Home Free

by Dan Wakefield

  “Yeh, man.”

  “Not many guys can go to their left.”

  “I know.”

  “Shit. I mighta caught on. I’m not sayin I’d have been another Jerry West, but I might have played a few years in the NBA. Got me some good business contacts, bought into some kind of franchise operation. Look at The Hawk. At least he has his fuckin Sub Shop.”

  “Yeh.”

  They were quiet for a while, and then Flash said he’d better hit the road. Gene clapped him on the back and thanked him for the ball game.

  “Forget it,” Flash said.

  He started off and then stopped a moment, under the streetlight. He turned to Gene and said:

  “I wasn’t shittin ya, man. I really could go to my left.”

  “I dig,” Gene said.

  Flash nodded. Then he turned and walked on.

  On weekends the city seemed like an empty echo chamber. Evidently everyone was either out sailing in the fleet of small boats that choked the Charles in a bobbing white traffic jam, or were hidden inside hooked up to TV and air conditioning. In Back Bay the streets were nearly deserted, the trees motionless, the sky hot and blank.

  After hitting the books all day since a breakfast of cold beer and some deli potato salad one late July afternoon Gene went aimlessly roaming around, looking in windows, studying marquees of movies he didn’t feel like seeing, lists of exotic ice-cream flavors he didn’t want to try.

  He stopped at a little outdoor café that was open on Newbury Street, and ordered an iced coffee. There were a few little round tables with old-fashioned drugstore chairs around them arranged under an awning. Maybe it was like Paris. He doubted it. There were two older women with hats at one of the tables, and at another one a guy with a beard and sandals eating some elaborate ice-cream concoction and reading a paperback. Moby Dick. Heavy. That was one result of Gene’s long rambling education. He may not have read all the shit but he’d heard of it.

  A girl in a flowered dress sat at a table a little in front of him and ordered a chocolate sundae. She carried a straw purse and a copy of the Evening Globe and a map of the city. Tourist. She put the purse and the Globe on a chair next to her and fanned herself with the map. Her medium-length black hair was mussy from the heat and every once in a while she brushed it back with one hand. She wasn’t any doll but she wasn’t bad either. Plain and pleasant-looking. And bored.

  Gene thought about it. He hadn’t been laid since Lou left, almost a couple of months ago. She wouldn’t be back for almost another month. The best part about the girl in the flowered dress was that she was a tourist. No matter what happened he would probably never see her again. There was a smudge of chocolate above her upper lip. Idly, her tongue licked over it.

  It had been a long time since Gene had tried to pick up a girl. He remembered the main thing was to start talking. It didn’t much matter what you said. He wiped his mind clean, like a blackboard, and smiled. He began to speak.

  The girl spoke back, and more words went back and forth between them and Gene heard his voice suggesting they try to find someplace cool.

  When they got there he admitted his apartment wasn’t very cool, but the beer in the refrigerator was.

  “OK,” she said.

  He popped two cans, gave one to her, and said, “I’ll bet you’re from Baltimore.”

  “No.”

  “Well—then let’s pretend you are.”

  “All right,” she said.

  He didn’t want to know anything about her. They talked about the heat some more and then Gene turned on the radio so they didn’t have to think of any more shit to say.

  After the second beer he kissed her and they moved to the bedroom. They undressed and made love—remotely, distant, dreamlike. When it was over they dressed and had another beer. When the “girl from Baltimore” finished hers she said she’d better be going. Gene said OK, and walked her down to the street and said good-bye. She gave him a little wave and went away, with her straw purse and map of the city. She forgot the Globe.

  Gene went back and turned the radio off. It was the first time he’d balled another woman since he’d been with Lou. It wasn’t even like the same act had been performed. This had been empty and flat, like a stale beer. He didn’t want to do it anymore with anyone else. He’d rather jerk off remembering Lou.

  The end of August brought an unexpected cool spell and Gene got stoned by himself and went out to sit on a bench in the Common, savoring the nippy breeze, knowing it meant he’d be seeing Lou soon. Going back to that stale apartment seemed like a bummer. He curled up under a tree and closed his eyes. He blinked awake to brightness, opening to a soft lemon light pouring down through the leaves. The fresh breeze stirred around him, cool and soothing. He stretched, smiled, thinking of the music, hearing it in his head, feeling all it meant:

  Here comes the sun

  II

  When Lou got back to Boston Gene had a surprise for her. He had got them a new apartment, nothing grand but at least a little more spacious and gracious than the funky pad behind the Trailways station. It was a long thin floor-through on Marlborough Street near Mass Ave, a bargain because of being corroded with archaeological layers of grime and needing repairs, but boasting big windows onto the street and a carved marble fireplace that didn’t function but looked very fine. For a six-pack Thomas helped scrub the place down and Gene applied plaster and paint, hung bright yellow curtains, added to former furniture an old leather couch from an office sale. For a housewarming present Thomas produced a brand-new queen-size Beautyrest mattress. He said not to mention to Lou it was hot.

  To crown the whole enterprise Gene rigged a thrift shop chandelier from the living room ceiling.

  “It’s royal,” said Lou.

  “For you,” he said, adding to please her, “Me, too.”

  Next stop the queen-size mattress with madras spread in the bedroom where they forgot the Almadén Chablis on ice and the supermarket red caviar and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. They were hungry first for each other and they filled themselves up in the shadowed room, to the tune of random sounds of a warm September afternoon: roller skates on concrete, the play-by-play of a Red Sox game on a neighbor’s radio, sparrow chatter.

  Later, their own purring.

  There was mellow Donovan music playing when Lou got home from her faculty meeting, and the place was bright and warm, welcoming. She unloaded her books and briefcase on the couch and sniffed the good scents coming out of the kitchen.

  “Hey—what’s cookin?”

  “Surprise!”

  “What kind?”

  “Bouillabaisse. With lobster even. The works.”

  “Wow!”

  “If the phone rings don’t answer. Door either. This is just you and me, babe.”

  “What happened?”

  Gene came out of the kitchen grinning, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

  “Grades came in the mail today. From summer.”

  “You passed!”

  “Passed? That’s an insult. Pulled down six hours of A.”

  “Far out!”

  They toasted with Rhine Garten Chablis, sitting on the floor. They hadn’t got used to the new couch yet, except as a place for piling stuff.

  “If I keep on truckin, I’ll finish in February. Finally.”

  “It’s great, babe. Really.”

  “It’s a load off.”

  “Your father—he’ll be so pleased.”

  “Too late for that. Relieved, maybe.”

  “Maybe you should call him?”

  “No. Not till it’s over. Not till I’ve got it right here in my hand with my name on it. I’ve talked big before.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “He’ll really be glad. And me, too. For you.”

  Gene filled their cups again, smiling as he raised his.

  “No more something, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. What the ‘something’?”

  “Hmm?”


  Lou looked preoccupied and distant.

  “Hey,” Gene said, “where are you?”

  “Huh? Oh. Just thinking.”

  “Of?”

  She took out a cigarette, lit it, tilted her head back, blew a long slow stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  “Have you thought about what you’ll do?”

  “When?”

  “When you get your degree.”

  “I dunno. Maybe have a blast. Not just booze, though. Food and all. Maybe bouillabaisse. A whole fuckin vat of bouillabaisse. Keep the mother on for days, keep addin to it, a goddam marathon bouillabaisse for—”

  “Fuck the bouillabaisse!”

  Gene’s head jerked back as if he’d been hit without warning.

  “What the goddam hell? You don’t like bouillabaisse all the sudden? Fuck it, I’ll take the whole thing I made for tonight and dump it in—”

  “Goddam it I’m not talking about bouillabaisse, for the love of fucking Christ.”

  “Well, begging your goddam pardon, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what I asked you, which was what are you going to do when you graduate?”

  “What do you mean by ‘going to do’?”

  “I mean what anyone means when they ask anyone what they’re going to do when they graduate. I mean what work are you going to do?”

  “Why the hell you so uptight about my working all the sudden? Haven’t I worked ever since we been here?”

  “I don’t mean those kind of jobs.”

  “Oh, you mean ‘those kind of jobs’ that helped feed us and sent me back to school aren’t good enough anymore?”

  “They’re perfectly fine when you’re going to school.”

  “And when you get out they’re not good enough?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, they’re not.”

  “Why the fuck?”

  She took a deep breath and spread her hands on her skirt, steadying.

  “Gene. Please. Listen.”

  “I am.”

  “OK. What do you want? For your life?”

  “This. I don’t mean arguing. I mean living with you. That’s what I want.”

  “That’s not enough,” she said fiercely.

  “Isn’t that for me to decide?”

  “Not if you refuse to be adult about it.”

  “Oh. I’m not being a good grown-up citizen. I guess I should go out and hustle my ass into the IBM training program.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s how it sounds.”

  “Forget it, then.”

  “I’ll sure as hell try to.”

  Lou got up and walked to the window.

  She sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Gene. I didn’t mean a scene.”

  He went to her, touched her.

  “Me, too,” he said, “either.”

  They kissed, tentative, and tried to change the subject. But it stayed there, in the room with them, invisible and real.

  Something else hanging over me, Gene thought.

  He began to suspect there always would be. You got rid of one, the next dude popped right in to take its place.

  At dinner Lou said the bouillabaisse was especially good. Gene said he’d used a new recipe, one with fennel seed in it. There was silence again. They could hear each other eating.

  Gene hadn’t been the only one who had got it on in the summer. While he was pulling down his six hours of A, Lou was wrapping up her doctoral thesis. Nell not only did her social work thing in Appalachia, she came back looking healthy and tan. Barnes emerged from his one-room Cape Cod cottage more sallow than ever but he had his new mystery finished. Thomas hadn’t done anything, but he hadn’t tried.

  But the one who came off the season like a real champ was Flash.

  After his summer of low-overhead living and high-volume sales in the boondocks he returned to Boston in triumph, renting a bachelor’s pad with ocean view in the swinging new Harbor Towers apartment complex, and business space in a fashionable row of newly renovated offices on the Wharf.

  The first official undertaking of Flash’s new business was a party to launch it.

  Gene said he and Lou would be honored to attend, but just out of curiosity, what was the business?

  “Professional sports,” Flash said.

  “Any special one?”

  “Very special. It’s new.”

  “You mean you made it up?”

  “No, no, what kinda crap is that? This is an established, historically traditional sport. I meant new in the pro field. This is a sport with class. Background. Originated in Scotland, old buddy, the country that gave us golf. Which happens to be the most popular sport in the English-speaking world.”

  “So what’s this one?”

  A pause. Flash pronounced the word with as much drama as anyone could drag out of two syllables.

  “Curling,” he said.

  “Curling?”

  “It’ll soon be a household word.”

  “I think I heard of it. Where a guy tries to keep running on top of a log without falling in the water?”

  “No, no, dummy that’s birling. Log birling. That’s an individual competition.”

  “What’s curling?”

  “A team sport. Played on ice. You mainly need brooms and what they call the ‘stone.’ Equipment costs will be low, which of course is a plus factor in establishing franchises for the league.”

  “There’s a league already?”

  “The North American Curling League. I am league president, as well as owner of the Boston franchise.”

  “Far out,” Gene said.

  He meant it. When Lou got home she said she’d never heard of curling and Gene said maybe it only existed in Flash’s head. Lou decided to look it up in the old World Book Encyclopedia Thomas had given them and damned if it wasn’t there. Curling. It had four-man teams that slid or “curled” a heavy stone or iron to a mark called a “Tee” on an ice rink. The rink was supposed to be 138 feet long and 14 feet wide. There were rules and regulations, the whole bit. It even started in Scotland.

  Lou said she thought it sounded kind of dull.

  Gene was just amazed it existed.

  The party in Flash’s new office looked like a combination of the Miss Universe Contest and the annual convention of the Massachusetts Elks club. The former group were personal friends of Flash, the latter potential investors. The only furniture in the office was what proved to be a Ping-Pong table covered with a bedspread on which were set two giant punch bowls. Behind it were a pair of tan blonde beauties wearing red miniskirts, white blouses, high-heeled black boots, and identical sashes of red silk emblazoned with the gold letters N E A E A. On the walls were a map of the United States with a red pin stuck into Boston, and a gold-framed black and white photo of Flash in a basketball uniform, frozen in the act of a jump shot.

  Flash pushed his way through the crowd to greet Gene and Lou. He was wearing jodhpurs and riding boots, a gold-colored sport coat with brown leather vest, a white silk shirt, and an ascot.

  “Some threads!” said Lou.

  “New image,” Flash explained. “Gentleman sportsman.”

  He went on to inform them that the N E A E A on the sashes of the punch servers stood for “New England Athletic and Entertainment Association.” That was the parent corporation which operated the North American Curling League. The N E A E A was sort of an umbrella, Flash said, under which he could move in many directions, both sports- and entertainment-wise.

  “Don’t forget the Rolling Stones,” said Lou, intending a gentle warning.

  “By no means,” Flash said. “They still have a following.”

  He had to excuse himself to mingle with potential investors, but asked Gene and Lou to join him and some of his new associates for dinner.

  Barnes bumbled into them, looking embarrassed. He was all spruced up, his eyes nervous.

  “Where’s Nell?” Lou asked him.

  “Fine,” said Bar
nes.

  “I didn’t say how, I said where.”

  “Home, I guess; I just thought I’d drop by for a sec.”

  “Sure,” said Lou.

  Barnes wasn’t asked to the dinner, Flash figuring rightly he was on the make and might take away from the influence he wanted to reserve for his first investor. That was Stan Plumley, a balding guy wearing a maroon double-knit with pink shirt and white tie. He sold auto insurance in Bangor, Maine, and Flash had sold him aluminum siding for his house last summer. More recently, Flash had sold him the North American Curling League franchise for his community. Flash had seated Plumley between Sissy and Sue, the two punch servers at the party.

  Flash had taken them all to Bob Lee’s Islander, a Polynesian place in Chinatown that rewarded patrons with leis around the neck and served exotic drinks. When Plumley went to the men’s room, Gene asked if he had actually paid five grand for the Bangor, Maine, franchise in the North American Curling League.

  “Certainly,” Flash said. “He is pledged to raise that amount. Thus far he has made an initial investment of a hundred and seventy-five dollars of his own cash moneys, as a show of good faith, and will proceed to collect the balance from among the leading businessmen of his community.”

  “The other four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five dollars,” said Lou.

  Gene poked her under the table.

  “We at N E A E A feel,” Flash said, “that funding of a franchise should be as widely distributed as possible, so as to insure broad-based community support.”

  When Plumley returned from the men’s room, Flash proposed a toast to the new Bangor franchise.

  “Let us raise our glasses,” he said, “to the Bangor—”

  “What?” asked Plumley.

  “Exactly,” said Flash, lowering his glass and looking thoughtful. “We have to think of a name. My own club is the Boston Brooms. That would have gone well with Bangor, too. Brooms. But that’s water over the dam. What would sound good with Bangor?”

  “Battleships?” suggested Lou.

  Gene poked her under the table again.

  “The Bangor Battleships,” Flash said reflectively. He shook his head. “A bit cumbersome,” he said.