Logan had been meditating in the den for fourteen seconds when he heard a knock at the door. He decided to ignore it. The knock only got louder. He rolled his eyes and pulled himself to his feet.
Warren stood on the other side of the door. “Um . . . Logan?”
Logan clutched the doorknob and just stared at him. (He did this a lot with Warren. It’s not that he didn’t like the kid. He simply didn’t have the patience for someone so quiet and equivocal. Kitty and Storm and Rogue appealed to him personally because they had opinions and had no trouble expressing them. Warren always seemed to second-guess himself.)
“There are cops outside,” Warren said quietly.
Logan jolted back to the scene. “What?”
“They’re at the front door. They have Artie and Jones.”
Logan had already pushed past Warren to head up the steps and down the corridor to the front door. He found Danielle hesitating in the threshold, her body turned away from him at an angle.
“Kid,” he said. “Go back to the rec room.” He nudged her out of the way. Pulled open the door to find two uniformed police officers on the front stoop, Jones and Artie standing between them. One officer was young and tall, with the physique of someone who spent hours working out. The other was short and middle-aged, but not fat.
The young one touched his transmitter and said some string of meaningless letters and numbers that Logan didn’t quite unpuzzle.
“Can I help you?” Logan asked.
The young one said, “Are you the guardian of these two boys?”
Logan eyed Jones and Artie. Jones had his hands folded in front of him as if praying. He didn’t look up. Artie stared at Logan as if waiting for the signal that it was okay to panic.
“What did they do?” Logan said.
“We found them riding in an ATV along Route 45,” the young officer said.
“Huh?” Logan said, stepping forward. He glared at Jones. “Where the hell did you two get an ATV?”
Jones cringed, very visibly, his mouth pulling to one side.
“Your neighbor reported one missing,” the officer said. “Luckily, he’s decided not to press charges. That’s why we’re here right now and not at the station.”
Logan’s grip on the door tightened. He felt his heart speed up.
“We just borrowed it,” Jones said, and Logan decided right then and there that he was going to kill both of them.
“Logan.” That was Storm’s voice.
He turned to find Storm behind him. She set one hand on his arm and caught his eyes, willing him to calm down. “I got this,” she whispered. “I got it. The children are watching. Take them into the rec room.”
He glanced over his shoulder to find that the entire population of the mansion was crowding into the hallway, trying to see past the door. The teenagers were standing in the hallway. A couple of the younger kids were standing on the stairs, stretching to see. One girl was leaning on the balustrade, arms clutching the wooden beams.
Storm slipped by him and out onto the front stoop. “Officers,” she said, her voice confident and concerned. “Let’s talk over here.” She led them down the steps along with Artie and Jones.
He watched. He knew that Storm hated outsiders, hated normal people, but he could never tell when he actually saw her interact with them. Her physical presence exuded a preternatural self-confidence that he, even on his best Zen day, could never come close to understanding.
The officers also seemed taken aback by her presence”a little fascinated, a little cowed. The tall one seemed to shrink while looking down at her, if that was even possible. The short one turned to look at her as they walked, his legs going forward, his torso bent toward her in what had to be an uncomfortable posture.
Logan wondered what they were thinking. He could guess. He bristled.
He didn’t like other people looking at her. In that sense, he was very predictable. One day he’d almost said something about the way she dressed”thought about asking if she’d worn that blouse for him (and he knew she hadn’t)”but he reconsidered his approach. He had no doubt that he’d survive electrocution, adamantium skeleton and all, but he just didn’t feel like going through that experience.
He back around again to look at the kids. Some were clamoring to look out the window of the front room. “Hey,” he said, with as much meanness as he could muster. “Get away from there. Get back to the rec room.”
One girl scurried toward him. “Mr. Logan, what’s going to happen? Are they going to jail?”
He almost said, I hope so. Instead, he took a breath and looked back in Storm’s direction one more time. Now she was standing under the tree. Smiling. But this, he knew, was her defensive position. She didn’t trust people, but she felt more comfortable dealing with them outside.
He wanted to be out there with her.
Instead, he turned to take the kids to the rec room. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen.”
###
That night he followed her into her bathroom.
She was rubbing lotion on her legs and looked up. “Jesus Christ, Logan. Can I get some privacy?”
The lotion was “wild honeysuckle.” She’d been wearing it a lot.
She’d also been wearing”okay, yes, he’d noticed this”different underwear. Satiny, lacy stuff. He didn’t know why women felt the need to do that. Didn’t they understand that the underwear didn’t matter? What mattered was the fact that it came off.
“I told you not to leave your door open,” he said.
“Yeah, apparently you were right. Look,” she said, straightening. “I think we should call off the whole Fourth of July fireworks thing.”
“Why? Because of Jones and Artie?”
“Not just that,” she said, snapping the cap back on the bottle. “I just don’t think the two of us can manage taking the whole crowd to see the fireworks. Rogue is working that night. Peter and Kitty and Bobby are going up to Hollow Hills to stay in some cabin. They’re asking Warren to come with them.”
He thought for a second. “Are they having sex?”
She looked at him. “What?”
“Bobby, Warren, Peter, Kitty? Are they having sex?”
“With each other?”
He shrugged. “No, with the gardener. Who else?”
“You mean . . . you think they’re going to the cabin to have some kind of orgy?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean.” He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s possible. Anything’s possible. Why else go to a cabin, right. But what I was asking was whether or not they’re shaking down into certain combinations and permutations or whatever. Like, coupling off.”
Storm stared at him. Then she just laughed. She pushed past him and went into her bedroom. “Well Logan, if you must know.” She pulled back the covers from her bed. “Kitty loves Bobby, but he’s still a little hung up on Rogue.”
“He’s the one who broke up with her,” Logan pointed out.
“That doesn’t matter,” Storm said. “I’m not sure, but I think Peter likes Kitty, but she doesn’t like him back. Jubilee, however, is completely in love with Peter. Or at least she was until Warren showed up. Now she thinks Warren is just oh-so handsome. She calls him the hottest white boy she’s ever seen. And I have no idea who Warren likes.”
He leaned against her dresser and tried not to smirk. “And they told you this.”
“Of course not,” she said, slipping into bed. “Well, Kitty tells me a lot. She’s an open book.”
He uncrossed his arms and made his way to the opposite side the bed. “Does she ask you about us?” He pulled back the covers and got in, his clothes still on. He reached for her, sliding his hand along her waist, which was covered by her satiny nightgown.
“All the time,” she said. She reached for his hand. “That tickles.”
He drew closer to her. Kissed the underside of her jaw, her neck. “What do you tell her?” he whispered. That there is no us, he thought.
“That it’s not her business,” Storm said, leaning back, her hands on his shoulders.
He pressed his lips against hers. Tightened his arms around her. Decided, for the second time in an hour, that he should stop trying to think so much.
###
Fourth of July was uneventful. Logan and Storm planned for a barbecue, and Jubilee offered to do her best to put on a little homegrown fireworks show since they weren’t going to be able to go to the one downtown. Kitty, Bobby, Peter, and Warren packed their things and headed for a cabin up north.
“Keep your phones on,” Logan said when they were about to drive off.
They all stared up at him.
“I’m serious.” He leaned down to look in the passenger side window.
Kitty was behind the wheel. She winked at him. “We love you too, Logan.”
“I don’t know if we’ll have coverage,” Bobby said. Of course Bobby would be the one to point this out.
Warren and Peter were in the backseat. Peter said something to Warren and they both laughed.
“We’ll be safe,” Kitty said. And then they drove away.
Logan spent the rest of the day picking up supplies. He used the truck”mainly because Storm didn’t mind if he smoked in it”and drove over to Walmart. He threw some hotdogs and buns in the cart and then headed over to the housewares aisle.
Rogue was struggling to stack some plastic trashcans on a shelf, one inside the other. He spotted her immediately; he knew it was her before he even neared the aisle.
Her hair was coming loose from her ponytail, but her standard-issue Walmart shirt was tucked neatly into her pants.
He stopped the cart at the mouth of the aisle. “Hey kid.”
She turned her head to look at him. Straightened. “Hey.” She smiled”as if she’d forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to like him anymore. “Can I help you find something?”
“Sparklers,” he said, rolling the cart toward her. “I need sparklers.”
“We don’t sell those here.”
“Crap,” Logan said. “I’ve been all over town looking for them.”
“Well, there’s a seasonal store on route seven. At the strip mall. They could probably set you up there. Unless they’re sold out.”
“Yeah.” Logan leaned over the cart, his elbows resting on the handle. He knew he wouldn’t have the time.
She eyed his cart. “You’ll need more hotdogs than that. I thought you’d know that by now. Those boys eat everything in sight. Make sure you get some marshmallows, too. Artie loves marshmallows.”
“Artie’s not coming to the party,” Logan said. “Neither is Jones.”
“That’s right, I forgot.”
Artie and Jones were grounded for the rest of the summer. Period. They were not partaking in school outings or parties until school started again, and they were responsible for both bathroom and kitchen duty until August. This was Storm’s idea of punishment. Logan would have rather pinned them to a tree and left them there all night and then forgiven them in the morning. The punishment he advocated was physical and strenuous but over quickly, one that ensured quick retribution and total absolution. Storm’s punishment was long and drawn-out and psychological. Isolation. Cold shoulder. Public shaming.
He remembered how Storm had treated Rogue after she’d taken the cure. Technically, Storm hadn’t done anything wrong or overtly nasty. But she’d made Rogue feel bad. She’d withheld encouragement, academic or otherwise. She’d simply been cold. It was something that Logan had a difficult time forgiving her for, even now. It was something they didn’t talk about.
But Rogue seemed over it. She seemed to have gotten over everything.
“Save me a hotdog,” she said. “Oh, and a slice of watermelon, if you can?” She tapped her fingers against the metal price tag fixture.
“What time will you be home?”
“Late. I’m closing.”
Logan opened his mouth to tell her that she should just forget work when he caught a glimpse of a short middle-aged man striding down the aisle with a clipboard under his arm. Change rattled in his pockets.
“Marie,” the man said, “Rachel needs your assistance in aisle seven.” He moved immediately to look at Logan. “Sir, can I help you find anything today?”
Logan stood there. Then gestured to the plastic garbage containers behind Rogue. “She was just selling me a trashcan.”
Rogue reached down and plucked a container from the bottom shelf and handed it to Logan without looking at him.
“Excellent,” the man said before reminding Rogue that she needed to get to aisle seven. He walked away.
Rogue rolled her eyes and walked with Logan to the end of the aisle.
“God, that’s your boss?” Logan whispered.
“Well, it’s like they say,” she whispered. “Bosses are like assholes. Everyone has one.” She smiled. Then the smile fell from her face. (Perhaps she was remembering who Logan’s boss was.) She cleared her throat. “Just don’t let the Guthries take over the karaoke machine. They’ve pretty much ruined any fond memories I had of Grease. It’s tragic.”
Logan put the trashcan in his shopping cart and headed for the check-out.
###
When Kitty and Bobby and Peter and Warren returned home on Monday, Logan was waiting. He tried to make it look like he hadn’t been waiting”he was standing on the porch, thinking about having a cigar and skimming through a tattered copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude (which had belonged to Scott)”when they pulled up.
They shuffled past him to go inside. He glanced up at each of them as they walked past, trying to detect some shift in the air between them.
“Did you have a nice time?” he asked. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned against the pillar.
“The best,” Kitty said. Her expression didn’t change. She moved past him to go into the house. She smelled faintly of shampoo and smoke. They must have had a campfire.
Warren nodded at him.
“Wings,” Logan said, reaching forward and tapping the spine of his book against Warren’s chest. “You got a minute?”
Warren stopped in his tracks. “Yeah, sure Logan.”
He asked Warren to fly up to the roof to fix a couple of shingles that had blown off in a weekend thunderstorm. But really, he was looking at Warren for some kind of sign. He wanted to know what had really happened during this camping trip.
But Warren was impenetrable as always. Infuriatingly serene.
Logan rattled off a series of instructions for fixing the shingles. (Warren was an eager, conscientious worker, but he had no idea of how to do anything.)
As Logan talked, Warren’s gaze wandered to the threshold. His eyes followed the others. He seemed stunned, distracted, and then”strangely pacified. And that was it”that was the signal. Warren was definitely getting laid. With whom? Logan guessed Kitty, but perhaps that was too obvious. Perhaps Bobby or Peter? He didn’t know if any of them was gay”he hadn’t felt like asking. But it didn’t surprise him. Nothing did. He needed to ask Storm about it. She’d probably want to know why he was so interested”and to be honest, he didn’t know why he was so interested.
Logan felt smug, though he didn’t know why. He spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the roof repair and chatting with the gardener. At half past three, he finally made his way into Storm’s office.
She was sitting behind her computer but had taken off her shoes. That was a good sign.
“Hey,” he said.
She didn’t look up. “Hey.”
“We need to pay the gardener.” He closed the door to the office behind him. “We haven’t paid him in over a month.”
“How did that happen?” Storm opened the top drawer of her desk to take out the checkbook.
“No,” Logan said. “Cash. He’s not legal, remember?”
Storm slowly closed the checkbook and looked up at Logan, a pissed-off expression grazing her face. It was, he thought, a harbinger. “I thought you said you were hiring a new gardener. Logan, we can’t have undocumented people working here. If someone found out? Disaster.”
“Okay, just get him some cash and we’ll talk about it later.”
“Logan!” Storm set her hand down on the desk. “Logan, don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Blow me off. It drives me crazy when you do that! I run this school. I have an obligation to make sure everything’s above board. And I told you to fire the guy a month ago. Why didn’t you just do it?”
He sighed. Took a step back. “Guy has a family, Storm.”
“And that’s sad, Logan, and I’m sorry for him. But we can’t just go around breaking the law like that. Not here.”
“I’m not legal either. We’ve talked about that.”
Storm closed her eyes and took a breath as though willing herself to calm down. When she opened them she looked up at him. “Logan . . .” She took another breath. “I forgot.” She put her hand on the phone. “I have to call Hank about that. Thanks for reminding me.”
He set his hand on hers. Caught her eyes. Smirked. Tried not to feel so goddamn smug. “Because if I got deported, you’d miss me.”
“Logan, getting deported isn’t something to laugh about.”
He didn’t let go of her hand. “You’d miss me,” he said again, and this time very seriously.
“Because God knows I can’t run this place on my own. I just don’t want to think about what that would look like.”
He took her hand in his. Then, placed two fingers on her wrist. Her pulse was a little on the quick side. “Don’t worry. I won’t get deported.”
Her hand relaxed.
“And if I did, I would just come back.”
She tensed again. He felt her pulse speed up. She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “You would. Right.”
He let go of her wrist and straightened. Put his hands in his pockets. “I would.”
She looked away. Cleared her throat and opened the bottom drawer of her desk where the petty cash was kept. Took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the box and counted several bills. “Here’s two months’ pay. That’s his severance package.” She got up from her chair to come around to the other side of the desk.
Logan reached for her, grasping her arms and squeezing. “I would come back.” He moved his hands to her shoulders. Grazed her neck with his thumb. “I would miss you.”
She raised her eyes to look at his. “I””
He kissed her, pulling her closer with a certain roughness that he knew she was okay with, that she liked. He felt her set the cash down on the desk.
They made love on the floor behind the desk, quickly, not bothering to get completely undressed and hoping, vaguely, that no one would choose that exact moment to come into her office. (He remembered that he hadn’t locked the door.) When they were finished”when he was certain that she’d gotten as much out of it as he could give her in that limited amount of time and space”they sat up and put their clothes back on. He got up and helped her to her feet. Walked around to the other side of the desk and picked up the cash.
“I’ll go give him the news,” he said.
Storm combed her fingers through her hair. “Don’t,” she said. “Just . . . he’s got a family. We’ll talk about it later. We’ll figure something out.” She walked over to the other side of the desk. She sat back down.
He reached over across the desk and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want.”
And that was as close as they came to talking about anything.
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