Works and Days

Introit

Ille erat semper volens

As he scanned the messy dorm room with its beer bottles and bedsheets hung over the semi broken blinds, the movie posters and cinder block bookshelves, Chayne Kandzierski realized he would return to these dirty dorm room several times before it was time for him to leave.

As Chayne dressed he looked to the bed longingly. The man naked in the old sunken mattress was, truthfully a boy, and a white one at that. A precocious, brunette former student. Chayne had promised himself that before he stopped teaching he would fuck a student if that was a possibility, and he hadn’t taught Adam Tyler in almost a goddamn year. There was no point in saying there had been a connection. Of course there was a connection between a gay adjunct and his queer student who both cared for the same subject and, dutifully, they had both used that connection to do good work and form a good friendship. But in the last few weeks, Adam of the well fitting jeans, pink polo shirts and spiked hair had sought him out.

“If you’re leaving,” he’d said. “You’re not leaving without going out with me.”

Going out meant furious drinking and smoking, and in the summer time the dorms were almost empty, and Adam had no roommates.

“I heard something about how back in the Sixties students learned by just hanging out with their professors, and they would smoke and drink and do whatever.”

There was a time when Chayne would have cared about being thirty-five and Adam being twenty-one. Now he didn’t. He thanked God that he was young enough to know about AIDs and old enough to have a care for whose bed he found himself in.

“I think any phrase that starts out, back in the Sixties is as true as it isn’t,” Chayne had said.

Chayne was narrow, bespectacled, Black, measured despite his uniform of jeans and plaid, and he had published three novels ten loyal fans had read. He remember hearing that in the future instead of everyone having fifteen minutes of fame, one day everyone would be famous to fifteen people, and now that there was Adam, Chayne only had four left to go.

“It isn’t the Sixties,” Chayne said. “It is the Nineties—“

“Soon it will be Two Thousand.”

“Eventually,” Chayne shrugged, looking at the 1998 calendar on Adam’s wall.

“And you,” Adam shot out cigarette smoke from thin nostrils in his pointed nose, “Are not really my professor anymore.”

“Not at all,” Chayne said, “or I wouldn’t be here.”

“And soooon,” Adam reminded him, “you won’t be here. You’re going home.”

“I’m going home,” Chayne echoed like a refrain.

“How dull it will be,” Adam said, “once you are gone.”

There had been more talk and then there had been the first time they had sex. They were quick In the undressing, but slow in the loving. For over a year they’d both wanted this. In the semi dizzy space after orgasm, as their bodies separated only a little, Adam yawned and asked, “And where is home?”

Curled against him, Chayne said, “Geschichte Falls, Michigan.”

“Guh-shick-tah,” Adam hummed contentedly while he kissed Chayne’s chest. “Indeed…. Indeed.”

Part One

Journey

One

Blue

From the kitchen door Thom Lewis asked his wife what she was cooking for dinner.

Patti crammed another cigarette between her lips to light it off of the stub of the old one, and flipping to the Movies page said, “I hadn’t really planned on cooking anything.”

“Aw, Patti, it’s Sunday. And Jeff and Bill and David are probably coming.”

“You’re telling me this now? And Bill and David’ll probably bring Lee and Dena? Is Jeff seeing that Spanish girl?

“Where are you going, anyway?”

Thom shrugged and gestured to the double pockets of his blue shirt as he hefted his bag.

“Bowling.”

“I’m not invited?”

“You hate bowling.”

“So do you.”

“It’s a church thing,” Thom shrugged, “We’ll be back around six thirty, okay? Tell Russell to wear something decent, alright?”

Thom smiled and was out the door. He was cute and little and that smile had gotten him through many things Patti realized, crushing out the cigarette she hadn’t even properly begun smoking. He hadn’t even waited for an answer about dinner, and as she got up to find something in the refrigerator, she realized he didn’t need to.

Unless you counted the buzz of the bell,Chayne Kandzierski was at his mother’s doorstep without warning, leaning on the lintel, clothes askew, a gym bag his only luggage..

“Shouldn’t you be in Chicago?”

Sharon’s brow furrowed.

“No,” Chayne said.

“How did you get here, baby?” Sharon asked as her son stepped into the apartment on South Royal Street.

“Hitchhiked,” said Chayne. “Mostly.”

Sharon said nothing. After thirty-five years she’d learned.

“Sharon!” Graham called from the kitchen, “who the hell—Chayne, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Graham’s mother, Pearl Prince had once been a maid in a hotel up in Saint Gregory and there she’d had an affair with a Polish boy who worked in the kitchens. In 1932, when her belly had grown round, she did not ask for his hand inarriage, but she did give his name to their resulting son, this grumpy and crumpled, grey haired man, yellow and grey eyed, so unlike his brown skinned wife and son.

“I’m thirsty,” Chayne ignored the question, put down the gym bag and went to the kitchen. “I miss the old house,” he murmured, opening the refrigerator.

Graham and Sharon exchanged glances, Graham’s asking what was going on, Sharon’s returning that she was damned if she knew.

Chayne came out with an iced tea. He was wore brass rimmed spectacles and was in jeans and tee shirt under an oversized plaid shirt.

“This is unexpected,” Graham said.

“Yes it is,” said Chayne. “I went to the house first, and saw a FOR SALE sign. What’s that all about?”

“What’s any of this all about?” Sharon asked. “Why are you here?”

Chayne gave his mother a withering glance. “Could you be a little less happy to see me?”

“I’m happy, Baby.” she made to touch his forehead. She was a good looking woman, thin, very dark, hair still black, not looking her fifty-seven years. “It’s just we didn’t expect you.”

“Well,” Chayne was a little put off. “I don’t plan on you having to expect me for long. I came to ask about the house, and I’m going to sleep in it tonight. And tomorrow and the day after and the day after.”

“When are you going back to Chicago?” Graham cut in.

“I’m not,” said Chayne. “I’m here. To live.”