couch, trying to keep her eyes open; and years and years earlier, picking up the phone to hear his father on the other end, the only time Roy remembered him calling, and how all sorts of strange lines appeared in her forehead, lines he didn’t see again until a few months before the end. Roy could picture all those looks on her face, but how would she have looked when he told her seventy-two seven before bonuses? That he couldn’t see at all.
Roy walked up to Marcia’s door. A red flower torn from one of the planters lay on the welcome mat, roots and all. Roy bent down to pick it up, and was still straightening when the door opened. He recalled how things had gone with Barry the last time, wished he wasn’t holding the flower.
But it was Marcia who looked out, not Barry. Her eyes went to him, the flower, back to him. “Why, Roy,” she said.
“Saturday,” he said, interpreting the expression on her face as puzzlement. “Collecting Rhett.”
“Come on in,” Marcia said, turning to call, “Rhett. Your daddy’s here.”
Roy stepped into the big square entrance hall. It was empty, as before, except for the chandelier still tilted in one corner of the floor, in a little sea of broken crystals. Then he saw something new, a red stain on the creamy wall. Alarming, until he realized it was the purple red of wine, not the bright red of blood.
“What have you got there?” Marcia said.
The flower. An explanation formed in his mind about how he hadn’t brought it for her, simply found it on the step, but all he ended up doing was making some kind of sound and handing it over, a tiny clod of earth coming loose from the roots and falling on the polished oak floor. That was when Rhett appeared-at the moment Roy and Marcia were facing each other, both with a hand on the flower-Rhett, walking in through the door that led to the living room, picking his nose.
There was a silence. Roy imagined he could feel all sorts of forces in the room, invisible but physical, tugging here and there. He and Marcia backed a little away from each other; she held on to the flower.
“All set?” Roy said.
Rhett took his finger out of his nose, nodded. His eye looked a lot better, swelling all gone, the discoloration now the muted shades of Easter.
“What are you guys going to do?” Marcia said. She’d never asked that before, seldom even appeared on changeover day. “If I’m not being too nosy,” she added.
“I joined this new gym near my- in the Highlands,” Roy said. “Thought Rhett and I would have a workout, sit in the whirlpool, then get some lunch, maybe see a movie if it keeps raining like this. How’s that sound?”
“Workout?” Rhett said. They’d never had a workout before. Roy’d been thinking a little physical training might help the boy the next time he ran into a bully; he also felt like a workout himself, a feeling he hadn’t had in some time.
“Why not?” Roy said.
“Sounds good.” Which is what he’d hoped to hear, except it was Marcia saying it, not Rhett.
“Then get your stuff,” Roy said. Which is what he would have said to Rhett, except his eyes were on Marcia when he said it.
“Yes, sir,” said Marcia, turning and leaving the room. Rhett stood there with his mouth open. His gaze met Roy’s. Roy came very close to shooting him a wink.
They got in Roy’s car-the Altima, with 103,000 miles on it, dust on the dashboard, empty coffee cups here and there, nothing to be done about it-Roy and Marcia in front, Rhett in the back. Roy turned the key. Music came blasting out of the speakers: Yes I’m going to walk that milky white way, oh Lord, some of these days. “Milky White Way,” one of Roy’s favorites. He snapped it off.
“What was that?” Marcia said.
“Uh,” Roy said.
“Sounded like gospel.” Marcia popped the CD out of the slot, examined the label. “You going religious on me, Roy?” she said.
“No.”
“But?”
“It’s music.”
“Just music, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“What’re you guys talking about?” said Rhett from the backseat.
“Big ears,” Marcia said.
Roy laughed. He felt good: loose, natural, at ease. And in his pocket-in his pocket because he’d never owned an object so valuable that didn’t come with a steering wheel and he was afraid to leave it behind-was the emerald necklace, like an ace in the hole.
They went to Roy’s gym. Roy paid two guest fees. “Depending on how much you all are going to use this, you might consider a family membership,” the girl behind the counter told Roy, handing out towels.
They did ten minutes on the stationary bikes, Marcia on one side, leafing through a magazine, Rhett in the middle, watching VH1, and Roy on the other side, sweating almost at once and trying not to huff and puff. Trying not to huff and puff interfered with his air supply. He huffed and puffed, glanced furtively at himself in the mirror from time to time, seeing how out of shape he was, making resolutions. Once Marcia’s eyes met his in the mirror. She smiled at him. Because of the mirror-that was the only reason Roy could think of-it was like a stranger smiling, a fit stranger in a leotard and tank top, and very exciting. Isn’t this the craziest thing? Like an affair, or something.
In the weight room, Marcia did squats, not with a lot of iron on her shoulders, but real squats with good form. When had she learned that? And her form: good in both senses of the word.
“Let’s see those push-ups,” Rhett said.
“What push-ups?” said Marcia.
“Dad said he could do twenty.”
“Fifteen,” Roy said.
“Twenty,” Rhett said.
“All right,” Roy said. “But you first.”
Rhett got down on the floor, started doing push-ups.
“Back straight,” Roy said, and: “You going to count that one?”
Rhett did nine; seven real ones. “Now you.”
Marcia lowered her bar back onto the rack. Roy said: “Who’s getting hungry?”
“He’s chickening out, Mom. Don’t let him chicken out.”
Marcia raised her eyebrows at Roy, made a clucking sound like a chicken asking a question. She was fun: what with how she looked, and how things had been in bed, and how he’d like to be there right now, he’d let that slip his mind, the fun part.
He got down on the floor. Fifteen? Twenty? Who was he kidding? Rhett stood over him. “One, two, three, back straight, four, five, you going to count that one?”
Six, seven, what the hell had happened to him? Had there really been a time he’d been able to do a hundred, win free beer at parties? Hard to believe. At eleven, he’d had enough, was about to stop, just flop down there on the mat and make some light remark, although he didn’t know what, when he thought: How many could Barry do?
Roy did twenty-nine.
“Dad!” said Rhett.
“Let’s feel that muscle,” said Marcia, or something like that, the words fuzzy with Roy feeling a little faint the way he did. But Marcia’s hand squeezing his biceps-no doubt about that.
They sat in the whirlpool together, Marcia’s foot touching Roy’s once underwater, maybe by accident, then showered, changed, went to lunch. “I’ve never been this hungry in my life,” Marcia said. She ordered barbecue, Rhett a burger and fries, Roy a tuna sandwich even though the barbecue looked pretty good. The three of them ate lunch in almost complete silence, their heads quite close together over the table. Rain ran down the windows of the cafe.
The waitress brought a newspaper from the bar. They opened it to the movie page. “Oh, let’s see this,” said Marcia, pointing to an ad. “Barry’s friends with one of the producers.”
That changed the mood a little bit.
