by Tom Perrotta
She moved away from him, sitting up straight and watching him with an alertness that was fierce, almost animal.
“What?”
“I feel awful about this.”
“Go on,” she said. There was the faintest quiver in her voice.
All at once, he knew he couldn't do it. He'd never be able to. They'd live together for fifty years and be buried side by side before he'd be able to explain that it was all just an accident.
“Go on,” she repeated.
“It's the ring,” he said. “I can't afford to buy you a good one.”
The tension drained visibly from her face; she slumped back against the couch and shook her head.
“I don't care about the ring,” she told him.
“I do. You deserve a nice one.”
“I really don't care, Dave.”
“Well, I do.”
She terminated the discussion by reaching behind his head, pulling his face against hers, and kissing him in a way that normally would have made him forget everything else.
“Julie,” he said, when she finally came up for air, “I was wondering about something.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you have any photo albums I could look at?”
“Now?” she asked, kissing him again.
“Yeah,” he said. “If it's not too much trouble.”
“Right now?” she asked, tracing the grooves of his ear with her tongue.
“Uh-huh,” he murmured. “As long as it's not a problem.”
“This very minute?” she asked, sucking on his earlobe while tugging with gentle efficiency on his belt.
“Whenever,” he told her.
YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND
On the way to Phil Hart's wake, Dave told Buzzy about his engagement.
“That's great,” Buzzy said. He was wearing a black pinstripe suit with a black shirt and a skinny white leather tie, an outfit that made Dave vaguely embarrassed on his behalf. “I'm really happy for you.”
“You mean that?”
“Why wouldn't I?”
“I don't know. I'm not sure it's such a great idea myself.”
“Why?” Buzzy turned to Dave with an expression of dawning comprehension. “Her old man answer the door with a shotgun?”
“Nothing like that.”
A couple of seconds went by. “So how'd it happen? You get down on your knees and all that crap?”
“I don't know.”
“You were there,” Buzzy reminded him. He looked at Dave more closely. “You were there, right?”
“I was,” Dave admitted. “I just didn't mean to do it.”
“Ah,” said Buzzy.
Dave's chest felt constricted, as though he were wrapped from armpit to navel in Ace bandages.
“I'm up the fucking creek,” he said. “She's already reserved the church.”
Buzzy laughed. “Tell her you have a gig that day.” When Dave didn't respond, he rolled his window down and spit a wad of gum into the street. “It was easier for me. Jo Ann was pregnant with Zeke. That kind of made the decision for me.”
Of all the Wishbones, Buzzy had come closest to the big time. In the mid-eighties he'd been part of Flesh Wound, a locally popular speed metal band that had been on the verge of signing with one of the major labels when the guy they were negotiating with got fired and the deal collapsed. Flesh Wound's lead singer and lead guitarist split off to form LasseratoR, which had since become a fixture on the local club circuit, but Buzzy had retired from serious rock ‘n roll in favor of marriage and family.
“Jesus,” said Dave. “Look at this.”
Warneck's Funeral Home looked like the scene of a good party. Cars lined both sides of the street in front of the imposing Victorian mansion; well-dressed people stood in clusters on the porch and lawn, taking advantage of the balmy evening.
Dave parked on a nearby side street. He and Buzzy walked in silence down a sidewalk sprinkled with a confetti of white blossoms already going brown along the edges. There was a greenish fragrance in the air, a soft springtime smell that made him nostalgic for high school, the feeling of endless possibility that stretched out in front of you every time you left your house on a night like this.
“Are you glad you did it?” he asked.
“What? Get married?”
“Yeah.”
“I'm forty-one,” Buzzy replied, after a brief hesitation. “I got a house, a wife and kids, and a job that doesn't make me want to buy a gun and go wreak havoc at the mall. I get to play music on the weekends and drink a couple of beers every once in a while. Things could be worse, Daverino. They could be a helluva lot worse.”
“I hear you,” said Dave.
A couple of teenage girls nearly bumped into them as they rounded the corner to Warneck's. The girls were nothing special, a pair of giggly fifteen-year-olds in baggy jeans and tight cropped shirts that exposed their navels, but Dave and Buzzy parted like the Red Sea to let them pass, then turned to watch them continue down the street, the air still vibrating from the mysterious power of their bodies.
“Damn,” said Dave.
“Sweet Jesus,” said Buzzy.
Just then, for no reason at all, the girls turned in unison and waved. They exploded into a fresh round of giggles when Dave and Buzzy waved back. Buzzy tugged on the sleeve of Dave's sport coat.
“Come on, let's go talk to them.”
“Okay,” said Dave.
Despite their agreement, both men remained motionless as the girls receded into the distance, finally disappearing around a corner. Without further discussion, Dave and Buzzy turned and walked the rest of the way to the funeral home.
Stan knew he was going to be late for the fucking wake, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to give Susie her goddam birthday present. That was the important thing. If Artie didn't like it, Artie could take his shiny saxophone and ram it up his managerial ass.
He uncapped the bottle of Jack Daniels between his legs and took a long pull, keeping his eyes trained all the while on the door of the handsome white clapboard house with the wraparound porch that doubled as the law offices of Joel Silverblatt, attorney-at-law.
“I'm Joel Shysterblatt,” Stan mumbled, “and if you suffer from hemorrhoids or tooth decay related to an automobile accident, I've got important information that you need to know.”
When she first started working for the guy, Susie had loved it when he did his Joel Shysterblatt imitation.
“That's him,” she'd say, covering her mouth to hold in the laughter. “That's Joel to a T.”
Then, all of the sudden, she didn't find it so funny anymore.
“Joel's a sweet guy,” she'd tell him. “He's not like you think.”
“Come on,” Stan would say. “The guy's a shyster. He gets rich off other people's misery.”
“You know what?” she'd tell him. “You don't know the first thing about the contingency fee system. It works to protect the little guy.”
“The guy's a shyster, Susie.”
“And stop using that word. It's anti-Semitic.”
She was probably already fucking Shysterblatt by the time she started talking like that, but Stan was living in a dreamworld. Susie was his wife. They'd been happily married (at least in Stan's opinion) for eighteen months. It never occurred to him that she might be even the least bit attracted to her boss until he came home from a wedding one Saturday night and found an envelope on the kitchen table with his name on it.
He lifted Susie's unwrapped gift off the passenger seat and studied it in the failing light. It was a framed enlargement of a picture taken on their honeymoon in Cancun. Stan couldn't remember who'd taken the picture, but he knew it couldn't have been him or Susie, since both of them were in it.
The subject is Susie, standing on the beach in a pink bikini, squeezing water out of her hair with both hands. She's smiling, and her evenly tanned skin glistens with tiny droplets of water. Behind her, the ocean glows a rich shade of turquoise. At the left ed
ge of the image, a man's arm reaches into the frame, offering the woman a towel. The arm belongs to Stan.
He thought the picture captured something important about their relationship, something she needed to think about. If it hadn't been for the restraining order, he would've just walked into the office and laid it on her desk.
“Happy Birthday,” he would've said. Nothing else. And then he would've walked out.
He still couldn't believe she'd slapped him with that court order. He hadn't been violent with her except that one time, and even then, he'd only put her in the headlock to try to get her to listen. At the hearing, she'd accused him of stalking her and making death threats. On Joel's advice she'd taped his phone calls and kept a log of the time he spent spying on her from his car. Stan was surprised to learn that he'd called her on fourteen separate occasions on Valentine's Day, each time saying the exact same thing before hanging up: “Till death do us part, Susie. Till death do us part.” (He'd been drinking that day, and could only remember calling her five, maybe six times at the most.)
Stan explained that he'd only been reminding her of her wedding vows, but the judge—probably an old law school chum of Shysterblatt's—had ruled in Susie's favor. So now Stan wasn't allowed within a hundred feet of the woman he'd married and still loved with all his heart. That was the fucking legal system for you.
At five after seven, Joel Silverblatt emerged from his office and walked across the street. He tapped on the driver's-side window of Stan's LeBaron. Stan rolled it down.
“Go home,” Silverblatt told him. “We just called the police.”
“The police can't do anything. I'm more than a hundred feet away.”
“You're drunk. You're sitting in your car with a bottle of whiskey. You want to lose your license on top of everything else?”
“Everything else?” Stan repeated incredulously. “You mean like my wife?”
The evening was breezy; Silverblatt reached up with both hands to protect his hairdo from the elements. He was a rubber-faced guy with a fleshy nose and dark circles under his eyes from trying to keep up with a woman half his age.
“Go home, Stan. Go anywhere. Don't you have someplace else to be?”
Stan thought of the wake. He thought of Artie, and of the cops on their way. He thought of Susie in Mexico, ocean water streaming from her hair. Suddenly he felt tired, too tired for any more trouble.
“I'll go,” he said. “On one condition.”
“What's that?”
Stan poked the picture into Silverblatt's tummy. “Give her this. It's her birthday present.”
With obvious reluctance, Silverblatt accepted the photograph. Stan started his car.
“It's our honeymoon,” he explained. “That's me holding the towel.”
“I'm sick of this bullshit.” Artie pushed up the sleeve of his double-breasted Armani-style suit to consult his nearly authentic Rolex. He held up his thumb and forefinger, spaced about an inch apart. “Stan's about this fucking close to being an ex-fucking Wishbone.”
“Come on,” said Dave. “It's a wake. What's the difference if he's here or not?”
“What's the difference?” Artie asked. “I'll tell you what's the difference. A band's only as strong as its weakest member. If one guy is a fuck-up, the whole group's in trouble.”
“Did you see Sid and Nancy?” Ian cut in. He was dressed like a professor on TV, tweed jacket over a black turtleneck. The jacket even had patches on the elbows. “It's just like what you're talking about.”
“Didn't see it,” said Artie.
“I did,” said Dave.
“Sid and Nancy?” Buzzy seemed distressed. “The one about the waitress?”
“Waitress?” Ian went cross-eyed and stuck out his tongue. “What planet are you from?”
“Sid Vicious,” Dave explained. “The guy in the Sex Pistols.”
“Good flick?” asked Buzzy.
“Excellent,” said Ian. “You should rent it sometime.”
“I liked The Doors,” Buzzy told him. “You were right about that one.”
“Oliver Stone.” Ian nodded as though the director were a friend of his.
“You liked that?” Artie said. “How could you like that crap?”
“I liked the scene in the elevator,” Buzzy said, grinning at the memory. “The one where he gets the blow job.”
“The guy was a poet,” said Ian. “An honest-to-God fucking poet.”
“Big deal.” Artie shook his head in disgust. “He writes a few good songs, shows the world his dick, gets fat as a pig, and drinks himself to death. That's the whole movie.”
“He was trying to make a point,” Ian countered.
“Oh yeah?” said Artie. “What point is that?”
Ian thought it over for a few seconds, then shrugged.
“Beats me,” he said. “I still think it was a pretty cool movie.”
Nobody said anything for a while. Artie checked his watch again and muttered something about Stan being a total fucking zero. Ian knelt down and rubbed a spot of dirt off his cowboy boot. Dave watched a teenage boy help a frail old woman up the steps of the funeral home and wondered why a grown man would make himself miserable over something as simple as marrying the woman he loved. Buzzy slapped himself in the forehead.
“Frankie and Johnny.” he said, his face lighting up with relief. “That's the movie I was thinking of.”
Phil Hart was laid out in the clothes he'd died in, the satin-lapeled, powder blue uniform of the Heartstring Orchestra. On a nearby table, surrounded by elaborate bouquets and floral wreaths, a boom box played a tape of Phil singing “Summer Wind,” accompanied by a piano.
Dave had never been to a wake with music before, and he thought it made a real difference. Instead of the grim focus on the casket he'd encountered in the past, there was a relaxed, almost cheerful atmosphere in the viewing room. People were mingling; a low hum of conversation filled the void between the living and the dead. If you closed your eyes, you might have thought you'd wandered into a cocktail party by mistake.
The Wishbones joined the line of people waiting to file past the coffin and offer their condolences to Phil's family, who were gathered along the opposite wall in a wedding-style receiving line. Dave was surprised to see the surviving members of the Heartstring Orchestra, also in uniform, standing shoulder to shoulder with Phil's wife and grown children, as though all of them—not just Joey Franco, but Walter and Mel as well—were blood relatives of the dead man, instead of guys he'd played in a band with.
“Candy Man” followed “Summer Wind.” Dave thought it was a peculiar song to be playing at someone's wake—he remembered hearing somewhere that it was actually about a drug dealer— but it seemed to have some sort of special meaning for the people in the receiving line. As soon as it began, the attention in the room shifted to Phil's widow, a tiny, white-haired woman with delicate features and a dazed expression on her face. She dabbed at her eyes with a pale green Kleenex, then whispered something to the overweight man standing next to her. The man, who must have been her son, smiled like he was going to cry and said something in response that sent a ripple of amusement down the line. Ian poked Dave in the ribs.
“Daryl Dragon,” he said.
“What?”
“Daryl Dragon.” Ian looked smug. “I'll be amazed if you get this one.”
Dave was in no mood for trivia, but he didn't want to hurt Ian's feelings. He pretended to think about Daryl Dragon while watching the activity on the other side of the room. Phil's widow began to sob quietly, as did Mel, the sax player in the Heartstring Orchestra. He buried his face in his hands while Joey Franco patted him awkwardly on the arm. Walter, the piano player, reached into his inside coat pocket with one trembling hand and pulled out a crumpled handkerchief. An obscure synapse fired in Dave's brain; two lost faces spiraled up at him from the dark swamp of oblivion.
“The Captain,” he said.
Ian's mouth dropped open. Despite his best efforts, Dave felt
a smile spreading across his face. Mel blew his nose into Walter's handkerchief; the sound of it was audible across the room.
“Daryl Dragon was the Captain in the Captain and Tennille.”
“Son of a bitch.” Ian ran his fingers through his hair in a way that expressed his total amazement. “They should put you on Jeopardy.”
The first thing Dave noticed when he stepped up to the coffin was the microphone someone had tucked between Phil's crossed hands and white shirt, as though he'd been booked for a couple of gigs in heaven and wanted to arrive prepared. The unexpected sight of it—black, sleek, technological—made him wonder if, centuries from now, long after Phil himself had returned to dust, archaeologists from another civilization might dig up his grave and discover a pair of artificial hips and a microphone.
Dave never knew how to behave when confronted with the bodily presence of the dead. He didn't believe in God—at least not in a God who had nothing better to do than eavesdrop—so prayer seemed like a hollow gesture. Touching the corpse didn't strike him as an appealing option, either. So he just stood there, looking down at Phil, listening to his disembodied voice singing “You've Got a Friend,” and wondering why it was that the people in charge of these things had decided to use such a thick coating of powder on his face.
It seemed to him that Phil had a lot to be grateful for. He had lived a relatively long, relatively healthy life, and had remained active and clearheaded right up to the end. He had lasted long enough to make music with his grandson, and had died doing the thing he loved best. Everyone should be so lucky.
An image took hold of Dave's mind, a vision so vivid it was almost an out-of-body experience. He saw himself standing by his own coffin, gazing down at his own peaceful face. Julie stood nearby, a brave, still-attractive old woman surrounded by supportive children and the remaining Wishbones. There was music in the room, and a sadness muffled by soft music and conversation.
Ian cleared his throat, signaling Dave to move on, but he didn't feel like moving. If Ian hadn't kicked him in the ankle with the toe of his cowboy boot, he might have lingered there indefinitely, basking in the promise Phil seemed to offer of a long, satisfying life and a sudden, painless death.