If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

SEVENTEEN

SNOW

They had talked about doing their own album with their own stuff, and though, for all sorts of reasons, this had stopped, Brad also stopped singing their original music. It was, to him, a way of saying, no one can have these songs until we decide what to do with them. They’re still ours. We’ll get around to them some time.

He had come to the Noble Red early, and if he’d asked himself why it would have been because this was the place Nehru was. Even when he wasn’t here, this was the place where he eventually would be. He realized that he’d brought Cody back here the other night because this was the place where he felt Nehru the most. When he was fucking Cody here, he had felt Nehru the most. Nehru had found them the Noble Red He was half charm and half confidence. He’d just talked to Gerald the owner and pretty soon Gerald was just telling them to come whenever.

Brad had settled on Eagles songs, and unconsciously he was playing:

 

One of these nights
One of these crazy old nights
We're gonna find out, pretty mama
What turns on your lights
The full moon is calling, the fever is high
And the wicked wind whispers and moans
You got your demons and you got desires
Well, I got a few of my own

Even as his finger stopped playing, the bell over the door jangled and Nehru walked into the empty Noble Red, coming down the flights of stairs onto the sunken floor.

 

“One of these nights,” he said.

“Yeah,” Brad said.

“Should we take it from the top. Just us?”

“Sure,” Brad said.

Nehru sang background on Eagles songs, on songs that he did not write or songs that he thought of as, “for white tolks.”

Brad played well, but sang with little heart, and after two verses, he said so.

“You really gave it everything,” Nehru said, “at the bar mitzvah in Ammon. You were basically Don Henley.”

“At the bar mitzvah with Josh?”

Nehru raised an eyebrow.

“Josh?”

“The guy at the door.”

“You wanted to say Jew at the door.”

“Whatever. Him.”

“What about him?” Nehru said.

“I know you fucked him.”

Just like that, without much thought, but with the flat of his hand, Nehru reached out and slapped Brad so hard, the tall man twisted and bent over.

Brad remained like that for some time, and then stood up straight holding the side of his face.

He rubbed his unshaven cheek, and it was red with Nehru’s hand print.

“Why don’t we change the subject,” he said.

“Yes,” Nehru agreed. “I think we should.”

They didn’t sing. Singing seemed inappropriate. Nehru sat at the piano and Brad played a series of riffs that ended in new riffs. For a moment, Nehru Alexander felt like he wanted to say something, and then he felt like there was nothing to say, and at last Brad stopped. He set his guitar down and he sat at the piano bench beside Nehru, and Nehru knew that Brad was remembering that same way he was. Brad brought his long fingers down on the piano and the sound filled the room, and then he said, “You should slap me again.”

“No one’s going to slap you,” Nehru said in a low voice.

“You should,” Brad said. Brad didn’t say that he wanted him to, because this sounded mad. He didn’t say that being touched by Nehru even if it was a slap was the most delightful thing to him. He took Nehru’s hand and put it to his cheek, fitted his fingers to where he still felt the sting.

“I really got you,” Nehru said, looking at the pink on Brad’s face.

“You really did,” Brad said.

He still held Nehru’s hand, but he tilted his face so that now he pressed his lips to his palm. He kissed his palm, deep like he’d kiss his lips and then he kissed all over his hand, slowly, and Nehru slowly caressed his face.

“You’re all I think about, really,” Nehru said, almost conversationally.

“Yeah,” Brad said.

The room was silent and Nehru Alexander understood something, but he had always understood it. It was as if for the world to move he had to move it. He stood up, and he walked away from Brad, down the stage, and he heard Brad rise and follow. They went through the unlocked and darkened kitchen, and past the narrow hall between the pantry and staff bathroom. They went up the inner stairway. On the other side of it was an outer stair, and they came up to a door and Nehru turned it and then entered the old and usually unused apartment. Nehru was bringing him to the very place where he and Cody had struggled in the dark. For a moment he wondered would Nehru know? Would he feel it? Would Brad have to explain it?

But Cody had happened because they had responded to each other’s ad, not knowing who the other was, and then laughed when they saw each other and, at last, decided they would do this. They both loved someone they couldn’t have, and they had both needed comfort.  Brad didn’t feel used, and he didn’t feel like he had used Cody. At the time they had no idea how often they would go to each other again, only that they needed each other immediately.

Brad shut the door, and Nehru closed it, and the air was of old closed up things, and they moved to the front which may have been a living room, which was couches and chairs covered like shrouds, and Nehru opened the window to the cold air and noises of late fall on Kirkland Street were heard and there came the smells of burning leaf, and Nehru turned, took Brad’s face in his hands and kissed him. He kissed him and his lips were strong and tender and he felt the rough hair of his unshaven face, his unintentional moustache, the wiry soul patch under his lip. He kissed him and tasted mint and cigarettes and the eagerness of Brad’s return kiss. He kissed him and looked at Brad, and Brad said, “Yes.”

Brad felt happy like a boy who had gotten his best friend back. He held Nehru so tightly, and the tightness of embracing became the joining of lovers. They kissed, caressing each other through their shirts, locking blue jeaned thighs, and it was so nice, so secure, better than sex.

Brad’s heart beat so fast. All the feeling in him welled up from his toes, rained down from his head and joined in the unfolding stiffening of his penis. When he kissed Nehru, his dick went so hard it hurt, and that was a pleasure too.

Nehru closed his hands around. Brad’s penis. Brad didn’t seem to know what he was doing at first, but Brad swiftly pulled down his jeans and his cock came out of them, heavy and dark from the coil of black hair. His balls, man’s balls, hung between strong thighs covered in black down and then, before either of them understood it, Nehru was on his knees and Brad was down his throat.

That first time, Brad came silently, his great eyes boring into Nehru’s until the force of coming arched his neck and shut fast his eyes. When he opened his them, he saw out a window the white sky through the last brown leaves, as the last of him bust with the force of a rocket out of his cock into Nehru’s mouth.

As afternoon turned into evening, the two of them joined a couple of couches together and made a deep bed. The old stale covers for furniture would make fine bed sheets, and the curtains closed to keep the sun away today let in the grey light that presaged snow.

Nehru Alexander closed his eyes and bit the pillow, letting Brad thunder through him. His voice rattled and while his mind went to the ululating place, and he grasped Brad’s hands tighter as they grasped his. Brad Long fucked him so heartily, so thoroughly, their bodies smacked and the bed jolted like a galloping horse. Shapeless noises, curses, exclamations escaped their mouths. Brad’s mouth fell on Nehru’s neck, murmuring this and that into it, kissing him, bruising him, and Nehru reached back to urge him on.

Nehru didn’t want it to ever end, and it felt like the fucking was happening forever, this hammering, this being entered and bruised and made to feel thunder in a place he didn’t even know existed, and Brad was strong, full of stamina, could go for a very long time. They were both surprised when he screamed and his body lifted up and then fell down, when, whimpering he erupted in Nehru, his voice a broken plea as he came, and came and came.

He rolled from Nehru onto his side, looking himself bruised and crushed, though Nehru looked neither of the two, his cheeks red, his face flushed. His caramel skinned glowed. Brad came so deep inside of him nothing came out of him. Brad’s body was long and red, and he breathed heavily, looking to Nehru, then to the ceiling, and Nehru lay on his side in contentment, admiring the long body, the penis like a trunk, still half hard, that had penetrated him so that he still throbbed.

Bradley Long turned over, lit a cigarette and soon Nehru smelled the smoke and received the cigarette Brad had started. They shared it, slowly passing it back and forth until at last Brad stubbed it out, motioned to Nehru, and kissing him, gently mounted him, his hand working Nehru slowly, stroking him, pulling him inside of a hot tightness so they were both shockd as Brad’s thighs wrapped about Nehru, as Brad settled deep onto him, riding Nehru gently, gently, finally urging him on. On his knees Brad took his friend deeper into him and he turned on his stomach to give what he had gotten, rejoiced in the pummeling as Nehru, filled with that strange ecstasy, fucked Brad into the evening and as day turned to night they both journeyed deeper and deeper into the mystery of sex.

When Nehru came the two of them were lying side by side, Brad’s face sober as he reclined over Nehru, working him until he moaned in surprise as they both watched him ejaculate, semen the color of lime water in the late autumn light, an arc rising impossibly high, falling, rising, falling, showering them.

The day Gilead Story put him in a headlock was the day Mark Young became quietly obsessed with him. Mark started eavesdropping on his conversations, to—when passing him in the hallway—laugh loudly at his jokes in the hope that he might be noticed in overhearing conversations and that, what? Gilead might put him in a headlock again?

For a seventeen year old going on eighteen, Mark had a surprising amount of self knowledge and when he saw from the outside, Jason Lorry and Ralph Balusik making Russell Lewis’s life a misery and he realized: Oh, they’re like me. They want to be put in headlocks too! That moment, Mark had to admit, the moment of being upside down, looking at the ceiling, with this other strange boy so near, was a moment of bliss he played over and over again in his mind.

But unlike Ralph and Jason, who he didn’t think much of, he would never wish to cause Gilead grief. He just wanted to be near him. He just wanted to know him. He had friends. He was friendly. He could see himself from the outside and know how friendly he looked, how good at being a teenager he was, but—as he had said to Gilead—he sensed that Gilead was someone who cared about things. Wanted things.

Mark wanted a weekend job, a car, and to go to a good college. He had the first two. He also wanted to feel alive. In his school world he felt alive when he was running track and cross country. The rest of his life his friends didn’t really come into, and he sort of wanted that someone who could. His friend Dan Soldener had a little annoying girlfriend who came to watch him run. Mark wanted someone to watch him run. Oddly, it came to mind that he wanted the serious, elegant Gilead to watch him.

So when Mark approached Gilead at on the field of Rosary high school before the beginning of the year and said, “Let’s be study buddies,” even though his mouth moved before his brain, he was glad it did, and on that first morning of class he had summoned up all the cool in him and said, making a salute: “Hey, Study Buddy! You’re just who I’ve been looking for.”

This was why now that Gilead was in his house off Willow Patch Terrace, in the winding roads of Shadybrook with the sky darkening, and snow had started to fall. Mark was more delighted than he wanted to let on. He did not know he had an impish smile on his face or that his eyes were shining when Gilead said maybe it was time to go home.

“Mom says you should stay for dinner,” Mark said.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Only if you want to.”

Gilead remembered his own mother’s warnings against eating white peoples’ food, but also knew Sharonda wasn’t cooking tonight, and would be glad to know he had friends.

“Stay for dinner,” Mark said. “And I’ll make sure you get home. Or like, if you want, we could go to a movie? Or that club out on Parkway. Or… I heard that the gang might be getting together.”

“The gang?”

“You know.” Mark said. “Our gang.”

Gilead had thought that the crowds they ran in were so different there could not be an “our gang”. But Cameron, Linh, Jeremy and Adam made a sort of cross over, especially since Chris Knapp seemed to be halfway dating Cam, and Gilead suddenly felt like he didn’t want to be dull anymore and not know people. He didn’t want to be safe. He didn’t even want to pretend not to like Mark, and Mark evidently wanted to be with him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes. All of that sounds like… Let’s. Unless we get snowed it.”

“Oh,” Mark said in that long, gentle voice of his, turning lazily to look out his living room window, “I doubt that, but if that did happen, it would be you and me together and that would be cool. Wouldn’t it?”