Chapter sixteen
1990
“Hey! What in the hell’re you doing here, man?” the huge mitt of a hand swallows up Henry’s. “Good to see you! Wow, it’s been a long time, huh?” The voice a smiling one, familiar and warm like Toll House chocolate chip cookies or James Taylor’s voice to a certain generation.
“What’re you doing here’s the question,” Henry expertly shifts the focus of attention to Connor Segman, their hands still pumping up and down. “Looking good, man, looking good.” He smiles back at the open skillet face he’d known for the first eighteen years of his life.
“Ah, well, you know,” Connor says. “Every goddamn Christmas my folks are at my throat to come back to this goddamn town so I finally caved. Plus I couldn’t miss the famous annual sale,” he says.
Henry nods. “The famous annual sale,” he says, knowing this is the point where Connor will realize he’s talking to someone who still lives in “this goddamn town.”
Right on cue: “I mean, it doesn’t take much!” Connor’s voice now transparently jovial. “I miss it here. I really do,” he says. And now, Henry thinks, and now the familiar subject change: “How’s it going with you, man? Jeez, how long’s it been? I don’t think I’ve seen you since that summer after graduation, man. You look great. Jeez.”
“Yeah, it’s been, what, ten, twelve years?” Henry says. “Jesus, we’re old now. Hey, you know who was in here a while ago? Peter Campbell. In fact you just missed him. You wouldn’t’ve recognized him, I’m telling you.”
“Campbell’s back in town? Unbelievable!” Connor says. Henry knows Connor is relieved, grateful to Henry for his willingness to rebound away from Awkward Topic to Comfortable Third-Party Topic. “What’s he doing these days? Jeez, I haven’t heard that name in years.”
“Turns out he’s a big-time Hollywood agent or something,” Henry says with a laugh. “He comes in here all tanned—middle of December—all tanned and slicked back. Like he’s Mr. California now or something. You’ve got to see him. You won’t recognize him.”
“Oh, man, I’ve got to call over there,” Connor says. “His parents still living in the same place? They got the same phone number you think?”
“Yeah. They’re still out there in that old barn,” Henry smiles. “Remember that barn? God, I haven’t been out there since tenth grade.”
“What’re you doing after work?” Connor asks. “Let’s drive out there. Pick up Campbell, go out drinking. What time’re you finished here?”
“I’m out at five but I’ve got something to do and then I’ve got to go back to my place first,” Henry says. “I can be good to go by six-thirty-ish.”
“That’s fine,” says Connor. “I’ve got to have dinner with the folks, anyway. Hey, guess where we’re going? DaSilva’s! Can you believe that place is still around?” But Connor colors when Henry says, “Um, yeah.”
“Fuck me. Okay well, come by my folks’ house at about eight. They like to eat early now, Jesus. If I let them they would’ve had us going out at four in the afternoon for dinner. So just come over.”
“Same place?” Henry asks, even though he knows the Segmans are still at 423 Hillside, their home since they first moved to town when the boys were two.
“423 Hillside,” Connor says.
“Good. By the way, what’re you looking for? You need a new jacket or something? We’ve got an unbelievable sale going,” Henry says. “But come to think of it, not much in your size. What’re you, like six eight now or what?” He means it admiringly but Connor suddenly appears in a hurry to leave.
“Naw.” Connor colors again and moves toward the door. “Came in to see you, man. Came in to see you.”
“You didn’t even know I work here!” Henry says. “You’re such a crappy liar.”
“I’m not lying! Anyway, I’ve got to go. Gotta pick my mother up from her eye appointment.”
“You need a suit, right?” But if Henry further pursues his old friend he will surely appear to be hounding him.
He knows it is Connor Segman’s reluctance to have his old friend wait on him that has him in retreat mode.
“See you later, right?” Connor Segman’s hand is reaching for the door.
“Connor, wait,” Henry calls after him, wanting to let him know it is okay. He won’t feel weird about it one bit.
“Turn here, turn here,” Connor says. He is hunched over in the front seat of Henry’s car. Stuffed in like Alice in Wonderland in the tiny rabbit hole after swallowing a magic pill.
“I think I know where they live, man,” Henry says.
“I’m telling you, you just missed it.”
“I know where I’m going…oh, shit. What the hell?”
“I told you,” Connor says. “I told you.”
“What’re you, like, five?” Henry is annoyed.
The night did not get off to a good start. Mrs. Segman, eyes dilated after her afternoon eye appointment, appeared startled to see Henry standing at the door, then quickly abandoned her post for the downstairs powder room where she could be heard retching from vertigo. Her nausea, though brought on optometrically, hurt Henry’s feelings nevertheless. Nothing like someone vomiting when they lay eyes on you, he thought. “Let’s go,” he mumbled to Connor after he clomped into the front hall from outside the bathroom door (“Mom? You okay? I’m going to take off, okay? Dad’s upstairs. You’ll be okay? Okay, so, bye”).
“I don’t know why you’re taking it out on me,” Connor is saying. “Jeez.”
“I’m not,” Henry says, looking over his right shoulder into the black night, negotiating a hasty three-point turn in the middle of the road, “taking it out,” he huffs the steering wheel back to the left, “on you.” Headlights showing trees in relief against the spookily dark woodsy backdrop with each angled turn.
Soon they are back on the right side of the double yellow lines in need of road crew touch-ups that always seem to get done when no one’s looking. Suddenly the yellow lines are fortified, the paint mysteriously dry and flawlessly within the lines. It’s a machine paint blower, Henry knows, jerry-rigged to the back of a beat-up municipal pickup truck. But still. It’s perfectly within the lines. And no errant tire tracks smearing the lipstick from the lips.
“Aw, jeez,” Connor is saying. “I puked in those bushes. After Campbell’s graduation party. Remember? I think I drank a whole bottle of Southern Comfort that night. Look at ’em. They’re still there.” He is proud. As though his vomit is the compost that’s enabled the bushes to thrive. Then again, Henry thinks, maybe it is compost.
“I hope he’s home,” Connor says, almost to himself, as he reaches for the door handle.
“You didn’t call him?” Henry puts the car in Park and turns to face Connor. “He doesn’t know we’re coming?”
“What?” Connor says. “I thought it’d be a good surprise! What’s wrong with a little surprise?”
“Jesus, Segman,” Henry says.
Segman’s body unfolds itself from the car, like a tiny dried-up health-food-store sponge that finally meets water and triples in size.
“Don’t slam your door—Jeez! He’ll hear us!” Segman lopes along after Henry.
“This is so great,” Segman whispers, after the doorbell is depressed. “This is so great.”
Henry looks over at him and, for a moment, feels eighteen again.
“Who’s there?” the voice calls out from not quite behind the door.
They look at each other and surpress laughter.
“It’s Henry Powell—”
“Shh” Connor jabs Henry’s rib cage. “Let him open the door.” Theatrical whisper again.
Petey Campbell’s father, Fred, has always been a source of hilarity to them. Petey’s mother was his father’s fourth—and very much younger—wife. “Old Shrivel Dick” they had called him.
“It’s my father you guys are laughing about,” Campbell said once. And he gave Powell a shove because, unlike the others, Henry had been unable to stop
his laughter after a particularly graphic and yes, pornographic, image was described by Connor to Henry.
Petey’s mother divorced Fred and had already remarried before they’d graduated. “Old Shrivel Dick” called it a day after four wives and the accompanying four costly settlements, no doubt figuring it would be cheaper and more to the point simply to hire a housekeeper/nurse named Jenny to take care of things.
“He’ll have a stroke.” Henry matches Segman’s volume. “He’s gotta be a hundred by now.”
“Who is it?” The heavy oak door barely muffling age and bewilderment tinged with annoyance. “Who’s there?”
“Candygram,” Connor says, and Henry bursts into unexpected laughter.
“Dad, just open the damn door,” another, younger, voice says.
Henry and Connor look at each other once more and the door moves backward. Revealing Peter Campbell alongside a squinting Fred Campbell, a Dorian Gray reminder of what thirty-year-old Petey could look forward to in a few decades.
“What the hell?” then “Hey!” and “Look at you! How long’s it been?” all tangled up in the three-way greeting.
Smiles. Exclamations. A tangle of manly hands reaching out across the threshold of years, clasping one another in genuine warmth and recognition of the history they share.
“Who is it?” Fred Campbell keeps asking in the background. “Who are these people in my house? Who is it?” As though the door had not yet been opened.
“It’s Henry Powell, Dad,” Petey is saying, clapping his friends on their backs as he shuts them into the front hall, “and Connor Segman. From Fox Run. Remember?”
“Who?” Fred Campbell pads behind the three men, now heading into the room once called the den, now the study. “Who is it?”
“Dad,” Petey says, clearly trying to cover his exasperation, “they’re old friends from school, okay? Now, why don’t you go to the kitchen. I think Jenny’s in there. In fact, I heard her calling you a second ago.”
“Jenny’s calling me?” the elder Campbell turns and shuffles off. “Jenny?”
“Hey, man.” Connor extends his entire arm out and draws Campbell in to his side. In younger days he might have completed the move with a noogie but now it’s more of a vibrating half hug. “You surprised?”
“How’re you guys doing? What can I get you? We’ve got everything. Beer? You want a drink? What’ll it be, Powell? Hey guess what, Segman, you’re in luck—we’ve got Southern Comfort.”
Henry looks over from the bookshelves of dusty family pictures. “Beer’s good. Whatever you’ve got. I can’t believe these pictures. When was this one taken?” He holds up a picture of the three of them playing Frisbee in an unrecognizable park.
Petey squints at it. “That was, what, like eighth grade or something? I don’t know. Jesus, we were young. Segman? Beer okay?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Segman says from another section of pressed-wood shelving, vertical holes finally given up hope that they’ll be called on for pegged shelf adjustment after years of dormancy. “Peter S. Campbell. State Champion. Peter Campbell. First Place. Jeez, I forgot we were in the presence of not one but two sports heroes.”
When Henry turns in Segman’s direction the years have magically melted away.
Their high school bodies, freshly showered, scrubbed cheeks still ruddy with athletic flush after the game, wait in the Segman den for Petey to steal the hard liquor so they can celebrate their victory. Henry is hoping to catch sight of Petey’s pretty younger sister, Nonnie.
“Okay, guys, let’s go,” Petey says, out the front door, the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam wedged up under his arm, football jacket puffing out to hide its bulk.
“A bet’s a bet,” Segman says, blocking the driver’s door, holding out his hands for keys.
“Oh, ma-an,” Henry says. “Get in the back, Segman. Seriously. You’re not driving the Jeep.”
“Hey, man.” Segman is not budging. “A bet’s a bet. You said she’d never say yes and—what’s that? Oh, yeah, you were wrong. Not only did she say yes but she pretty much jumped my bones after. So hand ’em over. I’m driving the Jeep.”
It is prom season and the males of Fox Run were one by one facing the frightening task of asking girls for inevitably uncomfortable dates. The three had bet that Connie DaSilva (whose family owned the only bona fide restaurant in town) would turn him down.
Segman jumps into the driver’s seat and reaches for the bar underneath to make room for his legs. “A bet’s a bet,” he repeats, adjusting the rearview mirror.
“You have to go readjusting everything?” Henry says, miserable at the thought of his settings all mucked up. He had really thought Connie DaSilva had better taste or he never would have made this bet.
“I’m being a responsible driver,” Segman smiles, pulling the bar under his seat again, pushing it back just one more slot’s worth.
“Aw, man,” Henry says.
“There,” Segman says. “Just right.”
“I’ll never get it back to where it was,” Henry says. Campbell leans into the radio, scrolling the knob up and down. “You already moved the mirror. Jesus, Segman!”
“Just drive already,” Campbell says. Then whoops as he pulls the bottle out once they turn the corner away from the house. He takes a gulp of it and passes it to Henry.
“Where’re we going?” Henry asks, trying to draw attention away from the liquor and the involuntary scowl it produces with each chug.
“I don’t know,” Campbell says. “Where should we go? There’s no place to go, man. I’m so sick of it here. That’s why we’ve gotta leave. I’m telling you…”
“Here we go,” Segman says. He looks back at Henry and makes another minor adjustment to his mirror.
“I’m just saying,” Campbell says. “We decide on a city to meet up in after college, right? What’s so bad about that? Powell, right?”
“Sounds like a plan, Stan,” Henry says. Not minding being a passenger in his new Jeep as much as he thought he would.
“I’m thinking L.A.,” Campbell says. “The girls are all babes. Every day is like, what, eighty degrees and sunny. What’s not to love? Let’s make a plan. Seriously. No, seriously…”
“I’ll tell you where we’re going,” Segman says, shooing away the bottle that is again offered him. He swings the Jeep around in the middle of the road and heads in the opposite direction.
“Jesus, Segman!” Henry and Campbell say at the same time. Campbell is holding the roll bar over his head.
“We’re going to the pit,” Segman announces. “Wooo-yeah!”
The high-pitched holler all three break out in is a sound that would never be ventured without “My Sharona,” playing on a car radio.
“Shit,” Campbell says after it sinks in. He swallows hard before he turns to look out into the blackness. “The pit.”
The rumors had started back when he was in Boy Scouts—somewhere in the quarry the body of a mobster was buried. The quarry became “the pit” because it sounded more Godfather than Breaking Away.
“Hell yes, the pit,” Segman says. “Powell’s up for it, right?” Segman’s checking the rearview mirror. “You’re in, right?”
But the alcohol is reattaching the synapse in his brain so the words sound like gibberish to Henry’s ears. He nods his head along to “Stairway to Heaven,” the only words that make sense to him right now.
“Right on,” Segman says. He honks for emphasis. The sound of the horn barely audible over the radio. To Henry it sounds far away. A car stuck in traffic heading in to dinner and a show in the city, perhaps, impatient to stay on schedule.
“Who the hell’s honking out there?” Petey Campbell says, handing out the beer. He goes over to the window to look out into the darkness. Henry is startled to see it is not varsity-letter-jacket-Campbell turning to face them, shrugging at the mystery of the honking car.
“Goddamn, it’s good to see you guys,” he says. Segman and Henry nod and settle in to the couch and armch
air. “Seriously, what’s going on with you guys? I’m so fucking out of touch.”
“I’m back for the holidays,” Segman says.
“I know that, Segman, Jesus,” he says, looking at Henry to confirm that their friend Connor Segman is still the court jester. “I mean what’re you doing for a living? Where are you living?”
Segman, Henry is pleased to note, remains nearly impossible to offend, realizes his mistake. “Oh, yeah. I’m in Chicago now. Married. Two kids. I’m in the insurance business. Cars and homes, not life…”
He keeps talking and Henry takes longer gulps of his beer.
When Segman trails off Henry says to Petey, “Hey, I told Segman about your job, man. So cool.”
On cue Campbell explains that his career is “artist representation,” and Segman cocks his head to the side and says, “Wait, Henry said you’re a big Hollywood agent.”
“I’m an agent,” he says, smiling at Henry.
“Whose? Whose agent are you?” Segman asks. “That’s so cool.”
He names an Oscar winner, a major television star and a teenager bent on parlaying her G-rated films into darker independent R-rated pictures.
“Whoa.” Now Henry and Segman are exchanging looks.
“Oh, you know who else I represent? You’ll get a kick out of this, Powell—Art Washington.”
Henry finishes off his beer and feigns impressed surprise, as he knows he is expected to do. Art Washington is the star of many blockbuster action films but mainly he is known for winning the Heisman Trophy. Henry knows people will always gauge his reaction to football references, but the fact that he will also have to bear the scrutiny of two of his oldest friends makes him feel exhausted.
“Is that right?” he says. “Can I get a refill?” He offers Campbell his empty bottle.
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
“This is great,” Segman says to Henry while Campbell is back in the kitchen. “Chicago’s good. It’s great. But…I don’t know…it’s good to be where people know you, you know? It’s a fucking job, you know? Roof-over-our-head kinda thing. When the fuck did we turn into our fathers, you know?”
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