If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

SNOW

CONTINUED

As night fell, Brad closed the curtains and found the lights. Even as they’d been making love, the lightness that overcame them was the lightness that happens when you do precisely what you have to do, even when you cannot see the way beyond it. The tub was clean enough and they showered together, more to touch each other’s skin than to be clean, and then, when they had dressed, catching hands, they descended the back stair straightening up the apartment and locking the door. Their hearts soared, and for Nehru it was one of those moments when he was absolutely connected to another person. In the overgrown yard behind the Noble Red, Brad took him by his face and kissed him.

“We’re together now, and that’s a fact,” Brad Long said.

“You are in a very good mood, Mr. Long,” Nehru noticed.

“We’re moving in together,” Brad said. “Oh, and by the way, we’re gonna start playing at the Blue Jewel and at parties. We got a bar mitzvah in East Sequoya on the third of January.”

Nehru raised his eyebrow.

Brad smiled broadly at his friend and winked.

“You’re the first to know. Also, we’re getting paid a little more for the Blue Jewel. I thought it would be wrong—and a little stupid –to jack up prices at the Noble Red.  Incidentally, for parties we’re charging even more. And people are willing to pay, believe it or not.”

“I believe it.”

“Wonderful, my friend.”

They were silent in the car for a few moments. Then Brad, who had known his friend for a few years now, raised his eyebrow and turned to Nehru.

“What?”

“What do you mean what?”

“I know you, you little black spider. You’re sitting there weaving your webs and—”

“And I was wondering, does this mean you would even think about setting foot in a recording studio?”

Then Nehru turned to look innocently out of the window. “This town is so pretty when it’s just snowed.”

“Okay,” said the guitarist to the singer, “you win.”

“I should,” said Nehru. “I’ve been fighting you for two years.”

“Will you stay with me tonight?”

Nehru nodded.

The thing about Marlboro Reds, at least for him, Russell reflected, was that he was unable to have more than one at a time. He could still feel the effects when he crept in through the back door and went up the back steps to his room.

It was warm in the house and in the darkness of his room relieved only by the snowlight from the open curtains, Russell stripped to the skin. He liked sleeping naked, the feel of the sheets and covers against his skin. But now he stood nude before the little balcony and his eyes were full of the wonder of snow, old grass, persistent flowers and naked trees.

He tilted his head left to the Dwyer’s yard where there was a little light and moved from the balcony to the window that looked next door.

It was in the back part of Cameron’s yard, where the yard rose to a second tier covered in now naked trees. Through them Russell could see Mr. Dwyer. And he was smoking.

At first it seemed large for a cigarette and not at all how you would smoke one. And why wouldn’t a grown man smoke in his own house, especially one that large?

Niall was always carrying on about how someone was stealing his stuff, by which Russell knew he meant the pot he was selling. And he had heard the other day someone going on about how the Dwyer kid had stiffed him on a bag. Cameron even told Russell she’d been accused by Niall of taking things though what those things were he never said.

Russell stood there, naked, head cocked to the side, transfixed in the darkness of his bedroom.

Bill Dwyer was getting high.

They were together, but they had to tell people in their time, in the morning. They could not be discovered tonight. They drove an hour to Holland and saw men and men together, people who were just like them, but too old to be them, or maybe too rich. Brad drove a little north to a poorer town, and they ate dinner there, and they did not discuss children or houses or the future like some couples, but they discussed the album and the long put away songs, and how much better things were now, and Brad told Nehru: “When we get home, I’ll get out some clean bed sheets. This will be the first time you’ve stayed the night.”

Neither of them said a word about Marissa. That would be for tomorrow and the light of day. Tonight was for them, and then the other nights as well.

“Do you really have to ask?” Gilead Story demanded Monday morning, shutting his locker.

“But we just talked to Niall, and he thinks Cameron’s taking his stuff, and Cameron doesn’t understand what’s going on with her father and,” the more he talked the more Gilead cocked his head at Russell until Russell had talked himself out.

“And I guess what you’re saying is I should just keep it to myself?”

“Like I said,” said Gilead. “Did you really have to ask?”

“Gil, Russell,” Mark said, clumsily bumping his shoulder into Gilead as, on the other side, floppy haired Nicky Ballantine did the same to Russell.

“You guys going to lunch?” Nicky asked.

“As opposed to?” Gilead looked at him.

“We’re on our way to the caf.”

“We’re all on our way to the caf,” Gilead said, unimpressed.

Mark said: “Mind if me and Nicky and Joe eat with you?”

“You can eat wherever you—” Gilead began.

“We’d love it,” Russell said, kicking Gilead quickly as they went down the hall.

In the cafeteria Adam, Jeremy and Seth saw Gilead and Russell at a different table, and then they just simply sat down and joined them. Soon, some of Mark’s friends Gilead never talked to showed up, and Russell said, “I like this new configuration.”

“New configurations are good,” Mark said to him.

He said to Gilead, “You free later? Around five-thirty?”

“What happens at five-thirty?”

“Well, track ends at five-thirty. So I guess six. Is six too late? Cause I wanna shower and stuff. But, that’s probably more like six thirty to get to you. Unless you’re at Chayne’s.”

“Gil’s always at Chayne’s,” Nick Ballantine said.

“Unless six-thirty is too late.”

“Six-thirty isn’t too late,” Russell said.

Gilead, half of a ravioli in his mouth, looked at Russell.

“It’s not,” Russell said. “Six-thirty is fine.”

Jawarhalal Nehru Alexander had always felt solitary. He knew he possessed a strength others did not, but this was for the simple reason he never expected to be protected, never expected to be wrapped up in someone else’s arms or be so at home in someone’s bed, his skin pressed to Brad’s skin, his breathing going out as Brad’s was going in.

“We gotta get up,” Brad murmured.

Nehru ignored him. They fiddled their legs together and turned around, Nehru burying his head in Brad’s chest.

“I have to be at the library at ten, and don’t you have early class?” Brad reminded him.

They kissed and played, but everything else could wait. They dressed and came upstairs and had toaster pastries, and then Brad dropped Nehru off at Soubirous. Brad Long was not heartless. It was only that he loved Nehru and he knew, for the first time in his life maybe, exactly what he had to do. So he wasn’t afraid to face Marissa. He was eager to put the truth out there for all to know. He wasn’t even afraid of coming out if coming out was the only thing he could do.

When he entered the library, Marissa was coming to him, happy, and he was happy to see her. He did not resent her. He loved her and loved to see her smile even if, he imagined, she would not be smiling in a moment.

She took him by the hand, and Brad followed her to her office. There, Marissa embraced him and kissed him.

“Marissa,” Brad said, caught off guard, thrilled by the kiss but remembering Nehru’s deeper kiss, remembering their bodies tangled together in the night.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

“Yes,” Marissa said. “And there’s something I have to tell you. Me first. Please!”

She seemed so excited, and after all, what he had to say was so awful, he ceded to her.

“I’m pregnant!” Marissa announced. “We—you and me—we’re pregnant.”

And as Marissa’s arms wrapped around him, Brad Long felt his entire world hit with a delicate hammer and shattered to nothing.