The Houses in Rossford

County Airport was ten miles out of the city on Route Two. Paul took the Land Rover and thought, briefly, of telling Todd about the movies they had made. While Paul drove Noah, it was the movies that went through his mind, and his whole time, these last few weeks with Noah. The truth was that everything was starting now. Noah had been an in between thing. Here was where his new life began.

West Rossford was threadbare and run down, a little seedy. For a few blocks at a time there came a set of run down buildings and old motels, and then it all stopped and started up again.

“Is that it?” Noah said, pointing ahead, and Paul saw the control tower, planes coming in, indicating this was County Airport.

“Yes,” Paul murmured, “That must be it.”

His brow knit. It was a three block drive from where they saw the tower to the actual airport. They crossed train tracks, and then came through the driveway, past an old model of a World War I plane, and the driveway turned into the trees before turning out into the parking lot.

“I guess we can park here,” said Paul. “Close enough to the airport.”

“It’s a little airport,” Noah commented. “Kinda cute.”

“It’s got a cuteness to it,” Paul agreed.

He climbed out of the Land Rover and turned to open the back of it. Then he climbed back in and, instead of grabbing a bag for Noah, he said, “How long do we have left?”

Noah looked at his watch. “About an hour, I think. Don’t they say you should get to the airport two hours ahead of time?”

“That’s for big airports. Like, for instance, O’Hare. Here’s a little bitty airport.” Paul sprang into the back of the Land Rover, holding a hand out to Noah. He grinned mischievously. “Come in.”

“What?” Noah said. But he took Paul’s hand and climbed in.

“For old times sake,” Paul said.

“What the…? Are you crazy? We…”

“We can’t?” Paul said. “That’s usually my line.”

He turned Noah around, and pulled down Noah’s shorts and underwear. He yanked down his and very quickly, face pressed into Noah’s neck, hands draped over him, began fucking him against the back seat.

It was so good; it was so without thought. It was like the old him, or like the oldest him that he wanted to be in the videos, some essential Johnny Mellow, and he could feel it, his sunglasses on, his mouth buried in Noah’s neck. Noah’s gasps and whimpers, almost like pain, Noah reaching back feebly, his small hands at last touching his ass, stroking Paul’s ass, pulling him in.

Noah strangled and came and, for a brief second, Paul realized he would have to clean that up, then suddenly it turned him on and he drilled him quickly, and came too, shouting, collapsing against Noah’s back.

They lay like that, the two of them, gasping a little. Finally Noah murmured, pulling up his Jockeys, and then his shorts, “What… was… that all about?”

Paul, oriented himself and tucked his polo shirt into his khaki shorts. Pushing up the lid of the back of the Land Rover while recovering from a little dizziness, he admitted: “I’m not sure I know.”

On the plane, Noah was disappointed to know there was no such thing as first class on a flight this small. He was going to demand it when he got to Chicago. He had heard stories of chairs that were shaped like the insides of eggs, where you could just lay down in them, or curl yourself in a ball like a fetus. People came up to you and offered wine. More Cabernet Sauvignon, Mr. Riley?—Well, of course.

As the plane took off, he heard someone call him.

“Noah. Noah, is that you?”

Noah turned, blinked, and realized it was Ned Bank, one of the Chicago Friends of Guy McClintock, in fact the one who had raged at him that afternoon, and whom Noah suspected had turned Guy in.

“Yes… Ned Bank?”

“Right. What’s going on? I haven’t seen you since that whole Guy McClintock thing?”

“Well, I’m just hoping to get more business somewhere else, you know?” Noah said. “I’m heading to Chicago. But just to catch the plane to Florida.”

“I’m going to O’Hare too. I guess everyone on his plane is,” Ned Bank said.

Noah had stopped himself from being foolish and saying, “I came into some money,” and in a moment, he was glad he did.

“They say Guy’ll be out in a few days,” Ned Bank was saying, “because the only thing they could pen him down for, at least right now, was the movie thing, which is legal. Someone’s trying to charge him with drug trafficking, but basically this lawyer—goddamn lawyers—have made it so Guy can just say that drugs were happening in his house. But he wasn’t selling them or taking them. Basically the whole event’s turned into the same thing like, if you owned your house and the police walked in and found someone else snorting smack.”

“Well,” Noah shrugged, still largely uninterested, “that’s the law.”

“Yeah,” Ned Bank nodded. “But you know who’s really cheesed? Joe Callan.”

“Who?”

“One of Guy’s really big partners. He came with... I think half a million dollars to make a purchase. He didn’t tell the police that because it would just get him into more trouble, but he told someone else. They said whenever the police find drug money, they take it and use it for the department.”

“Right,” Noah said. “To buy new cars and stuff.”

“Only,” Ned Bank said, “they didn’t. Not this time.”

“How do you know?”

Well... Joe had a friend of a friend—you know how that goes—who’s got connections with the police. And it turns out they never found that money.”

“That means it just disappeared?” Noah kept his voice down, stilling it, telling himself that pornstars were, after all, actors.

Ned Bank shook his head. “That means it was stolen… And I’d hate to be the guy who stole it when Joe Callan finds out.”

“I don’t give a goddamn!” Fenn declared.

“Fenn,” Paul said. “Noah’s got a point.”

Todd opened his mouth to speak, but Fenn said, “As long as Noah shuts the fuck up, there won’t be a problem. Joe Gallon or Fallon or whatever the fuck his name is knows that he had money, that the money is gone and the police don’t have it. He knows it’s vanished.”

“But it didn’t vanish,” Todd said. “It was stolen. He knows that now.”

“Now, do you see why it’s in my name, and I said it’s my money,” Fenn said to Paul.

“Look, goddamnit. For all he knows it might as well be disappeared. And you know what? It did disappear. Right out of this country. Why do you think it’s not in this country? There is nowhere in the United States that anyone can say Fenn Houghton ever received or did anything with half a million dollars and, quite frankly, no connection between me and that party, or Joe Callan.”

“But there is a connection,” Todd said. “Obviously.”

“What connection?” Fenn looked at him. “That you were a filmmaker for Guy’s movie? And a filmmaker who wasn’t even at the house, as far as he knows? Look, the only way a connection between us and that money could be made is if a drug lord went public and said he wanted the Feds or something to find money he lost at a porn director’s orgy.”

“Or,” Todd murmured, “if Noah said something.”

“Noah wouldn’t say anything!” Paul said quickly. He looked at Fenn.

“No,” said Fenn. “I agree. “Noah wouldn’t.”

For the second time Adele Lawden heard the knock at the door.

“Layla!” she shouted. “Lay-la!”

Good God, if they couldn’t even answer the door, then what good were children?

Another knock at the door, followed by a volley of doorbell ringing told her that Layla hadn’t answered. Maybe she wasn’t even home.

Adele shrugged and went down the stairs to answer the door. Only when she opened it, no one was there.

“What the…”

There was a rattling in the kitchen and Adele shouted back, “Layla.”

But she knew it wasn’t Layla.

Well, now, should she be a hero? Should she go into the kitchen, defend her own house? Would that make her a badass motherfucker, or just a damn fool? She could just scoot out the door like a bitch. And the bitch would live.

Because she had lost Hoot, because she had been married to a man named Hoot in the first place, because Hoot had a bastard child and Adele felt that a stand needed to be taken for something, somewhere, she stomped her foot, took a breath and set down the hallway.

The kitchen door was wide open and so was the refrigerator. Adele saw a man’s khaki colored behind, bent over, rummaging in it. She took a deep breath, became as Black as possible, and shouted:

“What the FUCK are you doing in my house?”

“Looking for some decent food,” Lee Phillips said, closing the refrigerator door. “And finding out there is none.”

“Lee! What are you…? You just broke in.”

“Nobody was answering.

“Reach up in the cupboard and pull down some paprika and garlic salt. Pepper too.”

“All… right,” Adele murmured, nonplused, as her cousin pulled out eggs and cheese and mushrooms.

“You hungry?” he said.

“A little.”

“Good. I’m here for a spell. I was on my way to Fenn’s when I realized his house was crowded enough and you’d probably appreciate some company. What with your husband leaving you and all.”

Adele opened her mouth to swear, frowned at her cousin and then said, “Just makes me some goddamn eggs.”