The City of Rossford

Chapter Ten

Magic

LAYLA HATED TO WAKE UP this way. Will lying beside her was supposed to help, but it didn’t. She was in trembles so bad her head hurt. It happened all the time. It happened for no good reason. Shit without logic, just confusion and worry. What if and what if and what if. She needed to breathe.

Beside her Will went on sleeping.

“The Queen of Cups,” Layla remembered. It was all going out of her head what that meant. Everything Caroline had said.

She wasn’t afraid around Caroline.

Well that was it. Like Brendan when he walked in and laughed. When he said he felt like he’d been given permission to do what he wanted. In her life Layla realized she didn’t feel much like she’d had any permission.

“You have to get some roots,” her father had said. “You have to put your feet on the ground.”

She seemed so care free, like something wild and great was going on inside of her. But what she was was rootless. What she was was looking for a thing she didn’t know how to get. And in the end she had nearly married. Marriage was supposed to take care of the longing.

More than that, marriage would make her who she was supposed to be. So she’d jumped into it, and that wasn’t like the old her.

She put on a housecoat. It was cold in here. It was damn near freezing. She turned the heat on as she entered the hallway, and went to sit in the living room.

“That’s Layla, she always knows what to do.” That’s what Brendan had said.

But lately she didn’t. Lately everything she did was foolish. She yawned, frustrated by the yawn that meant she wasn’t awake enough to be out of bed, but not sleepy enough to be content in it.

“Layla,” she heard Will’s voice. He was half asleep.

She turned around on the sofa, and looked to him.

“I can’t sleep,” she said.

He nodded and came to sit by her.

“I used to know what was going on,” she said. “I used to know what I was all about. Or some of what I was about.”

“And now you’re back in school.”

“That’s a cover up. And there’re a lot of people who can live in a cover up. But I can’t. I can’t confuse who I am with who I’m… hoping to be? Is that it?”

Will pulled her close to him, and placed an arm over her shoulder.

“It is more than that,” she said. “Today I knew. Today things were alright.”

“When you met your sister?”

“Yes. For the first time more than any time. More than… going to church or any of that, I knew who I was. I felt planted. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Well, now, Layla, most people don’t really care about feeling planted.”

“No, but I do. Because I was. Today. Everything made so much sense, and all of my fear dropped away.

“She said… Caroline said, that I thought I’d come to her for one reason—which I did. But that it wasn’t the real reason. I have to go back to her.”

“And are you going to tell her the truth?”

“Well, if I don’t,” Layla said, “how long before that turns into a lie? I’ve got to.”

She took a deep breath and pulled her housecoat tighter around her.

“I feel a lot better. I feel like… Like I know what I have to do. Like going to her is what I have to do. Like it’s… the thing that matters. Does that make any sense?”

Will nodded. He wasn’t sure if it made sense or not, but it did to her, which was what mattered.

Paul went upstairs to look over his sleeping children, and Noah followed.

In the dark, over where Bennett slept, Paul sat on the other side of the bed, watching him.

Noah sat on the nightstand.

“This seems like a million miles from where we used to be.”

Paul nodded.

“Was it easy? Telling Chay?”

“No,” Noah said. “And now he’s working for Casey. So…” Noah shrugged, looking somewhat defeated.

“I have no idea how my kids are ever going to hear about it,” Paul said. “You know what it feels like? It feels like a whole other world. When I went off to California, and then when I was working for Guy, it was like I had decided that the normal world wasn’t for me. I didn’t have any place in it. And… it was crap anyway. We were messing around in the toilet of the normal world. We were in the drainpipes and trash cans no one wanted to look at. And then, all of a sudden, we were at Eagle Studios. We had found a way to have some kind of power. It was two billion times better than turning tricks. And now…” Paul shrugged. “I don’t know.

“Noah, what’s it like? Chay working there. Around all that. How are you with it?”

“Casey says he looks after him and…”

“You’re not alright with it,” Paul whispered across the bed.

Noah looked down at Bennett, and then motioned for the two of them to leave the room and Paul, nodding, got up and went out into the hall with Noah, who closed the bedroom door behind him.

“Really, I don’t know what else I can do about it.”

“If you didn’t like it, then you could say no. That’s for starters.”

Noah nodded.

“But?” Paul said, picking up on Noah’s mood.

“He’s almost sixteen. This is a small town. If he wanted to keep working there, I couldn’t stop him. And all he would tell me is how I did the same thing. How I did more than that.”

In the dark, Paul’s face went very hard. He said, “Well, I’m sorry. But I’m not going to be afraid to tell my kids what’s what when the time comes.”

“Well, good for you, Pauly,” Noah said sourly.

Reproofed, Paul shut up.

“Besides,” Noah said. “It’s gone beyond that.”

“Beyond?”

Noah didn’t speak right away. He was surprised by how ashamed he felt, how afraid he was to speak.

“I think that Chay’s having sex with Casey.”

“I’m Cecile,” the girl offered her hand after class.

“You looked interesting,” she continued. “I saw you and I knew I had to say something.”

Layla smiled at her and offered her hand.

“Layla Lawden.”

“You know,” Cecile said, shifting her purse, “the thing is you don’t say a lot, but when you do it’s something worth saying.”

“We’re not even out of the first week of class,” Layla told her.

“I know. But already it’s a lot of people who keep on talking and nothing’s coming out.”

Layla laughed and asked, “Where are you headed?”

“That little lounge downstairs. Then a science class I do not want to take, but that my boyfriend says is good for me.”

“Your boyfriend goes here?”

“Not here. We live together,” Cecile said, as they went down the hall. “Like married, but as my mother would remind me, not married. I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I’ve been meaning to get around to it.”

“I know what you mean,” Layla smiled. Then, “Actually, I guess I don’t. I… Well, I guess I live with him now. He was my first boyfriend from back in high school.”

“Same with me and Ryan!”

“Really?”

“Yes. We screwed up everything for years. Then we got together.”

Layla touched Cecile’s arm.

“Well, that’s just the way it is for us. He was my boyfriend in high school. We broke up senior year,” Layla said as they began heading down the steps. “And when I was getting married he came and broke up the wedding.”

“That’s dramatic as hell.”

“I know. And then I went and slept with him. And then he moved into my house. And I said he was my roommate who just happened to be my boyfriend, but that sounds a whole lot like living together, and I love him to death, though I never tell him.”

“Why don’t you?” Cecile said.

Layla stopped.

“You’d better tell him, Layla.”

Cecile cocked her head.

“You remind me… a lot of my sister.”

“I never had a sister.” Cecile said. “The closest thing I had to a sister looks nothing like me. She’s very Irish and I’m very Black… so.”

“I think Dena’s a little bit Irish.”

“What’s that?”

“My oldest friend,” Layla said. “Yeah… I know what you mean.

“I tell you what,” Layla told her, “when I met you I was almost afraid you’d come up here and tell me how two sistuhs have to stick together. Then we could… I don’t know, hate white people and feel misunderstood together.”

Cecile laughed and shook her head.

“Naw,” she said. “But if it suits you, we can hate everyone in that class. I already feel misunderstood.”

Brendan found them at lunch, and he sat down at the table between them.

“This is Cecile Turner,” Layla said. “She is in my English program feeling as confused as I am. We have chosen to bond over that.”

“Also we both have white boyfriends,” Cecile said. “And that,” she rolled her eyes, “is its own thing.”

“You never think its gonna happen till it does,” Layla shook her head.

“Hey, I’ve got a white boyfriend,” Brendan said.

Cecile waved a finger. “I’ve heard all about you, Brendan Miller.”

“Hopefully good things.”

Cecile shrugged, and Layla burst out laughing at the look on Brendan’s face.

“So are you ready?” she said to him.

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll see you next week?” Cecile said, taking a last sip from her cola, and standing up.

“One last class for me.”

When Cecile was gone, Layla turned to Brendan.

“You feel like no one will understand you,” Layla explained. “Like it’s all crap. And then you’re opened up to a whole other world.”

“And Layla!”

Cecile had turned around and shouted.

Layla nodded.

“Tell Caroline the truth,” Cecile said, and then she was gone.

Logan squeezed himself and then, curling into a tight ball, released himself and turning to Sheridan, chuckled.

Naked, Sheridan pulled some of the sheet over himself and turned on his side.

“When I started all this,” Logan said, “it was because I figured… Well, I like sex. So why not? And you know what the irony of it is? Most of the sex I have is so mediocre. A lot of it is out and out bad. Some stuff is just bizarre. You name it, I’ve done it. Once an Amish guy came to a hotel just to watch me strip and masturbate. A college professor from Valpo liked to sit in the bathtub and be pissed on. You think it’s weird at first, but it’s your job, and what can it hurt? Sex is a job for me. You just shrug and get to work. You forget it can be good.”

“And with me?”

“You’re fishing for compliments?”

Sheridan grinned sheepishly and traced shapes on the bedsheet.

“Maybe.”

“With you it’s better than good. It’s just cool,” Logan placed a hand on Sheridan’s arm. “Everything we do is cool.”

“I wonder,” Sheridan murmured. “Maybe I was the same.”

“Hum?”

“Maybe it was just a job for me too.”

Logan lay back and looked at him.

“I always felt like I was going to work. Making a performance.” He shook his head. “Now I feel so dumb. Now I feel sort of like an idiot.”

“You feel like an idiot at this very moment?” Logan tapped the bed sheet.

“No,” Sheridan said. “I feel like an idiot for trying to be someone else. For the boxes of condoms, the people I hurt and the reputation I wasted trying to be someone else.”

Logan pressed himself to Sheridan. His hand went between Sheridan’s thighs and the boy gasped and shuddered. Logan’s hand remained there, stroking, thrusting a finger up into Sheridan’s ass while Sheridan closed his eyes, and his mouth opened a little. Logan thrust his tongue into Sheridan’s mouth and kissed him while his hand worked him. Slowly he parted from him.

“And now…” Logan asked him. “How do you feel?”

Logan’s fingers still held his penis, thumbing it, and Sheridan’s eyes were closed while his mouth rested, half open in pleasure, on Logan shoulder. Sheridan trembled and moaned, while Logan kissed him up and down.

“Don’t tell me how you feel,” Logan murmured, then. “Just feel.”