If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

There was a thump on Chayne’s bed, and he shot up while Rob murmured, “The fuck?” in his sleep..

“Remind me to start locking that thing.”

“Chayne this is serious,” Faye reprimanded her friend, taking off a high heel.

“Faye…?” Rob sat up in bed.

“Go back to sleep,” Chayne said.

Rob only glared at Faye.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “And this place smells like pot. Did you leave me any?”

“Faye,” Chayne said.

“I forgot about your living situation,” she said. “Next time I’ll wait till the morning, but you see, I can’t do that tonight because… Because…”

“For the love of Christ, Faye!”

“Chuck popped the question.”

“Chuck proposed?” Rob shot up and stared into Faye’s pale face.

“No,” said Faye. “That would be the easy question. He asked what was going to happen with us... the long distance thing and all.”

“Well,” Chayne shrugged. “You see how well it worked for me and Ted. It was only a matter of time before Chuck asked.”

Rob raised an eyebrow at the mention of Ted Weirbach.

“I know,” said Faye irritably. “But couldn’t we have had a little more time?”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“You know what I’m going to do. I’ll have to move here or he’ll have to move to Chicago. Or... we’ll have to break up. And that’s not really an option. However...”

“However?” Rob said.

“The other two aren’t really options either.”

Chayne sighed so that Faye wouldn’t have to.

“Well, let’s look at both angles,” he said.

“Start with me.”

Rob, with the confidence of a good looking young man who was not attracted to Faye, sat up naked, reached for his cigarettes and lit one, drawing his knees to his chest.

“Okay,” Chayne said. “You’ve got a high paying job at a major university and an established writing career.”

“And Chuck lives in a little podunk Midwestern town on the verge of collapse—”

“Hey!”

“It is, though,” said Faye, “and he is a teacher at a Catholic high school which means he lives just above the poverty level. By those standards, he should move out to me.”

“But,” Rob ashed his cigarette and pointed to her with it, “you have a job you hate, and a place you live in far away from any friends or family not to mention—though Chayne has—an established writing career that you can pursue anywhere, and the ability to stop working and be financially sound—easily—for at least the next… three years?”

“Four,” said Faye. “I don’t live large.

“And I don’t appreciate you throwing it in my face that I don’t have a life!”

“And I don’t appreciate your bursting into our bedroom,” Rob said, taking another puff on his cigarette and exhaling.

“Well, the two of you are evenly matched,” Faye noted, looking from Rob to Chayne who ignored her and said:

“Whenever you want to have fun you always drive out here.”

“You want me to move here!” Faye said, a triumphant light dawning in hr eyes.

“That wouldn’t be bad,” Chayne agreed.

“As long as we lock the fucking door,” Rob said.

Faye was quiet a while, then she said. “But that would make me the loser.”

“What?”

“Women are supposed to be independent,” said Faye. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m as independent as it gets, and I’m supposed to give it all up to be with a school teacher? He should be giving stuff up to marry me.”

“Well, maybe he should,” said Chayne. “But you’re not independent unless you’re free, right?”

“That’s what it means.”

“Well, how can you be free if you’re not free to give up what you have?”

“To be the bitch for Chuck Shrader?”

“Doesn’t everyone have to consent to be the bitch every once in a while?” said Rob. 

Faye looked at him.

“Isn’t that part of what love is?”

“Rob, you’re very wise,” Faye said.

“Faye?” Chayne said.

“Yeah?”

“Please get out.”

 

Nehru put down his books and sat awake in his room, mind vacant and imagining. It was past midnight and all of Geschichte Falls was quiet and he thought of two summers ago, coming over to Brad’s house. They were becoming better friends, writing and playing all the time, and his parents were used to Nehru, preferred him to the other boneheads. He came through the garage, into the breezeway and, shoes off, after helping himself to a drink from the fridge, he went down the linoleum steps to the basement Brad was turning into an apartment.

He had still been with Debbie Baynes then. Stone Temple Pilots were playing on the tinny, unseen radio. The cream curtains covered the ground level windows and by the not light Nehru saw Brad’s naked body, a long, slowly leaping frog, pumping up and down, his hairy buttocks clenching and unclenching like breath, and the breath coming out of Debbie. He barely saw her face, only her thighs, her comparatively small body wrapped about Brad, Brad moving up and down like a wave, the sounds of Debbie’s fucking, a taste like iron and embarrassment rising in Nehru’s mouth. He was trembling. He was a traitor for not walking away, for being so curious, for wanting to see this, wanting to see it faster and faster, feeling his heart beat and his mouth dry, watching Brad rise up and come with a shout. He’d never heard another man come. Shades of shame and desire rant through him. Having seen the act once, in some way the vision never left him. In his room, alone, he saw it tonight, and it was happening tonight. Brad sliding in and out of Marissa, Brad’s head lifting up. Brad coming.

    

And when Brad did come it was almost like a staggered cry, through clenched teeth, a moan like a roar that startled Marissa as she hummed with the way he knew how to touch her, and the way he bore into her. He was like a frozen wave, arched between her thighs, slowly now, slow he came down.

He did not like to think of sex as an experiment, but now, as Marissa lay in his arms he knew it had been.

“This is what I’ve been looking for…. This is what I’ve been looking for…”

When he remembered that, he remembered Nehru and looked for that feeling here, in this bed. But as he shot out of himself, and the last of the semen dribbled from his body, he was filled once again with the hollowness, the near despair that had happened the last time he’d been with Debbie, the first time he had been with Marissa, the ache that had driven him to Nehru in the first place.

 

 

When the revelation hit him, it didn’t scare him. What would come of it scared him, how they would handle the future scared him, but the revelation itself did not scare him at all. He waited until Marissa was asleep, and then he climbed out of bed, pulled on underwear and jeans, tee shirt, and left a note, remembering that first time, and then went out of the house quietly. He did not drive because he did not want the engine to wake her up, and he did not drive because he wanted the mild air to talk sense to him.

Nehru lived in the same neighborhood, just a few blocks away, and Brad climbed the fence and came into the backyard, grateful the Alexanders kept no dogs. He had a handful of pebbles at the ready, and he was tossing them at Nehru’s window. But they made no sound on the glass and when Brad heard Nehru say, “What the fuck!” he realized the window had been open.

His head appeared in the window. The light went on for a second and Nehru looked down, putting on his glasses and squinting through them. The light was out and a minute later, the back door opened.

The television was on, and Nehru said, “Dad’s asleep.”

Without looking back, he headed to the refrigerator, pulled out two Cokes and gave one to Brad and then headed up the stairs, expecting Brad to follow.

In his room, Brad shut the door and Nehru turned on the little light. He was in a thin house coat he had just thrown on, and he said:

“You’re always weird, but this is especially weird for you.”

“I had to come over,” Brad said.

“I was thinking of you,” Nehru said. He wasn’t going to say, “I was thinking of you with her, thinking of that time I saw you and I wanted to touch you so bad it ached. Thinking about the first time you touched me in this bed.”

“And I was thinking of you,” Brad said with earnest excitement.

“And I love you.”

Nehru said nothing, because the first thing to come to his mind was a cop out. They loved each other. They were frank about it. They were best friends when neither thought they’d find a best friend. This was different.

“I was asleep, next to Marissa.”

They both knew he meant after they’d finished having sex, after he had come.

“Just laying there, and I knew . You are the one I love, Jawarahalal Nehru Alexander. I love you.”

A part of Nehru that he did not understand thought that anything physical would ruin this moment. He’d just imagined touching him. This man had just finished having sex with someone else. Touching him would ruin something. The two of them, looking at each other, Brad, knees apart, his large hands grasping the Coke, his dark green eyes wide and earnest, made it real.

Nehru knew so clearly that he belonged to Brad that he didn’t say I love you too.

He only said, “Well, what are we going to do about it?”

Brad’s mouth was open, his face fell a little. Half brought back to reality, he shrugged and said, “I… I don’t know.”

 

“Whaddo you know about Cameron  Dwyer?” Chris asked as offhandedly as possible.

It was true that Russell had called himself an outcast, but he had known Chris Knapp, the famous football player since seventh grade. He was a guy who was so good looking that even when he went about with his Oxford blue shirt hanging out of his khaki’s and his sandy brown hair half combed and sticking up, you knew he was good looking. He had something of the wolf about him, always a little unshaven, his blue eyes ringed by long dark lashes that almost made him pretty.

“Cameron,” Russell began, “is a friend.”

“Is your next door neighbor,” Gilead reminded him.

“Is she single?” Chris said.

“Well, that’s to the point.”

“I’m a to the point kind of guy, Gil,” Chris shut his locker.

“As far as I know,” Russell said, “yes.”

“Great. When I see her at football games I’ll speak then.”

“Are you alright?” Gilead asked Chris.

“No,” Chris said. “I’ve been fucked up and mad sense Joe died and I had to bury someone my age who should have lived to be old but an asshole drove into him and Mark. And by the way, Mark’s looking for you.”

“Is he?”

“Or waiting for you.”

“Ok….”

“Gil,” Chris said.

“Yeah?”

“I know you won’t be able to tell, but Mark isn’t in a good way either. So give him some slack. Okay?”

Gilead opened his mouth.

“I’m not saying that because you’re a dick,” Chris explained. “I’m saying that cause you’re one of the good guys and Mark likes you and he needs a good guy right now so… I’m just letting you know. Alright?”

“Yes,” Gilead said.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Russell murmured as the two of them joined Nicholas Ballantine and Adam Daunhauer.

Gilead shrugged, and the four of them made a ragged line as they trumped down the hall to their first class of the year, History of the Germans. It was Russell’s first mixed grade class and the first time he’d been in a class with Gilead.

“This is also the first time I don’t want to throw up on the first day of school,” Russell discovered.

“Well, you went through all the bullshit last year,” Gilead said. “And then so much has happened since then.”

Nicky had been reciting poetry, his floppy hair falling into his long face, and stating that this would be the best year of all of their lives, his two large blazer half falling off, not that anyone was required to wear the blazer in this head. But Gilead seemed strangely preoccupied.

“Not unhappy,” Russell stated. “Just… preoccupied.”

“Your problem, Lewis,” Gilead said, “is that you pay too much attention to too little.”

“Room 352,” Adam declared, and they waltzed into a space with entirely too much sunlight and cheer to be at Our Lady of Mercy. As they sat down, it was Russell who saw before Gilead did, a guy leaning goofily over his desk and smiling at them.

“Gil!” he whispered.

“Huh?”

Russell directed Gilead toward the dark haired athlete in rolled khakis and a mint green shirt.

“It’s Mark Young,” Russell said.

Mark lifted a bag from the chair beside him and gestured for Gilead and Russell sat on Gil’s other side.

“Hey!” Gilead said, forcing all the cheer he could into his greeting for the hazel eyed boy.

Mark grinned and as Mr. Lanziger walked in, he said, “Hey, Gilead Story. You’re just who I’ve been looking for.”