The People in Rossford

Kirk went to answer the door with a beer in his hand, and when he did, he blinked a couple of times.

“Noah? Right?”

“Yes,” said Noah. “I… you’re Kirk. I’m glad to see you took him back. I… I don’t mean to interrupt but—”

“Noah?” Paul said over Kirk’s shoulder.

Remembering himself, Kirk lowered his arm, and ushered Noah in.

“I’m sorry,” Noah said. “But I just got back from Port Ridge, and I needed to talk to someone. I mean, I needed to talk to you.” He turned to Kirk. “Is that all right?”

“I’ll just go back to my room,” Kirk offered.

“Don’t be silly,” Paul said.

“I just really needed to talk,” Noah mumbled.

“Why don’t you all go to the courtyard? I’ll be right here.”

Paul nodded and asked Noah, “Do I need a jacket?”

“You might,” Noah said, shrugging. He was wearing a long sleeved plaid over his tee shirt.

Kirk went to the closet, handed Paul his jacket, and then the two left the apartment.

“What’s wrong?” Paul said.

“That whole gun thing shook me up,” Noah said as they headed down the apartment steps.

“I could tell. And you’ve been MIA for the last few days. We were getting worried.”

“Were we getting worried, or were you getting worried?”

“Whaddo you mean?”

“I always feel like this is your place. Like you’ve really made a home for yourself. And my home… I don’t have one. Not really.

“That son of a bitch almost killed me. I just stood there with that gun in my mouth,” Noah said punching the door open and walking through it into the dark courtyard. “And all the shit in me turned into water. As soon as I could I swear I sat on the can and crapped out my insides for three hours, but I couldn’t get enough out. I just kept trembling. I’m still fucking trembling.”

“And then you went to Port Ridge?” Paul said, sitting on a stone bench. Noah sat on the one across from him.

“Yeah. To make a few movies for Guy’s new site. And Jack Brody was interviewing me. I might do some shit for him. They had me in this one pose, where I had this guy on his back with his legs up in the air, you know, knees to chest, and while I’m plowing him with my ass all up in the air, I turn to the camera and smile, just like this:” Noah gave a cheesy grin.

Paul shook his head and chuckled.

“Don’t laugh too hard, I’m sure Johnny Mellow gave a few cheesy grins like that in his time.”

“I know he did,” Paul said. “But Johnny Mellow almost ruined my life, so he’s not so funny to me anymore.”

“Well,” said Noah. “I felt so… scared. The only way to get my… mojo back, if you will, was to fuck a few dudes on camera. I really feel like a fucking god then.”

They were quiet, and the crickets were chirping loudly all around. In the distance a cop car wailed.

“But you can’t make movies all the time. I wish I could, and now I’m back to me again.

“You… you make it work.”

“Whaddo you mean?” said Paul.

“You got the boyfriend. You got a home. You have this life and people who like you. You could just get up and leave all we used to do. I can’t make it work. I don’t know how to do anything else. Burt, he makes movies now. And then Keith is doing that whole physical trainer crap. I don’t know how to be anybody else.”

“I’m sure you could work at the theatre.”

“I don’t want to work at the fucking theatre. I want to do shit that excites me and is dangerous and would shame my parents and could damn near kill me. Don’t you know that about me, already? That’s the only time I’m close to happy doing, and even when I’m close to happy… I’m not happy at all. The shit is exhausting.

“And… I don’t want to live with Fenn and Todd. It just seems like I’m taking charity. I’m not close to them like you are.”

And then Paul heard himself beginning to make a suggestion he didn’t think he’d ever create, namely, because he’d done it already and he hated it.

“How much money do you have left?”

“A little. Plus I made those movies.”

“Well, like, if you need help then I’ll lease a place with you. That’s part one.”

“All right?” Noah nodded at him, waiting for the approaching idea.

“That way you don’t have to feel like you’re being someone else’s charity. And then you can run an escort service. I mean, you can be an escort.”

Noah blinked at him.

“You want me to be a male prostitute?”

“No,” Paul said. “I want you to enroll at college with me so we can go together when the new semester starts. But, I know you won’t do that, so I’m suggesting something you might do.”

Noah sat there quietly for a moment.

“Or you can keep going back to Port Ridge,” Paul shrugged. “I don’t have any exciting ideas for you anymore. I spent ten years doing exciting stuff and I’m sick of it. I want to do dull stuff like… be happy.”

“I want to be happy too…. But it’s not easy.”

“No,” Paul considered, “it isn’t.”

“What do I do tonight, though?”

“It’s very simple,” Paul said. “Either go back to Port Ridge, or take some of Fenn and Todd’s charity you can’t stand.”

“I know what I’ll do?” Noah stood up, jamming his hands into his jeans. “I’ll go home.”

Paul raised an eyebrow.

“To Rummelsville.”

East Carmel was an hour south. A half hour west was Carmel. On the other side of Carmel was Rummelsville.

“You’re going there tonight?” Paul said, disbelievingly.

“Yes,” said Noah. “Nothing better to do.”

Paul was about to say define better, but he held his tongue.

“And you,” Noah told him, “can go back to your hot date.”

Disguising his concern for Noah, he put on a smile and said, “I think I will.”

“Okay, so are you Mrs. Lawden or Miss Houghton?”

“I,” Adele opened her mouth and put down the menu, “am in transition.”

“Are you still attached to him?” Simon Davis said.

“Fuck no!” Adele covered her mouth. “I mean… no.”

“Maybe you want to settle somewhere in the middle and mean hell no?” Simon suggested.

Adele smiled and said, “That’s an appropriate compromise.”

The waiter approached.

“Have you all decided?”

“I want the house special. That freshwater trout sounds nice,” Simon said then nodded to Adele.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m paying.”

“I’ll have the lobster, and glass of white wine,” Adele said and handed the menu back to the waiter.

“When we were married, my wife used to do that,” Simon said, leaning in. “She did it before we got married too. She’d get something like lobster and see my facial expression.”

“And then you divorced her.”

“And then she died.”

“Oh,” said Adele.

“Fifteen years, which is not as long as your seventeen years. She was… a lot like you. From what I know of you.”

Adele folded her hands together.

“The first time I went out with Hoot—Layla’s father—he got upset when I wanted the lobster. I said lobster and I saw this crease in his forehead. Just like this: see? And it really pissed me off, but I ignored it. I thought, money’s tight, he’s a young law student. Now I know a young law student is pretty much like an apprentice devil and Hoot, who I excused so much for, was already married to another woman and had a baby while he was romancing me.”

“Wow,” Simon shook his head. “I don’t have anything that adventurous. I just almost killed Diane when I proposed to her is all.”

“What?”

“I put the ring in her soufflé. I thought she’d bite down on it. She choked. I Heimliched. Afterward she threw up. It was truly romantic. She still said ‘I do’.”

Adele chuckled and shook her head.

“We… Hoot and I were not a funny couple. He was very serious about being the modern successful Black Man, and I was his wife, and we had something to show… to all the benighted Blacks folks out there who didn’t know they could do better.”

“So you were like the Huxtables?” he said.

Adele burst out laughing as the waiter approached with her wine and she said, “I thought I’d said too much. Like you wouldn’t get it, and here you beat me to the punch. We were like the Huxtables, except I’m a Houghton, and I forgot that, and Houghtons are nothing like Huxtables.”

“Your daughter, Layla, is nothing like a Huxtable.

“You know what?” Simon said, “You kill me. I mean, Black people always think that no one can understand them but another Black person. Maybe I’m speaking out of place?”

“No,” Adele said cocking her head. “Go on.”

“But, my grandmother used to say about us—everybody get’s treated like a wetback sometime or another.”

“You’re Mexican?”

“I’m Puerto Rican, but wetback sounded better than what she really said.”

Adele nodded knowingly, “She said everybody gets treated like a niggah sometime.”

Simon looked at her startled.

“It’s the same thing my grandmother said,” Adele explained. “Actually, it’s the same thing she still says.”

“She’s still alive?”

“How old do I look?” Adele feigned shock.

“As old as me,” Simon said levelly, “and my grandmother is long dead.”

“My grandmother,” Adele said firmly, “is hell on wheels, and I’m sure that old woman will outlive us all.”

“I want to thank you for a lovely evening. Listen to that, I just said lovely.”

“Well, we can think of another word.”

“Any word but lovely,” Adele said. “My mother in law used to say lovely, and I never liked her.”

“If she’s anything like what you said about the son I see why,” Simon Davis said. “Let me walk you to your door.”

“I would like that. That would be something that would otherwise be the word lovely.”

“I like you Adele,” Simon rounded the car and opened the door for her. He offered his hand.

“This is just like the real date I never had.”

“If I just keep being corny, I guess I’ll be doing all right.”

“Corniness is overrated.”

They walked up the brick steps to the front door, and then Adele said, “Would you like to come in? I don’t know if you want to brave Will and Layla, but I’d be glad for your company.”

“I would be glad to give you company,” he said. “But I have to be up early for orientation at my new job.”

“You did say you just moved here. What will it be? If I can ask.”

“Oh, it’s not top secret. I’m just a teacher. Gotta get the lay of the school and everything.”

“Oh, dear,” Adele said.

“Hum?”

“The whole calling thing. The whole do you call me, do I call you? How long do we wait?”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Uh… nothing?”

“We could go out again. I can’t buy lobster, but we can go out again.”

“Is that in the rulebook?” Adele said. “I mean I think in the rulebook, two dates in a row is unprecedented.”

“I’m not saying you’re too old for the rulebook. I’m just saying, I’m too old for the rulebook,” said Simon.

“So tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night. You can kiss me by the way.”

“Oh! All right, hold on.”

Simon took the gum out of his mouth and said, “You’d never believe how many people try to chew gum and kiss at the same time. This is a world lacking in style and manners.”

“Ain’t that the fucking truth?”

Simon leaned forward and kissed her, and when they parted, Adele said, “And the way to handle the whoel calling thing is, call when you get home so I know you’re safe.”

He looked at her.

“I’m a mother,” she said. “I can’t help myself. Now, Goodnight.”

When Simon had gone down the steps and Adele opened the door, Layla and Will jumped back from it.

“That’s just sad,” she told them. “You’re just sad. Don’t the two of you have anything better to do than eavesdrop on my date?”

“You got a point mom,” Layla said. “Will, you wanna go up to my room and have some premarital sex?”

Because he was late and bored and frustrated, Brian slipped into flip flops and put a hoodie on, then grabbing his car keys, headed to the Video Watch on Birmingham. That same kid was there, and all he could remember is he had said too much and not been too kind.

“I remember you,” said the boy.

“Yes,” said Brian. “I remember you, too. Is there anything good here?”

“Do you mean here,” the boy said, gesturing about the empty video store. “Or,” he said conspiratorially, “back there?” and pointed at the curtain with the pornos.

“No,” said Brian, a little sickened by the boy’s a familiar tone. “That doesn’t do anything for me.” Which wasn’t completely true. “I’d much rather have the real thing.”

Brian browsed through the movies and the boy said, “In that bin over there you can buy five videos for five dollars.”

“Does anyone buy videos anymore?”

“You’d be surprised,” said the boy.

Yes, Brian thought, I would.

There was really nothing he wanted to see right now so he said, “How much are the DVDs in the bin?”

“Five a piece.”

Brian shrugged.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad at all,” the boy said.

Brian bought Spartacus, but didn’t let on how happy he was, or what good fortune it was to get Spartacus for the irrational fear that somehow this boy might suddenly raise the price. As he was humming the intermission music to himself and thinking, “I am Spartacus, I am Spartacus,” the boy said to him, “You know that Johnny Mellow?”

“Hum?” Brian came back to himself. “Uh, yes?”

“You said you nailed him, right?”

“I’ll pay in cash,” Brian said, taking out his wallet.

“Did I tell you he nailed me too?”

“I think you did.”

The boy was quiet for a second, as if he was considering a big risk. And then he said, “No one really comes in here. I could shut the place for a couple of minutes.”

“What are you getting at?” Brian said. But in those few seconds, things had shifted and already the blood in Brian’s groin knew what the boy was getting at.

“I mean, if Johnny Mellow had me, and then the guy that had Johnny had me, that would be sort of… cool, right?”

“Are you propositioning me?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Back there?” the boy said hopefully. “Behind that curtain?”

Brian Babcock said, “All right.”

“Oh, oh. Oh… aw God. Oh, uhhh!” The boy gave an ugly groan and reached behind him to pull Brian deeper inside. Brian’s hands clamped down on the boys shoulders and he slammed against him harder and harder feeling himself coming.

“Oh…” Brian spun out of him coming in him, then across his back, his body jecking up and down with the release. “Shit! Shit!”

For a black moment in the darkness of the porno section, Brian lay draped over the boy’s back, sighing. And then he moved away and the boy took a Kleenex—where had it come from—and wiped Brian.

“There you go,” he said. He moaned as he pulled his underwear and his pants back up. “That was hot. You were hot.”

Pulling up his shorts, Brian said, awkwardly, “Thank you.”

He left the store quickly, and when he’d got out into the parking lot realized he had not paid for the movie in his hand.

“Too late for that,” he decided and climbed back into the car. As the engine started, Brian saw the boy turn the CLOSED sign back to OPEN.

“It’s not like you’re in a relationship, Bri,” he told himself turning to the street. “It’s not like you hurt someone this time. That was just some innocent shit.

“It’s not like I did anything wrong,” he said out loud.

And then he said why did I do that?

And then he decided: This store gets me in trouble. I’d better get Netflix.