If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

RENAISSANCE

2

“It’s really cool of you to come back and wait with us,” Russell said in the cafeteria.

“And it’s really cool how they don’t lock up the food here and still play by the honor code,” Cody said, bringing out chocolate pudding and some very alright looking baked chicken from the refrigerator.

“You and Ralph have a good time?” Russell asked.

“Ralph,” Cody sounded distracted. Then he said, “Yeah, that Ralph is a good kid. He’s good people. You and Jason?”

Russell’s face went hot and he said, “I’m glad we got to talk. We’ve never really had the chance.”

“That’s what your friend Ralph said. He said Jason really wanted to talk with you, and we made ourselves a little scarce for that.”

Cody sat down at the end of the long cafeteria table across from Russell.

“Of course, now I’m violating that honor code, and I kinda sort of have a problem with that. I’ll have to philosophize my way around this.”

Cody ripped off the aluminum lid of the chocolate pudding and stuck the spork in.

“I hate sporks,” he said. Then, frowning. “I’m talking too much.”

“No,” Russell waved this away with a sophisticated hand. “I’m just sleepy.”

And to demonstrate this, he yawned again.

Cody Barnard was not really taller than Russell, but he had a larger structure, large shoulders and hands, a thick neck. He had a thick nose and jutting chin, but his smile was quicker. Cody was more animated and fond of pulling his hand through his dark hair, which he could not organize. He sort of reminded Russell of…

Cody stopped eating and scrutinized Russell scrutinizing him.

“What are you looking at?”

“You remind me of someone. I can’t put my—my uncle—Finn. You sort of look like a cross between my Dad and my uncle.”

Cody shrugged and laughed.

“Maybe we’re related.”

Russell cringed because he was enjoying looking at Cody. Upstairs Jason was with Ralph, but not long ago and a couple of miles away, in what seemed like a fantasy, he had been making out for the first time, and making out with Jason Lorry. Jason was gorgeous. Always had been, but Russell had never been allowed to say it, not even to himself.. And Cody, with his solid frame and dark complexion, with his thick lips, was godly as well. It was like, having been turned on by Jason, he was on for anything, and he wondered what it would be like to press his lips to Cody’s too.

“God,” Cody said. “I hope something happens with this weather.”

Thank you, Jesus, for giving us something else to talk about!

“I know. I’m gonna have to start wearing shorts and—”

“I hate shorts—” Cody finished his sentence. Russell blinked, and the dark haired good looking guy laughed.

“I swear I hate them. I hate—legs. I just like to wear pants. And then, I’ve got these nasty hairy legs,” Cody threw up his hands. “It’s like I can’t grow a beard. All I get is this scrag! But you could weave a sweater out of my leg hair. It’s unreal.”

From the look on Russell’s face, while he laughed, Cody said, “I take it you agree.”

“I’m not big on shorts either,” Russell allowed. “If I can keep a pair of khakis, I’m good to go.

“So you’re a mechanic?” Russell said after a while.

“Yeah. I’m a entrepreneur. I’ve got my own shop. Well, I’ve got my uncle’s shop. He left a while ago, so it’s mine right now. We’ll take care of that Duster for you tomorrow.”

“Rob’s good for it.”

“Good for what?”

“Whatever the price.”

Cody made a face, then a noise and blew the matter away with his hand. “Screw that. Sometimes the experience is worth it.”

“This is an experience?”

Cody shrugged. “How many times do you get to sit in a dark cafeteria and eat chocolate pudding? With a new friend?”

Russell grinned and nodded.

“Point taken.”

“And I believe in fate. Or Jesus or kizmit or whatever. If your car had broken down later or not at all, then my sister couldn’t be talking to your friend, Anigel, about life, and we couldn’t be talking about shorts, and sometimes I just think we’re all caught up in this... big old sacred net. Like a bunch of fish. Only... no one’s going to eat us.”

Cody laughed suddenly. It was a little maniacal, but it was also free. He threw back his head.

“That’s cool,” Russell said at last.

“What?” Cody went still and ran a hand over the scrag that he complained about.

“Most guys aren’t like you. You’re loud and free and make all these gestures. You’re not tough… Well, you’re not trying to be.”

“Guys like us,” Cody stated solemnly, “are few and far between.”

Cody tried to stay solemn, sucking in his chest and straightening his mouth. He frowned. Then, after holding it in, laughed and said, “But, it’s true man.”

Cody set his attention on rolling the foil top of his pudding into a cylinder and then said. “We could pass this around to certain people and call it the joint from Mars and tell them everyone who puffed on it would gain enlightenment and fly directly to the moon.”

“We could start a cult,” Russell suggested.

“I think we’d have to.”

“You think we’ll get a breeze anytime soon?” Jill asked as they walked along Finnalay Parkway in front of the hospital.

“I hope so,” Rob said. “Something should change.”

“You know,” Jill said. “For a moment—and this sounds vain—I thought you were hitting on me.”

“It’s not vain,” Rob said. “You’re very pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“Beautiful, really,” Rob said, and before Jill could say anything else, he said, “But no, I was not hitting on you.”

“You’ve got someone,” she guessed.

“I have someone,” he agreed.

“I’m so tired of this hot air.”

At the corner the lights were flashing yellow. No cars came though at this early time.

“You’re right,” Jill said.

“Huh?

“Something should change. Lots of things should change.”

Then Jill said, “Anigel really likes you.”

“Not in that way!” Rob protested.

Jill laughed.

“No, not in that way. She’s a take no prisoners sort, I think. But she does like you, and I think with someone like her, it counts. It’s not everyday we can find someone to like us. And I don’t think she likes everybody.”

Rob rolled his eyes and laughed. “She’s hospitable to everybody. But she’s not nice to everybody. Anigel’s usually not nice to anybody, come to think of it. But I think you’re right. I think you’d get on. I think we’d all get on.”

“I’ve been struggling with if I should tell you something or not,” Rob said.

“You’re a woman trapped in a woman’s body?”

“Well, who isn’t? No,” Rob shook his head.

“Well, out with it, Rob.”

“Listen, I’ve always been a person who thinks you don’t need to know everything that people say about you and that it just hurts and when people tell you, it comes from a bad place. You know? Like, there were people who came up to me in the past and whispered about what other people said, and I wished they hadn’t. So I don’t like to do that. I think it’s gross.”

“I think it is too,” Jill said, looking troubled. “But what in the world do you think you should say?”

“Leon Dixon—”

“Leon Dixon? Leon Dixon? Leon fucking Dixon!”

“He’s in the band we saw tonight, and he and Shane Meriwether—”

“Me ex.”

“Shane is your ex?”

“It’s clearly a small world. Go on.”

“Have been having these huge arguments because Leon is telling everyone he had sex with you in the back of your car, and that’s your business if you did or didn’t, but I had heard your name, and I just realized you are that Jill Barnard, and I just thought…. You should know.”

“Well!” Jill said as warm breeze kicked up while a semi came past them.

“I don’t know if I should have said any—”

“No,” Jill touched his hand. “You did good.”

 

“Chayne?” Shannon murmured from the couch where she was half passed out in the waiting room. “Do you ever think we’ll have kids?”

“Not with each other.”

The sun was coming up gold and orange through the large windows on the other side of the waiting room, and darkness was beginning to creep away.

“You know what I mean. I don’t think I will. I didn’t think Jewell ever would. I felt sort of betrayed when that happened, and now here we are, and I’m glad I brought you, but damn, births weird me out.”

Chayne laughed.

“I’m serious,” Shannon said, then she repeated. “I’m SERIOUS.”

“I know you are.”

“And I know that that’s stupid, but.... I mean. I’m almost forty. The fuckin’ clock’s tickin. No. It’s ticked. No—you know what? It never ticked and I feel a little bad for not having kids. I feel like I should have. Or I should have wanted to. Do you ever feel that way?”

“Yes,” Chayne said. “Sometimes I think the only people who don’t have regrets are the dead.”

 

Anigel and then Jill and Rob returned to the waiting room. The elevator opened and out came Ralph with Jason at his side.

Anigel, sitting beside Chayne and Shannon, declared, “This shit is ridiculous,” and this time when she went in to attend her sister, no one threw her out. In fact, a little later John came out scratching his head and sat beside his brother.

When the sun was coming up, Anigel  pushed back the swinging doors and said, “Balusik!”

Ralph and John both looked up.

“The husband!” she said, and then wheeled around and John followed.

Moments later, John pushed back the door.

“You wanna see a new baby?” he invited.

Rob looked at Jill and she said, “I’m all about seeing new babies.”

“It’s a boy,” John said.

“My first nephew,” Ralph shook his head.     

Russell and Cody were just returning from the cafeteria, and Chayne, yawning, said, “Come on.”

“I thought you guys were gone,” Jill murmured from the plastic chair beside Rob, where she had fallen asleep.

“We were gone,” Cody said. “And then we weren’t. And then we looked for you, but Chayne and Shannon said you were outside.”

Chayne didn’t think Caroline Balusik would let a lot of random people into her room to see her baby, but whether she would have or not, now the baby was with all the others in the nursery and it was very much asleep and not worried about any of them.

“Is that baby white?” Ralph wondered.

“No, fool,” Anigel said tenderly, her fingers pressed to the glass.

“It looks white,” Ralph judged.

“Please shut up.”

“It looks new,” Jason said, tenderly. “It looks new, and it makes you want to sort of be new too. Not be the same dummy you always were.”

Then the black haired boy said in his soft voice. “I’m talking about me, of course, but—”

“I think it applies to all of us,” Chayne said.  

Jill said, “I think I used to expect the world to change, something to happen. And then I stopped expecting anything. I kind of just stopped living. And I’m too young for that. And that’s got to change.”

She kept looking at the pale baby whose eyes moved under its thin lids, and whose fat, puckered lips pursed and unpursed.

“A man told lies about me,” she said to Anigel.

“What woman hasn’t been lied on by a man?”

“I let it slide,” she said. “And I thought I had to. I thought, in this world we get called all sorts of things. And if we turn the tables… all sorts of things can happen to a girl. Things you shouldn’t say over a newborn baby.”

“Yes,” Anigel said. “But if we don’t make things right, then when the newborn babies are grown like us, what kind of world will there be?”

At the house, having departed from Jason and the Balusiks, Chayne opened the freezer and turned on the deep fryer. They had fried mushrooms for breakfast with bacon and eggs and milk and since there was no orange juice, a bottle of wine. After a while, when it probably wasn’t prudent, Cody and Jill said it was time to get back home and they’d call when the Duster was ready. Russell slept off his buzz on the couch and thought that this whole last night was strange and unethical. When he woke up and Jill and Cody were gone, he wondered if it had all really happened, but did not dare ask Chayne or Rob.

Russell did not say goodbye. He just tipped out the door and went down the three blocks to his house. Outside was like a humid hammer, and even the short distance from Chayne’s house to his had him red and dripping with sweat.

When he got home, Patti said, “So the prodigal finally returns.”

“Anigel’s sister had a boy. And Caroline said since Chayne was watching after Ani, and also Caroline is friends with Jewell Emery and Chayne is godfather to her kid, maybe he could be godfather to Caroline’s too.”

Patti shook her head, ashed her cigarette and commented, “Chayne’s gonna have more godchildren than he knows what to do with.”

Then she said, “And Anigel’s sister is married to Ralph’s brother.”

“Right.”

“Small world,” Patti said.

“Small town,” said Russell.

Without thinking, Russell found himself in the little bathroom to the side of the kitchen. He locked the door and pissed loud and long, surprising himself a little and realizing that he was not completely sober. And then the doorbell rang.

Russell turned on the water, pretending to wash his hands before coming out of the kitchen, through the dining area and into the living room where he saw his mother, burning cigarette in one hand, the other on her hip, talking to a grizzled old man who said, “Ma’am. My name’s R.L.”