Bird Came Down

Felix came to the door in a pair of shorts with a burning cigarette dangling from his fingertips.

“What’s up?” he demanded of Joey.

The futon was still undone and rumpled, and clothes were all over the floor.

“Scott’s gone?”

“Scott has a real job,” Felix said, sitting on the edge of the bed and casually ashing on the coffee table. “He was getting dressed while I was asleep.”

“Well, you’re the one I wanted to talk to, anyway.”

“And I wanted to talk to you too,” Felix said. “Had you thought about going to school here? I mean I’m going to teach today. Enrollment is still on.”

“Would you be my professor?”

“God I hope not, we’ve been having sex for months, and while you get an A in that I’d hate to give you a C in English.”

“I might get an A.”

Felix ignored this and said, “You should at least think about getting back into school. Now you wanted to say?”

“Huh?”

Felix frowned. “You said you wanted to say something to me.”

“Ah, that’s right!” Joey remembered. “It’s about Wesley.”

“Oh, fuck! Not Wesley again. I know it didn’t work out, and you won’t find happiness, and you’re two crazy kids who can’t find your way to each other—”

“We slept together last night.”

“What?”

“He came by my house.”

“And you slept together in your mother’s house.”

“No.”

“In a Motel Six?”

“Would you let me finish?”

Felix shrugged.

“He took me to dinner.”

Felix said nothing, and Joey said, “You’re not going to ask where?”

“You said you wanted me to let you finish.”

“Well,” Joey said, “he took me to Del Taco.”

“That’s… romantic.”

“It was the way he did it. And then we drove around, and finally we just sat there and talked about life. And then he said he should take me home, but I told him I didn’t want him to. I told him….”

When Joey went red, Felix guessed, “You told him you wanted to have sex.”

“In the end Wesley decided the only place we could really be together was in the church. If we got together in Saint Margaret’s.”

“And then you said stop being stupid and you got a hotel room.”

When Joey didn’t speak, Felix said, “You fucked my pastor’s son in our church?”

“He fucked me, really.”

Joey Flower amended.

“We made love in Saint Margaret’s,” Joey said in one rushed breath.

At the look on Felix’s face, Joey said, “Please don’t tell anyone! Seriously. Please. I just told you because… I thought you’d understand more than anyone else. But Wesley would be so embarrassed if anyone else knew and… It wasn’t dirty. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t dirty when it happened. It was… I don’t know. But it wasn’t dirty, and we stayed there all night.”

“Well, it’s surprising,” Felix said, “but it’s not evil. And at least you’re getting along now?”

Joey nodded.

“I think. Yes.”

“Where did you—?” Felix began, “I mean, you didn’t do it on the altar.”

Joey blinked and Felix said, “Holy shit.”

Joey said nothing.

“You fucked on the altar.”

“Well not on the altar, per se. I mean, like people serve communion on it and other things, but… Like we put a blanket down and then it was between the screen and the altar, like where the priest stands.” Joey remembered the word Felix had taught him, smiled and said, “The chancel.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t tell.”

“Well, why’d you tell me?”

“I had to tell someone.”

“Well, now I have to tell someone.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Well, fuck,” Felix said, sitting back down. Then he said, “I have to be at school by eleven to teach my first class. You can hang out here if you want.”

Felix got up and went down the hall to the bathroom, but before he shut the door, he came back out and said, “So this means you and Wesley are together?”

“I’m in love with him!” Joey exalted. “And, can you believe it, he’s in love with me.”

“Of course I can believe it,” Felix said, as he went back to the bathroom. “You are an deeply lovable person.”

“So, I’m glad to meet you,” Felix began. “And I just had the strangest feeling. I was waiting for someone to start class, and then realized this was my class and I have to start it.”

A few of the students looked older than him. Some were black and some white, some looked fresh out of high school and some looked old to life at a very young age, but there was laughter around the room, and then Felix said, “You can call me Mr. Owens, Professor Owens or just Felix. Whatever floats you. And this is English 111.”

A Black girl in the front put her hand in the air and asked, “Is there an English 110?”

“I don’t think there is,” Felix confessed, “And I don’t know how the hell they number these classes.”

He hadn’t expected that to be funny, but it was, and Felix said over the laughter, “No, I don’t. I really don’t. And I notice that a lot of this class is done over computer. Which just pisses me off because this is not a computer class. It is English and… What’s the first thing we should do?”

“We should have a party!”

“What’s your name?” Felix asked the girl with the long micro braids.

“Shenerika.”

“Shenerika, that is precisely what we will not do. The first thing we will do is go to the library. So get your bags and we’re going down.”

“Sounds great, sir.” A lanky boy decided, pounding his fist in his palm.

“Uh…” Felix began. “I’m glad.

“This is my first day here,” Felix said as they headed down the carpeted hall, and to the staircase. “So I’m going to need some guidance. I can’t remember where the library is.”

“If you get lost,” the lanky boy said, “we’ll lead you, sir.”

When Felix headed down the stairs, he was shocked and pleased by the sound of thirty people coming down the stairs after him. He stopped, turned around, and they stopped too. He looked up at them, many much taller, all different faces, and he smiled.

“Well… that really is something.”

And then he said, “Come on.”

They came down into the main lobby and made a turn toward the glass doors of a library which was filled with computers. A man stood behind a desk looking upset while they entered the library and followed Felix to....

“The magazines?” Felix raised an eyebrow. He hooked a finger and called Shenerika to him.

“Do you see any books in here?”

Shenerika hooked a braid around a finger and frowning said, “I don’t think this is a book kind of library.”

“Um,” Felix murmured, then said, “Well…. What the fuck kind of library is it?

“Come on folks!” he shouted, “Follow me back up.”

As Felix left, and the thirty followed after him, the librarian behind the desk frowned at them all and Felix refrained from flipping him a bird.

He was surprised when class was over. He had never suspected that he could fill fifty minutes, let alone that they could fly by so soon.

“Some of you are staying for my next class and someone else is joining me. El—Professor Anderson will be here. Some of you will be in his speech class, and he’s going to get to=”

As the students were leaving, some stopped, murmuring, “Excuse me, sir. Excuse me.”

Elias came in, making Felix feel much less professional.

“Shirt and tie?”

“I was a little too ambitious,” Elias murmured.

“You don’t have to be here for ten minutes.” Felix looked up at the clock. “Fifteen minutes really.”

Elias shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

“I went to show my kids the library.”

Elias cackled. “That was a very short trip, wasn’t it?”

“If I had a sense of shame,” Felix admitted, “I would have been embarrassed.”

“Are you just getting in?” Nathan asked his brother.

Coming to the table, Wesley refused to answer, but poured himself orange juice and looked over his notes.

“Cause I don’t think you came home last night,” Nathan continued.

“Leave your brother alone,” their mother said. Laura Duncan was a nervous looking woman with shoulder length blond hair and, ignoring her, Nathan continued to harass his brother.

“You went to find that Joey, so I suppose everything turned out fine.”

“Everything,” Wesley said, “was fine.”

“You spilled coffee on my breakfast.”

“Sorry about that.”

“I bet you aren’t.”

“Things went brilliantly,” Wesley said, looking directly at his mother, “And after I get finished working on this part of my thesis about Julian of Norwich I’m going to meet Joey for lunch.”

“The boy from church yesterday?” his mother frowned.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good. What school does he go to?”

“At the moment,” Wesley admitted, “he doesn’t go to any school. He doesn’t really like it.”

“Well maybe you can help him in that direction.”

“Can you imagine,” Nathan said in mock horror, “one of the Duncan boys coming home with an uneducated boyfriend?”

His mother frowned at him, but Nathan continued, “Screw Wesley being gay, Wesley can bring home as many boys as he wants as long as they’re Ivy League.”

“Are you about finished with breakfast?” Laura asked while Wesley frowned at his brother.

Nathan frowned and ate around the coffee splash on his eggs.

“Say,” Nathan began after a moment.

“I really thought you were done talking,” Wesley told him.

“I just wanted to know what you were writing about Julian?”

“I was writing about her cat.”

“You mean her pussy.”

Laura pressed her lips together, stood up and pushed her chair into the table.

“Sure, Nate.”

“How do you know she has a cat? A pussy—”

“Nathan!”

“But,” he continued, ignoring his mother, “how do you know about her cat?”

“In icons she always has a cat.”

“So you don’t know that she had a cat.”

“It’s assumed.”

“Why?”

“Because when you became an anchorite, and she was an anchorite, they would carry you in on a litter—”

“They’d carry you in on a litter box.”

“Shut up, dummy. They would carry you in on a bier.”

“I thought you said a litter.”

“Forget the litter.”

“Forgotten,” Nathan said.

“And then they would lock you in for the rest of your life. You would just have one window to look into the church, and another one to empty your slop.”

“Gross.”

“And a cat. For vermin.”

“What did the cat eat?”

“The cat ate the vermin.”

“Is that all she fed the cat?”

“I don’t know, Nate, I wasn’t there.”

“Well…”

“Well,” Wesley repeated, hoping Nathan was finally finished.

But he wasn’t.

“So they carried the anchorite in on a bier?”

“Yeah, Nate.”

“Well, then, the cat?”

“What about the cat?”

“Did they carry it in on a litter box?”

“I hate you, Nathan.”

Nathan was about to reply when Wesley’s phone rang, and touching it, he said, “Hello?”

“Wes?”

Wesley immediately took it off speakerphone and said, “Joey?”

“Is it your lover?” Nathan asked him and Wesley negligently hit him in the back of the head, rising and going to the next room.

“Hey?” Wesley whispered, leaning against the wall in the hallway. “What’s up? I was wondering if you wanted to get together tonight or something?”

“I would,” Joey said, “but before we talk about that, what do you think about me going to school?”

“I don’t think much of you not going to school,” Wesley said flatly.

“Oh, that’s right. I guess you wouldn’t.”

“Look,” Wesley said, “you need an education. Do you just want to be a maintenance man for the rest of your life?”

Joey was deadly silent, and Wesley said, “I didn’t mean that. I meant—”

“I know what you meant, Jess. And maybe I do want to be a maintenance man. Someone has to be. We can’t all play polo.”

“I don’t play polo.”

“Or whatever you do. All I asked is do you think I should go to school?”

“And all I said was yes.”

“Alright.”

“Now,” Wesley shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, and crooked the phone to his ear, “Do you still want to go out or do you think I’m a snob?”

“I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at six—”

“But you are a snob.”