The Families in Rossford

 The train ride wasn’t long, but neither was it as short as it could have been, and Dylan was asleep by Hammond and woke up, his head on his father’s chest when they were disembarking to get onto the Metra train that would take them up to Evanston.

“Did I drool?”

“Do you think I would have let you pass out on my shoulder if you did. My love is not limitless.”

“Of course is it,” Dylan said, grabbing a bag from above them to relieve his father. “It’s just your wardrobe that isn’t.”

They sat on the platform watching the South Shore pass, and waiting for the Metra. Below them was South Chicago, the trees and old townhouses of Hyde Park on either side, a view that did not quite extend to the lake.

“I could go to school here,” Dylan said.

“At the University of Chicago?”

“No, my application would be too late and I suspect my grades aren’t nearly good enough. I mean here, in this area. I haven’t even really looked at a school.”

“I thought you were going to school with Lance.”

“I see what you’re trying to do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you say it so innocent,” Dylan told him, “but you really mean: what has happened with Lance?”

“I think you read far too much into innocent statements,” Fenn said, looking away as if seeing the Metra were the most important thing in the world.

“Well,” Dylan said rather loudly, “Lance decided we shouldn’t be together and so I’m being together with Elias.”

“Just like that?” Fenn said.

“No, not just like that,” Dylan said. “Just like after knowing him my whole life, and over the last few years dealing with how I feel about him.”

Fenn nodded.

“So whaddo you think?”

“Do you make Elias happy?”

“Yes,” Dylan said positively.

“And does he make you happy?”

Dylan turned away, but when Fenn turned his head back, Dylan’s face was red.

“Oh my,” Fenn said. “You are in love with this boy.”

“I know it looks like I’m always in love with someone—”

“No,” Fenn said. “With Ruthven you had something I completely disapproved of and would not allow in my house. You loved Lance. And he loves you. So Lance and Elias, that’s two people. Not a lot. I got used to Lance. I grew to care about him because he cared about you. I’ve always loved Elias so that makes things even better. For me. Not that it has anything to do with me.”

“Well, your opinion does matter to me,” Dylan said.

“I’ve always loved Elias too,” he added.

Fenn yawned, and stretching. He said, “Love is in the air.”

“Um hum,” Dylan nodded, pointing south of them. “And so is the train.”

“We need a station wagon,” Laurel said.

“We’re doing fine as we are,” Brendan told her.

“The train,” Sheridan said, though. “That would have been just the thing.”

“Too slow,” Layla differed.

Laurel and Liam sat between she and Will in the back, and Brendan and Sheridan were in the front of the SUV. Liam suggested that they should have taken the plane, and Will burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Liam said to Layla.

“Not a thing. Your father’s just rude.”

“Is Chicago like London?”

Layla thought about this and then said, “No.”

“But,” Will said, shaking the laughter away, “did you know that the man who built the El was the same man who built the London Underground?”

“Really?” Brendan said, intrigued.

“Yup, it’s a fact.”

“So,” Layla, who was not at all interested in subways, said, “you’re going to drop us off at the Fromms, and then go onto Chay and Casey’s?”

“Right.”

“Are you staying there?” Will said.

Sheridan looked at Brendan who shrugged, and turned back to the Dan Ryan.

“We don’t know yet,” Sheridan decided. “But if we don’t we’ll join the rest of you up at Meredith’s house.”

Elias hadn’t slept so well in days. When the tap came at his door, he felt a little guilty because just then he realized that Bennett still had Maris to deal with, and they weren’t through that yet. But all he could think of was Dylan, and as he held the pillow he thought of Dylan. He dreamed of the time he could wake up with Dylan again. It was worth the price of the hotel room, though they would have to work out something in the future because fucking in hotel rooms would be expensive.

Elias climbed out of bed, pulling a pillow over his erection, and opened the door.

Paul Anderson stuck his head in and said, “It’s the phone. For you.”

“That’s curious,” Elias said, but he was still feeling merry when he scratched his head and went down the hall to take the call.

He was about to say “Hey, Dylan,” when he thought it over and said, “Hello?”

“Hey, Elias!”

It sounded so like Dylan Elias had to think a moment. He was caught short, and then the voice on the other end of the line said, “Are you dumb or something? It’s me. Lance.”

“Yeah, so spring break’s coming up, and since I’ll be in town I was just calling to remind you. Maybe we could do something together. I definitely think we should.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Are you alright?” Lance said. “I mean, I know it’s been a few weeks since that last time I called, and I’m sorry for that. But.”

“No,” Elias said, trying to bring volume back into his voice.

“I mean I’m thrilled. I can’t wait.”

“Me neither,” said Lance.

“So, has anything changed since I left?”

“You only left ten weeks ago,” Elias said, trying to force a laugh.

“Yeah, but in Rossford you never know. Anything can happen.”

“Uh… no…” Elias said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Same old same old,” he said. “As far as I can see.”

When Chay answered the door, he was caught in a great embrace from Sheridan, and then Brendan stooped to give him one as well.

“Now I know,” Sheridan began, “why you never come back to Rossford. If I lived on State Park, I’d never leave either. Not even for Christmas.”

Chay waved it off. “It’s not all that.”

“It is the home of your empire,” Sheridan differed.

Logan came into the room with Casey, and Brendan said to him, “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“I had a photo shoot down the street,” Logan explained. “Now I’m just hanging out here for the rest of the day.”

Here was a white carpeted modern looking first floor, cleanly remodeled so that a large passageway opened onto an unused dining room and made for an expansive cream colored space. An electric fire blazed on the wall across from the stair, and Sheridan asked, looking up the stair: “Any movies going on today?”

“Last one just wrapped up,” Casey told him, rubbing his hands together. He looked very business like, a little nerdy now in his horn rimmed spectacles, and checked jacket.

“Do you know Sean Cody—a fellow I find increasingly creepy—actually stays in a tower and doesn’t see people, but has his movies shot down below?”

“Are we sure of this?” Brendan said.

“I am,” Casey said, stirring him a cocktail at the bar. “And my point is I am just the opposite. Always have been, even back in Rossford. You walk in and the first thing you see is my lovely home. Only now my home is lovelier than it used to be. You enter, walk around. Maybe have a drink. No food if you’re bottoming. Second floor: bedrooms and offices. Top floor: that’s where the magic happens.”

“And you really don’t mind it?” Brendan wondered. “You doing your living and people traipsing up and down the stairs doing film shoots?”

“But Brendan, you have to understand,” Casey told him, “they are my people, doing my business, paying for my lovely house. So, how could I mind? I’m not one of those who has to divorce himself from what he does.”

“Guy was like you,” Logan said.

“Guy McClintock?” Sheridan said.

Sheridan was too young to remember, unless he’d heard about it, but Chay’s father had been one of Guy’s Rude Boys. In fact, this was Brendan’s first memory of Noah, and because he feared it was a sensitive subject to the man who disapproved of his son Chay’s business, he never brought it up.

“Exactly,” Logan said. “Now that man was a prince.”

“He’s quitting the business,” Casey said.

“No! He was one of the good ones,” Logan protested.

“He doesn’t want a separate studio, and he wants his house to be a house, not a porn studio slash party place on Saturdays. He’s getting older.”

“But what’s he going to do?” Sheridan said. “Just live off or his reruns?”

Brendan had forgotten that Sheridan, having worked for Casey and dated Logan, was acquainted with this world.

“Well, no,” Casey explained. “I’m taking it over.”

“Really?” Logan said, excitedly.

Casey nodded. “I’m going to take his guys, and he’s going to be the silent partner more or less. I mean, they’re still going to be Guy McClintock’s Rude Boys, but I’ll be the new Guy.”

“The only problem,” Chay said, “is that we need someone to supervise it. Casey’s got his hands full, and frankly, so have I. I’ve never been directly involved with the movies and I’d like it to remain that way.”

“What about me, then?” Logan said suddenly.

Casey looked at Logan, waiting for him to continue.

“I need something more to do. And I can’t just do modeling and escorting and light porn forever. I need something real. Let me at that!”

They arrived at the Fromms in the late morning, and Marta embraced Laurel and kissed her hard on the cheeks but, and this was surprising, she embraced Layla with equal warmth.

“Welcome to the family,” she said, and when Layla looked at her, she said, “Israel.”

Layla laughed, putting a hand to her face.

“I never thought of it that way,” she said, as Marta touched Will affectionately on the shoulder and closed the door behind him.

“You’re getting a whole people,” Marta said. “Even the ones you don’t want. And,” she dropped her voice, “let’s be honest, there’s going to be a lot of those.”

Moshe came down the hall in white shirt and black pants. Laurel saw him fight to keep the grin off of his face and Layla looked at her neice and noticed the same thing in her.

“You are scandalous,” she whispered.

Laurel felt her face go hot.

“It’s good to see all of you,” Moshe said. “Welcome to my home. You’re just in time for lunch.”

“The truth,” Marta said, wrapping one arm about Layla and another around Laurel as they walked into the living room, “is that if you arrive anytime in the next four hours, you’ll be in time for lunch.”

Over lunch, Mr. Fromm said, “So you’ve started practicing?”

“Yes,” Layla said.

“She’s not new to this,” Will told him. “She’s been going with me and my mother since she was in high school.”

“But you never thought of converting until now?”

“I thought of a lot of things,” Layla told Mr. Fromm. “But I wasn’t getting married before.”

“What if I told you it could take three years to have an Orthodox conversion?”

“I would say I need to go to city hall because this marriage has to happen.”

“But would you still want to be Jewish?” Mr. Fromm asked.

“Mr. Fromm—”

“Please call me Leo.”

“Leo,” she said, “marriage is wonderful, but it’s a poor reason to make a religious conversion.”

She put down her fork.

“Look, marriage or not, Orthodox or not, this is what I am. When I go through mikveh or… whatever, it won’t be to make me something. I grew up in a very Catholic world, went to a very Catholic school. It was nice, most of the time. But—and I don’t mean to sound foolish—it wasn’t in me. Not like this is. I am doing this because it’s in me already, no matter what happens, or what you or your rabbis say.”

Layla shook her head. “I can’t make it any clearer.”

She did not notice Leo Fromm smiling at her across the table. She only noticed the silence, and finally she said, “What?”

“Miss Lawden,” Leo Fromm said, “you are the most earnest woman I have ever met, save possibly your niece. You must come from an extraordinary family.”

“Oh, we do,” Layla said, turning to Laurel.

“I am going to do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t take three years,” Leo Fromm told her. “You’re going to get your wedding.”

Sheridan found Brendan in the kitchen and said, “It’s almost time for us to head out and meet Layla and Will.”

Brendan nodded and Sheridan came closer.

“What’s wrong, Bren?”

“I don’t understand you people,” he said.

“You people?”

“Yes! Logan’s all like, I need something new to do. Let me run your porn studio! Something new. I got an idea. Go to school. Get a real fucking job.”

“It is a fucking job,” Sheridan said, laughing. “In fact, it’s a job that consists wholly of fucking.”

Brendan looked at him sourly.

“Look, Bren,” Sheridan said. “You’re a lawyer—”

“Who does not live in a house in Lincoln Park!” he hissed, pointing to the patterned tin ceiling.

“Are you going to let me finish?”

“Sure. Finish.”

“You’re a lawyer. You’ve given your life, since you were twenty-three, to law, and if you do anything lucrative it will be in law. They’ve given their lives to the male entertainment industry, and it’s the same thing. Logan’s not going to be an attorney, or a banker. If he gets Guy’s studio that’s a great move for a porn star who wants to stop doing porn and is getting long in the tooth.”

“He’s younger than me,” Bren said, roughly.

“You’re not in porn.”

“No, and—”

“And I know you wouldn’t be. But… I’m just saying…”

“Saying what?”

“Saying stop being a hypocrite.”

“I am not a—”

Chay came into the kitchen.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“No!” they both said.

Chay nodded as if he didn’t believe it, and then turned and left.

“I’m just saying Paul turned it around and so did Noah and—”

“Casey did too.”

“By becoming the head of a porn empire?”

“Who cares?” Sheridan said.

Brendan folded his arms over his chest and Sheridan said, “You look so pompous when you do that.”

“So, I’m pompous!”

“A little bit.”

“I thought I just had good moral judgment.”

“When your moral judgment concerns your personal choices it’s good. It’s fine as hell, Brendan. But when it starts to look down on other people, it’s being pompous.”

“I think we should leave now.”

“I’ve been saying that for ten minutes.”

Sheridan began to walk out ahead of him while Brendan said, “This discussion isn’t over.”

“No,” Sheridan muttered, “How good it be? Oh, and by the way?”

“Yes, Sheridan?” Brendan muttered wearily.

“This isn’t Lincoln Park. This is River North. For such a clever lawyer, you ought to know one from the other.”