The People in Rossford
“I’ll be goddamned,” Lee muttered.
Brian just kept blinking, and scrolling up and down.
“I don’t believe this,” he said breathlessly. “I don’t believe it.”
“I’ll tell you what your problem is,” Fenn said while they sat on the roof smoking and looked down on Ryan Street, “Now, I’ve got no problem with the pussy. It’s not my game, particularly, but I’ve got no problem with the pussy, and I understand how it has its appeals.
“But you just eat up all the pussy,” he told Tara. “You don’t leave any pussy for nobody else. You walk into the carpet shop, you say, I’m gone have all that shit. The shag, the Berber, the wall to wall, the Persian, and you just gobble it up like this, gobble gobble, gobble gobble. You don’t leave no pussy for nobody else. And that’s your problem, and that’s why you’re a ho.”
“You through?”
“No, bitch, I’m not through. You asked. Now, this is what you’re trifling ass needs to do. You need to find yourself one good pussy. Or maybe two or three. But probably one. You need to find that good, good pussy. And you needed to sit down, stick your face all up that good ole wet pussy, and just munch munch munch. You getting old, dyke. Find yourself a pussy to love you.”
They both stopped and looked up as Brian Babcock emerged onto the roof with a startled look on his face, and then Fenn and Tara looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“I… only heard the last part of that,” Brian said, awkwardly. “But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a discussion quite like that before.”
Tara stood up tossing her cigarette and crushed it on the tar.
“Well, the same thing applies to you, only take out the word pussy and put in the word dick.”
“And sausage factory,” Fenn added.
“You got a way with words,” Tara said, opening the door back into the playhouse. “Maybe you should have been the playwright.”
“Maybe I will be, bitch,” Fenn said, as she disappeared. “Now, what brings you up here, Mr. Babcock?”
“It’s really beautiful up here. You can see the college. And you can see the highway from here.”
“You came up to look at the highway?”
“Is it true, what you said? I mean, what they said. Even Adele doesn’t know about this?”
“Yes?”
“But why?”
“Because she didn’t need to.”
“But I do?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“For all the reasons I said before.”
“But… I would have been happy just to… not know. Just to say, here you guys go.”
“You would have?”
Brian looked at him.
“Or would you have just nursed in your heart how we didn’t trust you after all, until you got angrier and did something about it?”
“So you told me to save yourself from my wrath?” said Brian. “That doesn’t make sense, Fenn. I think I would have lied. I think I would have told part of the truth if that was just it.”
“Then obviously that wasn’t just it.”
“Then what?”
“What do you think? Seriously, Brian, what do you think?”
Brian turned away and went to the parapet. He stood there looking out on the street for only a little bit before he turned around and said:
“That you did it for the reasons you said, Fenn. And that… hurts. It… You are heaping coals upon my head.”
Fenn raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“From Saint Paul. In the Bible. Do good to your enemies, and it’s like heaping hot coals on their heads.”
“Thanks, I go to church too,” Fenn said. “Look, you’re not my enemy, and Paul’s a delusional fascist anyway, so that certainly wasn’t my intention.”
“But it’s how I feel,” Brian said. “It’s how I keep feeling.
“You’re right. If you had kept it a secret, I would have been angry. Not at once but it would have just fed into me. There’s this voice inside of me that says ‘See, you are rotten. You can’t be trusted. You are worthless. You are a fake. No one can like you, let alone love you.’ And… that’s how I would have felt. And I would have just gone on being me.”
“How do you know that’s you?” said Fenn. “How do you know that you is someone who just hurts people and can’t be trusted with the truth?”
“Because that’s always been me.”
“Because that’s the only you people expected.”
“I know,” Brian said quietly. “But you…. Expect me to keep this quiet. All of it.”
“I’m hoping you will.”
Brian sat down in Tara’s chair, his legs apart, and took his hands through his dark hair, sighing.
“I don’t get you, Fenn,” he said, at last. “I do, but I… I do get you, but I don’t get how you can be you.”
“I think the conventional wisdom is I’m still supposed to hate you,” Fenn said. “To make Lee and my sister and other just souls satisfied I am supposed to… never forget and never forgive. But I do both. Sometimes even simultaneously. On principal I am supposed to be angry and hurt for the rest of my life over something that is long past. Or pretend to be indifferent, and hate you in my heart.
“Why? Tom never strayed. He wouldn’t stray for anyone. Even if he forgets there must have been something in you, Brian that drew him to you, the way you were drawn to him. And though neither one of you likes to think about it, I see a lot of him in you. And I loved him. I still love him.
“Todd wouldn’t love just anyone, but he loved you. You were the first real lover he had and he still loves you. So why shouldn’t I?”
Brian opened his mouth.
Fenn held up a hand and repeated:
“So, why shouldn’t I?”
“I’m going to Adele’s; are you coming?”
“You’re seriously going to tail this man?”
“Yes,” said Todd. “Aren’t you curious about him?”
“No, I wasn’t curious about Hoot. Which was the problem. Despite what we’ve seen in the last few months, Adele is an intelligent woman and I trust her to not get herself killed.”
“Fine,” Todd shrugged. “I’ll go by myself.”
Todd headed out of the office and Fenn sat there for a second before calling:
“Todd!”
`A few moments later, Todd came back.
“What?”
“Fine, I’ll go by myself,” Fenn mimicked airly.
“I will.”
“I’ll get my coat.”
“I told you I would—” Fenn went to the closet under the stairwell and pulled out his car coat.
“Fine, Fine Fine.”
The back door opened and Paul entered.
“Where’ve you been?” said Todd.
“With Kirk.”
“All day and all night,” Fenn was slipping his coat on.
“We had a lot to talk about.”
“I’ll bet,” said Fenn.
Paul blushed, changed the subject and said: “Anyone seen Noah?”
“He dipped out a couple of days ago,” said Todd.
“You don’t think someone kidnapped him again?” Fenn said, only half joking.
“I don’t think that Callan guy had any friends,” Paul told him. “But I don’t like Noah just appearing and disappearing.”
“Hey,” Fenn said “We’ve opened up Callan’s account.”
“What?”
“Actually Brian did. Lee and I tried for a while, but Brian succeeded.”
“Are you actually going to take the man’s money, Fenn?”
“He’s dead. What can he do with it? Besides, it is so much more than money. It’s so much—” Fenn looked at Todd, who was tapping his foot.
“But we can talk about it all later. For now we’ve got to go and follow my sister around on her date with some man she met at the grocery store.”
Paul stared at Fenn, his brow furrowed.
Fenn stuck his thumb at Todd and, shrugging, said, “His idea.”
“This one or this one?”
“That one.”
“This top or this top?”
“Neither,” Layla said and left her mother’s bedroom. A few moments later she came back and said, “This.”
“I can’t wear this.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too… young.”
“You are young.”
“I’m not seventeen,” Adele said.
“Well, no Mom. Because I’m seventeen, and if we were both seventeen that would mean something sick had happened.”
“Did you hear a knock at the door?”
“No, Mama.”
The doorbell rang.
“You heard that, right?”
“Yes. I’ll go get it.” Layla was heading for the door when her mother said, “No!”
“What?”
“If you get it… then that’ll be him.”
“That’s right.”
“And then he’ll come in.”
“I think so.”
“So…. Don’t get it yet.”
“If I don’t get it, he’ll go away.”
The doorbell rang again.
“And then you’ll have no date.”
“Yes,” Adele stood in the mirror in her slip and bra, drumming he bureau top.
“I’m gonna go get it,” Layla said, and went down the hall and down the steps.
When she opened the door she said, “Will?”
“Glad to see you too. Do I get a kiss?”
“You get to come in here and close the door,” Layla said, shutting the door behind him. “I’m being emotional support. Mom’s going on a date for the first time tonight.”
“I’m going on a date for the first time in eighteen years,” Adele shouted from up the stairs, and coming down to the middle in her top and skirt, holding out the necklace for Layla to put around her neck, she said, “And these bitches make it hard now.
“I remember men used to like to treat a lady with respect. Do you know,” she said while she turned around and Layla fastened the necklace onto her mother, “I went on a dating site for about three weeks earlier this summer? All these tired men. Black, white, whatever. It didn’t matter. Profiles like, I’m forty-five, currently seeking new employment or… in transition. Ain’t that a bitch! In transition! And for a date… My moms is asleep on the couch, but if you come around back, it’ll be okay. Or my ex wife, or my baby mama lives with me, but it’s all right.”
“But,” Layla said, chuckling and coming down the stairs to Will, “my mother was lucky because what she met was a nice man in a grocery store. So she never had to sneak around to any man’s back door. At least as far as I know.”
“You,” Adele said, “can watch your mouth.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Layla said in a tone which meant she had no intentions of watching her mouth at all.
“Maybe we could go on a date of our own?” Will suggested. “That was why I came over.”
“You could go back to school shopping.”
“For what?” Layla said. “We wear the same thing everyday, and it comes from a uniform company.”
“Your problem,” Adele said coming down the stairs, “is you don’t realize free money when a parent’s handing it to you.”
“Oh, well, then—”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh, shit,” Adele jumped up the steps.
“I’m going to answer that,” her daughter warned her.
“All right. I need to go get my shoes. And… a little cologne. And… make an entrance… or exit.”
The doorbell rang again.
Layla said: “Damn, he’s pushy,”
And as Adele ran up the stairs she said, “Watch your mouth, Miss Lawden.”
“She keeps telling you to do it,” Will murmured as they went to the door. “And yet …”
“It’s part of my charm,” Layla said, and opened the door.
“Hello, you must be Mr. Davis. Come on in.”
“Call me Simon,” he said, entering the house.
“Flowers,” Will noted.
“I’m Layla,” she said, “and this is Will, my boyfriend. My mother will be with you in a minute.”
“She told you she had a daughter right,” Layla heard Will saying. “She was very, very young when she had Layla. I mean, not young enough to be a slut or something like that, but just young enough not to be old.”
“Will!” Layla heard her mother shout from up the stairs, “Why don’t you go join Layla.”
When Layla was coming back to the foyer with the flowers in a vase from under the sink, she nearly stumbled into Will going in the opposite direction.
“I stepped in it.”
“You bet your ass you did,” she said and joined her mother back in the foyer.
“See,” she said.
“Roses, oh, these are beautiful.”
“Actually,” Simon said, “they’re standard protocol for a first date.”
“You haven’t been on a date in a long time,” Adele said.
“It’s been about twenty years.”
Adele nodded and, inhaling the roses before she put them on the table by the stairs said, “You would be surprised as hell to learn what standard protocol is now. Shall we go? Or did you want more of my daughter and her,” Adele shouted down the hall, “LOVELY boyfriend.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lawden.”
“She was being sarcastic,” Layla shouted back.
“Only a little,” Adele told her daughter. She kissed Layla, handed her fifty dollars and said, “Don’t wait up.”
“Take good care of her,” Layla said and opened the door for them to leave.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Layla. You too, Will,” Simon shouted back.
This time Will had the sense to say nothing. He waited until the door was safely closed and then came back down the hall.
Peering through the curtain over the glass paneled door, Will said, “Was he Mexican?”
“I thought he might be Arab. Or something.”
As the lights went on and Simon Davis’s car went down the street, other lights on another vehicle went off in the same direction.
“I saw that car when I was coming here. It looked a lot like the Land Rover Dena’s uncle has.”
“That’s because it is.”
“Why’s Todd here? “
“It’s a very long story.”
“Which means it’s really just a story you don’t want to repeat?”
“Yes,” said Layla, pushing the curtain back as the taillights of the Land Rover turned in the same direction Simon and Adele had gone, “That’s exactly what it means.”