came. Rhett picked the pepperoni off his slices and laid them aside. They polished off a family-size Coke. Roy landed on North Carolina with a hotel, rolled snake eyes on his next turn, hitting Pennsylvania, also with a hotel, to end the game. Rhett counted his winnings to the last dollar, brandished the wad of play money, and said, “I’m the man.”
After that, they watched a sitcom that Roy had never seen and didn’t find funny. It was about a group of people in their twenties sharing an apartment in a big city and putting each other down.
“You like this?”
“It’s cool.”
Rhett’s swollen eye started seeping a little. He got tired, went to bed in his old bedroom. Roy thought of tucking him in, even reading him a story, but did none of that. The boy was going on twelve. “ ’Night,” he said from in front of the TV; and turned it off the moment Rhett was gone.
Roy called Gordo at home.
“He’s out drilling,” Brenda said.
“Drilling?”
“With the regiment. It’s part of the initiation.”
Roy felt the weight of the oxidized lead bullet against his thigh.
“Didn’t he tell you about the regiment?” Brenda said.
“He told me.”
“Pretty stupid, if you ask me.”
“I don’t know,” Roy said, although he thought it was.
“Do you realize he may even have to pay for some kind of uniform? What army makes you do that? He said it could cost three or four hundred dollars.”
Roy said nothing.
“It’s even more, isn’t it?” Brenda said. Brenda was quick; there were women like that all over the place these days.
“Did he mention anything about a train?” Roy said.
“What’s a train got to do with it?”
“Just tell him I called,” Roy said.
“A model train? ‘The General,’ or something like that?”
Roy sat down at the kitchen table. He had a stack of bills, not like Barry’s-Barry’s and Marcia’s-but big for him. A legal bill-divorce was expensive; the counselor’s bill; the mortgage, all his now; the home equity line; the car payment-two, in fact, since he’d missed last month; the two credit cards, both near their limits; utilities, phones, property tax. He wrote the checks he could cover, then sorted the remaining bills into immediate and less- immediate categories. There may be a few things opening up soon. Nice things, Roy. He considered calling Mr. Pegram at home. A promotion would sure be nice, Mr. Pegram. He didn’t know how to put that in a businesslike way. Job, salary, payments, money in and out-it was a little like Monopoly, but no fun at all. Roy corrected that thought right away-he wasn’t complaining. He liked the job, he liked the house, and his car, an Altima like Gordo’s, but a little older, was all right too.
Roy got up, walked around the house-a small house, and a fixer-upper, but solid, and built of brick just like Marcia’s, meaning no termites. He hadn’t done much fixing up-any, in fact-since Marcia left. There were tools and a workbench in the cellar, his housewarming present from the Irregulars. Roy went downstairs.
He hadn’t been in the cellar in months. A box of square tiles-not marble but something that looked like marble-sat on the workbench. Marcia had wanted him to replace the linoleum in the downstairs bathroom. A long two-by-two was clamped in the vise. It took Roy a moment to recall what he’d been building when he’d left off: shelves for Rhett’s room. Measurements were penciled on the two-by-two. Roy plugged in his Black amp; Decker and started sawing.
There hadn’t been any tools in the series of small apartments he’d grown up in with his mother. This was Roy’s first set. He liked using them. Sawdust sprayed in gold arcs lit by the hanging overhead bulb. Roy sawed, sanded, drilled, screwed the frame together, then started cutting the shelves from long pine boards. He lost himself in the sound of the saw, the grain patterns in the wood, the smell of cut pine. Especially the smell: it brought back memories, not specific memories, more the feeling, of when he was very young and they-ma, pappy, Roy-were all together, up in Tennessee.
A hand touched his shoulder.
Roy jumped inside his skin, spun around, his finger still on the trigger of the saw, and there was Marcia, the blade buzzing between them. He shut the thing off, got ready for her to be angry about something-the school, Rhett, his visit to her house. But Marcia didn’t look angry. Neither did she look sick or hurt; if she’d been in the hospital, it couldn’t have been serious. Marcia looked great-was still the best-looking woman he’d ever seen. That was his honest reaction. Roy tried to suppress it stillborn, but it popped to life in his head anyway.
Marcia looked up at him. “Thanks for handling everything today, Roy.”
In the silence-a special silence in the aftermath of the sawing and what with being down below street level- Roy heard every subtlety in Marcia’s voice, all the tones, all the vibrations, as though he could see the sound being produced by her throat, mouth, tongue. She had a beautiful voice. He started having the air supply problem again, bad enough for the inhaler this time, but he wouldn’t reach for it with Marcia there.
“How is he?” she said.
“Sleeping.”
“I looked in,” Marcia said. “But I didn’t want to turn on the light.”
“He’s got a black eye, is all.”
“How did that happen?”
“Some schoolyard thing,” Roy said.
They looked at each other. “I guess Barry didn’t hear the phone,” Marcia said.
“Too busy making money.”
“That’s a good one.”
Roy didn’t get that. Wasn’t busy or wasn’t making money? Couldn’t be the latter: Roy had seen the brand- new Benz with the BARRY vanity plate, and more than that, he could tell that Barry was the moneymaking type, just from the way he pointed his chin at you when he was talking.
Marcia was looking at Rhett’s shelves, coming together on the workbench. “Roy?”
“Yeah?”
She started to say something, changed her mind. “Got anything to drink?”
“Coke?”
“A grown-up drink, Roy.”
“Have to look.”
They went upstairs, Marcia leading, Roy trying to keep his eyes off her body. Marcia was in better shape than ever. How amazing that there’d been a time when a woman with a body like that had shared his bed.
Roy opened the fridge. He had a six-pack of Bud, one bottle gone.
“Any Chardonnay?” Marcia said.
“Sorry.” Roy wasn’t much of a drinker. Not that he didn’t like booze: he knew that he liked it a little too much. His father had gone that route.
Roy opened two bottles of Bud, poured one into a glass for Marcia. She drained half of it in one gulp.
“Barry said you were in the hospital.”
She nodded.
“You okay?”
“Just having my lips done, Roy.”
He didn’t understand.
“My lips. It’s something I’ve always wanted.”
Roy hadn’t known; hadn’t known she’d been dissatisfied with her lips, hadn’t known what bothered her about them, didn’t see anything different now.
“What do you think?” she said, smacking them together, sticking them out at him.
Roy studied her lips.
Marcia laughed. “You’re hopeless,” she said. “Don’t you see how much fuller they are? Not those pencil-thin
