After a conga line started up one end of the auditorium and then the other, and the kids and people with kids had gone home, Anigel and Cameron stepped out into the cold air.
“Heya Rob.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Rob said, ashing his cigarette on the steps of the reception hall. Across the street the lights in the houses were merry and the black sky was filled with more stars than you could see in Geschichte Falls.
“It really is,” Anigel said. “I can honestly say Catholics never partied this hard. What time is it, anyway?”
“Nearly eleven,” Cameron answered, looking at her watch. “Oh, wait, it’s nearly twelve.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded and Rob looked at his watch in surprise.
“Rob!”
Rob heard his name, but turned and did not know who it was. It wasn’t until the guy had crossed the street and Rob saw a young man in a rumpled suit with a tie hanging from his hand that Rob said, “Doug Norris.”
Anigel blinked.
“Doug Norris, Cameron Dwyer and Anigel Reyes. Cam and Ani, Doug Norris. What are you doing here?”
“Being a Jew,” Doug said. “I grew up in this shul.”
“Doug works the research library me and Chayne go to a lot when we’re—”
“Researching?” Anigel said.
“Exactly.”
“We’ve had a lot of good conversations,” Doug said, smiling. “About a lot of things. Haven’t seen Chayne a lot though, lately.”
“No, no,” Rob said. “He’s been busy with stuff.”
“Yeah, well,” Doug said,”we’re pulling an all nighter here, but you had said you were thinking about doing a medieval story, and there’s this exhibit in Kazoo I was on my way to. In the morning. So… if you wanted to come.”
Rob looked to Anigel.
“Well, we did tell Chayne we wouldn’t be back tonight. He could probably wait a little longer.”
“Let me think about it,” Rob said.
The dark haired Doug Norris nodded.
“Great, man,” he said, a smile breaking out on his handsome face. “Let me know.”
Rob looked after Doug until he thought it was indecent, and then said, indifferently, “The band still playing?”
“They’ve stopped like maybe twice,” Cameron said. “Marissa went to bed.”
“To bed? Where?”
“Don’t you know?” Anigel said, “this place is like a club house. I mean, a club house on a low budget, but yeah, they’ve got bedrooms upstairs and a little rooftop thing. I think I even heard someone say we’re going to try to stay up till sunrise.”
“I may have to cheat,” Rob said. He cleared his throat.
“By that I meant, I might have to take a look at one of those bedrooms.”
“Yeah,” Anigel said, exchanging a glance with Cameron. “I got that.”
Anigel hugged her knees.
“This has got me thinking.”
“About being Jewish?”
“You joke,” Anigel began. “But it’s got me thinking about the way I approached God, growing up.”
“And what are you thinking?”
“Look, I’m not saying I came up with any answers, just that…. Well, now I actually have questions. And there was a time when I thought I knew everything, and what I knew wasn’t worth much and now the world seems bigger, and I’m glad for it.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Cody began, “how we’ve never seen this town and we may never come here again, and it’s got all its little stories and dramas just like we have in ours? All these little towns, dotted all over Michigan, all over America, all with their own shit.”
“Do we really have drama in Geschichte Falls?”
“Did you seriously ask that question?” Cody said.
Russell cackled, jamming his hands in his pockets. The wind had started up and they were walking back across the park to the hall. They had gone toward the sleeping downtown with its plate glass storefront windows. They had seen, down the street, a church like Saint Adjeanet’s, and a gas station near a red light like the one on Market Street.
“You know everything will work itself out,” Cody said.
“I feel like everything has worked itself out,” Russell said. “And I don’t much approve of it. The year 2000 is turning out to be some bullshit.”
Cody touched Russell’s shoulder.
“Can’t you be happy?” he pleaded. “Just for tonight? Just a little? You used to be full of wonder, and if we can’t do anything about how things have turned out, I at least want you to have wonder again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Short Man.”
“I’m taller than you.”
Cody kissed Russell.
“Is that better?”
“Did you do that just to make me feel better?”
“I did it to make me feel better too.”
Russell bent down and pulled Cody’s face to his, returning the kiss.
He wanted to stop. They should have stopped. Once Cody’s arms raised up as if to protests, then in the empty grassy park, his arms went about Russell’s waist, and Russell’s went about him. Right and wrong and what they knew could have every other day, but this night was for them as they held each other, kissing deep and deeper still, faces clasped by the other’s hands.
Do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you? Tell me you want me to fuck you!” Ted demanded huskily, and his arms like pillars around Chayne, his waist between Chayne’s thighs, he fucked him, looking deep into his eyes.
Chayne groaned at each thrust, gripping Ted’s shoulders, but now he said: “Baby,” holding Ted’s face in his hands.
“I’m talking too much, right?”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
Ted stopped and chuckled and they both laughed as Ted fell on his back in the bed and they lay side my side. Chayne squeezed his anus and still felt Ted throbbing in him.
Ted took Chayne’s hand and, looking up, he swallowed then laughed.
“I’m glad you came back with me,” he said. “No matter what the morning brings—”
“The morning brings me going back to my house.”
“I’m glad you’re with me here tonight.”
They turned to each other, smiling, and then Chayne kissed him, and he kissed Chayne, and Ted’s fingers were soft on the back of Chayne’s neck. Chayne drew Ted to him, and their limbs wrapped together, their bodies clinging, and Chayne and Ted closed their eyes to savor each other and opened those eyes to see one another. Chayne held Ted to him and felt his head in the crook of his shoulder. Slowly they fit their bodies together in the darkness of the hotel room, Chayne moving into something like meditation at the thickness of Ted’s entry. Coupling bodies only lit by a slice of moonlight, they fucked.
Chayne Kandzierski knew lovers understood things about each other no one else could, and that this understanding cut short hesitations and made deadened second guessing. So when Ted, looking half Superman and half Woody Allen, asked where they would be spending the night, Chayne knew he would not refuse him.
In that night, they lay side by side, catching hands, laughing, saying they were sorry, weeping a little, and whispering tender words. In the night they lay face to face tenderly stroking each other, caressing limbs and wondering at the beauty of another man. In the night, Chayne lay on his face as Ted spread himself across him, kissing him, rubbing aches and pains and neglects out with his strong hands. In the night, Chayne, on his face, gripped the pillow as Ted slow and gentle, and then with great force, fucked him, and near the morning, Chayne flew from his own his body while, cock harder than it had ever been, he went deeper and deeper into Ted who, mouth opened in pain and pleasure, urged him on.
Jewell, who had only seen them leave together, would never question and always keep her thoughts to herself. He would tell Faye and Shannon, and there would be no judgment. So called faithfulness did not matter. This moment, when he almost wept to be with Ted again, when they opened hands to each other and joined palms, linked fingers, thrust together, kissed deeply, entangled limbs and touched flesh to flesh, unable to have enough of one another, giving themselves up to being inside of each other every way they could, was all that mattered.
They were yawning, half asleep on the love seat, and across from them, on the sofa in the common room, Cameron was already passed out.
“You don’t regret coming, do you?” Gilead asked.
“Are you kidding?” said Mark. “This is the most fun I’ve had in… Well, you know, I always have fun with you.”
“Do you?” Gilead said, in a tone of discovery.
“Yeah, dummy. Can’t you tell?”
“Well, last month you were in such a slump. And I know you were depressed, and I know it’s not just like something you fix once and then everything’s gone, but… I don’t know, I don’t feel like a very fun person.”
“Gilead Story, you are hands down the most fun person I know.”
Gilead laughed at Mark’s declaration, then he said, “Do you go to synagogue?”
“I have,” Mark said. “Now and again I do.”
“Would you take me?”
“You liked it?”
“I did like it,” Gilead said. “But also, if something’s a part of your life, then I want it to be a part of mine too.”
“Is that why you come to my track metes?”
“No, I come to your track meets because you look good in shorts and a tank top.”
“You know, no one ever came to temple with me. Not even Joe.”
“Was Joe your boyfriend?”
Mark blinked at Gilead.
“I mean, if he was, I don’t want you to ever think you can’t tell me. I know how much you loved him. Still love him, and—”
Mark put his fingers to Gilead’s lips and smiled sadly.
“Gil, you are my first boyfriend. You are the first guy I’ve been with. You’re the first anything I’ve been with. I knew I probably would prefer to be with a guy about…. Really not long before I met you. I never told anyone. Not even Joe. Certainly not Chris. They are two of my closest friends, but I just didn’t tell them. And I wish Joe had lived to see you. I wish he’d been around to see me this happy. That part hurts, thinking about the things we won’t do and what he won’t know.”
Mark looked like he was debating saying something else and so Gilead said, “Out with it.”
“Gil, you remember when I was depressed and was shutting you out?”
“Of course I remember.”
“I was scared. I kept thinking about… what if one day God took you away from me the way he took Joe? And it was… It was too much.”
Despite the dark, and the comfort of the warm, rumpled bed, Nehru Alexander believed it was nearly seven o’ clock. He could usually sense things like this. Brad was stretched out beside him, but Joshua had gone, and Joshua was not Cody. He had been fun, but they had not needed him to stay.
Brad stretched, and eyes closed, reached out to pull Nehru in. Joshua had wanted to be fucked, and not necessarily by Nehru. He had been so very hard watching Brad in Joshua, and the harder Brad fucked Joshua, the more Nehru felt his own prick rising. Brad’s round hirsute buttocks clinched and uncliched and Nehru took the lube Joshua had brought and then, just like that, he was pushing inside of Brad, who cried out in surprise and then delight, they were moving together in that little room, fucking and cussing. In the end there had been the satisfying sound of the bedstead hitting the thin wall as they suppressed their cries of pleasure until, at last, at the top of a bright star, Nehru came.
Now he dressed, searching for and pulling on jeans, finding his tee shirt, knowing his jacket was downstairs in the auditorium. For so long he had been this almost celibate, almost sexless thing. Who was this lover to who moved slowly in Brad, watched Brad move slowly in Cody, and now Joshua, bent on hands in knees, ass up for them? Who was this Nehru whose cock, like a radar, found the place that made men cry out?
“Are we getting up?” Brad rasped, lying on his side, hair sticking up.
“I am,” Nehru said.
“Wait for me,” Brad said. And Nehru did. He wanted Brad again. He always wanted him. There would be time for that. Walking down the corridor of this clubhouse, past the soda machine, he yawned and headed downstairs to the lobby before the auditorium. Hale and Shane were putting up instruments and Jill, with one devil horn gone, was asleep on the stage.
“I’m so hungry I could eat a…” Shane began, then said, “but I wouldn’t eat a horse. I’m so hungry I could eat Mc.Donalds.”
“There’s one down the street,” Nehru said. “I saw it.”
Brad shut his guitar in its case and slapped Jill on the ass.
“Ah!” she shot up blinking.
“Let’s go,” Brad said.
Thank God for time out of time. Though you try to regret it you never will. Thank God for the night that is early morning that is under the white stars. They come back to this long tall building that looks almost like a shed or a gym, and when they come they come through the side because they don’t really want to see anyone. In the lobby with its fluorescent lights they can see in one direction, Anigel, Cameron and Rob on the porch, and in the other is the door leading to the reception hall where people are still dancing, Across from them are kitchens and other small rooms, and they walk up the stairs because there are rumors of bedrooms.
By virtue of the height of the auditorium, upstairs is smaller than downstairs, but here, this low lit place reminds Russell of the a hospital waiting room, reminds him of the first night he first met Cody, who looks around at the round tables and the counters, the vending machines, the doors to the restrooms, and then kisses him again and takes him by the hand down a hallway where, on the other side of the door he hears the sound of frantic fucking. They move a few paces to turn the corner and find another door, try it, and come into an empty room, but one where they can still hear the fucking.
Cody feels the wall. It is only a partition that doesn’t go all the way up, that has made two rooms from one and when he looks through its cracks he sees, in the moonlit night, three naked men, legs rising like leaping frogs, the starlight on the smoothness of backs and buttocks. Nehru, gently fucking Brad, who is gently fucking someone else on hands and knees. They take up a hard, clapping rhythm, and the bed squeaks as the last man cries out. Nehru slows. They all sigh. They unlock and link in other poses, and the curly haired man wraps his thighs tight around Nehru.
“Nehru,” Joshua breathes. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
And as Joshua says it, Russell’s hands slip into Cody’s jeans, and while Cody watches Nehru, Russell strokes him, and then slowly Cody turns away and begins to undress Russell. In the small bedroom they lie on he bed, and to the sound and sensation of Nehru’s lovemaking, their bodies surrender to what they have not known since before Christmas, what is just for them and will harm no one, mouths hungrily kissing, arms and legs wrapping together, hands pulling on shoulders, stomachs, thighs, cocks, rubbing as they pull the covers over each other and give themselves to love. They are aware of the need to be quiet, but spurred on by Nehru and Brad and Joshua’s inability to be quiet. Their rhythms speed up when theirs speed up. They let the mattress creak when Nehru’s does. By the time Joshua, well fucked, is leaving, Cody and Russell have already come and are asleep in each other’s arms.
Russell, his arms around Cody’s waist, stirs when he hears Nehru dressing, hears the buckling of his belt and his shoes slipping on. It is cooler now in the room, but they can pull the covers higher. Cody grunts and groans, and Russell wishes he wore his watch and could tell what time it is. He loves his friends, but they must not be found like this. They can remain like this, but not much longer. A root of bitterness starts in him, but he pulls Cody to himself and kisses the small of his back, feeling himself go simultaneously melty and erect, his penis pressing against Cody’s.
