“Sure.”
“Before I met you, I knew I was unhappy, but I didn’t know just how lousy I made myself. Really was no fun being a drunk, and tonight didn’t help anything. I want to keep trying to quit…I am going to quit. That’s final.”
“I believe you.”
“Good. ’Cause me, I’m a little uncertain…. You sticking around for what’s left of the night, or going home?”
“If it’s okay, I’ll stay.”
“You know where the spare room is.”
“Sure.”
“Like to think my boy had lived, he would have been a lot like you.”
“That’s a special comment.”
“I got you something. It’s in the house. It’s a cell phone.”
“That’s nice, Tad, but the bill—”
“I’m covering that.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Listen, I want you to have it so we can be in touch, so next time I get the urge to go stinking, I can call you, or you can do the same. It’s got like, what do they call it, text messages. Where you can write me on the phone, don’t have to call. We can even take pictures and send them to each other. And here’s a real extra. You can use it as a phone. That’s pretty fucking uptown, I think.”
“Tad…”
“It’s as much for myself as it is for you.”
“Sure, Tad. That’s great. Thanks.”
Tad cleared his throat. “Now let’s get up and move.”
They moved in the starlight, soft and light, and the crickets chirped, and somewhere a frog bleated. Harry felt as if the night and the stars, the sounds, were an extension of himself, gliding through the dark, sucking it up, deep inside the absolute where he was part of the ebb and flow and pulse of the earth. Most important, he was connected to the universe without seams, gently breathing, gliding along, out and away, the sun rising slow and red and hopeful, gradually blazing out the night and the stars.
44
Fall flowed by and winter flowed in, and it was a cold one, and wet. Harry thought of what he had seen down there in the McGuire shelter, but there was nothing to do with his thoughts but wonder.
Tad believed him, but so what?
There was not a thing they could do about it.
The police were reluctant to investigate ghosts.
In time, Harry let it all slip to the back of his mind, tried to keep on keeping on, studied for finals, worked as much as possible, spent time with Tad, practicing, learning.
He spent less time at his apartment, and never answered Joey’s calls, which kept coming, filling up the answering machine. He played them back, he got a series. They sounded like someone trying to patch things up with his lover.
“Came by. You weren’t there.”
“See you soon.”
“I’m gonna drop by.”
“Call me,” all the messages ended.
But Harry didn’t call.
He thought about Kayla.
He thought about Talia. How she had looked that night when she had dragged the crowd after her, out to where he stood under the great lights, waiting for the cops. He remembered the way she had held Kyle tight, like it was all she ever intended to do in the first place.
But, damn. She sure had looked good.
He hoped she got the suit he sent back to her, sort of hoped she might hang herself with the tie.
In November he voted in an election, but his man lost.
It was Tad’s man too.
“Such is it always for the righteous,” said Tad. “Way you got to look at it is, the people have spoken. The goddamn ignorant cocksuckers.”
At school Harry found himself creeping around again, but it wasn’t so much the sounds that freaked him, it was Talia. He didn’t want to see her. Started going to class the back way, so he wouldn’t cross her path coming out of the building, wouldn’t see her on the spot where they had first met.
And it worked well. He saw her only once in the next few weeks, and from a distance. He started missing a lot of classes, studying out of the book. Talia had been right about that. The tests were out of the book more than the lectures. At least there was that good thing about their relationship, him knowing how the old man graded.
On the way to his other classes he was cautious too, just in case she changed her path and he came up against her, like a surprise meeting with a panzer division.
But she wouldn’t do that. He knew better. That wouldn’t be her way. She would know he would change his route. She was that confident. He was certain of it. Must be a good feeling, being that confident, that certain.
He had almost been there. Right in the middle of Confident Town. Almost. Once. And maybe some of the confidence he had learned had returned of late. He flowed better and better, and now Tad was attacking him, and he was defending, and once, just once, out back of Tad’s house, during the middle of a cold day, he had managed to touch Tad a bit, right close to the jaw.
Then he had gone unconscious.
When he awoke, Tad said, “You got to watch both hands. Most guys, they got two.”
So he was getting better. Not where he’d like to be, but better.
Of course, he had put the egg cartons back up, the cardboard. There wasn’t any use being silly.
One day at work, shelving books, lost in his own world, not thinking about Talia or school or the sounds, or anything like that, a female voice said, “Hey.”
It was Kayla. She wasn’t in her cop duds. Had on a loose T-shirt, blue jeans, tennis shoes, an oversize coat, her hair tied back, little to no makeup. She was smiling. He loved the way she smiled. She had a wide, expressive mouth, and seeing her smile made him do the same.
“I was softer this time,” she said. “So you wouldn’t bump your head.”
“No. I’m good.”
“Ever get a break?”
Harry looked at his watch. “I get off in five minutes. Just work mornings, two to three hours.”
“Could you take a girl to coffee?”
“I could. I would. I want to.”
“Remember how Joey was always taking a beating?” Kayla said.
“Never really had much of a chance, did he?”
“Guess not.”
“Why I’ve sort of stayed friends with him, I guess. We’re not exactly talking right now, but I know we will. I always go back. He’s just such a part of me.”
They were in Kayla’s car, and as they pulled into her drive a large deer sprang into the yard and leaped onto the car.
No. Not a deer. A big-ass dog.
“Good grief,” Harry said.
