The Ends of Rossford

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT.... ALOT GOES DOWN WITH OUR FRIENDS IN CHICAGO


Lance tapped on the door lightly, and then pushed it open.
“Are you asleep?” he whispered even though the little lamp on the bureau was still on.
“Not quite,” Elias told him.
Lance climbed onto the bed beside Elias and threw his arms around him.
“Did Dylan kick you out?” Elias jested.
“A little bit.”
Elias chuckled and Lance pressed his forehead into the small of Elias’s neck.
“It’s so good to see my Elias,” he murmured. “I think about you everyday.”
“I hope you do.”
“You’re so damn prickly,” Lance told him. “I hope you know how lucky you are. I hope you know only the two of us could read between your lines.”
Elias turned around and faced Lance. He held Lance’s face in his hands.
“You smell like him,” he said.
“Who?”
“Whenever you’ve been with Dylan, you all smell like each other. You’ve got him all over you.”
“Dylan has a smell?”
“It’s just a different scent of sweat than yours. Sweat and something else,” Elias said, running his hand down Lance’s arm, lifting it a little, to smell.
“You’ve made me self conscious now.”
“No,” Elias said, shaking his head. “I lie in bed, and I can hear the two of you in the next room. It’s so private. But it’s not, because I can hear it and when it’s over one of you’s going to come to me. And then when you do come here I can’t describe how I feel.”
“But you like it?”
“It’s almost like both of you are here.”
“Come to bed with us,” Lance said. “Let’s all be together tonight.”
Even though the shorter boy was sturdily built, Lance lifted him up like a child and stood him on his feet. He took Elias by the hand and they crossed the hall.
In the other bedroom, his bare ass soft and round, pointing to them, Dylan lay facing the wall.
“I thought you were staying with Eli.”
Lance pushed Elias into the bed and then came after him wrapping his arms around him, touching Dylan. Dylan turned around.
“The way it should be,” Lance said.
Dylan wrapped his arms around Elias, and he smelled like Lance. They all turned around so that Lance faced the door and Elias’s arms were about him, and then Dylan’s were about Elias. In the dark room, in the warmth of the two of them, Elias felt whole. Dylan’s body pressed against his, him pressed to Lance. The stiffness of Dylan’s penis innocently pressing his buttocks while his balls and his penis pressed into Lance. Their heartbeats went through him. Lance’s hand took Elias’s and pressed it to his stiffening cock, and his the warm weight of his balls. They were one body, half sexy, half sleepy, all innocence.
“I’m home,” Lance said.
“We’re all home,” Elias murmured into his back, “now that you’re here.”

“So what’s going on with you and Jonathan?” Sheridan asked him over the phone.
“I would have loved to ask you the other day, but he was there.”
“There isn’t anything going on between us,” Logan told him.
“He’s Larry’s slightly annoying son who hasn’t experienced anything about life.”
“Maybe you should be the one to teach it to him.”
“You’re very funny, Sher.”
“How do you know I was joking?”
I actually don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m just thinking he’s very into you.”
“You may be making that up.”
“I’m not,” Sheridan sang in an annoying, and slightly un-Sheridan like tone.
“Well, in that case he wouldn’t be the first person to be enamored of a porn star.”
“Have you fucked him?”
“Say—what—No!” Logan cried. “Of course I haven’t.”
“There’s no of course about it.”
“Okay! For one, I’m having paid sex with his father.”
“Logan,” Sheridan chided him. “We both know you’ve done worse than that.
“And he’s attractive.”
“You think so?”
“Not for me,” Sheridan elaborated. “I mean, I don’t want him. But there’s something nice about him. And you could use nice.”
When Logan did not speak for a long time, Sheridan said, “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
And then Logan added, “I’m pretty sure your heart is in the right place, but I can’t help think that’s a terrible idea.”
“Well, you know, as you once told me—along time ago when I thought I was straight—you have to keep an open mind about these things.”
“I said that?”
“You said something to the effect.”
“Well… alright then. Say, Sheridan—”
“Is this the part where you pretend you have to go?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll let you get on with that then,” Sheridan told him.
“Just think about what I said. I love you, goodbye.”

That was just the thing, though. Didn’t Sheridan understand? Love had happened once for Logan, and it may have not been the way that Sheridan wanted it, but Logan had loved him. Sheridan was the only man Logan had ever really loved. And now, here was the only man he ever loved telling him he should sleep with someone else. Jonathan wasn’t much next to Sheridan. Jonathan seemed sort of silly, actually.
Have you fucked him? Sheridan had asked. He had offered, vaguely. Made it a possibility. He hadn’t seriously wanted to. But right now, imagining the silly boy who talked too much bent over a sofa getting what he needed, Logan began to warm to the idea.


EDWARD PALMER RETURNED to the apartment very early the next morning. He was surprised to see Dena and Maggie sprawled out on the sofa, several open bottles between them. He didn’t know what the protocol was for this, so he just tiptoed around them, not wishing to wake anyone up.
He failed in this when he knocked over the dirty coffee basket with a string of curses, and Dena, long hair askew, sat up demanding—“Who’s a whatasa!” while Maggie shook her hair out and murmured something.
“I was trying to be quiet,” Edward said, desperately, scrambling to pick up the mess he’d made.
“Did you break it, Ed?”
“No. Just spilled old grinds everywhere.”
Maggie pushed her hair back and crawled off of the sofa.
“Here, Baby, let me help you,” she began.
“Here I come,” Dena chimed in.
“It’s really not necessary,” Ed protested.
“Oh, it is,” Dena said, sounding more serious than she ever had before. “It certainly is. Oh, honey, let me get that.”
Edward Palmer moved away because it did not take three people to clean up coffee, and the sight of Dena and Maggie working together was so strange, he wanted to give it a wide berth.
After Dena had helped set up the coffee pot, and the two women were washing their hands, Maggie said, “Are you staying for a cup?”
“I need to get back to Milo and the kids. They’re probably wondering what happened to me.”
“They’ll never believe it,” Maggie laughed.
The two women embraced and even kissed, and then when Dena was gone, in fact when Dena had made it to her car and was pulling back onto the street, Ed said, “So Maggie, exactly what did happen?”
Maggie thought about it. She went to the pot because she really did need coffee.
“I think,” Maggie decided, “what happened is that I finally learned to say I’m sorry.”

Early in the morning Elias woke up full of heat and desire. On either side of him, hot and firm and soft as life were his lovers. Lying on their stomachs they were just blinking in and out of sleep. He loved them so much. He kissed one and then the other, and he placed one hand on Lance’s back, another on Dylan’s. He stroked them gently and they both sighed. He moved his hand down to the small of their backs and they shuddered. He massaged their asses and they sighed, mouths open. They made child noises. Gently, he slipped a finger into each of them, and both boys’ mouths opened. Their eyes flew open in amazed wonder. While Elias worked them they moaned, grasping their pillows, then the sides of the mattress. And then, Elias kissed them. He kissed them down their backs, first Dylan, and then Lance and then again, all the way down until his tongue moved inside of them, from one to the other and they both cried out now. They shouted a little now. Lance banged on the headboard with his fist and shuddering sounds escaped from Dylan. Elias’s mouth worked on them, his hands reached around and kneaded them. Lance and Dylan looked at each other, eyes wide. Suddenly they began to kiss. As they kissed fiercely, Lance reached down and brought Elias up. The older boys kissed, pressing together with Elias between them, going up and down Elias’s body until, gently, Lance turned him on his stomach and Dylan, entranced into a strange contemplation, watched Lance fucked him. His mouth was half opened. His eyes glazed over. Elias grabbed the mattress and his eyes went dull under Lance’s thrusting. It ended all too quickly in an orgasmic flood, Lance’s hands bunched on Elias’s shoulder, the cords of his neck strained, his red face to the ceiling, his cock, thick, wet, spewing, deep inside of the younger boy. But when Lance came out of him, still stiff, his cock wet, Elias reached for Dylan, and Dylan came to him. Now it was his turn. Now they were together. He wanted to hold it in. He did, a little longer, making love to Elias the same way he did when they were in private, holding back his burst. Lance was there, exhausted, on his side, watching. In a way it was like they were doing this for him. When it was time to let go, Dylan almost mourned it. Elias gave a long whimpering cry.
The room was hot, and it smelled like sweat and the long night and fucking. They all three, sprawled, limbs together, their stomachs sprayed by their semen. No one said a word. Elias wanted to say, “No one would mistake us for brothers now.” He liked it when they all did this, though they often felt bad afterward. He didn’t want them to feel bad, so he said, “Come and hold me. Come clean off, and then come and hold me.”
Lance got up a little unsteadily and made his way to the bathroom. Somehow Lance was different after Lance had been inside of him, and Lance’s body would seem different still when, inevitably, in their room tonight, the older boy asked Elias to fuck him. Lance returned with a cloth and gently he wiped off Elias, and then Dylan, and lastly, up and down his own chest. Lightly he put the cloth on the bureau, and then he went to shut the curtains and hide the light from Magnolia Street.
Drowsily, he climbed into bed and Elias pulled him in. Dylan lifted up the covers.

They slept.

The knock on the door was gentle at first, and then it became more insistent, and by the time Maia came to open it, she was getting ready to shout: Chill out, bitch!”
It could have been her mother, though.
Instead it was:
“Laurel!”
“Is it true that you ran off and got married?”
“We didn’t exactly run off,” Bennett came from the kitchen.
Laurel Houghton stood looking at one, and then the other. She moved forward and slapped Bennett on the head.
“What were you thinking? But what was either one of you thinking?”
“Aw baby, stop yelling,” they all heard from behind her.
They looked down, and coming up the steps to landing was Moshe Fromm with two bags of Mexican food. Maia did not have to ask. She could smell it. She wanted those tacos right now.
“They’re young, and they’re in love,” Moshe continued, entering the apartment and putting the bags on the table by the door. “Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.”
“Like not getting married before you turn twenty?” Laurel said.
“Moshe,” Bennett swept in and embraced the tall, olive skinned young man, “Good to see you.”
“Don’t be flattered,” Laurel told her boyfriend. “He’s just hugging you to avoid me.”
“I’ll take it,” Moshe said, clapping Bennett on the back. “I’m low on self esteem.”
“Now what is in these bags?” Maia said, pulling a bundle wrapped in foil out of them.
“Sixteen steak tacos from Mazatlan,” Laurel said. “I know you love that place, and we stopped there on the way here.”
“That’s four a piece,” Moshe said, “So no one has to feel like they didn’t get enough.”
“I’ll just end up feeling like a fat ass,” Maia reflected. She looked at Bennett and Moshe. “You all are so lucky. You never gain weight.”
“Now that you’re married,” Laurel told Bennett. “You will gain weight.”
“What?” Bennett sounded offended.
“Maia learned to cook from her mother and from Fenn. You will be fat in no time.”
“We’re both going to have to watch ourselves, then,” Bennett said, but Maia was already taking her tacos to the microwave.

“We are on our good will tour,” Laurel was telling Maia.
“I’ve never been to New York, but Moshe wanted to show me to his family over there. They sniffed around me a bit—”
“Well,” Maia said with a shrug, “Jews.”
“Maia, you’re Jewish.”
“True,” Maia agreed. “But I’ll never be a Jew. It’s not quite the same. Especially since I’ll never be white.”
Laurel looked into the living room, where her swarthy boyfriend was in animated conversation with Bennett.
“The Fromms aren’t like that.”
“The Fromms are not the totality of American Judaism. American Jews tried to be white in Europe for years and got their houses burned down for their troubles. Now they really are white, and honey, they’re loving it.”
For the first time there was doubt in Laurel.
“Do you really think it will make a difference.”
“Why call it an it?” Maia said. “I am one quarter Arab and half Black. It’s not an it. It’s a this.”
Maia Meradan held out her golden arm and ran a hand over it, displaying her dark skin.
“Don’t let ‘em bullshit you. This will always make a difference.”
“Well not with Moshe’s family,” Laurel said.
“Once they learned I would convert for Moshe, they couldn’t have been happier,” Laurel said. “You can’t get mad at them. There was no harm in it.”
Maia did not comment on this, but she did say: “We stopped to visit Mom, and we’re staying there tonight.”
“But you could stay here!”
“We couldn’t. It’s too small. And Ma’s in that big house by herself. I wish, I really wish that she wasn’t. Or that I was here more often. Tomorrow we go to Chicago, though.”
“For?”
“To finish our goodwill tour,” Laurel said, loftily. “We need to go to Roger’s Park and see Moshe’s parents, and then I need to go see Dylan.”
“How does he live without you?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Um,” Maia thought about it. “Actually, I think I’m mocking him.”

MORE ON SATURDAY.... MAYBE TOMORROW, BUT DEFINITELY SATURDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow you were right, lots happening in this portion! Dylan, Lance and Elias all seem to go together well. I am glad Dena and Maggie are getting along. Maia and Bennett's marriage was fast but they seem to really care for each other. Great writing and I look forward to more whenever you are able to post it!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, everyone does seem to be pretty happy despite everything. I'm glad to be with our modern friends and see how everyone is now that they're all grown up and living with their grown up choices.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Man, I feel like there’s something you want to tell me,” Bennett said.
Moshe grinned foolishly.
“Look at you! Eating tacos with cheese and wearing snazzy clothes! What’s going on with you, Yeshiva?”
Moshe leaned in close to his friend.
“Don’t tell anyone anything that I’m about to say.”
“Alright?” Bennett waited.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Moshe admitted. “But I didn’t have the balls for it. Now I think I do.”
“You’re gonna get a reverse circumcision?”
Moshe frowned at him.
“They say the ladies love it.”
“No.”
“You’re going to quick fucking around and change your name to Moses? No, that’s too old. Be Dave.”
“Are you through?”
“Well, I had a few more, but…”
“I’m going to ask Laurel to marry me.”
“Shit!”
“I know.”
“That’s…” Bennett thought, “that’s pretty fucking big.”
“Yes, I know that,” Moshe said, “and coming from you, caution sounds awfully strange.”


“Where the hell have you been?” Milo said when his wife walked into the house that morning.
“I’ve been where you should be,” Dena countered. “With your daughter.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Dena took off her coat when she crossed the kitchen, and hung it up on the other side of the closet door.
“Mom, you smell like booze,” Rob said as he came down the hall and hugged her.
“Well yes, dear, I do. I’ve been getting trashed with your sister.”
“You’re awesome, Mom,” Rob told her, shaking his dark head in amazement as he went into the kitchen. Like his father he had wide dark eyes, chocolate hair and a dark complexion. And speaking of his father—
“Miles, you have dropped the ball, really.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“For three years you just shrug and go uh, uh, uh, when your wife and your daughter are squaring off to kill each other. There’s never been a moment when you said… I don’t know. Where you said anything. But I took care of it. It’s taken care of now.”
“Mommy, did you kill somebody!” Cara said.
Dena looked at her daughter. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Cara clapped her hands and laughed.
“Mommy’s cursing!”
“Yes, Mommy’s cursing,” Dena picked up the golden haired girl and kissed her. “And no, Mommy didn’t kill anybody.”
“Are you going to take me to school?”
“No, your father will because your mommy needs to sleep in a real bed. Rob, stop drinking out of the container.
“And then,” Dena said, though now she was looking very sharply at Milo, “your father is going to invite Maggie and Edward over for dinner tonight.”
“Is Meredith coming too?” Cara asked.
“No, that’s too many people. She needs to quit having kids.”

“God I hope I’m not pregnant again,” Meredith muttered as she watched Charlie getting into the car. He waved at her eagerly and reversed his car down the driveway.
“Are you serious?” Layla muttered, lifting her eyes from the ream of papers she was editing.
“I could be,” Meredith admitted. “And Charlie’s so damn cute.”
“Charlie is cute,” Layla agreed. “But not as cute as the ability to support your family. Or keep your uterus from falling out.”
Dena looked at Layla. For all of Charlie’s boyish good looks, and the happiness he and Meredith experienced, Charlie was nearly twenty years older than Meredith and, at one time, had been the lover of Meredith’s stepmother. Dena and Layla remembered this vividly, and whenever they were in the presence of Mrs. and Mr. Palmer they always looked at each other as if daring the other to utter that truth.
“I can’t help it,” Meredith said, loftily, while she scribbled, “pregnancy test” on her list of things to get. “I’m just a good Catholic girl.”
“Actually you’re a semi slut who for some reason hasn’t learned to use birth control despite your vast education and the simplicity of taking a pill,” Dena said.
“Harsh.”
“You are the only woman who’s had a baby by every man she’s been with,” Layla noted.
“Et tu, Layla?”
Layla shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“I didn’t have Kip Danley’s baby,” Meredith pointed out. Then she said, “Somehow that sounds like a very shallow retort.”
“It sort of is,” her sister said.
“Now look,” Dena began in the tone that meant she was shifting to something very important, “Maggie and Ed are coming to dinner—my stepdaughter and your stepson. And from now on we have to make a concerted effort to really include them as family. We ARE a family.”
“I always include them as family,” Meredith said.
Dena eyed her sister, and then said, “Firstly, you never liked Maggie—”
“Well, it was for your sake.”
“Well, don’t make it for my sake anymore. Just… She’s family. We’re going to be a family.”
Meredith shrugged, and Layla said, “I’m glad I’m not in this.”
“Of course you’re in it,” Meredith said. “Ed’s mother is Meg Callan and Meg Callan is Dylan’s aunt, and you’re Dylan’s cousin, so that makes you—”
“Not in it,” Layla repeated with finality.
“However,” she got up, “it does make me late for going to pick up some school clothes. You ladies seem to have forgotten, Dylan has a brother now, which means I have a new cousin, and I had agreed to take him shopping.”
“He’s not in school.”
“Not yet, and Tom has decided to send him to Saint Barbara’s, so… time to get some blazers.”
“Milo offered his old clothes.”
“Dena, my cousin is not going to wear Milo’s cast off pants and blazers.”
“He could probably wear Dylan’s though.”
Layla had not gone into the science fiction part of Thackeray actually being Dylan’s twin put on time delay, so she just said, “You’re probably right. And then that’s more money for real clothes. I don’t think Tom was thinking about real clothes. I’m going to make that happen.”
Layla gathered up the reams of paper she was working with and stuffed them, artlessly, into a manila folder, which she shoved into the messenger bag she carried in lieu of a purse.
“Send the little monster around here to meet his cousins,” Meredith said as Layla swung the bag over her shoulder.
Then, promising to do so, Layla kissed her friends, and headed out the door.

MORE SATURDAY NIGHT OR EARLY SUNDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

So Moshe is going to ask Laurel to marry him? I think thats great! Milo seemed to be very surprised that Dena and Maggie have found common ground and are getting along. I hope this dinner goes well. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, Moshe is about to pop the question. Of course this chapter is called marriage and everyone is exhibiting some form of it. Everything is happening, and you know how before there were all the conflicts and sad stories? Well, I believe in happy stories, and we're closing up this long one so everyone is going to end up happy this time around.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE MEET THE LITURGY QUEENS


“Don’t wander off because I’m not good at finding people,” Layla said. “I’ll be out of the lady’s room in a moment.
“Mom wants to know everything about you,” Liam said, solemnly, once Layla was in the restroom. He stooped to take a sip of water and then the green eyed boy told Thackeray, “She’s not going to ask. She won’t be nosey about it. You’ll almost think she couldn’t care less if you keep your secrets or not.
“But it’s a ruse. She wants to know everything. And eventually she’ll figure it out.”
“Well it sounds terrible when you put it that way,” Thackeray said.
“It isn’t,” Liam said. “It’s just—” the boy stopped. “It really does sound terrible, but I didn’t mean it to.”
Thackeray shrugged, his dark curly hair falling into his face.
“What was your life like before?” Liam asked.
“It kind of sucked,” Thackeray said.
Liam waited for him to elaborate.
“I was just this kid with no parents, going from place to place. Sometimes I was with a family. Sometimes I was in an orphanage. And then one day Eileen showed up. She said who she was, and that she was going to get me out. But they didn’t let me out easy, just like that. It took a while. It took a judge.”
“How long did you know your mother?”
“For about two years. On again. Off again. And she wasn’t telling anyone she was sick. That wasn’t until it was almost all over. She took me with her. I didn’t… I know this sounds terrible, but I didn’t really love her. Not the way I should have. I was glad I was getting out. But she had put me in, right? And then almost as soon as she got me, she told me she was about to die. It was like she was hanging on for that. That’s when she told me about Dylan and everything. Well, about some things.”
“What about your Dad?”
“Tom or Fenn?”
“I meant Tom.”
“He hugs me every time he sees me. He just looks so happy that I’m here. I guess he is. I mean, I’m happy to be with him. He’s my dad. We play piano and sing a lot. I’m staying there right now.”
The bathroom door opened and Layla looked at Liam, and then at Thackeray.
“Has Liam been interrogating you?” Layla asked Thackeray. “He’s nosey like that.”
“Actually, he said you were nosey like that.”
And then Thackeray covered his mouth.
Liam went red through his olive skin, and Layla raised an eyebrow.
“How about we just shop?” she said.

When Layla brought Thackeray back to Tom’s house, the boy saw a long tall man, handsome with graying temples, sitting at the piano. He looked up with an eager smile and Thackeray instantly liked him.
“You must be Thackeray.”
“I am.”
Layla thumped the boy on the shoulder and pushed him forward as she said, “This is Bryant Babcock. He’s friends with your father. Both of them, actually.”
“I hear you play the piano,” Bryant said.
“A little.”
Bryant grinned. “I heard it was actually more than a little. Would you like to show me now or show me later?”
“It seems like not showing him at all isn’t an option,” Layla said.
“It certainly isn’t,” Bryant said. “I love to meet good musicians, and when they’re so close!”
Thackeray held out his fingers and cracked his knuckles. Bryant slid off of the piano bench and stood by it as the young man took his place.
“A little something,” Thackeray said.
“Where’s Chad?” Layla whispered before Thackeray began.
“With Tom, helping out in the kitchen.”
Layla nodded and headed for the kitchen as Thackeray began to play an etude.
Layla was not a classical kind of person. She knew Thackeray was good, but she appreciated Dylan’s jazz trumpet better. She’d spent her whole life with Tom’s organ music, but it wasn’t until Dylan had taught him stride piano and Tom had picked it up almost instantly that she really respected him. Tom and Dylan, side by side, bent over a piano, making that holy, sexy sound, their shoulders shaking, father and son and both of them, somehow, a little like her uncle Fenn.
“Layla!” Chad cried as she entered the kitchen. “Listen to that!”
“It’s Thackeray,” Tom said before Layla could.
“You can tell?”
“He’s my son, Layla. And I’m a musician.”
“Fair,” Layla nodded. “I just dropped Liam off at the college. He’s following Will around—”
“Dr. Will, you mean.”
“Yes,” Layla nodded. “I hope the two of them don’t blow the chemistry lab up. So,” she glanced around, “what’s happening here?”
“Bryant and Chad showed up with surprise news,” Tom told her. “Bryant will be directing the Rossford Symphony.”
“And the surprise is that Rossford has a symphony,” Layla murmured.
“Oh, com’on,” Chad chided her in the gayest manner she’d ever seen, “you know that Rossford has a symphony.”
She did not, but she did not wish to argue this, and Tom went on to explain, “It’s actually the Rossford Wallington Miller Symphony, and I actually would love to be a part of it. But now Bryant is their new conductor.”
“Good for him!”
“Yes,” Chad and Tom agreed together.
They both went quiet. Like deer their ears turned to the door on the last notes of the etude.
When it was done, they both jumped out of the kitchen with the fervor of football fans. Layla followed them.
Bryant was standing there, his arms folded over his chest.
“Tom, what are you going to do with him?” Bryant demanded.
“Don’t do anything,” Chad murmured. “You’ll screw him up. He’s perfect.”
Thackeray looked at the three grown men, and Layla wanted to laugh.
“What?” Chad said to her.
“It’s like the three magi in the presence of the Christ Child. Or maybe Jesus in front of the temple teachers.”
“I was never into Jesus the way I should have been,” Chad admitted, “but I worship at the temple of good music, and Thackeray, you are a Messiah.”
Layla frowned.
“That sounds real clever, but I feel like you’re going to hell for saying shit like that.”

“Yup,” Layla told her uncle over the phone. “We’re at Tom’s and Thackeray’s receiving worship and praise from the liturgy queens.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chad demanded.
“Hold on,” Layla put the phone to her chest and purred, “ ‘I worship at the temple of good music.’ That’s what it’s supposed to mean.”
Then she put the phone to her ear and reported, “Laurel was here this morning. She stayed with Caroline. Now she’s off to visit Dylan. Yeah. Yeah. I will. Love you too. Goodbye.”
“Liturgy queens,” Chad murmured again.
“Oh, get over it.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I am glad Thackeray is getting to know more people. Things seem to be working out well for everyone and I am glad. I don't have much else to say other then great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed. Everything's moving along swimmingly as they say in English period movies. Of course, the stories not done, so some conflict is bound to show up before the whole thing's over.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed. Everything's moving along swimmingly as they say in English period movies. Of course, the stories not done, so some conflict is bound to show up before the whole thing's over.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT IN ROSSFORD, THERE IS PILLOW TALK ABOUT PILLOW TALK


“LAUREL!”
“Should I have called first?” his cousin said, as she entered the apartment.
“Well, if you had,” Dylan moved about picking up stray shirts and papers on the floor, “it would have been cleaner. I would have had something ready for you.”
“Well, as the British say, pish posh.” Laurel kissed her cousin on the cheek and went into the kitchen, “Hey boys. Lance, when did you get back?”
“Uh, hey Laurel?”
Lance had his glasses on and he blinked up at her looking a little startled. His hair was sticking up, and he was in jeans and a tee shirt. “You thirsty?”
“Whaddo you have?”
“Water and Water,” Elias said. “We haven’t really been shopping.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll take water.”
Lance and Elias both looked at the refrigerator and Elias said, “It doesn’t take three people, why don’t you go sit down.”
Laurel went to sit beside her cousin on the sofa.
“Where’s Moshe?”
“He’s visiting his parents. He figured you’d rather see me than him, and I figured I’d rather see you than them. What is going on? I’ve been out of the loop. And how come your apartment’s not as clean as usual?”
Dylan began opening the windows that lined the front of the living room and looked out onto Magnolia. A few moments later, Laurel could smell incense.
“Dad was here, and then Maia showed up and said she left Bennett—“
“Yes, that’s changed, hasn’t it?”
“You seen her?” Dylan said.
“I saw her last night.”
Dylan nodded.
“And then at the same time I got a message that Eileen was dying, and went to South Bend where I found out she had another son, Thackeray. I brought Thackeray back and he’s living with both my dads now. Then that’s when Maia and Ben showed up all married, and we came back here to pick Lance up from the station and….”
Lance came back into the living room. He was so tall! Laurel always forgot. He sat down beside her, all leggy, and put down her water saying, “And that’s the shape of it.”
“Yes,” Laurel said, breathlessly. She lifted the glass to her lips and took a great draught, “I imagine it is.”

Laurel had been there for about an hour, and Elias had gone to class while Lance was at the desk in the living room, his head bent over it homework.
“I can’t help but notice,” Laurel whispered, “that there’s something fucked up about your house right now.”
“Hum?”
“My mother’s half a witch. I grew up sensing shit. And frankly, I’d have to be blind and stupid not to notice anything going on here.”
Dylan shrugged and then she said, “You wanna go on a walk?”
“Only if it’s to the beach.”
“Ahright. It’s a bit cool.”
“That’s the best weather. I’ll get my jacket.”

After Dylan and Laurel had gone for their walk, while Lance was still bent over the desk, his glasses pushed up, Elias said, “Go take a shower.”
After their first year together, Lance never asked why. He always just did. It took a while to make the water hot, and then Lance got in, murmuring in his tone deaf way half of some music he had heard on the radio. Lance was the least musical person Elias knew. He waited a while, and then he followed Lance into the bathroom where he took off his things and went into the water with him.
Lance blinked down, startled.
“Hey, buddy,” he began.
Elias embraced him, feeling the muscles under the slick skin. Lance held him too as the water poured down. They cleaned each other and kissed and then Elias toweled him and half dry he led Lance to the bedroom. They shut the door and were in their a long while before Lance held Elias’s face in his large hands.
“Don’t make me say it,” he whispered to Elias. “Don’t make me beg you to do it. You know I hate using that word.”
Being the one entered could be easier. People didn’t know that. To just be there, to just open up and take someone in could be easier than the entering. There was a certain letting go required in fucking. He was drawn to the roundness of Lance’s ass, to the promise of home that came with being pulled into the heat of Lance. It was a shock, almost frightening. But once in he couldn’t stop. His loins against the roundness of Lance, his penis in the deep heat of him, his stomach against the other boy’s back, his chest against his back. Elias began to love the rhythm they built, the vibration Lance sent through his body from the very inside of his. He loved the way their hands caught to each other, and he buried his face in the softness of Lance Bishop’s hair, drew his ear into his mouth, kissed his eyes, massaged the scalp beneath the hair, the planes of the face. When Elias came it was in a hot, gentle flood that made his body tremble. After the initial orgasm was done, it continued to send waves through Elias, whose penis was still held firmly inside of his lover. When Lance came, it was between his legs, not in him. He felt the slick heat between his legs drip to his buttocks, anoint the bed spread.
Neither of them got up from this. They just lay there. He didn’t want to get rid of Lance, slick between his legs, in the cleft of his buttocks. Lance was curled on his side, this long, tall, muscular man all dusted in brown hairs, his Adam’s apple, the cords of muscle in his arm, the seriousness of his face still there even after this, who had just brought him inside of him, who lay fetal position to his fetal position, face to face.
“I wanted this,” Lance said. “To be with you.”
“Don’t be angry with me.”
“For what?” Lance put the back of his large hand to Elias’s face.
“For last night. I wanted you and Dylan. I wanted us together. I always hope that this will be the time the two of you are alright with it. I never know how to stop it.”
Lance kissed him on the head.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we can get over anything, and everything isn’t your responsibility,” is what Lance said.
The apartment was very quiet.
“Soon,” Lance said, running a hand over Elias’s breast, “I will be here all the time, and we will have to learn how to make us work. All the time. I’ll have to step up. Dylan will have to step up. Until now you’ve pretty much done everything that keeps us together, and you can’t be upset because there are some things we can’t handle. Besides,” Lance shrugged, “if you couldn’t tell, while it’s happening we actually like it.”
“Yes,” Elias was reflective. He turned over on his back. “That’s the problem with men. You always love what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and you can never think of the future. But when it’s done, you can’t live with it because you are forever sitting in the past.”
“What?” Lance laughed. “Aren’t you a man, too?”
“Not like you,” Elias said. “And not like Dylan. And not like most.”
Elias sat up.
“Like, there is a secret between you and Dylan, something like a shadow. It happened before me. It is always between the two of you. You never discuss it though. And I never ask.”
Now Lance was not smiling. He was not frowning, but the look on his face of indulgence for a boy’s silly whims was gone.
“What are you thinking?” Elias said, suddenly.
“Do you remember when we first met?”
“We met a lot. We were both around Dylan.”
“But when we really began to hang out?”
“Yes,” Elias told him.
“In my head you were a kid. A very interesting kid. But a kid. And then that night happened.”
“You mean when we had sex.”
“You never beat around bushes, do you?”
“Would you like me to?”
“Actually, yes. Sometimes,” Lance said. “Everyone can’t be as… frank as you.
“Well, anyway, yes, after that I became very scared of you.”
“What the hell for?” Elias demanded.
“Do you remember how it was?”
“Lance, of course I do.”
“I thought I shouldn’t have done it. I thought I’d hurt you. You were too young. But we kept on doing it. And then one day I realized you weren’t this little kid. In a way you were older than me. And a lot smarter. It was like I didn’t know you at all and you knew me… totally. It threw me for a loop. That’s how it was with you then, and that’s how it is with you now.”

Dylan did not talk while they went through Loyola and then up the little streets threading north. There was clearly a beach in sight, but Laurel supposed Dylan had his reasons for not going there. It was a few blocks later they went west, toward the water, and this beach had an entirely different quality. They went to the end of a quiet street that dead ended in a park. They walked across a little asphalt path running north and south and, across that they approached the sand, and another path, a cement walk pockmarked by time, half covered in sand. Across this stretched the beach. The sand was hard packed because of the drizzle and then they went toward the shore. Dylan knelt down and put his white hands to the edge where the water ran over them as they sank into the sand.
“Do you ever think about my sex life?” he said, at last.
“Do you think about mine?” Laurel said.
For good measure she elaborated, “Do you think about what a tremendous lover Moshe can be when he’s between my legs, way down deep inside of me—”
“Oh, gross—”
“And how he sucks on my titty—only my right one—until I moan—”
“Laurel please!”
“Dylan, please!” She knelt down beside him in the water. It went from grey to grey blue and stretched to the very horizon, so much water, primeval water under endless, ancient sky.
“Don’t you think I have better things to think about than your bedroom?”
“When people know about the three of us that’s the first thing they think. That’s why Paul Anderson doesn’t talk to me anymore.”
“Is that what you’re so upset about?”
It didn’t really seem that upsetting to Laurel, who hardly knew Paul Anderson.
“I’m upset when it does happen the way people think it happens.”
“Are you about to tell me things I don’t ask about and don’t really want to know?”
“Probably,” Dylan said.
“We work really well as a family. But my life with Eli is private and my life with Lance is private. And that’s the way it is with all of us. Sometimes we sleep in the same bad, but sometimes we do have three ways and stuff. Because Elias likes it, usually.”
“Well, you must like it a little,” his cousin said with her unmerciful logic.
“I like everything I’ve ever done,” Dylan said, “when I’m doing it. Some things are harder to live with after they’re done. And for some reason, me and Lance don’t do well with that kind of thing. It makes things really weird and awkward. Elias? He figures why not? He loves it.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t and I wish I did, because really, he’s right. We are a family, so why not?”
“Give me your jacket,” Laurel said, “I need to sit down, and I don’t want to have a wet ass.”
Dylan obeyed and Laurel folded both jackets under her and then sat down, stretching out her legs so that they almost touched the water.
“What exactly is it that you don’t like about it?”
“Oh, com’on. Are we playing therapist?”
“Yes, and keep in mind, one day I’ll be a real one.”
Dylan sighed, sat down heedless of the sand and said, “I’ve done a lot of stuff. I’ve done three ways. I did my first one when I was,” he thought of telling Laurel the whole truth and then settled on, “when I was much too young. I didn’t hate it. I loved it. I was doing all sorts of things with people I would never see again. But Lance and Elias are my family. They’re my boyfriend. I mean, I don’t even think about in the plural. We’re married, and when we do that stuff I feel—this is the way I feel—like we’re doing something sort of cheap and animal. When I’m with Lance I want to be with Lance. When I’m with Elias I want to be with him. When I’m… when I’m fucking one of them in front of the other or… stuff like that, it’s very hot, and then when it’s over I feel a little sick about it. I feel like I’m that same out of control kid who has to do any old thing to get off, and Lance was never that type of person so… that’s why he looks the way he does today. He’s still that good Catholic, and quite frankly being gay and being married to two men is a hell of a stretch for a good Irish Catholic boy. This is one stretch too many. He can’t take it. We can’t take it.”
Laurel thought for a moment.
“My life is much less complicated,” she said, at last. “You need to talk to Elias.”
“He’s not like us. He’s stronger than us.”
“You’re pretty strong yourself.”
“He’s the reason we’re even together. He was the one that said we should be a family. He organizes everything. He’s always right.
“And I know why he wants us at the same time,” Dylan said. “For him it’s totally different. He… for him if one of us isn’t there something is missing. He never wants anyone to be left out. But for me… it’s just very different.”
“Do you want me to talk to him,” Laurel stood up casually.
“Huh, what?” Dylan shot up, his face red.
“Hell, no!”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t say anything, Lor!”
“Alright, already.” She shrugged.
“So,” Laurel said, after a while, “what else do you want to do today?”
“I think I’d like to walk to the Krishna temple. Sort of get my self back in line. It’s a really cool provided you don’t talk to anyone.”
Laurel snorted.
“It’s like… I don’t know what it’s like. Maybe going to a Catholic church when you’re Episcopalian. Except Hare Krishnas aren’t really Hindus at all. If you just buy their incense and their music, maybe go to pray and be quiet, it’s a nice place. If you start reading their books and shit, you might get a little freaked out.”
They began to walk away from the beach. A little north of them was a clump of seagulls, opening and closing their mouths, minding their business. As they passed the square public restroom with the lock on it, there was a bum smoking a cigarette who gave them a thumbs up.
“That bum’s got the right idea,” Dylan said. “I know they say you shouldn’t call them bums, but… I think it sounds better than homeless.”
The cousins walked back up the street holding hands, looking to the unknowledgeable eye like a couple. Laurel put her head on Dylan’s shoulder for a moment.
“I’ve always felt secure with you,” she said.
“I have no idea why.”
“Because you never do anything wrong.”
Dylan gave a bitter chuckle.”
“You spent so much time being guilty over things in the past,” Laurel said, “that didn’t really happen for very long. But everybody loves you because you love them. I don’t think you’ve ever hurt anyone. At least not on purpose. And if you did I’m sure you made it right. I can’t say that about too many other people.”
Dylan did not respond. He just kept walking up Morse, hearing the sound of his cousin’s voice, for if he was her security—what a strange idea!—then she had certainly always been his.

By the time they reached the apartment on Magnolia, the place had attained a peace it had lacked that morning. In the corner over the window there was a light burning before Radha and Krishna, and a stick of the incense like the sweet rosy stuff they’d bought at the Krishna Temple. Lance would never touch that altar, so it must have been Elias. The house was quiet and clean and there was no sign of either of the other boys.
Laurel went to the refrigerator, saying, “I can’t stay much longer. I need to go pick up Moshe from his parents.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in West Ridge.”
“I meant Lance and Elias.”
“Probably in Elias’s bedroom, cause that’s the one with the shut door.”
It was while the coffee was percolating that the bedroom door opened and Elias came out.
“Lance is asleep,” he said, simply. “I’d say don’t wake him, but you already know that. And once he’s out, he’s out. You know that too.”
Elias went back down the hall. Laurel, still in the kitchen, watched Dylan follow him, The two of them were looking into the room on Lance.
“It’s amazing. He looks like a baby that way, and who would ever think of Lance Bishop as a baby?” Elias said. He put his finger to his lip and closed the door.
“Everything is alright,” he said. “everything will be alright.”
He took Dylan’s hand and brought him back to the kitchen.
Laurel was taking coffee mugs from the cupboard, and Elias said, “I look over you when you sleep, too. Sometimes when you’re both asleep, I look over you and think how I would do anything to keep you all alright. I do not like this creamer. I’m going to get the other.” Elias said this all in one breath.
“Things were not alright this morning,” he continued. “That was my fault.”
“Nothing’s your fault.”
“If I ask you to do things I know you don’t want to do, then that’s my fault.”
“Am I even supposed to be hearing this?” Laurel asked.
Elias just shrugged.
“I assume you already know most of it. Dylan tells you everything.”
There was no rancor in Elias’s voice.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Sounds like Elias and Dylan are going to continue their serious talk in the next portion. I am very curious to see what the outcome is. I am glad that Dylan had Laurel to talk to about the serious stuff. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I've always loved the relationship between Laurel and Dylan, and what is more I love that Laurel is not just the support, but feels supported by Dylan and has her own life. Yes, this chapter is all about marriage, and Dylan and Elias aren't finished talking at all.

 

[ChrisGibson]

After a pot of coffee, Laurel got up, and left. It took a while to leave because it was hard to say goodbye to Dylan, especially after a summer in New York, and then she drove the short distance to West Ridge and had dinner with the Fromms. It was good, but heavy and full of starch and Laurel was already full of coffee. The whole meal, Moshe kept catching her hand and smiling, and she kept thinking of what Maia had said:
“But I’ll never be a Jew. It’s not quite the same. Especially since I’ll never be white.”
“The Fromms aren’t like that.”
“The Fromms are not the totality of American Judaism.

For the first time there was doubt in Laurel. Maia was a twenty year old who had run off with her disaffected boyfriend and returned to Rossford married, and yet Laurel couldn’t dismiss her best friend’s words.
“We could stay here tonight?” Moshe said.
They could. Laurel could have her room, and then when the family was asleep, Moshe could sneak in. Even now, even as full as she was there was a part of her that savored the idea of reaching up to touch his face in the dark, making room for the length of his body in the bed.
“She wants to go back home,” Marta pointed out, though, reading Laurel well. “And there’s still light enough for it. Make sure you drive, Moshe. She’s been driving all day.”
And so they left West Ridge. They drove up Devon until they reached Sheridan, and then down Sheridan till they came to the Outer Drive. The lake passed them on one side and the tall buildings of the city on the other. It took longer to drive through the city than it would to get from the southern most border of Chicago to home. Laurel grew tired of Chicago and fell asleep by the time they reached Hyde Park.
The darkness of evening had settled in when they reached Rossford. Laurel stopped at Fenn’s house before she went on to her mother’s. She had a sense everyone would be there and thought Thackeray would like to hear about his brother.
Everyone, Fenn first, was glad to see her. He embraced his niece and said, “You snuck in and out of the city this morning without coming over.”
“Well, I did spend the day with Dylan. And this must be Thackeray.”
“Hi,” Thackeray nodded his head, and his hair bobbed up and down.
Layla was in the kitchen, and she kissed Laurel, too.
“Welcome, Moshe,” she said.
“Everyone’s glad to see me,” Laurel said, parting from her aunt. “But everything’s not right… Something’s happened.”
Todd and Dena were in the house, too, and so was Riley. They’d been speaking in low voices and now Fenn said, “Well, it is because of Barb Affren.”
“What?” Laurel started.
“She was old,” Layla allowed.
Laurel knew Barb. Not well, she admitted. She was Meredith’s grandmother.
“She died this morning,” Fenn said, simply. “It is a funny thing. No one really expects death in the morning.”



Though later they were to claim that he had all the choice, in those early days, Elias often experienced his lack of choice. Dylan had been his friend his whole life, and when he was fifteen, for the first time, in the same bed, sharing a blanket had turned into sex. The day afterward Dylan said nothing about it. It happened two other times, and each time was more intense. By the time Dylan sat him down and gave him a lecture, there was no virginity left in Elias.
“What we’re doing isn’t right,” Dylan had told him. “I mean, what I’m doing to you.”
“Fucking me?”
“That only happened once,” Dylan held up a lame finger, and Elias turned his head, looking at him like he was the biggest fool in the world.
“We’re supposed to be friends. I’m supposed to look after you. Like a brother.”
“That is the silliest crap I’ve ever heard,” Elias shook his head. “You’re nothing like a brother.”
Dudes on the way to fucking each other always had that idea in their head, “We’re like brothers,” Laying under the covers with Dylan, playing footsie, gently removing his clothes, was nothing like being brothers. The idea of doing that with Bennett made him wretch.
“I just feel like I’m misleading you,” Dylan said, simply.
“I like having sex with you,” said Elias with equal simplicity.
Dylan frowned about this and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’m no good. Not for a boyfriend or anything. I’ve always had someone, and I don’t know how to be alone. I don’t really even know how to sleep alone. I’ve been with a lot of guys.”
“You’re safe though, right? You don’t have anything.”
“Of course I don’t have anything!”
“Well, you just said—”
“Look, I haven’t been with that many guys. And not that way all the time,” Dylan said.
Elias didn’t know what the hell that meant.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “I’ve heard other guys talking about sleeping with you. About how good it was. And here you are, my friend, this close. And you know how I am. And fifteen. It would have been stupid if I hadn’t lost my virginity to you.”
“You make it sound so calculated,” Dylan began, and then there was the surprised look on his face. His face went red.
“I thought it just happened,” he said.
“It did just happen,” Elias told him.
“But you… You intended it all the time.”
“I intended it when I asked if I could sleep in your bed.”
“Oh, fuck this,” Dylan got up. “Fuck this. Elias, you’re making my head hurt. You have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because of what you just said,” Dylan told him. “Jesus Christ, what part of that sounds right?”
“It all sounds right. And it’s not like I used you! You clearly wanted it.”
“I didn’t want to start sleeping with one of my only friends,” Dylan sounded a little wretched now.
“That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to have a friend who was a friend. I wanted—I wanted to know I have some control over myself. That I’m good for people, not bad for them.”
“Dylan—”
“What could be worse than having your parents let you stay in my room, having my parents let it happen, them being sure that nothing will ever happen between Dylan—who is seventeen—and his fifteen year old friend that he’s always looked after. And then it turns out it is happening? What could be worse than that? It’s like… if I started sleeping with Chay. Or Sheridan.”
“What would be so wrong with that? And besides, they both ended up with guys who had the same relationship you have to me, only there’s a hell of a lot more years between them.”
“And you sit here, looking at me,” Dylan went on, “so logical like, ‘Yeah, of course, I wanted you to fuck me when we met! I instigated the whole thing!’”
“Aren’t we friends?”
For the first time in all the years Elias had known him, Dylan looked distinctly panicked.
“I’ll just,” he touched Dylan’s arm. And then he went to hug him. Dylan was so rigid Elias didn’t dare try to hold him close or stroke him. He was beginning to think he’d done something terrible. He let him go.
“I’ll go,” Elias told him.
Dylan didn’t say anything, and so Elias left.
It was days before they talked again, days before Elias came over. He didn’t stay very long. Things were so awkward between them.
“That’s a… good book,” Dylan said, one afternoon, pointing to what Elias was reading.
For Dylan that was a very lame line, but he knew Dylan was trying.
“It’s hard for me to read.”
“I’ll… You might want to read Aristotle first. I have him up in my room.”
Elias nodded and followed him.
This time around, looking for books in Dylan’s room strictly meant looking for books in Dylan’s room. Dylan pulled the book down and gave it to him.
“I’ll read it and give it back to you soon.”
“Don’t worry about it. Keep it.”
Dylan hugged him on the way out. Elias wanted to surrender to the hug, to fall into the warmth of Dylan’s body, to hold onto him, but he knew that wasn’t allowed. This sort of rigid love with almost visible boundaries would stand between the two of them until the day when they finally kissed in Rossford High School library, and then it would not turn into the passion of those nights in Dylan’s room until the afternoon where they rented a hotel room and made love.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was sad to read about Barb. She will be missed by those around her. Dylan seems to be very confused and upset at the moment. I hope he can sort things out with himself and at least be friends with Elias. I don't know where this leaves Lance but I will have to wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, yes, Barb was getting impossibly old, but I had always been afraid to let her die. This seems appropriate especially in light of it being the last book. I think if I wrote this series now, when I actually have had to let someone go, some of the very ancient characters would not have made it to be so old. As Dylan and Elias they are doing what Dylan and Elias do, which is having an argument because people in a relationship can do that and it doesn't mean they're going to break up.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DEATH IN THE MORNING

“IT’S SO STRANGE TO be here when she isn’t,” Nell said. She stood over the sofa, not sitting, as if even that was a sacrilege.
“I keep waiting for her to show up.”
The Affren house seemed strangely dark, no matter how many lights they turned on. The furniture and the curtains, the art on the walls, were all inexcusably old. The excuse had been Barb, and now she was gone.
Awkwardly standing around the house were Bill, and Maisy. Milo’s mother Tina, and his father John were on the sofa, and in a chair, beside Dena and Milo, sat Maggie.
“So, you’re my grandmother,” she said to Tina.
Tina, still blond, and barely in her sixties, seemed a little insulted by the idea of a grown woman calling her grandma.
“Yes,” Meredith told her, coming out of the kitchen with a platter. “That’s your grandmother.”
There was a knock on the door, but only out of courtesy, and then it opened and Fenn and Todd entered, followed by Adele, Layla, Thackeray and Liam.
“We’ve got food, and we’ve got booze,” Adele said, “so now everyone just relax while I put this place in some order.”
“I’ve been trying to put it together,” Maisy began.
Adele hugged her old friend, and then when they parted, she said, “She had a good run.”
“Mom did so much,” Maisy said, looking from Adele to Bill. “I always thought when the time came I would be sober and ready and have lots of good jokes on hand. Right now I can’t think of anything. Except how numb I am.”
“I think we need music,” Maggie murmured. “Dena, help me find something. Nobody really wants to be talking right now.”
Maisy went around the house, lighting jar candles.
“Now I do remember,” she said, as a candle flame lit up behind an image of the Sacred Heart. “That broken old Saint Jude. Mom and Dad used to put a lottery ticket under it every Saturday and there was one year when Dad told me that he thought they needed a new Saint Jude, because it had been dropped so many times, and it was so cracked the transmission wasn’t getting up to heaven. That’s why he said they never won the lottery.”
“And that’s why Mom got the new Saint Jude,” Bill realized.
“Yes,” said Maisy, “but Dad died a week later.
“Look,” Roger lifted up the Jude on the dusty mantle, “here’s an old… this must be a twenty year old lottery ticket.”
The Affren children gathered around, and the three of them held it in the tips of their fingers, laughing at the faded pink print on the browned paper. Behind them, from the stereo, Sarah Vaughan sang:

When you must do without him
But your dreams are still about him
You’ll begin the lonely hours

When your romance is ending
And your heart has stopped pretending
You are in the lonely hours

Oh, how slow the moments go
When your love disappears
Oh, how slow the moments go
Every minute is a thousand years

There was a knock on the door, but they were so used to people walking right in that no one answered. When it came again, Fenn looked at Meredith, and said, “I’ll get it?”
She nodded.
Fenn answered the door, and held in his breath.
“Hey, Fenn. We came as soon as we could.”
A little rougher for wear, a little older than they had been when he’d seen them last, in black coats and caps which made them look a little priestly, a little like they had once been, stood Keith McDonald, and Daniel Malloy.


“You haven’t changed.”
“Well, you just saw me four months ago,” Fenn told Dan. “Not frequent, but more frequent than the entire year before where you disappeared.”
Dan nodded.
“I accept that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
They were sitting in the bay window of Barb’s house, looking out onto Leeper Street.
“That I’ve been a very bad boy. Me and Keith are pretty solitary these days. We don’t get out much.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t ever call.”
“Point taken.
“As soon as Dena called Keith and told him about Barb, we packed a bag.”
“Then the point isn’t taken,” Fenn said mildly.
“I loved Barb, but she’s gone. The point is why rush in your car and drive as far as you can for someone who’s dead, but wait and wait and wait to see the living?”
Dan didn’t say anything to this. He’d learned that sometimes not answering Fenn was best.
“Life is so much shorter than we thought it was,” Fenn continued. “It feels so long. It feels very tedious, and then you look back and there go sixty years. Dylan is twenty one now.”
“Is it true Dylan has a brother?”
“Yes. Apparently Eileen had him hidden away.”
“And then?”
“Well, Eileen is dead,” Fenn said succinctly. “Before her death she got the boy out of foster care and made him known to Dylan, and Dylan made him known to Tom and me. And the rest…” Fenn shrugged.
The door opened and looking sober, side by side, Brendan entered the house with Sheridan who wore a blue pea coat and was dandling Raphael.
“Oh, God, remember when Brendan was just a little boy?” Dan whispered as Brendan approached them.
“I even remember when you were a little boy,” Fenn reminded Dan. “Bren always had that serious look, though.”
“What serious look?” Brendan said with a grin, sitting down in the old chair across from them, his knees wide apart.
Fenn ignored this and said, “Dena’s in the kitchen, if you’re looking for her.”
“I was. But I also figured it was good not to crowd her.”
“The way Charlie’s crowding Meredith,” Fenn gestured across the room.
“Um?” Brendan looked over there and said, “That is what one might call cloying.
“Is it just me,” Brendan gripped the edges of the chair, “or does this house suddenly have no excuse to look so old now that Barb is gone?”
“You are not the first person to say that,” Dan told him. “It reminds me of the rectory. Has that changed?”
Brendan shrugged and Fenn said, “I haven’t been in the rectory since you left.”
“He hasn’t been to church since you left,” Brendan said, wryly.
“Well, no,” Dan allowed, “we knew that was a temporary thing.”
“I am a Christian in my own way,” Fenn said. “Do the two of you insist on talking as if I’m not in the room?”
“Not at all,” Brendan said, “I want to show you my book later.”
“A new one?” Dan said.
“Well, yes,” Brendan told him. “I don’t want to be that guy who once wrote a book.”
“What’s it about?”
“I hate that question,” Brendan said.
“Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound like that,” Brendan clarified. “I mean, I hate that I don’t really have much of an answer to it. It’s about… I guess it’s just about a guy. Like me. Sort of like me. Actually, not at all like me. And I’ve hardly started it, so…” Brendan shrugged. “I do think it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever written, though.”
Brendan clapped his thigh in that brisk way that meant he was about to change the subject.
“So,” he said, “When do I get to meet your new son?”
“Thackeray is with Tom. He’s quite the musician. The two of them are like best friends. The boy may be the best thing to happen to him.”
Dan nodded.
“Father Dan, you’re getting grey,” Brendan said.
Dan Malloy wrinkled his nose at Brendan. After Dan had left the priesthood, Brendan had made a serious effort to stop calling him Father. In the end, it hadn’t succeeded, and this was just as well because eventually Dan had surrendered to inevitability and been ordained an Anglican priest. So it was not at the title Father, but the mention of grey that Dan wrinkled his nose.
As Keith came to sit on the side of the chair with Dan, Fenn continued,
“At this very moment, Thackeray is with Tom and Bryant, and of course Bryant is over the moon because he’s the conductor of the regional symphony.”
“Seriously!” Keith said. “Well, now I’ve got to go over and congratulate him.”
“Yes you do,” Fenn said. “You’ve been sort of neglectful of your friends in Rossford.”
Dan was looking at Fenn who asked: “What?”
“It’s just I’m surprised it doesn’t bother you a little. Thackeray with Tom and Bryant.”
“Thackeray is Tom’s son. Bryant is a great musician, and the rest is not worth remembering.”
The little circle of men had become very quiet now, and Fenn said, “A lifetime has passed.”
“It is the province of friends to remember,” Dan said. “I can’t help it.”
“You always lived more in the past than I did,” Fenn told him.
“I think somewhere underneath it all I’ve always been angrier than you,” Dan said.
Brendan grinned at the aging priest and said, “You’ve always been the mellowest person I’ve known and Fenn… But no,” Brendan reflected, “that isn’t true.”
Keith, who was Bryant’s good friend, said, “Surely we can find something else to discuss at a time like this.”
Dan Malloy did not want to finish discussing their current something, but Fenn looked away from his old friend and said to Keith, “Yes. Surely we can.”

MORE THURSDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a excellent portion! It was nice to see Dan and Keith even if it was for a sad reason. Barb will be missed by all. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I know. I wish Dan and Keith could have come in earlier, though I suppose Dan has already been in the first two parts of the book as a younger person. Now that Dan is here in the present, I think he's going to be around for the rest of the book. Hope you had a great day.

 

[ChrisGibson]

They walked for so long Dan and Fenn approached the long strip of Banding Park that went down Dorr Road until it reached Saint Barbara’s. It ended a block or so after the cul de sac that shot down to Fenn and Todd’s house. The park was deep enough that after a while you didn’t even see the traffic anymore. You hardly heard it. There was just the deep green of the grass in its last hurrah, before heat relinquished its hold on the world and autumn moved in.
“We never had to talk that much,” Dan said, at last. “Maybe that’s why I don’t call like I should.”
Fenn sat down on the grass. When it looked as if Dan was about to do the same, Fenn said, “I’m warning you now, it’s not easy to get up. And if you’re on the ground, who’s going to help me.”
“It can’t be that hard,” Dan said, while he settled down on the grass beside Fenn with a small grunt.
“I feel wet,” Dan said.
“So do I. But I don’t mind. You should sit on your jacket.”
Dan did not do that. He did not want to sit on a good pea coat. He just resituated himself.
“You were never really a nature person,” Fenn commented.
“Of course I… No,” Dan realized. “I never was. It isn’t too late to change is it?”
“If it’s not too late for me to adopt a fifteen year old, then it isn’t too late for you to change.”
“I feel naturely. Naturelike,” Dan said, “up in the house in Michigan. It’s the closest to a natural person I’ve ever been. It’s so quiet.”
“You’ve always been quiet.”
“My mouth has been quiet. My mind never was.”
“My mind still isn’t,” Fenn smiled a little.
“I miss being here.”
“You can always come back.”
“And you can always come up,” Dan said.
Fenn looked at him. Dan spoke had not spoken in anger, but in a tone of discovery.
“I never came to this place ‘cause it was so great. I came because you were here. You could always come up to visit me, you know?”
Before Fenn could open his mouth, Dan continued, “I know you’re busy. I know you have two children now. Though one of them is pretty grown and pretty capable. But you can come and see me.”
“I will go back with you,” Fenn said, simply.
“What?”
“I will go back with you and Keith for a few days. I will bring Thackeray with me. Part of me thinks it’s very silly to have adopted a child who stays with Tom half the time. But, if I’m going to be his father, then I had better be his father. I will bring him with me.”
“Will Tom like it?”
“I don’t care. I never did. That’s probably one reason we didn’t work out. Yes. We’ll go up. And… Be natural.”
Ahead of them the trees marched crown after green crown, and through them Fenn and Dan could see the little houses. The sky was very blue. Everything was so perfect, and things were rarely perfect.
“I have never known how to describe you,” Fenn said.
Dan touched his hand. “Do you have much cause to describe me?”
“To myself,” Fenn explained. “In my journal. In the journal in my head. Todd I can describe. Tom, yes. You…. I have never gotten a hold of you.”
“I’m the Holy Ghost.”
“What?”
“In your trinity, I’m the Holy Ghost.”
“You are so strange.”
“Todd’s the Son. I guess Tom would be the Father—literally—and if you can’t get a hold around me I’m the Holy Spirit. I’ve said that three times, so I should probably confess or something.”
Dan began laughing to himself. He was still sweet faced and sparkly eyed. Well, he wasn’t very old. He was the same age as Fenn. Fenn realized:
Dan is the only man I ever let go.
He hadn’t let Tom go. He had stopped living with Tom years ago, but Tom was still a part of his life. He had raised his children. And Todd was the one who had come to him. Maybe one very dark and inconceivable day he would have to let Todd go too, but Dan was the only person who, when he was full of love for him, he had given up.
“What’s wrong?” Dan said, touching his cheek. “You’ve got that look in your eyes.”
Fenn turned from him.
“It’s only that I’m very stupid. This whole… I don’t know who you are to me. Of course I know.”
Instead of denying it, Dan said, “Still?”
“It was never meant to be permanent. Something always came to interrupt it. We always belonged to something else, or someone else. Adultery is such a simple thing. I’ve seen it. I don’t want to be with you, I want to be with you instead. Or, I want both of you because I am selfish. Guilt is simple too. But to belong to someone, or something, the way a foot belongs to the leg… To belong one place and love another, to love one thing and also love another, two kinds of loves, two very true loves. That was always how it was with us.
“My friendship with you is my love for you, and that love has been a testing ground. With Todd my test was coming to him, picking the love up he offered. With you the test was letting go.”
Dan smiled at Fenn a little painfully, and Fenn said, “You let me ramble and you say nothing.”
Dan shook his head.
“It wasn’t rambling. It was everything.”


Maia Meradan, now properly called Maia Anderson, barged into her father’s office and said, “Dad, we have to talk.”
Todd was sitting in his easy chair, smoking a cigarette and not even pretending to edit when he put the cigarette down and looked up at his daughter.
“Now, we have to talk?” he said. “We have to talk now? After you walk into my house with Bennett Anderson and tell the whole family you all ran off and got married.”
Maia frowned and said, “Well, when you put it that way…”
“There isn’t another way to put it. Your mother and I are—surely you knew when you did this—you—” Todd kept starting and stumbling as he rose up. Her father wore old jeans with holes in them and a ragged sweater that smelled of cigarette ash.
“You knew we wouldn’t support it.”
Maia took a very deep breath and then she said, “Of course I knew.”
Todd had not expected such a bald admission, and now he asked her, “What was it that I or your mother did that caused this?”
Maia looked at Todd strangely.
“You didn’t do anything. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or Mom.”
Todd looked at her now.
“That’s why I didn’t call and I didn’t ask. Why? So I can have my overly protective father and my two lesbian mothers tell me marrying Bennett’s not a good idea, and he can have his family say the same thing. And then, in the end, I’d either make you see it my way—which probably wouldn’t have happened—or just do what I wanted, which is marry Bennett.”
While Todd stood before his daughter, his brows furrowed in a frown not so much of disapproval as the attempt to understand, Maia continued, “I did not ask you, because even though I love you, it was not your decision to make. It was mine.”
Todd opened his mouth, but Maia put her hand up gently.
“And if it was the wrong decision, if it was a mistake, then again, it was mine, Dad. Not Mom’s, not yours. If it shocked you, I am sorry. If it offended you, then I’m sorry too. But I don’t see that it could have been done any other way.”
Todd was about to say that he did, but he also knew that this would have sent the conversation into one of those spirals his mother used to put him through. As much as he loved her, long after the matter was settled, she’d have to have the last word, or the last thousands words, spiraling around and around on a subject that was already past. Maia was married. This subject was past.
Maia did not smoke, and in her head she knew the smell of cigarette smoke was unpleasant. But to her, the smell of cigarettes on her father was Todd at rest, in his house, deep in carcinogenic thoughts. This sweater, heavy with acrid tobacco, he only wore in the house, and hardly washed. It was, in a way that she thought would have looked silly in print, the smell of love.
She hugged her father, and the tall man put his chin on the top of her head, wrapping his arms around her.
“You do need to talk to your mother, though,” he said.
“I know,” Maia admitted. “I’m sort of dreading it.”
Todd nodded and squeezed her reassuringly, but what he said was:
“You should.”

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