Confluence - 5. Future, Present and Past

“Then it’s settled,” Ellie said with satisfaction. She stood, hands on hips, looking at the shop’s north wall. “The soda fountain will be perfect here, and Papa and Uncle will get us the best marble and the best workmen to put it in, and Owen, you’ll order all the equipment from Mr. Dows, and the pharmacy,” she turned to the back of the shop, “will be there, and then there’s all this space here for anything else you want.”

“Yes, dear,” Owen mumbled.

“Owen, don’t sulk,” Ellie chided.

“Did you have something else in mind, Mr. Owen?” Layne interjected.

“No,” Owen said. “That’s a good plan. I was just thinking of a few things I ordered that I have to cancel. Win, come and show me how much space you think I should have for the pharmacy.”

“Oh, I’d say about a quarter or a third of the shop. Maybe from the back to about here?”

Owen, with his eyes on Ellie, who was examining the edges of the front windows, grabbed Layne’s crotch and squeezed. “I’m so glad that I have you to rely on, Doctor Layne.”

“Mister Owen, any assistance I can render, any time, you just let me know.”

“I know just the way these windows should be painted with the name of the shop,” Ellie mused. “Owen, are you listening?”

“I heard every word, darling.” Owen backed into Layne. “Oh, pardon me, Doctor.”

“And I know just the man to do it. He’s a little expensive, but worth every penny.”

“If you will excuse me,” Layne said, “I should return to my office now.”

“Appointment?” Owen asked.

“Just something I have to take care of.”

*******************************

In the next month, carpenters, plasterers, and other tradesmen busied themselves in Owen’s shop; and matrons, socially ambitious women, and business leaders swarmed to Layne’s practice. With Owen, Layne reviewed the procedures for stocking a pharmacy in his own dispensary, which he planned to convert into an additional infirmary when Owen’s shop opened. He brought Jordan in to teach Owen.

“Jordan knows the dispensary as well as I do,” Layne told Owen. “Maybe better. Jordan, I’d like you go over everything in here with Mr. Owen, what each medication is and what it’s used for, how it’s administered, and what are the dangers it might pose.”

Jordan watched silently as Layne left for an appointment with a patient.

“Mr. Moreau, I don’t think you liked me much when we first met.”

“Mr. Owen, I think the feeling was mutual.”

“Is it going to be a problem, you teaching me?”

“No sir.” Jordan began pulling jars down from a top shelf. “Doctor Layne is satisfied with you, so I have no problem. If he’s happy, I’m happy. He’s been good to me.” He stopped and held Owen’s gaze. “I hope you’ll be good to him. He deserves to have some good things happen in his life.”

**********************

Reverend Joseph Fielden set upon his roast beef with a good appetite. “How are things, Bill?”

His dining companion, Doc Lawson, was devouring a large ham steak. “Oh, nothing to complain of. Nothing major.”

“How about minor?”

“Well,” Lawson picked his teeth, “my trade is a little down. Patients going off to see this fellow Layne. You know, the one who’s always washing his hands, boiling everything in sight in his surgery, wiping things down with carbolic acid. He’s going to acid-burn his patients, the ones he doesn’t boil. But I’m sure it’s just a fad. You know how people are about something new.”

“Doctor Layne,” Reverend Fielden mused. “Bit of a peculiar chap. Couldn’t get a straight answer out of him on whether or not he’d been baptized. All that washing, maybe he’s covering something up. Guilty conscience, like Lady Macbeth.”

“Maybe they find it necessary to wash a great deal down South where he comes from,” Lawson managed to declare through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “We don’t have the miasmas and swamp fevers up here that they do. He’s well-spoken, I’ll say that for him.”

“Maybe a little too well-spoken,” Fielden replied. “There’s something excessive about his style.”

“Stagey, almost.”

“Artistic.”

“Yes,” Lawson contemplated. “Are you implying -- You’re not suggesting --?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely observing.”

“I prefer plain speaking, myself.” Lawson relieved himself of a loud belch. “That’s what New England is about, and that’s the way it should be. Fellow uses flowery language like Layne, sooner or later it’s not going to sit well with people here.”

“He just seems -- a little --”

The two men looked at each other.

“Naw,” they said simultaneously, and looked to their food.

*********************************

Only the glow from the stove illuminated Layne’s bedroom. A few stars could be seen through the window on this moonless, clear night. Owen lay still as Layne mopped up the fruits of the evening’s exertions on their stomachs, chests and faces.

“You’re very handsome, Win.”

“Why, thank you. You’re pretty good-looking yourself, although I think you knew that.”

“I always wanted to be with a man, but I thought any man who would want that would be -- well, what the boys in school called a molly.”

“And I’m not a molly?”

“No, you’re a handsome, real man.”

“Oh, mollies are very real, I assure you. And they are men. Therefore, they’re real men. I don’t happen to fancy them, myself, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way they are. In some ways, because they can’t hide, they need more courage to live their lives than those of us who can pass unnoticed.”

“Is there a name for men like us?”

“Oh, there are names. Not very flattering and not very nice. Sodomite and buggerer, for example.”

“What exactly is a buggerer?”

“Well, if I were to insert my arbor vitae into that delightful little roundmouth that you so enjoy having fingered while I suck on your root, then I would be a buggerer.”

“What would that make me?”

“Probably very happy, if I read the indications correctly.”

“So it’s butt-fucking.”

“To put it bluntly, yes.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“I thought I did.”

“I want to try it.”

“Well, my brave adventurer, I must warn you that if we’re not careful it can be uncomfortable, at least at first.”

Owen laughed. “Oh, I’ve experimented with a few things. They weren’t painful, not really. But they’re no substitute for --” he grabbed Layne’s cock, “the real thing.”

“Polliwog, you continue to astonish me. Now, I know I have some lard around here somewhere. And then we can discover the sweet spot where the Winnipesaukee flows under your covered bridge.”

***************************

“A delicious meal, Mrs. Owen,” Layne said, leaning back in the highback chair in the Owen dining room. “Thank you so much for inviting me to this Sunday feast.”

“High time,” Mrs. Owen replied. “You’re all Paulie ever talks about.”

“Ma!” Paulie blushed.

“Well, it’s true!” Mrs. Owen continued. “Engaged to be married, and he doesn’t talk about Ellie nearly as much as he does about you.”

“But, Ma, you don’t like it when I talk about Ellie.”

“Because she’s not good enough for you. And the way she treats you! Doctor Layne here is head and shoulders above her -- intelligent, educated, sophisticated -- and he doesn’t talk down to you the way she does.”

“I find a great deal worthy of respect and admiration in Paulie -- in your son, Mrs. Owen.”

“You see? And I know Paulie must like you a great deal, Doctor Layne. He doesn’t let anyone else call him Paulie.”

“And I consider that permission a great compliment.”

“This was delicious, Ma.” Owen began clearing plates. “I don’t tell you that often enough.”

“No, you don’t.”

**************************

“This has been my room all my life,” Owen said, guiding Layne into a small bedroom. “It still is, as if I was still a little boy.”

“I know better. This is quite a collection of magazines you have.”

“I used to read and dream about places all over the world in this little room. I want a big section of magazines and newspapers from all over the country in the shop. Those magazines kept me going while I was waiting for my life to start.”

“And now you’re about to be an independent businessman.”

“Hm. Semi-independent. Ellie’s father and uncle will own thirty percent.”

“They seem to be big in this town. Forgive me, but how did they agree to a poor boy like you marrying Ellie?”

“Well -- the thing is -- this is one of those things that everyone knows but nobody talks about. You don’t know because you’re not from here. Ellie is Jonas Aiken’s daughter by his first marriage.”

“Yes, so I understood.”

“But no one here ever met that first wife. And no one has ever located a record of the marriage.”

“I see.”

“Rumor has it that what was located, though, was a record of Jonas adopting Ellie.”

“Nothing wrong with adoption. It’s a very noble institution.”

“But Jonas has never referred to her as his adopted daughter or made any mention of adoption. He has always called her his daughter, plain and simple.”

“And what are we to make of that?”

“What the gossip makes of it is that Ellie is Jonas’s daughter, but Jonas never married her mother.”

“Oh.”

“So the better families don’t regard her as quite eligible for a brilliant marriage.”

“Have you talked to Ellie about this?”

“I talked to her about it a little over a year ago, when Jeremiah Woodworth called off their engagement.”

“She was engaged before?”

“Yes.”

“And who is Jeremiah Woodworth?”

“Son of Elias Woodworth, one of the biggest mill owners. He broke it off for no reason.”

“Sounds like breach of promise on his part.”

“The Aikens wouldn’t pursue it. Ellie considered herself disgraced, as if her reputation was damaged. She was really upset. It was the first time I’d seen her so down and defeated. And that’s when I asked her to marry me. I always thought she’d marry someone rich. I didn’t really expect her to take me seriously, but she did, and the bigger surprise is that her father had no objection. I thought, why not? I’d known her all my life, and we get along fine, or at least we know how to argue with each other already.”

“So that’s what I’m up against -- your noble instinct to rescue a damsel in distress.”

“You’re not up against anything or anyone. Ellie and I, and you and I -- those just aren’t the same thing.”

“No, they aren’t.” Layne held Owen’s shoulders. “I love you.”

Owen sighed. “What are we going to do?”