Randy raises his mug. 'Here's to Tracey and Gary. May you find love and happiness.'
'Already have,' she says.
The night goes on to gain a comfortable momentum, buoyed by Bushmils and the Leafs going into the third period with an unlikely two-goal lead over the Red Wings. They wil ultimately lose, of course. But for now, Jake's is a place of hope and mild excitement and we are part of it.
I decide to quit while I'm ahead. I'm feeling pretty good, considering the grim business of the day—not to mention the strange encounter with the boy, and an observer I guessed to be Carl (though now, on the firmer ground of Jake's, I doubt either was who I thought he was). But much more of what's making me feel this way wil only be pressing my luck. I'm tired. From the long day, from burying a friend, from fighting to keep the Parkinson's hidden from the world. And tomorrow I have to assume my duties as Ben's executor. A first-class hangover would make that unpleasant task only doubly so.
I head up to the bar to give Tracey my credit card.
'Wrapping up?'
'Just me,' I say. 'I wanted to pick up the tab before my friend and I wrestled over it. Though Randy is usualy wiling to lose that particular fight.'
She swipes my card and taps the terminal with a pen, waiting for the printed receipt. It gives me a handful of seconds to study her profile up close. No doubt about it: something of Heather Langham lives in this girl.
She looks up at me.
'Sorry,' I say. 'It's rude to stare.'
'Were you staring?'
'Honestly? I was thinking of someone else. Someone you remind me of.'
'A girlfriend?'
'No. Just a person I looked up to.'
'Are you flirting with me?' she says.
'Is that what this sounds like?'
'A little. But then, I don't realy know you. And you're—'
'An old man. Old as your dad, anyway.'
'So I don't know how guys like you go about things.'
'Wel, let me tel you. I'm not flirting. I'm confessing. A man who thinks he can see someone in someone else, but is only dreaming.'
'Memory lane.'
'That's it. That's where I live these days.' My right hand fidgets at this, impatient at being stil for the length of this exchange. 'Trust me, I'm harmless.'
'Trust you?'
'Or don't. Just know that a felow doesn't get to meet a true lady too often anymore.'
She considers me another moment. Then, out of nowhere, she punches me in the shoulder. Hard enough that it takes some effort on my part not to let my hand fly to the point of impact to soothe the hurt.
'Dad said you were pretty good. Back in the day.' She laughs.
'Oh yeah? Good at what?'
She laughs some more before ripping the receipt from the machine and sticking her pen between my trembling fingers.
MEMORY DIARY
Entry No. 8
Over the days that folowed the night we found Heather Langham in the Thurman house we repeatedly reminded each other to act normal, a direction that raised questions in each of our minds as to what our normal might be. However I ended up resolving this, I considered my act a fairly accomplished performance. It certainly convinced my parents, classmates and, for stretches as long as a couple of hours at a time, even me.
Sarah, on the other hand, was a more skeptical audience. Right off she noticed something had changed. I assumed her main concern was that my feelings for her had waned, in the way Carl's did for the girls he cast aside. With the benefit of honesty, I assured her that I loved her, that I was aware of how lucky I was to have her, that nothing had come between us.
'This isn't an 'us' thing,' she said. 'Something's wrong with
I recal one lunch period when we drove out to Harmony with plans for what Sarah caled, in a singing voice, an 'afternoon delight.' But to my astonishment, my normaly enthusiastic teenage manhood offered no response to her attentions in the Buick's folded-down back seat. There were now two secrets I had to keep: I couldn't tel Sarah about finding Miss Langham, and I couldn't tel my friends about failing to get it up with a naked Sarah Mulgrave.
I don't remember us talking about it, huddled under a blanket of parkas, studying the patterns of frost our breath made over the windows. The significance of our skin against skin, dry and cool, was clear enough. Something had turned. And even though I was the one who knew what she couldn't know, I couldn't say how this knowledge had found power over us here, in our place, in Harmony.
'You guys ready?'
