v.

AFTER ROY AND RACE HAD left, Mrs. Cane said, “Such a lovely night, too.”
“Yeah,” mumbled Ian. He and his mother stood at the open door on the stoop, watching the car go south down the farm road, back into town.
It still smelled like summer, like wet grass and the remnants of sun, and the Cane house was set back off the country road and wrapped in trees and shrubbery. The sun wasn’t down completely, and the sky was filled with the memory of the passing day. Ian, content for it to remain a memory, went back inside, barefoot, and made for his room upstairs.
“Whatever happened to Cindy?” his mother said. Ian stopped as his right foot joined his left foot on the stairs and he turned around.
“Wha?”
“Cindy?” his mother said. “Goodness, it’s dark in here.” she flicked on an old brass lamp by the door.
“We broke up,” Ian said.
“She was so nice,” Mrs. Cane said.
“It happened a long time ago,” Ian said, plodding up the stairs.
This was one of those nights his mother wanted to talk.
“I don’t remember it happening,” Mrs. Cane said, coming up the stairs.
“I don’t either, I just looked up and she was with Jeff Barker and more power to the both of them and I hope they get syphilis.”
“Well, I don’t hope they get syphilis,” Mrs. Cane said. “but I don’t think it was very nice of her to drop you that way.”
“Thank you for rubbing it in, Mom,” Ian said, going into his room as Mrs. Cane flicked on the hall light.
“It’s just that you used to go out, and it’s Friday. The weekend.”
“I used to have a girlfriend,” Ian said.
“There’s more to life than girlfriends,” Mrs. Cane lectured. “Don’t you... Don’t you have a circle?”
“A circle?” Ian raised an eyebrow as he leaned out of his room and prepared to close the door.
“You know.... Of friends?”
“No.”

“No?” Mrs. Cane sounded incredulous.
“There’s no one, Mom,” Ian said.
“It’s just that when I was your age I had friends--”
“And you were so popular and you went out every weekend and--”
“Well, I did.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Ian, you must have friends. Don’t you have any friends?”
“No, Mother, I don’t. No one at all.” He closed the door on her, slid the lock home, and opening the end table at his door, took out his cigarettes shouting, “Nobody loves me everybody hates me, I’m going to the garden to eat worms. Now please let me hate life alone!”
“Alright, Ian,” Mrs. Cane sounded flustered. “You don’t have to be rude!”
“Obviously I do,” Ian muttered to himself. He took out his lighter and was about to smoke a cigarette when he muttered, Lucky Strike clenched between his lips, “Naw, fuck that!” and went to his closet, pushed out the dirty clothes and pulled out a bag of marijuana. He kicked some of his clothes under his door, and then went for his dresser to pull out the rolling papers and sat on the middle of his bed, leaning forward to open the window that looked onto his square of backyard. A deer had just wandered onto the property. He could hear the theme music from X-Files coming up from the window downstairs and a small breeze had picked up.
“Mom was right,” Ian said, opening the baggy and taking out a paper. “It’s a lovely night.”


FIRST CAME TINA, FOLLOWED BY Vaughan.
“I can’t believe I’m coning with you,” Madeleine said, taking a sweater to wrap around herself.
Mackenzie, coming down the steps last, said nothing.
Cedric was out on the back porch with Ida and Ralph. Before Vaughan opened the screen door with its soft creak, he could see in the yellow porch light the tendrils unfurling from the smoke of their cigarettes.
“Where ya’ll goin’?” Cedric said.
“Exploring,” Martina answered.
Cedric asked no more. He knew better by now.
They went down Michael Street. West, opposite of the direction of the high school, the way Tina and Kenzie would go toward home. The sky was finally darkening, and there were a few kids still playing in the front yards. A truck loaded with loud, shouting high schoolers zoomed forward, blasting music, and passed by them.
“Wonder who they were?” Mackenzie murmured, craning his head.
“We probably hate them,” Tina said, not bothering to turn around. She would not be distracted from her adventure.
Only one more truck came by, blaring country music. All in all it was very quiet in Jamnia tonight as they walked up the street of small houses in the residential neighborhood. Black against the night sky, highlighted by the sherbet orange lights of the factories, were the old abandoned silos and warehouses over the train tracks. Bells began to tingle, the red and white gates went down and they slowed for the train to roll past: quick, fast as lightning, but still taking five minutes to make it’s way across the tracks.
“Ding ding ding ding ding,” Vaughan murmured.
Mackenzie looked at his friend.
“What?” said Vaughan. “I like the sound. Ding ding ding ding ding.”
They could hear music, and Tina was unnerved by the car approaching. There was no reason except that she did not want to be seen tonight, or have to wave at anyone tonight. She hoped the car that stopped beside them, waiting for the train to finish rolling across the tracks did not belong to anyone they knew.
“Hey, Madeleine!” a guy called out of the truck.
Madeleine looked at Tina.
Tina shrugged.
“Madeleine!”
Madeleine had been trying so hard not to pay attention either, that when she turned and saw it was Rodder’s car, with Dice hanging out of the the back window, she was surprised. Rodder was smiling out of the window, waiting for her to come.
She shrugged and did so. Other cars were coming up now. There was a line of people waiting to cross the tracks. The train still rolled on.
“I wanted to say you were really great... at auditions,” Rodder said.
“What?”
“I was there. After practice. I heard you. you were great.”
“Thanks.”
The last train had come by. The bells started to ding, the red and white gates were going up. Madeleine made to leave.
“Maddy?”
She turned around, Rodder caught her arm, leaned up and said, “If it’s alright... can I call you?”
Madeliene was dumbfounded, and it was only when cars began honking in the long line behind Rodder’s car, that she realized the train was gone.
“Uh... yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
Rodder smiled broadly. Madeleine moved back, and the four or five cars made their way across the track.
Tina, Vaughan, Mackenzie and Madeleine crossed the tracks and stood before the glory of the factory.
“So what was all that about?” Vaughan turned to his sister.
“I believe,” Tina said, “it was about Rodder hitting on your sister.”
“He says he’ll call me,” Madeleine said, trying to sound non-chalant.
“Whatever you do,” Tina said, “don’t drop your panties for him again.”
“At least not right away,” Vaughan amended.

IDA DID NOT REMEMBER THE last time she’d seen the front of her house on 201 Windham Street. As a rule she always drove through the alley, and parked the Taurus under the trees between the garage where her nephew lived and the one belonging to the Denhams next door. The lights of Kirk’s garage were out, and as Ida climbed from her car and crossed the screen of weeds naturally fencing in her yard she could hear “Buffalo Soldier” playing on eternal repeat and smell the marijuana wafting from the back porch.
“Oh, honey, you got the Death card,” she could hear Meghan saying, “and ordinarily that means a change and transition in your life.”
“And for me,” the other woman was saying.
“For you it means you’re gonna die,” Meghan said glibly.
As Ida cleared away the last of the tall grass, she heard Alice say, “Sister, you need this more than me,” and she saw her youngest sister pass the blunt to the poor woman sitting before Meghan on the porch steps.
“Ida!” Alice waved joyously as the oldest of the O’Muil sisters came into view.
“Hey sis,” Meghan murmured, turning to the woman on the bottom of the porch and saying, “That’ll be twenty-nine, ninety-five, hon,” as she stacked her Tarot cards and wrapped them in the watered silk cloth.
“What the hell is going on here?” Ida said.
“Buffalo Soldier” started again.
“I’m getting high,” said her youngest sister. “And Meg’s making a bit of a profit.”
As Meghan, a round, saucy woman with raspberry colored tendrils stuffed the money down her brassiere, she began singing in a bad Caribbean accent, “He was a Buffalo Soldier! He was a Buffalo Soldier,” then interrupted herself with her bored, world weary voice and said to the woman, “Hon, that was great. Anytime you need another reading, feel free to call. Alright? You can go now.”
“Hold on,” Alice said, rising and opening the screen door. It hung open for a while before slowly closing. A few moments later, the short middle aged woman with ginger colored hair came out with two joints and a sunflower. “Life is short,” she said in a toneless voice, “Rock it out.”
The woman looked a little perplexed.
“Thanks,” she said after a while.
“No,” said Alice, taking a hit from her joint. She smiled contentedly, and passed it to Meghan. “Thank you.”
“Do either of you crazy bitches know where my grandchildren went tonight?” Ida said.
“To the abandoned factory over the train tracks,” Meghan said, bored as ever. “I thought they’d be alright. Sis, it’s been one hell of a night.” Meghan opened the the screen door for Ida who went in first, followed by her younger sister. “I’ve done five readings. That bitch Claudia Mc.Arthur came over. I fucked her reading up good, but she still paid me.”
Meghan shrugged, and filled the tea kettle with water. She set it on the stove in the little, yellow painted kitchen. “What I really want is for Aily to come over so I can do a reading and tell her that Kevin’s got her knocked up again.”
Alice chuckled low, a high woman’s laughter. “She’ll shoot all of us and Kevin last if you ever do that.”
Meghan shrugged and went to the cupboards to dig out some Ginseng.
“And Alice turned one hell of a profit tonight. She sold to Kirk.”
“Yo sold to your own nephew?” Ida said.
“Oh, please,” Alice sat down in her chair. “He doesn’t even get high. I sold to that bitch he’s been with. I hate her. And her little skank friends. I was back in the garage with them. They were playing Groundation and they all had dreadlocks--white people, white as my ass with dreadlocks, smoking reefer. About twenty-five in that garage. Some of ‘em high school kids. It was hotter than a mug, but I think I made next month’s rent money. Also,” Alice said, “I’ve got to change locations for where I grow my shit. I think the police might be on my ass soon,.”
“What?” Ida took out a cigarette. The tea kettle began to scream.
“A few cops’ kids were there,” Alice shrugged. “I don’t trust the motherfuckers.”
Meghan began pouring the hot water into a huge glass measuring cup, and adding ginseng.
“And the Cane kid.... he bought about fifty dollars of my best shit,” Alice said, reaching across the table for one of her sister’s cigarettes. “He won’t get up until noon tomorrow. But It leaves you feeling real nice. None of that shit where you have an anvil pounding in your brain the next morning. Let’s you down,” Alice dropped her hand and grinned. “Nice and easy.”
“Well,” Megan said, studying the tea in the measuring cup, “time to go out and give tea to the trees.”
Ida shook her head.
“You laugh, Ida Lawry, but they like ginseng.”
“They do,” Alice agreed. “If there’s some left, hook the kind bud up with a little.”
“Unh huh,” Meghan nodded, pushing open the screen door.


“He was a Buffalo Soldier...


“Goddamnit, Ally!” Ida cried. “Take that CD off of repeat or I’m gonna throw you , Bob, and the Wailers out of the fucking window!”
“You need to get high,” Alice pushed a joint across the table.
“You need to change that CD.”

ONCE THEY HAD REASONED THAT there was really no door to let them into the factory, it was Vaughan who was the first to clear out the last of the broken glass and climb through a window.
“Be careful,” Madeleine said, as her younger brother disappeared through the window. He landed safely on the other side with a soft crunching of broken glass.
Next went Mackenzie and then Tina and then they brought Madeleine through. Vaughan was holding the flashlight and now he shined it around.
“Make sure there are no rats, “Madeleine said.
“It’s just boxes and old machinery.”
“In the right light,” Mackenzie whispered, “or less light... that could be a dragon.”
“Please dont’ say that,” Madeleine murmured.
“I want to go high up,” Tina said. “I want to be able to look down on the town.”
Vaughan handed her the flashlight, and she led them past boxes and old presses, machines she could not identify.
“There’s an old elevator,” Mackenzie said.
“If you won’t try it, I won’t.”
“I feel like we should have a thread,” said Madeleine. “Tied to the window we came in from so we can find our way back in case we get lost. Like in the fairy tales.”
“Or with Theseus,” said Vaughan.
“What?”
“Theseus and the Minotaur,” Vaughan said. “The half bull-half man at the end of the labyrinth.”
“That was not the story I needed to be re--”


“ROAR!”


A growl came from behind her, Madeleine screamed and turned around strangling Mackenzie whose blue eyes popped out in fear over the result of his practical joke.
When she came to herself and Mackenzie looked white and dazed, the boy touched his throat for a bruise.
“Oh, my God!” Tina said. “Well, at least we know you’re ready for the Minotaur when he comes.”
“I almost killed you,” Madeleine marveled. “Kenzie, I thought you were the Minotaur.”
Mackenzie swallowed. His throat hurt.
As they walked, Vaughan said, “Did you feel something?”
“Vaughan, don’t start that?,” Madeleine said.
“No, I’m serious,” he said, “Did you feel some---Shit! There it is again.”
Then Tina said, “Someone dropped something on me.”
There was a rumble, and a high crate fell from above smashing open a few feet before Tina. She stood still with her flashlight, eyebrow raised.
Madeleine dragged her away just in time as another box fell. And then two more.
“What the--?” Vaughan started.
And just then a real ROAR filled the darkness, and then ahead of them a tongue of flame shot out and before the scream died in her mouth, Madeleine’s hand was caught in that of her brother.
“It is time to turn around,” he said. “And leave.... Very slowly.”
Vaughan went first, very slowly. He was cool, accept for when another box dropped out of the sky. Tina went behind him. He and she and Mackenzie and Madeleine wasted no time in crawling out of that window. Vaughan didn’t breathe until he’d crossed the train tracks. He did not look back. The wind felt good. He itched, the tingling of suppressed fear on his skin was so fierce.
“What was that?” Mackenzie’s eyes were wild and his hair, gold-white in the night light was tousled by the wind.
“I don’t know,” Vaughan whispered so neither of the girls could hear him. “And I don’t care how gay you are, you’re sleeping with me tonight.”
“Shit,” Madeleine said behind them. “I need a cigarette.”
“I quite second that,” Tina murmured, a Lucky Strike already clenched between her teeth.


“You think she’s home now?” Rodder asked Dice.
“Madeleine?” Dice shrugged. “She might be.”
“She probably isn’t,” Rodder said.
“It’s almost eleven o’clock. Where else would she be?” Dice reasoned. “You’re home.”
He stuffed Copenhagen under his tongue and began sucking.
Rodder, sitting ram rod straight on his sofa, clasped his hands and then ran them over his clean shaven scalp.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I guess I could call. She said I could.”
“Then do it.”
“She didn’t encourage it, though,” Rodder said.
“Rod... “ Dice swilled the spit it his mouth, took up a small cup and spat out the juice. “Didn’t you all date for three years? Doesn’t that give you some sort of right to expect to be received if you call?”
“You talk like a book sometimes.”
“You talk like a book all the time. It’s the reason we never win any games. Everyone’s too busy studying.”
“The right I thought I had was... I was the only one she’d ever been with.”
Dice raised an eyebrow.
“Would you call her?” Rodder demanded.
“No,” Dice pinched some more tobacco into his mouth. “She’d hang up on me.”
“You’ve been with her, though.”
“Is that what it is?” Dice smiled wickedly. For a moment Rodder wanted to pop him.
“You’ve all been with her,” Rodder said. “No one but Bone would call her though, and she’d hang up on him too. So what does my...? what does the fact that I had her have to do with anything?”
“You had my cousin, Ashley.”
“This summer.”
Dice shook his head knowingly, “You had her this weekend too. She said she was waiting for you. I know you fucked her.”
Rodder stared at Dice, red.
“Didn’t you?” Dice said. “And she’s supposed to be the hottest thing in school, and she puts out for anyone and you’ve had her in your bed, against a wall, against the Red Barn, in back seats and you’re still thinking about Madeleine.
“So yes. I fucked her. I fucked Madeleine. Once. It didn’t mean anything to her. That pissed me off. It hurt, Rod. But it’s cool now. You can call her. You’re the one she loves. Call her.”
Dice spat into the cup again.
Rodder rolled his eyes. “Wisdom from on high.”
He picked up the phone and dialed the number.
“Hello?” A scratchy voice came up out of sleep.
“Mr. Fitzgerald?” Rodder felt his voice cracking like he was thirteen again.
Suddenly Cedric woke up.
“Roderigo?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“She’s not here.”
“Oh,” Rodder felt stupid.
“I’ll tell her you called, though.”
“Oh,” Rodder said again. “Thanks, Mr. Fitzgerald. Good night, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
“Good night, Rod.”
Cedric hung up the phone.
Dice looked at his friend. Rodder was completely red.
“You need a beer,” Dice said. “Look in your mom’s fridge and see if she has a beer.”

IAN CANE WAS HIGH OUT of his mind by now. Tori Amos was singing out of the CD player.

Never was a cornflake girl
thought that was a good solution
hanging with the raisin girls
she’s gone to the other side
giving us a yo heave ho
things are getting kind of gross
and I go at sleepy time


this is not real
this is not
this is not really happening


“Oh,” Ian sang with Tori, “You bet your life it is! You bet your life it is! You bet your liiiieeeefe!”

Both of his windows were open and a fan was going, so it wasn’t even smoky in here. This was, quite frankly, some of the best shit he’d ever smoked.
The only thing I’m missing is liquor and sex.
He was at the roach of the joint, and so he finished it, and then stashed his ash tray and the papers and his bag under the bed. He kicked the towels and dirty clothes away from the door, and peeked down the hall. It was late. Everyone was sleep. He heard no noise from downstairs. Dad wasn’t asleep in front of the television. Tori was not loud enough to wake anyone, but Ian went and turned her down anyway.

And the man with the golden gun
thinks he knows so much
thinks he knows so much!
And the man with the golden gun
thinks he knows so much
thinks he knows so much!

Ian went down the stairs, his bare feet padding on the carpet, and then cool against the kitchen linoleum. He opened the refrigerator and made a pool of yellow light across the floor. Dad had bought a 24 case of Miller Gold Draft and started on it already. Ian took out one can, then shook his head, took out two and padded quickly back up the stairs.
He rolled another joint and stuck in a Beck CD. At the end of this joint he murmured, “All that is missing is the sex.”
He remembered hearing Michael Radcliffe, the boy who would probably be valedictorian this year talk about how great masturbating was when he was high. In fact it’s all he talked about. Michael Radcliffe had allegedly been attractive once upon a time. Now he always looked dirty. His hair was spiky like Ian’s own, but always a mess. And it had no particular color. Michael always looked high, and his upper lip hung down, defeated, over his lower one. He played in the drum section and liked to talk about gay sex, They Might Be Giants and wacking off.
“It’s great when you’re high. You can see colors. It’s like you’re going to the moon.”
“Naw man,” Ian waved it off as if he were actually talking to another person. He finished the first beer, opened the second one and started rolling one last joint. One last. Gotta quit..
“Naw man,” Ian stood up and chuckled, tightening his chest, and stretched his ribcage while he sucked in as much smoke as he could. “That’s fucked up,” he said shallowly, letting the smoke leak from his nostrils as he went to shut off his blinds and took out the Beck CD, switching to Portishead.
“This bitch is fucked up,” Ian moaned and giggled as he reached into his dresser for the lotion. The lead singer began to moan through the music that made Ian feel even higher.
“Ooooh,” Ian wailed along to Portishead, imitating the music, swilling the last of the beer and trying to finish off the joint.
“Ooooh.” he was cracking his own shit up, he started laughing and then coughing on the joint. He snuffed out the roach and cackled as he took off his belt, and let his jeans fall down.
He squirted the lotion on his hands, and began absentmindedly crooning to the songs as he stroked himself until he realized that his moaning was too loud and too insistent. It was no longer a joke, and he felt like he was fucking himself through the chords of the music. He felt like he was pulling himself in and out of lights and weed smoke, and riding on beer and jism. He wanted to laugh. Then he didn’t want to do anything. His hands moved faster and faster, his mouth hung open, he sat up straighter and set his face in tenser concentration.
He heard himself losing control, moaning, and then he shot forward and came and passed out.


“I THINK WE SHOULD GO SEE YOUR AUNT,”Madeleine said when they got back to the house.
“What for?” Tina said.
“Well, because she reads Tarot cards and everything. I mean, Meghan sees stuff, doesn’t she?”
“Meghan O’Muil is a quack,” Madeleine said.
“Well, still,” Vaughan said. “She might know something. I think we should go see her.”
“When?” said Tina.
“What are you doing now?”
Tina pulled a hand through her hair in an imitation of boredom.
“They’re still up,” Mackenzie said. “They never go to bed.”
“Well, shit. Are we walking?”
“We could,” Madeleine said. “Or we could take Dad’s car.
“Tina shrugged. “It’s nice outside. It’ll be cold before long. Let’s hoof it, tonight.”
On the front porch, Tina took out a Lucky Strike, lit it, and declared, “There’s nothing like fresh air on a beautiful September night.”
Reaching Windham Street required walking down Michael one block short of the train tracks and the old factory. A car whizzed by and Vaughan said, “That’s Bone Mc.Arthur’s Mustang.”
The taillights of the car pulsed red for a second, and then were gone.
“Um hum,” said Tina, “and I’d recognize that tousled hair streaming out of it anywhere.”
“It was Ashley,” Mackenzie said.
“You think she’ll fuck him?” Madeleine asked.
“Did you even have to ask?” Tina, muttered, turning a sharp look to her friend.

They headed south to a street of little white and stone houses, set off by deep yards where few cars passed on a Friday night, and one or two cats meowed inoffensively as they made their way down the block. 1120 Windham was a two story wooden house with a small front porch and blue shutters. Ivy grew up it, and the door was never locked.
Inside Frank Sinatra was playing from the kitchen, which meant that now Grandma had command of the music that would be listened to. The four young people threaded their way through the living room and dining room, down the main corridor to the kitchen where the three sisters were sitting. Meghan, reading tea leaves; Ida smoking cigarettes and Annie tracing abstract figures across a notepad and muttering, “I did it my way...”
The three sisters looked up at them, and Ida said, “Of all the places in Jamnia for teenagers to come on a Friday night...”
“You picked the most interesting.” Meghan smiled.
“That was what I was just about to say, Alice agreed, and slipped on her black rimmed spectacles, blinking owlishly.
“What brings you all here?” Ida stood up. “Who wants something to drink?”
“Maybe later, Grandma,” Tina waved it off. “We came because we had a question for Aunt Meghan.”
“I love the way they call me Aunt and not Great- Aunt,” Meghan said, sitting up straighter and taking out her cigarettes.
“We went to the abandoned factory near the tracks.”
Meghan nodded. This was not news.
“And when we got there boxes started dropping and all this and we heard noises,” Tina took out her cigarettes, still distraught by the memory. “And then we heard this roaring--”
“Like a lion,” Madeleine jumped in.
Alice clapped her thigh and laughed.
“No, I’m serious,” Madeleine said.
Tina continued, “And then this fire shot out.”
“And that,” Vaughan said smoothly, “is when we decided it was best to leave.”
“And you thought,” Meghan smiled slowly and sipped from her ginseng. “That I.. . being a medium and all... could tell you what it was?” She raised an eyebrow.
The teenagers looked at her.
“Except for this one,” Meghan gestured to Madeleine with her cigarette, “who thinks I’m a quack.”
“I-- “ Madeleine opened her mouth to protest. Meghan waved it off with her cigarette hand.
“I am a quack,” she said. “Most of the time. But there are some things I don’t have to be Nostradamus to tell you. Like, I can tell Tina that her twin’s getting laid right now, because that’s what Ashley’s like. I could tell Kevin, if he ever came over here, that he’ll lose the game tomorrow. That’s what his team is like. And I can tell you what was going on in the factory.”
Tina’s eyes lit up. So did Madeleine’s.
Meghan smiled gently.
“All that wonderful noise and sight and sound,” she said. “Was nothing more than little Luke Madeary.”
“Luke Madeary!” Vaughan and Tina said at the same time.
Meghan looked at Ida, and then she and Annie looked at each other.
“Luke...” Tina began, “Madeary... lives in an abandoned factory?”
Meghan and Alice nodded.
“But how?” Mackenzie said. “I mean....” and then he shook his head.
“That, my dears,” Meghan said, finishing off the cigarette with an elegant inhalation, “is a very long story.”







v i.


IAN CANE WAS IN A STATE of confusion. When he woke up he could hear Portishead whining away on his CD player. Presently, he blinked and realized that his head was on the floor, and he was bent over with his hands around his still stiff dick.
“Oh, shit,” Ian muttered, lifting himself. His room smelled sourly of old weed, and as he lifted himself up from the floor, and looked around he saw beer cans and a glass ashtray with burnt out roaches. The room was cool from the early morning chill of the air coming through the open windows.
He realized he must have fallen asleep right after coming. His head was throbbing now and he had to piss. Ian looked at the clock. It was only about 6:30. No one would be awake in the house on a Saturday morning.
Ian stood up with a grunt and turned off the CD player, then opened his door and went down the hall for the restroom. He pissed and took two Excedrin. When he came back to his room he locked the door and stripped naked, and then climbed into bed. Nuzzling the pillow he muttered, and was surprised by how raw his voice sounded, “This would make one hell of a story.”
But then he realized he had no one to tell it too.
Sleep. Sleep until...
“Shit!” Ian woke himself up, played with the alarm clock for a moment. There was a home football game today at twelve. Which meant band was at nine. Which meant he had to take the car and drive into town at eight, which meant about an hour more to turn off the world.
“I hate my life,” Ian grumbled, and punched his pillow before burying his face in it.


ASHLEY FOSTER STRETCHED ACROSS THE BED, reaching, and on finding nothing she opened her eyes and moaned.
Bone’s broad backside was on the other side of the room. She watched him rummaging slowly through his drawers, his brown hair sticking up. She knew his bottom lip was thrust out in that perpetual pout. His brows were furrowed.
“Bone,” Ashley moaned.
He turned around slowly. Everything about him was deliberate and studied. She was right. His big lips were pouting, his brow was beetled. He was not unattractive. He wasn’t Rodder. But he definitely wasn’t ugly.
“What time is it?” she said, reclining on one elbow, thinking about covering her breasts, then deciding she didn’t care.
“Almost seven.”
“Almost... Almost seven!” she started. Then why the hell be awake!
As if reading her mind, he said, “There’s a game today, Ash. You know that. We gotta be at field house by eight.”
“Shit,” she said.
“That means you gotta get dressed too.”
“And go?” she said. This whole having to sneak in and out of the big house on 1850 10th Street was not to her liking.
“You can’t be here when Mom wakes up,” Bone said. “You’ll leave with me. You might as well shower.”
“And what if they catch me in the second shower?” Ashley demanded.
Bone raised an eyebrow and said, “Why’d you be in the second shower?”
“Because you’ll be in the--” Ashley began, and then began to catch on.
Bone’s dangle, massive and red tipped, swelled and began rising out of the tangle of dark hair under his belly. She was, Ashley admitted to herself, a ho. She’d hear her mother go on, pruidish,, about how sex wasn’t that great and penises weren’t attractive, but Aileen must have been full of shit or how else would she have been only fifteen when she’d gotten pregnant the first time? Or have had four more kids after Ashley and her bitch of a twin had been born.
Ashley loved the cock. She loved Bone’s. It stood up, called to her. She got up out of bed and followed.
He said, “We can go down the hall buck. No one’s up yet.”
Ashley smiled and said, “I wouldn’t say no one’s up.”

“Are you awake?” Vaughan asked Mackenzie.
“Yes,” his friend said beside him.
“Oh.” For no apparent reason, both boys laughed in the bed.
“I want to go back to sleep,” Mackenzie said.
“Why don’t you? Oh,” Vaughan remembered. “You got band.”
“That’s right.”
“Another good reason not to join,” Vaughan said.
“Do you plan to join anything before we graduate?” Mackenzie asked him, still looking at the ceiling.
“Not if I can help it. But you know what I wanted to do?”
“Hum?”
“Steal a car.”
“Vaughan!” Mackenzie turned around.
“Dude, Ease up. Plus, your breath! I didn’t say I stole a car. I said I wanted to. Chill out.”
“I would chill out, but with you ‘I want’ always means ‘I will.’” Mackenzie lay back deeper in bed, pulling the covers under his chin. After all, the school was only across the field. “I can’t believe you’re so wild this year.”
“I can’t believe you’re gay.”
“Well...” Mackenzie didn’t know what else to say.
“I mean, you’re a Republican and everything.”
“You know Rich Tafel?”
“The gay Republican senator?”
“He’s a congressman.”
“Whatever--,” Vaughan said. “--that you’ve got the poster of on your wall on.”
“I have dreams about him,” Mackenzie confessed.
Now it was Vaughan’s turn to be impressed. Vaughan turned around and looked at his friend. Mackenzie turned toward Vaughan, his blond hair hanging in his face as the other boy traced circles on his pillow case. “I don’t know what’s weirder to tell you, that I get hard thinking about guys or that I get hard.”
“I don’t know what’s harder to hear.”
“I’m serious, Vaughan.”
“Me too. You’ve always been such an altar boy. It’s... I don’t think it’s you being a homosexual that’s odd. It’s you being sexual... at all.”
“What about you?” Mackenzie looked at his friend.
“What about me?”
“Do you.... think about anyone?”
Vaughan was quiet, then he said. “You’re going to think this is stupid...”
“Vaughan, I just said I want to sleep with Rich Tafel... It can’t get any stupider than that.”
“I think about the story of Saint Clare a lot. I think about Saints a lot. The way other people think about sex. And... the way women think about their wedding day. I think about me-- all barefoot. And you know the Floating Franciscan?”
“He’s a myth.”
“He’s real.”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said. “But you never see him around anymore. And he doesn’t float.”
“We don’t know that,” Vaughan said, “but I think about him. I want... I don’t ever want to be married. Or ever be with anyone.” Vaughan turned away. “And now I’m finished.”
“You want to be a priest,” Mackenzie whispered. “I think that’s cool. I wanted to be a priest, but lately I... I want to sleep with guys more.”
“I don’t want to be a priest,” Vaughan said. “I want to be a saint.”
Mackenzie paused over this.
“I think... I think I don’t want to be a saint or anything,” Vaughan amended. “But I feel like I have no choice. Like it’s gonna happen. The way you didn’t wake up and say you wanted to be gay. It just happened. But it’s you and you like it. You do like it don’t you?”
Mackenzie shrugged. “I guess. I.... wanted to tell you. A while ago. A few years back.”
“What? A few years.”
“It didn’t just happen yesterday,” Mackenzie told him. “I’ve been feeling this way for a long time. I used to ask God--- ‘Please Jesus! Make me stop being gay!’
“You know the whole Linus Roache Fan Club thing?”
“You’ve got a thing for Linus Roache.”
“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “Ever since I saw him and Robert Carlysle in Priest. I kept on wishing I was Robert Carlysle. I couldn’t get that movie out of my head for a week. Shit, Vaughan!” Mackenzie sat up in bed and looked at his open hands, “It feels so good to tell you this. All of this.... Finally.”
“Well,” Vaughan said, sitting up also. “Have you told anyone else?”
Mackenzie shook his head.
“You gotta tell Tina,”
“I was hoping you’d let it slip out for me.”
“No,” Vaughan shook his head. “That won’t work. You gotta tell her yourself. I let it slip out to dad, though.”
Mackenzie looked horrified.
“But you know Dad won’t say anything. “ Vaughan said, “As long as we’re talking. Who else?”
“Whaddo you mean who else?”
“Do you think about?”
“Rodder,” Mackenzie confessed.
“Madeleine’s?”
Mackenzie grinned and nodded.
“And Mr. Stearne the drama teacher.”
“Good, cause he might take you up on the offer.”
“I’m not offering. Goof. And he’s not gay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty positive. And.... I’ve thought about Bone Mc.Arthur.”
“Oh, my God, Mackenzie Foster... you’re fired!”











v i i

It felt good to swing your hair around and be sexy in short, short clothes, make yourself the subject of long longing fantasies with a swish of your pom poms, put your hands in your thick blond hair and then swing your head around winsomely at the head of the cheerleaders. Had her mother done this? Had her mother been picked up once by other cheerleaders, and put on the top of a triangle? Had her mother ever led the girls of Jamnia high school in a slow march toward the crowd, with red and white pom poms like weapons or like sex toys jabbing in and out, a half wicked smile on her face.
She would never admit she loved the band. She loved the beating of the drums, she loved hearing John Calhoun growl out directions, “Left, right, left, right. leeeeft,” the direct- ions to the marching band that no one in the bleachers would hear. She loved the blare of the trumpets.

BUMP BUMP BA BUMP
BA BUM BA BUM


“Yeah!”

BUMP BUM BA BUMP
BA BUM BA BUMP!

To Ashley it did not matter if the team was losing to Saint Xavier. For most of the game it was all about what Rodder was doing out on the field, or what Bone was trying to accomplish. It might have been about teachers who had once been students cheering for the team, and all the time never expecting them to win.
But right now it was all about her.



BUMP BUM BA BUMP
BA BUM BA BUMP

And in response the crowd roared:

“YEAH!”





“Where’s Rod gone?” Kevin Foster demanded.
“He’s been crazy all morning,” Dice said from the bench. “He’ll be back.”
“He better be back,” Kevin turned away and muttered to himself. “He’s the only one of you worthless motherfuckers who might turn this game around.”
Roderigo Luis Gonzales had run off the field in uniform and was passing under the bleachers, looking for Madeleine. When he found her feet-- he’d know her feet anywhere, he wanted to hoot. Instead he did a little victory dance and then ran to his car to find the Igloo cooler.

“And so,” Claudia Daniels was telling her cousin and her friend, “Rahim comes to me talking this shit about ‘Baby, when you gone give me some?’ and I told him, ‘Back off, niggah, I ain’t given you shit!’ My daddy’s a Methodist minister and Mama was a good catholic.’ I told thim--”
“You had virtue,” Tina said, ashing her cigarette.
“Exactly.” Claudia wrapped a microbraid around her finger. “So now he’s still hanging on, but I don’t know how long he can last because deep inside I think he believes I’m gon break down and give him some. You know? Only I’m not. And he comes telling me-, ‘Baby, when we make love it’s gon be raspberries and cherries and whipped cream and chocolate all over the place.’ I said, ‘Like shit! This ain’t no Dairy Queen.’
“No, Madeleine, I’m serious,” Claudia said when her cousin started to laugh, “You got to be strong, be able to tell a man no.”
Madeleine privately thought that if she had someone like Rahim Woodward she’d have no difficultly being strong and telling him no. This made her smile all the more. She touched the edge of her long black hair and made a note to share this thought with Tina at about the same time she felt a tug on her foot, and stopped herself from screaming.
Madeleine Fitzgerald looked down below her, while the trumpets of the band were still blaring, and Mackenzie was leading the brass section in forming the face of the Jamnia Wildcat.
Under her, grinning idiotically, was Roderigo Gonzales lifting up a bouquet of roses.
“Rod!” Madeleine got down on her knees on the metal bleachers.
“Madeleine!” Claudia called, not knowing what had happened.
“Shut up, girl!” Madeleine said.
Tina merely smiled down, and made it a point not to ash on Rodder.
“These are for you,” Rod said, smiling up at her.
Carefully, Madeleine reached down and pulled up the roses saying, “Tina, help, they’re stuck.”
As Tina helped Madeleine bring up the roses she said to Rod, “Awesome move, man. Roses!”
Which surprised Rod, because he’d always thought Tina hated him.
“There’s a little card,” Rodder told her.
“Madeleine turned the bouquet around, found the card and took it out.
“Will you be my 29th?” she read, furrowing her brow.
“I wanted to say Valentine, but it’s not February. It’s September twenty-eitgth and so... You know?”
Madeleine nodded and smiled dumbly.
“I gotta go back now,” Rodder said. “But... I wanted to give that to you. And, can I come by the house tonight?”
“Yeah. Rod I love--”
“I gotta go,” he told her, disappearing into the darkness under the bleachers. “I’ll be by tonight.”
That was the last she heard.
“I guess now that means we have to root for Jamnia?” Claudia guessed.
“Yes,” Madeleine said, trying not to smile too much. “It does.”
Tina adjusted the rosary around her neck and commented, “Who says romance is dead?”

“I KNOW THAT’S RIGHT,” IAN Cane said, poking him in the back, and grinning merrily.
Mackenzie thought that the other boy had a such a nice smile, and it was such a rare smile, that he hated to say, “Know what’s right?” but Ian kept on looking at him, waiting for an answer, and so he had to say it.
“Your tee shirt,” Ian said. At the look on Mackenzie’s face, Ian said, “Do you dress in the dark?”
Mackenzie reddened, and said, “Actually, yeah.”
“Your tee shirt says,” Ian moved behind him. Mackenzie could feel the older boy’s breath on his neck as Ian’s finger moved along his back, between his shoulder blades, down to the small.
“BAND ISN’T FOR SISSIES.”
Mackenzie laughed now and said, “Well, it isn’t.”
After the half time show, the band was always excused. They stepped out of the heavy, ridiculous uniforms and stretched their legs band pants and sweaty tee shirts, hair havocked by the tall hats they had worn. Mackenzie had never been aware of how silly he looked in band pants until right now.
Ian didn’t look stupid.
“I’d like to see the football team march around in all this crap,” Ian said. “And wear a big old hat that looks like an eye shadow brush with feathers coming out of it. No, I’m serious,” he said when Mackenzie tried to laugh. “And do you think they can make a wildcat?” Ian shook his head, “I don’t think so.”
It was weird and dizzying to have all at once this much attention from Ian Cane.
“I don’t see you around much,” Mackenzie said, realizing he’d better talk.
“After band?” Ian shrugged. “I figure eight to ten hours of my day, five days a week... And then the whole football game thing is all Jamnia High School gets from me.”
“You don’t live in the city, do you?”
Ian shook his head. “Lawrence County Limits,” he said. “Outside of town. Almost town. You know they’d make me pay taxes to go here?”
“What?”
“Um hum,” Ian nodded, took out his cigarettes, offered one to Mackenzie. Mackenzie shook his head.
“So I’ve got my residence listed as my Aunt Race’s house,” Ian muttered, his lips closed around the cigarette.
“Race Cane?” said Mackenzie. Then. “I guess she would be your aunt.”
“How you know her?”
Mackenzie looked embarrassed.
“C’ mon?” Ian’s eyes lit up.
Mackenzie shrugged, “I was gonna say that one of my aunts sells...” Mackenzie mouthed the word, “weed.”
“Ally O’Muil is your aunt!” Ian cried.
Now Mackenzie looked surprised.
“Yeah,” Mackenzie nodded.
“My aunt doesn’t get high.” Ian told Mackenzie. “Her worthless ass ex-boyfriend used to. He still comes around her house sometimes. She’d get it for him. And now she sells it to him cause she figures... might as well make a profit. She doesn’t know I know shit like that. But yeah....” said Ian.
“And sometimes you take it from her?” Mackenzie guessed.
“Goddamn, you’re no dummy,” Ian marveled.
Ian just kept smiling at him. Mackenzie waited for the older boy to touch him again, and he wasn’t satisfied until Ian’s hand landed on his shoulder and stayed there, companionably.

Madeleine was sitting between Tina and Claudia on the abandoned back steps of the high school, when Rick Rafferty and Mr. Stearne passed them.
“Great game wasn’t it?” Rick Rafferty said.
Madeleine nodded, remembered herself, and said, “Sure was, Mr. Rafferty.”
“Something turned Rodder around after half time,” he said while Madeleine clutched the flowers to herself and wondered if Rafferty knew anything. How could he?
“Yeah, well, at least we have some chance of a victory this year, now,” said Stearne, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“Who cares as long as the basketball team takes home the championship,” Mr. Rafferty joked back.
Tina was about to say, “Who cares at all?” when instead she said, “Mr. Rafferty, what do you know about Luke Madeary?”
Rick looked taken a back, and then he said, “Luke... You know Luke. Long, dark hair, moody expression.”
“Sort of looks like your long lost cousin,” Mr. Stearne commented pushing his glasses up with his classic wit.
“Ha,” Tina replied dryly. “I know who he is. But....”
“What?” Mick Rafferty suddenly looked very guarded.
“Do you know where he lives?” said Tina.
Both teachers looked at her, and then at Madeleine.
“You do? Don’t you?” Madeleine said.
Tina cocked her head, waiting for an answer.
Mick Rafferty looked to George Stearne, the shorter man with his goatee and glasses turned business like to Tina, and said, “We have to go now. It’s getting late.”
“Are you up past your bed time?” Madeleine asked, and Tina cackled. The sky might have been cloudy, but it was scarcely three in the afternoon.
“And, by the way,” Stearne went on, ignoring her questions, “you are Jaqueline Finney’s understudy for the role of Magnolia Hawkes. I’m counting on you, Tina. That is a big job, believe it or not. And Madeleine did get the part of Julie. Just thought you should know.” he eyed both of them carefully. Then said, “I believe you two are up to it.”
Then the teachers were gone.
Madeleine and Tina were embracing and carrying on and when they separated, Madeleine said, “You know he told us that to take our attention from Luke?”
By now the two men were specs on the other side of the parking lot, Stearne getting into the driver’s side of his Celica, Rafferty on the other.
“I know,” Tina admitted, still grinning from ear to ear, “And he knows we know. But the bastard also knows it worked.”
“Maddy!” Claudia stood up, pointing.
The other girls stood up.
From off the field Rodder was coming, muddy, and grinning, his blue bandanna ragged around his head, helmet swinging from his hands.
“Maddy!” he shouted.
Before she could shout back he swung her around and crushed her to him. Then they separated.
“Now we’re both a mess,” he said, a little forlorn.
“It’ll come out,” Madeleine shrugged. “It’s only jeans and a tee shirt. Come over tonight, Rod.”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
“I don’t give a damn about the bells,” said Madeleine. “Just be there.”

‘NOW WHY DIDN’T WE ANSWER her question?” George Stearne demanded, chalking his cue and rounding the billiard table. He took a swig from his beer.
` “About what?” Mick Rafferty stood on the other side of the table, waiting for the shorter man to hit the ball.
George leaned across the pool table and did so.
“Two in the side pocket,” George Stearne grinned, and looked up.
“I hate it when you brag.”
“About Luke Madeary,” Stearne said, swigging from his beer again.

On the jukebox in the crowded Tsalagi you could hear them singing.

Walk right in!
Sit right down!
Daddy let your mind roll on!

“I don’t know,” Mick licked his lips.
“Man, it’s your turn,” George said.
Mick seemed a little dazed, and then he shook his head and nodded. After Mick had managed to knock the cue ball into the hole, and George Stearne with a curious look of half pity, half duty more than gloating, began to methodically knock all of the other colored balls into their pockets, Mick said, “I didn’t think he’d want other people knowing he... You know...”
“Lives in a factory,” George said dryly, knocking the last ball into its pocket. He stood up straight, looking very much like a school teacher and said, “Mick, my friend, let me remind you that we shouldn’t know he lives in a factory. He should be in foster care. And when he turns eighteen he’s just going to be homeless and probably a felon.”
“A fel--”
“Mick, it’s gotta be a felony to just move into an abandoned factory. It’s gotta be.”
“What are you saying?” Mick Rafferty lifted his beer mug to his lips. The beer was warm and thick, half bitter-sour, half sweet in his mouth.
The little man in his glasses and goatee shrugged. “Maybe this shouldn’t just be your little secret. I think that’s what I’m saying. What does he eat?”
Mick looked astounded.
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“His clothes, what he eats and.... “ George Stearne lifted his beer mug, but didn’t drink from it. “I like Tina Foster. She’s a... she’s got spunk. She’ll go far with it. Far out of Jamnia.”


She’s heading for the cheatin’ side of town...

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes!

The Eagles warned.

“I think we could have told her and Madeleine is all.”
“Geo, that’s just great,” Mick said.
“Well, if you want Luke to have help, but you want it to be secret help, that’s the only thing I can think of. Get two people who know how to keep a secret.”

The doors swung open, and the patrons of the Tsalagi erupted into cheers. Then the old men with grey hair, plaid shirts and eagle noses roses up.
“What’s this?” George Stearne said.
“Oh, it’s Kevin and Aileen... Dressed up too.”
“Kevin!” Alfred Crow, old and round as ever, called from his bar stood, “We smell a championship this year in Jamnia!”
“Let’s hold on and see!” Kevin called back. He was in dress slacks and a white shirt. He wrapped an arm around Aileen. She had on a summer dress, pale blue with white blossoms. But above their heads, George Stearne heard thunder.
“She used to be so gorgeous,” Mick said as Kevin bent to kiss his wife, and Aileen whispered something to him.
“Used to be?” George raised an eyebrow. “She still is. And that after six kids.”
“She’s still nice to look at,” Mick acknowledged.
“But Ashley....”
George Stearne’s eyes lit up and then narrowed suspiciously all in one moment.
“What?” Mick said.
“Exactly. What?” George replied. “You’ve been going on about Ashley for a while now.”
“Can’t a man dream?”
George shook his head and said, “You can do whatever you want, but it’s not always that wise.”
“I’m just saying Ash Foster is--”
“And it’s not always that wise,” George continued, “because half the time when a man starts dreaming, he starts scheming. Then it’s all over. You better watch yourself, man.”
“You’re nuts,” Mick said.
“No, I’m not,“ his friend told him. “You’re young. You’re single. You want an adventure. You’re checking out cute students. You’ve got all the symptoms. You’re ready for an affair.”
Mick soured at that. He didn’t like the taste of his beer.
“You’ve got all the same symptoms,” Mick said. “Are you ready for an affair? Or maybe you’ve had one, and that’s how you got so wise?”
“I’m gonna get another beer. You want one, man?” said George Stearne.
“You had one?” Mick went on. “You been with a student?”
For a moment George Stearne--who was always in control--looked completely pissed off. And then he looked like himself again and he said, “I plead the Fifth,” and taking the two mugs, went back to the bar.

“SHE CAME OVER TALKING ABOUT about a family inheritance and telling me she wanted this and wanted that,” Cedric said.
“When?” said Ralph.
“When you and Ida went to the football game,” Cedric clarified. “Louise’s lousy ass was up here telling me she wanted four thousand dollars toward a new car and that she knew mama--who has been dead for a decade--left me some money. And that’s when I told her, back off bitch, I ain’t given you shit.
“I don’t think she’ll be back anytime soon. Ida,” he told, his friend, taking her lighter, “you don’t know how lucky you are to have sisters you can live with.”
Taking back the lighter, Ida disagreed. “You don’t know how lucky you are not to have to live with your sister.”
Madeleine came down the stairs, and her father looked her up and down.
“That’s a cute outfit, baby,” he said. “Now how ‘bout you run upstairs and put the rest of it on.”
“Daddy!”
“I’m serious, Madeleine.”
“This is the outfit.”
“Then you ought to find another.”
“Everyone’s dressing like this.”
“Be a trendsetter,” he said firmly. “Go upstairs and put some clothes on. Now.”
Madeleine didn’t try to resist the now. She made a point of sulking and hanging her shoulders, and then plodded up the stairs.
“She’s like her mother and her grandmother combined,” Cedric said, shaking his head. “And that’s dangerous.”
“Your mother,” Ralph said, ashing his cigarette and nodding with fond remembrance.
Cedric only nodded.
The doorbell rang from the front of the house and he called out, “Vaughan, where are you? Vaughan! Vaughan!” The doorbell rang again. Cedric heaved himself up out of the chair. “I’ll get it my goddamned self.”
He went down the corridor that a spare room, the library and the first story bathroom hung from, and then into the large, empty living room. On the other side of the door Cedric could see Rodder Gonzales standing with his hands in his jeans pockets, though when the boy saw the much shorter man, he took them out and stood at attention.
“Roderigo.”
“Mr. Fitzgerald.”
“Come on in. Don’t be strange.” He never said, “Don’t be a stranger.” “We’re all in the kitchen.”
Rodder nodded and shut the door behind him, following Cedric.
“Madeleine’s upstairs changing,” Cedric told Rodder thinking it was a shame because even if she wore a nun’s habit, the boy would probably have it off of her by midnight. The most difficult thing to deal with as a parent was not that your children had sex, but that you could not stop them.
“You wanna drink?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Sit, Rod,” he told the boy who was standing stiff as a board at the doorway while the three old adults drank around the table.
Ida patted a space for him and scooted over.
Cedric pulled down a glass. Ida opened the bottle of Old Grandad and a shot of amber splashed into the class. She pushed it toward him.
Rodder looked shocked, and then he looked to Mr. Fitzgerald, who took the bottle, poured himself and Ralph a shot, shrugged and downed the Scotch.
The other followed. The boy did the same, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“Oh, my--” he gasped.
Ida patted him kindly on the back.
“You’re a shot virgin.” she said, smiling.
“At least you didn’t spit it out,” Cedric said. He inhaled the last of his cigarette. The tip glowed bright red.
“Don’t a shot of Old Grandad make that cigarette taste just right?” he said to Ralph.
`I’ve done a shot with my priest, Rodder was thinking, my girlfriend’s dad and the grandmother of the girl I spent the summer screwing. This is too weird.
What was more, when Rodder looked around the table he was sure that the three older people smiling at him were thinking the same thing.
When Madeleine came downstairs, Cedric said, “That’s much better.”
“I look like a Mormon,” Madeleine said.
“You’re a pretty hot Mormon,” Rodder said, and then turned red, looking at his elders.
All Cedric said was, “Be home by midnight, or you’ll both be pumpkins!”