“Impoliteri?” The cop’s slitty eyes slide in the direction of the Glassmans’. “You mean, that house? Oh, jeez.” He clutches the huge St. Christopher medal nestled in his chest hair. “You must be Gary Imp’s mom? I am sorry…belatedly.”
Tim can’t hold it in any longer. “She killed him! Her own son! She shot—why the fuck are you smiling?”
Sloane’s yellow grin has a freshly missing eyetooth. He flicks his chin at the dozen little bottles of Sambuca. “You slip off the wagon there, Butterfingers?”
Rose snorts.
“I was there that night, Mike. I was in the room.”
“You witnessed a crime?”
“Well, technically, no, but—it is the reason I asked you in.”
Sloane plops down onto the couch, no doubt trying to disguise his loud fart. Fail. “Haven’t been here in a while. What happened to all the saint statues and all that? Crucifixes.”
Tim’s too wound up to explain that the religious decor went to Ohio with his mother. What was left, Tim threw into the garage. “I need you to listen, Mike.”
“But I’m starving,” Sloane whines. “You got pretzels?”
Rose informs him Tim ordered Chinese.
“Mike—”
“Ease up, would ya. I’m beat. This paranoid city. There’s still soldiers in the subway. Today—” He lifts his shirt to reveal a multicolored bruise over his nipple. “From a stiletto! Don’t even ask.”
“But this is real, Mike. She’s got a gun in there. In that white bag—”
Rose claps. “That’s it! The gun! That’s how I know you!” Evidently, Sloane was the officer who returned Vin’s gun when the investigation ended.
Sloane scratches his fuzzy head. “What gun is this again?”
“The one she killed her son with! Pay attention! Mike!”
“He was trying to steal my house!” Rose shouts. “What was I supposed to do?”
To Tim’s astonishment, Sloane chooses this moment to get up and check on his dog. “What the fuck?” Tim trails after him. “She just confessed!”
Sloane makes kissy sounds at Jill, his Doberman. Tied to the porch, she’s straining on her leash toward him, drooling. For the first time, Tim’s relieved to know that Blacky’s on the far side of the hedge. “C’mon, man,” Tim persists, grabbing Sloane’s Popeye biceps. “Do something.”
What Sloane does is slam Tim back into the end table. Tim and all twelve little Sambuca bottles wind up on the orange shag.
“Shit.” Tim rubs the place where his head hit. “Why’d you do that?”
Tim recognizes Mike’s disappointed headshake from their long days sharing a lifeguard chair. Fucking X-ray, Fucking Butterfingers, always bringing him dooooown. “Number one is, whatever happened next door is ancient history. And, B, I’m off duty. Mind if I use your john to change into my wetsuit?”
The door slides open and Bean’s bald spot pops in. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks Sloane of Tim, on the floor.
Sloane shrugs.
“Peg’s a no-show so we’re gonna hit the dart tournament at Tubridy’s. Who’s in?”
Sloane promises to meet them there later. First he’s “planning to escort this fine lady home.” He’s sick of police officers getting crapped on while firefighters “are the shit.” Turning to Rose: “Where to, honey?”
“Castle Senior Living,” Rose says, just like that. “On Horace—”
Tim charges, rips the white pocketbook from her grip, and, once and for all, upends it.
“I don’t see any gun,” Sloane says. “Where’s the gun?”
There is none. Amid the dirty, clattering shower of candies and wrappers, cigars, pens, crumbs, and tissues thuds a different heavy object, a canister wrapped in brown paper and stamped with the name GARY PAUL VINCENT IMPOLITERI.
“Ashes.”
Rose sighs impatiently. “Now will you spray the damn tree so I can finally sprinkle him?”
A coughing fit descends on Bean. He withdraws his balding head.
Sloane returns Rose’s things to the pocketbook. “Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get going.”
“Nothing’s cleared up!” Tim shouts. “She still killed him!”
“Oh, leave it alone already, man. If you’re so concerned about murder, come to the dart tournament. It’s a memorial.”
“Every fucking thing around here is a memorial,” Tim says, slumping onto the mushroom-infested couch. After nine years, his deepest, darkest secret has been revealed and, swiftly, dismissed. Done. It’s worse than any prank or pain Sloane has previously inflicted. Even Rose is sympathetic.
“It’s not your fault, Timmy,” she tells him. “The detective didn’t believe me either.”
“What detective?”
“With a V? Voly something? The one who gave me his card. You know, in case I saw something suspicious.” Rose laughs at this. “I called him right away to confess. I told him everything. Volystaga? Volystinya?”
“Volistaya,” Sloane says. “I know the guy. Diabetic.” He holds out his loglike forearm to help her up and she not only stands but also walks, walks, with Sloane across Tim’s living room.
“Father Dunne, Maureen, Bibi,” Rose adds. “None of them believed me either. Call your mother; I’m sure she’ll tell you the same. Nobody listens to old people.”
But Tim’s mother isn’t home. If she were, she’d answer. Her generation can’t seem to screen a call without guilt, always leaping up from tables and toilets to catch the phone before the machine. Dread is their default mode. This was so even before she and her nun sister fled back to the Midwest “to die where He first put us.” Tim was raised on tales of car wrecks and crop blight. Several times a year, she tells the story of the tornado that made his infant ears bleed like she’s proud of Tim for it, the closest her son would ever come to true heroism or stigmata.
Tim realizes he’s been scratching his face with the buttons on the cordless. He flings the phone to the ground. That’s it; he’s giving up trying to grow a beard. Wetting a razor, he thinks of the countless times he stood shaving beside Chowder at the firehouse. How his friend was always singing but getting lyrics wrong. Instead of “Life in the fast lane,” he sang, “Life in the vast plain.” Also “like a virgin touched for the thirty-first time.” It occurs to Tim that Chowder might have been purposely messing up lyrics to amuse his friends all along. Another swell of grief to surf. Here goes. And since Tim would rather not see his reflection while he shaves, he’s bleeding when the Chinese food finally arrives. It’s the delivery guy who alerts him, pointing at Tim and frantically pulling out napkins from the warm greasy bags. The boy, maybe fifteen, has one of those ultra-tight-skinned faces that allow you to see the exact shape of his skull. And its horrified expression says just how bad Tim looks. Probably the kid thinks he shaved off a nostril.
At a loss, Tim offers the guy a spring roll. Declined! Duh. The last thing a Chinese food delivery dude wants is Chinese food. Tim notes the kid’s perfect English, then feels racist for doing so. A drink? He gestures to the mini-Sambucas on the floor. Rose probably left them on purpose, to torture him.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m working.”
“Never stopped me,” Tim jokes, trying to be friendly. But the kid keeps turning to look back at the door. He thrusts out the credit card slip from a full arm’s length away. This may be the only human in history who has ever been frightened of Tim. It’s a weird feeling.
He signs for the food—$200.48. The Mets cap full of cash has gone to the bar with its owner, Billy. Tim’s no longer hungry but a spare rib comes in handy for luring Blacky back through the hedge, into the house.
Then Tim dons a raincoat, a respirator mask, and a pair of rubber gloves.
* * *
Regina’s the only one to “feel” Jake’s presence. She insists that the ghost whispered in her ear—something incomprehensible that made her feel “really nice.”
“‘You look hot’?” June guesses, and the two girls
fall onto each other, a fit of rolling hysterics that would have gone on forever only Regina got sand in her eye. Now that June’s stopped worrying that she’s jinxing Jake, she’s delighted to have this story to tell her old friend when she sees him, to have old friends to tell stories to and new friends to put in them. The curly tips of the flames are also delightful, also her lips, which feel soft, taste smoky. Even the word delightful is delightful when you say it aloud: “Delightful.” Try it. Your mouth has to stretch in three different directions. So the drugs must be working. If all of the above weren’t proof, there’s the moon. All the females worship it because it’s paying attention to them or looking “delicious like a crepe, the thinnest, most delicate—”
“No one needs any more descriptions of the moon,” Kenny says, impatient to move on and conjure “June’s Gary.”
“He’s not mine,” June says. “I just sleep in his room.” At least, June assumes it’s his room (left untouched for decades)—Miami Vice posters, porno mags, more footwear than any one person should own. Kenny returns the gold bracelet to June, then reaches into her backpack and pulls out the red cowboy boot with white stitching he believes is Gary’s “authentic” object. June waits for him to look inside—“What the hell?” He sees the real item, a snub-nosed wooden-handled gun. Finding the old-fashioned weapon at the back of the closet instantly changed the genre of June’s pretend film. And now Kenny understands this too. Very carefully, he places the firearm down on the sand.
“Are you out of your mind?” Necky shrieks, attacking June’s newfound delight. “What were you thinking?”
“We might need to shoot someone annoying,” Regina says.
“I’m sorry.” June’s panicking. She knew she should have brought Gary’s pinewood-derby car. Necky’s right. Guns ruin everything. “Look, I’ll bury it.” June grabs a clamshell and starts to dig.
Plink, plink. It’s like pressing a toy piano key. Every time the shell meets sand, plink! Scooping further down, June can get a real piano sound—right hand, treble clef. With another shell in her left hand? Yes, it’s there, the bass register. A long, even stroke makes a lush, major chord. A circular movement turns it minor. She has figured out how to play the beach! It’s incredible. Wait till her mom sees this! Her face aches from smiling.
Kenny slides the gun back into the boot for burial and waits while June gets the deed done. Then he has everyone stare up at the house. “Gary Impoliteri,” he bellows. “It’s safe to come out now, Gary…”
* * *
Tim kneels before the tree with the can of fungicide, trying to read the instructions in what’s left of the moonlight. Inside his mask, his breath sounds monstrous. When a gust of wind pushes the empty wheelchair into his back, he yelps in fright, then looks around in embarrassment. Pulling the trigger to get the chemical flowing through the thin hose, he silently apologizes to any insects or dead souls swirling around in the poison mist.
* * *
“Where are you, Gary? Come to us,” Kenny persists. Then both eighth-graders start screaming.
“He’s there! He’s there!” They point. “The ghost! Up there!” Up on June’s lawn, a tall bigheaded figure rises from the ground in a kind of vapor. “Aaah, he’s coming!”
Mayhem sets in. A mini-stampede of frenzied girls abandon their sweatshirts and shoes. June suppresses an urge to do a cartwheel while Kenny’s all business, collecting and hiding his baby bottles.
When Tim runs up and pulls off his mask, Necky gasps. “Your nose!”
“Your neck!”
Regina laughs. “Good comeback!”
“Your eye!” Tim says.
“I got sand in it.”
“What’s all this screaming?”
“Your nose!” Necky rudely repeats.
“Skin cancer.”
“What?” That can’t be, June decides. He’s lying. Hero Tim’s just too humble to tell this stranger what really happened. “What really happened?” June gets the courage to whisper.
“Skin cancer.” Tim kicks sand on the fire. “Sixteen years of lifeguarding…you know.”
June can feel the last of the delight draining out of her.
“And your neck?” Tim asks Necky again.
“Driver’s ed…kidding!” The horrible girl wraps her legs around Kenny’s but she’s still all about Tim. “You really do look like a ghost man. But stop pretending you’re Gary because I know you’re that driver’s ed teacher.”
“Yeah,” Tim says distantly. His eyes scan the waves. They rewind, replay, rewind, replay in an infinite loop. Maybe that comforts him, but not June. She feels trapped on film, dizzy and hot, cold, shivery, going to vomit. Regina holds her hair.
“Party’s over,” Tim says, taking the scrap of moon back home on his left shoulder. Kenny said it. No one needs any more descriptions of the moon. No one needs any more descriptions of anything.
* * *
Asleep in the dining-room chair, Sue is startled awake by June’s willowy shape draped all around her. Even stranger than the hug is the milky face, eyes molten and shiny. “You look, you look…transcendent.” But saying it causes the girl to vanish so fast, Sue has to question whether it even happened. Real June or apparition, Sue counts the vision as the third star she’s given up waiting to see (clouds massing). Mostly, it’s the excuse she needs to nix the prayers and reach for her iPod. “‘I’ve got the blues, I feel so lonely,’” Bessie Smith sings, and Sue too. “‘I’ll give the world if I could only…’” She doesn’t care if she wakes up the whole house. “‘Baby won’t you please come home…’”
* * *
“Hello. Hey. Did I wake you?” Tim breathes into the phone. He’d been just about done cleaning his yard of empties when he spied the lone Heineken, sitting in the moonlit grass—green glowing glass in the green grass, otherworldly. The beer was open but full, sweating but cold. Tim rushed to call his sponsor, Mark No Name.
“No, no. I wasn’t sleeping,” Mark lies. “Hold on.”
Tim pictures the goateed malpractice attorney (fourteen years sober) as he puts his hand over the receiver and mouths, It’s him, to his irritated wife before walking out of the bedroom. “How you doing, man?”
“Do you know if beer is bad for plants? I have to dump this out.”
“Did you get into some booze, Tim? What’s going on?”
Booze? “No.” The baby Sambucas weren’t so tempting in the end. It’s this Heineken that draws him. The familiar heaviness in Tim’s palm relaxes his shoulders like nothing else.
“Okay, Tim, talk to me.” The alarm in Mark’s voice is offset by the sucking sound of the fridge opening.
“Any brewskies in there, Marky?”
A square of light appears on an upper Glassman floor, the corner bedroom. “‘Baby won’t you please come home,’” June’s bluesy voice sings but all Tim sees of her is a white hand holding a pair of scissors. June must have been cutting away at the ivy, bit by bit, since she moved in, but Tim’s only just now noticing. The thick plant that used to cover the window has been thinned to a lacy screen. It reminds Tim of his promise to replace the Glassman back door. He got wood from Bean and everything.
“Bean? Is that one of your friends?” Mark asks through a wad of food.
“What’s that in your mouth?”
“Who’s Bean?”
“A guy with wood.” Bean works two days a week in construction. “Once he bit off part of a guy’s nose in a fight, so that’s the new joke. You know, that Bean got me too.”
“Hilarious.”
“I think it’s pretty funny.”
“And why are you hanging out with him?”
“Answer my question first. In your mouth is…”
“Turkey roll. Happy? Now talk to me. You miss being a fireman, is that it?”
Booze? Fireman? The dude’s like fifty but he uses the same vocab as Sy Glassman.
“Tell me exactly what you miss about it, Tim. Go ahead. Unload.”
“Hmmm. Knocking down wal
ls. Women.” Isn’t that what Mark’s dying to hear? “They throw themselves at you. It’s fucking obscene.”
“Really!” Mark loves it. “Sooo, did you, uh, do you—take advantage?”
More of June appears through the plant now. An arm. A freckly profile. “‘I have tried in vain nevermore to call your name…’” He knows that song. It’s not on the jukeboxes in any of the local bars—the Wharf, the Raintower, Connolly’s, Tubridy’s—but he’s sure he knows it. “‘When you left you broke my heart. That will never make us part…’”
Bringing the bottle to his lips, Tim tries to picture Mrs. No Name asleep in the other room. Mark said she’s a nurse, so even though it’s absurd, that’s all Tim can summon—a fully dressed nurse, down to the white stockings and clogs, in bed. There was one hot nurse during his time in the hospital but she was Puerto Rican, which Mrs. No Name is not. And, then as now, the white uniform is, to Tim, a turnoff. Not like a park ranger uniform. Not like Peg in bed in her park ranger uniform. Tim rolls the bottle back and forth on his lips, sticks his tongue in the hole. No way could aluminum ever be this erotic.
“I’m in love with my best friend’s wife,” Tim admits experimentally.
“Howser?”
“Chowder.”
“What’s his real name, Tim?”
“Mark No Name.”
“C’mon, man. Talk to me. This is—your friend who died?”
“No remains have been found.” Whatever was left of him was likely carted to Fresh Kills with the rest of the wreckage, but they don’t know for sure. They might never know. Tim likes to imagine his friend simply has amnesia and has made his way to somewhere beautiful, one of those spots they used to drool over in Surfer magazine—Bondi Beach, Sydney; Taghazout, Morocco. Even California would be nice. Santa Monica, where Chowder and Tim had raised the money to send their homeless friend Seaver, or Santa Cruz.
“What’s Chowder’s real name?” Mark asks. “Tim? For God’s sake, show the guy the respect—”
“Chowderhead.”
“Tim.”
“Have you ever done this before, Mark? ’Cause you suck at it.”
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