Bird Came Down

Dear Readers, I would just like to take these moments to say hello, and thank you for going along with me and Scott and Felix and Joey on this often circuitous adventure. Dont think we don't notice and appreciate you. With all love,Chris

In the middle of the night Felix woke with a raging erection and peed in the sink because his dick was too stiff for straight aim in the bowl, and then he came back and lay in bed looking at his penis. He got up, went to the kitchen, brought out the coconut oil, thrust his penis in it, and then suddenly began fucking his mattress until, with a groan, he ejaculated all over his pillow.

He lay there, thighs caught around the pillow, feeling his semen sticking between his stomach and pillow and then, at last, got up to clean himself. He sat on the bed smoking a cigarette and now the phone was ringing on his dresser.

“Really?”

Felix searched for an ashtray, but laid the cigarette on the jar top of the coconut oil and answered:

“Scott?”

“Felix, I need you to get up here right away!”

“Uh...”

“What’s going on?”

“There was a car crash. I’m at the hospital. I’m at Mount Sinai. Jen was driving with the kids, and the car crashed.”

Felix felt all the strength go out of him, and the floor move under his feet.

“You gotta get here. Jen’s dead.”

“I’m on my way.”

He got on the phone to call Joey, and was surprised when Dylan Mesda answered.

“I’m sorry. I got the wrong number.”

“You sound freaked, Felix.”

“I am. A bit. But I have to call Joey.”

“Is there any way I can help.”

“No,” Felix said. Then, “Not at the moment. I mean Scott’s wife was in a car crash and he wants me to come up to Michigan right now.”

“Alright,” Dylan said. “Calm down. How about you call Joey, and I’ll come and get you?”

“Huh?”

“Just sit tight. I’ll take you all up to Michigan.”

It was two in the morning and Felix had woken up to masturbate and was sitting in his apartment finishing off a cigarette and hearing that Scott’s wife was dead. This was no time to refuse a favor.

“Alright,” he said, remembering that Joey had no reliable car, “I’ll do that. We’ll do that. I’ll put some clothes on.”

“We’ll be over in twenty minutes.”

Felix went to the bathroom, wiped himself down a second time, and washed his face. He gathered up about three outfits and called Joey on the speakerphone to say, “We’re on our way.”

Dylan messaged to say he was five minutes away and Felix came downstairs with his bag and waited in the courtyard. Soon after the truck arrived with Lance driving and Dylan in the back.

“Elias is taking your classes tomorrow, so you don’t have to worry about that,” Lance said.

It was another twenty minute drive across the river to the Flowers House, and the whole family came out with Joey.

“We probably shouldn’t go,” Mr. Flowers guessed.

“I want to,” his wife in her housecoat said.

“Mom,” Joey told them, “We’ll all be back here in the morning.”

No one said anything until they hit the toll road and Felix asked Joey how he felt.

Joey took a deep breath and then he said, “Actually I feel like Scott got what he wanted, and he’s going to feel too guilty to be happy. But that bitch is gone and now his kids are his. I’m glad and that makes me feel really evil.”

No one said anything and, at last, Felix sighed and said, “But I was thinking the same thing.”

THEY DROVE ALL night. When they got to the hospital Scott was large and wild haired, gangly and frantic, pop-eyed, unshaved, the love of his life, his truest friend, the thing that needed to be comforted. He came to Felix and Joey, bear hugging them. Felix smelled fear and grime and sweat, and the ammonia of the hospital on Scott.

“How long have you been here?”

Scott, ever courteous even this disheveled, introduced himself to Lance and Dylan, and thanked them for bringing Joey and Felix.

“We’re going to take you back home,” Dylan said. “Your folks are waiting for you.”

“Not there,” said Scott. “Not my mother and my father and… Not that... And no one knows what to do with the kids.”

“They were at the house. With Matt,” Felix said.

Dylan told Felix “We’re taking him to your apartment.”

They put Scott in the backseat of the car where he collapsed on his side in a fetal position. But he didn’t fall asleep. They acted as if he was, though. Felix said, “Lance, Dylan, thank you for everything. Thank you for bringing us here.”

“Look,” Dylan said. “Most of my life has been so out of control it just feels good to be a little bit in control. A little bit of something right now. So you are more than welcome.”

They stopped at the house. Felix entered alone, looking around at the emptiness that was Scott’s life with this woman Felix had never known. Matt was half asleep on the couch with the kids.

“Scott’s in the truck, and I’m here for the children,” Felix said.

The young lawyer looked up at him and said, “You’re him.”

Felix took a breath, then replied, “And you are him.”

“Wake up boys,” Matt said, nudging them.

The boys stirred and yawned, knuckling their eyes.

“I have to pee,” Taylor said.

“Where’s mom?” Nathan asked.

“You need to get dressed. You all are going back with your Dad, He’s waiting for you.”

While the boys nodded their heads and, still sleepy, stumbled to the bathroom, Matt said, “At least I loved him.” Then he said, “I do love him. You know that, right?”

“And he loves you,” Felix said simply.

“Did he tell you…?”

“He told me everything,” Felix said.

Matt nodded.

“Can you do me a favor?” Felix asked.

“Hum?”

“Can you bring the children back. The truck is crowded. Can you take them to Scott’s parents?”

“You…” Matt began, then said, “Yeah. I can do that. I’ll tail you guys. Just give me a minute. Okay?”

The next day the phone rang, and Mrs. Flowers was glad to hear Felix pick up. She said, “We’ve got the kids and they’re terribly confused. They want to see their dad.”

“Liz, Scott’s in a bad way. I’m confused too. I didn’t know he still loved Jen.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Mrs. Flowers confessed after a moment. “I don’t know either. That may be what it’s all about, but...”

“We’re coming to get the boys. Me and Joey.”

“Thank you, Felix.”

“And, Liz?”

“Um hum?”

“About the boys? Who gets custody? How are you all handling that?”

“Oh, Scott gets it. No contest or anything. He’s their father. It’s all been taken care of.”

Felix looked to the sofa where Scott was huddled, incapable of taking care of anything. He wanted to press further, to ask if they’d handled what would happen in the event Scott wouldn’t or couldn’t care for the kids. But he left that alone.

Originally he had thought he would and could teach today, but it had been near eight in the morning when they’d gotten home, and when he woke up it was already eleven. He and Matt went to get the kids, and they didn’t talk much so Felix wondered what Matt thought of him, or if Matt might have even thought himself the object of Felix’s jealousy.

Matt headed back to Michigan after dropping Felix and the boys off, and they took the rickety elevator up to the seventh floor. When he returned to the apartment the shower was on. Scott came out, dripping, towel wrapped around his waist, his bronze hair plastered to his head as he held a Speed Stick. Looking lost, his gaze traveled from the kids to Felix.

Again he looked at the boys.

“Papa?” Taylor began. “Is Mama going to be alright?”

“Grandma wouldn’t tell us anything,” Nathan added.

“Listen to me,” Scott said, squatting before them. “Your mom’s always going to be with you, alright?”

Taylor nodded, and Nathan looked like he wasn’t entirely sure.

“She’s gone now. She’s gone to heaven.”

“Mama died?” Taylor said.

“She passed,” Scott said. “She’s with Jesus.”

And Felix wondered why the child who loved her could say she was dead, but the man who would have loved to kill her could not say it at all.

“I cannot tell you,” Felix began, spreading the bed sheet across the little bed while Elias caught its edges, “how grateful I am for your help.”

“Well, you’ve got to make a house look like a home for two kids.”

“And they can’t keep staying with their grandparents.”

Felix tossed the comforter across the bed. As Elias straightened it, Felix looked over the room and said, “More should be added. More will be added. But I want this house to actually look something like a home for those kids.”

“These days, isn’t it true they’re staying at your place more than anywhere else?”

“Yes,” Felix said. “And that’s got to stop. I mean, I’m not that crusty old bachelor from the TV shows who needs kids to open my world up. I live in a studio apartment with no bedroom, and I need to have some space back.”

“You’ll stay with them, right?” Elias said, moving up to place pillows on the bed.

“I suppose I will. I mean of course I will. I think they’ve taken a liking to me.

“Scott just works, and then comes home and crawls into a ball. He feeds the kids. At least that’s true. And then he goes to sleep.”

“He’s exhausted.”

“By what? Not by mourning. She was awful to him.”

“When my Grandfather Anderson’s dog died,” Elias said, “Granddad bursts into tears and cried for three days. Now, he had distanced himself from my dad, my Uncle Matty, my Aunt Claire as well as my grandmother, and one of his children from another marriage died too. But his second wife called and told us that he fell apart over a dog and then my dad says: ‘That’s more crying than he ever did for me.’”

“I feel like what you’re saying is sometimes a dog isn’t just a dog.”

“And sometimes a dead wife you can’t stop mourning isn’t just a dead wife.”

Felix rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth and, at last, he said, “I need to do something to that kitchen. Could you please help me?”

Elias nodded.

“Where is he staying tonight?” Elias asked as they went downstairs.

“Probably at my place. Huddled in a ball.”

Has anything happened between you two?”

“Like sex?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Felix said. “I wasn’t really expecting it to. I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve known a lot of men, but Scott is really my only love. How do you handle two?”

“On a schedule.”

Felix laughed and then looked at Elias.

“You’re serious.”

“Yes,” Elias nodded. “We have a schedule about who sleeps with whom and when. Or did you imagine a gangbang?”

“I actually didn’t. I really didn’t imagine it at all.”

“Then I guess you’re the type of friend I want to keep.”

“Threesomes are messy.”

“I’m so glad you know that!” Elias said as they began putting food in the cupboards. “But the way it is, there is a very specific schedule for who stays with whom on what night and that means sometimes you are lying next to someone and neither one of you wants to have sex with the other and then when we first got together Lance lived away from me and Dylan, and that was hard, and later on we all lived away from the other two for times and when you’re sleeping alone and they aren’t it’s very difficult to believe in your love or not to get jealous and… I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“That love is difficult.”

“Yes.”

“And commitment is much more than sex?”

“Goddamn, Felix,” Elias said, “you should be my editor.”

“I feel like all of this means I will be sitting across from Scott just looking at him.”