The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  It was almost two o'clock when he turned the Toyota up Parmenter Road. The neighborhood had been built in the late fifties and early sixties, and looked it. Ranches and split-levels dominated, but still it was one of the nicer areas in Eastborough if you didn't count the upscale private developments that had sprung up in the decade since he'd graduated.

  All of the homes were well maintained, the lawns neatly landscaped. Soccer moms were out power-walking behind sport-strollers. SUVs sat dormant in driveways. A sixtyish man with thinning gray hair walked his yellow Labrador, the dog hauling him forward with an eagerness that threatened to tug the man off his feet.

  Will nearly did not recognize the house he had grown up in.

  Number 76 Parmenter Road was a split-level with a large yard and a triangular garden beside the front walk that was almost exotic. Berry bushes and thin trees with an Asian flair had jutted from that triangle of soil. But all of the shrubs that had once lined the front of the house had been removed, with only sod left in their wake. A pair of ash trees was also gone—Will's eyes had itched all the time because of those damn trees, but he was sad to see the bare patches where they had once stood. The current owners had also removed the shutters and painted the house completely white.

  It was hideous.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered to himself as he slowed the Toyota to a standstill.

  For a long time he just sat in the car and stared at the house. A while later a bus rumbled past at the bottom of the street, disgorging kids from the high school. When the lanky, redheaded kid rapped on his window, Will jumped, heart pounding, and glared at him.

  “Hey. You scared the crap out of me,” Will said, putting the window down.

  “Help you with something? You lost?”

  The kid was maybe sixteen and broad-shouldered, just that age when he thought the world was full of shit and he might have to kick its ass any minute. He glared right back into the car, at this man who was pulled over to the side of the road and was staring at his house.

  No wonder, Will thought. Probably thinks I'm a stalker or something.

  “Lost?” Will considered telling the kid that yeah, he was lost, and then driving off. He surprised himself by telling the truth. “Not really. Actually, I used to live here. That your house?”

  “Yeah.” The kid's face was impassive, giving away nothing. Will wondered if he and his friends had been that insolent, and figured they had.

  Will smiled. “That place has a lot of stories to tell.”

  Maybe it was the wistful tone in Will's voice or the look on his face or maybe it was his words. Whatever did it, the kid's expression actually changed, his suspicious frown melting into an amused grin.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Well, so far it hasn't said a word to me.”

  “Could be it's keeping its secrets,” Will suggested.

  “Could be,” the kid agreed. “Or maybe it's just pissed that my parents freakin' neutered it, taking down those shutters and all those bushes. Wanted it to look different. I guess ugly is different enough.”

  Will laughed out loud. The kid had echoed the thoughts he had been too polite to express. For a long moment they just looked at one another. Will thought about introducing himself, then realized there was no point. This was their moment of contact, right here. It was unlikely they'd ever meet again.

  “You take care,” he said, then he started to pull away.

  “Yeah,” the kid said—his favorite word—and waved. “You, too.”

  Will turned around in the Ginzlers' driveway a few houses up, and on the way back down he saw the kid going inside his house and shutting the door. As Will drove away, he wondered if there would ever come a time when the redheaded kid would sit on the side of the road in his car and stare in horror at what some new-owner assholes had done to his home.

  WILL SPENT THE AFTERNOON just wandering around town. He knew that some of his friends were showing up early at Liam's for dinner, but he felt a kind of inner quiet that made him shy away. Instead he went into Annie's Book Stop and lost himself in the musty racks of used paperbacks, just glancing through titles. Eventually he found a Len Deighton book about World War II, and that was his sole purchase. He read the first three chapters sitting in The Sampan eating wonton soup and General Tsao's Chicken, careful not to get any food on his V-necked navy sweater or the crisp new blue jeans he wore.

  After dinner he left his car in the lot of the strip mall and went across the street to the Brooks Pharmacy. Once upon a time it had been an Osco, and before that a CVS. At the age of nine, with his mother over in the cosmetics section, he had stood in the candy aisle, glancing nervously back and forth to see if anyone was watching him as he debated stuffing a Snickers bar into his pocket. His conscience had won the debate, but even though he had not stolen anything, he had still felt guilty about it afterward.

  Now he bought a pack of Altoids to rid his mouth of the dreaded Chinese-food-breath and chewed three of them instantly, then followed them with two more.

  When he returned to his car, ready to head over to Liam's, he found that it was still only six-thirty. Though he had not wanted to be early, there was no way he was going to just sit in his car or invent something else to do in order to avoid it. He had enjoyed the afternoon on his own, but he found himself anticipating the evening quite a bit.

  Will started up the engine and the radio blared to life in the midst of the Barenaked Ladies tune “The Old Apartment.” A smile spread across Will's face as he sang along:

  “This is where we used to live. . . .”

  When he reached Liam's, the parking lot was already nearly full. The place had always been popular, and it was Friday night. There was a room upstairs, which he guessed was where his classmates would be gathered, but the main dining room and bar on the first floor would be packed as well.

  While he had been wandering through the stacks at Annie's the afternoon had cleared. There were still clouds in the early- evening sky, but they made a mural of shades of blue and none of them were threatening. There would be no more rain tonight. He climbed out of the car and started across the lot. The air was crisp and cold and he zipped his jacket up to his neck as he approached the restaurant.

  Just looking at Liam's Irish Tavern, a rambling old mid-nineteenth-century building with dark green paint and shamrocks on the sign, made him smile. It was good to know that some things never changed.

  “Hey, Will!”

  Just outside the door he turned to see a quartet of new arrivals moving through the parked cars toward the restaurant. Leading the pack was Joe Rosenthal, who had called out to him. Joe had been their class president all four years and Will had worked with him on the school paper. The two shared the same build, not tall but broad-shouldered. Will had remained fit, but Joe had a potbelly now and his hair was already thinning. There was a pair of women with him, both of whom Will recognized. One was Kelly Meserve, but to his horror he could not remember the other woman's name at all. He doubted if they had ever exchanged words in high school, but he still ought to be able to remember her name. Their class had not been that big.

  Tammy? Terri? Something like that. Hell, nobody's going to remember everyone.

  The last of the four was Tim Friel, who had been captain of the football team junior and senior year, but was such a quiet, humble guy that nobody could hold it against him. Tim had dated his share of cheerleaders, but he had never fit the stereotype of the football captain made popular by countless idiotic teen movies. The Eastborough Cougars had certainly had their share of dim-witted, cruel-natured assholes on the football team; it was simply that Tim was not one of them.

  “No shit,” Will said happily as he took a few steps back toward them and shook hands with Joe. “How've you been?”

  Joe grinned. “Never better.” But there was something in his tone, and in his gray eyes, that gave the lie to those words.

  “Good to see you, Will,” Tim said quietly.

  Will rocked on his feet and regarded the e
x–football star, who was just as tall, handsome, and boyish as he had been back in the day. “What about you, Tim? What've you been up to?”

  “I'm coaching at Holy Cross.” Tim smiled, and there was a sparkle in his ice blue eyes. “It's not quarterbacking for the Miami Dolphins, but it's a great way to spend your days. Almost feels like I never graduated.”

  Will nodded. “I know what you mean. I talk to my friends from college and listen to them bitch and I figure, hey, I actually like what I do. That's pretty rare. I'm not complaining.”

  The two of them exchanged a look and Will was surprised to feel a moment of connection with this guy he had never really been friends with. Neither of them had accomplished what they'd dreamed about, but still they counted themselves lucky.

  The pleasantries went on for another minute or so before the entire group went into Liam's together. Will had said hello to Kelly, caught up a bit with Tim and Joe, but as they were stepping into the foyer of the tavern, the woman whose name he could not remember smiled at him shyly, even a bit flirtatiously.

  “Hey, Will. It's been a while.”

  Reflexively, he gave a hollow laugh. “Too long.” He hoped that nothing in his face would give away how completely clueless he was as to her identity. Tori? Kerry? She seemed not to notice and he was grateful when she moved ahead to catch up with Kelly.

  Inside Liam's they were enveloped in a cloud of wonderful smells. Waiters and waitresses weaved in amongst the tables, serving steaks that were still sizzling on cast-iron plates that would burn if you touched them. Will hadn't been inside Liam's in a decade, but the smell and the decor were so familiar it was like another sort of homecoming.

  The hostess confirmed that their classmates were gathering in the function room upstairs, and Will followed the others along a narrow corridor to the steps that led to the second floor. As he climbed he heard laughter and music drifting down toward him.

  Will had one final moment of trepidation; then, as he stepped into the room, it evaporated in an instant. He was a little early, but it seemed as though the party had started anyway. Dozens of people had already arrived, some of them eating dinner at the round tables, others mingling in front of the bar. As Will entered with Joe, Tim, Kelly, and the mystery woman—Terri, pretty sure it's Terri—a number of curious faces turned to look at them.

  Familiar faces. Older faces.

  His mind was on overload, sifting through them all. There was bookish Delia Young, now sleek and elegant, talking with Todd Vasquez. A group of perhaps a half-dozen men and women were gathered around Chuck Wisialowski at the bar. The faces of the guys—all of them ten years past their glory days on Eastborough High's hockey team—were just as pinched and sour-looking as ever. Laughter erupted from the group, and Chuck took that as his cue to knock back a shot of something. He let out a kind of snarl, the very image of a drunken frat boy.

  Chuck was the only person Will had ever had an actual fistfight with. He had always regretted that his history teacher, Mr. Sandoval, had broken it up. In his mind, forever and always, the guys who had been on the hockey team would remain a herd of slack-jawed goons. It was a prejudice he had accepted long ago. And from the looks of things, the years had not done much to alter either his perception or the reality.

  As Will mentally sifted through the other faces in the room he noticed something else as well—the spouses and significant others. At the tables they seemed to sit back just slightly, and in groups they protruded from the edges of a conversation as though they might slip away at any moment.

  Will waded into the room, into a sea of hard kisses and firm embraces, of compliments and questions and pats on the back. To his relief he found that he could remember at least the first name of everyone he saw, if not the last. Adrenaline surged through him, along with a kind of high he had not expected. It felt good to be around them, to laugh and smile and reminisce. He knew without a doubt that in an hour he would for the most part have forgotten who lived where, had how many children, or did what for a living, but that seemed less important in the moment than the simple act of reconnecting.

  He had been shanghaied by a pair of old friends who had also written for the school newspaper when, beyond them, he saw Ashleigh coming his way waving both hands over her head. Will laughed.

  “Excuse me, you guys,” he said, then he slipped between them.

  Ashleigh punched him in the shoulder. “Goofball,” she chided him, wearing that mischievous grin that always silently reminded him how much she meant to him. “I've been waving to you for like an hour.”

  “I've been here for three minutes.”

  “Well, you're blind. We've been trying to get your attention the whole time.”

  She gestured toward the far corner of the room, where Eric sat with Danny Plumer and his wife. With them were the ethereally beautiful Carrie Klaussen, whom Will had dubbed “PixieGirl” during high school, and Lolly something, whose real name Will didn't think he had ever known. They were all grinning, waving at him like fools.

  Ashleigh took him by the hand and dragged him over to the table, where he said hello to Eric. Danny got up to give him a bear hug—he was a burly guy and could lift Will right off the floor. They spent a minute pretending to reminisce about how long it had been since they'd seen one another—in reality ten days—and each commented that the other looked like shit and had clearly aged very poorly in that time.

  Will kissed Danny's wife Keisha on the cheek. Then he smiled over at Carrie, who rose from the table to hug him.

  “Hey, Pix,” he said as they broke their embrace. He looked into her eyes. “It's really good to see you.”

  “You, too,” she replied, nodding as though to punctuate her sincerity. “But nobody calls me that anymore.”

  “Except me,” he teased. His gaze ticked toward Lolly, whose dark skin and sculpted features were such a dramatic foil to PixieGirl; it had always made their status as best friends that much more fascinating. Two beautiful girls—women now—who couldn't look less alike. “Pix and Lolly. You guys will always be Pix and Lolly in my head. You should've gotten together. As girlfriends, you know? It always seemed so right.”

  Lolly laughed. “We tried it once. Didn't like it.”

  Will smiled in appreciation. “You know, I can't tell if you're bullshitting me, but if you are, please just let me go on believing that.”

  He bent to kiss her on the cheek as well.

  There followed just the slightest awkward pause, a silent moment filled only by the music being played at the other end of the room and by the strange feeling that there was a ghost among them. Pix gave him a look that was sort of sad.

  She had been there that day—the day he was supposed to have married Caitlyn. Pix had been the maid of honor. Panicked and humiliated, Will had jokingly asked her if she wanted to stand in. And PixieGirl had cried for him.

  He smiled at her now and leaned close in so that no one else could hear him. “I'm fine,” he said.

  “No, I'm fine,” she teased. “You, you're just okay.”

  “Will, what'll you have?” Danny asked. “Have you eaten? Want a drink? What's your pleasure?”

  Before he could answer something hit him in the back of the head. Will spun just in time to see a maraschino cherry bounce on the ground. When he touched his head where it had struck him, his hair was sticky. He shot a glance over at the bar and could only laugh.

  “Hang on,” he told Danny.

  He marched over to the bar, where Nick Acosta was pouring glasses of wine for a pair of women who were obviously spouses. Neither of them looked familiar to him at all. When the spouses departed, Will rapped on the bar.

  “Barkeep. Captain Morgan and Coke, please.”

  Nick shuddered with revulsion and shot him a look that wrinkled the thin white scar that trailed down from his scalp across his forehead and through his left eyebrow. The sight of it triggered a memory in Will, images of freshman year, when Nick had lost his footing playing basketball in the schoolyard an
d careened into a tree, a broken limb peeling his skin back far enough that when he looked up, blood veiling his features, the other guys gathered there had been able to see bone. Even now, all these years later, with his black hair, a mass of curls and cowlicks, and deep olive skin, the scar was like a magnet to the eye, forcing anyone talking to Nick to glance at it at least once.

  “Spiced rum. You still drinking that crap?” Nick asked. “Don't know how you don't sick it up.”

  Will gave him a blank look. “I do. Is that not supposed to happen?”

  Nick chuckled and started to fix the drink as he regarded Will. “How you doing, man? Been way too long.”

  “Doing great. Can't complain, though it usually doesn't stop me.”

  “Any love in your life?” Nick asked, raising that same scarred eyebrow. He was tall enough that he seemed to loom over Will from behind the bar.

  “Comes and goes,” Will replied, and though their banter was light, there was a truth to it, just as there had always been in these conversations with Nick. He was the sage of the group. Whenever anybody had a problem, Nick was the one they talked to.

  “It always does,” Nick replied. “Then again, who knows what fate might have in store for you this weekend? For instance, have you taken a look at her?”

  He gestured across the room.

  Will turned.

  On a raised platform a woman sat on a stool with an electric acoustic guitar and a microphone. Since he had walked in Will had been enjoying her raspy, smoky voice and the way she played. Old Tori Amos songs side by side with The Corrs and Nelly Furtado. But only now did he get a good look at her.

  She was slender, with an exotic bronze complexion that was set off by the green silk shirt she wore with plain blue jeans. Her black hair was lush and draped in a sensual curtain across her face when she bent over her guitar to play a break.