The Lights in Room 42

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! You were right things did get better for Doug in a way. Him and Joe seemed confused about what they were or going to be for a while but it seemed like they had worked through it by the end of this portion. Great writing and I look forward to more soon.

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! You were right things did get better for Doug in a way. Him and Joe seemed confused about what they were or going to be for a while but it seemed like they had worked through it by the end of this portion. Great writing and I look forward to more soon.

Thank you for your thoughtful analysis. I really liked that. And I'm glad you've been enjoying the story, and thinking about what's going on?

 

[ChrisGibson]

That night, the night Garrett Kerner was buried, they drove on in sadness. It was too cold for the beach, which was too far anyway. They had no particular destination and finally Doug said:
“You know you don’t have to wait for some sort of grace period? We don’t have to get reacquainted again or any of that crap. We don’t even have to find a hotel, we could go back to the dorm. Back to that little room.”
Tears started down Joe’s face, so he frowned and blinked. One hand on the wheel, he gripped Doug’s tight.


“Do you still wish nothing would happen?” Joe asked him the morning after the funeral. It was the perfect morning again, early fall. From the open window he could see every bead of dew on every branch was perfectly placed by God. The air was just right, smelling of wet, green grass and a little of apples.
Had nineteen year old Joe been serious when he said, “Fuck senior year?” Yes, Doug thought, he’d been serious with the earnestness of a nineteen year old who hadn’t seen enough to understand consequences. But at the time Doug was seventeen and on the lip of Lake Michigan, and the world was just starting and so he decided right then that he would leave Saint Anthony and not come back.
“It doesn’t matter what I wish,” Doug said the morning after they had returned from driving and an early breakfast. They lay in bed together, and Doug was pragmatic as usual. They had already made plans. During Thanksgiving he would come to Joe, When Joe could, he would come to him. In the spring, no matter what, Doug would arrive at Aiguebelle, and they would start their life together. What Swann or Sal would make of it was not Doug’s concern.
“Things did happen,” Doug had said. “Many. And now I am ready for more.”


Chapter Eighteen































Until I fall away


They sang



I won't keep you waiting long

Until I fall away

I don't know what to do anymore

Until I fall away



Salvador Goode banged on his steering wheel, and the car was hot enough that, even in December when the roads were chapped gray and the farm fields on either side of them were white, they could roll the windows down a little. Beside him sat Swann Portis and thy were on their way back home, or at least on their way to Swann’s home.

As the lead singer of the Gin Blossoms droned, so did Sal.







If it's all rusted and fade

In the spot where we fell

Where I thought I'd left behind

It's loose now but we could try

Until I fall away

I won't keep you waiting long

Until I fall away…



Sal noticed that Swann knew the refrain if not the words, but that he still managed to sound better, for when the words left him, he could harmonize, and Sal said, “You’re really good at that.”

Ashing out of the window, Swann said, “Smoking?”

“No, derf. Singing. Weren’t you on the choir back in school.”

“For a bit.”

For a moment, Swann thought Sal would ask about Max Mueller, and scenes came back to him of Max’s house, the two of them listening to music and eating pizza, laying naked in his bed, humming to himself as Max knelt over him, massaging the pain in his muscles out with his strong hands.

Sal did not mention Max Mueller at all. Instead he said, “What about when Prynne became Abbot? Were you in choir for that?”

“I was!” Swann remembered. “I was cause Prynne came to m one night and asked me to be.”

He and Sal could more than endure stretches of silence. That was what was wonderful about him. Leaving Aiguebelle, the entered the land of white fields with stands of snow tipped, leafless trees in the distance. The trees gave way to gas stations, then road shops and they were in towns again. Sal got onto the Interstate, and they were passing Gary and he said, “I always wondered what it would be like to live there.”

“Awful, I think.”

“No,” Sal disagreed. “Once it was the place. Once it was beautiful. Think about all those apartment building we passed , the empty ones the ones with the boarded up windows. A long time ago people would have loved to live in them. Think about those wide abandoned streets. It must have been something, really, once upon a time.”

Swann became quiet because he was beginning to realize that if he let Sal find his way to speech, wonderful things came out of his mouth.

“I dunno, I just think if we keep doing anything we want, then there won’t be anyone in America who can afford to do anything they need. But by the time it happens, who the fuck will notice?”

Then Sal was quiet before he added, “You’ll notice.”

“Huh?” Swann said.

“You’ll notice,” Sal said. “Cause you don’t work. Not in a normal way. So you’ll see everything happening. People who work are too busy working to pay attention to anything, so they just get worked more and more.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

On Swann’s side he saw more highway. He saw train rails, the South Shore on its way to Chicago from South Bend. He saw the white stacks of factories like tall cigrarettes letting out their white smoke and the water beyond, the canals and little wetlands that opened to Lake Michigan. He turned to Sal’s side, where Sal made an excellent balance of watching the road and seeing the city beside him, houses and houses, block after block, some blackened, blighted and burned, some places stretches of nothing.

“I’m weird,” Sal said. “Because there’s something beautiful about it to me.”

“You’re not weird,” Swann said. “Or, at least, if you are, it’s the way I’m weird. I like a desolate place. I like a place that looks like it’s really abandoned, because it never really is. It still has its people, you know. Only they aren’t people like us, privileged people. They’re people who are abandoned too. They’re people we forget. Because it’s easier that way.

“Have you ever been to Michigan City?”

“I think once my parents took us through Michigan City,” Sal said.

“Well, it used to be quite the place. From what I hear. And the beach is the greatest beach I’ve ever seen. I mean, my gosh, it’s beautiful. But the town, when you get into it, it looks like something the world forgot. And I had taken the South Shore there, and I was sitting, waiting for the train on Pine Street, in this very hot thing that looks like a bus stop, and the whole time I was waiting, I talked to, or was talked at, or heard, the most interesting people. They were down and out, but then I understood them, because I felt down and out too, Like, so much of my life I concentrated on the good things and reminded myself how blessed I was, how fortunate I was, but with them I started to feel…. Other things.”

“Like?” Sal looked at him a little too closely for someone driving, but he looked at him as if he were not someone saying ‘why?’ to further conversation for the sake of manners, but someone who wanted to actually know.

“Like how fragile we are. And how sad. No matter what, How sad.”

Sal nodded, and then he said, “Can you make art of it?”

“What?”

“Art,” said Sal. “I mean, when I feel bad or think too much, I go running, or I kick stuff.”

“Soccer balls.”

“Chiefly. But you can paint and you’re an artist and you talk real good,” Sal jested. “So did you do art about it?”

“I wrote about it,” Swann said.

“I’d like to hear that.”

“It’s in a notebook. I’ll read it to you.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Sal had discovered that with Swann he was able to switch from one subject to another with little notice and now Swann said, “Prynne was the reason I ended up at Saint Anthony.”

Sal chuckled.

“That’s funny. He’s how I ended up there too.”

Sal wondered how much Swann knew about Doug’s adventures with them. In the days when they had gone to school together, Sal never spoke to Swann, or rather he had spoken to Swann about once or twice and never again. Swann wouldn’t have known Calverton, and Sal wondered what sort of school he’d been to before he showed up at Saint Anthony.

Regina Coeli had been on the south side, near Benton. It was an ugly school, like most of the Catholic schools he’d seen, orange brick, one story, long and plain, attached to an ugly church, orange brick and built like a cross between a spaceship and a gymnasium. There was an angular cross shaped like a white star on the front, and inside another such cross with a stretched out Jesus. There was blue carpet, and the seats were arranged like an threatre. Along the walls were little plastic holy water stations. There was a statue of Mary somewhere in there, though Sal could no longer remember where. Every Friday they had an all school mass which Sal remembered as having been fun when he was little, but being a little bit boring by the time he was in seventh grade. That was also the time his parents were fighting, and it seemed like they wouldn’t make it, and it was also the time when things had started up with Joe. He wasn’t stupid. He was afraid of what they were doing together. He knew he couldn’t tell anyone, though he wasn’t sure just how he knew, but he knew he couldn’t stop it, that there was no use in trying. The one happiness in life was going to school every morning with Joe, the two of them in their blue trousers and white Izod Lacoste shirts. Around the same time that divorce was certain, Sal’s parents were united in the decision that it was time to look for schools.

He and Joe would look together. Joe’s dad trusted the Goodes, but didn’t want to look at schools, and his mother wasn’t really able. There were the boys’ schools, Augustinian and Bishop Lewin, and there were the coed ones, Mother Ward and Cardinal Lacey. The boys’ schools looked like bigger versions of Regina Coeli, Ward scared Sal by how large it was, and Lacey was too small and too far out. He knew they’d never be able to travel that far.

“I don’t really like any of them,” Joe said outloud when he was staying over one Friday night.”

“I don’t know what else to tell you kids,” Mrs. Goode said.

She had ordered a pizza, because she never cooked on Friday and it was just as the pizza was arriving, that she said, “I do have an idea, but you’re going to hate it.”

“Public school?” Joe suggested. “Cause I don’t hate that.”

“No,” Mrs. Young said.

“Saint Anthony.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent long portion! It was very interesting to see all the characters in contemplative moods. I am enjoying this story even more as it goes along and look forward to the next portion!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Sal continues to remember his first trip to Saint Anthony's....


“I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t think you’d want to go, but as long as you don’t like the rest of the schools, you might as well not like this one, too.”

They were driving up Bancroft Road in the northern tip of Calvertion, almost out of town and back to the highway, and Sal had traveled here before. He had seen, in passing, the monastery that looked like something out of a history book, a combination of a castle and cathedral. With the customary lack of curiosity possessed by someone his age, he hadn’t thought much of it until they were coming up the driveway. A great church, broad porched with a thick old bell tower behind it and, on either side of it, two old stone buildings with towers and turrets. Beyond it were houses and not far from it was another set of similar buildings. He thought it might be a nursing home, or a convent for very old nuns. He wasn’t entirely sure why they were coming there.

When they parked on the gravel driveway, several monks from out of the movies came to greet them. They weren’t like the brothers and sisters at school. These were in real robes, black and white, some of them with huge rosaries hanging at their sides, and along with them was a Black guy in a bowling shirt and jeans and glasses and he looked at the boys and said, “You’re Salvador, and you’re Joseph?”

Joe nodded and stared stupidly as the Black guy said, “Mrs. Goode?”

She nodded.

“I’m Brother Prynne. Let me show you around.”



Every school they’d been shown had been on a trip with other students, and there had been some kid in a blazer or maybe some teacher who showed them the classrooms, the cafeteria, the library, the computer lab. They met the occasional student. Neither Joe nor Sal had been personally showed a school by monks or brothers or whatever they were. There were three men in robes walking about what Sal realized was their house. The leader was the guy in jans and bowling shirt, Brother Prynne, and as if libraries and computer labs didn’t matter at all, he showed them the chapel, larger than Regina Coeli and old and quiet and solemn, smelling of incense with lanterns dropping from the vaulted ceiling, and he show them stain glass windows, situated boy girl boy girl boy girl, Sal thought with a grin, trying to remember the names of the saints Prynne ticked off, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Martha, John, Saint Thecla, Saint Andrew, Thecla, Thecla, how that stayed on the tongue. And Regina Coeli’s stainglasses were abstract shards of bright glass, but these were old and large and beautiful, and Prynne told their stories. As they approached the altar, there was Saint Anne, in a great bed with Saint Joachim beside her, and she was holding an infant who was the Blessed Virgin, and across from that, on the other side, above where they had just stepped past the communion rail onto the sanctuary was that same Mary, her hair caught by the sun coming through it as she was taken into heaven. The altar was massive and marble and lined with brass candlesticks and high candles, and beyond it the chapel went on to the choir stalls where the brothers and priests sang their prayers, and at the end of that was a last little altar. Everything seemed so old and so serious and so real here in a way that religion never had, and what was more, it felt comfortable, safe.

Outside, In the vestibule, a door opened, and out ran some screaming boys.

“Guys!” the red headed brother beside Prynne said in what was an only half serious reprimand.

“Sorry, Brother Herulian, Sorry Father Reed,” they said as the thin man in spectacles eyed them.

The boys ran around Prynne, making sure to tug on his shirt tails as they ran out onto the lawn

“Hey, Brother Prynne!”

“Hey, Brother!”

“Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Ben,” Prynne said tonelessly, but with a smile that betrayed his pleasure.

“Students,” Prynne told Sal and Joe.

“You have to live here?” Sal scrunched up his face.

“Some students live here,” the monk called Father Reed said.

Herulian said, “We have day students, students who live here Monday through Friday and some who live here all year.”

“I wish I could go away to school,” Joe said, and Sal remembered how tired Joe was of his fighting parents.

“That, which you just saw kids running out of, is the boys’ dormitory”

Prynne went in the other direction and said, “Come this way.”

Apparently in the other direction, one door led to the rest of the dorm rooms for Freshmen, and the other door led to the first classrooms. There were three stories of classrooms in what seemed to be the closest thing to new the monks had built. The dorm rooms had apparently once been part of the old monastic quarters, and even most of the school had been for teaching formation to incoming religious. On the first floor was the cafeteria, and on the other side of that the gym, and beyond that the pool. The whole thing made a sort of double square, the original cloistered monastery surrounded and occasionally intruded on by the newer school and then new sections. The whole effect was a little dizzying, and Sal felt something in him stirring almost like the first time Joe had kissed him, an excitement, a desire, a sort of coming home.

Prynne’s full name was Eutropius Prynne, and Herulian’s was Herulian Stanichek. They had gone to school here when they were boys, and they were explaining how the school was primarily a high school but took in kids from seventh grade and Prynne was lifting his finger—he was an elegant man—to say something, when high above them the bells tolled and he said, “If you can wait till after Sext—I said Sext—get that look off your face—we’ll be right back.”

Sitting in the back of the chapel with Mrs. Goode, Sal and Joe heard the shuffling of monk feet, most coming in from the back of the church, genuflecting, crossing themselves before the great altar, and then, Sal assumed, walking up to the stalls behind the altar Prynne had shown them earlier.



“O God come to my assistance!” one sang.

“O Lord make haste to help me!” they all sang.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

In sixth grade they were made to learn a number of prayers, but had never said them in real life. Now Sal heard them sung, and the voices of the monks sang across the chapel, back and forth to each other:



Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,

and his kindness is for ever.

Now let Israel say, he is good

and his kindness is for ever.



Now let the house of Aaron say it too:

that his kindness is for ever.

Now let all who fear the Lord say it too:

that his kindness is for ever.



Sal had never been particularly religious, and he didn’t become religious now. He wasn’t even an altar boy, and that was just something that Catholic boys did. What he felt was safe. What he felt was happy.









In my time of trial I called out to the Lord:

he listened, and led me to freedom.

The Lord is with me,

I will fear nothing that man can do.



The Lord, my help, is with me,

and I shall look down upon my enemies.

It is good to seek shelter in the Lord,

better than to trust in men.



It is good to seek shelter in the Lord,

better than to trust in the leaders of men…



“So,” Prynne said to him after Sext, when he knew it was time for them to be heading home, “I’m glad you all came, and we can’t wait to see you in the fall.”

“Brother Prynne,” Sal said earnestly, “we still haven’t decided where we’re going?”

“You’ve seen Augustinian?”

“Yeah?”

“And Bishop Lewin?”

“Uh hunh.”

“Ward? And Lacey?”

“Yeah?”

“And yet you came here? After all that, your mother brought you boys here?”

“Yeah.”

Eutropius Prynne clapped Sal on the back.

“I’ll see you in the fall.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well it sounds like Sal liked Saint Anthony’s a lot when he first visited. This was fascinating! Thanks for continuing to post and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELL, IT APPEARS WE'RE COMING CLOSE TO THE END OF OUR STORY..... IT JUST SNUCK ON ME...


Approaching Illinois with Swann Portis beside him, Sal wants to stop and say how much he loves Joe. Swann understands this. Anyone who doesn’t understand how much he loves Joseph Stanley, how powerful their bond is, is never going to understand Sal. When they were fourteen, or nearly fourteen, and Sal was still playing hard to get about Saint Anthony, Joe’s naked love of the school, his unhidden desire to go there, undid Sal. Sal told himself he wasn’t a deep thinker. He’d said that and Swann said, please stop saying that. Sal had thought that some people existed just so you could be filled with love for them, just so you could become the type of person who would do anything to make someone else happy. It wasn’t martyrdom, not like his mom who took the burnt chicken and the drafty seat and let you know it. It was pleasure in the pleasure of another. Sal realizes now that even with all the shit they would go through, all the troubles the two of them would have, if he had hated Saint Anthony, the look on Joe’s face would have made him agree to go there with him. Joe’s happiness was his happiness. Joe Stanley deserved some happiness, and the truth is, Sal would have done anything to make Joe happy.



Things are new. It’s only in the last few days that Sal has said to Swann, “Let me take you somewhere.” And when he says it, there is a question mark at the end of the sentence. He is aware that what Swann wants is for the question mark to leave, for Sal to assert himself, but Swann will never say that, and Swann will be perfectly patient until it happens.

They go to the Oaken Bowl, which is the nice restaurant in town, and Sal has never been, He says, “I thought the food would be better.’

“The food’s wonderful,” Swann tells him. “I appreciate it.”

“Well, then.”

Sal has ordered French onion soup because Swann ordered French onion soup and the cheese twists about on his spoon.

He is trying to explain the very thing going through his mind on the road that day as they drive through Hammond and onto East Chicago.

“I understand,” Swann says in an almost business like way.

“It’s almost like we’re the same person,” Sal says, “and that frightens me. It’s not the way I feel about you.”

“We’re definitely not the same person,” Swann says.

“But maybe it is the way I should feel.”

Swann looks like he would rather eat than have this discussion, but he says, “Well, how do you feel?”

“The complete opposite. I feel like I can’t even guess where you’re about to go, like you’re not really like me at all. I feel like we’re totally different people. And… I like it. I feel like it’s sort of an effort.”

“An effort?” Swann raises an eyebrow.

“I’ve never had to try to know someone. I never wanted to try. I’ve never had to… Step up. That’s what I mean. Swann. I don’t know what the fuck we are, probably because I don’t know what you are. But I like it. I really just love hanging out with you.”

“This soup is delicious.”

“Really?” Sal raises an eyebrow.

Swann laughs and says, “Really, it is, but I like hanging out with you too.

“I just didn’t know you talked so much.”

“Well, damn, I guess I’ll shut up.”

“No,” Swann puts up a hand. “It’s not that. I like that you talk a lot, I just used to think you might be kind of…. “

“Quiet.”

“Dumb.”

“Oh!”

“I used to think, please God, don’t make me have a crush on a dummy.”

“You had a crush on me?”

“You know I did. You know I do. But you’re not dumb at all. You’re always thinking. I think that’s what you have in common with Joe. I always thought you guys were brimming with confidence and on top of the world, but now I think that’s not true. I think you had all these thoughts, and no one to tell them to. Well, that’s alright,” Swann says, “You can tell them to me.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

SO..... HERE IS THE CONCLUSION OF OUR TALE
They drive in silence, at ease and Sal wants to say, “Were you afraid? That night? Because I was?”
He doesn’t have to ask. He understands Swann this much. Swann has known so many lovers. Sal has had so many encounters with men and women he could not love. This is different from the fear of sex possessed by virgins, the fear of how it will change everything. The fear that it will change nothing, that it will not work, that the thing desired will be the thing not worth having, that it might ruin everything. As they are diving toward Chicago and Swann’s family, and the first time when Salvador Goode will see Swann’s world, he remembers coming back from the Oaken Bowl thinking how they could simply, after that wonderful date, go back to their respective rooms, go to sleep.
But he follows Swann up the stairs, so close his breath is on his neck, and Swann reaches back and catches his hand. His door is never locked and without speaking they enter room 42 only lit by amber lights like stars and they embrace, sighing against each other. Sal is so relieved at the relief in Swann, at how Swann settles against him in absolute truth, and he doesn’t say any of the things he wants to, and then they undress, slow and shy without speaking, folding their clothes and there they stand before each other and then go to the bed.
To Swann, Sal is beautiful, all of his body gentle under the amber light. The window is open and he thinks, if anyone could see, they should. They would be blessed to see Swann, kneeling before Sal kneeling before him, as he hold’s Salvador Goode’s penis in his hands and polishes with the lube he took from the drawer. Sal’s eyes are clothes and his breath rises as he swells in Swann’s hand and then Swann turns around, on his stomach, reaching for Sal, and as Sal enters him, they both sigh. Quietly they move together under the lights of Room Forty-Two, Swann’s teeth biting into the pillow, Sal’s teeth gritted when his mouth does not open in an O. His hands grip Swann, kneading his back. The bed creaks gently and Swann savor’s Sal Goode, Sal Goode, Sal Good deep inside him. Now and again Swann becomes Max, becomes Pete, becomes even Chrism is always Sal, is kisses on the throat, is lips on ears, is “I love you, baby. I got you baby,” said almost a little too soon, is all that will happen between the two of them this night as gentle entry becomes steady pounding becomes fucking becomes resting one another’s arms.





What’s on Sal’s mind these days is how everything started with Garrett Kerner, and how it seems like he hasn’t thought about him since the funeral. He was just a good guy, and what else do you need to be in this world but a good guy? And something happened to him, the whole story is fucked up and weird, being shoved into a trash compactor. What was on his mind? What was going through him that whole time? His mom said something had happened at school and he’d had some sort of set back, but then he was trying to make it in the world, be a success, and then this happened. Why didn’t he call? Who did he turn to? In those last minutes as he fell, what did he think? Did he go quickly?

“Do you pray?” Sal asked as they passed into East Chicago.

“There you go with those deep thoughts.”

“I don’t” Sal said, chomping his gum. “I should, but I don’t.”

“Yes,” Swann said. “I do.”

“Do you think Garrett prayed?”

“He probably did as he fell in that trash compactor.”

“Swann!”

But Swann just kept laughing until, mad himself, and wiping his eyes, Sal did.

“You’re such an asshole,” he said, shaking his head, still chuckling.

“You were getting much too fucking heavy,” Swann said.

“It’s just,” Sal said, “I’m starting to forget him. What’s wrong with us? We said we were the Tonies, and we were a family, but things happen and we forget them, we just move on. We’re there for each other for five seconds and then we just forget about each other. And we forget what happened to us even. Like, Brad Crist sophomore year, like Keith’s sister, like Mike and the car crash, or like Chad right after graduation. Or Chris, junior year, the baby. We just forget about it.”

They drove in silence a while before Swann said, “I don’t forget anything.”

As Sal drove over East Chicago, Swann said, “I remember it all, write it all down, think about it again and again, and wonder why no one ever says anything.”

Sal had nothing to say to that. He didn’t want to say anything. He liked the silence. He even liked the heavy way he felt. He thought, this is the thing he and Swann share. The quietness, the heaviness. They shared that. He felt really close to him now. He knew there was never going to be anything he said that surprised Swann, that made him say, “You shouldn’t say that.”

“I wanted to open Garrett’s casket,” Sal said.

“I wanted to open it and see what the compactor did. The whole time it was closed and Father Reed was going on about him being in a better place, and people were telling jokes and what the not, I wanted to open that casket, look in, and scream.

“I think I was just very sad,” Swann said. “It wasn’t like me, like the me that people know. I was just so sad that everyone had to go through this. I wondered how much more sadness we had to see. I hated the sermon. I hated the speeches. I hated the idea of Garrett being on some big swim team in the sky, but people say things like that because they need—”

“Comfort?”

“I was going to say they need to hear their own voice.”

“They say it cause we’re Catholic and we’re supposed to believe in good stuff happening when you die.”

“Religion isn’t a fairy tale,” Swann said. “Faith is not the same thing as comfort. At least, not that comfort. It’s not about making up things that make you feel good.”

“Well, do you believe…? What do you believe? Do you believe in heaven?”

“I guess. I mean, yes, but… not in a sentimental way. At least, I don’t think it’s sentimental. I mean, after all, I lost my grandmother when I was ten I loved her. And I lost my dad junior year—”

“Fuck, I’m an ass. I forgot—”

“No,” Swann said. “No. It’s not about that. It’s… I do believe. I believe very much in something. I think that so much gets lost, you know? Friends and loves and promises. I think one day, someplace, somehow, everything that’s lost, our friends, our family, our happiness, our peace, will be found again. Everyone that’s been separated will find their way to each other again. Everything that’s scattered will be… gathered again. All the love that was lost will be found again. That’s really the only heaven I care about.”

The Book of Birds and Boys will continue with​

Swimming in Basements​

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great ending! I’m glad the overall story is continuing but this was a good conclusion to this part. Swann and Sal are cute and I look forward to hearing more about them. Excellent writing!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great ending! I’m glad the overall story is continuing but this was a good conclusion to this part. Swann and Sal are cute and I look forward to hearing more about them. Excellent writing!

I'm glad you enjoyed it and yes, this story has just begun
.

 

[ctyanqui]

When I saw that the story was going to end. I was pretty bummed. I am happy to see it is not over. I love the characters. I almost had a friendship like Sal and Joe, but backed out of it after our second sexual encounter. I always have wondered what could have been. And here it is for me to read. Awesome!

 

[ChrisGibson]

When I saw that the story was going to end. I was pretty bummed. I am happy to see it is not over. I love the characters. I almost had a friendship like Sal and Joe, but backed out of it after our second sexual encounter. I always have wondered what could have been. And here it is for me to read. Awesome!

Hello! Thank you so much for reading my story. It thrills me that you're enjoying it!