The Families in Rossford: Chapter 43

THAT SUMMER IN ROSSFORD was a hot one, made hotter by Milo’s sense of upset about having no clear plan as to what came next. Loretto College was too expensive to attend with a half assed spirit. Dena called from California.

“We may be coming back a little later than we thought,” she said.

“How late?” Milo tried to keep from sounding desperate.

“I’m not really sure,” Dena sure did sound careless as fuck about the whole thing.

“Take your grandfather’s car,” Barb told him. “And have an adventure. Take Kenny with you.”

One night they stopped at a bar in a small town where no one carded for age, and a girl wearing a corny ten gallon hat, but wearing it well, gave them beer all night.

“Yawl are both real nice looking.”

“Kenny’s attached,” Milo said, looking around the bar with its steer horns and jukebox playing that old time country music.

“So are you,” Kenny remarked. Taking a long sip from his beer mug.

“Yeah,” Milo allowed. “But you’re really, really attached. You couldn’t have this guy,” Milo said.

The girl placed the cowboy hat on Milo’s head and said, “Well, then could I have you?”

Kenny cleared his throat.

“I had a girlfriend who went away three months ago, and I don’t know when she’s coming back,” Milo told this girl, taking out a cigarette. “So, why don’t we talk and figure out if you can have me or not.”

“Good. You boys got a place to stay?”

“We’re thinking about a hotel we saw down the road,” Kenny lied.

“Don’t count on it,” the girl said. “I got a place. Not much. But I love to help a gentleman in distress.”

She offered her hand to Kenny first.

“Don’t be afraid. I never bite. Well, I do. But not real hard. The name is Bree. Bree Biggs.”

TWELVE

COMING TOGETHER

When Jonah let him in, Keith was shocked by Jonah’s skill, and by the tightness and the heat of him. He started with the joy of being inside of him, and the rumbling thunder of the storm outside was an outward sign of this inward thrill, this unbelievable gift. Jonah’s thighs were around him, enthroning him, pulling him in, and Jonah’s body guided him as Keith moved slowly. The long hands pulled him down, strong and delicate, the mouth opened in pleasure and kissed him. They moved together slowly, and when Keith wanted to speed up, but was afraid, Jonah whispered, “It’s alright. Don’t hold back.”

Keith’s rhythm built, and when Jonah whispered, “I love you,” though Keith had always known this, it was too much. Keith opened his mouth to say, “I—” but his voice rose in a strangled shout and he came, he came over and over in waves, buckling, secure in Jonah’s arms, secured by his legs. He came and then lay across him, Jonah stroking his damp hair. Neither one of them spoke a long time. Keith’s was still coming a little. He was strill trembling. All of him but his penis was so limp and damp, and as Jonah’s hands moved gently across his hair, Jonah said, “And now we’re together,” and Keith, kissing his throat, echoed, in a small murmur, “Together.”

There were some men, and he was rarely with them, who loved fucking. They loved to be the fucker because they felt more or less like they were still a man. They didn’t want to be entered. They didn’t want less. But they didn’t know the power of being entered. They didn’t know what it was like tonight, to see Keith’s face, his mouth open, his eyes brought to the ecstatic place where he wasn’t dumb or helpless, no, where he had gone to a place beyond sensible speech and made himself helpless, made himself lost in Jonah, and Jonah felt his hair and the power of his shoulders, and his back and his hips, and he was so surrounded by him, the heat of Keith’s breath, Keith’s kiss, Keith, deep, deep inside him in that gentle ache. And then that moment when his word of love had loosened him and he’d felt Keith hot, flooding into him.

HE OPENED HIS EYES, not from dreaming, but from the day dream. Pen on paper, in Sean’s room, Jonah asked himself, if he had come to find Sean, if Sean was the light of his life and he spent all night happy in his arms, then why did he spend his mornings thinking of Keith Redmond?

Logan Banford looked more tired than Chay had seen him when he came down to lunch on Huron Street. The people passed up and down River North outside their picture window and Chay said:

“You don’t look like yourself.”

“I feel like myself, though,” Logan told him.

The waitress brought his seltzer water. He thanked her and removed the paper from the rest of his straw.

“I’m just tired,” he said.

“Have you been sleeping? Or burning the candle at both ends as usual?”

“Well, Chay I have to burn the candle at both ends. That’s what keeps the rent paid.

“And,” Logan said, “that’s what keeps me alive.”

He took a long sip on the tall glass of frosted over, sparkling water.

“It’s work, work, work. And you can never just wam bam thank you. That’s not what you’re paid to do. You are paid to be interested and interesting, make comments about how much you care about… whoever. Whatever. And the more money they pay you, the more interested you have to be. Why, there was this old bastard on the Gold Coast, and I swear I spent three hours hearing about business ventures I didn’t understand and another three with his limp dick trying to fuck me. And then you say, well, of course it was great. Or you pay for the Viagra so that something actually will happen and, again, you say—of course it was great. Of course I care about you.

“That’s just the escorting.”

Chay nodded. Long ago, back in Rossford, Chay had gone with Logan on his escorting appointments. But though the money wasn’t as good, the exchanges had been a lot simpler.

“And then the photo shoots you don’t get. I flew out to New York, twice in the last three weeks just to not get the job. Once to LA. I’ve been living on a fucking plane.”

“But you just got the one for Mistal,” Chay said, “and that’s right here.”

“And getting the job is almost as bad as not getting it,” Logan continued. “No matter what you do, get it or not get it, you are being rejected. You are not good enough. And your shelf life… I’m going to be like that one motherfucker, the one who gets botoxed all the time now. The one who’s making his videos on You Tube.”

“When’s the last time you put a video up there?”

“I—unwisely—filmed my drive to O’Hare for the last shoot in New York,” Logan said. “It’s been weeks. It’s just…”

Logan shook his head.

“I kind of hate my life.”

Chay slid an onion ring around on his plate and waited for Logan to continue.

“I feel like I am so tired. I am so exhausted. Everything I have is so secondhand, and I’ve been hustling and hustling. And I am still hustling. I’m always trying to get there, but I’m never there. I always want some more, and you know what? The more I want isn’t that much.

“Maybe you’re right,” Logan said. “Maybe I should go to sleep.”

He planted his elbows on the table though, and looked out of the window at the people walking by. A cab stopped, and a handsome man, about thirty, in a chic pinstriped shirt and black slacks got out.

“How do they do it?” he wondered. “How the fuck do they do it?

“Those people, so together looking, walking up and down the street so smart, and you know what? Those fucks are as miserable as I am. More. But they don’t go on like I do. I’m so bored with my life. I’m so fucking angry that sometimes I could just cry. I want to scream. I want to throw shit. I can’t stand it. So I hustle and hustle and try to get there, even though I might not. Because the only other option is to stay here. Here and bored, here and content with what I’ve got. Here in my nice shirt and black trousers, nodding my head and tapping on my palm pilot on my way to the office. How, how, how, the fuck do they do it?”

Chay felt himself caught between Logan, ever struggling, always on the hustle, constantly on an edge he would never put himself on, and those people outside, that woman with the shopping bag and shades who looked slightly harassed, that nervous man on his way somewhere.

“If they saw you,” Chay told him, “they might ask the same thing.

“Sheridan’s coming this weekend.”

“Ah, Sheridan!”

“He’s bringing Brendan with him.”

“You say it like I need to be warned.”

“Well, Sheridan is the only man you ever loved.”

“You make it sound awfully poetic,” Logan told him. “Even though that’s about accurate. But we were broken up long before Brendan. And Brendan’s what he needs. And what’s more, from what I know of Brendan, Sheridan is what he needs too.”

The summer after high school graduation, Dena and Layla had made peace after the lack of Layla’s sex life, and Dena’s romance first with Brendan, and then with Milo, had begun to make a rift between them. Will was out of the picture at the time. He and Annalise Michaelson were together, liking each other, but not in love, not the way Will had been with Layla.

That summer in Rossford was a hot one, made hotter by Milo’s sense of upset about having no clear plan as to what came next. Loretto College was too expensive to attend with a half assed spirit. Dena called from California.

“We may be coming back a little later than we thought,” she said.

“How late?” Milo tried to keep from sounding desperate.

“I’m not really sure.”

Dena sure did sound careless as fuck about the whole thing.

“Take your grandfather’s car,” Barb told him. “Have an adventure.”

He and Kenny went on the adventure, because it was approaching the end of summer, and Will was going off to school. They would take him. Bren had to go to his grandparents at the end of August, and that was too bad because, after they’d had their first fight, Milo became increasingly fond of him.

At the end of August they piled into a truck, and Sheridan whined, “I want to go,” and Will said, frankly, “Eighteen year olds don’t want eight year olds.”

The stringy little boy with the sticky up hair frowned up his face, but Brendan reached down and ruffled his hair.

“I’ll look after you until I go, okay?” he said.

Sheridan stopped to consider this and looked up at Brendan.

“Can I look after you too?” the little boy asked him.

“Sure thing. We’ll just look after each other. Okay?”

Sheridan seemed content with this arrangement, and the other boys drove off.

After Will was settled, they drove further west. There were whole days when they saw only one or two cars, or seemed to be passing the same mountain. One night they stopped in a small town and found a bar where no one carded for age and a girl wearing a corny ten gallon hat, but wearing it well, gave them beer all night.

“Yawl are both real nice looking.”

“Kenny’s attached,” Milo said, looking around the bar with its steer horns and the jukebox playing that old time country music.

“So are you,” Kenny remarked, taking a long sip from his beer mug.

“Yeah,” Milo allowed. “But you’re really, really attached. You couldn’t have this guy,” Milo said.

The girl placed the cowboy hat on Milo’s head and said, “Well, then could I have you?”

Kenny cleared his throat.

“Good. You boys got a place to stay?”

“We’re thinking about a hotel we saw down the road,” Kenny lied.

“Don’t count on it,” the girl told him. “I got a place. Not much. But I love to help gentlemen in distress.”

She offered her hand to Kenny first.

“Don’t be afraid. I never bite. Well, I do, but not real hard. The name is Bree. Bree Biggs.”

The night was cool, but no breeze came into Bree’s apartment. Kenny, in boxers and tee shirt, under a light coverlet, went in and out of slumber beside Milo. He saw a shape stir out of the darkness, Bree Biggs shaking Milo by the shoulder. The bed lifted as Milo got up and followed her into the bedroom. There was more space. Kenny rolled over and vowed to go to sleep. A moment later, from Bree’s bedroom, he heard bed springs creaking, the bed touching the wall, then hitting it, slamming hard, and then stifled noise. Silence. There was such a long silence.

Very early in the morning, the sky still grey, Kenny felt a nudge. He moved over and Milo climbed back into bed. When morning proper set in, they got up. Bree fixed them breakfast and offered her shower. Everything was very hospitable. They drove on another two days, until they reached Salt Lake City. They never mentioned that night.

To bring it up would be to make it real. That night, far from home and rolling on beer and cigarettes, Milo began to sense again what he knew, that he was good looking, someone tall, a little muscular, dark of skin, dark of hair, chocolate eyed, thick thighed, a real treat in faded jeans. Dena had left him, as she often did, feeling dispensable, someone to be forgotten for months at a time, and it didn’t make any sense that she should be the only woman he was ever with. It became more and more possible that, in fact, she might not come back. After all, Layla had quit Will—a good man—on such a small thing. So when Bree had invited them into her house, it wasn’t that he was hoping something would happen, but he wasn’t exactly hoping it wouldn’t happen either. On the way there he felt the same way he had when he was getting ready to steal cars back in Pennsylvania.

When she had come for him he was ready. He knew Kenny was only half asleep. He’d had to sleep in the other direction because his dick was so hard. Bree had actually pulled him by his hard dick into her room, not by his hand, but by firmly grasping his erection and pulling him into the darkness. She pulled down his boxers and he could barely see. He was completely surprised by her mouth on his dick, sucking like he was some kind of drink, trying to fit him all the way down her throat. While her hands cupped his ass, he placed his hands in her hair, and eyes up to the darkness, he began fucking her mouth. It was so good, but he stopped when he felt himself coming. She pulled him to the bed and shocked him by the tight hotness inside of her. She pulled him in, her hands on his sides. He fucked her slowly at first until she encouraged him. He didn’t know how much was in him, how much he needed this. He was so shocked by the first orgasm that he shouted out, and his body almost lost control. He kept shooting and shooting and he was dimly aware that the woman he was fucking didn’t know his name, and he hadn’t used a condom.

They fucked two more times, the last he lay on his back and felt a bead of semen come out of him, hang like a sticky rope. In the morning he left his address not because he wanted or expected Bree Biggs to ever contact him again, but because, perhaps in the back of his mind, he knew that when you had a one night stand without contraception, far from home, the right thing to do was to be traceable.

He and Kenny never discussed this, but for about six months Milo waited to be traced, to be hit by a repercussion for what he had done.

He had quite forgotten about the whole thing until, seventeen years later, Milo Affren found himself sitting across from Maggie Biggs in a jail in Rossford.