The People in Rossford

“Where is she?” Noah said, coming into the kitchen and reaching for his keys.

“In the bathroom. Getting ready to take a shower. She’s been there for a while,” Paul said.

“Well, then I guess she’s filling it up with cigarette smoke and taking a morning shidoobie. Thanks, Nay.”

He turned around and thumped on the door.

“Hello!” Naomi said.

“We need to talk,” Noah said. “You need to finish up what you’re doing, Nay.”

She said nothing, but a few moments later the toilet flushed, and Naomi Riley came out in a pair of Paul’s shorts and one of his large tee shirts.

“I need to go for a bit,” Noah said. “Paul’s gotta go to work, and then he’s got class all afternoon.”

“Oh, all right.”

“No, not all right,” Noah said. “Paul, can she stay in the house when we’re not here?”

“Goddamnit, Noah, I’m you’re mother, not a meth addict. Whaddo you think I’ll do, sell all your fucking furniture? Not like you have any worth selling.”

Paul ignored this and said, “Of course she can stay here.”

“Well, Paul said it,” Noah said. “But stay out of my room. And don’t get too cozy here. Your time is limited.”

“I’m so sorry I came, and took up all your precious space.”

“If you were sorry,” Noah said, heading toward the door, “you wouldn’t have come.

“I’m going to Port Ridge,” he told Paul. “I’ll be back late tonight.”

“You’ve got an interesting day on your hands,” Kirk said at lunch, which was in his office at the car dealership.

“If you want to call it that, then sure,” said Paul. “How are things here?”

“Oh,” Kirk sat up, taking his feet off the desk. “Good news. We sold a car in the last two days.”

“Shit,” Paul said. “And here you are listening to me complain.”

“One car,” Kirk said. “And about seven employees. And someone’s got to be let go. Or will have to be sooner or later. And we are trying, very hard, to put a good face on it. Family dinner last night… Just everyone sitting around the table with strained faces, trying to look happy. I mean, God, Paul! We’re Hanley Autos. We’ve been that for thirty years. That name meant something around the county.”

“Well, then this is just a little bad time,” Paul said. “And you all can get past it.”

“I don’t know,” Kirk shook his head. “This is the worst little bad time anyone in our family knows. Dad was saying not even when Carter was President, with the gas crisis and all, was it this bad. I’m scared,” Kirk said. “It’s no business here. I spend half the day at Saint Agatha lighting candles. And, I’m sorry, but she’s not doing anything.”

“Noah still thinks that new priest at Saint Barbara’s is a pornstar.” Paul said, more to take Kirk’s mind off of his troubles than for any other reason.

Kirk snorted, then asked: “Did you ever work with him?”

Paul looked at him, shocked.

“What?” said Kirk. “Are we not supposed to…. Talk about that?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to,” Paul said. “And really, I don’t feel that comfortable about talking about it.”

Paul said, “Noah thinks I’m turning into a prude just because I want to put the past in the past. I think everyone knows and the past has hurt the present enough. So, I want to leave it alone.”

Kirk nodded.

“But no,” Paul said, “I haven’t gotten close enough to see him, so I don’t know. I think Noah’s nuts. I think his mom coming back has made him nuts. This priest is a good guy. I hope it’s not true.”

“You’re a good guy,” Kirk said. “And so is Noah. And anything can be true.”

“Well, there’s a house in The Keys,” Brian began, passing the manila folder to Fenn and Todd. “A house outside of San Francisco in Marin County, real nice,” he said, pushing the folder to Fenn and Lee, “and this little baby in Jamaica.” He shook it around and grinned.

The office door opened and Tara said, “Have yawl figured out how to split the money, yet?”

Fenn swiveled in his chair and told her, “That’s what we’re trying to do now.”

“You wanna sit in?” Todd said.

“Not really. As long as you give me a nice little,” she made scissoring motions with her fingers, “cut.”

“Oh,” Todd told her, “you know we will.”

“I know,” she said, and pulled out of the room.

Lee immediately said, “I think we should sell one of the houses.”

“What?”

“Yes,” he told Brian. “Three houses is money.”

“Well, not the one in Jamaica,” Brian held it close to his chest.

“Not the one in Marin County,” Tom said to Lee.

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Lee said. “That son of a bitch was worth three million. Take that, and sell one of these expensive ass houses, and you can by a home wherever you want.”

“We need to check the mortgages. We’d need to make sure the shit was paid for before we tried to move into one of them, anyway,” Fenn said, head to head with his cousin.

Lee nodded, “Make sure it’s no shit on them that comes back on us.”

“I say sell the damn things,” Fenn agreed. “Each one of those houses is yearly taxes. Well, I don’t know how it works in Jamaica. But, there are taxes here.”

“I think Tom is right,” Todd said, holding out his hand for the folder Tom had.

Tom passed it to him, and Todd opened it.

“I have always really liked the idea of a little house in Marin Country. Marin County’s so groovy.”

“Let’s come back to the houses later. We don’t own them. We don’t have to worry about them. Let’s get to the money.”

“Well, since it’s three parties here,” Brian said, “we could spilt it three ways.”

“You mean me and Tom and Fenn and Todd, and you?” Lee said.

Brian nodded.

“Um hum,” Lee shook his head. “I don’t give a goddamn how softhearted you’ve gotten,” he told his cousin, “this man is not walking off with a million dollars.”

“What about?” Todd thrust out his lip, “Half a million?”

“What about a quarter of a million and shut the fuck up,” Lee returned.

“And at this stage of the game,” Fenn announced, “that’s what everyone at this table gets, a quarter of a million. That is more than enough for any unanticipated shit.”

Brian had perked up at the idea of being a millionaire, but had to remind himself that being a quarter of one was also something he’d never been.

Tom, who also wanted a million dollars, nodded his head and, holding in his greed, drummed his fingertips on the table and said, “You’re right. That is more than enough for any… as you say, unanticipated shit.”

Like something out of a song, a Black girl in glasses with a ponytail Noah assumed was a weave was standing at the side of the road, so defiant as she smacked her gum that Noah had to stop.

She came to the car. “You going to Rossford?”

“I’m sorry,” Noah said. “I’m going in the opposite direction. I just came from Rossford.”

“Oh,” she said. She stepped away., and then, while Noah was trying to figure out what he could do for her, she came back and said, “Well, how long until you go back to Rossford?”

“I’m going to do a job,” Noah said. “I’ll be in Port Ridge for a few hours.”

“Okay,” she said. She walked around the car, opened the door and got in. “Then you can take me with you.”

And because she was there, and because Noah didn’t know what else to say he said: “Uhh… A’right.”

They began driving up the road.

“I’m going to see my daddy,” the girl said. “I’m in some fucked up shit, you know? And sometimes a papa is the only one who can help you.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t know your daddy?” the girl sounded sympathetic.

Noah was about to say, “My daddy was a drunk ass Klansmen that nailed my mom in the back of a bar,” but somehow he thought this girl was the wrong audience for that much truth.

He just said, “I don’t know the man. Mama was a rolling stone.”

The girl said, compassionately, “Well, I understand. I’ve been kind of a rolling stone myself.”

“Uh, when we get to Port Ridge… my work is kind of rough. So, do you think you could entertain yourself some place while I’m doing what I’ve got to do?”

“Looking like you do? This cute little surfer white boy—who has probably never seen a beach past Lake Michigan—what you got to do that’s so tough? I did time for running drugs and dumb shit I should never have gotten into.”

And because he didn’t like to lie and because with her, for some reason, he felt very sure he didn’t have to, Noah said, “I do web porn.”

“Hum?” she looked at him, only vaguely comprehending.

“Web porn. And movies. Dirty movies. There’s a studio up there. I’m a pornstar.”

“Oh,” the girl looked at him with something that was oddly somewhere between amusement and respect.

“Well,” she said, offering her slim hand and lying back as the car rolled on past the fields, under the viaduct, past the farm fields again:

“I’m Danasia.”