If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

EIGHTEEN

LIFE AT SAINT ALBAN’S

Once he finally cared nothing for making sense, Jawarhalal Nehru Alexander put on his winter coat, wrapped his scarf around his face, zipped himself up to the neck and, going down the back stairs of his mother and father’s house and out of the kitchen, keys in pocket, he left by the back way and walked through the little blocks of the Near Eastside toward Indragal Road. Except for Brad’s family’s house, which was on the other side of town, and which was not where he would be going now, everything that mattered was near here. The Noble Red on Kirkland, across it and a little bit south, Chayne’s house and now, at the end of Indragal Road, the little white house where he had sat several nights this week, polite and kind, watching Brad make a home with his pregnant girlfriend, Marissa Gregg.

What would he do when he got there? Would he knock on the door, sit down and watch the eleven o’clock news with them?  Such questions had rhyme and reason and he couldn’t be bothered with that right now.

But the lights were out. Even the porchlight was off. It didn’t come on when he stepped on the stoop. This was just stupid. Perhaps Marissa felt more secure with a man in her home. He walked along the front of the house, his feet crunching on the snow as he passed the large darkened windows. He wouldn’t have done this anywhere else but Geschichte Falls. The third window was the bedroom, and as he stood on his tiptoes, Nehru saw it held a very dim light coming from the hallway by which he watched Brad’s naked body as he fucked the mother of his child.

This wasn’t the first time he’d stood there and watched. Before he’d gone hot watching Brad fuck Debbie, long legs, leapfrogging in slow motion, pumping up and down, his ass clenching and unclenching like breath, and the breath coming out of Debbie who was hidden by his shoulders and back as he pressed himself inside her. Nehru only saw her comparatively small legs wrapped about Brad, Brad moving up and down like a wave, the sounds of her startled fucking, a taste like iron and embarrassment rising in Nehru’s mouth. He didn’t think he should stop looking. Brad was his. Brad belonged to him, these flexing buttocks, this long back, the man gathering woman up, pressing himself inside her belonged to him. Nehru was trembling as surely as, in the umber dark he could see Brad’s face trembling, Brad licking his lips. As his face burned equally with lust and rage, Nehru watched Brad, moving so slowly, fuck her faster and faster, heed her cries on the other side of the glass, watched white fingers fly up and go around Brad’s neck. It was when he heard Brad’s balls deep response, grunting, groaning, swearing in response, matching the rhythm of his boy, that an emptiness, a deep pain moved through Nehru Alexander.

Dry mouthed, he was filled with incredible loss as he watched Brad, shudder, his body stagger, his eyes widen, as he watched Brad rise up and come with a shout. He’d never heard any other man come. It was happening tonight. It was happening now. Brad sliding in and out of Marissa, Brad’s head lifting up. Brad coming.

    

Brad’s parting words that day in his basement after they’d had sex for the last time

 

“It’s really good of you to be worried about this baby.”

“Okay,” Nehru said, lifting the last small box and waiting for Brad to say something else.

“And it’s good for you to think about Marissa. I just hope you aren’t doing this because you’re afraid of what will happen when it’s just you and me.”

They had driven here, to this house, to Marissa’s in silence. But Nehru had thought, somehow, that Brd would be unable to have sex with Marissa, that they would live like Mary and Joseph, Brad a father for the baby being born, nothing more because he had a true love. That Brad could have passionate sex with him, and then turn around and do this, fuck Marissa, joining his body to hers, collapse in more orgasm, lay naked and entwined with her, whispering to her in the dark, was a revelation to Neru.

But of course, this was how the baby got there. The same time Brad was loving him, he was fucking her, loving her? The same nut that arced out of Brad like a geyser while the two of them beheld it in shock and rapture, was the same nut he crammed inside of Marissa to mak this baby. Goddamn him.

Nehru turned away and walked home in the cold. In the end watching was only watching, and being outside of things was being outside of them. What he saw he saw in shadow and with the memory of what he’d seen before.

When Brad came it was with 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 he came down, slowly down he came.

He looked for that feeling he had with Nehru, and it wasn’t there. But as he shot out of himself, and the last of the semen dribbled from his body, a contentent took him. The sex which was not quite the sex you wished to have was sex all the same, and so he was relieved and grateful for his coming.

When he was a lanky in a dark blue Saint John’s uniform with a shock of black hair, Brad Long returned to the locker room for his shorts and the only other boy there was Aaron Duckworth in the shower, water running down his body, fit and glossy, golden brown, and Brad was struck hard between the eyes, as disconcerted by his knowledge of Aaron’s beauty as he was by the beauty itself.

He had been dating Cheryl then, and for a week he was bothered by what he has seen. After all, boys weren’t supposed to think about other boys. He’d seen naked girls before. He’d seen sex. He’d made out. It was all nice, but seeing Aaron was something entirely different. A week later, with Cheryl, he’d had sex for the first time. Looking back he wished he’d been gentler, knew he’d been too hard, too uncaring, had been trying to fuck himself to orgasm. He knew then, though he had put the knowledge away until this moment when he lay on his back, that while he fucked her be’d been thinking of Aaron. He knew now, beside Marissa that same feeling as when he’d come inside of Cheryl. That this was good enough, close enough, that sex which was not quite the sex you wished to have was sex all the same, and so he had been relieved and grateful for his coming.

Russell and Gilead spent the night at the Dwyers and when they came across the yard to 1735 Breckinridge the next morning, Thom and Patti were smoking their cigarettes and drinking coffee.

“A girl called you,” Thom gloated.

“A woman called,” Patti said, not sounding pleased.

“What’s the number?” Russell said. Thom read it off the refrigerator and Russell said, “Oh, that’s no woman. It’s Anigel.”

“Is she the one who lives with Chayne and refuses to work during her period?”

“That’s her,” Gilead said.

“I like her,” Patti decided. “And she’s Cameron’s cheerleading coach or something, right?”

“Yeah,” Russell said.

“Oh, I like her. I mean, I like the idea of her. Why haven’t we met?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I’ll see what I can do.”

That afternoon, after Gilead left, Russell called up Anigel.

“When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow!” she cried. “I’ll pay for your ticket. I’m good for it.”

Russell was flabbergasted. “But I’m still in school. We don’t get off until Friday.”

“Well then I guess we just gotta find a way to get you away for three or four days,” she said, nonplussed.

The phone rang and Chayne picked up.

“Oh?” Chayne said. Then, “Oh.”

Then he said, “Oh.”

“That’s a lot of O,” Rob said.

Chayne put the phone to his chest and said, “Gil, it’s for you.”

“For me?”

Gilead got up and came to the phone.

“It’s your boyfriend, Mark Young.”

“That’s not funny,” Gilead said, taking the receiver as Chayne sat down.

“Who says I was joking?”

Gilead simply said, “What’s up? Oh… Yes. Yeah. Ok.”

Rob heard Gilead’s voice change and said, “Chayne, you might be right?”

“I often am.”

“Yes,” Gilead said, sounding kinder than he’d ever sounded before.

“Mark’s on his way,” Gilead said. “We’re going to Saint Gregory.”

“What’s in Saint Gregory?”

Gilead shrugged and said, “Nothing, but in an hour I guess us.”

That afternoon, while Thom and Cody were playing chess in the living room, and Russell was watching them, but paying more attention to the guitar he strummed, a yellow El Camino rolled up to 1735 Breckinridge.

Thom answered the door before he could say anything, Cody shouted, “Anigel!”

“So you’re the famous Anigel Reyes!” Thom said.

 She held a large box of hot wings from the Blue Jewel and started to say, “I won’t be staying long—”

“Oh, you have to! My wife wants to meet you, and she never wants to meet anyone.”

“So,” Anigel was telling Patti as she sucked the meat of another bone, “my plan is to take Russell with me to Saint Alban’s. We leave at about eight o’clock and of course his cousins will be there.”

“Oh, I don’t trust Jimmy,” Patti said.

“What about Macy?” Russell said, snatching a sip of his mother’s beer.

As she took back her beer and Thom secretly pushed Russell his, Patti said:

“I don’t really even remember Macy half the time. But I trust you,” she said to Anigel.

“And I trust you,” she told Russell.

“And you’re okay with me missing school?”

“Do you want us to tell you no?” Thom demanded.

“Please don’t,” Anigel said. “I hate traveling by myself.”

“Well, why should you!” Cody declared.

Patti looked at Cody in surprise, mainly because why the hell was he speaking?  But then she agreed, “Indeed, why should you?”