The Hidden Lives of Virgins

[CharmedFan28]

I don't know how to feel about Mick and Ashley. Ashley seems to just do exactly what she wants without thinking about what will happen next.

 

[ChrisGibson]

GEORGE STEARNE FINDS OUT A THING OR TWO, VAUGHAN GETS GENERAL APPROVAL FROM FOUR OUT OF FOUR GAY MEN, AND MACKENZIE AND CEDRIC HAVE A LITTLE TALK ABOUT FEAR



“You really dig Vaughan, don’t you?” Mackenzie said as he and Simon sat on the porch.
Simon nodded, took out a cigarette, and said, “You’re lucky as hell, Mackenzie.”
The cigarette smelled good to Mackenzie. He’d been around tobacco too long he decided.
“Told him he could sit out here with us,” Mackenzie said. “But he said we needed time just to talk alone.”
“Well,” Simon admitted, inhaling, and then shooting smoke out of nostrils, “this is true. But it’ll be cool to talk to him before we leave.”
“When you all going?”
“The morning,” Simon shrugged.
“Cedric’ll let you have the spare room here. It’ll be great.”
“Things with you and Ian?”
“I don’t know if there is a me and Ian.”
“Sure there is,” Simon said. “You think me and Drew didn’t have the same fight?”
Mackenzie looked at Simon in surprise.
“The same fight two or three times,” Simon said. “And we don’t have a Vaughan or a Tina to give us some common sense. And we were a year younger than you and Ian. I mean, I love him so much, but I’ve been such a bastard sometimes. I don’t know if it’s in guys or in people, but there’s so much of the asshole I work at getting out of myself. I just turned eighteen. I’m an eighteen year old white male- Midwesterner. Not known for being the most loving, in touch kind of creature in the world. We’re not known for leaving ourselves behind, and here I am,” Simon took a drag on his cigarette, “trying to turn myself into a lover for that guy that just drove over to Ian’s with what I hope were good directions.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Well, what? Listen! Do I have to tell you what I saw when I saw you and Ian? You all don’t even have to try! I mean, sure this whole outing yourself must have been a pain in the ass. But the worse pain is not being able to love, not being able to do it right, be a good lover. I don’t mean good in bed. I mean good at loving. But you two are surrounded by people who do nothing but love you all day long, and Ian... he doesn’t even have to learn. He loves you so much. You can see it. He’d jump off a bridge for you.”
Mackenzie smiled wryly.
“I’m about to the point of telling him he can do just that.”

With little interest, Ian heard the car stop in the driveway. It was not Friday. It was almost time for bed. He wished that he had some of his stash left. He wished he could get high tonight. But it was all gone. He looked around his quiet bedroom. It had been so long since it had just been him, and he had just been bored. Being bored was easier back then, when he’d had nothing with which to compare it.
When there was a knock at his door, he said, “Come in, Mom!” And he sat there, head cocked and mouth a little open as he took in the last person short of Jesus Christ he’d expected to see.
“Drew? Drew Marsh!” Ian jumped up, and hugged the other boy. Then he separated from him, holding him by the shoulders. “What are you doing here? What are- ? Did Vaughan call you?”
Drew only nodded rapidly, and grinned.
“He said you and Mackenzie are in trouble.”
“You make it sound like a National Crisis.”
“Well it is a crisis,” Drew said. “Can I sit on your bed?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I’m rude. Look around. This is my room.” And then Ian said, “My room bites, Drew. You wanna go out some place? He pulled down his old globe, and lifted up the Northern Hemisphere.
“Sweet!” said Drew.
“I got money. I’ll buy,” Ian pulled out a couple of twenties.

They were in a booth at the Golden Rail when the waiter brought them their food, and Ian nodded his thanks.
“I’ll refill your Cokes,” the man said, and left.
“So Vaughan calls you guys down like a couple of fairy godmothers- no pun intended- ” they both grinned, “to fix things up?” Ian said, picking up a steak fry and salting it before putting it in his mouth. He chewed a while, and then said, “You know what makes me feel like a loser? If we were married, a man and woman, and Vaughan did something like this, I’d think- of course, he’s trying to save our marriage. But I’m a guy, and Kenzie’s a guy, and so it sounds kind of weird. And that gets me to thinking that maybe it’s me that didn’t take our relationship seriously. That maybe to me it wasn’t a real relationship.”
“Do you think me and Sy are real?”
“Aw, Drew!”
“No, seriously,” Drew said, taking up his Coke as the waiter came back. “We’re the same thing. I mean, a couple of guys. And no one but you all know about us. So does that mean that whenever a guy loves another guy it’s fake? That it’s not real until you find the right girl, and everyone knows and calls it real, and you go down the aisle while everyone claps for you?”
“Drew, man, I don’t know,” Ian said. “It’s late at night, and you’re getting all heavy.”
“Well, who’s gonna get heavy with you if I’m not? How many gay guys do you know in Jamnia? Who are sort of like you?”
Ian looked up from his plate, and said, “None. Except Kenzie.”
“That’s right,” Drew said. “Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking,” Drew told him.
“You do?”
“That’s right. You’ve never been with anyone but Mackenzie. For over three months you’ve been steady doing another guy- ”
“God, Drew!”
“You’re doing him aren’t you?” Drew said.
Ian reddened, and rolled his eyes, “Yes, Drew. I’m doing Mackenzie.”
“Right,” Drew said, “and all of a sudden you get scared. Maybe you’ve gotten scared before. For whatever reason. And you start thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll go straight. Maybe after I’ve been banging another guy—and liking it—I can fix myself up, and get a nice girl so that everyone approves of me. And then I can train myself to like doing her.’”
“I had a girlfriend once,” Ian told his plate.
“Well, congratulations, Ian,” Drew said in a tone that let him know that everyone had a girlfriend once. “But you’ve got a boyfriend now. You’re gonna spend the rest of your life, gay or straight, trying to improve yourself, struggling with shit about you. Some of it because other people don’t like it, some of it because it really needs to change. To all the crap you already gotta work with you’re gonna add trying to straighten your sexual preference out? Here’s what’s gonna happen:”
Ian sighed, rudely, and said, “Tell me what’s gonna happen.”
“You leave Mackenzie. Maybe you will get another girl. Maybe you’ll like her. Another guy’ll come around, and another, and another. You’ll sleep with guys. You’ll want guys. They’ll remind you of Kenzie, but they won’t be him. Dude, listen to me.”
Then Drew said, louder, “Listen, goddamnit.”
“Alright,” Ian said, looking up at him, angry now.
“We’re the lucky ones, alright? You and me, and for that matter Vaughan, who’s in love with Jesus, and his sister and her boyfriend. And hell, even Tina and Luke. But especially you and me. You know how many people spend their whole lives looking for someone who loves them, and wants to be loved by them? You know how hard it is for a man to find another man ? Now, Ian, I love you, seriously. That’s for true. But God dropped Mackenzie right in your lap, you didn’t even have to work for him. He was just right there in your world, and he’s a great guy, Ian. And if you let him go, well, then you deserve whatever you get.”

More than ever George Stearne wanted morning to come so he could tell Tina Foster the good news. He would even call her Tina he decided, maybe Martina just to razz her. But it was still late at night, and sitting in his apartment, drumming his foot against the edge of the table wasn’t making time pass any quicker, so—at last—he got up, and got into his car to drive toward Mick Rafferty’s.
His first thought was joy when he saw Tina Foster’s car parked in front of the apartment building. Even in the dark he knew the LTD. Then he realized that there was no reason for Tina to be here. He went in through the lobby. The lights shone on the old black and white tiles. He went past the glass door, up the worn carpeted stairway. Up the three flights. As he was coming up to the third floor, he heard laughing. A girl. George came up to the first apartment door that was open, and Mick Rafferty and Ashley Foster went silent, staring at him, bug eyed.
“Good evening, Ms. Foster,” George Stearne said.
“Mr. Stearne,” Ashley said. Then she turned to Mick Rafferty.
“M- Mr. Rafferty, I’d better go,” she said.
“Well, you’re legal now, aren’t you?” said George Stearne.
“What?” Ashley started.
“Nothing,” Mick said grimacing, before George could open his mouth. “Good night, Ashley. You rest well.”
“Good night,” she said. And then she moved past George Stearne. “Goodnight, Mr. Stearne.”
“Um hum,” he murmured.
“What was all that?” Mick Rafferty hissed. “Get in here, I don’t want to fight with you in the hall.”
George Stearne walked into the apartment.
“It’s her,” he said to Mick. “That’s the piece of ass you’ve been so excited about.”
“Stop being stupid,” Mick said in a way that almost made Stearne believe he was being stupid.
“She’s a student for God’s sake,” Mick said.
“That’s right, she is,” Stearne told him. “You think you’re her first?”
“Oh, God, George!”
“No, really, Mick. Just tell me. What was it in you that said, ‘This is a good idea. I should start banging a seventeen year old?’ ”
“You know what?” Mick said. “I don’t need this. I don’t need you to be judge and jury and- ”
“and executioner,” Stearne concluded. “For God’s sake, if you’re gonna make a speech make an original one, Mick. But please let me hear it from your mouth. From your mouth tell me that I’m wrong. Or tell me that I’m not. I want you to tell me if you’re playing around with Ashley Foster?”
Mick stared blankly at his friend, and then said, picking up a towel that was on the floor.
“We’re not playing. It’s not a game.”
“Well, what the hell is it? What kind of future do you have?”
“You have got a stick up your ass.”
“I have got reality up my ass,” George pounded the side of his head because he couldn’t reach up the smack Mick’s. “And your best interest at heart. And, believe it or not, her’s... That little tart. I can’t believe you’d be this dumb.” He stopped and said, “I take it back. I can’t believe you’d be this dumb for this long a time. I gotta go.”
Stearne turned around to leave.
“Is that what you came to say?” Mick demanded. “Did you come to call me an idiot?”
“No,” Stearne said. “I came to share a little good news. But, God... I don’t feel like being around you right now. Good night.”

WHEN MACKENZIE WOKE UP IN the middle of the night and padded downstairs in his boxers and tee shirt, Cedric was sitting alone at the kitchen table, doing what looked like paying bills, but was probably the last stages of putting together a play. Mackenzie reminded himself that somewhere, in the mysterious world outside of Jamnia, Ohio, Cedric was important.
As Mackenzie went to the refrigerator to stare inside of it, Cedric, eyes never straying from his work said, “Is this the part where I continue on with my work unaware of you, or where I put an arm around your shoulder and say, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right?’”
Mackenzie grinned, and took out the pitcher of orange juice.
“I think this is the part where I just pour a glass of juice, drink it, and go back to bed without disturbing you.”
“Don’t forget to- ”
“Rinse it out before I put it in the dishwasher.”
“And- ”
“Rinse it well because its orange juice, and the pulp can stick to the inside of the glass.”
Cedric smiled, pushed his glasses up, ran his red pen through a line and said, “You’re a wonderful boy, Mackenzie.”
“And all I need to do is know how to clean a glass.”
“Life is simple that way sometimes.”
Mackenzie put the pitcher back in the refrigerator.
“Do you like Drew and Simon?” he said. “They think you and Vaughan are cool.”
Cedric stopped his work, and looked up at Mackenzie. “I think they’re... cool too,” he said, smiling. “And I think you’re cool for that matter. They’re brave. Or, at least, they’ll have to be. This is supposed to be the best time of your life.”
“Is it?” Mackenzie said. He downed half the glass of orange juice in one gulp. “I mean... was this the best time of your life?”
“Jesus God, no!” Cedric swore. “No. But... if I hadn’t learned to start enjoying life when I was young, I don’t know that I’d enjoy it now. Mackenzie, sit.”
Mackenzie nodded, and sat down, watching Cedric attentively.
Cedric pulled off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Most people are not happy or wise. Old people are not necessarily wise. If you have a little wisdom when you’re young, you’ll have it when you’re old, but if you’re young and stupid, you’ll be old and stupid and most people start off young and stupid. When you get old you hate to see someone doing it right if you haven’t, and if you’re not a little wise. You hate to see someone free if you’ve never been free. And so it’s hard sometimes for a young person to get free. Everyone wants to push you into their mold. That’s what makes being young hard. It’s hard till you get to the point when you’re old enough not to care.”
Mackenzie finished his orange juice before asking, “How long did it take you?”
“I was probably a Freshmen in college.”
“How long do you think it’ll take me?”
“Oh, I think you’re already there.”
Mackenzie drummed the sides of his glass with his fingertips. He got up to wash out the tumbler in hot water. He put it in the dishwasher, and then before he left he said,
“Cedric?”
“Yes?”
“I only pretend,” Mackenzie said. “I do care. I get scared all the time. Sometimes I can hardly breathe,” he admitted.
“You should pray,” Cedric said simply. “Go light a candle at Our Lady.”
“I don’t even know if what I’m doing is right. It would be so much easier if I knew. If I had a catechism or the Pope or something to say, ‘Mackenzie, you’re right. But I feel like since I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing, how can I pray to God to help me?”
“Oh, God’s not like that,” Cedric said. “Only helping people who deserve it. Who earn it. Help comes to people who need it. When you try to do what’s right.... That may be all that matters.”
Cedric shook his head.
“I’m fifty- two. Almost. It’s not following these rules like the Lord is some kit you put together out of a box, and if you do this, and do this, and do that then it’ll all turn out right. Or... if you’re fair it’ll all turn out right. Life is not fair. Thank God. And God helps you when you need it. And when you ask. Just keep on doing what you’re doing. Alright?”
Mackenzie nodded, and said, “Good night, Cedric.”
“And, Kenzie?”
Mackenzie turned around.
“Of course you know that whole being too old not to care thing...”
“Yeah?”
“It starts out with you still being afraid, and doing what you have to do anyway... You just... acknowledge yourself whenever yourself gets afraid, and then move on. Alright?”
Mackenzie nodded. “Alright,” he said, and headed down the hall.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Sounds like shit has hit the fan with Mick and Ashley! I wonder what will happen to them now? I hope Drew has convinced Ian that Mackenzie is right for him. I am enjoying these new characters as much as the old ones. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! I'll be late as usual because of work but I will read what you post tomorrow eventually.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, now everything is hitting the fan and George knows about Ashley and who knows where that's going to go. As you say, Ashley just does whatever she wants without thinking about the consequences and this time around, Mick did too. Drew and Simon aren't finished saying what they have to say, and now Ian's got a lot of thinking to do. We'll see what happens tomorrow! You'll see it... later than usual.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELL, YOU KNOW.... FOR SUCH A SMALL TOWN IT'S NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN JAMNIA

“George!”
George Stearne turned around on his way to teach his history class, and Kevin Foster was standing there, looking awkward as ever while he played with his tie.
“Yeah, Kevin?”
“My son’s in your next class, right?”
Stearne smiled gently, and said, “Mackenzie?”
“Right?” Kevin nodded.
“Yes.”
“Could you… could you do me a favor and send him down to my office?”
Stearne screwed up his face in thought. There were so many things that connected him to this man right now, a few of them actually decent.
Finally, Stearne said, “I don’t mean to butt into family affairs, but this time around I’m going to have to. Kevin, I think that you might have to be the one to come to Mackenzie. Now maybe I’m stepping in where I shouldn’t but- ”
“No,” Kevin said, “I think you might be right about that. I- ”
“He and Tina are in the play, so you could swing by the auditorium after school,” George suggested. “Does that sound good?”
Kevin looked a bit stupefied.
“This is where you say, ‘yes’, Kevin.”
“Yes,” Kevin said. “I’ll be there. To talk to my boy.”

There was a thump on the other side of Mackenzie’s locker while he was getting his books out, and cursing himself for being late to Mr. Stearne’s class.
“Look up, Kenzie,” Simon told him.
“Hold on,” Mackenzie said. “I can’t believe you guys would ditch your school to hang out at mine.” He closed the locker, and looked up, shutting the door. Then his eyes landed on Ian, who was with them.
“Oh, so you decided to turn up,” he said to Ian, whose smile dissolved.
“Don’t be like that, Kenzie,” said Drew, realizing that he might have stepped over a line. Mackenzie shot him a look that told him this was so, then looked at Ian.
“I wanted to talk,” Ian said.
“Well, I’ve got a class to go to. I’ve got Stearne for history, and if I don’t get there—”
The bell rang over their heads.
“- now,” Mackenzie continued, “I am history.”
He began to move forward, but Simon took his history book out of his hand.
“Who are the two of you?” Mackenzie said to Simon and Drew, “The Love Connection?”
“Vaughan’s not here, so we’ve got to be.”
“Where is Vaughan?” Ian wondered.
“Ironically enough,” Mackenzie replied, “he’s the one of us who actually is in class.”
“Why don’t the two of you go talk it out?” Drew said. “On the smoker’s porch?”
Ian gestured for Mackenzie to follow him.
“We’ll be waiting in the lobby,” Drew said. “Go on.”
Simon shooed them away.
Mackenzie looked at the two with a mixture of amazement and frustration. Ian was looking hopeful though. He thought about grabbing Mackenzie’s hand, and then thought better.
The four of them set down the hall, and then turned left through the shiny lobby past the gymnasium. Simon and Drew were to wait for them here. But they had not planned on Kevin Foster going into the gym to teach his class at that same moment. He stopped, thought, and went up to:
“Mackenzie!” Then he saw Ian. He added Ian’s name to his address, and then quickly went back to his son, “Can we talk later?”
Mackenzie thought his father looked like a stupid and overgrown boy. The fact that Kevin Foster hadn’t really been courteous to Ian was something he wasn’t sure how to feel about since, at the moment, Ian wasn’t number one on his list of people.
“Yeah, sure,” Mackenzie said, ungraciously. “This must be my lucky day, Dad.”
Mackenzie turned, and walked out of the lobby, followed by Ian. As the glass doors closed he could hear Simon saying, “Hello, I’m Simon Pendergast...”
Ian grinned at Mackenzie, who did not feel like grinning back, and said, “Kenzie, they’re gonna come out to your Dad. This is gonna be a trip.”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie muttered.
“Mackenzie...” Ian said, trying to touch him. Mackenzie backed away.
“God! Will you talk to me for a second?”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
“Then listen.”
“Please don’t tell me,” Mackenzie said, “how this whole thing has been terrible for you.”
Ian, who had been getting ready to do just that, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, “No. I was going to tell you I’m sorry I’ve been terrible to you. I’m sorry for screwing it all up so bad.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m sorry.”
“I know that. But what are you saying? That you want to be my boyfriend again? Or whatever the hell we’re supposed to be.”
Ian grabbed his hand. “You are my boyfriend. My guy, my man, whatever, alright? You’re the one who’ll get all my candy hearts on Valentine’s Day.”
“Until you call it quits again.”
“Wha? I- ”
“You got confused,” Mackenzie said. “But I didn’t. Alright? Well what happens next time, and the time after next?”
“There won’t be a next time.”
Ian tried to touch him again. Again Mackenzie backed away.
“What about when there is no Drew or Simon or Vaughan? And you listen to a moron, and break it off with me again? Am I supposed to just keep on nodding my head, and saying, ‘Come on back, Ian! Come on back! Oh, I know you’re sorry. Come on back.’ ”
“Is that a no?”
“That’s a no, Ian.”
Ian sucked in his breath, and then went up the stairs to the glass doors. Something snapped in him, and he ran back down again.
“You know, what? Fuck you, Mackenzie Foster!”
Mackenzie looked shocked.
“Yeah, I said fuck you! You’re being a bitch. We fought. Make up, get the fuck over it! Let’s get back together, now or not get back at all. I know you. You forget we’re not a regular couple. I know you too well. You’re a guy. I’m a guy. You’re a guy into another guy. So am I. I know the shit turning around in your head cause it’s turning around in mine too.”
Mackenzie looked stupid now, like his father had a second ago.
“You’ll take me back the third time I beg, right?” Ian said, “Or the fourth, fifth. Something like that. You’ll make sure I really really mean it. Well fuck that, cause I’m not gonna ask you again. I’m not gonna play a game again, and quite frankly you’ve got two years left until you can go to college, I’ve got one, and we’re both gay. I admit it! I’m gay- ” Ian shouted to the parking lot.
“And I’m horny. We’re horny, and in love with each other. We’re gonna be pretty fucking angry, and lonely in a town like Jamnia because we don’t have any one but each other. This isn’t exactly San Francisco, Kenzie!
“So,” Ian said, catching his breath. “What’s it gonna be? Are you in or out?”
“That’s your apology?” Mackenzie said, looking irritable.
“It’s my apology, and it’s my proposal,” said Ian, looking utterly serious. “Are you with me or not?”
“I- ” Mackenzie’s teeth clenched, and his breath hissed out of them.
“Ian, I don’t want to be pathetic. I don’t want to know that whenever you call I’ll just come running.”
“Why not?” Ian said with heat. “Why not? That’s what I’ve been to you. My father’ll never speak to me again. My mother’s useless to me. Baby, I walked out on my whole family for you. I got socked in the face for calling you my boyfriend. The first time you told me you loved me, all you had to do is make a gesture, and I came to bed with you. And you’re afraid to be at my beck and call? Goddamnit, please!”
“Ian, shut up.”
Ian looked at Mackenzie.
“Ian, I’m sorry. Ian, I love you.”
They didn’t kiss or hold hands or embrace or anything like that. Ian just looked around like he’d heard a gun shot. Then he nodded, and said, “Alright. Let’s go back inside.”

Roy had surprised even himself today not only by dressing for gym class, but also by nearly making a goal. Was this the secret? To turn off the part of himself that was always looking around at everything else, and hone in on the ball and the game and his aggression?
“Roy,” Coach Foster said while the boy was coming up the stairs from the locker room. “You got a minute?”
“Not really, sir,” Roy said, trying to put respect in his voice. And it was true, because when you actually participated in gym class you needed a shower, and there was no time for a shower, so you needed to splash a little water on yourself, and reapply deodorant before heading to the next class.
“This’ll only take a minute,” Kevin said in a voice that made Roy scowl. He had a feeling he wouldn’t get out of this one.
“Yes, sir,” Roy said, approaching Kevin.
“You haven’t been to the house in a while.”
Roy looked around to see if any kids were approaching, and then came closer to Kevin, and said, “You disrespected my blood, sir.”
God, they all talk like that. It must be a Lebanese thing.
“I intend to talk to Ian.”
“You should intend to talk to him very soon,” Roy said, “because he’s more than a brother to me, and I would never set foot in a house that he’d been thrown out from. Sorry, sir, that’s just the way I feel.”
Kevin nodded and said, “I see, Roy. You’ve got a point. I’ll talk to him as soon as I can.” Kevin saw the incredulous look on Roy’s face. It reminded him of Race’s looks, but not Race’s eyes. Here it reminded him of Tina, or the way Mackenzie had looked earlier this afternoon.
“That’s a promise, Roy. I didn’t mean to do what I did. You know how it is when you do things you regret.”
Roy was about to say that he didn’t. Instead he only shrugged, and turned around, striding toward the lobby.
“Eh, Roy?”
“Yeah?” Roy turned around.
“Are things still alright between you and Ryan?”
“Yes,” Roy said. Kevin had been half afraid that Roy might start taking his anger out on the boy that needed a friend so much.
“Good. He really likes having you at the house.” Then Kevin said, “We all do.”
Roy gave a strange smile, because the truth was that he liked being there. And then he turned around and left.
When Roy pushed open the doors, Rachel DuFresne stood on the other side.
“You were waiting, or was that my imagination?” said Roy.
“I just thought I’d say, hey,” she said. “You took so long to come out of class. So I guess I was waiting. Now I look desperate.”
“Naw,” Roy ducked his head, and was embarrassed to realize he was coloring. “I like that. I’m glad you waited... Just to say hi.”
“Cause,” Rachel went on as they headed down the lobby, and through the main hallway, “I thought I’d say hi to you in class today... But you were actually playing the game and everything. Like a demon.”
“I was not,” Roy grinned.
“You were. You were red and your eyes were all on fire. You looked like the devil.”
“Like a blue eyed devil?”
“Stop!” Rachel laughed, except when Roy turned his gaze on her he did look a bit like a blue eyed devil.
“You wanna go out?” he said.
“Huh?”
“Cause Vaughan- you’re cousin, my friend.... He’s trying to hook us up, and.…” Roy looked around, and cleared his throat. “I might not be opposed to that idea.”
“You’re asking me on a date?”
Roy shrugged. “I don’t know how much of a date it is,” he said. “I mean it’s probably just dinner at my house. The Chez Cane.”
“Your French accent is terrible.”
“Oui Oui, it is.”

“I could never do this, Stearne! I mean, Mr. Stearne....” Tina was breathless in the auditorium that afternoon. It was still filling up with students, and she was on the stage with him at the little table he brought out during practice.
“Which of course means, I will,” Tina said.
“I had hoped that was a yes.” Stearne smiled at her, which caught her off guard because it made him handsome, and reminded her that he was really not that old.
“Thanks,” she said, earnestly. Then Tina threw her arms around him, and hugged him tight. He was stiff in her embrace, and she said, “Stearne, what’s up?”
“What, Ms. Foster.”
Tina said, “I’m eighteen. I’m graduating in a few months, and I think I should ask you what the deal is? I mean, you’re not a mean person. You’re... this whole thing! Europe, for free. For me. But it’s like you’re afraid.” Then she shut up and said, “And now I have overstepped my boundaries. We should probably get on with the play.”
Tina got up, but Stearne put a hand on her arm. She turned around.
“Ms—Tina,” Stearne started over. “You’re right,” he said. “I... I try to distance myself from my students. I’m not that old. You may have noticed.”
“Someone said twenty-four.”
“Right,” Stearne nodded. “And it’s easy to lose track of how you’re the teacher, and a student is a student when you all are so close in age. I take my job very seriously, so I try to maintain that...”
“Frostiness?” Tina teased.
“Er, yes,” Stearne smiled back at her. “And I suppose sometimes it’s my loss.”
“Tell you what Stearne,” Tina said, “if you help me write my essay for this thing then, after graduation, I’ll swing by your place and do shots with you.”
Stearne suddenly laughed, and all the kids entering the auditorium looked up, surprised and frightened by such a sound. “You’re too much, sometimes, Ms. Foster—”
“You’re gonna have to knock that off too.”
“Martina.”
Tina shrugged, and turned around then stopped, surprised.
“Oh, my God,” she muttered, looking down from the stage.
It was her father.



MORE TOMORROW NIGHT

 

[CharmedFan28]

You were right, never a dull moment in Jamnia! I am very glad Ian and Mackenzie made up. I don't know what to think of the situation with Tina and George Stearne. It will be interesting to read what happens with them. Great writing and I eagerly await more tomorrow! Hope you are having a better week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

As for Tina and George Stearne I can only say a few things: she isn't fucking him and screwing up his career and she is legal and almost out of high school. While Mick was very foolish, he and George are actually pretty young and I am roughly the same age as most of my high school teachers, so.... an ambiguous shrug. I noticed today, while reading over the Houses in Rossford, that Father Julian straight up tells Paul that Fenn and his family are DuFresnes and that Fenn's grandmother came from Jamnia. I forgot about that. And of course, now Roy is sort of dating Rachel DuFresne, (Evelyn's great-granddaughter) so I guess he's in the family too.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Since Drew and Simon were at play practice, Vaughan went to the auditorium for play practice as well. Madeleine would show up around three-thirty.
On their way down the lobby, Vaughan was the first to hear the shrieking, and then the hooting, and turn around to see Roy in jeans and tee shirt, gym bag over his shoulder, speeding down the hall. By way of greeting, he stopped when he met them, dropped to the ground, and began doing one handed push ups.
Ian and Mackenzie looked at each other. Drew and Simon looked to Vaughan, and Vaughan looked down on Roy.
Roy leapt up and threw his arms about Vaughan.
“I could kiss you!”
“But you won’t,” Vaughan said by way of warning.
“People, you are looking at a sex god,” Roy announced.
“Deep inside,” Vaughan commented tonelessly, “I always had that sense about you.”
“What’s up, Roy?” his cousin said.
Roy broke into a rhythmless dance and chanted, “Rachel Du Fresne wants me! Rachel wants me.” He told Vaughan, “we’re practically family now.”
“This is too weird,” Vaughan said.

ALL AT ONCE, in the auditorium, a number of things happened
Roy Cane burst in singing, “Rachel DuFresne wants me!” and Mackenzie stopped in his tracks upon seeing his father look down at them from the stage, then Ian turned around and headed back for the exit of the auditorium while Tina came down the stage steps.
“Ian,” Kevin called out. He could tell this was the first thing he would have to do.
Ian turned around.
The two of them stood looking at each other, and then the doors of the auditorium opened, and Madeleine came in. She glanced over the entire situation, then made her pronouncement:
“Really, someone should say something to somebody!”
Vaughan raised a hand, and went down near the stage, motioning for Simon and Drew to follow him. After a second’s hesitation, Madeleine and Roy did as well.
Kevin looked from Ian to Mackenzie, and then said to Ian, “I was wrong about the other night. I was... I was discourteous. I wanted to apologize. I’m sorry.”
He offered his hand.
Instead, Ian looked to Mackenzie, who shrugged as if to say, take it or leave it. Ian took it. He met Mr. Foster’s eyes. He could not tell what he saw in them. For the first time he was aware that they were not Mackenzie’s eyes, that this man who had produced his lover was nothing like Mackenzie. As their hands parted, Ian wondered what Kevin Foster saw in his eyes. It wasn’t graceful acceptance. Maybe it was the phrase, “Too little too late,” which kept rolling around in his head.
“I’ll let you talk to Kenzie,” Ian said, and then looked to Mackenzie for confirmation that it was alright.
Again, Mackenzie gave the barely perceptible nod. Ian nodded back, and headed down to where the others sat.
“How are you, son?”
“I’m alright, Dad,” Mackenzie said in a tone that seemed to mock Kevin’s.
“I... I knew I needed to talk to you.”
“Did Mom send you?”
“Um?” for a moment Kevin had that spaced out look that accompanied him so often.
“I said, did Mom send you? Did you know you had to come and talk to me because she told you so? Or Tina?”
“No. No,” Kevin’s brows furrowed and he looked grim. Mackenzie could see the wheels turning in his father’s head. “I came to let you know you can come home.”
“I know I can come home,” Mackenzie snapped. Kevin’s eyes lit up in surprise. “It’s my house, for God’s sake. It’s my mother’s house. You didn’t throw me out. I left because you couldn’t handle Ian, because you can’t deal with what I am.”
“I know you’ve had a change. You’re going through new things.”
“Well, Dad, actually I’m queer. That’s the change,” Mackenzie said.
Mackenzie couldn’t tell if Kevin was pained by the loudness of his statement, or the statement itself. His father said, “Mackenzie, you don’t really know what you are at sixteen.”
“I suppose you didn’t know you were a heterosexual at sixteen, either? When you had already made Tina and Ashley, when me and Lindsay weren’t far off.”
Kevin looked put out, and said, “That was completely different.”
“It was completely different because you had to marry Mom. And for that matter, you’re right. It is completely different because I actually want to be with Ian. You’re right it is completely different, and that is why I am queer. Because I am completely different. I’m not gay and happy. I’m not listening to Bette Midler, and Judy Garland. I’m not a poof or a fag. I’m different. I’m weird! I feel strange, and a little pissed off, and I certainly do not fit in with Jamnia, Ohio, and this... makes me QUEER.”
Mackenzie took a breath. Kevin looked as if he didn’t know what to say.
Mackenzie spoke again.
“Thank you for coming to talk to me. Thank you for apologizing to Ian, though I think he probably thinks you could have done a little bit more. I... ah,” he pointed to the stage. “Play practice is beginning. I need to go.”
“Alright,” Kevin nodded his head. “Okay.”
Kevin Foster prepared to leave the auditorium, wondering if he had actually accomplished anything.

Tina was the last to leave the auditorium that evening, and Stearne said, “You are happy? About Europe, aren’t you? I thought I was doing the right thing.”
She smiled brightly, “Mr. Stearne, I am incredibly happy about Europe,” Tina told him. Then she said, “I know that you’re told not to worry about other people. In the academic life... Or I guess life in general. You’re supposed to make sure you turn out alright, and not worry about others.”
“Really,” Stearne said. “Who told you that?”
“You did,” Tina looked at him strangely. “In history of the modern world.”
“Oh,” Stearne was caught up short. “Well, continue, Ms. Foster.”
“But Luke... He is my friend.”
“Madeary?”
“Yes. And.… he’d love something like this, and he has nothing like this. I can’t even see telling him about it. Not right now. All he has in his future is the gas station he works at with my cousin that I’m about to go pick him up from. You know, I want him to have a chance too.”
“Ms.- Tina,” said Stearne. “There aren’t a lot of girls like you.”
“Well, no,” Tina pulled on a strand of her black hair, and examining it as if to prove this.
“No,” Stearne grinned. “I mean, you’re very kind. I’ll see what I can do.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll see what I can do,” Stearne said.
“So that Luke can go too?”
“I’m not promising anything,” Stearne told her. “But, yes, that is what I meant.”
Tina threw her arms around George Stearne’s neck once more. “I could kiss you!”
“Please, Martina. Not until after graduation.”

“ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T WANT to stay for dinner?” Cedric said, sitting in the driveway as Simon’s car rumbled, and the two boys stood on either side of it.
“Oh, you don’t want us,” Simon Pendergast said. “We’d just eat up your food, never leave, and get on your nerves.”
“You’d be like family, then,” Cedric said, beside Vaughan.
Simon was about to climb into his side of the Volkswagen Beetle, when Drew said, “Alright, one last time. Group hug!”
Ian groaned the same time Vaughan did. Simon reached over and grabbed Vaughan with one hand and Mackenzie with the other, and then Cedric watched the very different boys in a cluster, muttering something or other to each other. Simon surprised Cedric by giving the older man a hug and whispering down- because both he and Drew were bigger than Cedric, “Thank you, sir.”
Drew did the same, and then they got into the car, puttering backwards down the driveway. Simon turned the car right, to the west. Cedric said, “He forgot- ”and then the car u-turned, heading east, “No, he remembered the right direction.”
Simon honked at them one last time. The boys stayed outside because it was getting warmer, and the sky over the high school was tangerine and gold. Cedric went into the house to begin dinner. Madeleine would finish it off. Tina and Luke were coming... along with Rodder.
The kitchen was filled with western light. Cedric reached into the aluminum sink to test the ground beef. It had finally thawed. When he heard the screen door open, and the boys come in, in one deft move he hid the newspaper article that Brother Julian, ever timely, had sent. He prepared to push it out of his mind as much as possible or as much as was safe by the time the boys came down the hall.
“Julian sent me a message today,” he said as they came into the kitchen, speaking to Vaughan more than anyone else. “Brumbaugh’s funeral is this Saturday. Ralph wants to know if you and Kenzie will be pall bearers.”
Vaughan shrugged, and said, “I guess.”
What Cedric did not say is that Julian had taken special pains to cut out an article about a sixteen year old gay boy down near Cincinnati whose father had thrown him out of the house, taken him back in, and then knocked on his door politely, while he was listening to a CD—Depesche Mode to be exact—and beaten, raped, murdered, then decapitated the boy. There was a photograph of what the boy had looked like before. Could have been Simon or Drew. Might have been Derrick Todd for that matter. Could have still been alive. His father had taken care to scratch over his forehead, with a pen knife the ironic judgment, “Sodomites go to hell.”
At any rate, as Cedric unwrapped the ground beef, and put it in the skillet, he was terribly afraid. He did not want Drew and Simon to leave because he trusted Crawford Street Rule, but he did not trust the world.
“Ian, how are things at home?” he asked.
“I was thinking about going back for a few days,” he said. “Maybe. Why?”
Cedric didn’t look at Ian He just held out his hand, which was the gesture everyone knew meant, “Give me my cigarettes.”
“Do me a favor?” Cedric said. “Don’t go back there just yet. Stay here, alright?”
Ian didn’t ask any questions. He just nodded his head.

Cedric usually kept to himself until dinner time, locked away in his study. So it wasn’t until somewhere near dinner time when Vaughan noted that his father should have been getting ready to cook, that Madeleine said, “Oh, yeah. Dad went down to Crawford Street to visit Cousin Letmee.”
Vaughan looked as if he’d smelled something bad. Cousin Letmee’s real name was lost in history, but he was a cousin of Cedric’s, the same age, and the grandson of the long dead Evelyn whom Vaughan vaguely remembered. Letmee was the youngest of four brothers, one of whom was the father of Rachel DuFresne, and he had gotten his name because, in childhood, whenever someone had asked for a volunteer he would always put his hand up and say, “Let me! “Let me!”
So Letmee DuFresne had a volunteer’s spirit. But every Fitzgerald, Sandavaul, and DuFresne this side of the Mason-Dixon line knew that what Letmee volunteered for was usually illegal. If you needed to learn to make a fake ID, or have one made, go to Letmee. If you needed to license a nice car, sold on the cheap because it was more than likely hot, go to Letmee. If you were wondering where you just might be able to find a hit man in a pinch, then you should never be afraid to look up Letmee DuFresne.
So the fact that Cedric had been at Letmee’s house this long piqued Vaughan’s curiosity.
He kept the reason why to himself, and did not let on anything to Ian or Mackenzie.
Ian dropped Roy off at his home, and Roy did his homework because for once he was in a mood to and he didn’t want the feeling to pass without putting it to some use. Race was not home; he had the house to himself. When he’d finished, he went to the mirror in the bathroom, and began looking at himself. He pulled up the lids of his already wide blue eyes, and rolled them around. He felt around his cheekbones, traced his lips, and pushed a hand through his short dark hair. He even flexed his stringy biceps. He was not entirely sure what he was looking for.
He picked up the phone when it rang. It was Rachel.
“Roy, what are you doing Friday?”
“I thought we were getting together Saturday.”
“I thought so too,” Rachel said. “But we’ve got to go to a funeral. Our priest died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was real old,” Rachel said. “Anyway, we’re all gonna be there. And I thought- I don’t want to back up our date. That sounds like I’m canceling or something. And I’m not. So I thought... What about Friday?”
Roy sighed, and then said, “Rachel, I would love Friday, but I already promised a friend that we would spend the night together, and- ”
“You can’t back out of that.”
“Yeah, thanks for understanding.”
“You shouldn’t want to back out of it,” Rachel said, displaying some DuFresne common sense. “Friends are hard to come by. I tell you what?”
“Hum?”
“This’ll sound stupid.”
“I’m up for stupid,” Roy said.
“What if... you were like my date to the funeral? And then we could go out, and do something.”
“Your- ” Roy burst out laughing.
“Roy!”
Roy was still laughing.
“Is that a, ‘no’?”
“Actually,” Roy said, when he could finally say something, “that’s a huge, ‘Yes’. Sure. I guess I don’t have to bring flowers? Or, I could just grab some off the coffin!”
“Roy, don’t me mean!” Rachel reprimanded.
But when she hung up the phone, she was laughing too.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am glad Kevin is at least trying to make things right with Mackenzie and Ian. I think he might be right though in that he didn't accomplish much. Roy and Rachel are cute. I hope there is more of them. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

True that. But at least its a beginning place. Well, now Mackenzie and Ian get to heal up and now our new friends Drew amd Simon are driving back to Lassador. Wonder if they'll see Jay and Michael or Marabeth? Roy and Rachel had started a very cute thing, indeed and we'll see where the rest of it leads tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE GET A BIG BUTTERY DOUBLE PORTION OF JAMNIA!


Ian heard his name being whispered. When he was awake he still heard it. In the dark blue-grey light of morning he hoped it was still a dream. Mackenzie’s chest, rising and falling under his cheek, the blankets around them, was more real. The heat and smell of his living flesh, the arm holding him loosely was far more real.
“Ian.”
Ian turned around, and Cedric stood at the doorway of the room. A million thoughts were going through Ian’s head, waking him at once.
“Come out,” Cedric whispered. “I need to talk to you.”
Ian felt himself nodding, and then Cedric left the room, closing the door behind him.
Careful not to wake Mackenzie, he reached into the covers and found his boxers, and pulled them on before climbing out of bed. The linoleum of the kitchen was cool on his feet, and Ian hugged himself in the darkness of the kitchen. Only the light over the stove was on.
“Cedric,” Ian said, sounding hoarse, “I know it’s your house and I should have asked about sleeping in the same room with Mackenzie, and everything, and if you don’t want me- ”
Cedric put up a hand, and shook his head rapidly. This was not his concern. Cedric, Ian guessed, had expected to find the two of them together. Simon and Drew had slept in the same bed the night before.
“I didn’t wake you up at five a.m. for that,” Cedric said. “I woke you up to talk to you alone.”
Cedric handed Ian a bundle wrapped in what felt like a silk scarf. It was a woman’s done in red and blue paisleys, but it was heavy in his hands when Ian held it, and the feel and weight gave the gift’s identity away
“It’s a gun,” Ian said, removing the material, and looked up at the older man.
“The safety’s on it. It is loaded. I’ll teach you how to use it. We’ll take the safety off later. Now if you want me too.”
“Cedric what’s this for?”
“If you leave home, don’t do it without American Express. If you go home, don’t go home without this.”
“Wha?”
Cedric sighed, and moved around Ian. Everything felt as heavy and cold as this gun. Ian thought he was still sleeping. Cedric reached into one of the baskets on top of the refrigerator, and pulled out the article. He handed it to Ian.
Ian perused it, and looked up, wide eyed, very young and terrified.
“My father wouldn’t do that,” Ian said without any sign of being convinced of this. “I’m not going to get killed.”
“No, you’re not,” Cedric insisted. “Because you’re not going back. But if you do, you’re going back with this.”
“You’re scaring me,” Ian told Cedric.
Cedric sighed, and then said, “Well...” He shrugged. “Go back to bed. You’ve got a while before it’s time for school.”
Ian looked at Cedric, and then at the gun. He nodded, then turned around for the bedroom.

“I haven’t been with you since before all this mess,” Ian murmured into Mackenzie’s ear once the sun was coming up. He kissed the other boy’s ear and breathed into his blond hair.
“I think if I had remembered what it was like to be with you... I would never even have honestly thought my father had a point.”
Ian’s arm was draped over Mackenzie, and Mackenzie just reached up and rubbed the arm, delighted by the little hairs that covered it. They had the same body. Their bodies were completely different.
Ian kissed him on the cheek, and sat up, reaching for his cigarettes. When Mackenzie turned around he saw the other naked boy, his thin body adorned by black hairs, was blowing out smoke.
“You need to shave,” Ian stated, taking another drag. “You’re scraggly.”
“You’re scraggly too,” Mackenzie told him.
“Yeah, but you’re too pretty to be looking scraggly. I’m not pretty.”
Mackenzie, walking his fingers up and down Ian’s foot, told him, “I think you’re very pretty.”
Ian gave Mackenzie a coy look, and blew smoke out of his nostrils, “You really do make me feel like a natural woman.”
“There is nothing natural... or womanly about you,” Mackenzie insisted, sitting up beside the other boy.
“I missed you,” Ian said suddenly. “I missed being with you, Kenzie. I don’t just mean having sex with you. Can you imagine? I almost forgot what it was like to have sex with you? But I remembered what it’s like after, just holding you to me when we’re so close it’s like we’re the same person. When there’s nothing between us. I missed waking up with you. I missed what your hair smells like...” Ian grinned and buried his nose in it. “And it doesn’t smell that good,” he told him, truthfully.
“Thanks.”
“It smells like a wet dog.”
“If you go on, I shall blush from embarrassment.”
Ian crushed out his cigarette, and kissed Mackenzie quickly. Mackenzie could taste the remnants of the cigarette. For a moment, he breathed out smoke too. They were kissing and then, very quickly, they were making love, and trying to keep quiet. Kenzie’s body and brain, his heart, were the same. The same things rushing through them. That they were safe and protected, that somehow they were still innocent and this felt too good for words and that it was utterly, totally, rough, and that there was nothing but love in it went through his head. The taste of Ian’s body, and the truth that Vaughan was right upstairs, Cedric down the hall. Simon and Drew had done this very same thing the night before in this bed. He didn’t know who he was, he didn’t... He was on fire... He was shaking. He was erupting. He was hard. He was opening. He came. Ian moved quickly, and breathed quickly and then made a strangled noise. He reared up. His ass was soft as velvet, solid as metal. Ian went rigid in his arms.
They held each other, not speaking.
Ian finally said, “Cedric gave me a gun, Kenzie. I’m scared as hell.”
Mackenzie didn’t say anything, and Ian added. “He wants me to take it whenever I go home. He showed me this article about this gay kid who got killed by his father. He thinks my dad’s nuts. He knows my dad pretty well. I don’t know what I’d ever do if my father came at me, and tried to kill me.”
Mackenzie, the sixteen year old altar boy, afraid of everything, wanting to do the right thing, who had just had sex with another man in the guest bedroom of his best friend’s house, said:
“I think you’d better kill him.”





i v

Cedric had taken care of a whole pot of coffee, and jotted a little note on the refrigerator before taking his bicycle down to the house on Windham Street where he would meet Ida and they would go up to the rectory for Ralph before winding their way to Holy Spirit Monastery. There they’d breakfast with Julian and Mario. He told the boys yogurt, milk and fruit were in the refrigerator. He’d bought new cereal. He didn’t remember what kind, but it wasn’t that cheap stuff, and it wouldn’t rot your teeth out. He said they should feel free to have whatever, that there were also muffins. Mackenzie’d better eat the bran ones because he was the only one who liked them. Don’t be late for school.
It was seven o’clock. In the early days of April, not long after Easter, there was still a chill in the air, and the grass was rimed with a little bit of frost. The sun was just making an appearance, and Cedric was riding into its direction, down the cracked path of Michael Street. Only a few cars passed up and down.
He was fifty-one, almost fifty-two. He had managed to mess around and get a long running Broadway show. When it had left Broadway, it went around the world. It had legs they said. Whatever. It paid the bills. He had managed to publish three large volumes of poetry, and become playwright laureate of the state. This was nothing compared to the managing of two children. However, he had never managed to secure a driver’s license, or buy a car. Such were the ironies of life. So here he was, and here was the turn south onto Windham Street. And here he went.
Ian had probably told Mackenzie about the gun by now. They were probably telling Vaughan. Cedric had not intended for Ian to keep it a secret. He only wanted to talk to him in secret, not let everyone hear the words that were for him alone. He couldn’t know that the words Mackenzie had spoken to Ian about the gun were the same words that had been spoken to him well over thirty years ago, and that he himself had in turn spoken to another.
Cousin Flipsy, Evelyn’s not- husband, the youngest son of that enigmatic witch, Marie Madeleine, had called Cedric to him one day in 1968.
“I hear you going Down South.”
“Um hum.”
Flipsy sucked in his black cheeks, and rolled his tongue around in his mouth before presenting the gun to his younger cousin.
“You’d better take this,” Flipsy said at last.
“What if someone tries... to get me?” Cedric had asked.
Flipsy gave a cackle that turned into a hack after a while, and then he said, thoughtfully:
“I think you’d better kill him.”

Eighteen years later, with Marilyn dead, and two near infants at home, Cedric had taken the bus up to Crawford Street. Same street, different house. Letmee was every bit as black as his grandfather had been, and at the time nearly as old... or so it looked.
“But Ced, you might want this again,” Letmee said as his cousin handed him the gun.
“I don’t really want a gun in my house. If I need it, I’ll come back for it. Just don’t misplace it. ”
“Aw, Ced, I ain’t gon misplace no gun.”
“Marilyn doesn’t need it anymore,” Cedric said, “I’m not sure she needed it when I gave it to her.”

Saint Clare’s had been the college where he blossomed. Always there was Lake Erie, big and beautiful as the sea, grey like mother of pearl one day, blue like sapphires the next. It was there he’d started acting, and Marilyn had been with him in every play. It was there he joined the poet and writers circle and began contributing to the magazine.
In 1972 he was still only about to become a junior, the year or so of roving, the decision to go undeclared for so long had much to do with this. Marilyn was graduating. It was awful to think of being parted from her, and awful to think it was so awful. They got on well, true, but they were not really girlfriend and boyfriend. They didn’t even kiss.
To make matters worse, Ralph had come up to visit. In what he claimed to be common sense, he had waited his two years out at Sainte Terre before transferring to Notre Dame- not Saint Clare’s, as if to rub in the fact that he didn’t want to attend school with Cedric. And now, about to graduate himself, Ralph had come to visit him.
“I’m going straight into seminary, “ Ralph told him.
“Are you already accepted?” Cedric tried to sound as interested as possible.
“Well...” said Ralph, “it’s not quite like that. It’s not like going to grad school or anything.”
“I bet it isn’t,” Cedric said baldly. “Most of the priest I’ve known couldn’t spell grad school let alone get into one.”
Cedric’s feelings for the priesthood in general, and this prospective seminarian in specific, were altogether dark. When Ralph parted from him, he was sure he had hurt his one time best friend, and a little surprised to realize he didn’t give a damn.
What did make Cedric give a damn was Marilyn’s announcement.
“I’m going to work the Chitt’lin’ Circuit!”
“I didn’t know they had a Chitt’lin’ Circuit anymore.”
“They don’t,” Marilyn explained. “Not much of one. This is kind of like an.… In Memory Of . Put on by a bunch of young Afro-American artists. We start this summer. So you could come on down. You’ve been South, Ced.”
He had already pissed off one friend, so he didn’t feel bad about pissing off another.
He told her straight out, “Hell no,” and added, “I think you’ve really lost your mind, and if I see you again in the land of the living, I’ll count us both very fortunate.”
But he had also given her the gun.
“Oh, Cedric,” she’d said, standing in his room, “what if somebody... tries something?”
“I think you’d better kill him,” he said, frankly.

MORE TONIGHT !

 

[ChrisGibson]

AS WE CLOSE OUR CHAPTER NINE, THINGS WITH ASHLEY COME TO A HEAD, AND TERRIBLE TRUTHS ARE REVEALED


Ashley Foster followed Mick Rafferty into the stockroom. He was bent over in his brown trousers, picking up stacks of Hammermill paper for the photocopier downstairs. She draped herself across him and his body stiffened.
“Hey, Ash. Don’t do that. Okay?”
“What’s wrong?” She was still clinging to him.
“Ashley,” he twisted out of her hold, and she moved from him, a little angry.
“Not here,” he said.
“You didn’t mind it in the English room last week.”
“And not so loud,” Mick turned around, and said, “Look, Ashley. Not at all.”
“What?” she sounded, and looked completely confused.
“I’m calling it off, Ash. It’s over.”
She looked at him incredulous, opening her mouth, then closing it. She felt the power of speech preparing to leave her.
“How?” She could barely hear herself as Mick picked up the stacks of paper, and walked swiftly past her, down the hall.
“How?” Her voice grew louder as she followed him.
“Don’t make a scene,” he hissed, and kept walking.
“What the hell kind of scene am I making?” her voice was louder as it echoed down the halls. “There’s no one out here. Class is supposed to be in session.”
Mick stopped at the door to the main office, and turned around.
“Ashley. It’s over.” he whispered. “We can talk about this later.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“Not now,” he pleaded.
“Yes, right now.”
In one swift gesture, she brought down her hand on the stacks of paper, and they fell to the ground. Mick moved to pick them up, but thought better of it.
“Right now,” Ashley said. “You don’t just decide to start something with me, and then break it off, you worthless dick, because Stearne—that short son-of-a-bitch—found out about us. I ought to scream it from the top of the school. I ought to tell them all!”
She leaned in closer to Mick. There was a student coming down the hall. Mick’s heart was racing, sweat was pouring down his pits and his face.
“I ought to scream, ‘Mick Rafferty’s been fucking me every night for two months now!’ My father would love that one!”
“Ashley, don’t!” Then he said, “Ashley, think about it. What kind of future do we have?”
“None, thanks to fucking jealous George Stearne.”
“That’s really enough,” Mick said, suddenly turning into a school teacher again. He squatted to pick up the paper.
“He was looking out for both of us. Why would Mr. Stearne be jealous, huh?”
He looked up at her with that smug adult face, and Ashley smiled down at him, triumphantly, and asked: “Why the hell to you think?”
And then, while Mick had time to think, she turned around, and walked away.

“Tina, you’re weird as hell, lately,” Luke told her on the smoker’s porch.
“I’m not weird,” Tina said, taking the burning butt of one cigarette, and lighting the next one with it. “I’m just... preoccupied. A lot is going on right now, and.…”
“Do you plan to tell me any of it?”
“Not right now,” Tina said. “Not until every single detail is worked out. I gotta meet with Stearne tonight after play practice. So scratch anything we wanna do until about six-thirty.”
“You’re all about plots and plans recently,” Luke said.
“It’s our future,” she said.
“Our?”
“Yes, jerk,” Tina said, looking up at him. “Don’t you remember? We’re all linked. The whole jati thing. Friends don’t walk alone.”
The glass doors opened and suddenly Ashley, in tight jeans and pink top, came storming down the steps past them.
Luke took out another Lucky Strike, and told Tina: “She needs some friends.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU needed me to look over this,” Stearne said, sitting back in his seat in the booth, and passing the essay back to Tina.
“It’s good enough, you think?”
“It’s more than good, Tina,” Stearne said to her. “What do you plan to do with yourself. After Europe?”
Tina sighed, and pushed her black hair out of her face. “I suppose real college. Get a nice job. Marry, have some kids, and a dog. You know: the responsible thing.”
Stearne shook his head, and grinned at her.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I don’t believe you, Martina Foster, and I don’t believe you believe yourself.”
Tina raised an eyebrow.
“After a while you can tell,” Stearne said. “There’s a difference between people who say they want to do fabulous things, but are just settling for a normal life, and people who pretend that they’re going to settle for a normal life.”
“Aw, Mr. Stearne,” Tina teased, “you think I’ll do fabulous things?”
Stearne sat up, and ate the last fry from his place.
“Martina Foster, I know you will. You’re a great actress- ”
“I’m alright.”
“You’re a great actress,” Stearne repeated. “And you’re a talented writer, and you have a wonderful heart, and personality. No one will keep you down. You do know that, don’t you?”
Tina was caught up short for a moment, and then she said, “Well... I guess I did. Sort of. Maybe I just needed someone to tell me.”
“Well,” Stearne said, looking a little embarrassed. “I just told you.”
For only a brief second, Tina thought about what it would be like to kiss Stearne, and then immediately pushed the idea out of her mind.
“And while we’re on the subject of things that you already knew, but might like to be told,” Stearne said, “when we do the play- ”
“You want me to re-color my hair?”
“I would be so pleased if you did.”
Stearne signaled for Race Cane, and said, “When it’s convenient, can we get a check?”

“Can I have the car?” Ashley asked Aileen, who was rinsing the dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher.
“You asked Tina, right?”
“Mother!”
“Ash,” Aileen shut off the water, and opened the dishwasher, “it’s Tina’s car. In one dim point in history your sister—who hates work—actually worked a whole summer to buy it.”
Ashley let out a breath. Aileen said, “You can take your father’s if it’s that much trouble to ask. But I bet Tina wouldn’t mind. She’ll be working on that application all night.”
“What application.”
“For this thing in Europe.” Aileen was pouring detergent into the washer. “I’m sure she’ll get in. In fact she’s already in. She just has to send off everything.”
“This is all news to me,” said Ashley.
“It was all news to her. George Stearne’s taken quite a shine to her. He pulled a few strings and helped her out.”
“George Stearne?” Ashley said.
“I’m surprised too.” Aileen hit the buttons, the old dishwasher shuddered, then roared to life. “He and Tina are becoming really good friends. That’s good,” Aileen went on never noticing the hardening of her daughter’s face. “Every student should be under a good teacher at least once in her life.”

“I like you, Rodder,” Cedric told the tall boy outright.
Rodder sort of blushed, which was surprising, and said, “Thank you, sir.”
What Cedric meant to say was, “I almost forgive you for taking my daughter’s virginity.” He’d like to say he totally forgave Rodder, and didn’t care. But he was sure that the day he said that he would find a trace of resentment and care lying around somewhere inside of him.
“So you go to University of Chicago this weekend?”
“But I’m not telling Madeleine, and please don’t you tell her either,” Rodder begged.
Cedric raised his hand as if to say, “You’ve got my word.”
Rodder was turning to leave Cedric’s living room when he said, “Sir, can I ask you a question? It’s gonna sound stupid?”
“It never stopped anyone else,” Cedric said.
“When I get to be... say, your age.... Do troubles stop?”
Cedric raised his eyebrow.
“Maybe you get used to them,” he said. “I think I know what you mean. When I was your age I would look at my aunts and my grandmother and think they’d finally done it all. They were finally at peace. Nothing left. And when I look at you kids, when I’m being stupid and forgetting what childhood was like I think, how nice it would be to be a kid again, and not have any troubles. Am I right? Is that what old people say?”
“My parents say it to me,” Rodder said. “And maybe they’re right. But... I don’t know. I want things to get easier. I feel so stressed out a lot and you don’t. And neither does Tina’s grandmother, and I thought... maybe when I’m older I won’t be stressed.”
“If I knew when I was eighteen that I would be fifty-two with a dead wife, two unruly children... and just that for starters... if I had any idea,” Cedric confessed, “I would have swallowed a bottle of pills on my prom night.”
Rodder grinned, and then realized that Cedric was serious.
“Thank God,” Cedric said earnestly, “we don’t get a preview of what’s coming to us.”
There was a look on Rodder’s face that made Cedric say, “You’ve got another question.”
“Since you’re answering them.”
“I guess I am.”
“Alright,” Rodder put his fingers together and tried to gather his words.
“I... I’m a good student. Real good. But... I have never ever asked myself what I want. I know what my mom and dad want. I know what I should want, but I don’t know.... what Roderigo Luis Gonzales really wants. Nobody ever asked me. Cedric, no one. I mean, Madeleine did. When we went to Massachusetts she asked me... It was the first time anyone asked and now....” Rodder took a breath and looked at the ground. When he looked up, he said, “When did you know that you’d be a writer?”
“Not right away,” Cedric told him. “But... it was the thing that drove me... After awhile. It was a passion I guess. I take it for granted. But I knew what I should do because... I had to.” Cedric smiled. It all seemed such a surprise. Rodder looked sad.
“That’s just it. I’m afraid,” he told Cedric. “I’m afraid and I can’t tell anyone else that I’m afraid that.... I don’t have anything that drives me.”

“Yeah, so Rod is going some place with his Aunt Louisa this weekend,” Madeleine was telling Claudia. “But never fear. Father Brumbaugh’s funeral is on Saturday, so it’s not like I’ll have nothing to do.”
The cousins stopped talking when Ashley Foster stood before them. Eighth period had ended. It was Friday and time to go home. They didn’t feel like being bothered with Ashley today.
“Can I help you?” Claudia said in a voice that said, “Can I jack you in the face?”
“Where’s my sister?”
“The bitch, or Tina?”
“My twin.”
“Believe it or not,” Madeleine said, “I don’t keep tabs on Martina Foster at all times.”
“I think she’s in the auditorium,” Claudia said. “In third period she said she wanted to go talk to Stearne... If you can imagine that.”

“No, I’m serious!” Tina said. “It can be like that one night in the bar. Me and Luke and Madeleine. You could bring Mr. Rafferty!”
“Tina!” George Stearne said.
“You can’t even give me that student teacher stuff. You’re not that much older. This is completely innocent, and I’m eighteen. I would say it’ll be legal, but we’re using fakes.”
“Aw, Tina, I don’t know.”
“Plus, Luke will want to thank you personally... I think... when he finds out he’s going with me. This’ll be great.”
Stearne rolled his eyes, then said, “Alright, what’s the harm? Are you guys gonna be at the same restaurant?”
“You mean bar?” said Tina. “Yeah. Around nine o’clock.”
George shrugged and said, “Fine, I’ll go. But for right now I’ve gotta clean up backstage.”
Tina looked around the stage and said, “I’ll get this mess up if you want me too.”
“I would appreciate that a great deal, Ms.- ” Stearne smiled ruefully, “Tina.”
George Stearne lifted a box, and then went backstage with it, and Tina didn’t feel completely bad for thinking that he really was a cute little man. She went to get the push broom, and when she came back with it Ashley Foster, of all people, was coming up the aisle.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Tina demanded.
Ashley didn’t answer. She just quickened her steps, and came up to the stage where she said, “I don’t have to ask what you’re doing here, do I?”
“No, you don’t. I’m sweeping the stage floor, as you can see.”
“You think you’re so smart, Tina!”
“Ashley, what’s up?”
“What’s up is you’re just the new flavor, sweetheart.”
“Excuse me?”
“Excuse me,” Ashley mimicked, badly. “Excuse me while I sweep up the stage floor for George Stearne. Excuse me while I giggle at everything he says. Excuse me while I flirt back and forth with my teacher. Excuse me while I play the oldest game in the book.”
“You’re flipped.”
Ashley went on.
“Excuse me while I suck your dick, Mr. Stearne. Excuse me while I think I’m such The Bad Ass for getting a piece of my drama teacher- ”
“You’re a lunatic, you know that—? ”
“Well, excuse me, baby,” Ashley said to her twin, “but I had him first.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Anything you did with Stearne, I did first. Alright? That cute little desk back there, Tina? Every time you picture it picture me on it with—as Madeleine would say—one leg in the east, the other in the west and Stearne all up in my Mississippi.”
“You’re a lying cunt!”
“No,” Ashley declared, triumphantly, “I’m not. And I got to him two years sooner. That’s right! I fucked him a long time before you were ever in the picture.”
Just then Tina heard a door slam.
She ignored her sister and went backstage. There was no Stearne. Only the door that led out to the parking lot. Opening it made a scar of light in the backstage area, and Tina saw Stearne’s car driving away. She blew out her breath, and came back around where Ashley was standing.
“Ashley,” Tina declared, “you are such a fat, miserable bitch.”




“Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” George Stearne said when he opened the door to his apartment and found Tina standing in his living room.
“I look up where you live, and drive all the way down Willow Parkway just so you can suggest I leave? Oh, I don’t think so.”
Tina shook her head, and walked into the apartment. “Nice place. Bit of a lake view too. Bet you pay far too much for it.”
“Martina...” Stearne started.
“Thank God you didn’t pull that Ms. Foster bullshit with me,” Tina said. “Now, you walked out on me, Sir,” she told him.
“You know everything now,” Stearne said.
Tina sighed and said, “I know a few things. I know about you and Ashley because she told me, because she thinks there’s a me and you. And you never stepped out to say anything. You just left.”
“I was embarrassed,” Stearne said, and now she could tell he really was. He was standing taller, and more rigid than usual. What he had said made sense now. How he tried to distance himself from students. He’d given her hints all along, really. She knew now why. This explained why he was so wary of her. He’d gotten too friendly before, and see what had happened?
“The thing is,” Tina went on, “Ashley understands what I don’t think you do.”
When she didn’t continue, Stearne raised his eyes to look at her.
“She knows that there is an us,” Tina told him. “A you and me.
“You see, I guess you know Ash doesn’t have any friends. She doesn’t get it. She goes from bed to bed, and she’s jealous of friends cause... she doesn’t know how to be one, or how to have one... Which, I think might be about the same thing. And she sees us, and she thinks it’s sex. But she doesn’t get that it’s friendship.”
“Tina- ”
“I wonder,” Tina continued, “how many different ways you can say my name.
“You’re my friend, Mr. Stearne. You hooked me up with Europe, and then helped Luke get a free trip too. You’ve supported my acting, and lifted me up when I felt ... down to tell you the truth. And you reprimanded me when I needed it and Sir, that’s what a friend does. And a friend stands by another friend when... when that friend might be a little embarrassed. So, I’m your friend, alright, Mr. Stearne?”
Stearne stuffed his hands in his pocket, and stood in the middle of his apartment looking at the carpet.
“I don’t know what to say, Tina,” he told her at last.
“Say, ‘yes,’ or nod your head.” Tina told him.
Stearne nodded.
“We still on for tonight?”
“What?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said,” George Stearne wiped that away with a hand. “Martina, I just told you that—”
“You didn’t tell me. Ashley told me, and I don’t think we need to go on with this any longer. You don’t want to talk about it, and I sort of don’t want to hear about it. But I do want you to go out with us tonight, alright?”
Stearne was quiet for a moment. He said, “I think I owe you an explanation. How it happened and all…”
“Maybe,” Tina allowed. “And maybe one day when I’m older and you’re wiser we’ll talk about it.”
He cocked his head at her and grinned.
“But tonight,” Tina said, “I’m taking you out, young man. Alright?”
George Stearne opened his mouth and then with an expression that said it was useless to fight, shrugged and nodded.


TOMORROW WE WILL HAVE SOME COLOSSUS OR RHODES, BUT WHEN WE RETURN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WEEKEND, IT WILL BE THE FINAL CHAPTER OF HIDDEN LIVES OF VIRGINS, HAVE A GOOD NIGHT, ALL.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very dramatic and interesting portion! Ashley is really a bad person, I can't believe she would say all that to Tina but I guess I am not that surprised. I am glad Mick Rafferty ended things with Ashley but I think the damage to his reputation has already been done. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Hope you have a nice Friday and weekend!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Whoops I missed the first part of this! I will read that and leave another comment! Sorry! Edit I now have read part one of this portion. I am scared for Ian, I hope his father doesn't give him a reason to use or act like he is going to use that gun.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Were you surprised to learn about Stearne? Is there anything redeeming about Ashley?

 

[CharmedFan28]

I was surprised to learn about Stearne. Maybe the only redeeming thing about Ashley is she is so young and maybe had not thought through what she was doing.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I honestly don't think Ashley ever thinks things through. I think she's just a jumble of hurt emotions looking for some kind of relief and at this moment, hurt and rejected by two men who probably should have done a lot better by her. She is terrible, but her terror is a self destructive one. Actually, now that I think of it, she isn't terribly different from Dylan who was just lucky enough to have friends, a watchful father and boyfriends who actually loved him. Change of plans: I am not going to run Colossus or any other story. I will post a little surprise tomorrow, but Hidden Lives will be back late Saturday/early Sunday as usual, and I will simply run the last chapter until we get to the end. Next Week, only Hidden Lives.

 

[ChrisGibson]

C H A P T E R

T E N ​

v

DURING THE SPRING SEMESTER OF 1974 at Saint Clare’s College in Rhodes, Ohio, Cedric Fitzgerald was the most popular thing around. He was editing the poetry magazine and the literary magazine. He had been reviewed in Black Who’s Who in American Colleges, and gone from starring in school productions to directing them. This spring, right after Easter, he was directing the first one he’d written. Any professor he had would be willing to write him a letter of recommendation for graduate school—which should have made him feel good.
They loved him at Mc Cleiss.
Now people of Saint Clare’s were of two minds about McCleiss University.
McCleiss was the large Catholic university on the other side of Rhodes with its rich kids, and the large new seminary sprawled out overlooking Lake Erie. McCleiss students never came from the lower economic ranks like Saint Clare’s kids. Or if they did they didn’t show it. McCleiss kids were not townies- which Saint Clare’s kids were suspected of being. In fact, Mc Cleiss kids were not kids. They were students, and they were academes. They went to a university which meant that in the sixties Saint Clare kids had looked on with envy while their Catholic brethren down the street had gotten to stretch out on that street and protest. Some of the priests had even come out in their cassocks to protest with them.
And being a University also meant they had more programs. McCleiss was highly selective unlike Saint Clare’s which took anybody. If you wanted to get into the really good engineering program, or biology department, you’d better transfer to McCleiss, and if you wanted any sort of graduate program, well then Saint Clare’s was definitely out.
So McCleiss, invisible from the east end of town where Saint Clare’s sat, cast a long shadow on the little red brick school.
And Cedric knew that he should want to go to McCleiss. If he was ambitious enough he would go. He never understood other people his age or older who tended to deny their age, who didn’t want to admit that yes, at twenty-four, five, six and above, they probably should have been out of school a long time ago. They were not as young as the others. Some people were good at shouting down invisible name callers. Shirley, who would probably be valedictorian, was approaching thirty, and one day Cedric had heard her shouting at a vending machine, “I’m NOT that old.”
But Cedric knew that he was that old, and for all the world could not see getting excited about going to get his Masters or anything else at McCleiss. College had been good to him. It had been really good. But he had to move on now.
Where on was he could not say.
Graduation came. Evelyn was there. Gladys was there. Ida came. Ralph did not. Almost thirty years later, Cedric remembered Louise, ten years old standing before him, looking horrible, say, “Mama thought you’d never gradu—ouch!”
And then Gladys hissing, “Louise!”

His grandmother had been present as well, but if Estelle had done anything, said anything or was even in the position to say anything given her advanced years, Cedric could no longer remember.
He did remember the days after graduation, sitting up in bum-fucking-Jamnia, which seemed more like nothing than it ever had before, smoking cigarettes and watching all his opportunities dry up and flake away like roses, and Cedric certainly didn’t want anything that came his way.
He played a lot of poker with Cousin Letmee, who wanted to know what had happened to the gun. This made Cedric think of Marilyn, and this only made him sadder. He never slept past eight o’clock. It would have just been giving into despair, and he still dressed well, and went to daily Mass though Mass was starting to be a strain since he was having a hard time believing in anything.
In the middle of that incredibly stifling summer, they got a new priest. James Brumbaugh had said little except that he had been born in New York, and came from Holy Spirit monastery up the hill.
Surely this time in his life must have been more insufferable than he remembered. After all, he was only twenty-four, and could compare it to none of his future tragedies. And then, at the time, he did not have the comfort of knowing that time really does make one forget, compact those things that seem so long. So it must have been horrible at twenty-four to be this depressed.
“It could be so much worse,” he told Ida when he was finally willing to tell anyone how he was feeling. “I could be in Viet Nam.”
But this only made him feel worse because he felt guilty for not feeling as bad as the men coming home from Viet Nam.

The last thing Estelle did was walk into the living room of Evelyn’s apartment where Cedric was finishing the last of a pack of cigarettes.
“Look at him,” his grandmother complained.
“God, Estelle. He’s getting his life together.”
“Doesn’t look like he’s getting his life together. Looks like he’ll turn into another DuFresne, Sandavaul drunk. Looks like he’ll be just like his father.”
“Looks like you should shut your mouth, Estelle,” Evelyn said.
“That’s what comes of bringing bastards into the world,” Estelle concluded.
Cedric stood up, a little unsteady from the liquor, and looked at his grandmother. He said something that had started out, “Now, look you old bitch- ”
And where it had ended, no one could say.
Estelle had, somewhere in the midst of her grandson’s tirade, clutched her chest, and fallen to the ground. When Evelyn went to her knees to check her sister’s breathing, she looked up at her nephew and said, without any note of accusation, “Well, damn, Ced. You killed her.”

At the funeral the news soon went about first through Estelle’s children, and then her other grandchildren as well as Evelyn’s wayward brood, that Cedric had killed Estelle with a word. No one accused him. Everyone seemed to revere him a little. Gladys told him he could probably sit around on 1133 Crawford writing stories and plays for the rest of his life, and never work. In families that large a patriarch just had to be there, and Cedric had certainly made himself patriarch. There were few women as proud of their sons for murdering their mothers as Gladys DuFresne was of Cedric.
But Cedric did not settle down to write in the back of 1133. He did not want to write or act. He wanted to get a new life. So the day after the funeral he loaded up a Samsonite suitcase, and without warning, caught a cross-town bus that shot out to Holy Spirit Monastery.

Julian Brown had not been ordained long, and he still had hair when he answered the door. In 1974 one did not knock and enter into a hall. Instead there was a cord outside, and when the visitor- this time around Cedric- pulled on it, a great boom came from the inside, and then a monk would come to answer the door.
“I’m here for privacy and thought,” Cedric said. “I just can’t be bothered with questions. I came to put my life together... Or take it apart. I don’t know which.”
Julian, to his credit, smiled and said, “Come right on in.”
“I’m sure we have a spare room somewhere around here,” Julian was telling Cedric. He led him upstairs, and they began the long hunt around the rectangular monastery while Julian gave a history of the house, of the Poor Clares who had come long ago, but not remained. And Cedric told of how his school had once been part of a Poor Clare convent.
“She’s all over the place isn’t she?” Julian said.
When Cedric cocked his head, Julian explained, “Clare.
“Ah,” Julian jiggled a doorknob, opened it. It smelled musty. “Here is a spare room. I’ll let the abbot know you’re here.”
Marion was abbot then. He was already impossibly old, and he made no sound when he walked, so Cedric nearly hit the ceiling at seeing the ancient monk appear in his room.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the abbot said cryptically.
“Really?” said Cedric.
Then the monk threw back his head and laughed.
“Of course not, but didn’t it sound ethereal?” He waved his fingers around.
It was not hard to talk to Dom Marion, and it was later that evening that he found himself telling the man, “So the last straw was: I killed my grandmother.”
Dom Marion looked at Cedric quizzically.
“I shouted at her, and she dropped dead.”
A great gush of air came out of Dom Marion, so great that Cedric feared that he might have killed him as well. And then the old abbot said, “You must feel terrible about that.”
“I ought to,” Cedric said, “Only, she did have it coming.”

Julian and Mario were in their thirties, but they explained to Cedric, “Monasticism has a way of keeping you younger.” So the three of them had a ball in the most monastic sense of the word. Holy Spirit was outside of Jamnia City Limits. It was like being in a different world. Things went on peaceably. No one asking Cedric if he would join the community or not.
One day Brother Crysoganus told Cedric, “We have a visitor. From New York. Staying in the old nun’s room.”
Everyone was curious, but with the curiosity of monks, so not a word was mentioned about the new visitor. And no one saw him. Cedric was preoccupied with the matter of prayer. He spent a great deal of his free time before the Blessed Sacrament, first asking God for what he wanted, and then asking God to tell him what He wanted, and then asking God to just do whatever was supposed to be done.
Julian came looking for him, and the two of them were heading toward the lake by way of the chapel’s back exit.
“I don’t know, Julian,” Cedric told his friend. “It’s like I say, God, give me patience- ”
“But give it to me right now!”
“Exactly!” Cedric laughed looking up at the vaulted ceiling and clutching the air theatrically.
“I don’t know what I expect,” he shook his head. “I suppose I want God to drop his will down from the sky onto my head!”
And then there was a groaning, a tearing, a shower of dust and a scream when a woman fell through the roof, through the chapel, and crushed Cedric beneath her.
He groaned on the chapel floor while Julian looked up at the hole in the roof, and then the woman looked down at him and smiled while Cedric muttered, “Marilyn Alexander, what the hell are you doing here?”


“Well, I was working Atlanta,” Marilyn explained between mouthfuls of food, “Ever been?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Too damned hot. And what’s more, nothing but drag queens. Most depressing part? Some of them looked better than me.”
Marilyn finished her water. They were in the dining hall of the monastery, and Julian had said Marilyn was the first woman to ever sit here.
“So I swallowed my pride, and went to New York.”
“New York’s nice,” Mario said.
“Not if your father lives there,” Marilyn told the monk. “And he’s the lousiest son of a bitch I ever met. Scuse the language.”
“You can say lousy whenever you want,” Mario excused her with a grin.
“I was doing this show I really didn’t want to do, Ced. Feeling all useless and everything. Sometimes I would look at the gun you gave me, and just smile.”
“Gun?” Julian raised an eyebrow.
“Long story,” Cedric and Marilyn both said.
Julian shrugged.
“I needed to find you,” Marilyn said. “You were unlisted at Saint Clare’s. And then when I finally found out where you were- ”
“I was staying in a boarding house.”
“I know that now,” said Marilyn. “You were never home.”
“I never got the message.”
“I should strangle that woman,” Marilyn said. “But anyway, after a while, I figured you had to be graduated. So then I had to start trying to remember where you lived. Then I had to dig up Saint Clare’s records.”
“How?”
“Oh, I drove to Ohio.”
“Really?”
“Really, Cedric.”
“Just for me,” Cedric murmured, feeling a little pleased.
“And for my sanity,” Marilyn told him. “I thought I might lose my mind if I didn’t find you. Can’t explain it. Just thought that it might happen that way. So I finally found out you were here... in Jamnia. Which I remembered the town name once I saw it in print. But you know, it’s sort of a hard place to remember. And then I called up all over town and found out you were here.”
“So you chose to fall on my head?”
“No, no,” Marilyn shook her head rapidly. “Having come here I had to decide why it was so pressing for me to find you or find anyone. I had to get my life together, you see? Reflect. Think. So I came here for that. I just reflect best out in the sun, and the sky was so beautiful today. It really is Cedric. We should take a walk. I was going along the roof tiles.”
“Why the roof tiles?” Mario asked Marilyn.
“Because no one can see you on the roof,” she explained. “With the little parapet and all. Real private, you know? So I was going along them when I fell through it... Onto you.”
“Now that,” Julian commented, “is romance.”


“See, I can’t believe you guys never tried this,” Marilyn told them, walking along the parapet. They looked over the parapet and onto the deep green of the trees, the blue of Lake Clare, and the clearer, pearl blue of the sky and its clouds. In the distance the city was small. Nearly invisible.
“I feel sorry for anyone who couldn’t feel at home in the world on a day like this,” Marilyn said, clasping her hands. “It’s a good world. That the Lord made.”
“You and Cedric could stay with us forever,” Dom Marion suggested. “and keep us all young.” He pointed to Mario and Julian, then amended, “younger.”
“What a joke,” Marilyn murmured.
Dom Marion gave a hooked grin, and said, “You thought I was joking?”
They rounded the whole of the parapet, taking in the fields to the northwest nearly ready for harvest, and then the long slope veiled in trees which overlooked the highway.
“Oh my,” said Marilyn, excitedly grabbing Cedric’s wrist.
“Hum?”
She pointed below to where the road from the highway emerged from the green trees. Someone who appeared to be—from the size of his Afro—Jimi Hendrix was coming up to the monastery. No, he was a little too light complexioned for Jimi. Besides, Jimi was dead.
Cedric stood, scrutinizing the fellow who was about to pull the cord of the main door, and then, suddenly, he called out, “You cheap son of a bitch!”
And taking off his shoe, Cedric Fitzgerald launched it at Ralph Hanley’s head and knocked him cold.

“Well, now we’re all together,” Abbot Marion said cheerfully, clapping his hands as Ralph stirred from sleep.
“Cedric, one day you will explain to me why you did that,” Marilyn told him.
“How do you know him?” Cedric demanded.
“Ralph is the one who told me you were here.”
Ralph, with a considerable dark lump over his right eye, was looking at both of them.
“What’s going on?” Ralph said.
“What’s going on is I’m considering giving you another knot on your head, nig- ”
“Cedric,” Marilyn warned.
Cedric shut his mouth and fumed.
“Was it you?” Ralph said, “who threw that thing at my head?”
“It wasn’t a thing. It was a Florsheim. I paid thirty-eight dollars for those.”
Cedric lifted his foot, and began to polish the shoe with which he’d hit Ralph.
Ralph opened his mouth.
“And before you ask me why I did it,” Cedric beat him to the punch, “I’ll tell you it’s for missing my graduation, adopting a holier than thou attitude when you decided to be a priest and not bothering to call or show your face since I’ve been back in Jamnia. And not necessarily in that order.”
Ralph sat up, and looked at Cedric, his green eyes sharp bottle chips.
Not giving a damn, Cedric continued: “Not to mention the completely bitchy attitude you took when I came to Sainte Terre, the prompt decision to go out of your way not to attend Saint Clare’s with me—not that you had to. Obviously you didn’t have to. And about a million other things I can’t think of right now.”
“I brought Marilyn to you,” Ralph said.
“Well now that’s the one good thing you did do.”
Ralph sighed, and laid back down on the cot, placing a hand over his bruise before wincing at the pressure of said hand.
“Can we start all over again?” Ralph demanded.
“Hell no- ” Cedric began.
But Marilyn cuffed him in the head. There was such a look in her eyes that Cedric, sulking, said, “Okay... But just for her sake.”
Ralph put out a hand, cocked his head in Cedric’s direction, and stuck it out.
“I’m Ralph Hanley.”
“I’m Cedric Fitzgerald,” said Cedric.
“See how new that was?” Ralph said. “The first time we met, you didn’t even have the same name.”
“What?” said Marilyn.
“It’s a long story,” Cedric explained.
The three Black people, and the three black monks sat around in the infirmary for a few moments longer, and then Abbot Marion clapped his hands together again in his brisk manner, and turning to Marilyn and Cedric said, “So when will you kids be getting married?”

GEORGE STEARNE HAD ALWAYS BELIEVED that eventually everything had to be paid for. He still believed it. Only what now was taking shape in his mind was the idea that maybe all the payments might not be as cruel as he was previously certain they would be.
As he searched for his jacket- wondering if he’d even need one, and then deciding he would- George admitted that he had been embarrassed, was still embarrassed about Ashley. The odd thing was that he wanted to talk to Tina about it. He vowed that one day in the future, when the six years age difference didn’t matter, and it wasn’t a student-teacher thing, he would talk to Tina as a friend. She was younger, yes, but George recalled seeing Kevin Foster’s mother-in-law and Cedric Fitzgerald together. There was certainly an age gap between Ida Lawry and Cedric, yet they were the best of friends.
There was a knock on the door. George wondered if it was the forceful Tina, and the thought made him grin. She was a hell of a person, and when she realized that one day…
“Watch out world,” George was saying as he opened the door, and prepared to zip his jacket.
“You fucked her!” was what Mick Rafferty said as he walked through the door.
For a moment George was confused.
“You fucked her. Didn’t you, George?” Mick demanded. “That was why you were always shaking your finger, and disapproving, and warning me. You’d been with her a long time ago.”
George sucked in his breath, then sighed and said, “Mick, in case you didn’t notice, everyone’s been with Ashley Foster a long time ago.”
Mick stood before his friend, silent. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and then said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t tell me,” George said.
Mick didn’t respond to that. He just looked out of the sliding patio door, the little lake glinted darkly in the evening, almost invisible.
“I am so fucking embarrassed,” Mick said.
“That would make two of us,” said Stearne. “I tried to tell you.... without telling you.”
There was nothing to be said. Stearne took his hands through his black hair, and then said, “Hey, listen. Tina invited me... and you too... out with her and Luke and I think Madeleine Fitzgerald. I gave in and said yes. Graduation’s not that far off. I’ll buy ‘em a round of drinks, and lose to Tina at pool.”
“Is she that good?”
Stearne nodded and said, “It’s the only thing she inherited from Colonel Foster. Why don’t you come along?” When Mick didn’t answer, Stearne said, “Alright? Com’ on, Mick.”
Mick Rafferty blew out his cheeks and said, “Well, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“That’s the spirit,” Stearne said. “Kind of.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an interesting look into more of Cedric's past. I like hearing more about him. So George and Mick are being honest with each other? Good. I still think there will be consequences for one or both about Ashley but it won't be from either of them. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! I hope you are having a nice weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

How did you enjoy the map? This weekend is restful and completely different than the last. I'm not going to make your hold your breath waiting for a shoe to drop with Ashley. We're in the last chapter of the book,so that storyline's pretty much done. Yes, more, more, more about Cedric, and I had to get us back to the present time. What will happen in the remaining pages of an, admittedly, fat last chapter? Lots.