If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

BRIGHAM STREET BRIDGE

CONTINUED

It was getting on toward eleven, and Noble Red was winding down. As the members of Chili Comet Sunday were packing away their equipment, and Hale was talking to Brad, Nehru saw the snow beginning to fall. They hadn’t had the big snow just yet, and Nehru reflected that they never really did until after Christmas. So casually that anyone who saw would not have seen, Cody squeezed Nehru’s ass.

“Where are we off to after this?”

“I’m on vacation,” Nehru said, wishing for the squeeze again, wishing for much more than a squeeze. “We can do whatever.”

But it was Brad, who had helped put away the drums and now was closing his guitar case, who said, “What’s everyone up to?”

Cody and Nehru looked at each other. Nehru, who knew how to say everything, did not quite know how to say that he planned to sneak off someplace with Cody, and it was Cody who said, “I guess we could hang here for a little.”

He was looking to Nehru with a question in his face and Nehru nodded and said, “Yeah. We could do that.”

His friendship with Brad hadn’t really suffered. There had been no time except for those rough few days after Brad had moved in with Marissa where he hadn’t wanted to see him, and whatever people said about whatever people called casual sex, sleeping with Cody had made him able to be with Brad again. Brad, Nehru reminded himself, was in an—if not loveless—then certainly ultimately mismatched relationship with a baby on the way, and that was nothing to be jealous about.

They were drinking beers in the half emptied hang out, and Nehru was with two of his favorite men, dark haired Cody and dark haired Brad. He’d been with both of them and he felt alright, more alright than ever before. They would probably end up closing out the bar. Anigel and Rob had never turned up, that was strange. The staff would go home soon and leave the three of them to lock up and put glasses in the dishwasher.

Now that the band was done playing, the radio did their work. Faintly they could hear Adam Duritz singing:

 

“Mr. Jones and me
Tell each other fairy tales
And we stare at the beautiful women
She's looking at you
Ah, no, no, she's looking at me
Smilin' in the bright lights
Coming through in stereo
When everybody loves you
You can never be lonely…”

 

“Is Leon gone for good?” Nehru asked.

“It does seem like it,” Brad said.

“He just…. Was it because of Jill?”

“If it was, he deserved it,” Brad said. “You don’t tell lies about a lady.”

“Jill’s no lady,” Cody chuckled, and then he said, “Ironic, I take the place of a guy who talked shit about my sister after she exposed him. Should we go by and check on him or something?”

“Robin did,” Nehru said. “So did Hale. He just says he’s not interested anymore.”

“Quite frankly, if he isn’t interested in coming back, I can’t lie and pretend I’m that interested in him being here,” Brad said, running a finger around the bottom of his pint glass.

“I always thought he was like the yelpy pet that everyone complained about but everybody loved,” Cody said.

Nehru furrowed his brow.

“That may not be true,” he said after a moment.

When Cody lay back and yawned, stretching his tee shirt over his well made chest, Nehru thought it was time to do something and said, “Well, maybe we should call it a night.”

He leaned in to hug Brad and said, “Give Marissa my love.”

But instead of Brad giving the pat and expected: alright, a strange look came over his face, and Nehru said: “What?”

Brad seemed to be thinking something over, and then he said, “We’re not together anymore.”

Brad said, “We’re not going to be together.”

It was Cody who said, “What?”

Nehru said nothing.

“When did it happen?” Cody said. Then he added in a quieter voice, “If I may ask.”

“A few days ago.”

“A few days ago!” Nehru exclaimed. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“And I still wasn’t,” Brad said, “going to say anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Brad said. “I felt like I’d done enough, and you didn’t need to be involved in all that. You needed to do… whatever you and Cody are doing.”

Cody nakedly blinked at Brad, and Nehru tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“You knew?”

“Yeah. And Rob sort of insinuated it.”

Nehru was about to say something along the lines of “Rob needs to shut the fuck up,” but couldn’t really understand why he’d say that, or why he’d feel caught out.

“It’s just us being friends,” Cody said, rubbing Nehru’s thigh under the table.

“Yeah,” Brad’s greenish eyes were warm, turned a little golden as he looked to Nehru. “That’s how it was with us.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Cody said, though his hand was still caressing Nehru’s thigh, and Nehru’s penis was firming.

“No?”

Cody shook his head.

“I don’t think you were ever just being friends. Some people are like that. They’re meant.”

Neither Brad or Nehru looked at each other after Cody had said that, and while Tori Amos sang in the background, Nehru said, “Well, what do we do now?”

“What were you guys going to do before?” Brad said.

“We were going to hang out,” Cody said. He thought of the English phrase: “Mess about.”

“Oh,” Brad said, pushing his bottom lip out.

Nehru felt as if things were happening all around him very quickly and he had no control of them. Brad got up. Cody got up. Nehru got up and Brad pushed his chair in.

“I’m gonna head out,” Brad said.

“Yeah,” Cody said. “We all should.”

“Where were we going?” Nehru asked Cody.

“Thompson Street,” Cody said, by which he meant the gas station, by which he meant that house behind the gas station, that dark and private place where they’d gone upstairs and made love only days ago.

And then Nehru said, steadily, though his brain was racing and his blood was pumping, “But Brad, what about upstairs?”

Upstairs was the apartment where he and Brad had been together. Upstairs was the apartment where Brad and Cody had been together. Nehru knew this now.

“You have the key, don’t you?” he said to Brad.

“Uh,” Brad’s voice had changed as if he was waiting for something to happen, but didn’t know what the something was.

“Yeah. Yes. I’ve got it.”

He added, “There’s beer in the fridge, too.”

Cody’s face changed. He was the last to catch on.

“Will you show us?” he said, his voice low.

“Yes,” Brad said.

Brad led them through the hallway that went past the bathrooms and alongside the kitchen where they could hear the last of the dishes being washed. They were outside in the cold at the nearly empty parking lot, and then they were going up the back stair, and now Brad Long was on the back porch, then unlocking the door. They were in the apartment that had once smelled musty, but after all the recent use, smelled something like a home, had the remnants of cigarette smoke and the smoke of Black and Milds, burning incense and the must of patchouli,  the green and sagey pungent memories of marijuana. 

This was Brad’s secret place like Thompson Street was Cody’s. He went into the kitchen and brought out beers and Cody took marijuana out of his pocket. They were drinking and Brad was rolling joints because he was better at it than Cody. Now and again Nehru got up, and first he turned the radio on, and he started at jazz, but found a tonal music, like a throbbing heart beat, and he was going to turn on more lamps, but he turned on the fairy lights Brad had strung up. They were the remnants of what was used downstairs and they twinkled in low amber lines all about the room.

 

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel

and kiss the ground”:

 

Cody said.

    

That was beautiful, Nehru thought, but also thought it silly to say so.

Brad said,

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.   

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel

and kiss the ground.”

 

Nehru did not ask whom they were quoting. He assumed it was Rumi and thought asking would take them out of their mood. Cody reached into his jacket pocket and put two bottles of poppers on the table before them. Plainly, he reached behind him and took out a bottle of lubricant. Nehru felt like a high priest who must get this ritual right. All of the desire that had built up in him since earlier tonight compelled him. Knowing there was a moment and knowing what was the ruin of that moment compelled him. He kissed Cody quickly, kissed him long and deep and could almost hear Brad’s whimper of desire. But Nehru desired Cody right now, and the strength of his kiss, the roughness of his tongue and the feel of his hair, and now Cody was lifting up his tee shirt and Nehru pulled it off, running his hands up and down Cody Barnard’s body, inhaling the pungent scent of patchouli, bergamot and young man. He pressed his face to Cody’s chest, inhaled deeply. Remembered what he was about. Best not to lose the thread of this magic.

He turned around, and Brad was standing up, and his face was lost in shadow so Nehru could not see his expression, only the fullness of his lips and his black soul patch, the mutton chop side burns lining the plains of his face. Cody had lain out the poppers and lube on the table to plainly state what would happen and Nehru unbuttoned Brad’s jeans and then unzipped them and took out his heavy penis, With care, gently now, he began to massage it from half life to full life, watching it rise like a long arc.

As if polishing a precious instrument, with the lube he rubbed and stroked Brad, watching the veins rise up on the shaft of his cock, watching the head swell. Because he loved him, because he desired him, he took him in his mouth. Because he loved him more than he knew, he stayed there. Nehru felt Cody’s hair brushing his shoulders, felt Cody’s mouth on his throat, on his back, felt Cody’s arms embracing him, heard Brad’s jeans dropping. They remained like this before Brad stepped out of his jeans, lifting up his tee shirt with a groan, and they watched him, tall, black hair sticking up, penis like a bobbing arch, move to the bed where they followed. Cody took up the poppers and the lube, and they moved the long short distance in the midst of low throbbing music and low amber stars while Nehru stood still in lust and contemplation, knowing he led this dance..