PART
FIVE
THE PRESENT AND THE PAST
TWELVE
LOVE IN THE NIGHT
“FUCK!” Dan screamed.
Fenn had put off the telling as long as he could, which was until seven a.m. After all they were all coming to the apartment to start moving at around nine.
Dan Malloy, aged twenty-nine, had been surprised when Fenn came to early morning Mass anyway. And then when he had said, “I need to speak to you,” Dan had raised an eyebrow, shrugged and said, “The new confessional is free.”
The church was also empty at this time of morning, when the sun was barely up, and so when Fenn had told him succinctly, “Me and Tom are done. Tom is having sex with Bryant,” Dan had taken a cup, smashed it against the wall and screamed: “Fuck!”
“That son of a bitch!” Dan breathed. “That lousy, fucking son of a bitch. I should have, I should have…” Dan raged around the room. “I always knew. I knew he was an ass. I should have… When? How long?”
“I don’t know,” Fenn said.
“I should find out and—”
“Please don’t,” Fenn said. “This is enough.”
Dan turned to him wild eyed and said, “Of course it is. I’m so sorry.”
Dan went to his knees and put his arms around Fenn. This was so strange, so unlike Dan, or at least unlike the Dan he had known in the last ten years. Dan put the side of his head into Fenn’s stomach, and Fenn could feel Dan’s hands clenching into angry fists
“He wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth you,” Dan went on. “I should have…”
Fenn waited for him to finish.
Dan didn’t look at him.
“I should have never let you go to him. I should have never been a priest,” he murmured. “I never would have done this to you. Never. I should have been with you all this time. Not Tom.”
Fenn thought Dan might be talking to himself as much as he was talking to Fenn. He sat up, took a deep breath, blowing out his cheeks and smoothed Fenn’s shirtsleeves.
“Well, no matter. Things will be right again. He’s gone, and I’m here now. I’m going to be what I was supposed to be to you.”
Fenn didn’t really know what Dan meant by that. He was surviving on five hours of sleep, a terrible revelation of betrayal, the decision to move into his house anyway, a good cry in the bushes, Todd making out with him in the car, enduring a morning Mass and then Dan shattering a cup and raging like a banshee. Right now all he could do was nod and say, “I better get ready for the move.”
Dan and Tara looked at each other, and then at the living room where Fenn sat on the new sofa.
“Are you sure you want us to go?” Dan said.
“Or that you don’t want to come back to the apartment?”
“Well what would be the point in that?” Fenn said to Tara. “I left for a reason.”
“I’ll stay,” Dan said, simply.
Tara nodded. She kissed Fenn on the cheek and she said, “Call if you need me.”
He nodded.
Tara returned to the apartment and screamed when she entered.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here!” Tom said, forcefully.
Tara looked at him with an evil expression on her face.
She put her purse back over her shoulder and turned to go.
“Please!” Tom shouted. “Please,” he repeated. “I… can’t go anywhere else. And I don’t have any friends anymore. Please. Don’t leave.”
Tara turned from him, sickened and full of pity at the same time. His shout had been terrible. Tara had known Tom for ten years. She shook her head. If one of them didn’t leave it was treachery.
She heard a great intake of breath and when she opened her eyes, Tom had gone to the sofa, hiding his face in his hands.
“I’m stupid,” his voice came out high pitched. “I’m such a stupid man.”
“Fenn will never forgive me if I let you stay with me.”
Tom only trembled and kept sobbing. He nodded his head to that, and kept crying.
Fenn would never… Tara sighed, looking at her friend, fallen apart, weeping into his hands, crumpled on the sofa. Fenn would never…
“Stay,” Tara said. “I’ll make tea.”
Tom just nodded, and his body shook harder as he kept crying.
Fenn would never…. The gentle voice went on in her head.
Well… Fenn would have to.
“I am grateful,” Fenn said, after Tara was gone, “for all of you.”
Dan held his hand, squeezing it.
“And I am very sleepy,” Fenn said.
They sat on the sofa a while, in the house which was already home, even though it was empty and had the strange sound of a house that had been empty a long while. As Fenn drifted off, suddenly he felt the pressure of lips on his.
“Dan.”
Dan stopped kissing him. Dan straightened up.
“I just…”
Now Fenn straightened up.
“Daniel,” he said to him.
“Yes?”
“I think I’d better leave town for a while.”
“THANK YOU FOR BRINGING him here,” Noah Riley said, awkwardly. “Meredith will really appreciate it.”
Parental memory was long, Chay observed. Though Chay forgot, Noah did not, that time when he had come home to announce that Sheridan had gone off with Logan to make a life. When things between Sheridan and Logan had ended, Noah had not so secretly rejoiced.
“See, and now you have someone who loves you.”
Never mind that the someone who loved him was Casey, another someone Noah harbored an old grievance against.
“You’re welcome.” Logan nodded to Noah, and then turned to Chay:
“When you need me, you know, just buzz. I’m going back to the house to catch a nap.”
“Bye, Logan, Goodbye, Jonathan.”
Chay hugged both of them, and Noah’s face was expressionless while he watched this, and then the two men left for the house that had once been Casey’s.
“This will be the second time I see where you live,” Jonathan noted.
“True, but you didn’t stay for long the first time,” Logan yawned as they came onto Demming Street. “This time around I’m not heading back till tomorrow.”
“Or until Chay is ready.”
“I think Sheridan’s here. If so, he could take Chay back.”
“With everything that you all went through you’re still friends,” Jonathan noted. “That’s cool.”
“I guess,” Logan said, offhandedly, as they crossed Birmingham, at the end of downtown, and headed into more country places.
“No, it’s wonderful,” Jonathan went on. “I don’t have friends like that. Now that I think of it, the people in my life are more like associates .”
“That sounds really lame,” Logan told him. “And you are starting to ramble.”
“Well, I could shut up.”
“You can keep on talking,” Logan yawned again. “Just understand I may not be listening.”
They drove a little longer, into the scree and the bare fields, up the gravel path to the large old white farm house that had once been the headquarters of Casey William’s empire. But what they found there shocked Logan.
“What the fuck?”
It was just out of place. Or rather she was out of place. In the middle of a group of about three or four people sat a youngish Black woman of medium height with a bandanna tied around her head who clearly did not feel like dressing today. She was wearing glasses, and as Logan parked, she rose and approached him.
“Logan Banford!”
“Layla Lawden?”
“At first I was going to stay with Dena all day and then I thought that’s really kind of sad, and at a time like this the last thing she needs is my ass showing up all the time, sitting there looking sad and patting her hand. And, as much as she loved Barb, Barb wasn’t her grandmother anyway, so me and Jonah got together.”
Jonah nodded.
“And Jonah was saying how this house was perfect for filming a short scene in Todd’s new film. Jonah wrote the script and they’re going to Sundance or something.”
“Riverwood,” Jonah said.
“The movie’s called Riverwood?” Jonathan looked at him.
“No, the festival,” Jonah explained. “It’s sort of like a low budget Sundance.”
There were two good looking white guys with the two serious bespectacled black people.
“It is a place of enchantment and discovery,” declared the sturdy young man beside Jonah. He was in well fitting blue jeans and an off maroon tee shirt with dark curly red hair. He was beautiful actually.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” said the other guy beside him, “Kenny’s an artist.”
In his way this second guy was nice too. Jonathan had seen enough porn to wonder if he was involved in it. He had that look no gay man outside of sex work did, the look of a California surfer, a gay for pay kind of fellow.
“Are you an artist?” Jonathan asked, because he wanted to know if he was right.
“Hah!” the guy with whitish blond hair and the dark gold goatee laughed. “No. I’m a Ruthven.”
“What’s a Ruthven?”
“He’s being funny,” Layla said. “This is Ruthven Meradan. He’s semi family. So, can we hang around your house?” she asked Logan.
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Logan said, remembering himself. He moved ahead of them, unlocked the door and entered through the enclosed porch.
“Semi family?” Jonathan murmured.
“His uncle is my uncle’s spouse,” Layla said.
“This is a progressive town,” Jonathan said.
“No,” Layla disagreed. “Just a horny one.”
