“WELL, WHO THE HELL IS THIS NOW?” Lula Stubblefield demanded. “Get my glasses, Anne. If I’m going to have company, I need to see him. And, Adele, my makeup bag.”
“Grandma!”
“Don’t grandma me.”
From beside the bed, Fenn looked up, “Thomas.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving Fenn a small wave.
“You,” Lula said, loading that one syllable with immense disappointment.
“Lula,” Fenn said in a warning voice.
“It’s because I love you,” his grandmother murmured and Fenn nodded while saying to Tom, “I told you that you didn’t have to be here.”
“That’s what I said,” Todd, standing beside Tom commented. “Half the county is outside in the waiting room.”
“If I knew having a heart attack would make me this popular,” Lula said, “I would have had one along time ago.”
“Don’t say that, Grandma!” Adele told her.
“Adele!” another man stuck his head into the room.
“Oh, not you too!” Lula said.
Adele lifted a finger and resituated her purse over her shoulder before heading out of the room.
“Adele,” Hoot was saying, “now, I was glad to bring you here, but I got things to do.”
“The first of them is get those divorce papers ready,” she said. “Now, don’t worry, Hoot. You can go. But Layla’s going to want to be here, so do you think you could pick your own daughter up?”
“I don’t think I can do that, baby—”
“No—” Adele put up her hand. “Do not call me baby. Or anything else. And, if you can’t be any use to me, then you ought to leave.”
Hoot opened his mouth to say something, but then turned away and walked toward the elevator.
Adele stood there for a moment and then suddenly was surprised by a hand on her shoulder.
“Todd!” she turned around.
“You all right?”
Adele nodded, pressing on a smile.
“I’ll be all right. I need to go over to the school and pick up Layla. Since Hoot won’t even do that.”
“Don’t you worry,” Todd told her. “I can do that.”
“No—” Adele began. But she relented, smiled and said, “Thanks Todd.”
He nodded, heading to the elevators behind Hoot.
In Lula’s hospital room her daughter, Anne, and her grandchildren were sitting while Tom stood.
“Well, you look really good, Mrs. Stubblefield,” he told her.
“Well, yeah,” she agreed, finishing off her face, and putting the makeup sponge back in the bag, “You know what they say, ‘Black don’t crack.’”
“Yes,” the toilet flushed and out a voice said from the opening door, “and with the right amount of plastic surgery sometimes it doesn’t even smile or have the ability to raise its eyebrows.”
Tom covered his face and met the eyes of the man who stood beside Fenn.
“Lee Philips, cousin of the suffering,” he said, offering his hand. “Don’t worry. I always wash after pissing.
“And you would be…?”
“Tom Mesda.”
“The cheating ex, yes. Well, good to finally meet you.”
Tom opened his mouth, but Fenn only said, “Lee lacks discretion.”
“Lee lacks the desire to bullshit,” Lee Philips said. “I never saw the point in it. Besides, whatever you did, here you are, so you can’t be that bad. And speaking of discretion and the lack thereof, everyone knows it wasn’t your indiscretion that ended things. You let Fenn go, and he flew away.”
“You talk entirely too much,” Adele told him.
“Fenn’s a damn bird, once you let him go, you might never get him back.”
“Oh, shut up,” Lula said, before Fenn could say anything. She looked at her grandson and told Lee, “You’re right, of course. But shut up all the same.”
“Yes, Aunty,” Lee said with mock sorrow.
“Besides,” Adele added while everyone tried to recover from Lee, “Todd has Fenn, so he can’t be that much of a bird.”
“I don’t appreciate being talked about like I’m not in the damn room.”
But he was, and Lee added, looking over at Tom, “That’s because Todd had the good since to never let him go.”
“Oh, cousin, so that’s Tom!”
“Yeah, that’s Tom.”
“Well.”
“Well, what?”
“It’s just…” Lee began. “I didn’t know he looked like that is all.”
“Everyone says that.”
“Well, shit, yeah. I mean, the boy—the man—is beautiful. All that… curly hair and those dark eyes. Those eyes. And he’s so shy. Is he really shy?”
“Yes,” Fenn said. “When I met him it took a month to get past hello with him. It was like pulling teeth.”
“And then it was worth it?”
“For almost ten years it was worth it.”
Lee let out a whistle between his teeth.
“Fuck!”
And then Lee said, “Do you still love him?”
“In that best friend way. Yes.”
“No, I mean in the ‘would you be jealous if someone was after him?’ kind of way.”
“Oh, my God!” Fenn said. “What’s wrong with you? You were hitting on him, weren’t you? In my grandmother’s hospital room.”
“I will confess,” Lee lifted his eyes to the fluorescent lights and put a hand over his heart before whispering, “I would make sweet love all night long to that boy, if you didn’t mind.”
And then, releasing his pose he added, “Or even if you did.”
The elevator opened and Tom came out with a tray full of drinks.”
“Here you go, guys.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Fenn muttered.
“I’m sure we will.”
“Talk about what?” said Tom.
But just then another elevator swung open and out came Todd, followed by Paul and Noah.
“Guess who I found in the lobby?” Todd said. “By the way, Layla left, already. It’s a good thing I had the sense to call first. Apparently she’s coming here with some guy named Will.”
Fenn smiled. “I guess the date went well, after all.”
“What date?” said Tom.
“Never mind. Tom, this is Noah and this is Paul, and we have something we all need to talk about, tonight.”
Tom looked from Paul to Noah, and smiled cautiously. “Well…. All right.”
The elevator doors opened again, and out came Layla, Dena, Will and Brendan.
“Damn,” Fenn said.
“We all wanted to be with Layla,” Dena told them.
“Lee?” Layla blinked.
“Cuz,” he drawled.
“Is she so sick you needed to come from…?” Layla began, then said, “Where the hell did you come from?”
“From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. And no, you don’t have to worry. She’s fine.”
Fenn, who always felt that it was important to introduce everyone to everyone else, did so and Brendan stopped, tilting his head, when he met Paul.
“What?” said Dena.
“I just feel…” Brendan began, “I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
Paul looked awkwardly to Fenn and Noah, and then Noah said, “Probably in a porno. We used to do that before our boss got busted for possession of cocaine and other illegal substances.”
While Paul was opening and closing his mouth like a dying fish, Brendan blurted out, “Johnny Mellow!” Dena looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and Tom cried, “You work for Guy Clintock!”
“How do you know that?” Fenn demanded.
Lee whispered: “Who?”
And Layla shrugged.
“Well,” Fenn said, still eyeing Tom, “since my ex is apparently already acquainted with Paul’s—we call him Paul now, folks—work, I’m sure he’ll be glad to know that he’ll be taking over Chris’s part in Twelve Angry Men.”
“You can act?” Tom said.
“You should know,” Fenn said.
Dena looked at Layla and both girls covered their mouths.
“He’ll be wearing clothes this time,” Fenn added, heading back to his grandmother’s room.
I’LL BE HERE just long enough to make sure Lula’s okay, and then I’m on my way back to Kansas.”
“You came all the way from Kansas?” Tom said.
“No,” Lee told him, taking out his cigarette roller and a pouch of tobacco. “I came all the way from Chicago. But I was on my way to Kansas.”
“Never seen Kansas.”
“It’s very… flat,” Lee said, putting a filter in the roller and reaching for papers. “And very dry.”
“And the Black folks are backward as fuck,” Tara added, saying, “Roll me one, Lee,”
Todd said: “Then I don’t know why you don’t stay around here a little longer.”
They were in a Red Lobster, which Fenn always thought was ten degrees colder than it needed to be, and Lee pressed down the roller and out it came the cigarette.
“Do you know…” he began, waving the cigarette around as his cousin reached for a lighter, “that they want to ban smoking in this restaurant? Thank you cousin,” Lee took a long drag and let out the smoke. “What the fuck is the world coming too?”
“We’re in the last days,” Fenn tut-tutted in a nasal accent. “We’re in the last days!”
“The sun will turn black as night,” Lee lamented in a country preacher’s voice. “And the moon will turn red as blood. A third of the stars shall fall from the sky—”
“And smoking will be made illegal in all restaurants throughout the state of Indiana,” Todd added, reaching for a cheese biscuit.
“Amen,” Lee and Fenn intoned. “Amen.”
“You all are so alike!” Tom rejoiced.
“That—” Lee began
“—is not a compliment,” Fenn finished, and they both laughed.
“You’re both in the arts,” Todd said. “You both smoke—”
“We’re both Black,” Fenn pointed out.
“You’re both near sighted,” Tara pointed out
“I believe in contacts,” Lee said to Tom, who cocked his head.
“You’re both sort of… scoundrels,” Todd said.
They both pretended to look shocked.
Tara added, “Let’s not forget: you’re both queers.”
“What?” Tom said.
“You thought it could only strike once in a family,” Lee raised an eyebrow.
“Well, now usually it does,” Todd said.
Fenn chuckled. “I bet it doesn’t.” The cousins clicked cigarettes like toasting drinks and Lee added with a meaningful gaze at Tom, “and we both have the same tastes.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Fenn said, though he didn’t really seem to mean it.
“And now the reason for this dinner,” said Lee. “That we all had to be at. That was so important that Tom and I both be here? Were you trying to hook us up? Pass your ex off on me?”
Tom went red. Fenn cleared his throat.
“The two of you can work that out on your own time. This has to do with me being a scoundrel.”
Lee looked at Tom, shrugged, and said, “Well, now, what the fuck doesn’t?”
Above them there was a great ripping, a thunderclap.
“Damn, rain,” Tara said, “Let’s go and see if it’s started up yet?”
She returned a moment later and reported, “It’s biblical out there, baby. It’s more water in the sky than sky. Like God just emptied out his bathtub.”
“Well, we’ll just have to be careful,” said Lee. “But onto what Fenn was going to tell us.”
Fenn nodded, and leaning in, he began in a whisper, “I found—”
And then he stopped.
“That’s right,” Tara said. “Write it down.” She reached into her jacket and pulled out a notepad. “That’s how they always fuck it up on the soaps. Someone says some shit out loud where they shouldn’t. Write it down.”
Fenn, unnecessarily, cleared his throat again, and wrote for a while. Then he passed it to Tara.
“Shit,” she said, and passed it to Tom who frowned and passed it to Lee.
“Four hundred—”
Fenn slammed a hand over his cousin’s mouth and said, “And I’m not giving it back, and everyone at this table is sharing in it.”
Lee took a breath and sat back in his chair.
“Who else knows?” he said.
“Dan Malloy, Noah and Paul.”
“What about Adele?” Tara said.
“No,” Fenn said, firmly, and Tara nodded.
“Four hundred thousand dollars,” Tom said, as he drove through the rain, Lee Philips beside him.
“That… That’s the end of our troubles.”
“What were your troubles?”
The theatre was in the red, and unpaid for. Now it can be in the black—for a week at least—and be ours outright. I’ve been afraid really, to do some of the things I wanted to do with the theatre. Afraid because we’re always broke. And of course Fenn and Todd can pay off the house. You know. Practical things like that. But good things. What are you going to do with your share?”
“It’s not our money,” Lee said. “I mean you’re getting your share because the theatre is yours and Fenn’s. So Tara would get some too. But that money is Fenn’s.”
“True. But do you really believe he’d sit there and tell us about… four hundred thousand dollars, if we weren’t all going to be dipping into it?”
“How many of us are actually dipping into it? And no, I still don’t think it’s a community pot by the way. Make a turn to your right on Birmingham.”
Tom nodded and the car waded through the water, stopping at the red light on Birmingham.
“Maybe we should have just spent the night in the restaurant,” Lee said.
Tom’s mind was on the money.
“Paul and Noah, You and me and Father Dan, but he doesn’t count—”
“Priests need money too.”
Tom dismissed this with a shake of his head. “He’ll never take it. And Todd and Fenn count as the same person pretty much.”
“I doubt they’d agree with you.”
“Well, financially they do. And Tara. And that makes… ”
“Seven shares by your count, and by your count six that matter.”
The light turned green, and Tom turned the car through the thick water, saying: “That makes about….four hundred thousand divided by… six…”
“Roughly sixty-seven thousand.”
Tom looked at him. “How did you do that? I was never that good at math.”
“It’s not math,” said Lee. “It’s money. Now turn left. Here on Armitage. Right up there… ”
“Oh, I remember this house. Fenn still lived there with his mom when we first met.
“So you’re really going back to Kansas in a few days?”
“In a few days. But not tomorrow.”
“That’s great. I mean… maybe we could get to know each other.”
The car stopped in front of the two storey with the wide porch still visible through the dark rain.
“I suppose we could,” Lee said. “But why?”
Tom rolled his eyes.
“Just… I find you intriguing.”
Lee chuckled and turned from Tom for a second, and then said, “I think you find Fenn intriguing and you think I’m like him. Which is a compliment, really. But don’t tell him. However, we are two very different people.”
“I know that. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re interested in me because you think I’m Fenn come again.”
The thunder drummed to a crescendo and then boomed.
“That is so not true,” Tom said.
“You sure?”
Tom opened his mouth, and shut it.
“That’s right,” Lee said. “Don’t say you’re sure when you’re not.”
Lee opened the car door and before he stepped out, Tom said, “Wait. I got an umbrella.”
“Well, if you give me your umbrella, what will you do?”
Tom seemed to be thinking about this for a second, and then he said, “Well, I could walk you up to the porch.”
Lee snorted and said, “You could. Sure.”
Tom reached behind him, pulled out an umbrella and, as he opened the car door, Lee’s ears were filled with the sound of the storm. A second later, Tom had rounded the car and said, “My socks are soaked. Com’om.”
Together they went up the walk to the porch and then Tom said, “By the way, for whatever the reason… I really would like to get to know you. All right?”
Lee nodded and said, “All right.”
Tom smiled.
“Great. Now… I better high tail it before your aunt opens the door and sees me. I don’t know how Fenn’s mom feels about me.”
Thunder rolled slowly across the sky, and Lee said, “Run now, and I’ll give you a five second’s head start before I ring the doorbell.”
Tom nodded, smiled, and ran down the steps.
“Ahh!” he shouted.
“Yes, Tom,” Lee murmured, turning toward the doorbell, “the umbrella only works if you open it.”
