MARRIAGE CONTINUED
“So what’s going on with you and Jonathan?” Sheridan asked him over the phone.
“I would have loved to ask you the other day, but he was there.”
“There isn’t anything going on between us,” Logan said.
“He’s Larry’s slightly annoying son who hasn’t experienced anything about life.”
“Maybe you should be the one to teach it to him.”
“You’re very funny, Sher.”
“How do you know I was joking?”
I actually don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m just thinking he’s very into you.”
“You may be making that up.”
“I’m not,” Sheridan sang in an annoying, and slightly un-Sheridan like tone.
“Well, in that case he wouldn’t be the first person to be enamored of a porn star.”
“Have you fucked him?”
“Say—what—No!” Logan cried. “Of course I haven’t.”
“There’s no of course about it.”
“Okay! For one, I’m having paid sex with his father.”
“Logan,” Sheridan chided him, “we both know you’ve done worse than that.
“And he’s attractive.”
“You think so?”
“Not for me,” Sheridan elaborated. “I mean, I don’t want him. But there’s something nice about him. And you could use nice.”
When Logan did not speak for a long time, Sheridan said, “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
And then Logan added, “I’m pretty sure your heart is in the right place, but I can’t help but think that’s a terrible idea.”
“Well, you know, as you once told me—a long time ago when I thought I was straight—you have to keep an open mind about these things.”
“I said that?”
“You said something to the effect.”
“Well… alright then. Say, Sheridan—”
“Is this the part where you pretend you have to go?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll let you get on with that then,” Sheridan told him.
“Just think about what I said. I love you, goodbye.”
That was just the thing, though. Didn’t Sheridan understand? Love had happened once for Logan, and it may have not been the way that Sheridan wanted it, but Logan had loved him. Sheridan was the only man Logan had ever really loved. And now, here was the only man he ever loved telling him he should sleep with someone else. Jonathan wasn’t much next to Sheridan. Jonathan seemed sort of silly, actually.
Have you fucked him? Sheridan had asked. Logan had offered, vaguely, made it a possibility for Jonathan. He hadn’t seriously wanted the boy. But right now, imagining the silly boy who talked too much bent over a sofa getting what he needed, Logan began to warm to the idea.
EDWARD PALMER RETURNED to the apartment early the next morning. He was surprised to see Dena and Maggie sprawled out on the sofa, several open bottles between them. He didn’t know what the protocol was for this, so he just tiptoed around them, not wishing to wake anyone.
He failed in this when he knocked over the dirty coffee basket with a string of curses, and Dena, long hair askew, sat up demanding—“Who’s a whatasa!” while Maggie shook her hair out and murmured something.
“I was trying to be quiet,” Edward said, desperately, scrambling to pick up the mess he’d made.
“Did you break it, Ed?”
“No. Just spilled old grinds everywhere.”
Maggie pushed her hair back and crawled off of the sofa.
“Here, Baby, let me help you,” she began.
“Here I come,” Dena chimed in.
“It’s really not necessary,” Ed protested.
“Oh, it is,” Dena said, sounding more serious than she ever had before. “It certainly is. Oh, honey, let me get that.”
Edward Palmer moved away because it did not take three people to clean up coffee, and the sight of Dena and Maggie working together was so strange, he wanted to give it a wide berth.
After Dena had helped set up the coffee pot, and the two women were washing their hands, Maggie said, “Are you staying for a cup?”
“I need to get back to Milo and the kids. They’re probably wondering what happened to me.”
“They’ll never believe it,” Maggie said.
The two women embraced and even kissed and then, when Dena was gone, in fact when Dena had made it to her car and was pulling back onto the street, Ed said, “So Maggie, exactly what did happen?”
Maggie thought about it. She went to the pot because she really did need coffee.
“I think,” Maggie decided, “what happened is that I finally learned to say I’m sorry.”
Early in the morning Elias woke up full of heat and desire. On either side of him, hot and firm and soft were his lovers. Lying on their stomachs they were just blinking in and out of sleep. He loved them so much. He kissed one and then the other, and he placed one hand on Lance’s back, another on Dylan’s. He stroked them gently and they both sighed. He moved his hand down to the small of their backs and they shuddered. He massaged their asses and they sighed, mouths open. They made child noises. Gently, he slipped a finger into each of them, and both boys’ mouths opened. Their eyes flew open in amazed wonder. While Elias worked them they moaned, grasping their pillows, then the sides of the mattress. And then, Elias kissed them. He kissed them down their backs, first Dylan, and then Lance and then again, all the way down until his tongue moved inside of them, from one to the other, and they both cried out now. They shouted a little now. Lance banged on the headboard with his fist and shuddering sounds escaped from Dylan. Elias’s mouth worked on them, his hands reached around and kneaded them. Lance and Dylan looked at each other, eyes wide. Suddenly they began to kiss. As they kissed fiercely, Lance reached down and brought Elias up. The older boys kissed, pressing together with Elias between them, going up and down Elias’s body until, gently, Lance turned him on his stomach and Dylan, entranced by a strange contemplation, watched Lance fuck him. His mouth was half opened. His eyes glazed over. Elias grabbed the mattress and his eyes went dull under Lance’s thrusting. It ended all too quickly in an orgasmic flood, Lance’s hands bunched on Elias’s shoulder, the cords of his neck strained, his red face arched toward the ceiling, his cock, thick, wet, spewing, deep inside of the younger boy. But when Lance came out of him, still stiff, his cock wet, Elias reached for Dylan, and Dylan came to him. Now it was his turn. Now they were together. Dylan wanted to hold it in. He did, a little longer, making love to Elias the same way he did when they were in private, holding back his burst. Lance was there, exhausted, on his side, watching. In a way it was like they were doing this for him. When it was time to let go, Dylan almost mourned it. Elias gave a long whimpering cry.
The room was hot, and it smelled like sweat and the long night, and fucking. They all three sprawled, limbs together, their stomachs sprayed by their semen. No one said a word. Elias wanted to say, “No one would mistake us for brothers now.” He liked it when they all did this, though they often felt bad afterward. He didn’t want them to feel bad, so he said, “Come and hold me. Come clean off, and then come and hold me.”
Lance got up a little unsteadily and made his way to the bathroom. Somehow Lance was different after Lance had been inside of him, and Lance’s body would seem different still when, inevitably, in their room tonight, the older boy asked Elias to fuck him. Lance returned with a cloth, and gently he wiped off Elias, and then Dylan, and lastly, up and down his own chest. Lightly he put the cloth on the bureau, and then he went to shut the curtains and hide the light coming in off Magnolia Street.
Dylan lifted up the covers. Drowsily, he climbed into bed and Elias pulled him in.
They slept.
The knock on the door was gentle at first, and then it became more insistent, and by the time Maia came to open it, she was getting ready to shout: Chill out, bitch!”
It could have been her mother, though.
Instead it was: “Laurel!”
“Is it true that you ran off and got married?”
“We didn’t exactly run off,” Bennett came from the kitchen.
Laurel Houghton stood looking at one, and then the other. She moved forward and slapped Bennett on the head.
“What were you thinking? But what was either one of you thinking?”
“Aw baby, stop yelling,” they all heard from behind her.
They looked down, and coming up the steps to the landing was Moshe Fromm with two bags of Mexican food. Maia did not have to ask. She could smell it. She wanted those tacos right now.
“They’re young, and they’re in love,” Moshe continued, entering the apartment and putting the bags on the table by the door. “Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.”
“Like not getting married before you turn twenty?” Laurel said.
“Moshe,” Bennett swept in and embraced the tall, olive skinned man, “Good to see you.”
“Don’t be flattered,” Laurel told her boyfriend. “He’s just hugging you to avoid me.”
“I’ll take it,” Moshe grinned, clapping Bennett on the back. “I’m low on self esteem.”
“Now, what is in these bags?” Maia said, pulling a bundle wrapped in foil out of them.
“Sixteen steak tacos from Mazatlan,” Laurel said. “I know you love that place, and we stopped there on the way here.”
“That’s four a piece,” Moshe said, “So no one has to feel like they didn’t get enough.”
“I’ll just end up feeling like a fat ass,” Maia reflected. She looked at Bennett and Moshe. “You all are so lucky. You never gain weight.”
“Now that you’re married,” Laurel told Bennett. “You will gain weight.”
“What?” Bennett sounded offended.
“Maia learned to cook from her mother and Fenn. You will be fat in no time.”
“We’re both going to have to watch ourselves, then,” Bennett said, but Maia was already taking her tacos to the microwave.
“We are on our good will tour,” Laurel was telling Maia.
“I’ve never been to New York, but Moshe wanted to show me to his family over there. They sniffed around me a bit—”
“Well,” Maia said with a shrug, “Jews.”
“Maia, you’re Jewish.”
“True,” Maia agreed. “But I’ll never be a Jew. It’s not quite the same. Especially since I’ll never be white.”
Laurel looked into the living room, where her swarthy boyfriend was in animated conversation with Bennett.
“The Fromms aren’t like that.”
“The Fromms are not the totality of American Jewry. American Jews tried to be white in Europe for years and got their houses burned down for their troubles. Now they really are white, and honey, they’re loving it.”
For the first time there was doubt in Laurel.
“Do you really think it will make a difference.”
“Why call it an it?” Maia said. “I am one quarter Arab and half Black. It’s not an it. It’s a this.”
Maia Meradan held out her golden arm and ran a hand over it, displaying her dark skin.
“Don’t let ‘em bullshit you. This will always make a difference.”
“Well not with Moshe’s family,” Laurel said.
“Once they learned I would convert for Moshe, they couldn’t have been happier,” Laurel said. “You can’t get mad at them. There was no harm in it.”
Maia did not comment on this.
Laurel said, “We stopped to visit Mom, and we’re staying there tonight.”
“But you could stay here!”
“We couldn’t. It’s too small. And Ma’s in that big house by herself. I wish, I really wish that she wasn’t. Or that I was here more often. Tomorrow we go to Chicago, though.”
“For?”
“To finish our goodwill tour,” Laurel said, loftily. “We need to go to Roger’s Park and see Moshe’s parents, and then I need to go see Dylan.”
“How does he live without you?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Um,” Maia thought about it. “Actually, I think I’m mocking him.”
“Man, I feel like there’s something you want to tell me,” Bennett said.
Moshe grinned foolishly.
“Look at you! Eating tacos with cheese and wearing snazzy clothes! What’s going on with you, Yeshiva?”
Moshe leaned in close to his friend.
“Don’t tell anyone anything that I’m about to say.”
“Alright?” Bennett waited.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Moshe admitted. “But I didn’t have the balls for it. Now I think I do.”
“You’re gonna get a reverse circumcision?”
Moshe frowned at him.
“They say the ladies love it.”
“No.”
“You’re going to quick fucking around and change your name to Moses? No, that’s too old. Be Dave.”
“Are you through?”
“Well, I had a few more, but…”
“I’m going to ask Laurel to marry me.”
“Shit!”
“I know.”
“That’s…” Bennett thought, “that’s pretty fucking big.”
“Yes, I know that,” Moshe said, “and coming from you, caution sounds awfully strange.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Milo said when his wife walked into the house that morning.
“I’ve been where you should be,” Dena countered. “With your daughter.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Dena took off her coat when she crossed the kitchen, and hung it up on the other side of the closet door.
“Mom, you smell like booze,” Rob said as he came down the hall and hugged her.
“Well yes, dear, I do. I’ve been getting trashed with your sister.”
“You’re awesome, Mom,” Rob told her, shaking his dark head in amazement as he went into the kitchen. Like his father he had wide dark eyes, thick hair and a dark complexion. And speaking of his father—
“Miles, you have dropped the ball, really.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“For three years you just shrug and go uh, uh, uh, when your wife and your daughter are squaring off to kill each other. There’s never been a moment when you said… I don’t know, where you said anything. But I took care of it. It’s taken care of now.”
“Mommy, did you kill somebody!” Cara said.
Dena looked at her daughter. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Cara clapped her hands and laughed.
“Mommy’s cursing!”
“Yes, Mommy’s cursing,” Dena picked up the golden haired girl and kissed her. “And no, Mommy didn’t kill anybody.”
“Are you going to take me to school?”
“No, your father will because your mommy needs to sleep in a real bed. Rob, stop drinking out of the container.
“And then,” Dena said, though now she was looking very sharply at Milo, “your father is going to invite Maggie and Edward over for dinner tonight.”
“Is Meredith coming too?” Cara asked.
“No, that’s too many people. She needs to quit having kids.”
