by Richard Cox
“Will you stop? Your house is great. Although your movie theater living room could use a feminine touch.”
“Chicks never want a TV in the living room.”
“Whatever. Maybe a plant or two? A chair over there? You’ve got a couch and a wall of electronics.”
“Tough crowd tonight. I’m not letting you anywhere near the kitchen.”
Alicia laughed and punched him on the arm. Jonathan poured a glass of wine and handed it to her.
“So Karen lived here with you?”
“We bought the house together six years ago.”
“Did she . . . I mean, what happened with you guys?”
“It’s a long story. The simple answer is she thought I was selling myself short at work. That I could make more money if I put a little effort into it.”
“How would you do that? Isn’t school funding low already?”
“She thought I should aspire to be an administrator. Principal, superintendent, that sort of thing.”
“And you didn’t want that?”
Jonathan drank a little of his wine. “I didn’t get into teaching to work my way up the ladder. I got into teaching to help kids. And to have a salary until I could publish novels and write full-time.”
“So Karen didn’t see the same potential in your writing as you?”
“I guess you could say she was more pragmatic than me. She thought of it more as a lottery. Spend a little time writing, you know, an hour or two on the weekend, after work, whatever . . . and maybe one day I’d land a big book contract and we could both quit our jobs. But the more time I spent on it, this pipe dream, was less time I was devoting to my ‘real’ career.”
“Do you think you’ll ever make money at it? Enough to give up your day job?”
“I used to think so. I’m no Stephen King, but I think I write pretty well. I don’t know anyone in publishing, though, and it seems like that’s the only way to make it.”
“I don’t blame you for sticking to your guns,” Alicia said. “Who’s going to make your dreams come true if you don’t?”
Jonathan smiled broadly at this. “Exactly.”
Still, Alicia could understand the challenge of being married to a struggling author.
“Did you ever wonder if Karen was jealous of your writing? Maybe her concern wasn’t so much about focusing on your school career as you having just one career. If you wrote every night after work, it probably didn’t leave a lot of time for her.”
“Yeah, I thought of that. But honestly all our issues were just symptoms of a larger problem.”
“Which was?”
“I didn’t love her. We fell into a relationship mostly by accident, and staying in it was easier than breaking up and finding someone else. In retrospect the relationship doesn’t feel like it really happened. Like it was just a placeholder until my real life began.”
“So what about now?” she asked him. “Has your real life begun?”
He looked over at the television, then back at her. “Do you really want to watch Pretty Woman? I could put on some music.”
“Music would be wonderful.”
Jonathan leaned near her and pressed some buttons on a remote control. The dark melody that followed, unfamiliar to her, seemed to change the mood of their conversation. As Jonathan leaned back on the couch, he looked directly into her eyes as if he might want to kiss her.
“I don’t even know what real life looks like,” Alicia said. “I see friends and family all doing the ‘normal’ thing, buying bigger houses, driving their kids to church in SUVs, and when I look at them it makes me cringe. For some reason I get the feeling there’s something out there extraordinary waiting for me. How arrogant is that?”
Jonathan was looking at her carefully, the way she remembered from their junior high days. She loved it now the way she had loved it then.
“I sound ridiculous,” she said. “I know I do. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t sound ridiculous.”
“I feel like a pretty strong woman, you know? I hate my job, but I work hard at it. I make decent money for a town like this, and I take care of my mom when my dad is away on business. I tell myself I don’t need a relationship to be happy. If I meet someone, fine, and if I don’t, well that’s fine, too. The last thing I’ve ever wanted is to force it to happen. And still almost every day there’s some woman at work who wants to set me up or wonders why I’m ‘still single.’ As if ‘single’ is an affliction I’m trying to cure. And the dumbest thing is you should hear how they complain, these women, about their husbands and their kids and how the world is going to hell because the government took prayer out of schools. Everyone seems so damned miserable and yet they judge me because I have the audacity to do what they wish they had.”
“And what’s that?”
“To hold out for, you know, the fairy tale.”
Alicia looked at Jonathan and felt with a strange and sudden clarity they would have a future together, even though her ideal fairy tale partner looked somewhat different than this. Jonathan was ordinary-looking. He wasn’t particularly confident or witty or any of the things she might notice in a man. But he was emotionally transparent and she loved the logical, almost scientific way he looked at the world. Also, the interest he still showed in her after so many years made her feel more attractive than she had in some time.
Alicia finished her wine, and Jonathan poured more for both of them. It was six-thirty, half an hour before David and his girlfriend were scheduled to arrive. Was she looking for something in Jonathan because David was bringing a woman along? Surely not. Hopefully not.
“This whole thing is surreal,” Jonathan said. “The fires, the detectives, seeing you grown up. I haven’t thought about any of this in forever and now, suddenly, it’s like it all happened yesterday. Remember in junior high when I called you on the phone? I swear I can still hear you telling me about the frozen oceans on Europa.”
“Jonathan, I’m trying to . . . This is complicated, I know. Being childhood friends and all, and now the two of us here as adults, having wine together, and—”
He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against hers. She could taste the ripe flavor of cheese on his tongue, could smell the wine on his breath. He ran a finger down her chin, then backed away and touched the same finger against her lips.
“Who’s going to make my dreams happen if I don’t?” he said. “Right?”
She squeezed his hand and then touched him on the forearm. It was ridiculous, being here with him, kissing him. On Monday she had gone to Chili’s with that Stuart fool, absurdly sure she would never meet a decent man in Wichita, and had come home to find her house in flames. At that moment her emotional spirit could not have been more wounded, at least not until this afternoon when she heard the news from Allstate. Now she was sitting on the couch of her first crush, feeling as if she were somehow a kid again. Or like she was a character in one of Jonathan’s novels.
He leaned into her, taking his time, and she decided it was okay, for now, whatever he was trying to do. They kissed for a while. She warmed to him. Tingled.
32
A few minutes before seven, Jonathan poured himself the rest of the wine while Alicia went into the bathroom to freshen up. His heart was beating faster than it should have been. His head was swimming a little from the wine. It had been years since he’d kissed a woman other than Karen, and it felt as weird as it did wonderful.
Any minute now David would arrive with his girlfriend, and Jonathan was growing more nervous by the moment. For one, if he was ever going to discuss his thoughts about Todd and the impossible music, tonight was the time. The problem was Alicia seemed like a pretty level-headed girl, and Jonathan didn’t want to come off looking to her like he was a gullible fool. Especially not in front of David.
Jonathan heard the popping sound of gravel outside, a car stopping in front of his house. He looked through the blinds and saw a silver BMW SUV.
“Alicia,” he called. �
�They’re here.”
A moment later the doorbell rang. Jonathan approached the door and opened it. David was tanned, fit, dressed in a golf shirt and slacks. The large watch on his wrist looked like it was made of solid platinum. Meredith’s blonde hair was shoulder-length, her arms lithe and bronzed.
“David,” he said. “Wow, it’s been a long time. You guys come in.”
David shook Jonathan’s hand and hugged him, and then he introduced Meredith, who handed over a bottle of white wine.
“Very nice to meet you, Meredith. Thanks for the wine. Alicia’s inside if you guys want to follow me.”
He took them through the living room and into the kitchen.
“Alicia,” David said, and stepped forward to hug her. “It’s been forever. You look great.”
“You, too,” Alicia replied. “California obviously suits you.”
David smiled. He put his arm around Meredith and said, “Alicia, this is Meredith.”
The two women shook hands and smiled at each other.
“I’ve heard a lot about you both,” Meredith said. “Thanks for allowing me to be here. I sort of feel like I don’t belong.”
“Nonsense,” Jonathan said. “We could use some outside perspective.”
She smiled at this.
To David, Jonathan said, “Man, I’m so sorry about what happened to your dad, that you had to come out here under these circumstances. You must be devastated.”
“Thank you. It’s a terrible thing for sure. But he and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and had fallen out of touch. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, to be honest.”
“Oh, David,” Alicia said. “That’s terrible. You must be overwhelmed right now.”
Meredith grunted agreement.
“I could think of better ways to spend my time,” David said. “But the bright side of all this is I finally get to see you guys again.”
This seemed like a good time for Jonathan to pour wine and hand glasses to each of them.
David said, “On the way to the police station today, Meredith was telling me how impressed she was with Wichita Falls. What did you say? Flat and hot and angry?”
“Oh, I was just joking around.”
“It’s all right,” Alicia said. “I’d move away in a heartbeat if I could.”
“What’s keeping you here?” David asked.
“My mother. She has MS and my dad is on the road a lot.”
Jonathan couldn’t help but imagine, if he were worth millions, how easy it would be to turn Alicia’s dreams into reality. If he were a rich and famous author, he could simply hire a full-time nurse for her mother and whisk Alicia away to New York. They could find a super cool apartment downtown and do hip things like eat hot dogs on the street and have sex every night to jazz music on vinyl. Or whatever hip and artsy people in New York liked to do. Honestly, they could do similar things in downtown Wichita Falls, except they would probably need to bring their own hot dogs and jazz records.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” David said.
“Thank you. It’s been tough on both my parents, but they’ve handled it as well as they could, I think.”
Jonathan didn’t like the way Alicia was looking at David.
“So, Meredith,” he said. “You were telling us how much you wanted to live here in Wichita.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m sure it sounds shitty coming from an outsider, but something about this place doesn’t seem quite right. The people we’ve met, I don’t know, they seem to just be going through the motions. Like they’ve got nothing to live for, like the city is doomed or something.”
“I don’t know if we’re doomed,” he said to Meredith. “But there definitely is some insecurity about being so remote and forgotten. Everyone thinks Wichita Falls is in Kansas.”
Meredith nodded at this, but when no one said anything else, Jonathan decided a change of scenery was in order.
“You guys want to go sit down? If we’re going to chat for a while we might as well get comfortable.”
Soon the four of them were in the living room: Jonathan and Alicia together on the couch, David and Meredith on the adjacent love seat.
“I can’t believe it’s been so long,” David said, looking directly at Alicia. “Our twenty-year reunion is next fall. You going?”
“I doubt it,” Alicia said. “I went to the ten-year and the only interesting thing was to see how fat everyone was. I noticed you didn’t bother to show.”
Jonathan hadn’t attended the reunion, either, but Alicia neglected to mention that.
“Was your old boyfriend there?” David asked. “The linebacker?”
“He weighed probably three hundred pounds. Works for Terminix or something.”
“He kills termites?”
“And spiders and scorpions, I presume.”
Both David and Meredith chuckled. Alicia took a long drink of her wine, and Jonathan realized his was gone already.
“So what do you guys do?” David asked.
“I work in tech support for a software company,” Alicia said. “All the people who can’t figure out their computers, they call me.”
“I’m one of those,” Meredith said. “I run a bridal boutique, and I swear half the time I try to launch my inventory program it crashes the computer.”
Everyone laughed at this.
“And you, Jonathan?” Meredith asked.
“I teach Social Studies to junior high students.”
“Oh, that’s a great way to give back,” David said.
“He also writes books,” Alicia pointed out.
“Really?” Meredith said. “What kind of books do you write?”
I write books like this, Jonathan felt like saying.
Instead, he told her, “Speculative fiction. Stories with strange things going on, like The Twilight Zone.”
“Anything published?”
“Not yet.”
Jonathan wondered how much longer he should wait before broaching the topic that had brought them together in the first place. He couldn’t put it off forever, but he was in no hurry to bring up Todd and his music.
David, however, seemed to anticipate his thoughts.
“I want to catch up with you guys,” he said, “but we also need to figure out what the heck is going on in this town. I want to know what happened to my dad. I want that detective to stop acting like I had anything to do with it.”
“Why would he believe that?” Alicia asked. “You don’t even live around here.”
David looked at Jonathan, “What exactly did you tell the detective?”
“I told him our original story. The only thing I changed was that we knew in advance Todd was going to burn down your dad’s restaurant.”
“That’s good,” David said. “Consistency is good. The problem is Gholson doesn’t believe it. And if he ever finds proof, the next question he’ll ask is what happened to Joe Henreid.”
“I thought you didn’t know what happened to Joe,” Alicia said.
“We don’t,” David replied. “But I don’t want some local yokel detective using this business to reopen a missing person case and drag my name through the mud. Do you?”
“No,” Jonathan said. They were both declining to reveal crucial information about Joe, which wasn’t really fair to Alicia (or Meredith), but this didn’t seem like the best time to address the topic. And really they didn’t know what had happened to Joe. They only suspected.
“So where’s Adam?” David asked. “I thought we were all going to be here.”
“Said he had other plans.”
“We should project a united front. We have no idea what Adam has said to Gholson. He needs to be here.”
“He was pretty adamant,” Jonathan explained.
“Which makes me think he’s nervous. I never really trusted that guy, if you want to know the truth.”
“Look,” Alicia said. “What happened twenty-five years ago might be interesting to you guys, but my insurance c
ompany is withholding payment until the arson investigation is complete. I need to know what’s going on today. And besides, if someone is still out there, they might keep doing this. They could try to burn down Jonathan’s house, or Adam’s, or who knows what.”
“But why?” Meredith asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. If this Todd guy is back in Wichita Falls, is it for some kind of revenge? How in the world did he convince your friend, Bobby, to burn down the restaurant? And kill David’s father in the process? I mean that is some serious shit. What is he trying to accomplish or communicate by doing all this?”
No one had an answer. They all just sat there. And where he had watched David control the conversation earlier, Jonathan decided now was his chance to steer them in the direction he had intended from the beginning.
“Detective Gholson has every reason to suspect us,” he said, “because the lyrics in these emails are obviously connected in some way to the name of our club. But if he’s done any research, he must be confused about what the connection is. He must know by now we named our club The Boys of Summer more than a year before the song actually came out.”
Jonathan looked at David for recognition. He found nothing.
“Why does that matter?” Meredith asked. “Just because you didn’t name your club after the actual song doesn’t mean the emails aren’t meant as some kind of clue.”
“The thing is,” Jonathan said, “we did name our club after that song.”
He could see Alicia and Meredith calculating the ways this could be true. And once they arrived at the same impossible conclusion, they would question it as he had. There was no reason for either one of them to believe something so ridiculous, but David had been there in 1983. The two of them had seen and heard the same things. If their memories matched, did that mean it might be true after all?
Finally, David breathed out a sigh of what seemed like relief.
“Most of the time Todd used his keyboard to play music he heard on the radio. But sometimes he wrote his own songs, and Jonathan’s correct: One of them inspired the name of our club.”
“‘The Boys of Summer,’” Alicia said.