The People in Rossford

Layla walked into the living room with a drink for Brendan and one for Will. She lay on the couch placing her head on Will’s lap, and then reached for her old lemonade and sipped from the straw.

“You all look so happy,” Brendan said.

“Well, we try to keep up appearances,” Will said.

“I thought I made you happy?” said Layla. “It’s all I think about. Day and night. Keeping Will Klasko happy.”

“Yeah,” Will remarked. “I see that.”

“Do you know,” Will told Brendan, “this is the first week she hasn’t called me a bastard or a son of a bitch since we’ve been together?”

“It’s only Wednesday,” she reminded him.

“But you all are happy,” Brendan insisted.

“Of course we’re happy,” Layla told him. “We’re happy as fuck.”

“I want to be happy.”

They both looked at him.

“I mean with Kenny. I thought that if I broke things off with Dena, then when I went back to Kenny, I’d be really happy again. We’d be a couple again. Or, at least, be a couple for the first time.”

Will furrowed his brow to say something intelligent, but Layla, ready to talk, sat up and said, “And now what’s going on? I mean, aside from the fucking?”

Will blinked at her, and Brendan stared.

“What?” said Layla. “How will we take care of anything if we don’t call a spade a spade.”

“Well…” Will said, shaking his head.

“When she’s right she’s right,” Brendan told her.

“No,” he said. “That’s about all it is. I mean, it seems like we can’t really get past that.”

Will said nothing. Layla pursed her lips together.

“You’ve got an idea?” Will said to her. “I see it. I see your wheels turning.”

“My wheels are only turning trying to figure out the right way to say this.”

“Layla, we’ve been friends since kindergarten. You don’t have to think of the right way to say anything.”

“Well, it’s just, maybe you think that since you weren’t loyal to Dena, you have to be loyal to Kenny. And that’s fine and good. But maybe the thing is… you don’t love Kenny.”

“No!” Brendan said with a wince.

Layla looked at him levelly.

“I don’t… I must have loved him. I can love him. I can stick by him.”

“Look, Bren,” Will said, “I bet you think that because you failed with Dena it’s horrible to fail with Kenny. But the only way you’ll fail is if you don’t be true to yourself.”

Layla and Will both looked at their friend, and then turned away thinking it wasn’t polite. Brendan’s face looked so sad.

He said, “I just want to be in love.”

“Brendan?” Kenny looked beyond Brendan and saw no one else was in line.

“I want to talk to you,” Brendan said. “Can we talk?”

“Uh… I’m busy. I mean, I’m on the clock.”

“Okay,” Brendan said.

He turned around where the candy and the magazines were, and dumped them all on the conveyer belt. Then he dumped a pile of Snickers and said.

“Okay. Talk and work.”

Kenny blinked at him.

“Just scan. I need to talk.”

Kenny nodded.

“I was just thinking, Kenny. I want to be in love.”

Kenny nodded.

“I was at Layla’s last night, and she was with Will, and I thought, I want that. Or, you know, Layla’s uncle and Dena’s uncle… I want something like that. I want love. I want real love.”

Kenny continued scanning candy bars and People magazines.

“I want that too, Brendan. It’s exactly what I want.

“I thought I had it with you. I thought we were that.”

“We were,” Brendan said. “But we’re not now. We’re…

“Kenny, if we’re not going to make a go at it, then we should just stop being together period.”

Kenny didn’t say anything right away. And then he said, “I agree, Bren.”

“Uh,” Brendan looked around. An old woman came into line with a loaded cart. She looked like she was eavesdropping, and suddenly Brendan turned around, took a rack of Enquirersand M&Ms and dumped them on the conveyer belt. She took a deep breath, and in disdain moved to the next aisle.

“Kenny, do you love me at all? Because if you don’t, if you’re still mad and we’re still just fucking, then… I don’t see a point in this.”

“I do,” Kenny said. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“That’s the way I feel about you, Ken. But I wasn’t sure what it was. I think that I love you, but these last few months have been so…”

“I know,” said Kenny.

“Well,” Kenny continued. “I know I love you. And… Your grocery bill comes to five hundred dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“What?” Brendan began, and then Kenny burst out laughing.

“If you want us to have a future,” Brendan said, “You’d better take that shit off.”

“You’ve been around Layla too long,” Kenny said as he and Brendan began to gather up the candy and magazines.

“I don’t know,” Brendan said. “Maybe there’s always been a Black woman inside of me waiting to come out.”

Adele Lawden crashed her shopping cart into a man.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry.”

She moved away from her cart toward the man.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I should have been paying attention.”

“I wasn’t paying attention either,” she admitted. “I mean if I had been… I wouldn’t have…”

“Crashed into my cart?”

“Right,” Adele said.

“I’m Simon Davis, by the way,” he offered her his hand.

“Oh,” Adele said. “Yes… I’m Adele Law—Houghton.”

“You must be having a rough day. If you forgot your last name.”

“No,” she said. “I just… You see, I’m getting a divorce.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He was a son of a bitch. But the bottom line is, I’m having a hard time remembering my last name these days, seeing as it’s about to change, anyway.”

“Well… you’re single, then.”

“Yes.”

“Is it too quick to ask for a date?”

“A what?”

“A… You know what?” Simon Davis said. “It is too quick. It’s entirely too quick. Forgive me, it’s just this beautiful woman crashed her cart into me and I thought ‘It’s a sign from God.’ But, nevermind.”

“Yes,” Adele said.

“What?”

“Yes. I’ll go out with you. I’d love that.”

“Really? Well, heck. Hell,” Simon Davis jammed his hands in his pockets. “This must be my lucky day. What about eight o’clock?”

“Eight is good.” Adele said, and then nodding, she took her cart and headed all the way down the aisle, when she realized something and turned back.

“You’re going to want my address, right?”

Simon Davis nodded.

“It would be helpful.”

“I WAS GOING TO go home, but then I thought, well who would I talk to at home? I’d just walk around in circles and say it again and again to myself. So I came here.”

“Actually,” Todd noted, looking up from Adele at his sister’s kitchen table, “You haven’t really told us anything.”

Nell looked at Adele who was looking vaguely stupid, and then Adele said, “That’s right.”

Adele Houghton paused for effect: “I have a date.”

“Thank God,” Todd and Nell said together, and Adele frowned at them.

“You’re one to talk,” Adele looked at her best friend. “You got rid of Kevin when Dena could hardly walk, and I’ve never seen you with a man.”

“Don’t follow my example,” Nell said. “Follow my wish. Besides, Todd’s been with enough men for us both.”

Todd shot his sister a sour look, but Nell said, “What’s he like? What’s he look like?”

“I really don’t know.”

Nell looked at her.

“Well, you know, these days you just don’t know. Folks are all mixed up. He looked kinda white, but maybe with some Mexican. Or maybe he was part Black. I don’t know. He was definitely brownish, but not entirely brown.”

“You know,” said Todd. “Like Dad. Or like toffee.”

“Toffee is good,” Nell said.

“He definitely had some toffee like aspects to him,” Adele said.

“Very good. Mystery man from Toffee Land, which is just due south of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now what’s Toffee-Man do?”

“I don’t know,” Adele said.

Nell and Todd looked at each other, and then Nell said, “Well, honey, what do you know?”

“Well, I crashed into his cart at the Kroger on Birmingham and he looked at me, and I looked at him and I asked him for a date, and gave him my address and said I’d be ready at eight.”

“So this man you don’t know—do you even know his name?” Todd said.

“His name is Simon Davis.”

“Well, that is one thing. Simon Davis, who you know nothing about, is coming to take you some place you don’t know.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Adele,” Nell warned, “he could be… an ax murderer.”

“He doesn’t have the arms for it.”

“You know what I’m talking about! You don’t know anything about this man.”

“I was married to Hoot for seventeen years, and now it turns out I didn’t know anything about him. But I felt things. I always felt things. Well, we don’t really know anything about each other, do we? How much do we know? But, I feel like he’s a nice man. It’s just a date. And I could use just a date.”

Under the table, Todd crossed his long legs and propped them on another chair.

“All right,” he said. “You’re right. But I think we should be there to meet him.”

When Nell nodded her head in agreement, Adele said, “You’re not meeting him, and that’s that.”

“Fine, but… I’m gonna be across the street in the Land Rover. Tailing you.”

“You’re not serious.” Adele turned to Nell. “He’s not serious, is he?”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Nell said.

“Don’t try and stop me,” Todd said.

“No, I won’t,” Adele told him at last. “It would just be pointless.”

Suddenly Nell clapped her hands and said, “Well, okay. Now that security’s taken care of, let’s go shopping and find you something pretty to wear.”