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From: "Rev. Cotton Mather" <revcottonmather@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} [rom fest] Hard Promise, Chap. 11/14 (rom mf)
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 16:10:13 -0400
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Welcome to the Church of The Right Reverend Cotton Mather.  This story
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(Copyright 2001, Rev. Cotton Mather)

Don't be shy!  I enjoy hearing from you.
RevCottonMather@hotmail.com

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HARD PROMISE
Rev. Cotton Mather



- 11 -

The next Friday night, after the football game, a big crowd was at
Fabrice's as usual.  I had been feeling sorry for myself, and feeling
sorry for Micki, so I tried to act more like a boyfriend for her
sake, even though my heart really wasn't in it.  We were sitting
together in a booth with Jared and Mattie, and for a change my mood
wasn't as black as it had been.  I was almost having fun.

I got up to go to the john.  As I was finishing up, standing at one
of the row of urinals, I heard the bathroom door open.  I was just
zipping up when Donny Hammach, Brittany Felson's old boyfriend,
stepped up to the urinal next to mine.

"How ya doin', Kennedy?" he drawled.  "How's your love life?"

"What's it to you, Donny?" I said.  He was talking like he had
been drinking.  Normally he was such a chickenshit, especially
after Jared had cleaned his clock when he broke up with Brittany,
that he wouldn't have said more than two words to me.

'Oh, just wonderin'," he said lazily.  "By the way, mine's just
fine, thanks for asking."

"I didn't ask, and I don't want to know," I said angrily.

"Hey, it's all right, I don't mind you asking," he continued, as
if I had asked him to elaborate.  "You wanna smell?"  He held up
the middle finger of his right hand to me, offering me to take a
sniff.  "No?  Don't mind if I do."  He raised his finger to his own
nose and inhaled deeply.  "Ah, luscious," he sighed.  He slipped
his finger into his mouth.  "And tasty, too," he said, looking at
me craftily.  "Tastes like a...hmmmm....like a Samuelson to me!" he
said gleefully.

Just the thought of this mope touching Melissa was enough to set
me off.  In a rage, I grabbed the back of his collar as he was
standing there and pulled him back and down onto the restroom
floor.  He was taken by surprise, before he was done urinating.
His flabby prick was still sticking out of his pants, and he was
peeing on himself.  I dropped to my knee on his stomach, and he
let out with a breathy "Hoooofffff".  I reached down and grabbed
him by the hair and pulled his head up toward me, my knee still in
his gut.

"If you want to stay alive, you'd better be telling me you're
lying," I said quietly.

"Take...it...easy...Ray...Let...me...up...can't...breathe..." he
gasped.

"Too fucking bad," I said.  "Is it true?"

He didn't have enough breath to say anything, so he shook his
head violently from side to side, not caring that some of his
hair was coming out in my hands as I held on tight.

I let up on him just enough for him to take a long, panicky gasp
in, then pressed down on him again.  "Are you going to tell me
what that was all about, then?" I asked.

"Yeah, okay, get off me first, will ya?"  I clear look of panic
was starting to show itself in his eyes, which I liked to see.

"Nope," I said, smiling.  "I'm not letting you up yet."  But I
did let up on the pressure on his spasming diaphragm so he could
painfully take small breaths.  "Talk, motherfucker."

"All right, all right," he said.  He knew his situation was not
good, and his best hope was to come clean with me.  That panicky
look faded a little, but he was still scared.  "I got someone to
fix me up with her on kind of a blind date.  We were out tonight,
but nothing happened."

"How much of 'nothing' are we talking about here, Donny?" I asked.

"Nothing nothing, goddamn it!" he cried.  "She wanted to go home,
so I took her home.  I tried to get her to at least kiss me good
night, maybe cop a feel, but, man, what a cold fish!"  I pressed
down harder on him for that comment.  "Hey, take it easy, Kennedy!"
he wheezed, the panic rising again in his eyes.  "You wanted to
know what happened, I'm telling you.  I thought you'd be happy she
was cold to me, for crissakes!"

"You're right, I should have known better than to think she might
have let a loser like you into her life," I said.  I stood up and
looked down at him.  "Get up, you human waste of skin.  Can't you
see you're lying down on a filthy restroom floor?  And by the way,
you pissed all over yourself," I said as I headed for the door.

Wow, I thought, now THAT put me in a good mood.  All I had to do
was beat on someone not wearing pads, and I was happy.  I laughed
as I sat back down again.

"What's up with you, Ray?" asked Jared.

"Let me take a look at your face," said Micki, grabbing my ear and
turning my head toward her.  "Jesus, is that a smile I see there?
Where'd that come from?  It looks so strange on that face."

"Cut it out, Micki.  Can I help it if I'm in a good mood?" I said.

"Hey," said Mattie, looking past us toward the back of the
restaurant, "isn't that Donny Hammach coming out of the john?"

Jared looked up, his eyes narrowing.  "Where?  I told that
buckethead not to show his face anywhere near me or Brit."

"Hey, what happened to him?  He looks like he fell into the
toilet.  Oh, it's okay, Jare, he's leaving," said Mattie.

Jared looked over at me, a sudden realization dawning.  "Was he
in there while you were there, Ray?"

I smiled at him happily.  "Oh, yes, he was," I said with a grin.

"And did you assist in getting him to look like he does?" he
asked, smiling.

"Well, his parents had a lot to do with the way he looks, but,
yes, I assisted in his current state of disarray," I said.

We all burst out laughing, and Jared gave me a high-five.  Kids
at the other tables looked at us, and were probably wondering
about what happened.  The Ray Machine hadn't laughed in a long
time, and it felt kind of good.



By Thanksgiving, Micki and I had evolved into a more comfortable
relationship.  We weren't as close as Micki probably wanted us to
be, but I had begun to appreciate her as an individual, and most
of my friends were accepting her.

The biggest fallout, other than Melissa and me, was that eventually
Brad and Lindsey broke up.  Knowing Brad, it was probably
inevitable, but what happened at the campout accelerated the
disintegration of their relationship.  Hardly missing a beat, Brad
asked Jared's sister Brittany out, and they were now a pretty
steady couple.  Lindsey and Missy, from what I heard, did a lot of
double dating, but not with anyone steady.  Missy still wouldn't
talk to me, but I was slowly getting beyond that.

Or, at least, I hoped I was.

Just before Thanksgiving, Marcus's two brothers, Jerry and Ev,
came home from college for the holiday.  By Friday afternoon, the
day after Thanksgiving, the North High telephone tree was
a-shaking.  It all kind of started right after Marcus called me,
around noon.

"Hey, Ray, Marcus here.  How are you doing?"

"Okay, I guess, what's up?"

"Jerry and Ev are home.  They told me what happened at the
campout.  Why didn't you tell anybody, man?  You were a fucking
hero, and you didn't say a word to anybody."

"Wait a minute, Marcus.  What did they tell you?" I was a little
puzzled.

"They told my whole family about it at breakfast yesterday,
about how you fought off those two other guys and kept them from
raping Micki.  Why didn't you tell us?  You could have saved
yourself an awful lot of grief if you had just told us all about
what happened, Ray."

"I couldn't tell anybody, Marcus," I said.  "Micki made me promise
I wouldn't tell anybody about it."

"Oh, man, I can't believe you kept that promise, buddy.  It really
cost you."

"Well," I said, "it would have cost me more in the long run if I
hadn't kept my promise."

"I'm not so sure, Ray.  But I admire you for keeping your
promise, despite all that's happened.  Anyway," Marcus continued,
"I wondered why Jerry and Ev and their friends had just packed up
so quickly that morning and left without a word, and now we
know.  Jerry says that that guy got back to campus in even worse
shape than you left him, and he ended up dropping out of school.
Jerry said that he was really impressed with the way you took care
of things, and told me to tell you that if you need a reference
to help you get into the university, that you've got it.  Both he
and Ev, and that other guy Carl, are now huge fans of the Ray
Machine."

"Wow, that's really great of them, Marcus.  Thank them for me,
will you?  I really appreciate it."

"That's not all, buddy.  The word is spreading.  I think your
days as a pariah are over.  Expect a bunch of phone calls, Ray.
There are a lot of kids who will be swallowing a lot of words
over this one.  And Ray?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm a huge fan of the Ray Machine, too.  That was a hell of a
thing you did for Micki."

"Thanks, Marcus.  Thanks for calling."

Marcus was right.  The rest of that night, and all weekend, the
phone hardly stopped ringing.  Around midnight, Micki called,
very upset.  We were on the phone for a good two hours, reliving
that night, while I tried to reassure her that nobody would think
she was a bad person.  She was afraid people would see her as
dumb for being caught in the position she was in, and she was
afraid people would hold it against her that I had kept my promise.

I was finally able to convince her that she had no control
whatsoever over how I kept any of my promises, and she reluctantly
agreed that, now that the story was out, we could tell our version
of what happened in the woods.

I stopped answering the phone by the next day.  Brad and Brittany
came over around noon, and we hopped into Brad's car and drove
over to pick up Micki.  The four of us then headed out to a big
shopping mall in another town, just so we wouldn't have to run
into anybody we knew.  We spent the entire afternoon shopping,
laughing and joking and deliberately keeping off the subject of
the campout.

After we were all shopped out (or at least Brad and I were shopped
out. I don't think either Micki or Brit could ever be said to be
"shopped out"), we stopped at a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We
passed around kung pao chicken, sweet-and-sour shrimp, Mongolian
beef, and vegetable chow mien in a frenzy of hunger, and
afterwards, over tiny cups of green tea, we talked, finally,
about that weekend.

"I can't believe that you refused to say anything, even to me,
that whole time, Ray," complained Brad.  "You're my best friend,
and you wouldn't even tell me what went on that weekend."

"A secret isn't secret if someone outside the circle knows it,
Grasshopper," I replied.

"Ah, so," said Brad, smiling.  "Is this Oriental wisdom you
picked up during your time in the monastery, oh wise one?"

'Nah," I said.  "It's what my fortune cookie says."  I passed
around my fortune for all to see.

"How appropriate," said Micki.  "Here's mine."

She passed the slip of paper over to me to read.  Behind her
smile, I could just detect the beginnings of tears filling her
eyes.  I read the paper, and silently passed it around to
Brittany, who read aloud, "'That which was lost may soon be
found.'  Very mysterious."

Brad cracked open his fortune cookie, popped half into his
mouth, and extracted the slip of paper from the other half.
"'Good luck smiles most often on the industrious.'  Damn it,
I guess that means I'd better study for that physics test,
then.  What about yours, Brit?"

Brittany opened her cookie, dropping both halves onto her plate
as she unfurled the scrap of paper.  Brad immediately reached
over and grabbed the pieces of cookie and ate them.

"Well, mine seems to fit the occasion, too.  It says, 'The boy
on your right must pay for your dinner.'"

"Hey," said Brad as he tried to grab the paper from Brittany's
hand.  "Does it really say that?"

She moved her hand out of his reach, laughing, and said, "No,
Brad, I was just funnin' ya.  It says, 'A true heart can move
the world.'"

"Well," said Brad, it sounds like we all got some little bits
of wisdom that fit our situations.  So now what?"

We all sat there, thinking our own thoughts.

"I don't have a clue," I finally said.  Micki reached out and
took my hand in hers.  Her hand was icy cold, and I could feel
her trembling.

On the way home, Micki stayed snuggled up next to me, her head
down and resting on my chest as I held her.  Every now and then
I heard her sniffle, and felt her breath catch, and I knew she
was crying, and trying not to let me know.  Brad dropped us off
at my house, and we went down into the basement and turned on the
television.  I kissed her tenderly as I held her, down there on
the old couch, trying to kiss away all the tears, the pain, the
uncertainty.

Silently we undressed, hardly looking at each other, until we
were both naked as newborns.  We melted into each other, our
fingers and our palms, our lips and our tongues no longer needing
to explore, but rather needing to give comfort.  Her cheeks were
salty with the tracks of her tears, and her tiny breasts and
expressive nipples were warm and inviting.

With a minimum of movement, a minimum of fuss, we positioned
ourselves on the couch.  Her legs opened to envelop me, and
wrapped around my waist tightly as we made love.  It was the
tenderest, quietest, sweetest time ever for us, and when we had
each worked to our climaxes, we kissed, eyes closed, and each
silently sent up prayers of thanksgiving and forgiveness.

In a reversal of our usual roles, Micki fell into an exhausted
sleep afterward.  I, on the other hand, was up and awake.  I
covered her with an afghan, and crept upstairs quietly.  I needed
time alone to think things through before I woke her and took her
home.



(Continued in Chapter 12)







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