But that’s exactly the kind of story people made up later—the way everybody and his brother claimed to have been in the shack earlier that night. Hell, if half the people who claimed to have been inside that shack had actually been there, it would have been as packed as Fenway Park in July.
There were maybe thirty kids in and out all night; never more than about twenty at one time. Kids came drifting in looking for something to do, and trailed back out. Louisa and Art had left maybe fifteen minutes before the oil-drum stove exploded in a consuming sheet of flame. Five unlucky kids perished, and their names were engraved right here on the monument. Carved in light-gray speckled granite. Five lucky kids made it out. The Lundgren twin girl who later moved to Colorado. Paul Bell, who had died at thirty-six from meningitis, Paco, and a younger kid named Roman, and Flick, too—just barely.
At the memory of Flick Bergstrom, Louisa turned her car around and headed a couple of blocks north to his little Cape Cod house on Brattle. Wherever in the world Flick happened to be, Louisa believed she could have found him with her eyes closed. There were a few stately homes on Brattle Street—but Flick’s definitely wasn’t one of them. He’d bought his place cheap from one of their old high school buddies, a redhead everyone called Cheetoh. Flick had bought it after Cheetoh’s third divorce. He’d left town and crawled off to tan his skin into leather someplace in Nevada. By the time Cheetoh had moved out, he’d pretty well torn up the place, what with one domestic brawl or another, and a couple of wild parties.
There was a gigantic hole left in the middle of the living room, Flick had told her ruefully, where some drunken squid had decided to put in an indoor swimming pool. Flick was handy, and he liked carpentry, so he’d fixed up the little house really nice, at least it looked nice from the outside. He’d painted it a sunny yellow color, added a small square front porch. In summer, now and again he’d grill out on the driveway while everyone stood around the car, yakking, and the girls, as they still called themselves, sat inside Flick’s Chevy truck with the air-conditioning on, eating rib-eye steak off paper plates.
Nobody in North Worcester air-conditioned their whole house—nobody she knew did, except her sister Michelle over on the West Side, and that must have been Joe’s idea. For people who had supposedly wandered in the desert for forty years, it seemed to her that the Jews couldn’t take the heat. Their houses were always chilly in summer and temperate in winter, and in case you never noticed, all their country clubs had extra-strength air-conditioning and numerous swimming pools.
Louisa and the Bridge gang just met up out in public places—diners and places like that. She had been inside of Flick’s house maybe twice in her whole life. That sounded crazy, even to her. But it was true. And they were good friends. Really good friends. Though the whole gang got together at least twice a week, every week, and had been doing it now going on almost twenty years, they seldom went inside of each other’s houses, except when somebody died and there were sympathy calls to be paid. Then they stood around inside of unfamiliar rooms, suddenly awkward and out of place, while the blood relatives moved about taking trays out of cupboards and pouring stiff drinks into shot glasses no one had ever seen before.
Dropping in at Bergstrom’s hardware store was a different thing. It was a public place. That was fine. Louisa went there whenever she needed a mousetrap or a new ice scraper. But Flick Bergstrom’s own private house was another matter entirely. She’d driven by and seen Paco’s car parked there once in a while—the boys now and then got together to watch some ball game on TV. But never the whole gang at once. They probably wouldn’t even have all fit. Louisa stayed far away from Flick’s house, and she wasn’t sure he had ever come inside hers and Art’s place, either.
Louisa and Art weren’t big on entertaining. Maybe Art had always felt a little embarrassed about their house; maybe they just weren’t all that hospitable. Art always had an excuse about why people shouldn’t come over. When Louisa’s mom died, they’d held the wake at Nordgren’s, like any good Worcester Swedish family, but the after-funeral brunch took place at Michelle’s house, because it was roomier and nicer and honestly, because Michelle could afford to pay for that enormous spread.
Now it was a Sunday, and Flick’s long black truck sat parked in his driveway. Bergstrom’s Hardware was closed on Sundays. Flick wasn’t a churchgoer, to say the least; none of them were churchgoing people except for Jean-Marie, who had been raised Catholic and said it was harder to give it up than smoking. She hadn’t quit either one yet.
But then, once Louisa was parked outside Flick’s house she just sat there listening to the car radio and staring down at her hands. It seemed like a stupid idea, just showing up here out of the blue. Her car’s AC blew in her face, making her blink. She wasn’t about to ring his doorbell, who did she think was she kidding. And even if she had rung the bell, what was she going to say? Flick, I’ve been in love with you since kindergarten, and here I am, middle aged and out of shape, now I’m free? Fat chance. The usual predictable love songs were playing on the radio over and over. Katy Perry sang about stealing liquor and not having a clue. A sudden rap came on the window right next to Louisa’s head and she practically went through the roof of the car. It was Flick, grinning down at her.
He made a gesture for her to roll her window down so she did. “What’s going on, Louey Lou?”
“Not much,” she said.
He stuck his head through the open car window and craned his long neck around, as if he expected something to jump out at him and yell, Surprise!
“You okay?” he asked. He had his Bergstrom’s baseball cap pulled around to the front, and tugged down, shading his eyes. He squinted at her.
“Not bad not bad,” she said automatically.
He shifted the cap forward and back. “I was watching the game,” he said.
“Yeah? What game is it?”
He told her. She lost track of what he was telling her two minutes into the explanation. Some ball team she didn’t care about was playing some other team she didn’t care about it. The truth was, she hated baseball. Most boring game on earth, she thought—next to golf. Golf was like baseball in slow motion, with a smaller ball and a longer, skinnier bat.
“Where’s Art?” Flick finally asked.
“Oh. Right,” she said. Louisa turned off the engine, and put the keys into her pocketbook. She took a deep breath in and out. It didn’t help the drumming of her pulse. If she’d had any sense at all, she would have driven straight to Michelle’s house like she had planned, or called Jean-Marie. Meanwhile she just sat there with her mouth open, like she was trying to catch flies.
“Remember Art? —Your husband?” Flick joked.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said wearily. “Look, you’re going to hear about this sooner or later anyway. Art and I are—well, we’re taking a break.”
Nothing. Flick’s brow crinkled a little, under the cap. When he looked at her uncomprehendingly, Louisa added, “We split up.”
Flick yanked the car door open so fast she practically fell out onto the sidewalk. “Get the fuck out,” he said. “What do you mean, split up?”
“I think you know,” she said in a dry voice. “I think you’ve done it once or twice yourself.” She swung her legs out the door, but she didn’t get all the way out of the car. The heat of the summer day hit her in the face and she sank back for a second, blinking against the glare.
“Me, sure. But I’m a screwup,” Flick said. “What did you two lovebirds do, have a fight? Everybody fights, Lou. That happens. You’ve got a hell of a nasty temper.”
“No I don’t,” she snapped. “Fuck off.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. He had thin long eyebrows, surprisingly delicate for such a masculine face.
“I do not have a temper,” she snarled, “and we didn’t have a fight.” She didn’t know what else to add. “It’s just—look, it’s just over.”
He put out one gnarled hand and hauled her to her feet. He shut the car door behi
nd her. “You want some coffee?” he said. “I can make it iced.”
“Okay,” she said. “But I can’t stay long.” It felt like a magnet was drawing her out of the car, up the front steps onto his screened porch. There she stopped, and sat down on a sagging chaise lounge, covered in an old flowered cushion. She felt suddenly exhausted.
“Wait right here,” Flick said. “I’ll go get whatever you need. You just wait.”
She heard him banging around inside the kitchen. There was a muffled roar rising from his TV set deep inside the house that meant somebody or other on some team had scored a run. She shut her eyes and tried to sink deeper into the shade of the porch. What if somebody drove by and saw her sitting right here for anyone to see? What if Art drove by and spotted her, what would he think?
What do you care what Art thinks, she told herself. Nothing’s going on here. Nothing’s ever going to be going on.
Finally, after what felt like an hour of waiting in the summer heat, when she was stuck to the back of the plastic chair with sweat, when she felt completely stupefied from the humidity of the day and the dull pounding in her head, Flick reappeared, with a tray of the drinks and a bowl of pretzels. He’d even set out some milk for her, in its plastic quart jug, and sugar in an old sugar bowl. Flick always drank his own coffee black and bitter.
He looked grim. “You’re serious?” he said. “About you and Art?”
“Like a heart attack,” Louisa answered. She added sugar to her iced coffee and a few more splashes of milk till the coffee turned the right shade of brown. Flick made good coffee, but he always made it extra strong.
He sat in the recesses of the porch, out of the sun’s reach, on a folding chair made of woven plastic straps. He folded his arms over his skinny chest and shook his head. “Uh-uh-uh,” he said. “What’d he do to you? Anything bad? Do I have to go kill my man Art?”
“He didn’t do a thing,” she said. “You keep your big fat nose out of this, Felix Bergstrom.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you don’t have a temper,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said—and found to her surprise that it was true. “I’ll just go to my mom’s old house on Ararat for a while and—”
“Fucking Christ,” he said. Then, at the look on her face, he added, “Pardon me.” He pushed the bowl of pretzels closer to her. When she shook her head, he started eating them, tossing them into his mouth two and three at a time.
“At least I’ve got a place to stay,” she said. “That’s lucky.” She realized the truth of it. Lots of people weren’t as fortunate as she was. No matter how bad things were, they could always be worse, she heard her mother say in her head.
“Lou, as long as I’m alive you’ve got a place to stay.” Flick slurped at his coffee.
She nodded, too stirred to speak.
“We don’t have to talk.” Then he shut up, good as his word.
She drank her iced coffee in silence. The only sound was the chiming of ice cubes in the glass, and a few birds calling to each other in the yard. It was peaceful. Nothing that ever lasted. Somebody a few houses down started using their chain saw. Someone else started to mow his lawn. Summer was a noisy time of year. Flick opened his mouth to say something. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the chain saw.
“You wanna watch the game?” he asked, pointing toward the house.
“Why not,” she shouted back.
The early afternoon turned slowly into mid- and late afternoon, which dragged down with it one of those rare, radiant, burning-red gorgeous New England sunsets Worcester displayed just a few times of year. Nothing else anywhere could touch it. They took a few minutes’ break from the TV to watch it from the window. Then sunset fell away into a long blue dusk, and the next thing she knew, when Louisa looked outside again it was turning a dark shade of navy blue that seemed almost purple.
“You need some dinner,” Flick said, rummaging around in his refrigerator. “You need to keep your strength up.” He kept the place surprisingly tidy. He made a couple of thick ham sandwiches, with slices of cucumber on the side, and potato chips and a dish of olives. Louisa was surprised to find she was hungry. They’d watched the first ball game without talking much, mostly to make fun of the lameness of the local car-dealership commercials, and then another game came on playing somewhere else, so they watched that too. In between they played a couple of games of Pitch, both of which Flick won.
By the time the second ball game had gone into its long extra innings—three extra innings, that night—it was almost ten o’clock, and pitch black outside the window. Louisa stood up, suddenly awkward. They’d been watching TV in Flick’s bedroom, but it hadn’t felt like a bedroom till it turned dark, mostly because they both sat in armchairs to watch. Now she stood next to her chair and was suddenly conscious of his bed in the room, covered by a dark-red coverlet.
“Well, I’d better go,” she said. Her hands felt like hammers, hanging at her sides.
He cocked his head. He held still. His face was unreadable. “You could stay,” he said.
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t even tell what she was feeling—surprised, appalled, offended, delighted? She couldn’t catch her breath long enough to say.
He yawned. “It’s so late. Believe it or not, I’m usually in bed by now.”
“Flick,” she said. “Nothing’s going to happen. —Between us, I mean.”
He peered at her in surprise, then laughed. “Well, no shit,” he said. “Jeez, Louise.” He shook his head in slow amazement. “You and me, we’re buddies. I wouldn’t try anything like that on you. Ever.”
“All right then,” she said. “As long as we’re clear on that.” Now she didn’t know what to feel, either: relieved, disappointed, crushed, offended?
He reached out and poked her stomach. “Come on, now. You know better than that. What do you take me for?”
“You’re a guy,” she said. She didn’t know what she was saying. They were just words, coming out of her mouth randomly, so she didn’t just stand there gaping at him.
“I’m not just some guy,” said Flick, his jaw tightening, his eyes darkening. Sometimes they were pale-greenish blue. Sometimes, like now, they looked dark green, almost hazel. “I’m Flick. Your Flick.”
Her Flick. An inexplicable happiness came over her.
“I just thought you might not want to be alone tonight,” Flick said. He patted the big bed for emphasis.
“Yeah, well, you were right about that,” she said.
Louisa felt like she was an anthropologist, studying a tribe firsthand in some strange culture. You knew someone for close to forty years, you thought you knew them pretty well—but then it turned out there was always something else, something new to discover. Especially if you got the chance to study someone on their own turf. For instance, Flick used the same brand of lavender liquid hand soap she did. She’d never have known that. Or that he bought the kind of toothpaste people with sensitive gums used—though she might have guessed at that, given everything else that was wrong with his body. He went into the bathroom to change, and came out wearing a pair of red plaid cotton pajama bottoms and a Bergstrom’s short-sleeved T-shirt, white with dark-blue lettering. “I usually don’t wear pajamas,” he said, gesturing down at his own lanky body with a rueful expression. She tried not to picture him sleeping in the nude.
They’d gone through a little elaborate back-and-forth argument about how he could sleep just fine on the living-room sofa, but she could tell at a glance that the stiff little sofa was way too short for Flick’s long frame. Then Louisa insisted she could sleep on the sofa instead, but he said he wasn’t going to have any friend of his sleeping on anything so broken down. “I need new furniture,” he said, rubbing his chin. “I keep meaning to go to Rotmans and buy some, and then I keep putting it off. Seems like there’s always some better way to spend my money.”
“There is,” she agreed.
“Like on alimony,” he said, pulling
a long face.
“Or on beer,” she said.
“Yeah, there’s that,” he admitted.
Finally they agreed they’d both just camp out in Flick’s king-size bed, which of course was what she’d really wanted all along, and Louisa was amazed, when they both finally got in under the covers, how natural it seemed, how without awkwardness—like she’d always been sleeping beside him, like she belonged right there.
Flick’s bedroom was spare, and somehow calming. She looked at the few items lined on top of his dresser in front of the window—his cell phone, his leather wallet, a colorful glass paperweight, a bottle of glucosamine—trying to memorize everything, just the way it was all lined up, so she could bring it back to mind down the line whenever she needed something to comfort her. She could always conjure up this room. She closed her eyes for a second, to see if maybe she could make time stand still, just by willing it to pause. She wanted to keep living inside this exact minute forever. He got some extra pillows out of the linen closet, and they pulled the pillowcases and the duvet cover on together, like an old married couple. To her amazement, he slept on silky cotton sheets, nice ones, pale blue. She remarked on them.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Egyptian cotton. That’s the kind of thing I spend my money on. Broken-down furniture and elegant sheets.”
“I love them,” she said, which was as close as she could bring herself to saying that she loved him.
“You gotta hear this one song,” he said, fishing out his laptop from a little bedside table. Only with Flick, it was never going to be just one song. The man loved music more than anyone else she’d ever known. He always had loved it. At Trivia he could name a song and the band performing it, and the year of its release, all from hearing just the first five or six notes. It was crazy. He took his laptop into bed, and opened it, like he was lifting the lid on a casket of treasure, or raising the sail on a boat, and he played her a selection of songs, with the back of the computer propped against his knees. Flick’s taste in music was old school. He played a Peter Gabriel song, “Don’t Give Up.” Then Leo Kottke, wailing away on a steel-string guitar. An oldie by Frankie Lymon. Not “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” but something she didn’t know, called “The ABC’s of Love.”
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