The Houses in Rossford

That day, Fenn Houghton was so happy he let Brian drive him home.

“You were as good as you word. I can’t believe we’ve got this thing up and running.”

“Well, we don’t have it up and running yet,” Brian said. “I mean, I’ve just got a lot of handshakes, but at Loretto that’s usually more than enough. And—ohhhhh, almost missed the turn—there is, of course, the grant money.”

“I wasn’t going to bring that up.”

Brian gave that rich, slightly toothy laugh that, at one point in time, Fenn hated, and said, “That’s the classy thing about you, Fenn.”

“Ah, here we are,” Fenn said.

Brian pulled into the driveway.

“This is a beautiful house, Fenn.”

Not that Fenn ever took his home for granted, but he paid close attention to it now, the little round overhang above the stoop, the large picture window, divided in three, the second floor with the other large window that was their bedroom peering from under the sloping roof and the immaculate white paint that was a testament to Todd, someone who liked to keep things clean and in perfect order, who needed the grass cut perfectly.

“Yeah, it is,” Fenn agreed. “Thank you. Would you like to come in, Brian?”

“I can’t, but thanks. It looks like you have company, anyway.”

Fenn had noticed that, of course, but chosen to ignore it for courtesy’s sake. Dan Malloy’s grey van was sitting in the carport, and Fenn imagined that he must have let himself in. What news was waiting in the house?”

“Thank you, Brian. For everything.” Fenn said, hopping out the car. “Have a good night now.”

“You too, Fenn.”

Brian, having manners, waited until Fenn was inside the house before driving off. And Dan Malloy sitting at the table beside Paul, both of them smiling merrily, said, “Brian Babcock? Bringing you home? Let that be a warning to all the heathen who don’t believe in miracles.”

“Time heals all wounds. Or most of them,” Fenn amended. “And that helps make miracles possible.”

“And now,” Paul said, standing up and handing Fenn, first two, large folders, and then two slim checkbooks, “here is another miracle. Or something like it.”

“Really?” a fierce smile spread across Fenn’s face.

“Notice,” Paul began, “that in the account of one Fenn Houghton there is, look at that. Oh, by the way, you didn’t count right—five-hundred, two-thousand dollars.”

“Oh, shit,” Fenn murmured.

“We had all your personal stuff we needed,” Dan said. “And apparently there used to doing business through… well, third parties.”

“We thought of a joint account for you and Todd,” Paul added. “But, then we only had all of your stuff, and besides, Todd didn’t get on the stick till late in the game.”

“Don’t say that to him.”

“But it is true. I mean, this really was your thing, and we thought you’d do right by him so it should be yours.”

“And now for yours,” Fenn sat right down at the table and reached into one of the double breast pockets of the shirt he was wearing. “How is…. What did I give you that night when we found it?”

“You actually gave me thirty thousand dollars,” Paul said, cautiously, wondering if that would sound like too much.

“I know,” Fenn said. “Damn, that was stingy, wasn’t it? How about…  seventy?”

Paul bawked.

“I mean, to start with.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Paul said. “I was just…”

“And for Noah, I think twenty-thousand is more than enough. Don’t tell him what I gave you, though.”

Paul nodded.

“Privately, I think he’ll blow it or else I’d give him more. But he deserves a chance to blow it. Right?”

“You’ll notice that half of it is in a high yield saving’s account,” Paul noted. “That was a little high handed of me, because that means you can’t touch it all right away. But I think in the long run it’ll be good.”

“And what about for you, Sir Priest?”

Dan waved that away, “You know I can’t.”

Fenn shrugged. “I know you won’t. So, who was the contact?”

“You wouldn’t believe this, but—”

“Tell me it wasn’t Julian Phelps?”

“How did you know? Paul spluttered.

Fenn shrugged and said, shaking his head, “Well… it is Julian.”

“He’s gonna go on a trip with that money,” Paul said later that afternoon, when Dan had left and they were sitting on the couch.

“Well,” Fenn shrugged. “That seems like it’s up Noah’s alley. He needs to be doing something.”

“He’s just so… wild,” Paul said. “I don’t know that I was ever wild. I think I just did what I had to do. I think Noah misses the biz. He may go back. He was talking about doing Brazilian porn.”

“I don’t know a damn thing about Brazilian porn,” Fenn said. “Or most porn for that matter.”

“But there’s so much to do right here.  There’s so much excitement right here. Like, I gotta see my mom. You wanna come with me?”

“When?”

“I’d like to go Sunday.”

“After Mass. Sure thing. I’ll get past my dread of East Carmel.”

“They will love you in East Carmel. The chance to touch a real live Black person?  They won’t pass it up!”

Fenn coughed and said, “As long as they don’t touch me with a noose, it’s all right.”

“Hey now, none of that!

“But seriously, there is just so much to do. So many books to read. So many plays to star in. Maybe? Maybe I’ll go back to school. Or maybe I’ll just go, and you know, sit in churches. I’m not talking about being religious. But I might do that one day too. I mean, just sitting in side of a church and being quiet. It’s so… I did that, Fenn. I can’t possibly be bored here. You know, in the last few days I learned who Andromeda, Perseus and Medusa are, and I learned about Saint Francis and Saint Claire and what a breviary is and how to spell it, and why Julian wears a brown robe. I’m like, I’m like this sponge. It’s phenomenal. Hell, listen to me, I just used the word phenomenal.”

“All that,” Fenn said, sitting back on the sofa, “when you too, my friend, could be staring in Brazilian porn.”

Paul shook his head.

“I think I got a nice little tan down south, but pretty soon I think I’ll be too pasty for it. They like their boys brown.

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I think it’s pretty clear that I’m out of that business. As far as I know. I can’t really imagine going back. I love sex. I’m not sure I love being photographed while having it, though.”

“Can I ask you a question.”

Paul waved around the check and said, “You just gave me seventy-thousand dollars, you can do whatever the hell you want.”

Fenn grinned. “Are you going to be okay with Noah gone?”

“Noah was just the one who understood. I mean, he’d been in the business with me. How many other people are going to get it?”

“I get it.”

“You know what I mean. Besides talking to you, how many people am I going to meet that are cool with me being what I was? Or, if they do get excited thinking about it, who aren’t going to have these… dumb expectations. It’s hard. I feel like I’m starting all over again.”

Fenn nodded.

“And then, on a very practical level, there is the sex. I am not used to having relationships, or even casual sex the way other people do. I’m used to screwing pornstars and doing it on camera and taking home a check. Noah was…”

“A nice transition.”

Paul grinned and snapped his fingers, then nodded.

“Yeah… And now I’m going to have to find another transition.”

“That was great. Just great.”

Lee Phillips sprawled out in his bed with a general feeling of sweaty contentment as the other man got up and asked if he could use the bathroom.

“Go right on ahead,” Lee murmured, and with lingering appreciation, watched his guest’s ass leave the room.

He reflected, sitting up and drawing his knees toward him, that the problem with homosexuality was that it was sexuality and the problem with sexuality was that it was fun. There was nothing honorable or redeeming in men banging men; not like there was in heterosexuality. It didn’t make families or uphold society. It didn’t create children or do that thing women were supposed to do, “settle a man down” like they used to say on Dallas. Nowadays there were some conservative homos out there touting the wonders of gay marriage. They’d be proper and acceptable, settled down. Just like straight people. Lee didn’t really have much good to say about straight people. Or anyone else for that matter.

“Okay,” the man came back in awkward, bending over, reaching for his underwear. He had been attractive before, as opposed to his current state of clumsy confusion. Lee ignored him and reached for his cigarette case on the nightstand.

“I have to go now.”

“Well, yes, you do,” Lee had found a sophisticated way of getting up and pulling his pants on quickly without really being seen. He reached down and slipped on the old silk shirt. He lit the cigarette.

“I’ll walk you to the door.”

Why did they always act as if you wanted them to stay? And why always so shame faced about the few minutes of exuberant happiness you’d just had? Lee, like his cousin Fenn, like his whole family, had been raised in the Church, and had thought well now when does right become wrong? If another man smiles at you is it wrong? If you hug your friend is it wrong? Well, now if you kiss your friend is that so much more wrong? Why is it wrong? And if you take your clothes off with someone else, well then is that wrong? How wrong is it? And if sex is wrong, and sex with someone you’re not married to, well then when exactly is what you’re doing sex?”

Lee decided that these were too many questions and no one had the answers and a God who had the free time to check into his bedroom when tsunamis and genocides were taking place elsewhere was a God who either wasn’t real or simply wasn’t very interesting.

“Sex should be like a handshake,” Lee told the man as he lead him out the door. “Or like a good massage. Only… you have to pay for massages, and if everything goes right, you should never pay to get laid.”

“All right, good bye now,” the man said.

With courtesty, Lee said goodbye and closed the door.

He felt a general sense of satisfaction that came, he thought, from having been a virgin for so long. He never so much as made out with anything male or female until he was damn near thirty, until he was certain how he felt about sex, and until he was sure that most of the power attributed to it was mythological. Could it solidify a relationship? No, none of his serious relationships contained it. Could it make you a man? No, he’d been a man a long time before it happened. Did it make you more popular? Not necessarily. More immoral, more evil? No. Evil made you evil. Well, did it make you happier? Definitely. When Virginity with a capital V had become oppressive Lee decided to remedy the situation. There was no point in complicating things by saying the love of his life had to fulfill this purpose. It put too much on whomever he was looking at, and, in almost thirty years the love of his life had never come anyway.

He just did it. And he continued to do it. In fact, Lee often wondered about any man who was under three hundred pounds and fifty-five years, “What would that be like?” not that he planned to do it, and not that the answer to the question was always a pleasant one. Sometimes he thought it would be absolutely gross. But there was always the curiosity factor. Homely people made him especially curious. For some reason, perhaps the gratitude, making love to a homely man was always a strange pleasure.

The phone rang, and interrupted his cigarette and Lee’s philosophizing about the nature of his sex life.

“Ello?”

“Cousin?”

“Cousin!”

“What are you up to?”

“Don’t ask, Fenn.”

“Okay, I won’t. I’m sure it’s better that way.”

“Don’t get sanctimonious with me, you nasty bastard. What’s going on?”

“Are you still in Texas?”

“Yes?”

“At the same address?”

“Um hum.”

“Well, where are you going to be in a week?”

“Still here, I’m sure.”

There was a space of silence, and then Fenn said, “I’m going to Western Union you something.”

“Really!” Lean sat up.

“Yes, I can’t imagine mailing it.”

“When you say it like that—!  I mean, you gotta tell me.”

“Just wait and see.”

“Damnit, Fenn. I can’t wait.”

“But, you’re gonna have to. Okay, I have to go now.”

“Fenn—!”

“Bye, cousin.”

Fenn hung up. Lee sat down and frowned. And then, smoking the last of the cigarette, he smiled and said, “Well, it is Western Union, so it can’t be bad.”

“So it’s well…” Todd walked around the living room, looking at the sheet of paper, “Five hundred thousand dollars…” He shook his head.

“Wow.”

“It’s not five hundred thousand anymore. Some of it I used for Paul and Noah, of course.”

“Of course,” Todd said.

“And then everyone that knows about it… you know, Lee and Tara—”

“Tara’s getting some?”

“She has to. I told her.”

“What about Adele?”

“I didn’t tell her,” Fenn said. It was as simple as that. “We can’t run around giving everything away. This will pay for the house and the theatre and get us a little more on our feet.”

Then Fenn, folding his legs on the sofa, said, “You may have noticed that’s it’s in my name.”

“Yes,” Todd said. “I did notice that.”

Fenn thought of saying, “You didn’t give Dan your information.” But this sounded a little accusatory, so he rephrased it:

“They only had my information. I mean, all the stuff they needed to open an account.”

“That’s because you didn’t give them mine.”

Fenn looked up at Todd.

“You, who didn’t even want the money, who wanted me to give it back to the police, are going to blame me because you didn’t give Dan your information?”

“I thought you’d ask me.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I mean…” Todd put down the paper.

“In your world, Fenn, everything is yours. This house is yours. Your money is yours.”

“And yours is yours, and we both have access to each other’s.”

“Well, hell you don’t really need mine, do you, Fenn?”

Noah was coming down the steps, when he said, “I’m obviously interrupting something,” turned around, and headed back up.

“So what you’re saying is you wanted this to be a joint checking account?”

“You decide who gets how much. You give this to whoever, this much to whoever else.”

“Well, hell you can too. You’ve got access.”

“To an account in your name.”

“Well, yes, Todd, it’s my goddamn money. If you had found it and said, hey baby, I’m gonna take all this shit, and I had said, no, no, give it to the police, and you had said, Fuck you, Fenn, I’m keeping my goddamn money, and here’s what I’m gonna do with it, then you know what? You would be perfectly in your rights to… not give me shit. I’m giving you all the access.”

“That’s right, you’re giving it to me.”

A light snapped on in Fenn’s eyes, and he said, “You’re right, Todd. You’re exactly right.”

“This is not about a joint bank account,” Todd said. “This is about… sharing. The house is yours, the money’s yours. The playhouse is yours.”

“Actually, the playhouse is Tom’s.”

“That’s not my point.”

“And the Land Rover is yours.”

“Would you… would you just listen.”

Fenn took a breath. “I’m listening.”

“When we got together I said I wanted us to be partners. I wanted to call you my husband. You said that was stupid. Husbands have wives, we’re not married. I wanted a ceremony to symbolize that we were together. You said that wasn’t necessary.”

“But I gave in, and I gave in and I always give in.  Don’t I? We went to that damn Episcopal church and had that stupid ceremony.”

“It wasn’t stupid. Not to me. That’s my point.”

“What’s your point?”

“I do everything to push us together, and you do everything to… do just the opposite.”

“Oh, that is bullshit.”

“Separate property, separate bank accounts, yours and mine, his and his, two different people.”

“We are two different people!”

Todd threw down the paper.

“Okay, you know what, here’s your money and your fucking house. I’m going out.”

“Where the hell are you going?” he shouted after Todd who was heading toward the back door in the kitchen.

“To do something in my Land Rover!”