“Why should we be sad over things we cannot change and people we cannot help?”
-Layla Lawden
“Ouch,” Milo’s eyes flew open and Will watched as he rolled his tongue in his mouth.
“Bit on a popcorn kernel,” he lamented even as he put his hand into the popcorn bowl again.
“Are you alright?” Will asked.
“Fuck,” Milo murmured, then said, “I’ll live. But fuck.”
“Well, then I’m glad I’m done complaining,” Will said.
“But you’ve got some real shit to complain about.”
“It’s just,” Will went on, “education is so fucked. I wonder what do I want? What do I really want? And maybe if it was just me and Layla I would have been a little more honest. But I filled in for this teacher for four fucking weeks. Tenured, PhD, everything. He hadn’t done a damn thing, not a test, not a paper not the smallest assignment, and he still kept his job. How the hell professional is that? And how professional is it to show up in a class and say, “Hi, they hired me on the spur of the moment to fill in for this class, and I’m leaving who the heck knows when? And then someone else will come and keep doing what I started. Only in a different way?”
On the jukebox, the Grateful Dead sang:
It's a buck dancer's choice my friend;
better take my advice.
You know all the rules by now and
the fire from the ice.
“They did that at the junior college I was working at,” Milo said. “Hired too many fucking adjuncts cause they didn’t want to pay a real teacher, and then gave the students a dumbed down syllabus and no one tried to make it better. I mean, I put some meatier stuff on it, but I could tell I wasn’t supposed to.”
“How did you know?” Kenny said.
“Well,” Milo shrugged, “I am no longer employed there. That was an excellent sign.”
“Is that in store for me?”
“You already worked at Loretto,” Milo reminded him. “and I bet art is totally different.”
Kenny nodded and Brendan said, “Well, I just think any place you work for has what you don’t want.”
“Yes,” Milo agreed, “but some places have more of what you don’t want than others. In that way you two kids are lucky,” he gestured to Kenny and Brendan with his bottle of beer. “When you’re writing, or when you’re painting, there isn’t any boss but you.”
“Most people need a boss, though,” Will decided regretfully.
“Do you?”
“I need to see someone running things who gives a crap,” Will said, frustrated. “I feel like all the people who care leave.”
“Don’t you leave, Will,” Brendan said earnestly. “Schools need good teachers like you. Good profs I should say.”
“Well a prof is a teacher and it’s a title you call yourself to feel better. I’m a teacher, and I’m not going anywhere. Not for now.”
Brendan started to say that was good, but suddenly, in the darkness of the bar he felt a hand on his thigh.
Goddamn, well I declare, have you seen the like?
Their wall are built of cannonballs, their motto is
"Don't tread on me".
Come hear Uncle John's Band playing to the tide,
Come with me, or go alone, he's come to take his
children home.
It's the same story the crow told me;
it's the only one he knows.
He didn’t look at Kenny. He didn’t want to give anything away. But he didn’t do anything to stop the hand from traveling up his thigh and pressing down, cupping him.
“I think I’m about to call it a night,” Kenny declared, his voice raising while his hand kneaded Brendan who stopped himself from moaning, and looked down at the counter top.
“The night’s early,” Milo declared.
“It’s not,” Kenny said.
He got up, his hand slow to leave Brendan’s sex, lingering over his thigh, and then threw his arms around Milo.
“I’m out,” Kenny declared.
Brendan gave him a perfunctory hug and continued on his beer. The rest of the beer. Five more scoops of popcorn. The phone ring. He pulled it out from his jacket.
“What’s up babe?” he said loudly.
“Follow me to Salem Street,” Kenny said.
“Yeah,” Brendan continued. “If you insist. Yes. I’m on my way. See you soon.”
“Sheridan?” Will said.
Brendan hung up quickly and shrugged.
“Hubby wants me home.”
“Is the night coming to an end?” Milo demanded.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Brendan said with what wasn’t entirely feigned regret. He embraced Milo and he held Will tight trying not to think that he was going to sleep with Kenny and keeping it from the both of them. For good measure he hugged Ed Palmer, and then, his heart pounding, trying to stop himself from running, Brendan was off to follow Kenny.
When Will came home that night, Layla was still up. She did not want her husband to know she had been waiting, and so when she heard the car outside of their bedroom window, she flicked the light off and, discarding her nightgown, climbed into the bed.
Only a few moments later she heard him entering the house, heard him making the rounds, looking into the childrens’ rooms and then, at last, coming into their room. He stripped to his underwear and tee shirt and crawled into the bed, smelling, Layla had to admit, like the bar.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Huh?”
“You knew I wasn’t really asleep. What happened at the bar, Will?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you smell like the bar, and in the time I’ve known you, you never come to bed without showering.”
“Would you like me to?”
“This,” Layla said in the darkness, “is called deflecting. And yes I would, but what happened?”
Will sat up and then climbed out of the bed.
“You’re right,” he said, “I will shower.”
“Will!”
“A shower is what I need,” he said, “and then I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
“Well, then,” Layla sat up in bed, her old tee shirt full of holes. She turned on the light and, reaching for her housecoat, headed to her desk. “I will occupy myself until you come back.”
Will went down the hall to the bathroom, and a minute or so later, she heard the shower running. There was a tap on the door.
“Yes?”
“Mommy,” Marla entered, twisting her pajama top, “did Daddy just get home?”
“He did.”
“Can I stay up with you all?”
“You can’t,” Layla said, turning around to hug her daughter. “Daddy came in to see you.”
“I know,” Marla said whispering. “I pretended to be asleep. But he kissed me on my head.”
“Well, wait for him to come in so you can say goodnight to him. You can stay up with Mommy until he gets here.”
“Will you tell me a story?”
“No, cause it’s one in the morning, and mommies get sleepy. And Marlas shouldn’t be awake anyway.”
When Will came in the towel was wrapped around his waist and his wet hair, clung in dark tendrils to his head and hung to his shoulders. He looked like Jesus to her for a moment, and she thought of laughing. Of course, they were both her Jewish saviors.
“Whatareyou doing up?” he said to their daughter in the tender voice he always used for his children, and Marla came to him and clung to him. Will placed the deodorant and lotion, the comb and the brush on the bed, and the little girl placed her cheek on her father’s stomach, unconscious of its flatness, the shape of it, all those things her mother looked to with pleasure.
“I heard you come into my room,” she said to him, joyfully.
“And now,” Layla said to her shaggy haired, bearded husband, “you can take her back.”
She heard her husband’s long feet padding down the hall to Marla’s bedroom, and for a moment she thought of her twenties and how she had almost married someone else. What strange paths she might have taken. Was it possible that she could have been with someone else other than Will? He came back into the bedroom and shut the door, and she came to meet him, taking the towel from around his waist and tenderly drying his body. She wanted to ask him, “Was it possible that we were almost not together?”
“Now, my love,” she said, coming to her knees to dry his legs, and then sitting him down so that, gently, she pulled the comb through his tangles, “why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Brendan’s going to fuck Kenny,” Will said, flatly. “I know he is.”
Layla stopped. She sprayed detangler in her husband’s hair, more because she didn’t know what to do, and then pulled the comb through his locks.
“How can you know?”
“Bren’s been my best friend for over twenty years. Kenny too. The way they were looking at each other, the way they came here together. They way… they weren’t looking at me.”
Layla squirted lotion into her hands and rubbed it about in her palms till it was warm.
“Yes,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t seen it until now. Not really. Or maybe I didn’t want to. I could ask Dena. She would know. Bren wouldn’t tell me either, and he hasn’t been himself.”
“Well, I don’t even know what to do.”
Layla massaged the lotion into his back, feeling the muscles in his shoulders, running her hands up and down his back. He took the lotion and rubbed his legs while she sat on the side of the bed with him and watched her husband finish his toilet.
“Are you angry with him?” she said.
“I can’t even prove that anything is happening,” Will said.
“When I was seventeen, Brendan and Dena went with me to stalk my father, to see if he had a mistress. That was how I discovered Julian.”
“Well, Dena is apparently keeping this from both you and me,” Will said, “and… the day I stalk Bren…”
“I know,” Layla shook her head. “I’m just saying… I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“And I’m not angry,” Will decided, folding his towel while Layla got up to find his housecoat.
“They were together for years. And… I know that from Kenny’s point of view Brendan left him for Sheridan, so now…” Will shrugged. “I don’t know how to feel.”
Layla put her hands to her black hair.
“You broke into Saint Barbara’s on my wedding day. I was engaged to Kevin, standing on the altar in white and you came in and stopped it.”
“You had no business with that clown, anyway.”
“Well, I can see that now, but it makes it a lot harder to feel any way about what may be happening with Brendan. And I emphasize, may be happening.”
“I know.”
“If they belong together—like we belonged together.”
“Kevin wasn’t the only person I stole you from.”
“No,” Layla agreed, “not if you can legitimately steal one person from another.”
“And Kevin wasn’t the first guy I pushed past to get to you.”
“No,” Layla said again. “It didn’t matter who I was with, and what’s more, it seems I agreed with you.”
