Fenn was all for throwing things down and arranging them later, but Tom wanted the apartment arranged that day. They moved up a battered old sofa, a large fu-ton, two easy chairs, folding chairs and a card table. While Tom arranged, Fenn slept on the sofa.
When he woke up, Tom and Ryan were sitting under him their baseball cap visors hiding their faces while they drank beer.
“I didn’t mean to hog the sofa.”
“It’s alright,” Ryan said, and Tom said, “The fu-ton’s up, so you can go to sleep if you want.”
Fenn was still tired, but he lied and said, “I don’t want. I can put some food on.”
“We don’t have food yet,” Tom told him.
“Ah… Then,” Fenn said, “I can order a pizza and we’ll go shopping tomorrow.”
“Why do you guys only have one bed?” Ryan said.
Fenn looked down at Tom. Tom grinned, and gripping his beer bottle, the handsome, unshaven man said, “Fenn and I sleep in the same bed.”
Ryan thought about this, and then his eyes dilated for a moment. He looked at Fenn. Fenn shrugged, and Ryan said, “Oh.”
In the summer, Tom ran low on money because there weren’t many students who needed to take summer courses in music. He began playing organ at Saint John Crysostom, the Episcopal church downtown, and then got work at Saint Agatha’s. At the end of May, Trisha called Fenn and told him auditions for a play in Chicago were taking place.
“You should come down on Monday, and stay with me. We’ll go up Tuesday morning.”
Tara had no work and nothing to do, and she had gone back home to Gary. Trisha told her, “There’s always stage crew work. Come on up with Fenn.”
So Fenn and Tara got on the South Shore and, kissing Tom goodbye, Fenn went off to Chicago. Trisha lived out in one of the South Suburbs, and they got up when it was still dark in order to make auditions. After auditions came call backs, and then another call back, and then, when Fenn thought he’d gained the part, the news that someone else had it, but that he would be the understudy.
“That’s not what you wanted,” Trisha told him. She was in the play. “But it’s a paying job. Now you need your Equity card.”
Once he understood an understudy was paid, it wasn’t such a terrible thing. Practices went for six weeks and the play ran for nine. The whole time Tara learned what went on in the world of stage hands. When the job was steady, Tom observed, “It takes just as long to get downtown from Trisha’s place as it takes you to get there from Rossford.”
True, either way it was a two hour trip. Fenn knew that Tom meant he should just come home and travel every morning. Tom missed him, and he missed Tom. But practicality put him, Trisha, Tara and a young man called Nate Fromm in a small apartment north of downtown.
Tom came up on the weekends. He always had red carnations for Fenn, and he wore a blue blazer over a white shirt open at the throat.
“He looks like a yacht captain,” Trisha commented with a grin.
“Maybe. But he’s my yacht captain.”
Toward the end of the season, the company surprised Fenn, and Fenn surprised Tom. Rogan Mortman who was playing his part, took ill. Fenn got to go on stage. Then Tom brought roses.
“I’m glad you’re coming home,” Adele said. “I’ve hardly seen you all summer.”
He could hear Layla crying lightly and guessed, by the way Adele was talking, that she was rocking the baby up and down.
“Layla said her first word.”
“Really! What did she say.”
“You won’t believe this,” Adele cautioned. “But she said: girlfriend.”
“You’re right, I don’t believe it.”
“No, Fenn, I’m serious.”
“And yet I still don’t believe you.”
“Well, you have to understand the context.”
“Alright?” Fenn sat down on the cot in the small room where he and Trisha stayed.
“Me and Nell had the babies playing on the floor. You know little Dena. And Layla slapped her hand and said, ‘Girlfriend!’ you know what this means? Those girls will be life long friends, just like me and Nell.”
Fenn thought that what was more likely was that Layla had just slapped Dena’s hand for touching her toy. Privately, Fenn remembered his mother trying to make him friends with the children of her friends. Hereditary buddies were always bad ideas.
“Oh, and I almost forgot. You got a letter.”
“A letter?” Fenn said. Who the hell wrote letters anymore? Well, he did, but no one wrote back.
“Yes. Arrived at the house. I guess he didn’t know where else to send it. It’s from Dan Malloy.”
“Oh,” Fenn said, not know how to sound, or really even how to feel.
Tom swung back into the apartment. He had been down the hall, and he was grinning while some girl swung from his arm. Girls loved Tom. He came to the cot and Fenn said, “Well, I guess I’ll get it when I return in the morning.”
“Alright, love you, Fenn.”
“I love you too, Sis. Give my love to Layla. Bye, now.”
In the sight of the girl, in case she didn’t get it, Tom threw his arms around Fenn’s neck and kissed him.
“You ready to go home?” Tom said. “Home’s been waiting for you all summer, and it’s really lonely. Both of us are tired of sleeping alone.”
The sober Dan Malloy, who in their last encounter had been sobbing over the phone, was superimposed over Tom Mesda. He didn’t supplant Tom, though. There wasn’t a contest. This was his man. He wanted him as much—no, more—than he had when he’d first seen him at the party in the dormitory. He squeezed Tom while the girl looked on with mystified approval.
“Yes,” Fenn said, “Let’s go home.”
Sunday morning he stopped at Adele’s apartment, yes, to see his sister, but also for his mail. He wondered what it was that Dan could have to say. He should have been a year into seminary by now.
“Hoot’s looking for a house.”
“Well it makes sense now that you all have Layla. And then when all the other kids come…” Fenn shrugged.
“I don’t know that I want other kids,” Adele said.
Across the room Layla was asleep in her crib and Adele said, “One is enough, and it’s not that Layla’s a difficult baby. In fact, she’s kind of a charmed one. But it’s the pain aspect.”
Fenn raised an eyebrow.
“They say you forget the pain?” Adele shook her head and took a great breath. “You never forget the pain. Or the pregnancy. The back pain. The titties. My titties hurt so bad. If I could pay someone else to do it, or if I could get a strap on uterus, well then I might do it. But neither one is an option, so it’s going to have to be Layla.”
“Speaking of Layla,” Fenn said, “can I have my letter?”
“What’s that gotta do with—oh!” Adele laughed. She raised a finger and stood up while her brother chuckled. “I’ll be right back.”
She was right back with a long envelope addressed from Dan Malloy.
“You think he’s writing to say he wants you back?”
“I think it’s too fucking late for that,” Fenn stuffed the letter in his breast pocket.
“And besides,” he added, “it’s addressed from a monastery, so I’m thinking no.”
Dear Fenn,
How have you been? I haven’t talked to you in so long, and I miss you. I didn’t mean for us to part so sadly, or so definitely. I hope you didn’t think that I was telling you I didn’t want us to be friends anymore. I just wanted you to be happy and free. That’s all I ever want for you. I hope you are still my friend. If you aren’t then I accept it, but I think about you so much.
The last year has been so strange. I’m learning so much I never knew before. I’m learning what it means to be a priest, part of this band of brothers. I am finally learning what it means to be in the image of Christ, not that we’re the only ones who are. I mean, I don’t feel very Christly at all. But our vocational director says the job of a priest is to manifest the image of Christ at all times so that everyone can see the Timeless Christ. I can’t argue with that.
Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with stuff like that. What I do want is to hear from you. I sent this letter to you Mom’s house, and I don’t even know if you got it, or when you will get it. I just have faith you will. Maybe once we’re in contact again, you can even make a trip down here to see me.
Yours,
Danny
Fenn put the letter down, light hearted. He missed his friend so much. He loved life with Tom, but being divorced from Dan and his old life, there was a sort of vacancy in him.
However, when Tom came into the living room, and saw him with the letter in his hand and the smile on his face then said, “What’s that?” Fenn answered:
“Nothing. I mean, it’s a letter from an old friend. It’s nice to stay in touch with old friends,” he added.
“Yeah,” said Tom, who took this on faith and not experience. “It is.”
The new school year was beginning, and Tom was working full time at Loretto again.
“I could probably get you a job there, too,” he told Fenn, but the look on Fenn’s face said it was best not to repeat that suggestion.
“I’m going to audition in Chicago again,” Fenn said.
“But if you’re in Chicago you’re not here.”
“Yes, that is a basic rule of geography,” Fenn said. “However a basic rule of economy is that if I’m here, I’m not working.”
“Well,” Tom said, frowning, “I don’t really mind if you don’t work.”
“I do,” said Fenn, understanding that Tom would be content to handle all of the bills and even hand out his meager money so that Fenn was around more often. “I mind that very much. The last play really put money in the pot, and as long as we’re together, I’m always going to put money in the pot.”
If you didn’t mind traveling, there was always steady work in Chicago. This time he heeded Tom’s wishes and came home every night.
“If you want me to come every night,” he said, “you better pay for this pass, or else all my money will be eaten up in travel.”
Tom paid.
If there was a weekend run, he stayed with Trisha, and all of this happened so quickly, that he had not written Dan back though he kept Dan’s letter with him all the time. One night, at Trisha’s, he reached into his back pack and pulled out the by now much folded letter. He read it only briefly before taking out pen and paper.
Daniel,
I’m sorry for not getting a hold of you sooner. I graduated this May, and isn’t it fucking about time? Tom wanted us to move into an apartment together, and we have. It happened right away, only a few days after I moved out of the dorm. Ask me how it is? Well, I can hardly tell you because I’m never there. I did a play in Chicago—I was understudy, not the star, and not even an understudy for the star, but the money was good—that lasted all summer, and I came back here to receive your letter. I’m just getting around to writing you back because I was waiting for a good time before I realized that such a time doesn’t exist. So now I’m back in Chicago and in another play, and tonight I’m writing you from a friend’s house.
I do want to see you. I think about you as much as you think about me. Letters may not be the answer, though, if we want to arrange something. Call soon.
-F
However, when Fenn left a phone number, it was not the number of the apartment he shared with Tom, but Adele’s home phone.
