“Hey!” Raphael laughed, tapping their heads under the covers. “Whatchu guys doin’?”
Brendan and Sheridan stopped, wide eyed, in the midst of what they were doing, which was discreetly fooling around with each other while their child slept.
“Waking your dad up,” Brendan lied merrily. “Get up sleepy head.” He thumped Sheridan on the head.
Raphael climbed up closer and echoed this, thumping Sheridan gently and whispering, “Wake up, sleepy head.”
When the boy was done with this, businesslike, he planted his head on the pillow and told Sheridan, “I have to pee.”
Sheridan climbed out of the bed, reaching for his boxers, pulled them on, and took the little boy up in his arms.
“Daddy has to whiz too. Let’s make that happen.”
When they’d first adopted Raphael, Sheridan had told Brendan, “I have a big brother and a father. Trust me. He learns to pee by watching you.”
“I’m not doing that,” Brendan said, flatly.
So in the mini bathroom Sheridan peed while he sat the little boy on his potty and told Raphael, “When you get big enough to do this, remember aim straight even at seven in the morning. And if you don’t—”
“Clean it up!”
“Right. Because?”
“The ladies don’t like it.”
“And by ladies,” Sheridan said, “I mean your father.”
When he was with Logan, Logan pissed loudly, with the door open after sex. Or early in the morning. Brendan didn’t believe in that at all. Of course neither had Chay.
“Bren,” Sheridan said, returning to the bedroom and straddling Brendan while Raphael toddled back in. “Remember what Will said last night?”
“I remember what he said last night, and I remember how I feel this morning. But I really, really, can’t do that in this house.”
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re leaving your child with me so you can make a boodie call,” she told Brendan while Raphael was eating in the kitchen.
“Can you believe we’re going to your uncle’s house to use the old apartment, though?” Sheridan said.
“I’m actually sure he’ll understand,” Layla said. “Well, don’t take all day. I have to meet Jonah at twelve.”
Todd was surprised when he woke up alone, and even more surprised when he smelled breakfast. He climbed out of bed, pulled on pants and a tee shirt, the old housecoat with a crushed pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and came down the back steps.
“Look at you,” he said to Fenn, “cooking breakfast and everything.”
“It’s not like I don’t cook,” Fenn murmured, serenely receiving Todd’s kiss on his cheek, and then, taking the spatula to put one egg and then the next on the plate.
“Well, not before twelve o’clock.”
Fenn laughed a little and then poured the pancake batter into the skillet. It hissed.
“Be good and pull out the syrup for me.”
He shouted up, “Thackeray! Breakfast!”
“He might need another call.”
“No, he slept in yesterday and the plate was sitting there waiting for him, ice cold. He’s a quick learner.”
The boy’s feet could be heard coming down the steps and Fenn said, “There’s no need to hurry. Wash your hands.”
The boy departed and Fenn said, “I love you, Todd. But I forget how much. And then I cook breakfast for you so we both remember.”
“That is really…” Todd was taking out a cigarette. It hung from the corner of his mouth reflectively before he took it out and hugged Fenn from behind.
“You’re right,” Fenn told him, “It really is. However I don’t want to burn this food,” he said to the fifty year old man still clinging to him, “so you might want to back away a little bit while I flip this hotcake.”
Thackeray returned and volunteered, “I’ll get the milk and the silverware.”
“Good boy,” Fenn touched him on the cheek.
He frowned and said, “Dad?”
It sounded like he was trying the word out.
“Yes, son?”
“That’s a different car in the driveway.”
“That is Brendan and Sheridan’s car,” Fenn informed Thackeray. “Brendan is your cousin Layla’s best friend, and Sheridan is Will’s brother. And they are a couple.”
“It’s so many gay people here,” Thackeray said in a tone of wonder. “I wonder if I’m gay too.”
“I think if you were you would know by now,” Fenn said placidly.
Thackeray nodded at the wisdom of this and went to the refrigerator for the milk. Todd said, “Where are Sheridan and Bren, then?”
“In the apartment downstairs,” Fenn said in a different tone.
“For wha—?” And then Todd murmured, “Ohhhhh.”
“What’s ‘oh’ mean?” Thackeray said.
“It means pour the milk,” Fenn told him clearing his throat.
Thackeray began to pour the milk, and then in the middle of doing so, he suddenly murmured: “Ohhhhhh!” in a tone of discovery.
The phone kept ringing, over and over again, and it took Logan a while to realize it wasn’t a dream. He had put that ringer on his cell that recreated the sound of an old fashioned rotary phone. That had been cute once, but now it was a little annoying. He reached out slowly from the covers and pulled the phone to him.
“Hello?” he croaked.
“Are you in Rossford or Chicago?”
“Casey?”
“Yeah.”
Logan looked around slowly. Under the heavy comforters of Larry’s bed, in the large bedroom, Logan said, “I’m here. In Chi. I’m not far from you.”
“Great. Can you do me a wonderful favor?”
“I guess.”
“Take Chay to Rossford. A friend of his needs him.”
“Uh… sure. Okay.”
Logan sat up in bed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“When do you need me to do it?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Give me about an hour.” Logan scratched that. “An hour and a half.”
“That’s good. He’ll be ready. I’m stuck here shooting.”
“I get it,” Logan said. “I’ll be over.”
“Incidentally, you’re being really vague about what I’m going for.”
“I don’t know if you know his friend Meredith.”
“Yeah, I know Meredith.”
“Her grandmother died.”
“Oh, shit. Not the Affren lady?”
“Yeah.”
“Crap. Okay. Yeah. I’ll be there soon.”
“Good morning, sunshine,” Jonathan said.
“Don’t you have something better to do than watch me walk around your dad’s apartment half naked?”
“Not really.”
“Like class?”
“Northwestern is boring as fuck. They ought to call it Snorewestern.”
“You’ve been dying to use that joke, haven’t you?”
“A little. Was it funny?”
“A little. You wanna to go to Rossford with me?”
“Uh,” Jonathan sat up, “sure. Is there a party?”
“If you think a funeral’s a party,” Logan said.
“Ugh.”
“Be nice and put out some clothes for me. I have my own closet here,” Logan said.
Jonathan nodded to this, asking no questions, and then said, “When do we leave?”
“We’re going to pick up Chay. It’ll be in about an hour.”
Without shame Logan peeled off his briefs as he entered the bathroom and turned on the jets of hot water in the shower. There was a moment he savored of being naked and smelling himself before the cleansing and the soaps, and then he stepped into the jets and felt the water beat his skin. They were south of Kinzie in the high buildings of Streeterville. Casey and Chay were just a little north of Division Street. It wouldn’t take long to get to them.
What a life they were living! This was what his mother called New York City living. He remembered something Chay had said once, that this was life out of an Anne Rice novel. She was always writing about bored people living in luxury it took ten pages to describe. There was a part of Logan that distrusted all of this, distrusted enjoying it too much. He didn’t want to lose his soul though some people would have said he’d lost his soul a long time ago. But he didn’t think fucking Larry, or sleeping with any of the often gentle and lonely men he’d been with was the same as damnation. Even in those days when Chay would go with him to seedy men, and he would service them, he’d had a soul. To go on about the quality of the marble on the counter tops, and lovingly discuss the cut of his lapel while only wearing name brands, to become the person who couldn’t live without bottled water, that was what Logan thought of as losing soul.
One day when he was here, he got off of the El at Clark and Division and went walking down North Dearborn until his legs got tired. He wanted to see where it would take him. It was one of the first times he’d come to Larry. Autumn was setting in. The grass was that deep green, the trees red orange and yellow with their dying. Across from Newberry Library, kids were playing in the park. People walked up and down the streets, but nobody waved and nobody smiled. His stint in California, doing movies with guys who hated themselves and hated him a little, had taught him to live with that. But there was something dead in these folks. There was something dead in walking down Dearborn and not seeing it, paying rent this high and not seeing the beauty of the high rises, and of the low old buildings, the green in the grass, the squirrels in the trees. Every time he took a high priced client, every time he woke up in that man’s expensive bed, he was afraid that he was close to becoming one of those people. In his early life he’d feared going over the edge. After that time when Sheridan had saved him—Brendan and Fenn and Lee had saved him too—Logan had feared going over the deep end toward madness. There was a guy in a business who had murdered a man for a dollar, one who had run himself through with a sword. There were nights, especially the difficult ones after things with Sheridan had ended for good, after Sheridan was with Brendan, when Logan lay in bed terrified that he would go that way too, that, at last, madness would take him. Now he feared the numbness that coated the whole world, the numbness that he had fled in the early days, taking his clothes off for money, fucking grown men in parking lots. He was doing so well, he was now so prosperous, that he feared numbness might catch him again.
Jonathan and Logan were well dressed. Logan intentionally did not pay much attention to what he was wearing. He knew he was good looking, and he knew the clothes were too. He knew how to dress. Why be concerned? Chay didn’t keep them waiting when they reached the house on State Parkway. Casey ran down the steps long enough to lift Chay up, kiss him and then tell Logan, “I really, really appreciate you, friend.”
“It is no problem,” Logan asserted.
Chay, the smallest man Logan had ever seen, who still retained a childlike look, carried a travel bag with him and was in a sweatshirt and jeans. Casey was in jeans and an old tee shirt, his black rimmed spectacles making him slightly endearing, a little bookish. There had always been a quiet side to Casey. He kept a very political blog about matters of sexuality read by more than gay men trying to masturbate. Logan wondered if Casey felt it too, the danger of going crazy or going numb?
They took the Escalade out of Chicago. It was limo like, but not a limousine. Logan did the driving. Jonathan excused himself, climbing into the back and opening a book.
“I can’t believe Barb Affren is gone,” Chay said in a small voice. “Which is stupid, because she was ancient.”
Logan reached over and rocked Chay’s little shoulder. There was so much between them. He remembered again that it was Chay he had known before Sheridan. Chay who had accompanied him on those dark nights to visit clients. Chay, as a fifteen year old, who had asked Logan to take his virginity and Logan who had refused, leaving that to Casey. Maybe the force of his emotions was too great. Maybe the spell that Casey had fallen under would have happened to Logan. Maybe, Logan thought, he was trying to protect himself from what making love to Chay would do to him, not the other way around. In the end Logan had gone with Sheridan, and that had created the triangle ending in what they had done to Chay.
All that, and the uneasy years afterward came to him now. And then came the night three years ago, when he had gone to the house on State Parkway, more in need of love than he knew, and for the first time, in Casey’s presence, he had known Chay. The love he had run from ten years earlier, he came to in their bed, in that house, Chay bringing Logan into his arms, the stiff throbbing between Logan’s legs being brought into him as well. He had been with Casey many times before, but this was different. This was the first time Casey had made love to him. The three of them together had become something different from a three way, different from the movies, something that linked them forever. The morning he’d waken up between Casey and Chay, the morning Casey had gotten up to work and left Logan with Chay, they had found their way to forgiveness. He still remembered the jackhammer power in his body while Chay’s mouth and eyes opened wide, and his little hands splayed across Logan’s back. As Logan’s eyes lost focus, and rolled to the back of his head, the darkness passing before him as his jaw set, while his body seized and he passed into orgasm, was the passage through the damage done ten years past.
He told Chay, very quietly, as they approached Lake Shore Drive:
“I’m getting out of this. All of it. I don’t know exactly what I mean by all of it, and I don’t know what I’m going into. But I do know that I am definitely, definitely, getting out.”
END OF PART FOUR
