The Prayers in Rossford

“Why did you come?”

“That’s a horrible question.”

“It is the way I asked it,” Noah acknowledged. “I didn’t mean to sound that way. It’s just… You’re the last person I expected to see. Not the last one I wanted to see, though.”

“I came because I missed you.”

They spoke slowly. At first Noah had been looking out of the window. Now he came and stood on the back of the couch. James rose up. So as they spoke they circled the couch

“And now you’re here.”

“Yes,” James sat down.

Noah said, “So much has happened to me. I can’t tell you any of it. I want to tell you everything. This is so strange for me.”

“It was never strange before. We were never strange before.”

“No,” Noah said. “But I made it strange.”

“Oh,” James said. “You still remember that.”

“Of course I remember it,” Noah shook his head in frustration. “It was only four years ago.”

“It seems like it never happened at all.”

“You should have stopped me.”

“Why?”

“I had no right.”

“Noah, you didn’t do anything. Not really.”

“Still,” Noah said down. “And then you disappeared. Or I disappeared. Whoever disappeared, I haven’t seen you since.”

“I think, Noah,” James said, “that it was you who disappeared.”

“Maybe. Yes. Probably. And… the things I’ve been up to. Well…”

“I have the Internet too. Besides, I was at the house today. Remember? That’s where I found you.”

Noah looked at him. “I didn’t know how much you knew.”

“I’m not a fool,” said James.

“No,” Noah said. “I don’t guess that you are. “You never were.”

Then Noah said, “How do you feel about it? About what I do?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“See!” Noah said. “There you go! That was always you. Why can’t you just tell me how you feel about the fact that I make movies?”

“Because it doesn’t matter how I feel,” James said. “Why won’t people get that! It doesn’t matter how I feel or you feel about someone else’s business. That’s between them and God.”

“God spoke to me tonight.”

“Oh?”

Noah looked at him closely.

“I just… needed to say that to you. I needed to look you in the face and see how you reacted when I said that.”

“How did I react?”

Noah shrugged. “I dunno. Like you always do.”

“Why does it matter how I react, or what I think? I’ve been gone for three years.”

“Now I think it’s you who’s asking silly questions,” Noah said. “If you really think how you feel doesn’t matter. If you think I don’t care about one of the only real friends I ever had.”

James nodded, betraying a touch of embarrassment, and then he pushed his glasses up with his middle finger.

“But you still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “About how you feel about the business.”

“I want to stop. I’ve wanted to stop. But I’m afraid, James.”

“Afraid of what?”

“You see those guys who get out and become part of the religious right, or something like that? I… Tonight I met someone who used to do pornos with me and he’s a priest. He’s not a bad person. I see that now. But I don’t want to be some reformed, oh my gosh I learned my lesson person. I don’t want to be… penitent. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like the only thing worse than being a porn star is someone who says, ‘Oh, I used to be a pornstar, but that’s in the past.’”

“You don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

“Yes!” Noah said. “That’s it. Why couldn’t I say it like that? And I don’t want to be someone who says I’ll never do it again when one day I might. And… who am I going to sleep with if I’m not doing dirty movies? I’ve… never been on a real date or had a real boyfriend or… anything like that. I’ve gotten drunk and got up to mischief. That’s about it. I…” Noah’s voice faltered.

“Go on,” James said, touching him tenderly.

“That’s why you’re one of the only people I love,” Noah discovered. “You make me able to say things that… that I never could to myself. You make me know things about me I was just too stupid to know. Like… I thought I was bored by life, that doing those movies was the only thing that excited me. But that was only part of it.

“One part of it is I don’t want to be one of those people that says, ‘I did it until I saw the light.’ Or… even worse, ‘It was just a stage for me, a part of necessary growth, and I moved past it. No regrets.’

“I do have regrets. I have lots of fucking regrets. How could I say ‘no regrets’? But then, the last part of me is just… I want to be this brand new person. I do, James. I want to be the person I’ll bet I was always supposed to be. But… I don’t know how to be him. Or where to start.”

James nodded, his tongue running along his gums.

“What?” Noah shifted in his seat. “What’s that mean?”

“Just that you’ve got a point. It is hard to become a new person.”

“BITCH, YOU’LL DO WHAT I tell you!”

He moved toward Naomi with the baseball bat. Noah jumped in front of her. Butch knocked him to the ground. Noah scrambled up, but the bat came in his direction and Noah dodged it, lifting his hand, the top of the wood slamming his fingertips.

“Get off her!”

And Naomi screamed out his name.

From the corner of his eye, as Noah rose up, he saw the door open. But he turned around heading for Butch again, and then Butch came at him and Noah hoped he could catch the bat and not be hit in the groin, but just then Butch went down.

Noah turned around.

In his jeans and tee shirt, James stood there with the crowbar.

“Apparently I didn’t come back a minute too late,” he said, sighing. He tried to smile.

“You miss me?”

“James, shut up,” Noah said, standing up to hug him.

Naomi was crying on the floor and James said, “Mrs. Riley, you have to stop that.”

“James, help me get Butch the fuck out of here.”

Huffing and puffing they dragged Butch’s fat, smelly body out of the house, James harnessing him under the arms. Once he started to wake up, James casually hit him over the head one more time.

“Whaddo we do with him?”

“Put him in the car,” said James. “Drive the car far away. You get in mine all right. Follow us.”

Noah did not ask where this plan was going. He just nodded.

They went east down Route 13, literally nothing but the occasional stoplight and intersecting road, farm fields pale yellow because it was autumn. James stopped at the side of the road and drove into a ditch. Noah parked behind him.

James came out of the car with the keys and said, “Let’s go. I had to keep hitting him upside the head. If he’s not totally retarded when he comes to, he’ll feel like he is. Take these keys, Noah?”

“How’s he gonna get back?” Noah said, as he moved over and James took the driver’s seat.

James started up the car.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

That night they sat with the car parked in a field outside of town. The moon rose up high and large, and Noah said, “If Butch comes back he’ll make straight for Naomi.”

“Maybe Naomi’ll get some sense and call the police. I don’t think anything ever happened to her that just had to.”

“I don’t know,” Noah said. “But I gotta get the hell out of here. I mean, as soon as I turn eighteen.”

“You can go to my school,” said James.

Noah shook his head.

“That’s not for me. I’m just going to go to California.”

“That is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard.”

“James!”

“Well,” James shrugged. “Do whatever, Noah. But just get the hell out of here.”

They sat quiet like that for a while. James’ hand was casually placed on Noah’s thigh and just then Noah gave into his wonder. He placed James’ hand between his legs.

“I’m sorry,” he said as his hand rested lightly on James’ after his friend started in surprise.

“It’s just… my whole life people have been touching me there when I didn’t want to be touched. And I just wanted to know how it would feel to be touched in a good way. When I wanted it. It feels good, James. Please don’t stop. I’m not ready for you to.

“You don’t… have to do anything. You don’t have to make me come or anything like that. Just… I just need to feel you touching me right there. All right.”

James placed his head on Noah’s shoulder and nodded, and under the moon, Noah opened his legs and let down his pants and closed his eyes, feeling for the first time loved by another man.

Brendan Miller jiggled the key into the door slowly and, closing the door quietly, he locked it, untied his dripping shoes, left them on the mat, and then tiptoed through the black stone foyer beside the large, low living room. He was on his way up the stairs when he heard a voice drawl:

“Well, well, well.”

Carol sat on the couch in her white housecoat, looking pleased and sipping a cup of coffee. How could he have not smelled the coffee, he wondered?

“Little brother was up late last night,” she commented.

“And you’re up early.”

Carol shrugged. “It’s Christmas.”

Then she said, “Wanna talk?”

“I guess,” Brendan said. Then, “Yes. But I want to go upstairs and take all this stuff off.”

Upstairs Brendan threw his clothes in a pile and changed into his pajamas. He yawned. Part of him wanted to go to sleep. In a few hours it would be sunrise. The other part of him was almost happy about the interrogation Carol was sure to give him.

When he came back down she was not on the couch, but in the kitchen and she had poured coffee for him into a white a mug.

“Were you with Kenny?”

“You know I was.”

“Um.”

“Um what?” Brendan said, reaching for the powdered creamer.

“Nothing. Just… Ho Ho Ho.”

“You’re a horrible person.”

“And you’re wrong as hell if you’re going to use powdered creamer. Use this.” Carol handed him the hazelnut liquid. “It’s the holidays.”

“Maybe you should get your own love life,” Brendan said. “And then you won’t have to be so concerned with mine.”

“You could have something there,” his sister said as they crossed the foyer and settled back down on the couch in the wide living room.

“Or maybe I just need to get laid,” she said. “I miss getting laid. The boyfriend was sort of incidental.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“If you don’t think I mean it, then you don’t know me, Bren. God, men are so… They really are a mess.”

“I know I’m a mess.”

“No,” Carol put her hand on his knee. “I mean, yes. I mean I suppose you are your own type of mess, but not like some of the messes I’ve dealt with. I think if I could go into a dark room, have some stranger come and give me a good shagging and then leave, I would be completely happy.”

“Then you’ll like the dildo I bought you for Christmas.”

“I bet that’s what you didn’t buy me,” Carol said. “But I think I could appreciate something like that.”

“Well,” Brendan shrugged, “That’s what birthdays are for.”