead said.
“Well, now, I’m not driving,” Mark said, holding the bottle aloft, “and I feel like you aren’t either. So I’m going to camp down on a no.”
Mark had stopped in the liquor store on a dare, and when the man at the counter had asked them, “You strapping lads home from college?” Mark had said they were and ordered two bottles of bourbon and one of honey brandy. They had no time for beer, and they might never have this kind of luck again. All the way back to the motel they had laughed, Mark honking on his horn and then rolling down the window to yell at the dunes.
“Let me,” Mark held out his hand for a cigarette.
“What about track?”
“Fuck you. What about it?”
Gilead handed him one and tossed him the lighter, and while Gilead watched the orange glow against Mark’s face, Mark said, “You’re just trying to hog your fucking cigarettes.”
He sat back against the wall, his knees apart and exhaled smoke, merrily.
He had thought of saying, “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time,” but he didn’t. They just drank themselves silly.”
“Now,” Gilead lifted a finger, “I want to drink till I’m silly, but not till I’m sick, cause that shit isn’t fun.”
“Hey Gil.”
“Yeah?”
“Hey Gil.
“Yeah?”
“Hey Gil.”
“Goddamn, Mark.
Mark chuckled, reached for Gilead, trying to hook one of his fingers with his own fingers.
“Don’t be so fucking far away from me.”
“You mean knee to knee?”
“Get closer.”
Gilead scooted so that he was side by side with Mark, and Mark touched his chin and pulled him down and kissed him.
“You feeling what I’m feeling?” Mark said.
The first time they’d slept together, that is, slept side by side in Mark’s house, Gilead felt Mark for the first time, the boy who was always a little distant in the way that most lovers are, he could feel his breathing, his heartbeat, smell his breath, touch his hair for that first time.
In the night, against his back he had felt Mark’s erection, and it neither embarrassed nor titillated him. It made Gilead feel tender toward this boy sleeping beside him with his arms loose around him in the cover. The things about Mark that should have sexually excited him, which did sexually excite him, also moved him on a deeper level. Now, Gilead Story’s body was buzzing with alcohol and he felt open, his mood changed as it had never been.
He slipped his hand between Mark’s legs and Mark laughed and his eyes lit up as Gilead held him.
“Yes… I think I do know how you’re feeling.”
The dark, under the covers, was a haven for them where they did things that they did not dare in day light. For the first time Gilead looked at Mark while he touched him, while he undid his jeans. Mark sighed, and putting down the bottle lifted his tee shirt and did something between a laugh and a moan. Gilead leaned forward to kiss him, and Mark’s arm hooked him in so that they stumbled and fell together, catching the bourbon before it spilled. As they undressed, making love in the midst of liquor, Gilead realized he did not feel like an adult. He had felt adult all of his life. Right now he felt, and realized he’d been feeling that way since he’d begun his life with Mark, as light as a child.
Rob turned over in bed that morning and looked out of the window.
“Pull these cover back down,” Chayne demanded, half asleep. “And my God, where is the heat?”
“I’ll check,” Rob said.
Chayne Kandzierski’s great dread was that the furnace would die in winter, and Rob jumped out of bed naked, ran into the hall and sprinted back into bed, reporting. “We never took it off of the timer. I just turned it up to seventy.”
Chayne leaned out of bed long enough to grab the comforter and pull it over them.
“This is going to be a three blanket morning,” he declared.
Rob chuckled and shivered under the covers, turning on his stomach to look out the window: “Chayne, it’s Christmas Eve.”
“I know. I have to be at the church at five for choir practice.”
“And it looks like it’s going to be a white Christmas.”
“And that excites you?”
Rob smirked at Chayne and said, “Stop being such a grumpy old man.”
“I am a grumpy old man.”
“I don’t know if thirty-six makes you old.”
“Older than you,”
“Well, Rob slipped back into the covers, “It’s a good think you have me to keep you young.”
“And warm.”
BRAD LONG SPEAKS
I can’t remember how I met you, but I remember how we became this. I remember the afternoon by the black piano in summer in the quite of the Noble Red when I bent toward you or you bent toward me, and the whole world bent between us and I kissed you. I discovered what had terrified me. In the tenderness of your lips the whole world ended.
I did not plan to be anything or anybody, I did not plan to be unusual or take a stand. I do not want parades. Maybe there should be parades. I don’t want to go on marches. I do not want to be without you. This is the only thing I want, the press of more forehead to yours, our lips to each others in bed, or on the street.
In bed we press feet to feet, knees to knees, knead the palms of our hands into each other. Lock legs, Lock arms, lock tongues. We are like living sticks rubbing together for that greater heat.
I am not political. I mean, I was a very little political. I had sentimental leanings toward the hippies. I had a semi longing for the Sixties. But if telling the world I love you is political, then I am political. It is winter, but I picture spring in Jefferson Park where the cherry blossoms are all on the tree, and there is that bridge, and we are standing on it and the little stream shoots under us, the one that leads to the river, and I lean down and press my head to yours, press my hands into yours. I look into your eyes so you know me, know how I feel.
I am silent long enough for you to talk. You say nothing. Good, say nothing, you’ve earned that right so that I can say there is a real moment, one I can’t remember, and then a realer than real moment when I think of how I met you. You are in those white linen pants and that white dress shirt, and Lake Michigan looks almost Caribbean so that, even though you are the color of caramel or of a good cup of coffee you seem gloriously black against the electric blue of water, the glowing blue of sky. You are coming to me from the sea, or am I coming to you?
“Coming, coming, coming, like that first time. Fuck, we were kids together, weren’t we? I was thirty, you were twenty three, and like teenagers we lay on the bed in jeans and tee shirts, making out and holding back, not going here, not going there, and you know what? I felt just like a virgin, and I think I wanted to be a virgin for you. I wanted to be your baby. I didn’t want to fuck and fuck it up. Make it like all of those other times with all of those others, where I wanted to be touched and never quite was.
So I say, “Let’s live here, together. Let me find out, in time, how much it would cost, look into a lease?” And you say, “We can do that today.”
I say I wanna make a home with you, and you say you wanna make a home with me too, and after all the waiting, why wait any longer?
Sentimentally, I want to make love to you again in my old bed, or in your old bed in your parents’ house, like that very first time when I was as eager to undress as someone in a heated room on a summer day when they see a pool. I wanted to be real for the first time with you, not to hold anything back, to give you everything. That first time I was in you, there was the miracle of stupid old me, six foot three, someone inside of you, the best thing in my life, the miracle of me, squeezing through a line of seed, joy made liquid, rejoicing ejaculation, love, the surrender of orgasm, us in each others arms, the formless at last with form.
God forgive me. I want to be a virgin for you. God forgive me. You are everything, and some of the things I took you through were unworthy of you. We came together in a strange kind of heaven. It can’t be hell unless Cody was the devil. He was tempting, you were tempting, we were coming together. I longed for…. I was full of longing. I would killed myself if you hadn’t taken me in that night. I know it now. If we had gone our separate ways I would have driven off a bridge. Now I understand the fragile line between choosing life and choosing death. Every moment, but especially that moment I loved to drive into you. That night, pot and poppers, liquor and infinite arms, infinite embraces, endless love and absolutely mercy came to me under twinkling amber lights in form of sex. You and Cody were my fucking guardian angels, fucking angels. Fucking… And in the end, like a good angel, there is Cody, hair like chocolate, leaning there, pointing to you, telling me, so stupid, and you so stubborn, “This is home. This is your home.” Like a golden angel he did it, and like a golden angel, in the grey and white morning he leaves us alone, and he is gone.
In the morning we repeat what we began. Every time we come together, face to face, lips to lips, hands closing on hands, touching belly to belly, is like what they used to say in church. How do you call it? A sacrament. And this last moment is the first moment, is the first moment as we come together on the second floor in that old apartment, making love, as the winter sun shines across us hot as summer, and we simmer together, my love, my one, my Jawarhalal Nehru Alexander.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am happy for Cameron and Chris. Gilead and Mark are getting some alone time which is always good. It was nice to hear directly from Brad which doesn’t happen too often at this point in the story. Those were some beautiful words about Nehru. Great writing and I look forward to reading more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
ANIGEL AND ROSS ARE ON THEIR WAY BACK FROM THEIR RETREAT...
SEVEN
HOMECOMING
Anigel Reyes realized that, for most of her life, she had known nothing like solitude. She loved Chayne’s house, and there she knew peace, a rare enough experience, but not until now had she known what it was like to have this space, this thing called solitude.
She would have said that she had never been alone, except in some way or another she knew all about that, had felt alone often. Anigel knew all about loneliness, or she knew all about the feeling that she wasn’t really here, or the reverse feeling that she was here, but no one else was, something was a fantasy, and she wasn’t sure if it was her, or the people around her.
Her whole growing up in Geschichte Falls had been like that from her childhood in Westhaven until she had escaped home to live with her sister across the river in Little Poland. The memory of growing up was keen, but it was like the memory of a very vivid dream. She wished she’d been normal or brought up by normal people who said “Go to college, far away from here,” but she was the daughter of Grace and Roberto Reyes, and so she went to community college in East Sequoya and left after a semester.
But this, this was real. Everything around her was the realest thing she’d ever known. And maybe in order to be real, all that was needed was that something be looked at. The steam curling, almost transparent from this cup of coffee was real, as was the blackness of the drink before the sugar and the whiteness of the milk. The starkness of this room where she had slept for three days was real as was the view outside, black trees like fanning arteries of the earth, leafless against the thick white sky and the hill below her on which this little place was built. Tramping up the hill all in black like a priest, black pants, black coat, black blue boots, was someone real too. He leaned on his staff cut from a tree as if he were an old man or, realistically, as if he were someone walking up a dark hill dusted with snow like powder. His round, bespectacled face looked up, seeming to look at her as he approached: her old friend and sometimes her only friend, Ross Allan.
He had barely given the merely perfunctory knock and entered the small house when Anigel lamented, “Must we leave, or can’t we come back?”
The Hermitage consisted of four large rooms, two of them making a little apartment, separated by a foyer and joined, at the end, by a shared bathroom and kitchen and an icy back porch with a refrigerator.
“You’ve come to love it?” Ross said, “Being alone?”
“I think I always loved it,” Anigel said. “I think I was meant for it. She sat down in the little wooden chair and reached for her cigarettes, but did not take one up.
“It’s funny. Other girls always wanted a boyfriend or a something, and I’ve always looked for a vocation, a life I should have, but this is the first thing I’ve ever wanted, and all it is…. Is being in this silence.”
Ross nodded. He always listened to what she said, and now he said, “We can always come back. For now, though, we’ve got to head back. We said we’d be home for Christmas and tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. What’s more, it looks like we’re going to have snow, and I don’t relish driving in it.”
“Well, don’t worry about that. I can drive.”
“I relish that less.”
Anigel did not even exert the energy to curse him, and Ross said, “Before we leave, I’m going to Mass. It only seems right, and I want to thank everyone for letting us stay.”
“Oh,” Anigel pushed herself out of her seat, “I think I’ll go with you.”
“Really?” Lewis said in a voice barely betraying surprise.
“Yes,” Anigel said, “really.”
Everything here was a series of white boxes. The little hermitage they stayed in where no one bothered to make sure Ross stayed on one side and Anigel on the other, the two story building where the nuns lived and the other with the monks and the little steepled church all were simple and white under the white grey sky, and between the square monks’ house and the square nuns’ hosue was the square little church. As Anigel and Ross entered, they were already singing:
“O gates, lift high your heads; grow higher, ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory!”
The chapel was not huge, but it was bigger than Anigel has assumed from her view of it in the high up Hermitage, and there was no organ music with the thin and earthy singing that hummed off the crossed beam rafters. All was plain in here, spare, and Anigel and Ross took their place along with the townspeople. There weren’t many of them. In a regular church there were pews and then the altar, but here, between the pews and altar were choir stalls facing one another, and monks were gathered in one and the nuns in the other. A middle aged woman in glasses with a white bandanna about her hair that must have served as a veil, went to the pulpit to read:
“After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.
The word of the Lord.”
Along with Ross, along with everyone else, Anigel heard herself saying, for the first time in years, “Thanks be to God.”
The nuns were not all the same, not that she had noticed them until now. She had not wanted to look at them, and then he had been attracted not by the idea of nuns, but by the idea of absolute quiet. They were mostly all white, with white veils though one or two were in black with white habits. But when she looked closely, the habits were different from one another. There were the jumpers she remembered from Catholic school, but there were also full robes, and then simple dresses, and two older women were in white pants and shirt. Again, there was the neat veil from school, or the full veil from long ago, or like the woman who had just read, the bandanna or scarf tied neatly about the head with the hair poking down. But now the brothers were singing:
“My heart exults in the LORD,
my horn is exalted by my God.”
And the nuns sang, their voices quavering as they touched the rafters:
“I have swallowed up my enemies;
I rejoice in your victory.”
Back and forth they sang:
“There is no Holy One like the LORD;
there is no Rock like our God.”
“Speak boastfully no longer,
Do not let arrogance issue from your mouths.”
Saint Celestine’s was the opposite of a box of a church. It was the first place she’d has an awe of God. High roofed it was shaped like a long cross, and it’s transepts were painted with murals of saints and angels amidst the clouds. In the great mural over the altar, all of these surrounded Jesus, wounded hands open, face serene as a Buddha, and Anigel remembered the great white marble stature of Christ to the left of the altar. You passed him after receiving communion, and on your way to your pew you saw the scenes of his last day, Christ Falls for the Third Time, Simon picks up his Cross, Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, and Anigel corrected herself. As a child, yes, Saint Celestine’s was the first place she had come to have an awe of God, but more than that, it was the first place she had come to love him.
But what had happened. There had been a day when she had walked out of that church and never returned, and she’d never gone to another mass until… now? What had happened that for years she had gone into that church every Friday as a girl at Saint Celestine’s school, and then every Sunday until she was seventeen, and one day seen nothing, seen nothing but sentiment? She had been their recently, and met Niall Dwyer, and she knew he was in some terrible trouble, but what trouble it was she could not say, and it had not inspired her to come to church on Sunday.
“The bows of the mighty are broken,
while the tottering gird on strength.”
“The well-fed hire themselves out for bread,
while the hungry no longer have to toil.
The barren wife bears seven sons,
while the mother of many languishes.”
But it was here, amidst this starkness, with the absolute lack of art or even beauty, that she had felt the same way she felt as a child, as they stood up and she shook out her legs, as the Gospel acclamation begun, Anigel realized that in this cold and white country she felt what, as a little girl she had felt in the warmth and ornate beauty of Saint Celestine’s, awe, love. No…. no…. She felt… in love.
They got in the van, and Anigel wanted to hear good music. She wanted to hear something quiet and classical to go with the snow that was falling very gently onto the roads around them. But every station was full of noisy music, and when there wasn’t the noise of music there was static and so they turned it off and sat in silence.
“It gives the lie to things,” Ross said. “We sit here and everything is silcnce, and then you turn on the radio and the world is full of noise, all these noisy radio waves are just bouncing around us all the time.”
They have packed up. When they leave, the nuns and the monks stand in a line, to shake hands and embrace and Anigel says, feeling foolish, “I feel like I didn’t get to know anyone.”
“You weren’t really here to know anyone says one nun, a Sister Jeanne. “Unless maybe you were here to know God. Or yourself.”
“Oh, yes,” said a plump little nun in a grey coat, a muffler wrapped around her face, “And knowing people… oh, that’s greatly overrated.”
“Well, now, I don’t know that this is true,” Anigel says as Ross pulls off onto the road and they begin the long trip home. “I don’t know if knowing people is overrated. Maybe knowing people is how we know God.”
“That’s very philosophical of you.”
“You don’t think so?”
“That’s not what I said,” Ross Allen said.
They drove in silence for a long time, because why not? Silence felt good, and Anigel didn’t think she was fully awake anyway. She felt a yawn come up, and lay against the window, watching white flakes drift over the country where she could just see the blank outlines of trees and fences
“Ross?” she said, dreamily, “what do you think God is?”
“This is what I mean,” he said, quietly, “by you being philosophical. A month ago I thought you didn’t believe in God, and now you ask me what he is.”
“A month ago the Virgin Mary didn’t show up in my room and light a cigarette,” Anigel yawned, “and, to be fair, it’s been more than a month.”
As Ross drove, Anigel was surprised by how smooth the road was, what a gentle rise this was. She yawned and said:
“Well, now that I think of it, it was never that at all. It was as if somebody showed you something, say, a stuffed lion, and said, “This is a lion. And then one day you say, no that’s not even real. And then you sense that there are real lions. And then…. Maybe you feel it’s breath. Know the lion is there but can’t see it. Ah, I don’t know. That sounds a little too Narnia, and I hate Narnia, but does that make even a little sense?”
“It makes more than a little sense,” Ross patted her hand and kept his eyes on the road.
At last Ross said, “Silence.”
“Hum.”
“When I wonder what God is, I think, I don’t know, I cannot really conceive of it, certainly nothing I’ve ever seen, something sort of hinted at in what you see in churches, hear about in books. But… I don’t know. And then when I do know my answer is a great Silence.”
“Do you think it,” Anigel said, sitting up, “or do you know it.”
Ross looked at her as if he were waiting for his friend to say something else.
“Or feel it?” she said.
“God is not notional to me,” he said. “He is somewhere between knowing and feeling. I’m not a theologian. Thoughts about God aren’t really my department, or at least not many thoughts. Not many words That could be dangerous. You could think your words are the Word, and then take yourself seriously and worship the bullshit you have made.”
“Even if it’s beautiful bullshit.”
“Especially if it’s beautiful bullshit. That’s why I like where we went. There was so little of the bullshit we make and all the starkness of God.”
“Can we go there again?” Anigel wondered.
“We can go many places,” Ross said.
Right now, where they were going was Geschichte Falls, and he was fine with that. They were going to celebrate Christmas, and he was alright with that. Ross Allan didn’t love it. It always disappointed, and then the year that his mother had died nine days before it, Christmas could not be more disappointing, and so, for the most part he had tried to get through it rather than celebrate.
Religion was a help, not a hindrance. If his mother had died at a less religious time, when it was all about family and togetherness, Ross Allen is not sure what he would have done, but she died in a time when you could emerse yourself in religion, and so he went to monasteries and convents. He went to Mass and kept silent. He had learned that in those convents and monasteries, beneath the robes and rosaries, there was an equal loneliness, a same unwillingness for the frivolity so many people associated with the holiday.
Anigel drove for the first part of the trip, and then around six they stopped at a diner and it had a strange feeling to it as if even the fluorescent lights were anticipating Christmas. Anigel wondered and stopped herself from asking Ross if he wondered too had these people ever seen a Black person before. Sometimes she expected to be lynched when she traveled and wondered if they dared stop where they did. However, as witnessed by the lack of rope burn on their necks, they had come out fine so far, and they came out well here.
“You folks on the road getting home for Christmas,” the waitress asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ross said. He called all women ma’am. “We’ve been away, and we want to get home in time.”
“Well, you better hurry. I hear there’s snow, and it’s a good thing you came tonight. We close on Christmas Eve. We were open last year, and you should see what it’s like, so many people just trying to get home for Christmas. And then the saddest things, the folks that don’t have a home to go to for Christmas, who are on the road to keep life off their minds.”
Ross’s own mind turned to that. It was what had attracted him to the monasteries. He had heard on the radio about a woman who had become a nun. Her whole reason for entering the convent was because back in college she had anxiety issues, couldn’t sleep through the night, and sometimes she would sit at her window and see the lights come on in the convent and know the nuns were gathering for prayer. Somehow, she said, knowing that at the same time she was up these women were up and praying for her and people like her, gave her comfort, calmed her anxiety, and made her able to finally sleep.
When he and Anigel had come to Tabor Monastery, Anigel had unpacked her small things, made a cup of tea and sat at the window looking down on the valley. She had not stirred until Lewis told her it was time for dinner. She was sociable when she came down to eat, kind even, but not interfering and not to be interfered with. She passionately wanted the silence she had found, and she had not showed up at any of the offices or the masses until this morning. Not so Ross. He immersed himself in the Liturgy of the Hours. He and Anigel had the adjoined hermitage, but there was another hermitage on a hill across from them, and then a small guesthouse. From all of these came the guest to pray the holy hours with community, but it was Ross who got up at two in the morning for the long service of Vigils. It was then, as he half sang, half slept, as his mind, a little weary, drifted deep into the readings from the church Fathers and the prophet Isaiah, and rolled down into some dreamless country, that he thought… I am praying with those people, all of those people, the wretched, the ones who cannot sleep, the ones who feel alone, the ones who cannot go on. I was all of those yet, and I am praying for them.
“Was I praying for this woman?” he thinks as the waitress pours them what Ross has decided will be the last cup of coffee. He decides he wasn’t, and if he wasn’t, he will. He’ll pray for this whole town. Ross once had thought that prayer was a work of the mind and the intellect. Then he thought it was of imagination. On the religious radio station back in East Sequoya, every morning at nine there was a space of fifteen minutes where prayer requests were read to slow and slightly sad music. Ross would try to imagine the various illnesses, put himself in the pain of whoever was suffering, picture them, feel truly sad. But prayer was as simple, and as difficult as joining one’s own heart to someone or something else, some other manner, and lifting them up. If you could not lift them up, sitting with them was more than enough.
MORE TOMORROW
SEVEN
HOMECOMING
Anigel Reyes realized that, for most of her life, she had known nothing like solitude. She loved Chayne’s house, and there she knew peace, a rare enough experience, but not until now had she known what it was like to have this space, this thing called solitude.
She would have said that she had never been alone, except in some way or another she knew all about that, had felt alone often. Anigel knew all about loneliness, or she knew all about the feeling that she wasn’t really here, or the reverse feeling that she was here, but no one else was, something was a fantasy, and she wasn’t sure if it was her, or the people around her.
Her whole growing up in Geschichte Falls had been like that from her childhood in Westhaven until she had escaped home to live with her sister across the river in Little Poland. The memory of growing up was keen, but it was like the memory of a very vivid dream. She wished she’d been normal or brought up by normal people who said “Go to college, far away from here,” but she was the daughter of Grace and Roberto Reyes, and so she went to community college in East Sequoya and left after a semester.
But this, this was real. Everything around her was the realest thing she’d ever known. And maybe in order to be real, all that was needed was that something be looked at. The steam curling, almost transparent from this cup of coffee was real, as was the blackness of the drink before the sugar and the whiteness of the milk. The starkness of this room where she had slept for three days was real as was the view outside, black trees like fanning arteries of the earth, leafless against the thick white sky and the hill below her on which this little place was built. Tramping up the hill all in black like a priest, black pants, black coat, black blue boots, was someone real too. He leaned on his staff cut from a tree as if he were an old man or, realistically, as if he were someone walking up a dark hill dusted with snow like powder. His round, bespectacled face looked up, seeming to look at her as he approached: her old friend and sometimes her only friend, Ross Allan.
He had barely given the merely perfunctory knock and entered the small house when Anigel lamented, “Must we leave, or can’t we come back?”
The Hermitage consisted of four large rooms, two of them making a little apartment, separated by a foyer and joined, at the end, by a shared bathroom and kitchen and an icy back porch with a refrigerator.
“You’ve come to love it?” Ross said, “Being alone?”
“I think I always loved it,” Anigel said. “I think I was meant for it. She sat down in the little wooden chair and reached for her cigarettes, but did not take one up.
“It’s funny. Other girls always wanted a boyfriend or a something, and I’ve always looked for a vocation, a life I should have, but this is the first thing I’ve ever wanted, and all it is…. Is being in this silence.”
Ross nodded. He always listened to what she said, and now he said, “We can always come back. For now, though, we’ve got to head back. We said we’d be home for Christmas and tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. What’s more, it looks like we’re going to have snow, and I don’t relish driving in it.”
“Well, don’t worry about that. I can drive.”
“I relish that less.”
Anigel did not even exert the energy to curse him, and Ross said, “Before we leave, I’m going to Mass. It only seems right, and I want to thank everyone for letting us stay.”
“Oh,” Anigel pushed herself out of her seat, “I think I’ll go with you.”
“Really?” Lewis said in a voice barely betraying surprise.
“Yes,” Anigel said, “really.”
Everything here was a series of white boxes. The little hermitage they stayed in where no one bothered to make sure Ross stayed on one side and Anigel on the other, the two story building where the nuns lived and the other with the monks and the little steepled church all were simple and white under the white grey sky, and between the square monks’ house and the square nuns’ hosue was the square little church. As Anigel and Ross entered, they were already singing:
“O gates, lift high your heads; grow higher, ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory!”
The chapel was not huge, but it was bigger than Anigel has assumed from her view of it in the high up Hermitage, and there was no organ music with the thin and earthy singing that hummed off the crossed beam rafters. All was plain in here, spare, and Anigel and Ross took their place along with the townspeople. There weren’t many of them. In a regular church there were pews and then the altar, but here, between the pews and altar were choir stalls facing one another, and monks were gathered in one and the nuns in the other. A middle aged woman in glasses with a white bandanna about her hair that must have served as a veil, went to the pulpit to read:
“After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.
The word of the Lord.”
Along with Ross, along with everyone else, Anigel heard herself saying, for the first time in years, “Thanks be to God.”
The nuns were not all the same, not that she had noticed them until now. She had not wanted to look at them, and then he had been attracted not by the idea of nuns, but by the idea of absolute quiet. They were mostly all white, with white veils though one or two were in black with white habits. But when she looked closely, the habits were different from one another. There were the jumpers she remembered from Catholic school, but there were also full robes, and then simple dresses, and two older women were in white pants and shirt. Again, there was the neat veil from school, or the full veil from long ago, or like the woman who had just read, the bandanna or scarf tied neatly about the head with the hair poking down. But now the brothers were singing:
“My heart exults in the LORD,
my horn is exalted by my God.”
And the nuns sang, their voices quavering as they touched the rafters:
“I have swallowed up my enemies;
I rejoice in your victory.”
Back and forth they sang:
“There is no Holy One like the LORD;
there is no Rock like our God.”
“Speak boastfully no longer,
Do not let arrogance issue from your mouths.”
Saint Celestine’s was the opposite of a box of a church. It was the first place she’d has an awe of God. High roofed it was shaped like a long cross, and it’s transepts were painted with murals of saints and angels amidst the clouds. In the great mural over the altar, all of these surrounded Jesus, wounded hands open, face serene as a Buddha, and Anigel remembered the great white marble stature of Christ to the left of the altar. You passed him after receiving communion, and on your way to your pew you saw the scenes of his last day, Christ Falls for the Third Time, Simon picks up his Cross, Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, and Anigel corrected herself. As a child, yes, Saint Celestine’s was the first place she had come to have an awe of God, but more than that, it was the first place she had come to love him.
But what had happened. There had been a day when she had walked out of that church and never returned, and she’d never gone to another mass until… now? What had happened that for years she had gone into that church every Friday as a girl at Saint Celestine’s school, and then every Sunday until she was seventeen, and one day seen nothing, seen nothing but sentiment? She had been their recently, and met Niall Dwyer, and she knew he was in some terrible trouble, but what trouble it was she could not say, and it had not inspired her to come to church on Sunday.
“The bows of the mighty are broken,
while the tottering gird on strength.”
“The well-fed hire themselves out for bread,
while the hungry no longer have to toil.
The barren wife bears seven sons,
while the mother of many languishes.”
But it was here, amidst this starkness, with the absolute lack of art or even beauty, that she had felt the same way she felt as a child, as they stood up and she shook out her legs, as the Gospel acclamation begun, Anigel realized that in this cold and white country she felt what, as a little girl she had felt in the warmth and ornate beauty of Saint Celestine’s, awe, love. No…. no…. She felt… in love.
They got in the van, and Anigel wanted to hear good music. She wanted to hear something quiet and classical to go with the snow that was falling very gently onto the roads around them. But every station was full of noisy music, and when there wasn’t the noise of music there was static and so they turned it off and sat in silence.
“It gives the lie to things,” Ross said. “We sit here and everything is silcnce, and then you turn on the radio and the world is full of noise, all these noisy radio waves are just bouncing around us all the time.”
They have packed up. When they leave, the nuns and the monks stand in a line, to shake hands and embrace and Anigel says, feeling foolish, “I feel like I didn’t get to know anyone.”
“You weren’t really here to know anyone says one nun, a Sister Jeanne. “Unless maybe you were here to know God. Or yourself.”
“Oh, yes,” said a plump little nun in a grey coat, a muffler wrapped around her face, “And knowing people… oh, that’s greatly overrated.”
“Well, now, I don’t know that this is true,” Anigel says as Ross pulls off onto the road and they begin the long trip home. “I don’t know if knowing people is overrated. Maybe knowing people is how we know God.”
“That’s very philosophical of you.”
“You don’t think so?”
“That’s not what I said,” Ross Allen said.
They drove in silence for a long time, because why not? Silence felt good, and Anigel didn’t think she was fully awake anyway. She felt a yawn come up, and lay against the window, watching white flakes drift over the country where she could just see the blank outlines of trees and fences
“Ross?” she said, dreamily, “what do you think God is?”
“This is what I mean,” he said, quietly, “by you being philosophical. A month ago I thought you didn’t believe in God, and now you ask me what he is.”
“A month ago the Virgin Mary didn’t show up in my room and light a cigarette,” Anigel yawned, “and, to be fair, it’s been more than a month.”
As Ross drove, Anigel was surprised by how smooth the road was, what a gentle rise this was. She yawned and said:
“Well, now that I think of it, it was never that at all. It was as if somebody showed you something, say, a stuffed lion, and said, “This is a lion. And then one day you say, no that’s not even real. And then you sense that there are real lions. And then…. Maybe you feel it’s breath. Know the lion is there but can’t see it. Ah, I don’t know. That sounds a little too Narnia, and I hate Narnia, but does that make even a little sense?”
“It makes more than a little sense,” Ross patted her hand and kept his eyes on the road.
At last Ross said, “Silence.”
“Hum.”
“When I wonder what God is, I think, I don’t know, I cannot really conceive of it, certainly nothing I’ve ever seen, something sort of hinted at in what you see in churches, hear about in books. But… I don’t know. And then when I do know my answer is a great Silence.”
“Do you think it,” Anigel said, sitting up, “or do you know it.”
Ross looked at her as if he were waiting for his friend to say something else.
“Or feel it?” she said.
“God is not notional to me,” he said. “He is somewhere between knowing and feeling. I’m not a theologian. Thoughts about God aren’t really my department, or at least not many thoughts. Not many words That could be dangerous. You could think your words are the Word, and then take yourself seriously and worship the bullshit you have made.”
“Even if it’s beautiful bullshit.”
“Especially if it’s beautiful bullshit. That’s why I like where we went. There was so little of the bullshit we make and all the starkness of God.”
“Can we go there again?” Anigel wondered.
“We can go many places,” Ross said.
Right now, where they were going was Geschichte Falls, and he was fine with that. They were going to celebrate Christmas, and he was alright with that. Ross Allan didn’t love it. It always disappointed, and then the year that his mother had died nine days before it, Christmas could not be more disappointing, and so, for the most part he had tried to get through it rather than celebrate.
Religion was a help, not a hindrance. If his mother had died at a less religious time, when it was all about family and togetherness, Ross Allen is not sure what he would have done, but she died in a time when you could emerse yourself in religion, and so he went to monasteries and convents. He went to Mass and kept silent. He had learned that in those convents and monasteries, beneath the robes and rosaries, there was an equal loneliness, a same unwillingness for the frivolity so many people associated with the holiday.
Anigel drove for the first part of the trip, and then around six they stopped at a diner and it had a strange feeling to it as if even the fluorescent lights were anticipating Christmas. Anigel wondered and stopped herself from asking Ross if he wondered too had these people ever seen a Black person before. Sometimes she expected to be lynched when she traveled and wondered if they dared stop where they did. However, as witnessed by the lack of rope burn on their necks, they had come out fine so far, and they came out well here.
“You folks on the road getting home for Christmas,” the waitress asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ross said. He called all women ma’am. “We’ve been away, and we want to get home in time.”
“Well, you better hurry. I hear there’s snow, and it’s a good thing you came tonight. We close on Christmas Eve. We were open last year, and you should see what it’s like, so many people just trying to get home for Christmas. And then the saddest things, the folks that don’t have a home to go to for Christmas, who are on the road to keep life off their minds.”
Ross’s own mind turned to that. It was what had attracted him to the monasteries. He had heard on the radio about a woman who had become a nun. Her whole reason for entering the convent was because back in college she had anxiety issues, couldn’t sleep through the night, and sometimes she would sit at her window and see the lights come on in the convent and know the nuns were gathering for prayer. Somehow, she said, knowing that at the same time she was up these women were up and praying for her and people like her, gave her comfort, calmed her anxiety, and made her able to finally sleep.
When he and Anigel had come to Tabor Monastery, Anigel had unpacked her small things, made a cup of tea and sat at the window looking down on the valley. She had not stirred until Lewis told her it was time for dinner. She was sociable when she came down to eat, kind even, but not interfering and not to be interfered with. She passionately wanted the silence she had found, and she had not showed up at any of the offices or the masses until this morning. Not so Ross. He immersed himself in the Liturgy of the Hours. He and Anigel had the adjoined hermitage, but there was another hermitage on a hill across from them, and then a small guesthouse. From all of these came the guest to pray the holy hours with community, but it was Ross who got up at two in the morning for the long service of Vigils. It was then, as he half sang, half slept, as his mind, a little weary, drifted deep into the readings from the church Fathers and the prophet Isaiah, and rolled down into some dreamless country, that he thought… I am praying with those people, all of those people, the wretched, the ones who cannot sleep, the ones who feel alone, the ones who cannot go on. I was all of those yet, and I am praying for them.
“Was I praying for this woman?” he thinks as the waitress pours them what Ross has decided will be the last cup of coffee. He decides he wasn’t, and if he wasn’t, he will. He’ll pray for this whole town. Ross once had thought that prayer was a work of the mind and the intellect. Then he thought it was of imagination. On the religious radio station back in East Sequoya, every morning at nine there was a space of fifteen minutes where prayer requests were read to slow and slightly sad music. Ross would try to imagine the various illnesses, put himself in the pain of whoever was suffering, picture them, feel truly sad. But prayer was as simple, and as difficult as joining one’s own heart to someone or something else, some other manner, and lifting them up. If you could not lift them up, sitting with them was more than enough.
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Nice to see a Anigel and Ross centric portion! I am glad they got to go away and take a break from their lives for a bit. Christmas is approaching soon and I wonder how it will go for everyone? We will see. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
It was good to get back to Anigel. Anigel's adventure is always a religious and metaphysical one. In most stories the girl wants to fall in love, but my chief girl is more of a philosopher. She's sort of the only one not falling in love. That's not her concern. Of course all of this mess has been taking place in a matter of days, and they just left a few days ago to get their heads back. The part of the book is so different from what else has been going on because many characters have been looking for some thing, anything, inside of other people and Anigel and Ross are going off and basically being hermits. Their little adventure is not over, and hopefully they can bring some light and reason with them back to G Falls.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS CONTINUES WITH ALL MANNER OF GIFTS AND REVELATIONS
“You’re coming with us,” Brad Long announced.
Brad was full of happiness for the first time at the thought of his baby. He thought, maybe all of this confusion happened just so a new life that wouldn’t give a damn about his twisted emotions or his coming to understand his feelings for Nehru, or Marissa momentary love for him. This new life was coming from them. Nehru would be the godfather, and all of this that had made it would be a bookmark. A boy or a girl who would live his or her own life, fall in love or not, who owed nothing to them or their story.
This happiness made Brad happy for Hale Weathertop who seemed to be making Marissa quite happy. This happiness made him tell Cody, as he threw him in his van, “You’re coming with us.”
Nehru got into the backseat. He wantd Cody to ride shotgun. Nehru now realized he’d always been happy, but he was so very happy right now and that happiness could make room for Cody.
“It’s the day before the day before Christmas. Don’t you dare be sad.” Nehru told him.
“Where are we going?”
“My cousin had the right of it,” Nehru said. “We’re going to the beach.”
The drive was over an hour over white, stubbled land and Cody found himself having to take it on faith that a beach was anywhere, but at least they were in Ely, Michigan in a town that had not even though being a beach town. They drove to the end of it, past an aqua colored .bungalow with a dark haired little boy and what may have been his sister, playing in the snow and then arrived at a pier and stood at the edge of massive water, grey white, stretching so far ahead it, so far right and left, it seemed to stretch above them as well.
“This is….” Cody began. “Guys, thank you.”
Brad was in a fisherman’s cap and took out a cigarette to hand to Cody.
“We can catch a meal in that house,” he said.
“Just knock on the door?”
“I’ve got family there,” Brad said.
“Funny,” Nehru said, “I never thought of you as having family.”
“Will they mind?”
“If they do they’ll keep it to themselves.”
Brad had a slightly assholey cousin named Stan, and Stan didn’t seem in a mood to ask them to stay, which would have made Nehru turn right around and walk out, but his wife, a long suffering blond woman named Cindy was all about their visit, and the three kids, Deanna, Fred and Caedmon, each picked one of the visitors as their favorite. Deanna set to tell Nehru everything about her life.
“That was just what I needed,” Cody said as they were heading back. The sky was full of snow, but Brad, laughing and smoking, seemed unaffected.
“You’re staying with us tonight, right?” Nehru said.
“I…” Cody blinked. He laughed. The world seemed like a less lonely place. The lack of Russell seemed less painful, in some ways even more appropriate.
“I guess I am.”
Night was arriving in earnest as they left the diner and Lewis took over driving. Anigel was relieved for this and lay back to sleep. If they continued like this, in three hours they would be home. ..
Three hours later, Anigel Graciela Reyes was blinking and sitting up in the car, watching the dark road pass by. She looked at her watch, and then she looked at Ross.
“Where the fuck are we?”
They were not home.
“We’re on the road.”
“We’re not in Geschichte Falls.”
“Clearly not.”
Ross was not a person who felt the need to explain the obvious.
“Where the hell are we going?”
“To Walter.”
“Walter… Michigan?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of damn questions,” Ross said.
“But how do you feel?” Kristin asked Patti.
They sat in the kitchen drinking coffee that morning.
Jackie said nothing, but she nodded and Felice took out her cigarettes, handing and one to each of the women.
“Well, I like Cody. He’s a good kid. And a good friend to Russell. And a good friend to Thom. I guess I feel fine,” Patti said. “It’s not like he cheated on me. Cody’s been out in the world the whole time I’ve known Thom.
“But, I don’t know, it still changes things. I have to keep reminding myself he didn’t cheat on me.
“And then I think about Liz.”
“Liz Parr?” Jackie said, exhaling smoke.
“Yeah,” Patti said. “He did have an affair with her while we were split up. And there was some other woman. And somehow this random bitch, Cody’s mother, I’m getting her confused with them.”
“Maybe you should go to therapy,” Kristin suggested.
Patti snorted, and all the women looked at Kristin.
“Look, I understand you are a therapist, but you can’t really therapize yourself.”
“Is therapize even a word?” Felice said.
“Felice, I don’t know what the fuck it is,” Kristin said, “but I think Patricia should do it.”
The kitchen door swung open, and the women were quiet, thinking it might be Thom, but Denise Mc.Llarchlahn entered the room in a bright blue snow suit and took off her goggles. She was in a pom pom hat and she sang, “Good morning, ladies.”
“Denise,” her sister said.
“I just wanted you all to know, “I didn’t feel like cooking at the parish house for Christmas.—”
“Great,” Patti said, “so just come here.”
“Oh, I am, and I’m bringing guests.”
“Guests?”
“I can’t just leave Father Jeff and Father Keith hungry—”
“You actually could—”
“So,” said Denise, taking out a cigar and lighting it, “I’m bringing them here—”
“Two additional seats—”
“Along with Ann, Hannah Decker and her husband.”
“Denise!”
“Four additional guests,” Felice laughed, “is that all?”
“No,” Denise replied. “Father Keith’s brother is coming too. Or is that a problem?”
There was something in her cigar chomping sister that seemed to be challenging her, and so Patti said, “No, Denise. I welcome the chaos.”
In the apartment over the Noble Red, they sat up till late, talking under the low gold pinpricks of the amber fairy lights.
“I wasn’t right,” Cody said. “I wasn’t right and then the two of you came and saved me, and I thank you for that. Once I was a together person. I want to be a right person. I want to be right.”
Cody slept on the couch in the three season room, and when Brad led Nehru away, like the lover that he was, they kissed in his room—their room now—with the door open, and then stripped in candlelight and held each other. Black and white, long and shorter, they tangled their limbs together, and like baby animals, lay down to sleep.
“Ohhh, God,” she groaned. “Ohhhhhgod, fuck me. Fuck me. Stay in me. Stay!” her voice rose.
“Fuck me! Fuck me!” she insisted.
In the dark little apartment, in the rickety shaking bed, his head buried in her shoulder, ass arched up as he buried himself in her, William B. Dwyer fucked Lynn Messing.
“Stay in me, stay in me, stay in me,” she pleaded, her voice shallow, her hands planted on his back, now running down it, caressing his sides, the sides of his thighs, his ass.
“I’m about to—” he almost croaked.
“Come in me,” she whispered. “Come inside me.”
She placed her hands on either side of his red face and almost growled, “Don’t hide from me when you come. Let me see you.”
His eyes bulge, his face is red, veins rise from his neck, and he trembles as he stares into her. He freezes, let’s out a strangled groan, and she exhales a sigh of relief at his own relief, feeling his ejaculation, and the relaxation of his flesh.
“Where are you?” Lynn asks.
They lay side by side in the bed and Bill, his mouth half open, stares at the ceiling.
“It’s Christmas.”
“Almost.”
Lynn turns and leans over on her elbow.
“You know you can come with me, meet my family if you want.”
Bill Dwyer does not answer immediately, and before he can gather his thoughts, Lynn Messing, who is no fool, takes a strand of her brown hair, gently brushing it over his shoulder.
“You want to go home, don’t you? You want to go back to your family.”
Bill frowned, steepling his fingertips.
“I want to go back to Cameron.”
Nehru woke on his back, his mouth dry, his back sore, grey light coming into the room. He pushed himself out of bed, and went to the closet to pull a sheet over Brad before pulling on a housecoat that was much too warm at this time of year.
Nehru went into the restroom, and then came back to bed. Brad was already half awake and Nehru said, “The library?”
“Is closed,” Brad said.
And then, narrowing his eyes, Brad said, “Sacred Net.”
“What?” Nehru said.
“Nehru,” Brad said, “Cody’s Sacred Net.”
“Ah!”
Brad only kissed him, quickly, and then he sprang up, pulled on his shorts and went to the restroom. He came back, pulling off his shorts and climbing under the sheet. Only now, as they pulled themselves together, they heard Cody shuffling around, going into the bathroom, and Nehru said, “I will clean that place today. It’s getting a lot of use.”
As they chuckled, the toilet flushed, water ran, and then there was a heavy silence, and the two of them turned as, white and narrow, Cody came into their room. He stood looking at them, shirtless, wearing his jeans from yesterday, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. Then he pulled off baggy jeans and his sex tumbled out. He climbed into the bed on the other side of Nehru, pulling the covers over himself as well.
MORE TOMORROW
“You’re coming with us,” Brad Long announced.
Brad was full of happiness for the first time at the thought of his baby. He thought, maybe all of this confusion happened just so a new life that wouldn’t give a damn about his twisted emotions or his coming to understand his feelings for Nehru, or Marissa momentary love for him. This new life was coming from them. Nehru would be the godfather, and all of this that had made it would be a bookmark. A boy or a girl who would live his or her own life, fall in love or not, who owed nothing to them or their story.
This happiness made Brad happy for Hale Weathertop who seemed to be making Marissa quite happy. This happiness made him tell Cody, as he threw him in his van, “You’re coming with us.”
Nehru got into the backseat. He wantd Cody to ride shotgun. Nehru now realized he’d always been happy, but he was so very happy right now and that happiness could make room for Cody.
“It’s the day before the day before Christmas. Don’t you dare be sad.” Nehru told him.
“Where are we going?”
“My cousin had the right of it,” Nehru said. “We’re going to the beach.”
The drive was over an hour over white, stubbled land and Cody found himself having to take it on faith that a beach was anywhere, but at least they were in Ely, Michigan in a town that had not even though being a beach town. They drove to the end of it, past an aqua colored .bungalow with a dark haired little boy and what may have been his sister, playing in the snow and then arrived at a pier and stood at the edge of massive water, grey white, stretching so far ahead it, so far right and left, it seemed to stretch above them as well.
“This is….” Cody began. “Guys, thank you.”
Brad was in a fisherman’s cap and took out a cigarette to hand to Cody.
“We can catch a meal in that house,” he said.
“Just knock on the door?”
“I’ve got family there,” Brad said.
“Funny,” Nehru said, “I never thought of you as having family.”
“Will they mind?”
“If they do they’ll keep it to themselves.”
Brad had a slightly assholey cousin named Stan, and Stan didn’t seem in a mood to ask them to stay, which would have made Nehru turn right around and walk out, but his wife, a long suffering blond woman named Cindy was all about their visit, and the three kids, Deanna, Fred and Caedmon, each picked one of the visitors as their favorite. Deanna set to tell Nehru everything about her life.
“That was just what I needed,” Cody said as they were heading back. The sky was full of snow, but Brad, laughing and smoking, seemed unaffected.
“You’re staying with us tonight, right?” Nehru said.
“I…” Cody blinked. He laughed. The world seemed like a less lonely place. The lack of Russell seemed less painful, in some ways even more appropriate.
“I guess I am.”
Night was arriving in earnest as they left the diner and Lewis took over driving. Anigel was relieved for this and lay back to sleep. If they continued like this, in three hours they would be home. ..
Three hours later, Anigel Graciela Reyes was blinking and sitting up in the car, watching the dark road pass by. She looked at her watch, and then she looked at Ross.
“Where the fuck are we?”
They were not home.
“We’re on the road.”
“We’re not in Geschichte Falls.”
“Clearly not.”
Ross was not a person who felt the need to explain the obvious.
“Where the hell are we going?”
“To Walter.”
“Walter… Michigan?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of damn questions,” Ross said.
“But how do you feel?” Kristin asked Patti.
They sat in the kitchen drinking coffee that morning.
Jackie said nothing, but she nodded and Felice took out her cigarettes, handing and one to each of the women.
“Well, I like Cody. He’s a good kid. And a good friend to Russell. And a good friend to Thom. I guess I feel fine,” Patti said. “It’s not like he cheated on me. Cody’s been out in the world the whole time I’ve known Thom.
“But, I don’t know, it still changes things. I have to keep reminding myself he didn’t cheat on me.
“And then I think about Liz.”
“Liz Parr?” Jackie said, exhaling smoke.
“Yeah,” Patti said. “He did have an affair with her while we were split up. And there was some other woman. And somehow this random bitch, Cody’s mother, I’m getting her confused with them.”
“Maybe you should go to therapy,” Kristin suggested.
Patti snorted, and all the women looked at Kristin.
“Look, I understand you are a therapist, but you can’t really therapize yourself.”
“Is therapize even a word?” Felice said.
“Felice, I don’t know what the fuck it is,” Kristin said, “but I think Patricia should do it.”
The kitchen door swung open, and the women were quiet, thinking it might be Thom, but Denise Mc.Llarchlahn entered the room in a bright blue snow suit and took off her goggles. She was in a pom pom hat and she sang, “Good morning, ladies.”
“Denise,” her sister said.
“I just wanted you all to know, “I didn’t feel like cooking at the parish house for Christmas.—”
“Great,” Patti said, “so just come here.”
“Oh, I am, and I’m bringing guests.”
“Guests?”
“I can’t just leave Father Jeff and Father Keith hungry—”
“You actually could—”
“So,” said Denise, taking out a cigar and lighting it, “I’m bringing them here—”
“Two additional seats—”
“Along with Ann, Hannah Decker and her husband.”
“Denise!”
“Four additional guests,” Felice laughed, “is that all?”
“No,” Denise replied. “Father Keith’s brother is coming too. Or is that a problem?”
There was something in her cigar chomping sister that seemed to be challenging her, and so Patti said, “No, Denise. I welcome the chaos.”
In the apartment over the Noble Red, they sat up till late, talking under the low gold pinpricks of the amber fairy lights.
“I wasn’t right,” Cody said. “I wasn’t right and then the two of you came and saved me, and I thank you for that. Once I was a together person. I want to be a right person. I want to be right.”
Cody slept on the couch in the three season room, and when Brad led Nehru away, like the lover that he was, they kissed in his room—their room now—with the door open, and then stripped in candlelight and held each other. Black and white, long and shorter, they tangled their limbs together, and like baby animals, lay down to sleep.
“Ohhh, God,” she groaned. “Ohhhhhgod, fuck me. Fuck me. Stay in me. Stay!” her voice rose.
“Fuck me! Fuck me!” she insisted.
In the dark little apartment, in the rickety shaking bed, his head buried in her shoulder, ass arched up as he buried himself in her, William B. Dwyer fucked Lynn Messing.
“Stay in me, stay in me, stay in me,” she pleaded, her voice shallow, her hands planted on his back, now running down it, caressing his sides, the sides of his thighs, his ass.
“I’m about to—” he almost croaked.
“Come in me,” she whispered. “Come inside me.”
She placed her hands on either side of his red face and almost growled, “Don’t hide from me when you come. Let me see you.”
His eyes bulge, his face is red, veins rise from his neck, and he trembles as he stares into her. He freezes, let’s out a strangled groan, and she exhales a sigh of relief at his own relief, feeling his ejaculation, and the relaxation of his flesh.
“Where are you?” Lynn asks.
They lay side by side in the bed and Bill, his mouth half open, stares at the ceiling.
“It’s Christmas.”
“Almost.”
Lynn turns and leans over on her elbow.
“You know you can come with me, meet my family if you want.”
Bill Dwyer does not answer immediately, and before he can gather his thoughts, Lynn Messing, who is no fool, takes a strand of her brown hair, gently brushing it over his shoulder.
“You want to go home, don’t you? You want to go back to your family.”
Bill frowned, steepling his fingertips.
“I want to go back to Cameron.”
Nehru woke on his back, his mouth dry, his back sore, grey light coming into the room. He pushed himself out of bed, and went to the closet to pull a sheet over Brad before pulling on a housecoat that was much too warm at this time of year.
Nehru went into the restroom, and then came back to bed. Brad was already half awake and Nehru said, “The library?”
“Is closed,” Brad said.
And then, narrowing his eyes, Brad said, “Sacred Net.”
“What?” Nehru said.
“Nehru,” Brad said, “Cody’s Sacred Net.”
“Ah!”
Brad only kissed him, quickly, and then he sprang up, pulled on his shorts and went to the restroom. He came back, pulling off his shorts and climbing under the sheet. Only now, as they pulled themselves together, they heard Cody shuffling around, going into the bathroom, and Nehru said, “I will clean that place today. It’s getting a lot of use.”
As they chuckled, the toilet flushed, water ran, and then there was a heavy silence, and the two of them turned as, white and narrow, Cody came into their room. He stood looking at them, shirtless, wearing his jeans from yesterday, the expression in his dark eyes unreadable. Then he pulled off baggy jeans and his sex tumbled out. He climbed into the bed on the other side of Nehru, pulling the covers over himself as well.
MORE TOMORROW
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CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am glad Nehru and Brad are looking after Cody. It must be a confusing time for him. Everyone is still processing the news which is to be expected. Anigel and Ross are continuing their trip and I look forward to reading more of that. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
AS WE CONCLUDE OUR WEEK, WE ARRIVE AT CHRISTMAS EVEN
The snow was just starting to look bad when Anigel Raez walked through the door of 1421 Curtain at the head of a small party.
“Ani!” Rob cried, nearly tackling her, while Chayne said, “Try not to kill her,” and ,”I’m glad you got in before things got really crazy.”
“Before?” Ross Allen turned and looked at the white snow blowing onto the street.
“It’s supposed to get worse,” Chayne said. “Sit down and get some coffee. I’m thinking of canceling choir practice.”
“No. don’t do that,” Rob said as he welcomed the last two visitors, Macy Mc.Llarchlahn and Jimmy Nespres and their fellow student, Richard B. Sanders better known as Flipper.
“We stopped in Walter early this morning,” Ross explained.
“That’s awfully late to still be on campus,” said Chayne.
“Jimmy’s flight to Baltimore got canceled,” Macy said.
“Flipper And Macy didn’t want to drive to Chicago in this weather,” Jimmy added.
“So here we all are,” Flipper explained.
“Russell’ll be glad to see you,” Chayne told them.
“If we ever get out of this house.”
“Aw, things ain’t so bad,” Anigel said, wrapping an arm about Chayne’s waist. “Howabout, you get me the address book with the choir members and I start calling to tell them practice is off if snow doesn’t stop by…?”
“Three,” Chayne decided. “And you’re a brilliant friend.”
“I’m a friend who needs coffee,” Anigel said. “Rob, please get to it.”
“Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know if you’d even left or what?” Russell said when he got the call from Gilead.
“We’re at home. At my home,” Gilead said. “Mark thought it was best if we came here first. What you got going on for today?”
“I’m just watching my family arrive,” Russell said. “and trying to stay awake from lack of sleep.
“Well, why fight it. Just go to bed.”
“I don’t really want to be here.”
“Well then come here,” Gilead said. “I mean not now, but in a few hours. I’ll just send Mark up the road to get you.”
“You sure?”
“It’s really not a big commitment.”
“Okay, but I’m not even sure if we’re having choir practice or not. If we do, I’ll just be at Chayne’s.”
“Maybe we’ll all be at Chayne’s.”
On the other side of the phone, Russell heard Mark shouting, “Come to bed.”
“With this snow, we may not be going anywhere.”
“Fuck snow,” Gilead decided.
Then Russell heard Gilead say to Mark, “How can you sleep? We just got home.”
“Did you have a good time?” Russell asked.
Before Gilead could answer, Mark was saying, “You weren’t the one driving from here to Sawyer, were you?”
“We had a great time,” Gilead said in a low voice so Mark could not hear him.
“You guys,” Russell began, “you guys really love each other, don’t you?”
“Well, damnit, Russell, when you put it that way—”
Mark was wailing:“I’m tired1 I want someone to snuggle with or I can’t sleep. Waaaaah.”
“Will you stop, my mother can hear your foolishness.”
“You better come to bed, then.”
“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding exasperated, “I guess I do love him after all.”
Halfway through their drive home, the thick white snow revealed sunlight, and it looked as if things might clear off after all.
“Wow,” Chris said, “Russell’s got a lot of people parked in front of his house.”
“He’s got a big family,” Cameron noted, and then she said: “What? Dad’s home.”
His car was in the driveway, and he was shoveling a path through the snow.
Chris stopped the car and Cameron jumped out and ran toward her father.
“Cam!” Bill put the blower down.
“Daddy,” she hugged him so hard she almost dragged him to the ground.
“Who’s with you?”
Cameron waved for Chris to come out of the car, and Chris parked on Breckinridge, then came toward them.
“Dad, this is Chris Knapp. He and Russell and Linh and Freestar have been taking care of me.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Dwyer.”
Chris offered his hand. He was bigger than Bill, and in some ways even seemed older.
“Good to meet you, Chris.”
“I was staying with Linh,” Cameron said. “Mrs. Lewis invited me to stay with her.”
“What about your mom and your aunt and uncle?”
“That’s not my home,” Cameron said.
“No,” Bill said. “No it isn’t. This is your home.”
“Is that why you came back?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Yes it is. Why don’t you and Chris go in there and make us some cocoa, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“It’s just us, Russell,” Jimmy said.
“It’s not just you,” Russell imitated his cousin. You all are my family. And…” he thought for a second before saying it, “You brought Flipper.”
There was a lot he wanted to say. He had hugged Flipper as long as he could when they’d come to the door, and he wanted to smell that cologne that was always in his sweaters and behind his ears. He felt relief when Flip was at the door, like he could fall into the older boy’s arms and cry, and he didn’t know he wanted to cry until just then.
While they sat in the den of the house on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy shook her head watching the news.
“My God,” she murmured.
The blizzard was burying Chicago and she said, “I know I just called them, but I want to call Mom and Dad again.”
“They’re fine,” Jimmy assured her. “And as long as they stay inside they’ll keep on being fine.”
“This is the first Christmas I haven’t been with my family,” Macy said, and when Jimmy looked at her, she shrugged and said, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, its definitely the first Christmas I’ve been without my family,” Flipper said, “so thanks guys, for letting me be with yours.”
“Flip Sanders,” Macy said, clapping him on the back, “you are welcome to our terrible family anytime.”
“Hey!” Patti said.
Russell, just coming back into the house, wished he’d done that too.
Jimmy left Macy and Flipper to watch the TV while he joined Russell, who had returned from choir practice a few moments ago and was waiting to talk. Like any two people who are ready to talk and have much to discuss, and much of that deep down stuff, neither of them said anything right away. Russell went and got a cup of coffee his grandmother Sara had made, and Jimmy went in to get cocoa. They were waylaid by John, Frank and Sara stopping Jimmy and measuring him against Patti.
“I never knew they looked so alike.” Frank said. “You really are my sister’s grandkid.”
“That’s what they’ve been saying for the last twenty two years,” Jimmy joked.
As he and Russell walked out of the kitchen, they could both hear Sara saying, “So how does it feel, this whole Thom having another son, thing?”
“Actually,” Jimmy demanded, taking a cigarette from behind his ear, but handing it to Russell, “How does it feel?”
“It feels like…. Well, it feels a lot more complicated that you’re going to believe.”
“No, I get it. You’ve been an only kid. I mean, now, I’ve got two brothers and if I woke up and there was a third all of a sudden…”
“It’s not even that,” Russell said.
“Uh, okay.”
“Do you remember just a few weeks ago,” Russell lowered his voice and looked out of the window as if the window was the most important thing, “when I told you about Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said you knew he wasn’t the thing that was important. That there was someone else who was important to me.”
“Yes, cousin. Yes, I do remember that.”
“Well, the important person was Cody.”
“Cody,” Jimmy murmured then, “Cody. Thom’s son, Cody?”
“Yeah….” Russell murmured.
“Shit.” Jimmy shook his head and took an extra long drag of his cigarette.
“Oh, yeah, shit indeed,” Russell said.
They smoked in silence for a time, and then Jimmy spoke.
“Well, you know,” Jimmy said. “A good thing is you never did anything with him.”
When Russell didn’t reply, Jimmy looked at his cousin.
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it,” Russell said.
“You all—”
“I had sex with him,” Russell whispered. “We had sex right before Dad found out—not found out we had sex. Found out we were—”
“Brothers.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, breathless.
“Oh, my God,” Jimmy said.
Then he said, “Russell, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” Russell said. “And I told him that. I’m not sorry. In fact, I wish I’d never found out. The only thing I’m sorry about is that it can’t happen again.”
MORE NEXT WEEK
The snow was just starting to look bad when Anigel Raez walked through the door of 1421 Curtain at the head of a small party.
“Ani!” Rob cried, nearly tackling her, while Chayne said, “Try not to kill her,” and ,”I’m glad you got in before things got really crazy.”
“Before?” Ross Allen turned and looked at the white snow blowing onto the street.
“It’s supposed to get worse,” Chayne said. “Sit down and get some coffee. I’m thinking of canceling choir practice.”
“No. don’t do that,” Rob said as he welcomed the last two visitors, Macy Mc.Llarchlahn and Jimmy Nespres and their fellow student, Richard B. Sanders better known as Flipper.
“We stopped in Walter early this morning,” Ross explained.
“That’s awfully late to still be on campus,” said Chayne.
“Jimmy’s flight to Baltimore got canceled,” Macy said.
“Flipper And Macy didn’t want to drive to Chicago in this weather,” Jimmy added.
“So here we all are,” Flipper explained.
“Russell’ll be glad to see you,” Chayne told them.
“If we ever get out of this house.”
“Aw, things ain’t so bad,” Anigel said, wrapping an arm about Chayne’s waist. “Howabout, you get me the address book with the choir members and I start calling to tell them practice is off if snow doesn’t stop by…?”
“Three,” Chayne decided. “And you’re a brilliant friend.”
“I’m a friend who needs coffee,” Anigel said. “Rob, please get to it.”
“Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know if you’d even left or what?” Russell said when he got the call from Gilead.
“We’re at home. At my home,” Gilead said. “Mark thought it was best if we came here first. What you got going on for today?”
“I’m just watching my family arrive,” Russell said. “and trying to stay awake from lack of sleep.
“Well, why fight it. Just go to bed.”
“I don’t really want to be here.”
“Well then come here,” Gilead said. “I mean not now, but in a few hours. I’ll just send Mark up the road to get you.”
“You sure?”
“It’s really not a big commitment.”
“Okay, but I’m not even sure if we’re having choir practice or not. If we do, I’ll just be at Chayne’s.”
“Maybe we’ll all be at Chayne’s.”
On the other side of the phone, Russell heard Mark shouting, “Come to bed.”
“With this snow, we may not be going anywhere.”
“Fuck snow,” Gilead decided.
Then Russell heard Gilead say to Mark, “How can you sleep? We just got home.”
“Did you have a good time?” Russell asked.
Before Gilead could answer, Mark was saying, “You weren’t the one driving from here to Sawyer, were you?”
“We had a great time,” Gilead said in a low voice so Mark could not hear him.
“You guys,” Russell began, “you guys really love each other, don’t you?”
“Well, damnit, Russell, when you put it that way—”
Mark was wailing:“I’m tired1 I want someone to snuggle with or I can’t sleep. Waaaaah.”
“Will you stop, my mother can hear your foolishness.”
“You better come to bed, then.”
“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding exasperated, “I guess I do love him after all.”
Halfway through their drive home, the thick white snow revealed sunlight, and it looked as if things might clear off after all.
“Wow,” Chris said, “Russell’s got a lot of people parked in front of his house.”
“He’s got a big family,” Cameron noted, and then she said: “What? Dad’s home.”
His car was in the driveway, and he was shoveling a path through the snow.
Chris stopped the car and Cameron jumped out and ran toward her father.
“Cam!” Bill put the blower down.
“Daddy,” she hugged him so hard she almost dragged him to the ground.
“Who’s with you?”
Cameron waved for Chris to come out of the car, and Chris parked on Breckinridge, then came toward them.
“Dad, this is Chris Knapp. He and Russell and Linh and Freestar have been taking care of me.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Dwyer.”
Chris offered his hand. He was bigger than Bill, and in some ways even seemed older.
“Good to meet you, Chris.”
“I was staying with Linh,” Cameron said. “Mrs. Lewis invited me to stay with her.”
“What about your mom and your aunt and uncle?”
“That’s not my home,” Cameron said.
“No,” Bill said. “No it isn’t. This is your home.”
“Is that why you came back?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Yes it is. Why don’t you and Chris go in there and make us some cocoa, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“It’s just us, Russell,” Jimmy said.
“It’s not just you,” Russell imitated his cousin. You all are my family. And…” he thought for a second before saying it, “You brought Flipper.”
There was a lot he wanted to say. He had hugged Flipper as long as he could when they’d come to the door, and he wanted to smell that cologne that was always in his sweaters and behind his ears. He felt relief when Flip was at the door, like he could fall into the older boy’s arms and cry, and he didn’t know he wanted to cry until just then.
While they sat in the den of the house on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy shook her head watching the news.
“My God,” she murmured.
The blizzard was burying Chicago and she said, “I know I just called them, but I want to call Mom and Dad again.”
“They’re fine,” Jimmy assured her. “And as long as they stay inside they’ll keep on being fine.”
“This is the first Christmas I haven’t been with my family,” Macy said, and when Jimmy looked at her, she shrugged and said, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, its definitely the first Christmas I’ve been without my family,” Flipper said, “so thanks guys, for letting me be with yours.”
“Flip Sanders,” Macy said, clapping him on the back, “you are welcome to our terrible family anytime.”
“Hey!” Patti said.
Russell, just coming back into the house, wished he’d done that too.
Jimmy left Macy and Flipper to watch the TV while he joined Russell, who had returned from choir practice a few moments ago and was waiting to talk. Like any two people who are ready to talk and have much to discuss, and much of that deep down stuff, neither of them said anything right away. Russell went and got a cup of coffee his grandmother Sara had made, and Jimmy went in to get cocoa. They were waylaid by John, Frank and Sara stopping Jimmy and measuring him against Patti.
“I never knew they looked so alike.” Frank said. “You really are my sister’s grandkid.”
“That’s what they’ve been saying for the last twenty two years,” Jimmy joked.
As he and Russell walked out of the kitchen, they could both hear Sara saying, “So how does it feel, this whole Thom having another son, thing?”
“Actually,” Jimmy demanded, taking a cigarette from behind his ear, but handing it to Russell, “How does it feel?”
“It feels like…. Well, it feels a lot more complicated that you’re going to believe.”
“No, I get it. You’ve been an only kid. I mean, now, I’ve got two brothers and if I woke up and there was a third all of a sudden…”
“It’s not even that,” Russell said.
“Uh, okay.”
“Do you remember just a few weeks ago,” Russell lowered his voice and looked out of the window as if the window was the most important thing, “when I told you about Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said you knew he wasn’t the thing that was important. That there was someone else who was important to me.”
“Yes, cousin. Yes, I do remember that.”
“Well, the important person was Cody.”
“Cody,” Jimmy murmured then, “Cody. Thom’s son, Cody?”
“Yeah….” Russell murmured.
“Shit.” Jimmy shook his head and took an extra long drag of his cigarette.
“Oh, yeah, shit indeed,” Russell said.
They smoked in silence for a time, and then Jimmy spoke.
“Well, you know,” Jimmy said. “A good thing is you never did anything with him.”
When Russell didn’t reply, Jimmy looked at his cousin.
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it,” Russell said.
“You all—”
“I had sex with him,” Russell whispered. “We had sex right before Dad found out—not found out we had sex. Found out we were—”
“Brothers.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, breathless.
“Oh, my God,” Jimmy said.
Then he said, “Russell, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” Russell said. “And I told him that. I’m not sorry. In fact, I wish I’d never found out. The only thing I’m sorry about is that it can’t happen again.”
MORE NEXT WEEK
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
PLEASE DON'T READ THE SCENE BEFORE THIS. IT'S NOT COMPLETE AND IT SHOULDN'T BE UP
AS CHRISTMAS ARRIVES, EVERYONE IS COMING TOGETHER IN ALL SORTS OF WAYS
The snow was just starting to look bad when Anigel Raez walked through the door of 1421 Curtain at the head of a small party.
“Ani!” Rob cried, nearly tackling her, while Chayne said, “Try not to kill her,” and ,”I’m glad you got in before things got really crazy.”
“Before?” Ross Allen turned and looked at the white snow blowing onto the street.
“It’s supposed to get worse,” Chayne said. “Sit down and get some coffee. I’m thinking of canceling choir practice.”
“No. don’t do that,” Rob said as he welcomed the last two visitors, Macy Mc.Llarchlahn and Jimmy Nespres and their fellow student, Richard B. Sanders better known as Flipper.
“We stopped in Walter early this morning,” Ross explained.
“That’s awfully late to still be on campus,” said Chayne.
“Jimmy’s flight to Baltimore got canceled,” Macy said.
“Flipper And Macy didn’t want to drive to Chicago in this weather,” Jimmy added.
“So here we all are,” Flipper explained.
“Russell’ll be glad to see you,” Chayne told them.
“If we ever get out of this house.”
“Aw, things ain’t so bad,” Anigel said, wrapping an arm about Chayne’s waist. “Howabout, you get me the address book with the choir members and I start calling to tell them practice is off if snow doesn’t stop by…?”
“Three,” Chayne decided. “And you’re a brilliant friend.”
“I’m a friend who needs coffee,” Anigel said. “Rob, please get to it.”
Last night was a fire in the dark, a burning point till morning with the sun coming through curtains that were never properly shut. When Cody cames to bed, there was the desire only for sleep, only for the perfect welcome of friends. Brad and Nehru are deep in sleep themselves. They are always themselves, always naked before each other, but in this early morning, the day before Christmas with the curtain barely hiding the fall of white snow, under the amber fairy lights there is a joy that makes those naked more naked still, that makes the seed of longing into a full grown plant. As they begin moving together, Brad murmurs, offhandedly, “If we fuck, we fuck.”
Those who have known each other in darkness and in light and have no shame move to something past even that, and kisses become hot, limbs tangled, hearts open. In the golden dimness of the apartment over the Noble Red, one of them is witness to two of them striving together, gently at first then in great need.
Love far more than lust makes this moment of limbs embracing, mouths hard kissing, tongues entangling, knees kneading, as the creaking bed gives witness to the three of them joining an old dance, and the silent room suddenly is a place of moans, curses, shouts, gentle sighs, tiny laughs. Peace and love reveal most urgent need, tasting, touching, entering and being entered, hands planted upon hands, hips slamming, hands reaching into hair, holding onto shoulders, eyes and mouths, wide and shining in the dark, open in something between terror and great need, the calm after the earthquake and the volcano, the falling back into arms, even the laughter, especially the laughter, everything that leads to this sunlit morning.
“Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know if you’d even left or what?” Russell said when he got the call from Gilead.
“We’re at home. At my home,” Gilead said. “Mark thought it was best if we came here first. What you got going on for today?”
“I’m just watching my family arrive,” Russell said. “and trying to stay awake from lack of sleep.
“Well, why fight it. Just go to bed.”
“I don’t really want to be here.”
“Well then come here,” Gilead said. “I mean not now, but in a few hours. I’ll just send Mark up the road to get you.”
“You sure?”
“It’s really not a big commitment.”
“Okay, but I’m not even sure if we’re having choir practice or not. If we do, I’ll just be at Chayne’s.”
“Maybe we’ll all be at Chayne’s.”
On the other side of the phone, Russell heard Mark shouting, “Come to bed.”
“With this snow, we may not be going anywhere.”
“Fuck snow,” Gilead decided.
Then Russell heard Gilead say to Mark, “How can you sleep? We just got home.”
“Did you have a good time?” Russell asked.
Before Gilead could answer, Mark was saying, “You weren’t the one driving from here to Sawyer, were you?”
“We had a great time,” Gilead said in a low voice so Mark could not hear him.
“You guys,” Russell began, “you guys really love each other, don’t you?”
“Well, damnit, Russell, when you put it that way—”
Mark was wailing:“I’m tired1 I want someone to snuggle with or I can’t sleep. Waaaaah.”
“Will you stop, my mother can hear your foolishness.”
“You better come to bed, then.”
“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding exasperated, “I guess I do love him after all.”
“Fuck me Fuck fuck me fuck me fuck me. Fuck me. Brad! Fuck me!”
He had gotten up to write in his journal, string together lines over lines that would twine into songs. Maybe Nehru had even come into the kitchen to let them be alone. They loved him, so he wasn’t jealous. He knew them both. He’d known them both. He would know them again. He loved both of them, so he wasn’t troubled. And seeing them he could see what he never saw when he was with them. As Cody had climbed into the bed, half asleep, Brad had murmured, “If we fuck, we fuck.” And now they were.
“Fuucccck Yes! Yes! Oh, God!”
Much like only a few nights ago, when Cody had brought them together, he watched with desire the length of Brad’s legs with the hair all down them, his hairy ass round and firm, flexing and unflexing as he pressed himself into Cody. He watched Cody’s ivory thighs and arms wrapped about Brad’s long back, his white hands pressed like claws to his shoulders. Or he would watch Brad shuttling up and down as he held Cody under him, tight, and the bed creaked furiously. He would watch each of his loves as he could not watch them when they were loving him.
Now he heard Cody, pleading, his voice high like it never was in the rest of his together life crying, “I love how you fuck me. Come inside of me. Come inside of me. Come in me.”
He would make the coffee. Soon enough, Brad would say: Come to bed.
As much as he wanted sex, he wanted the solitude of writing. In the afterglow of sex not his own he sat at the table and half drowsed, half meditated over the night below. He barely heard the tapping of feet, the arms around him, the smell that was mint and wheat bread, pot and cigarettes, that was Cody behind his chair, arms pressing his cheek to the back of Nehruovan’s head, wrapping his arms around him.
“Come to bed,” he said, insistently. “Come to bed.”
He almost sang it. He could feel Cody’s bare arms, knew he was shirtless, but in the thin mesh pajama pants that fit snugly to him and were only a little opaque.
Cody drew him under the blanket and they slept. In the middle of the night the howling wind beat more of a welcome than a threat and Nehruovan woke up to look at Cody’s snoring back, but turned to feel Brad, half dozing, eyes half closed, his fingers pressing Nehru’s hips.
“Fuck me Fuck fuck me fuck me fuck me. Fuck me. Brad! Fuck me!”
He had gotten up to write in his journal, string together lines over lines that would twine into songs. Maybe Nehru had even come into the kitchen to let them be alone. They loved him, so he wasn’t jealous. He knew them both. He’d known them both. He would know them again. He loved both of them, so he wasn’t troubled. And seeing them he could see what he never saw when he was with them. As Cody had climbed into the bed, half asleep, Brad had murmured, “If we fuck, we fuck.” And now they were.
“Fuucccck Yes! Yes! Oh, God!”
Much like only a few nights ago, when Cody had brought them together, he watched with desire the length of Brad’s legs with the hair all down them, his hairy ass round and firm, flexing and unflexing as he pressed himself into Cody. He watched Cody’s ivory thighs and arms wrapped about Brad’s long back, his white hands pressed like claws to his shoulders. Or he would watch Brad shuttling up and down as he held Cody under him, tight, and the bed creaked furiously. He would watch each of his loves as he could not watch them when they were loving him.
Now he heard Cody, pleading, his voice high like it never was in the rest of his together life crying, “I love how you fuck me. Come inside of me. Come inside of me. Come in me.”
He would make the coffee. Soon enough, Brad would say: Come to bed.
As much as he wanted sex, he wanted the solitude of writing. In the afterglow of sex not his own he sat at the table and half drowsed, half meditated over the night below. He barely heard the tapping of feet, the arms around him, the smell that was mint and wheat bread, pot and cigarettes, that was Cody behind his chair, arms pressing his cheek to the back of Nehruovan’s head, wrapping his arms around him.
“Come to bed,” he said, insistently. “Come to bed.”
He almost sang it. He could feel Cody’s bare arms, knew he was shirtless, but in the thin mesh pajama pants that fit snugly to him and were only a little opaque.
Cody drew him under the blanket and they slept. In the middle of the night the howling wind beat more of a welcome than a threat and Nehruovan woke up to look at Cody’s snoring back, but turned to feel Brad, half dozing, eyes half closed, his fingers pressing Nehru’s hips.
Halfway through their drive home, the thick white snow revealed sunlight, and it looked as if things might clear off after all.
“Wow,” Chris said, “Russell’s got a lot of people parked in front of his house.”
“He’s got a big family,” Cameron noted, and then she said: “What? Dad’s home.”
His car was in the driveway, and he was shoveling a path through the snow.
Chris stopped the car and Cameron jumped out and ran toward her father.
“Cam!” Bill put the blower down.
“Daddy,” she hugged him so hard she almost dragged him to the ground.
“Who’s with you?”
Cameron waved for Chris to come out of the car, and Chris parked on Breckinridge, then came toward them.
“Dad, this is Chris Knapp. He and Russell and Linh and Freestar have been taking care of me.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Dwyer.”
Chris offered his hand. He was bigger than Bill, and in some ways even seemed older.
“Good to meet you, Chris.”
“I was staying with Linh,” Cameron said. “Mrs. Lewis invited me to stay with her.”
“What about your mom and your aunt and uncle?”
“That’s not my home,” Cameron said.
“No,” Bill said. “No it isn’t. This is your home.”
“Is that why you came back?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Yes it is. Why don’t you and Chris go in there and make us some cocoa, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“It’s just us, Russell,” Jimmy said.
“It’s not just you,” Russell imitated his cousin. You all are my family. And…” he thought for a second before saying it, “You brought Flipper.”
There was a lot he wanted to say. He had hugged Flipper as long as he could when they’d come to the door, and he wanted to smell that cologne that was always in his sweaters and behind his ears. He felt relief when Flip was at the door, like he could fall into the older boy’s arms and cry, and he didn’t know he wanted to cry until just then.
While they sat in the den of the house on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy shook her head watching the news.
“My God,” she murmured.
The blizzard was burying Chicago and she said, “I know I just called them, but I want to call Mom and Dad again.”
“They’re fine,” Jimmy assured her. “And as long as they stay inside they’ll keep on being fine.”
“This is the first Christmas I haven’t been with my family,” Macy said, and when Jimmy looked at her, she shrugged and said, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, its definitely the first Christmas I’ve been without my family,” Flipper said, “so thanks guys, for letting me be with yours.”
“Flip Sanders,” Macy said, clapping him on the back, “you are welcome to our terrible family anytime.”
“Hey!” Patti said.
Russell, just coming back into the house, wished he’d done that too.
Jimmy left Macy and Flipper to watch the TV while he joined Russell, who had returned from choir practice a few moments ago and was waiting to talk. Like any two people who are ready to talk and have much to discuss, and much of that deep down stuff, neither of them said anything right away. Russell went and got a cup of coffee his grandmother Sara had made, and Jimmy went in to get cocoa. They were waylaid by John, Frank and Sara stopping Jimmy and measuring him against Patti.
“I never knew they looked so alike.” Frank said. “You really are my sister’s grandkid.”
“That’s what they’ve been saying for the last twenty two years,” Jimmy joked.
As he and Russell walked out of the kitchen, they could both hear Sara saying, “So how does it feel, this whole Thom having another son, thing?”
“Actually,” Jimmy demanded, taking a cigarette from behind his ear, but handing it to Russell, “How does it feel?”
“It feels like…. Well, it feels a lot more complicated that you’re going to believe.”
“No, I get it. You’ve been an only kid. I mean, now, I’ve got two brothers and if I woke up and there was a third all of a sudden…”
“It’s not even that,” Russell said.
“Uh, okay.”
“Do you remember just a few weeks ago,” Russell lowered his voice and looked out of the window as if the window was the most important thing, “when I told you about Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said you knew he wasn’t the thing that was important. That there was someone else who was important to me.”
“Yes, cousin. Yes, I do remember that.”
“Well, the important person was Cody.”
“Cody,” Jimmy murmured then, “Cody. Thom’s son, Cody?”
“Yeah….” Russell murmured.
“Shit.” Jimmy shook his head and took an extra long drag of his cigarette.
“Oh, yeah, shit indeed,” Russell said.
They smoked in silence for a time, and then Jimmy spoke.
“Well, you know,” Jimmy said. “A good thing is you never did anything with him.”
When Russell didn’t reply, Jimmy looked at his cousin.
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it,” Russell said.
“You all—”
“I had sex with him,” Russell whispered. “We had sex right before Dad found out—not found out we had sex. Found out we were—”
“Brothers.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, breathless.
“Oh, my God,” Jimmy said.
Then he said, “Russell, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” Russell said. “And I told him that. I’m not sorry. In fact, I wish I’d never found out. The only thing I’m sorry about is that it can’t happen again.”
MORE NEXT WEEK
AS CHRISTMAS ARRIVES, EVERYONE IS COMING TOGETHER IN ALL SORTS OF WAYS
The snow was just starting to look bad when Anigel Raez walked through the door of 1421 Curtain at the head of a small party.
“Ani!” Rob cried, nearly tackling her, while Chayne said, “Try not to kill her,” and ,”I’m glad you got in before things got really crazy.”
“Before?” Ross Allen turned and looked at the white snow blowing onto the street.
“It’s supposed to get worse,” Chayne said. “Sit down and get some coffee. I’m thinking of canceling choir practice.”
“No. don’t do that,” Rob said as he welcomed the last two visitors, Macy Mc.Llarchlahn and Jimmy Nespres and their fellow student, Richard B. Sanders better known as Flipper.
“We stopped in Walter early this morning,” Ross explained.
“That’s awfully late to still be on campus,” said Chayne.
“Jimmy’s flight to Baltimore got canceled,” Macy said.
“Flipper And Macy didn’t want to drive to Chicago in this weather,” Jimmy added.
“So here we all are,” Flipper explained.
“Russell’ll be glad to see you,” Chayne told them.
“If we ever get out of this house.”
“Aw, things ain’t so bad,” Anigel said, wrapping an arm about Chayne’s waist. “Howabout, you get me the address book with the choir members and I start calling to tell them practice is off if snow doesn’t stop by…?”
“Three,” Chayne decided. “And you’re a brilliant friend.”
“I’m a friend who needs coffee,” Anigel said. “Rob, please get to it.”
Last night was a fire in the dark, a burning point till morning with the sun coming through curtains that were never properly shut. When Cody cames to bed, there was the desire only for sleep, only for the perfect welcome of friends. Brad and Nehru are deep in sleep themselves. They are always themselves, always naked before each other, but in this early morning, the day before Christmas with the curtain barely hiding the fall of white snow, under the amber fairy lights there is a joy that makes those naked more naked still, that makes the seed of longing into a full grown plant. As they begin moving together, Brad murmurs, offhandedly, “If we fuck, we fuck.”
Those who have known each other in darkness and in light and have no shame move to something past even that, and kisses become hot, limbs tangled, hearts open. In the golden dimness of the apartment over the Noble Red, one of them is witness to two of them striving together, gently at first then in great need.
Love far more than lust makes this moment of limbs embracing, mouths hard kissing, tongues entangling, knees kneading, as the creaking bed gives witness to the three of them joining an old dance, and the silent room suddenly is a place of moans, curses, shouts, gentle sighs, tiny laughs. Peace and love reveal most urgent need, tasting, touching, entering and being entered, hands planted upon hands, hips slamming, hands reaching into hair, holding onto shoulders, eyes and mouths, wide and shining in the dark, open in something between terror and great need, the calm after the earthquake and the volcano, the falling back into arms, even the laughter, especially the laughter, everything that leads to this sunlit morning.
“Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know if you’d even left or what?” Russell said when he got the call from Gilead.
“We’re at home. At my home,” Gilead said. “Mark thought it was best if we came here first. What you got going on for today?”
“I’m just watching my family arrive,” Russell said. “and trying to stay awake from lack of sleep.
“Well, why fight it. Just go to bed.”
“I don’t really want to be here.”
“Well then come here,” Gilead said. “I mean not now, but in a few hours. I’ll just send Mark up the road to get you.”
“You sure?”
“It’s really not a big commitment.”
“Okay, but I’m not even sure if we’re having choir practice or not. If we do, I’ll just be at Chayne’s.”
“Maybe we’ll all be at Chayne’s.”
On the other side of the phone, Russell heard Mark shouting, “Come to bed.”
“With this snow, we may not be going anywhere.”
“Fuck snow,” Gilead decided.
Then Russell heard Gilead say to Mark, “How can you sleep? We just got home.”
“Did you have a good time?” Russell asked.
Before Gilead could answer, Mark was saying, “You weren’t the one driving from here to Sawyer, were you?”
“We had a great time,” Gilead said in a low voice so Mark could not hear him.
“You guys,” Russell began, “you guys really love each other, don’t you?”
“Well, damnit, Russell, when you put it that way—”
Mark was wailing:“I’m tired1 I want someone to snuggle with or I can’t sleep. Waaaaah.”
“Will you stop, my mother can hear your foolishness.”
“You better come to bed, then.”
“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding exasperated, “I guess I do love him after all.”
“Fuck me Fuck fuck me fuck me fuck me. Fuck me. Brad! Fuck me!”
He had gotten up to write in his journal, string together lines over lines that would twine into songs. Maybe Nehru had even come into the kitchen to let them be alone. They loved him, so he wasn’t jealous. He knew them both. He’d known them both. He would know them again. He loved both of them, so he wasn’t troubled. And seeing them he could see what he never saw when he was with them. As Cody had climbed into the bed, half asleep, Brad had murmured, “If we fuck, we fuck.” And now they were.
“Fuucccck Yes! Yes! Oh, God!”
Much like only a few nights ago, when Cody had brought them together, he watched with desire the length of Brad’s legs with the hair all down them, his hairy ass round and firm, flexing and unflexing as he pressed himself into Cody. He watched Cody’s ivory thighs and arms wrapped about Brad’s long back, his white hands pressed like claws to his shoulders. Or he would watch Brad shuttling up and down as he held Cody under him, tight, and the bed creaked furiously. He would watch each of his loves as he could not watch them when they were loving him.
Now he heard Cody, pleading, his voice high like it never was in the rest of his together life crying, “I love how you fuck me. Come inside of me. Come inside of me. Come in me.”
He would make the coffee. Soon enough, Brad would say: Come to bed.
As much as he wanted sex, he wanted the solitude of writing. In the afterglow of sex not his own he sat at the table and half drowsed, half meditated over the night below. He barely heard the tapping of feet, the arms around him, the smell that was mint and wheat bread, pot and cigarettes, that was Cody behind his chair, arms pressing his cheek to the back of Nehruovan’s head, wrapping his arms around him.
“Come to bed,” he said, insistently. “Come to bed.”
He almost sang it. He could feel Cody’s bare arms, knew he was shirtless, but in the thin mesh pajama pants that fit snugly to him and were only a little opaque.
Cody drew him under the blanket and they slept. In the middle of the night the howling wind beat more of a welcome than a threat and Nehruovan woke up to look at Cody’s snoring back, but turned to feel Brad, half dozing, eyes half closed, his fingers pressing Nehru’s hips.
“Fuck me Fuck fuck me fuck me fuck me. Fuck me. Brad! Fuck me!”
He had gotten up to write in his journal, string together lines over lines that would twine into songs. Maybe Nehru had even come into the kitchen to let them be alone. They loved him, so he wasn’t jealous. He knew them both. He’d known them both. He would know them again. He loved both of them, so he wasn’t troubled. And seeing them he could see what he never saw when he was with them. As Cody had climbed into the bed, half asleep, Brad had murmured, “If we fuck, we fuck.” And now they were.
“Fuucccck Yes! Yes! Oh, God!”
Much like only a few nights ago, when Cody had brought them together, he watched with desire the length of Brad’s legs with the hair all down them, his hairy ass round and firm, flexing and unflexing as he pressed himself into Cody. He watched Cody’s ivory thighs and arms wrapped about Brad’s long back, his white hands pressed like claws to his shoulders. Or he would watch Brad shuttling up and down as he held Cody under him, tight, and the bed creaked furiously. He would watch each of his loves as he could not watch them when they were loving him.
Now he heard Cody, pleading, his voice high like it never was in the rest of his together life crying, “I love how you fuck me. Come inside of me. Come inside of me. Come in me.”
He would make the coffee. Soon enough, Brad would say: Come to bed.
As much as he wanted sex, he wanted the solitude of writing. In the afterglow of sex not his own he sat at the table and half drowsed, half meditated over the night below. He barely heard the tapping of feet, the arms around him, the smell that was mint and wheat bread, pot and cigarettes, that was Cody behind his chair, arms pressing his cheek to the back of Nehruovan’s head, wrapping his arms around him.
“Come to bed,” he said, insistently. “Come to bed.”
He almost sang it. He could feel Cody’s bare arms, knew he was shirtless, but in the thin mesh pajama pants that fit snugly to him and were only a little opaque.
Cody drew him under the blanket and they slept. In the middle of the night the howling wind beat more of a welcome than a threat and Nehruovan woke up to look at Cody’s snoring back, but turned to feel Brad, half dozing, eyes half closed, his fingers pressing Nehru’s hips.
Halfway through their drive home, the thick white snow revealed sunlight, and it looked as if things might clear off after all.
“Wow,” Chris said, “Russell’s got a lot of people parked in front of his house.”
“He’s got a big family,” Cameron noted, and then she said: “What? Dad’s home.”
His car was in the driveway, and he was shoveling a path through the snow.
Chris stopped the car and Cameron jumped out and ran toward her father.
“Cam!” Bill put the blower down.
“Daddy,” she hugged him so hard she almost dragged him to the ground.
“Who’s with you?”
Cameron waved for Chris to come out of the car, and Chris parked on Breckinridge, then came toward them.
“Dad, this is Chris Knapp. He and Russell and Linh and Freestar have been taking care of me.”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Dwyer.”
Chris offered his hand. He was bigger than Bill, and in some ways even seemed older.
“Good to meet you, Chris.”
“I was staying with Linh,” Cameron said. “Mrs. Lewis invited me to stay with her.”
“What about your mom and your aunt and uncle?”
“That’s not my home,” Cameron said.
“No,” Bill said. “No it isn’t. This is your home.”
“Is that why you came back?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Yes it is. Why don’t you and Chris go in there and make us some cocoa, and I’ll join you in a minute.”
“I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“It’s just us, Russell,” Jimmy said.
“It’s not just you,” Russell imitated his cousin. You all are my family. And…” he thought for a second before saying it, “You brought Flipper.”
There was a lot he wanted to say. He had hugged Flipper as long as he could when they’d come to the door, and he wanted to smell that cologne that was always in his sweaters and behind his ears. He felt relief when Flip was at the door, like he could fall into the older boy’s arms and cry, and he didn’t know he wanted to cry until just then.
While they sat in the den of the house on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy shook her head watching the news.
“My God,” she murmured.
The blizzard was burying Chicago and she said, “I know I just called them, but I want to call Mom and Dad again.”
“They’re fine,” Jimmy assured her. “And as long as they stay inside they’ll keep on being fine.”
“This is the first Christmas I haven’t been with my family,” Macy said, and when Jimmy looked at her, she shrugged and said, “You know what I mean.”
“Well, its definitely the first Christmas I’ve been without my family,” Flipper said, “so thanks guys, for letting me be with yours.”
“Flip Sanders,” Macy said, clapping him on the back, “you are welcome to our terrible family anytime.”
“Hey!” Patti said.
Russell, just coming back into the house, wished he’d done that too.
Jimmy left Macy and Flipper to watch the TV while he joined Russell, who had returned from choir practice a few moments ago and was waiting to talk. Like any two people who are ready to talk and have much to discuss, and much of that deep down stuff, neither of them said anything right away. Russell went and got a cup of coffee his grandmother Sara had made, and Jimmy went in to get cocoa. They were waylaid by John, Frank and Sara stopping Jimmy and measuring him against Patti.
“I never knew they looked so alike.” Frank said. “You really are my sister’s grandkid.”
“That’s what they’ve been saying for the last twenty two years,” Jimmy joked.
As he and Russell walked out of the kitchen, they could both hear Sara saying, “So how does it feel, this whole Thom having another son, thing?”
“Actually,” Jimmy demanded, taking a cigarette from behind his ear, but handing it to Russell, “How does it feel?”
“It feels like…. Well, it feels a lot more complicated that you’re going to believe.”
“No, I get it. You’ve been an only kid. I mean, now, I’ve got two brothers and if I woke up and there was a third all of a sudden…”
“It’s not even that,” Russell said.
“Uh, okay.”
“Do you remember just a few weeks ago,” Russell lowered his voice and looked out of the window as if the window was the most important thing, “when I told you about Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said you knew he wasn’t the thing that was important. That there was someone else who was important to me.”
“Yes, cousin. Yes, I do remember that.”
“Well, the important person was Cody.”
“Cody,” Jimmy murmured then, “Cody. Thom’s son, Cody?”
“Yeah….” Russell murmured.
“Shit.” Jimmy shook his head and took an extra long drag of his cigarette.
“Oh, yeah, shit indeed,” Russell said.
They smoked in silence for a time, and then Jimmy spoke.
“Well, you know,” Jimmy said. “A good thing is you never did anything with him.”
When Russell didn’t reply, Jimmy looked at his cousin.
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it,” Russell said.
“You all—”
“I had sex with him,” Russell whispered. “We had sex right before Dad found out—not found out we had sex. Found out we were—”
“Brothers.”
“Yeah,” Russell said, breathless.
“Oh, my God,” Jimmy said.
Then he said, “Russell, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” Russell said. “And I told him that. I’m not sorry. In fact, I wish I’d never found out. The only thing I’m sorry about is that it can’t happen again.”
MORE NEXT WEEK
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Well a lot is going on in the lead up to Christmas. I am glad all these friends are there for each other. I am also glad that Russell realises that he can’t keep sleeping with Cody. Gilead and Mark are cute, I enjoy reading about their relationship. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
EIGHT
HOMECOMING
Anigel Reyes was annoyed whenever her brother-in-law said, “You can tell this isn’t a Polish church, not really, because Polish churches are…. Beautiful.” He always paused before saying the word beautiful to let everyone know how beautiful beautiful really could be. Anigel had never seen the fucking churches, and anyway, John Balusik had to be dumb as hell if he didn’t understand how beautiful Saint Celestine’s really was.
Saint Celestine, Anigel knew, was the pope who had sent Saint Patrick to Ireland, and when every Irish community this side of New York named their churches Saint Patrick or maybe sometimes Saint Brigit, the Irish of what would one day be part of Geschichte Falls, Michigan raised up Saint Celestine’s. Saint Celestine’s of the polished floors so bright they were like a sea of glass, Saint Celestine’s of the thick high pillars, far apart that reached tree high and spread out to make the branches that became the ribs of the great overarching nave. Saint Celestine’s with its swinging brass lanterns, and the smell of old wood wax and incense from Sunday masses that sunk into everything and lasted all week, where the little grottoes to Saint Patrick, Saint Ita, Saint Bridget, Saint Celestine, Saint Joseph and the Mother of God herself, always winked with votives burning in red glasses, Saint Celestine’s was where she had first fell in awe with God.
And she had been in awe. She never understood how anyone could not be. Before they had moved up to Westhaven, life had been here, and in the end life continued to be here in what was now called Little Poland. Her mother was born here, for her mother was Black, yes, but her grandmother had been Irish and this had been an Irish neighborhood. There was, truthfully, very little difference between Little Poland on one side of the Brigham Street Bridge and Westhaven on the other. Except one had begun as Black, the other as Irish and one succeeded to Polish and then Mexican while the other had succeeded to Mexican and Puerto Rican. The inhabitants went between both, for they were more like each other, more like Chicago or Detroit from where so many of them had come, than like East Sequoya and Geschichte Falls.
And though Anigel had heard with wry amusement about the rivalry between Saint Adjeanet and Evervirgin, this church was the one that looked like a proper old church in a great city, and when she stepped out of it and looked down onto Calvert Street, she felt she was looking at a proper city.
The snow was softly falling in the glow of the headlights as Ross Allen’s van trudged softly through the snow behind Chayne Kandzierski’s hearse, and they headed from Curtain to Kirkland for Midnight Mass. Anigel was glad Ross was driving, because in her heart was a strange and not entirely sweet pain. She was not feeling nostalgia. She was remembering the Christmas Eves of her childhood when she had wanted something. She was remembering trying to get her mother or her father up to come to Saint Celestine’s, or trying to get her mother to put a Nativity Scene up beside the cheap Santa Clauses from the Dollar Store. One year, she and Ross had gone to Saint Celestine’s for Midnight Mass, and she had heard the beautiful music and saw all the families together, whispering to each other, singing unselfconsciously, had seen their happy, innocent white faces and felt something, some pain. She’d wanted to cry. Something in her hurt at Christmas.
Something in her had always hurt at church. And in the last days that something had gone away. She wished, almost, that they had stayed at that monastery where there was no space for the mother who sent her to Rosary and made sure she said Mass everyday, who would have slapped her across the face if she’d said she was an atheist, but who would never go to church or put up a baby Jesus. Who sent her to Saint Celestine’s alone to wonder what healthy families who believed with no trouble were like, who believed purely. When she had been at the monastery it had been just her and just everyone else, and they had all been wanting something real, and in the wanting…. They had found it.
“We’re all alone,” Anigel said as the van trundled over the fresh snow and she ooked out and saw another car driving slowly north up Kirkland.
“What?”
“Ross,”
“We’re all alone before God,” Anigel said, almost breathlessly.
“And that’s alright.”
She had once said she did not believe in any of this, but what was the this? There was something more than belief surely. She did not know this church, did not know these people But she knew how she would have felt once upon a time. She would have felt too wild, too uncertain and unhappy, too, too too dark, too Mexican, too Negro, too lonely for this place. But this darkened place with its few lit lanterns was for forlorn people. She saw it now. She saw, in the crowd, Cameron Dwyer’s family. She saw her mother and her uncle and Niall and Dave and Dave’s father… David? And the washed out white woman who must have been Dave’s mother, and there, on the other side of the church, looking like a tall and tired mouse, was Bill Dwyer beside Cameron. That was Chris Knapp with them. In another time she would never have waited for Cameron to catch her eye, but now she did. She waited for Cameron to come to her.
“You look awful,” Anigel said simply.
Cameron threw her arms so tight around her, she wanted to sob.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Cameron said. “You don’t even know the things that have happened.”
“I know some of them,” Anigel said.
“Can we talk? Are you busy? Maybe in a few days?”
“I’m not busy at all? After Mass? Or tomorrow maybe?”
“No,” Cameron said, and Anigel could tell she was trying to keep it together, “After church if you can?”
“Yeah,” Anigel said. Then, “Yes.”
She said, “You want to see the crèche with me?”
Cameron took a breath and nodded, and they went up the aisle and knelt before the half life sized stable with its ox and ass, its Mary in a red gown and blue veil who apparently, even though she had just given birth, had no problem kneeling in worship of her porcelain son.
“That’s such bullshit,” Anigel whispered.
Cameron looked at her, wide eyed, and covered her mouth.
Anigel looked at the angel hooked at the cross point of the stable, bearing the scroll that read, “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”
“And yet it isn’t,” Anigel whispered.
The procession would have to walk around the nativity scene which was squarely before the altar. On small bales of hay, the plaster shepherds kept their watch over plaster sheep.
“It’s us, you know,” Cameron said.
Anigel looked at the girl.
“All of us,” she said, looking over the figures.
“Not quite real, all waiting. All waiting…. For something. For God. Desperate for him to send any sign. Come any way. Even if it’s a baby.”
The lights had been dimming. The lights had dimmed.
Anigel crossed herself and Cameron did too. They rose.
“Godhead here in hiding whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more.
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.”
With no organ, their voices touching the walls and echoing over the church, the choir sang into the darkness.
“So,” Ross said as Anigel took her seat beside him, “it’s not the monastery, but…”
“Oh, it’s still plenty wonderful,” Anigel said, leaning her head on Ross’s shoulder.
“And you know what?”
“Huh?” Ross said.
“I think my eyes were just shut. There’s really so much happening if you’re looking, so much miracle. Like Jimmy and Macy here. We were able to bring them, and we all get Christmas together.”
“I wonder if they think it’s a miracle,” Ross wondered, “or if they’d rather be home.”
“They’d rather be here with some of their family, than stuck on campus in Walter, I’ll bet,” Anigel said. “And if it’s not their miracle, it’s my miracle. Everyone in this place has so much... Stuff. And here we are, for each other, in this moment. That’s a miracle.”
MORE TOMORROW
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion and return to this story. Anigel may have a rough time with Christmas but it is good to get more of her and her thoughts. I am glad her and Cameron are going to talk and catch up with all that has been going on. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHRISTMAS DAY HAS RETURNED TO GESHICHTE FALLS, FULL OF CHRISTMAS SURPRISES
“Well, that was a beautiful Mass,” Mrs. Alexander told Chayne. She was with her husband, Bill Wynn, and Nehru was right behind them with Brad, the two men looking uncommonly formal in new suits.
“I’m surprised to see any of you in church,” Chayne said.
“Well, Chanakuh was early this year,” Nehru’s mother said. “So, no real competition.”
“I didn’t mean you,” Chayne said. “You got a synagogue to go to, I meant the rest of these sinners.”
“Oh, Chayne,” Brad said, loftily, “it’s Jesus’s birthday. Everyone wants to come and say hello.”
Nehru, who divided his religious duties between Temple Beth Shan downtown, and occasionally Saint Adjeanet’s, said, “And we’ll be back in time for Good Friday.”
“Well, it looks like I came back just in time,” Anigel said when she was sitting in the back pew with Cameron, and Hannah was playing the organ as people lingered in the church, always threatening to go out into the night and return home, but finding one more person to wish a Merry Christmas before leaving.
“Or maybe I left mine just in time,” Cameron said.
“So you and your dad are staying together?”
“Yeah.”
“And the rest of the family?”
“At my aunt and uncle’s.”
“What about Niall?”
“I can’t blame Niall for not wanting to talk to Dad. He’s probably glad to be free of him.”
“I understand that. Look,” Anigel said, “I don’t know your father. You love him and you’re close and that’s great, but from Niall’s place he seems like a real asshole. Here’s the thing: don’t spend Christmas alone.”
“Oh, we’re going over to Russell’s tomorrow.”
“Well, there you go. I was going to say come over to the house with us. I’m not sure if I’m having you horn in on Chayne because he’s supposed to be gone after eleven. But, well, you know. You’re always welcome. Whatever I end up doing, you’re always welcome.”
Cameron hugged Anigel quickly.
“By the way,” she said, “is that your boyfriend?”
“Ross? No. Ross is my best friend,” Anigel said. “And I’m glad he’s here cause usually he doesn’t do Christmas either, b
One o’ clock in the morning on Christmas, Russell is always sure that this is what the first Christmas must have been like. He imagines the whole world humming with the strange magic of earth united to heaven and hope in the place of what was hopeless, because he certainly feels it. After church, after his solo, very little matters. Blessedly, he is not even self conscious. Things will sort themselves out. All things. Tonight Cody is all cleaned up in a black suit, looking alarmingly like Thom and yet, never really like Thom, too broad and wild for a suit. When Russell embraces him and smells his cologne, he is full of love for him, but all love seems pure now. Nothing seems doomed. Back on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy has stayed home with Grandma Sara and Aunt Denise, and the house smells like tomorrow morning’s breakfast, apple cheese Danish, raspberry cheese Danish, cinnamon raisin Danish. For the last two days Sara has been rolling and re rolling the dough and tonight she leads Patti and Denise—Macy has no interest in cooking—in the last rolls, and in cutting the strips in the dough that will make the braided patterns. The house is filled with the smell, and there is no need to be stingy or restrain oneself because one will be eaten right now, right here.
There will be coffee. No one much feels like going to sleep. And they will open one present a piece. Macy is philosophical about her lack of presents, but surprised when Jimmy slips her a small box.
“How?”
“I went out today,” is all he says.
And he is surprised when Macy slips him a small box and says. “I went out today, too.”
“I bet,” Macy says to Flipper, “you thought we forgot about you.”
“Oh,” Flipper waves it off in his reedy voice, “I wasn’t even thinking that way.”
But of course he was, Russell knows. He would too.
Macy runs to her room and then Jimmy says, “Hold on,” and followers her. A few minutes later, they both come back with white paper bags.”
“No you guys, didn’t!” Flipper says, and Macy reaches in it and hands him a small box and Jimmy shrugs, waiting his turn, and says, “I guess great minds think a like.”
“And sometimes ours do too,” Macy says.
“Don’t open it now,” she tells Flipper as he keeps her present on his lap and accepts Jimmy’s. “And it’s nothing special, do don’t get excited.”
“With that word of warning,” Flipper says, grinning, “I won’t. And thank you, guys.”
“Oh, and we both got you this,” Macy tells Russell and hands him a box from her bag.”
“Well!” Russell says, grinning and pretending like he isn’t ready to open it right there.”.
And Kristin says, “Well!” satisfied as she rocks her baby, strangely Madonna like, “this is what being a family is all about.”
She yawns, and along with Uncle Reese is the first to go to bed. Finn and Meg arrived in the night and are already asleep. When Flipper says he can’t stay up any longer, Russell says he’ll show him the spare room downstairs.
“Mom and Dad had the basement redone when they thought they would be basement people,” Russell explains.
“It’s huge.”
“Right?” says Russell. “And I guess they were right because now we’re sort of running a hotel. So,” he shrugs, “here is your room.”
Flipper puts down his bag which has been in the living room all afternoon, and Russell says, “Look, I got you something too.”
He hands him a bag that is not white and there is no fancy wrapping.
“T.S. Eliot,” Flipper says appreciatively.
“The collected works,” Russell said, feeling embarrassed. “It seemed like you. I thought you might like it.”
“No, no,” Flipper said, grinning. He shook his head.
“Russell, you don’t know how glad I am to see you. I wondered if I would again. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like, to meet someone and be like…. This is the realest moment. And you wonder, was it real, was it a dream? But, you’re here, and giving me Blake and…. Ross told me to call you.”
“What?”
“Ross told me I should call you. He knew I was thinking of you.”
“Why didn’t you.”
“Cause I’m dumb. But…” Flipper bent over and began rummaging through his blue duffel bag. He pulled out an equally ill wrapped bag and handed it to Russell.
“Allen Ginsberg. Collected works. And… On the Road. You trumped me!”
“On the Road’s a shit book,” Flipper said,. “It’s kind of whiny, but I feel like you need to have it, if you’re going to get Ginsberg.
“I’m so fucking tired my eyes can barely stay open, but please, promise me we’ll get some time together.”
“It seems like an easy promise to keep,” Russell says.
He thinks of doing so much, but instead, he says, “Goodnight, Flip.”
.
Back upstairs, Jimmy Nespres unfolds his long legs and rises, saying he’ll stay with Russell. It’s only a little later, as they are going up to bed and Russell is behind Cody and Macy who will share the last spare room, that he realizes he had imagined staying with Cody tonight, and Jimmy, wise in the ways of sex, probably imagined him imagining. That in his bed, Cody shifts to Flipper and then back again, and that Russell doubts either one would turn him away, Jimmy does not know. While Jimmy snores, Russell shifts around in his bed in the night before finally frantically masturbating and falling asleep.
No one tries to get up early on Christmas. Russell’s mouth is wide open and dry, and a pool of saliva is on his pillow while Jimmy snorts and sits up as they both come into sudden wakefulness. The sun is bright in the room and Jimmy croaks, “Merry Christmas, cuz.”
Russell looks for Cody, but the spare room he and Macy had is empty. He can hear Macy downstairs. In the spare upstairs bathroom, he hears someone pissing. The door is cracked. He pushes through and Cody stands there, hands in in his boxers, urinating. Russell enters, and opening his pajamas, starts pissing beside him. Russell is almost afraid Cody will finish before he begins, but Cody pisses like a man, loud and long, and Russell is done while Cody, looking up at the ceiling, still finishes, shakes himself, hits the flusher, puts down the lid. He always puts down the lid, He joins Russell at the sink. They stand close together, moving arms pressing against against arms, as they wash and dry their hands.
“We should go and see if we can help out,” Cody says. His breath smells like spearmint. Russell wonders how bad his is.
“Yeah,” Russell says.
He can’t wait to see Flipper. He wants to catch up on old times even though old times was barely two weeks ago. He is afraid that in his confused state he’ll try to fuck him. He’s not afraid of fucking Cody. He wants that badly. He is afraid that Jimmy will be his guard dog, standing outside the door and watching. After all, Jimmy shared his room last night. But then, Jimmy was never a judge or a policeman, and Jimmy is not outside.
“I’m going to go put some clothes on,” Cody says.
“Alright.”
Russell follows him to the room. Cody closes the door behind them. He could ask for privacy, but he doesn’t. Cody pulls out clothes from an overnight bag. The snug brown pants he wears all the time, the fitted tee shirt. He expects Cody to take the pants and pull them on, but instead he takes off his boxers and his compact, muscled body, brown with hair, is naked before Russell. He slips the pants on like a skin and Russell is erect, his penis coming out of his pajama pants. Cody slips on his tee shirt.
“Are you ready?”
He looks at Russell’s erection and grins. He looks, almost, as if he’s going to touch it. Touch him.
Instead, taking a large hand through his chocolate hair, he says, “You might want some underwear.”
He tosses Russell a pair of his Jockey’s.
Russell shimmies out of his pajama pants, slips them on over his boner and then pulls his pants back up while Cody watches with amusement and tenderness, but not lust before speaking.
“Com’on,” he says to Russell. “Let’s head down.”
It is as they are headed downstairs they find Jimmy in the kitchen with a glass of orange juice, and he murmurs in admiration, “Finn’s old lady isn’t bad.”
Russell frowns as he looks at Meg Rice of the rosacea skin, and the too big hair and two big tits leaning on his Uncle Finn in the corner of the kitchen and says, “Finn’s old lady… is old.”
Beside, Flipper, Jimmy nods, sipping his orange juice.
“I appreciate it,” Jimmy says. “By the way, your grandma Kathleen’s kind of a fucking dish too.”
“I can’t believe you even said that.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t say an hour ago,” Flipper says.
Jimmy shrugged. “She’s not my grandma. We’re not even related.”
“Alright,” Patti says. “Whoever isn’t cooking, get the hell out of the kitchen.”
They are mostly in the living room and the den that spills over into the living room, and without much ceremony, casually opening a present now and again. John’s boys were first to that, but everyone else can wait, especially since there are guests here who have no presents. Patti had put danishes, sausages, coffee and juice and milk in a small cooler in the dining room because she is serious about no one bothering her. Russell was taking comfort in being next to Cody, and it was almost like it had been before, and Jimmy was eyefucking Meg Rice, who seemed to be returning his gaze when, so suddenly, they almost didn’t understand it, the TV went off, the lights and music went off, Patti shouted, “What the hell?” from the kitchen, and the furnace clicked, whirred and died.
“What the fuck?” Cody murmured beside Russell.
While they were still sitting around dumbfounded, the doorbell rang and when Russell answered it, Chris Knapp was standing at the door.
He was in jeans and a tee shirt, ears and cheeks burning red.
“The whole block’s out,” he said.
“It’s so quiet here,” Rob marveled.
Chayne lit another cigarette and sat back down in the old recliner in the living room.
“Um hum, it is,” he said. “Because after Thanksgiving I’ve decided I’m tired of opening my house up to my family, and tired of being any place before I want to be, and this is Christmas morning, and we’ll take it at our ease.”
On the phonograph, Bing Crosby was crooning:
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
“I think,” Ross Allen rose slowly, “I need another piece of kringle.”
“Oooh, and coffee,” Anigel said, standing up. “Another cup of coffee.”
The phone rang. It rang four times and Chayne said on the fifth ring. “Someone is rude, or this is very important.”
He grunted to get up, but Rob was nearer the phone and picked up, stretching the cord across the room as he handed it to Chayne.
“Hello?” Chayne started. “Russell, what’s…. Oh.”
Chayne voice was flat. Rob watched his face frown.
“I see,” Chayne said dismally.
“Well, let me call you back in ten minutes. Um. Alright.”
Chayne hung up the phone.
“What’s up?” Rob asked.
“Fuck,” Chayne said. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck.”
MORE NEXT WEEK
“Well, that was a beautiful Mass,” Mrs. Alexander told Chayne. She was with her husband, Bill Wynn, and Nehru was right behind them with Brad, the two men looking uncommonly formal in new suits.
“I’m surprised to see any of you in church,” Chayne said.
“Well, Chanakuh was early this year,” Nehru’s mother said. “So, no real competition.”
“I didn’t mean you,” Chayne said. “You got a synagogue to go to, I meant the rest of these sinners.”
“Oh, Chayne,” Brad said, loftily, “it’s Jesus’s birthday. Everyone wants to come and say hello.”
Nehru, who divided his religious duties between Temple Beth Shan downtown, and occasionally Saint Adjeanet’s, said, “And we’ll be back in time for Good Friday.”
“Well, it looks like I came back just in time,” Anigel said when she was sitting in the back pew with Cameron, and Hannah was playing the organ as people lingered in the church, always threatening to go out into the night and return home, but finding one more person to wish a Merry Christmas before leaving.
“Or maybe I left mine just in time,” Cameron said.
“So you and your dad are staying together?”
“Yeah.”
“And the rest of the family?”
“At my aunt and uncle’s.”
“What about Niall?”
“I can’t blame Niall for not wanting to talk to Dad. He’s probably glad to be free of him.”
“I understand that. Look,” Anigel said, “I don’t know your father. You love him and you’re close and that’s great, but from Niall’s place he seems like a real asshole. Here’s the thing: don’t spend Christmas alone.”
“Oh, we’re going over to Russell’s tomorrow.”
“Well, there you go. I was going to say come over to the house with us. I’m not sure if I’m having you horn in on Chayne because he’s supposed to be gone after eleven. But, well, you know. You’re always welcome. Whatever I end up doing, you’re always welcome.”
Cameron hugged Anigel quickly.
“By the way,” she said, “is that your boyfriend?”
“Ross? No. Ross is my best friend,” Anigel said. “And I’m glad he’s here cause usually he doesn’t do Christmas either, b
One o’ clock in the morning on Christmas, Russell is always sure that this is what the first Christmas must have been like. He imagines the whole world humming with the strange magic of earth united to heaven and hope in the place of what was hopeless, because he certainly feels it. After church, after his solo, very little matters. Blessedly, he is not even self conscious. Things will sort themselves out. All things. Tonight Cody is all cleaned up in a black suit, looking alarmingly like Thom and yet, never really like Thom, too broad and wild for a suit. When Russell embraces him and smells his cologne, he is full of love for him, but all love seems pure now. Nothing seems doomed. Back on 1735 Breckinridge, Macy has stayed home with Grandma Sara and Aunt Denise, and the house smells like tomorrow morning’s breakfast, apple cheese Danish, raspberry cheese Danish, cinnamon raisin Danish. For the last two days Sara has been rolling and re rolling the dough and tonight she leads Patti and Denise—Macy has no interest in cooking—in the last rolls, and in cutting the strips in the dough that will make the braided patterns. The house is filled with the smell, and there is no need to be stingy or restrain oneself because one will be eaten right now, right here.
There will be coffee. No one much feels like going to sleep. And they will open one present a piece. Macy is philosophical about her lack of presents, but surprised when Jimmy slips her a small box.
“How?”
“I went out today,” is all he says.
And he is surprised when Macy slips him a small box and says. “I went out today, too.”
“I bet,” Macy says to Flipper, “you thought we forgot about you.”
“Oh,” Flipper waves it off in his reedy voice, “I wasn’t even thinking that way.”
But of course he was, Russell knows. He would too.
Macy runs to her room and then Jimmy says, “Hold on,” and followers her. A few minutes later, they both come back with white paper bags.”
“No you guys, didn’t!” Flipper says, and Macy reaches in it and hands him a small box and Jimmy shrugs, waiting his turn, and says, “I guess great minds think a like.”
“And sometimes ours do too,” Macy says.
“Don’t open it now,” she tells Flipper as he keeps her present on his lap and accepts Jimmy’s. “And it’s nothing special, do don’t get excited.”
“With that word of warning,” Flipper says, grinning, “I won’t. And thank you, guys.”
“Oh, and we both got you this,” Macy tells Russell and hands him a box from her bag.”
“Well!” Russell says, grinning and pretending like he isn’t ready to open it right there.”.
And Kristin says, “Well!” satisfied as she rocks her baby, strangely Madonna like, “this is what being a family is all about.”
She yawns, and along with Uncle Reese is the first to go to bed. Finn and Meg arrived in the night and are already asleep. When Flipper says he can’t stay up any longer, Russell says he’ll show him the spare room downstairs.
“Mom and Dad had the basement redone when they thought they would be basement people,” Russell explains.
“It’s huge.”
“Right?” says Russell. “And I guess they were right because now we’re sort of running a hotel. So,” he shrugs, “here is your room.”
Flipper puts down his bag which has been in the living room all afternoon, and Russell says, “Look, I got you something too.”
He hands him a bag that is not white and there is no fancy wrapping.
“T.S. Eliot,” Flipper says appreciatively.
“The collected works,” Russell said, feeling embarrassed. “It seemed like you. I thought you might like it.”
“No, no,” Flipper said, grinning. He shook his head.
“Russell, you don’t know how glad I am to see you. I wondered if I would again. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like, to meet someone and be like…. This is the realest moment. And you wonder, was it real, was it a dream? But, you’re here, and giving me Blake and…. Ross told me to call you.”
“What?”
“Ross told me I should call you. He knew I was thinking of you.”
“Why didn’t you.”
“Cause I’m dumb. But…” Flipper bent over and began rummaging through his blue duffel bag. He pulled out an equally ill wrapped bag and handed it to Russell.
“Allen Ginsberg. Collected works. And… On the Road. You trumped me!”
“On the Road’s a shit book,” Flipper said,. “It’s kind of whiny, but I feel like you need to have it, if you’re going to get Ginsberg.
“I’m so fucking tired my eyes can barely stay open, but please, promise me we’ll get some time together.”
“It seems like an easy promise to keep,” Russell says.
He thinks of doing so much, but instead, he says, “Goodnight, Flip.”
.
Back upstairs, Jimmy Nespres unfolds his long legs and rises, saying he’ll stay with Russell. It’s only a little later, as they are going up to bed and Russell is behind Cody and Macy who will share the last spare room, that he realizes he had imagined staying with Cody tonight, and Jimmy, wise in the ways of sex, probably imagined him imagining. That in his bed, Cody shifts to Flipper and then back again, and that Russell doubts either one would turn him away, Jimmy does not know. While Jimmy snores, Russell shifts around in his bed in the night before finally frantically masturbating and falling asleep.
No one tries to get up early on Christmas. Russell’s mouth is wide open and dry, and a pool of saliva is on his pillow while Jimmy snorts and sits up as they both come into sudden wakefulness. The sun is bright in the room and Jimmy croaks, “Merry Christmas, cuz.”
Russell looks for Cody, but the spare room he and Macy had is empty. He can hear Macy downstairs. In the spare upstairs bathroom, he hears someone pissing. The door is cracked. He pushes through and Cody stands there, hands in in his boxers, urinating. Russell enters, and opening his pajamas, starts pissing beside him. Russell is almost afraid Cody will finish before he begins, but Cody pisses like a man, loud and long, and Russell is done while Cody, looking up at the ceiling, still finishes, shakes himself, hits the flusher, puts down the lid. He always puts down the lid, He joins Russell at the sink. They stand close together, moving arms pressing against against arms, as they wash and dry their hands.
“We should go and see if we can help out,” Cody says. His breath smells like spearmint. Russell wonders how bad his is.
“Yeah,” Russell says.
He can’t wait to see Flipper. He wants to catch up on old times even though old times was barely two weeks ago. He is afraid that in his confused state he’ll try to fuck him. He’s not afraid of fucking Cody. He wants that badly. He is afraid that Jimmy will be his guard dog, standing outside the door and watching. After all, Jimmy shared his room last night. But then, Jimmy was never a judge or a policeman, and Jimmy is not outside.
“I’m going to go put some clothes on,” Cody says.
“Alright.”
Russell follows him to the room. Cody closes the door behind them. He could ask for privacy, but he doesn’t. Cody pulls out clothes from an overnight bag. The snug brown pants he wears all the time, the fitted tee shirt. He expects Cody to take the pants and pull them on, but instead he takes off his boxers and his compact, muscled body, brown with hair, is naked before Russell. He slips the pants on like a skin and Russell is erect, his penis coming out of his pajama pants. Cody slips on his tee shirt.
“Are you ready?”
He looks at Russell’s erection and grins. He looks, almost, as if he’s going to touch it. Touch him.
Instead, taking a large hand through his chocolate hair, he says, “You might want some underwear.”
He tosses Russell a pair of his Jockey’s.
Russell shimmies out of his pajama pants, slips them on over his boner and then pulls his pants back up while Cody watches with amusement and tenderness, but not lust before speaking.
“Com’on,” he says to Russell. “Let’s head down.”
It is as they are headed downstairs they find Jimmy in the kitchen with a glass of orange juice, and he murmurs in admiration, “Finn’s old lady isn’t bad.”
Russell frowns as he looks at Meg Rice of the rosacea skin, and the too big hair and two big tits leaning on his Uncle Finn in the corner of the kitchen and says, “Finn’s old lady… is old.”
Beside, Flipper, Jimmy nods, sipping his orange juice.
“I appreciate it,” Jimmy says. “By the way, your grandma Kathleen’s kind of a fucking dish too.”
“I can’t believe you even said that.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t say an hour ago,” Flipper says.
Jimmy shrugged. “She’s not my grandma. We’re not even related.”
“Alright,” Patti says. “Whoever isn’t cooking, get the hell out of the kitchen.”
They are mostly in the living room and the den that spills over into the living room, and without much ceremony, casually opening a present now and again. John’s boys were first to that, but everyone else can wait, especially since there are guests here who have no presents. Patti had put danishes, sausages, coffee and juice and milk in a small cooler in the dining room because she is serious about no one bothering her. Russell was taking comfort in being next to Cody, and it was almost like it had been before, and Jimmy was eyefucking Meg Rice, who seemed to be returning his gaze when, so suddenly, they almost didn’t understand it, the TV went off, the lights and music went off, Patti shouted, “What the hell?” from the kitchen, and the furnace clicked, whirred and died.
“What the fuck?” Cody murmured beside Russell.
While they were still sitting around dumbfounded, the doorbell rang and when Russell answered it, Chris Knapp was standing at the door.
He was in jeans and a tee shirt, ears and cheeks burning red.
“The whole block’s out,” he said.
“It’s so quiet here,” Rob marveled.
Chayne lit another cigarette and sat back down in the old recliner in the living room.
“Um hum, it is,” he said. “Because after Thanksgiving I’ve decided I’m tired of opening my house up to my family, and tired of being any place before I want to be, and this is Christmas morning, and we’ll take it at our ease.”
On the phonograph, Bing Crosby was crooning:
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
“I think,” Ross Allen rose slowly, “I need another piece of kringle.”
“Oooh, and coffee,” Anigel said, standing up. “Another cup of coffee.”
The phone rang. It rang four times and Chayne said on the fifth ring. “Someone is rude, or this is very important.”
He grunted to get up, but Rob was nearer the phone and picked up, stretching the cord across the room as he handed it to Chayne.
“Hello?” Chayne started. “Russell, what’s…. Oh.”
Chayne voice was flat. Rob watched his face frown.
“I see,” Chayne said dismally.
“Well, let me call you back in ten minutes. Um. Alright.”
Chayne hung up the phone.
“What’s up?” Rob asked.
“Fuck,” Chayne said. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck.”
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