Works and Days

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After dinner they drove around Saint Gregory and back into Geschichte Falls.

“It’s so quiet,” Liz marveled. “On a Friday night and all.”

“Around Main Street the kids cruise, but otherwise it is pretty quiet,” Thom agreed as they came back onto Royal Street. In the apartment, he told Liz, “We still never got around to having drinks.”

“You know what?” Liz said, falling on the couch with Thom. “I don’t want to drink. I want to talk.”

And they did talk. On again off again, Thom brought up Patti, occasionally hinting that he thought things were his fault. But more often he brought up Russell.

“Jackie invited me to choir practice and I said no. When she got home she told me Russ was there, and I felt a little bad for not going. I wanted to see him. But then I was kind of relieved because I think he might have felt awkward, even a little afraid with me there.”

“You know what?” Liz said, touching a lock of hair behind Thom’s ear, “I think you’re the one who would have been awkward and afraid. You talk about this boy like he’s a little god.”

Thom looked at her, amazed.

“It’s okay. That’s the way I feel about Marvin and Julie. Especially Julie for some reason. And after the divorce, I was almost ashamed to see them. Which is sort of inconvenient, since they live with me.”

“Where are they tonight?”

“With friends. You’re staring at me, Thom.”

“Am I—?” he started. But Liz had kissed him by then.

He kissed her back. Thom leaned in to kiss her and placed his hands on her shoulders. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. He stopped, pulled away.

“We can’t.”

He got up. “Liz, I don’t think...”

But then he kissed her again, and Liz placed her hand on Thom’s back, rubbing it through his shirt. Her hand went to his belt. He thought of pulling away. He didn’t really know what he was doing. If he thought then he could come up with a thousand reasons this was wrong. So he stopped thinking and began to work with his tie as Liz reached up and turned out the light.

    

“Are you gonna come back to bed?” Liz asked, wrapping the sheets about her.

“I’ll come now,” Thom said.

“Not just yet,” said Liz. “I want to see you naked.”

Thom opened his mouth, cocked his head, and remained reclined against Jackie’s desk as Liz watched the sun outline his body, turn the top of his dark hair golden..

“You’re still beautiful to look at, Thomas,” Liz told him.

 “What were you thinking?”

“I,” Thom seemed a little puzzled, “I don’t remember.”         

“You don’t regret it?” Liz sat up.

Thom returned to the sofa bed, taking her hand.

“No, I don’t regret any of it. I haven’t felt this way in a long time. It’s been a long time since...”

“Sex?”

Thom laughed a little and kissed Liz. She put her head against the soft down of his chest as he cradled her. She remembered the first time she’d seen Thom naked and hairy, and how she couldn’t decide to laugh or not. He had been her first. It felt good being held by him again, being assured, feeling his heart beat against her ear. It had felt good feeling him inside of her last night.

“Well, sex, yes,” Thom said. “But it has been a long time since I’ve had love. Last night, I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

“Remember back in college?” Liz asked him, and they both laughed. She was still laughing when she said, “That’s what it was like last night.”

Thom stopped rocking her. Liz could feel him hard against her.

“You want it to be that way this morning?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow.

She looked up at him in wonder. A smile came over her face.

Thom felt his penis stiffening. His voice was growing thick.

“I haven’t felt like this. I haven’t felt like... a man in forever,” he told her, taking her hands and guiding them to his sides. Liz’s hands came down, felt the dimples on his ass. She went limp against the crook of his neck, and Thom lifted her thighs, pressing her to the backboard.

 

His name was Dan. Chayne had not asked because he did not ask idle questions, and he did not care. He didn’t find this out until Friday, when Dan came back, and all Thursday night, Chayne had called him The Cowboy.

He earned the name. He was courtly and well mannered like something from a Gene Autry movie, and he smelled damn good. He smoked good cigarettes and they chatted a while. The house was not small, and there were plenty of other places for Russell to be. He’d told him part of living with a single adult was knowing when to be scarce, and it had been nearly ten, so Chayne didn’t feel bad about having Russell shove off.

This was the first man he’d met since he’d come back home, and even though he’d confidently said men were everywhere, he wasn’t sure everywhere included Winthrop County until this one was sitting on the sofa across from him. When Chayne said men were everywhere, it was in response to the belief that there was only a certain type of man who wanted to be with a man, and he lived in New York or San Francisco and was interested in interior decorating or the theatre. But what Chayne knew was that men were men and all sorts of men liked all sorts of things, and if one was patient and confident he only had to wait, and someone would be on this sofa, chatting, sharing a drink. Something would happen, and someone’s pants would be down. Someone would be on their knees and someone else would be leaned back, head between his legs, having the life sucked into one point of him. In a house without children this could have gone on in the living room much longer, but Chayne got up and led Cowboy Dan to the bedroom.

The world was afraid of sex. He was afraid of sex, though he went to it anyway. In sex you were taken out of yourself. Your eyes left the normal world and went to the world of darkness where a man who had been in jeans and an expensive shirt, knelt on you, pulling you inside of him, and rode you, his neck arching back, then looking down on you, mouth opened, both of your mouths open. You became one thing and traveled without forward movement, crossing valleys and hills in this bed, his hand on your shoulders, you hands on his hips, and you rode each other through the night country.

Chayne was no teenage virgin, and neither was the Cowboy. They rode each other through the night and when orgasm finally came it was like lightning buried in blackness, shaking them to the teeth, piercing both their bodies.

 

He did not have quite a southern accent, but it was country and gentle and he said, “Should I go or should I stay over?”

“No one’s asking you to go,” Chayne said, curling up and facing him.

“Good,” he kissed Chayne on the mouth quickly. “Then I’ll stay.”

 

Friday night they had been at the Blue Jewel, and the Cowboy was there again.

“Do you always hang out here?”

“When I’m in town,” he’d said. “I work construction.”

“So, not a cowboy.”

“I like to be a cowboy now and again.”

“What else do you like now and again?” Chayne asked.

“Oh,” the Cowboy said, “I think you know.”

 

They stayed at the Blue Jewel till well past two, and the Cowboy didn’t seem to mind, but when they were driving back into town, he followed Chayne at a leisurely crawl.

Russell was dizzy from the little bit of beer he’d had, and the smell of pot, and Chayne had no plans of hiding the man from him when he arrived. Russell was already in bed when the Cowboy, beer on his breath and the smell of cigarettes mixed with his cologne, drunkenly kissed Chayne on the mouth and they tumbled from the living room into the bathroom, and undressed almost savagely, making love as they climbed into the shower.