When we Travel at Night
a Journey in the Dark
chris lewis Gibson
I suppose the most accurate description of the book you are about to read is that it is a sequel to Geschichte Falls, taking place roughly half a year and then an additional three months after the close of Nights in White Satin. When I say it is a sequel, I mean it is one of many possible stories of what came after, for it deals primarily with three characters who were actually off to the side in the previous novels, and the main characters you remember only show up in passing. This is the tale of Ross Allan, Richard “Flipper” Sanders and James Nespres, three friends whose very full story at Saint Alban’s college had to be sidelined for the larger story I was telling. This little book is about a trip that becomes a pilgrimage and thrill seeking that becomes soul seeking. It is about sex, depression, oppression, religion, magic and staying up all night, in short, all of my favorite subjects. I hope it confounds you in the reading as it did me in the writing.
Ross Allan, Jimmy Nespres and Flip Sanders are on their way to Miami for spring break, but it soon becomes apparent that, for these dark and often lonely souls, their road trip is becoming a desperate journey in search of love, magic, pleasure, and redemption from the past. In this sequel to Geschichte Falls we meet old friends again: Brad Long and Nehru Alexander, Russell Lewis and Ralph Balusik, and not least of all, Anigel Reyes, but this is always the story of Ross, Jimmy and Flipper. In monasteries, in backwoods, on the beach and in the midst of sex, the sojourners move travel toward a God dark enough to make light of all their demons.
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls."
Anais Nin
They had almost given up hoping or being afraid about anything when at last they saw lights ahead: dreary lights, like that of their own lantern. Then, quite suddenly, one of these lights came close and they saw that they were passing another ship. After that they met several ships. Then, staring till their eyes hurt, they saw that some of the lights ahead were shining on what looked like wharfs, walls, towers, and moving crowds. But still there was hardly any noise.
“By Jove,” said Scrubb. “A city!” and soon they all saw that he was right.
-from The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
Chapter X: “Travels without the Sun”
WHEN WE TRAVEL AT NIGHT
BIRTH
“Hello?”
“Nehru?”
“Yeah?”
When the phone rings at five in the morning, you pick it up, and even though Nehru Alexander was just barely asleep, and the gin and cigarettes of the night before had him croaking like a frog, he answered.
“It’s Hale,” Hale Weathertop said just as Nehru’s brain was telling him it was Hale.
“What’s—” Nehru started, but Brad was turning around, yawning bad breath in his face, and saying, “What?”
“I think Marissa’s going into labor.”
“Oh, shit. Oh, hell.”
“What?” Brad shot up, his black hair standing.
Nehru ignored him.
“What’s going on right now? Are you all getting ready for the hospital? Does she have a bag ready or—”
“We have nothing ready, and I’m not quite sure and, oh shit, a bunch of pee—no, its water—just came out of her and—”
“Please put her in the car with the most durable interior and take her to Saint Francis, We’ll be there soon.”
“Marissa?” Brad said.
Nehru nodded.
“Oh, God!” Brad was as worried and flustered as someone who had just gone to sleep forty five minutes ago after a long night could be, and he jumped out of bed only to fall on his face.
“Alright,” Nehru was saying, and when he hung up, he turned to Brad who was lying on the floor and said, “Stop that.”
As Brad picked himself up and walked around, searching for his underwear, Nehru said, “Why are you panicking? The hospital needs her there, not you, and Hale is driving, and the baby’s not coming any time soon.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Brad said, nervously. He had found his Jockeys and was walking around the living room they used as a bedroom. Ordinarily, when he was not flustered, Nehru loved the sight of Brad in a pair of black briefs, but now he was nervously pulling on jeans and searching for an appropriate tee shirt. For some reason: YES, I FUCKED YOUR MOM and GOOD TIME HERE, with a downward arrow pointing to his crotch were the first things he found followed by SHOW ME THE PUSSY.
“You might want to consider plain tee shirts in the future,” Nehru suggested as he he reached into a bureau and pulled out a long sleeved tee shirt and a red short sleeve to put over it.
“Thank you so much,” Brad said as he dressed. “What the fuck would I do without you?”
“Not get dressed,” Nehru said, as he neatly pulled on clothes from the pile he’d undressed from only an hour and a half before. He’d wanted to shower, eventually, probably around now, and return to bed. He hated being crammed into yesterday’s clothes, and logic told him there actually was time to wash and more than time, but Brad Long of the wide green eyes in their tired sockets and soul patch and sticky up black hair, his best friend, the man he loved, who, when he wore the tee shirt GOOD TIME HERE always excited Nehru while his eyes descended to loins that were indeed a good time, was standing over him, fearful, and asking him if he was ready. Nehru said yes.
Butthole eyes. Some kid at a party had told Brad he had butthole eyes and after that, Nehru couldn’t get the description out of his mind. Especially since, by now, he had seen Brad’s actual butthole on several occasions, and could well tell the similarities.
“Is there anyone we should call?” Brad wondered as they pulled into the parking lot off Finnalay Parkway.
“No,” Nehru said. “We’re just used to having an unnecessary ton of people turn up at every birth.”
Brad nodded, then said, “You know, I thought I’d like to have a normal, orderly birth, but I think I’d like to have a crowd of people for my baby.”
“Well, then call your parents at least.”
“And yours?”
“I don’t think so,” Nehru shook his head. “Hey, Mom and Dad, my best friend’s baby is being born. Get up and come over.”
“But it’s more than that,” Brad said looking at him with that… look.
“Right?”
“Not to them,” Nehru said. “I’m afraid the conversation where I explain over and over again that you left Marissa for me, and we sleep in the same bed is one that’s not happening because it’s one they really can’t understand.”
“What do they understand?”
“That you and Marissa didn’t work out and that’s not really their concern, but now I live you.”
“It is the truth,” Brad said as they got out of the car, “but it’s not the whole truth.
“Who in the world ever had the whole truth?”
“Call Rob and Anigel and Chayne.”
“Okay,” Nehru shrugged as he tried to keep up with Brad’s long strides across the parking lot.
“No,” Brad said, turning around and holding him by the shoulders.
“Call then because… Even if your folks don’t know this is about you, it is about you. Okay?”
Brad seemed more serious than usual lately, more troubled, and Nehru just nodded and said, “Alright, Bradley. Yes. Okay.”
“I wish I’d had a shower.”
“There’s no reason you couldn’t get one now,” Robert Keyes said.
Rob smelled like bergamot and every pair of jeans he had was soft and worn and fit him closely, and half of his shirts were silk with flower patterns. There was a cigarette behind his ear and with his frosted hair he always looked like the slightly edgy member of a boy band, the one who had secrets, except Robert Keyes had few secrets and his elf eyes winked at Nehru the same as the big blue stone in the costume ring he wore on his middle finger.
“I will take you home right now, so you can get your shit together. After all, it’s not your baby.”
“Brad needs me,” Nehru said.
“It’s nice to be needed, but you need yourself,” Anigel Reyes said on the other side of him. She envied Rob who had managed to climb out of bed beside Chayne and show up fabulous. At the time, when she had come in pajama pants and a sweatshirt, combing out her long black hair, and not taking care to scrub the face she was so proud of, Anigel had told herself this wasn’t about her and she didn’t matter, but despite all evidence that this was correct and grown up knowledge, she still couldn’t entirely believe it.
“Ani’s right,” Rob said.
“Ani is right,” Nehru agreed. “But, I’m not leaving.”
Brad had been pacing outside of the delivery room and now Nehru went to him.
“I can’t just burst in, can I?”
“No,” Nehru said.
“I mean, I said I’m here, and they should let me in. She should let me in. Unless she doesn’t want me?”
“I don’t really think Marissa wants or doesn’t want anything except to push out this baby.”
The elevator doors opened and out came Cameron Dwyer.
“Where is she?” Cameron demanded.
“How did you get here?” Brad asked.
“Anigel called me. Where is she?”
Nehru pointed at the door and Cameron raced right in.
“She didn’t wait,” Brad said.
“Well, then why are you?”
Brad nodded, but didn’t move.
“Go on.”
“Are you coming with me?”
Brad had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when he said, “That’s a stupid question, isn’t it?”
“Go,” Nehru told him.
Brad nodded, ran toward the doors, came back, and kissed Nehru quickly, then turned around and ran through them again, the doors flapping behind him.
Rob and Anigel came up to him, throwing their arms over his shoulders. It was very much day now, and Rob said, “How about that shower?”
“We could miss the birth.”
Rob nodded, but Anigel said nothing.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, Rob?”
“Are you afraid to miss the birth, or are you afraid to look like a bad person?”
“This baby is going to be a part of our lives.”
“This baby is going to be a part of Brad’s life,” Anigel said. “It’s only a part of your life in so much as Brad is. That might change one day, but for now that’s facts.”
“I am very tired,” Nehru said.
“You’re not becoming a dad today,” Anigel said. “You’re not even becoming a stepdad. You’re in love with a man who had a baby with someone else. You don’t have to stay here and wait for it to be born.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Rob said.
Rob and Anigel took Nehru to their home, which was Chayne Kandzierski’s home, and he was eating breakfast across the table from his redheaded seventeen year old godson Russell Lewis, neither of them at all concerned with events at the hospital.
“You look terrible,” they both told Nehru, glancing away only momentarily from the bacon and eggs to which they’d devoted themselves.
“I’ll make you a bath,” Chayne said, and got up quicker than Nehru expected. He went upstairs, and for a while Nehru heard the floor creaking above him, and then Chayne came down and said. “The tub’s running, but it takes a while to fill. A good bath is what you need, cousin. I just hope you brought clothes.”
“He brought clothes,” Rob said. “Because I made him stop at his place and get them.”
“Great minds seem to think alike and Rob thought I’d want a bath too. Or I just stink.”
“Because today is a different kind of day,” Chayne said, reflectively, “Let’s just say great minds think alike.”
“But why is it a different kind of day?”
“Why is this night different from all the others?” Russell chimed in, in a childlike voice.
“What?” Anigel said.
“It’s what they say at Passover.”
Anigel dismissed this and said, “This is a different kind of day because it’s not a lot of days or a lot of ways in which people wait for their boyfriend’s baby’s mama to give birth to their first child.”
“Well, that’s a way to put it, and let me check the water,” Chayne said, turning to go back upstairs. Nehru wondered if people were as confounded by him with Brad as he was by Chayne with Rob. They were of the same height, but that was about it. Chayne was Black and myopic and usually wore jeans and khakis and a plaid shirt over a tee shirt. There was none of Rob’s flashy jewelry or tinted hair, and Chayne was at least a decade older than Rob. As the water shut off and Rob clapped him on the ass, Nehru thought, “But they work together really well. Perhaps better than me and Brad.” Brad was his best friend, and they had survived so much, but how in the world could they survive a baby?
You have no right to be angry, he had told himself, which meant that he was. And he was surprised at his anger, his resentment toward this child. Or was it his resentment toward Brad. He felt cheated on though, he had to be honest, Brad had been cheating on Marissa with him, and Nehru had not cared, not even a little bit. He thought his claim was older and better, and maybe that’s why he was enraged. Enraged? Was that too big a word? Well, maybe not. He had loved Brad so long, and apparently Brad had loved him. It wasn’t until he’d gone to bed with Marissa that he’d finally kissed Nehru and admitted how he felt. Marissa never had to happen, Debbie Baynes, the girl before, never had to happen. It could have been them in the beginning as it was now them in the end and this child who would ruin everything would never be here, and now that Nehru was taking his clothes off in the old bathroom that was cool with the white tiles at the same time it was warm, and his toes were comforted by the thick rug beside the tub, he could admit this. He and Brad had just found their happiness, and now here came this fucking baby to ruin it.
Midway through his third cigarette, Nehru heard Rob knock and told him to enter.
Rob didn’t say anything about, Damn, that’s a lot of cigarette smoke or, how hot it is in this bathroom. He just opened the window and now Nehru could hear birdsong and now the light of eleven o’clock entered the grey smoke.
“I laid out your clothes.”
“You’re a good friend, Rob.”
“I try to be.”
“You’re my best friend.”
“Rob squatted by the side of the tub and said, “Lean back.”
Nehru did, and Rob scrubbed his back, and then said, “Give me the shampoo.”
“Rob washed his hair and dunked him, and Nehru came up spluttering, and Rob, pursing his lips, extended two fingers and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the of the Holy Ghost. Woohooo! Now get dressed so we can get back to the hospital. Unless you don’t want to go.”
Nehru frowned, and drawing his knees out of the water and to his chest he said “I think we’re beyond the point of wanting. Get out and let me rinse off. I’ll be dressed in a few minutes.”
The jeans were Nehru’s. He and Rob didn’t have the same thighs or ass and he would never have been able to squeeze into Rob’s jeans, but Rob had left one of his own shirts, and to let Nehru know it was his, he’d also placed beside it a silver chain with a silver ring hanging off it. Also, Rob had left him a slim cotton slip of a jockstrap, and as Nehru dressed in the soft faded jeans and the silk shirt he began to feel sexy and realize that was the very reason for these clothes, the power Rob didn’t want him to forget.
Maybe if I’d known I’d had this power there would be no baby.
But there was a baby, and there was no point to—in fact, Nehru decided it was a foul thing—think of wishing it out of existence.
Downstairs all Chayne said was, “The weather is better. It was an ugly heat, but now it’s a nice one. There may even be a breeze.”
Russell said, “I keep on wanting to ask how it feels, but I have no idea how I would feel.”
“I don’t really know how I feel either,” Nehru said. “But here goes.”
“One thing I would hate to feel,” began Anigel, who had bathed and redeemed herself, who was in a blood red summer dress, her golden skin glowing, black hair combed out and shining down her back, “is a baby pushing out of me for the last eight hours.”
But she had some say in this, and so it did not worry her, and she took up the broad brimmed sunhat Chayne had gotten her for her birthday, and was first out of the door.
But they did not drive for the hospital right away, or at least it did not seem as if they were headed toward the hospital. They crossed Kirkland and went went east until they were in the neighborhood Nehru knew well, and they arrived at Cody Barnard’s gas station on Thompson Road. Russell, hands in his pockets went to the door and without knocking entered the house. A few moments later out came Cody and Nehru, looking at that house, flushed with heat remembering the first time he and Cody Barnard had made love, and all the times, like two best friends more than lovers, they’d had sex in that place and others. Whatever anyone thought of that, there was a durability in having a friend for a sex partner that did not extend to the fragility of lovers, and something warmed in him when Cody slipped into the backseat and clapped his knee.
“We’re off to see the baby, the wonderful baby of Brad,” he sang, and squeezed Nehru’s thigh. In the rearview mirror, Rob winked and Nehru put it out of his mind that Rob had always preferred Cody and the idea of Cody as his lover to Brad Long.
