“So, is this where we part ways?”
“According to you,” Laurel said while they stood on the corner.
“Well, your home is that way, Cuz, and my mission is that way,” Dylan pointed in the opposite direction. “And not to beat a dead horse, but I’m through with making all of my problems your problems.”
“Well, do I get a hug goodbye?”
Dylan turned around and gave his cousin a crushing but comforting bear hug. He was only a little bigger than she, but very strong, something she frequently forgot, and then he turned around and went up Charleston Street in the direction of Dena and Milo’s.
Laurel watched her cousin growing smaller, and then her phone rang.
“Yes, Mama,” she said. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
Still she waited, because she knew Dylan. And then, just like she expected, he turned around to check if she was still there, and she turned around in a circle to pretend like she had just happened to look back, and he waved and she waved, and that was their pattern, and then they were both on their ways.
Charleston Street was full of old houses converted into duplexes and sometimes reconverted into many plexes, and at the brown Victorian, Dylan went up the steps and tapped on the door. Footsteps came from behind it a few moments later, and then Ruthven opened the door, a sandwich in his hand, and, mouth full, said, “Dylan?”
When Dylan stood there waiting, Ruthven said, “I’m sorry, come on in.”
Dylan closed the door behind him and said, “You’re right. We need to talk. I just don’t know what else to say.”
“Well,” Ruthven was still chomping on his sandwich. He moved through the living room and went to turn off the television, “what I have to say is I love you, Dylan, and I’m ready to man up and be something you can depend on. If you want that too. I’m tired of talking about how you really love me, or how Lance Bishop is a blockhead, even though I think he is. It’s not about that. It’s about the fact that I came all this way for you, and I’m really fucking sorry for letting you down, and there is not a day, not a fucking day, that I don’t wish we were together.”
Dylan opened his mouth.
“I’m not finished,” Ruthven said. “I also wanted to tell you that… even if you stay with Lance, I get it. He’s safe. He’s the right age. I get it. But… it doesn’t change how I feel. Alright?”
“Good,” Dylan said, flabbergasted. “That’s good. But… I’m not leaving Lance, alright?”
“Okay,” Ruthven nodded, his fingers playing with the bit of beard under his chin.
“May I ask why not?”
“Yes,” Dylan said, pleased with the civil turn of their conversation and wondering how long they could keep it up. “He’s loyal, and he loves me.”
“And you?”
“I’m loyal to whoever is loyal to me. I don’t turn my back. Fear… or wanting to fuck other people doesn’t make me disloyal.”
“But do you love him?” “I do.”
“As much as you love me?”
“I thought you weren’t going to do that?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Fine,” Dylan said. “No. Not as much as you.”
Then he added, “But he has been more loyal to me than you ever were, and that sort of evens things out. As far as I’m concerned.”
When Ruthven said nothing, Dylan said, “Well... We said what we needed, so… I’m going to run on home because school lets out soon and I did tell Lance I would meet him, and I am a guy of my word, so…”
As Dylan turned for the door, Ruthven said, “Can we hang out, though?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
“Just hang out,” Ruthven came up beside him. “Just like cousins.”
“But we’re not just like cousins.”
“Come on,” Ruthven said. “How are we going to be good again if we can’t even hang out again?”
Dylan was sure there was a flaw in this plan. He even vaguely suspected he wanted there to be a flaw. But he sighed and said, “Sure. All right. Call me. We’ll figure out something. But now I really, really have to go.”
“Great,” Ruthven said. “See you soon.”
On his back he was still gasping and catching his breath, trembling a little as he held onto Lance’s hips. When Lance came like this, his eyes nearly glazed over, his face looking straight ahead into nothing, his whole body shivering, Dylan felt even more tender than when he himself was coming. He wished that he could pass into Lance. For just a moment they were the same person. Today, as sometimes, the coming was almost violent. Lance shivered like an epileptic, and then slowly collapsed against him.
Neither one of them said anything right away, and Dylan ran the palm of his hand over Lance’s damp hair. He smelled lightly of sweat, his hair had that wet scent to it. There was that brief time when their bodies were the same, curled up like an intricate pattern before separating, before Lance grew heavy, and they parted, lying side by side on his floor in the pile of blankets.
“Are we ready?” Dylan said. Lance turned and looked at him. “You still wanna do this?”
“Yes,” said Dylan. “Oh, hell yes.”
Lance groaned a little and pushed himself up. Dylan turned on his side to look at the length of Lance’s body. He’d left a cloth on his dresser and he wiped himself down with it and then tossed it to Dylan.
“All right, cowboy. But it’s your funeral if something happens.”
Dylan wiped his belly and thighs.
“It’s supposed to be your funeral too,” he said, and then stood up and shoved the cloth into Lance’s palm.
“That’s what being together means.”
Laurel sat on the sofa with her mother, and when the doorbell rang, both she and Caroline jumped.
“You don’t have to do this,” Caroline said.
“Mama, do you believe in this?”
“Yes, I do,” Caroline told her.
“And do you believe in me?”
Caroline nodded.
“Then I do have to do this. There’s no way I can’t do this.”
The doorbell rang again, and Caroline said, “We better answer it, then.”
They walked past the coffee table and over the old, round rug, past the pillars into the foyer of the old house on Simpson off of Birmingham, and opened the door. The earnest looking young man nodded, and then his eyes went wide when he saw Laurel.
“Ma’am,” he said to Caroline, “This is her!”
He looked at Laurel.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that it is you.”
“Come in,” Laurel told him, “and close the door behind you.”
“It’s you, it’s you,” he repeated, amazed. “This has happened before, but never like this.”
“You said you dreamed about me,” Laurel said.
“That’s right. Last night I dreamed this address, and then I came here, and when I saw your mother I thought… she looks like the one I dreamed about, but she isn’t. It is you, and you are the one who is supposed to read my cards. Can you do it?”
Even having been in this strange world her whole life, Laurel felt like this was one of the strangest days she’d been a part of, but she answered, “Yes. I can. Come right on in.”
"You’ll have to bear with me because I don’t necessarily see what other people see in the cards,” Laurel told him. “In fact, its more like I make up my own interpretations. But it seems to work, so…” she shrugged.
He nodded.
“Right here, Nine of Swords… Well, that’s dreaming, clear as anything. And it can mean bad dreaming, but its also dreaming at the end of a long cycle. With all of these swords around you, I’d say the cycle is what was bad and now you’re past it.
“Cause look right here, Three of Cups, and right here, Two of Pentacles… and then a Three of Pentacles. All of that means companionship. It means you’re going to find help in someone else. And… this right here, maybe it means you’re going to help them.”
“It’s you,” he said smiling brightly, the light winked off of his glasses. “I think you’re supposed to help me, but I’m also supposed to help you.”
Jack Warren sighed through his nose. The light had been green for ten seconds. He pushed his hand to the horn and let out a long honk. Still, the car didn’t move. This was the car that had been before him for three blocks. Now, out here, there were no other cars.
He pressed his hand to the horn, making a long low noise and in the middle of it, the driver’s door of the car ahead of him opened, and a tall young man with a prominent forehead got out and came to him. He looked a little menacing, but he was a string bean and Jeff thought he could probably take him if worse came to worse.
“Excuse me,” the boy who had tapped on the window said once Jeff rolled it down, “are you Jack Warren?”
“Yeah, what the fuck is it to you?”
“Dylan, it’s him,” Lance called.
Out of the passenger’s seat of Lance’s car came another, more compact boy. He knew the two of them now. Some people said they were faggots together, but no one really believed it. This was Laurel’s cousin, Dylan Mesda, and he was clearly carrying something.
“Are you the one who fucked over my cousin Laurel?”
“I didn’t do anything to that bitch.”
Dylan looked at Lance. Lance said, “Looks like it’s him.”
Dylan nodded.
Just like that, Dylan’s bat took out the window behind Jack.
“What the fuck!”
And just like that, Lance took out the passenger one.
“What the hell are you—?”
Dylan took out the other back window, and then they nicked up the side of the car and the hood and the front for good measure while, trembling, Jack screamed.
“You fucking faggots! You couple a fucking faggots!”
Only Lance and Dylan didn’t really look like two fucking faggots. They looked like the two football players that hung out together all the time and people whispered about but didn’t really believe were gay, and they looked like they could kick his ass, so when they looked at him, Jack Warren shut up.
Then they nodded to each other, turned around and got back into their car. The light was green again, and quietly they drove away leaving Jack, who still had his own window and was uninjured, amidst glass and a wrecked car, shaking for his life.
“Faggots,” he muttered, as the light turned red again.
“Oh I was still a little girl,” Caroline said to the boy, whose name was Alex. “I started reading cards trying to look for my mother, I think. I just kept looking for some sort of answers.”
“And then you found them there?” he said, eagerly.
“Well, I found them in a lot of places,” Caroline shrugged. “It’s a skill, yes. But it’s also a gift.”
“Do you have other gifts?” he asked.
She looked at him.
“My grandmother sees things,” Alex said. “She sees them before they happen, the way that once and again I can have a whole dream that makes no sense. I’ll have no idea where I am and then, suddenly, it’s happening to me. It seems so familiar, and I remember that this is part of the dream I was in.”
It’s different for everyone,” Caroline said. “I always hoped Laurel would have something. I hear it’s in our family. I have a sister,” Caroline told him, “who has a gift for the cards.”
“Layla,” Laurel filled in.
“But now what she does is write. It turns out her biggest gift is poetry, and writing.”
“Is that really a gift?”
“Of course it is,” Laurel said. “And music. I was reading about bards and all that in ancient Ireland. Well, they were poets. And the word ‘enchanter’, well whaddo you think that means? Chanting, singing that puts a spell on you. Well, I swear my uncle Fenn can put a spell on you.”
“On that,” Caroline said, “we are agreed.”
“I think we have a very magical family. Even Dylan, and he’s not blood related.”
Just then there was a knock at the door and Caroline picked up the salt shaker and shook some over her shoulder.
“Mama?”
“I don’t know why,” Caroline shrugged. “I just sort of felt it.”
Because in their house that was enough, Laurel got up and went through the living room to the door.
“You sent your faggot ass cousin after me!” Jack Warren was shouting at the door.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Laurel said.
“Look what he and his boyfriend did to my car!”
From the porch steps Jack Warren pointed down to his car sitting on Simpson Street, and Laurel gasped, putting a hand over her mouth and chuckling.
“You think it’s funny? I’ll teach you to think it’s funny.”
But before Laurel could shift from comedy to rage, she heard behind her: “You need to learn respect.”
“Who are you—?” Jack began, but when Laurel turned around, Alex was standing erect, his hand lifted.
“You’ll learn respect now, and not come to this house or any woman’s again until you do, and until you do, the weakness in your head’ll be the weakness in your pants.”
Laurel looked at Alex, so sure and so still, and then she looked at Jack Warren, eyes wide, backing down the steps slowly, eyes growing wider, not daring to look away. When he was at the bottom of the steps, Alex said, “Now go.”
And then, turning around, Jack did.
As Jack scrambled into the ruined car, and turned the ignition, Alex shouted, “And you’ll keep how that car got that way silent!”
And then, nodding rapidly, Jack was gone.
“Damn, Gandalf,” Laurel murmured.
Alex shrugged and looked very embarrassed.
“Let’s not talk about that.”
“No,” Laurel agreed, feeling a little faint as she trembled. “Let’s not.”
