Archives for July 1, 2013

Chapter 18

 

Chris read but the words blurred and made him look away. He slipped his glasses over his nose and tried again. He tried to concentrate on his belief that the law was the rules through which people organized their principles. His reporting parts provided a series of responses that that drove him toward reverie but then he tried to rally himself with thoughts of getting dressed. He was too easily defeated with an opening of windows and a needle on a track and a song that could put him right.

He sat in the open window with the law book on the sill and his head and knee bouncing to a beat. He could do this, it wasn’t that hard. It required more time than deep thought. Reporting parts quieted and listened to the song and inside of it all he was able to think with just a few minutes of clarity that came and went.  Mose Allison cooed, “Everybody’s crying mercy but nobody knows the meaning of the word.”

Chris didn’t think about the list of callbacks that he could make. If he wanted to hear a voice. He would call and if he wanted a presence, he could make it appear. For now, there was the book and the music and the street sounds and the promise of a walk. Reporting parts had different volumes and illuminations. Anything might be turned down or faded to black. It was right to wait for what the tide brought in, inspect what it carried, sort through and move on. Dancing like figurines in compartments, reporting parts had occasional convulsive rhythms that crested and subsided.

Warren and Laureen were perfect together, particularly since he had managed to avoid the entangling loops of both of their snares. He looked back into the book and brought the print into focus. Reading and taking notes while the light faded and the street music rose in back of it.

Later he did yoga, turning the stereo off and listening to his heartbeat and the continual hum that ebbed and flowed outside of his windows. He longed for the place of silence, not the silence that he had learned to use as a weapon, not the cold and predatory place where emotions waited and sharpened, not the resistant silence, but the honey hued invitation of his breathing and the steady strong beat of his heart.

It made him light headed and that told him that he was hyperventilating and that he must slow it down even further if he was ever to develop a means of travel to reach this new and quiet place. He read and took notes and tried not to think about the lures that would cause him to wander. He picked up his guitar and began to play and for the first time ever, it was one of Ron’s songs that he heard in his heart and played through his fingers. Chris fought the nets of incompetence and felt well rendered. He breathed in New York City and thought of Laureen: slinky, smart and able to make him cry. Then he played the blues song and tried to remember the words. There were other rhythms in it and he searched for them. Just as it was feeling right, it would make him stumble, like she tried to do. It was almost uncanny.

Chapter 17

At Halloween, the students were allowed to dress up. They came dressed as witches and angels and cats. Ron hung a skeleton up over his door but did not dress up himself. The girls giggled as they entered his room, halos tilted, witch hats crumpled and cat tails sticking up and bouncing along behind them. Ron’s first thought was that this was going to be a difficult day. He tried to think of ways that he could have fun and still make it productive. Some of the girls had not dressed up at all and looked embarrassed by their navy blue skirts and white tops. Some just wore silly hats and put on makeup that gave them a clownish appearance.

“Where’s your costume, Mr. Tuck?” said Andrea.

Ron laughed. “I wear a costume every day, Andrea.”

When he was a young boy, his mother would dress him in her clothes because of how much he looked like her. He cringed as the thought sprang into his mind. What was she thinking of, dressing a young boy up like a girl! It had left him never wanting to wear a Halloween costume again.

Ron drew columns that he crossed with lines that made them squares on the board and said, “Do you guys know the game Jeopardy?” Their smiles told him that they did. “Today we are going to play team jeopardy. This side of the room, push your desks together and this side do the same thing. The winners will get 25 points on the next quiz.”

Now Ron had to think about categories that they would know something about. He wrote across the top History, Vocabulary, Music, TV, Movies, and Literature.

Ron figured out some rules and told them that each side would get a chance at the same question until someone got it right. If there was any calling out of answers from the other side it would not count. There was no penalty for wrong answers, just points for right answers. Each girl would get to answer a question for a point value. The questions would be harder depending on the number of points. Only the girl whose turn it was got to answer the question, but she could get help from the others on her team.

The girls were excited and squirmed in their desks. “Where are you gonna get the questions from?” said Maria.

Ron pointed to the side of his head and said, “From here.”

Quickly, he filled in the point values and then he saw Sister Irene Emmanuel opening his door and walking into the back of his classroom. She sat down quietly with a small pad and nodded, smiling to the girls. Ron was stunned. This was the class that she was gonna watch him teach?  After all of the gritty work that he had done with them over the last two months, this was the day that she picked to observe him? Too late to do anything about it now!  Ron looked at the board and at his smiling students and then thought, “Fuck it,” this is what he told them that he was going to do and this is what he was doing.

The first girl, Sadie, chose TV for 20 points. Ron thought for a moment and said. “What is the name of the bald NY Detective who chews lollipops because he has quit smoking cigarettes?”

A girl in back of Sadie whispered into her ear and then Sadie’s face brightened and she said, “Kojak.”

Ron smiled as Sister Irene began to write. “Correct!”

He put the 20 in a column on the side. Then he saw Andrea whispering to her friends and the next girl picked vocabulary for 30.

Ron said, “OK, from the story The Open Window what does the word endeavored mean?”

The team got it right and for the next 30 minutes his students ignored TV and movies and music and asked questions about history and literature and vocabulary. Ron could have kissed each one of them as the class ended. He knew what had happened. They had tried to save him. In the process they had shown Sister Irene what he had taught them about literature and vocabulary and history. Even the nun was smiling by the end of the class. She stopped by Ron’s desk and said that he should come to her office during his free period.

After lunch, Ron waited outside of the principal’s office like a kid in trouble. They had done a great job but was she going to buy his method? Sister Irene came to the door all black and white and starched and scrubbed clean. He followed her into her office and waited to be asked to sit. Never having down this before, he wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen. When the vocabulary and history and literature questions had run out, Ron had put new point values up to keep it going.  His kids had made it seem like it was always that way. “That’s an interesting review technique that you use, Mr. Tuck,” began the principal.

Ron decided to just blurt out the truth. “When I saw the costumes and how they were all wound up, Sister, I made it up so that we could at least get a good review in.”

The nun arched her eyebrow, “You made that up as you went along?”

“Yes, Sister,’ said Ron bowing is head. “ I wanted it to be a fun day but not a wasted day.”

The nun stared at him for a long moment and then said, “We try to keep popular culture out of our studies as much as possible, but given the day and the way that it turned out, there’s not a lot that I can criticize you for today,”  she paused and pursed her lips, “except your handwriting. Mr. Tuck, is it necessary to assault the blackboard the way that you do and press down so firmly on the chalk?”

Ron stammered. “I’m not sure what you mean, Sister.”

“I’ve had complaints that you press so hard on the chalk, Mr. Tuck, that it is necessary to wash your boards every night. Do you think you could write a little more lightly and perhaps even a little less sloppily?”

“I can try, Sister or I can just wash them myself at the end of the day.”

The nun was inwardly amused at his response. Of course she had set up him by going in there on Halloween, but he had passed her little test very well. She did need to talk with him about some things though. “There’s another matter, Mr. Tuck. Some of the girls have taken to writing your name over and over on their books like you were a boyfriend.”

“I didn’t know that, Sister,” said Ron, genuinely surprised.

“These are very impressionable minds, Mr. Tuck, and it is important that we don’t overstep our boundaries.”

“I understand, Sister,” said Ron hanging his head again.

“I’m sure that you do. It was a nice review, Ron and I was pleased to see how much vocabulary they’ve learned. That’s what we are going to call your lesson, a literature and vocabulary review. Do you understand?”

Ron wasn’t sure that he did understand but he nodded anyway.

Then the nun said, “And Mr. Tuck, John is spelled J…o…h…n…..not J ….h …o…n.” She enunciated each letter clearly and with what Ron could have sworn was a clicking or her tongue against her teeth.

His felt his face flush hot with embarrassment. Had he really miss-spelled John? “Yes, Sister. I’m sorry about that, Sister”

“Do you realize how much you pace while you are teaching, Ron. It was making me dizzy to watch you.”

“I guess that it’s just nervous energy.”

“Perhaps you can find a way to channel your nervous energy more efficiently, Mr. Tuck.”

 

When Ron got back to his and Zoe’s apartment he saw her naked body running towards the bedroom when he opened the door. The table was set for dinner and across his plate were six willow switches that she had cut from one of the trees. He stared at them with his mouth open. Zoe was kneeling on the bed with her head down on the pillows and her ass raised up towards the door. Without turning around to face him she said into her pillow, “I played with myself today while you were gone. Please don’t hit me too hard.”  Ron laughed and fingered the switches, and then he began to strip off his clothing. The thought crossed his mind that this was one way of channeling his nervous energy.

Slowly, he slid the switches across her raised cheeks. He smiled when he saw that she strained upwards for the contact. He turned them so that the thin, young leaves, spiny and long, slid along her flesh. She whimpered and then he took the end of one of the switches and slid it between her thighs, under her cheeks along her puffed, opening lips. She trembled. He slid them up and down and rotated his wrist so that they would drag along that special place, then he pulled them back and smacked her ass with them. The air hissed as they snapped towards her. Ron felt himself twitch and she moaned. He slapped them across her cheeks fanning them out so that they covered her raised, trembling, slightly reddened flesh. They broke with snaps that surged through him. They fell on the lounge cushions that were their bed and he broke them over her bottom with hissing, plaintiff swats that sent them into pieces.

She turned to him as he dropped down onto his knees. She tugged at the stiffness of his penis. She licked her tongue across the tip of it. Ron was sticking out with his eyes closed, swaying like an inebriated creature. She lay on her belly and thrust up from underneath him with a hope of impalement that slid along his shaft with a wave of intoxicating chills. Then Ron pointed it at her and stuck it right in. Zoe’s arms and legs flung out. She screamed some kind of deep, wordless wish. The liquid releases convulsing through them like a whirling machine that had gone full sprint.

Afterwards they smiled that kind of self satisfied grin that rises from deep inside and holds you like a warm glow of the sun. Zoe stuck her elbow out across the mattress and cradled his head in her hand. She put on her glasses and inspected him.

He was lean, thick-boned with an oval face and spring green eyes that took each signal that she sent and then spun it back to her.  Ron smiled and let his eyes explore her. From time to time, he extended his hand to part a thigh, or lift an arm. The warm glow in her belly heated as she noted his approval.

Ron said, “The girls came dressed in costumes today.”

The idea caused her eyes to shimmer like a long caress and then she gazed at him strong and deep and said, “Do you want me to wear a costume?”

Ron’s eyes let off excited sparks that flew at her and she smiled when they entered her like they were his seed. “Let’s make something,” she said

Ron took a scissors to a pair of her cutoffs. He left the seam that ran between her legs and cut an outline of wings to stretch across her thighs and cheeks. Then he cut away the intruding white of her pockets. Then he cut U shapes for where her pockets had been. He slipped the remains of the cutoff’s up snugly while she put on a sheer blouse that she had decorated to accent her nipples, which it covered in a tight pull that was drawn down by inserted ribbons that gathered the fabric up, so that it seemed she was lifting her shirt from her body but was frozen in that pose. Ron, his hands on her hips, held her at the length of his arms; she swiveled back and forth for him.

Then they heard the first buzzer of the evening go off in the October quest for candy.  Ron gave her two bars and squeezed her mostly naked cheeks as they jutted out with anticipation and the promise of a quick slap that sent her to answer the door. He followed her, wanting to see the reaction and the way that she responded to it. She looked back at him and extended her arms with the candy in her hands, asking him to do it. Ron made her wait and watched her squirm and then took the candy and opened the door. Two little girls dressed up like ducks held their bags open and chorused “Trick or Treat.”

Ron filled their bags and then he shut the door and dropped to his knees and slowly swirled his tongue up her exposed taunt inner thighs. She came for him almost immediately.

They lay with the bag of miniature candy bars between them. Zoe told him that she wanted to go to New York and get a piece of alabaster that weekend. Ron smiled and asked what that was like.

“There are rooms filled with chunks of stone, different sizes.”  She set her hands at shoulder width and navel to nipple height. “I want a piece of white alabaster this big,” she said.

Ron said, “How do you know which piece to take?”

Zoe said, “I embrace it and see if it hugs me back.”

“Can I touch them?” said Ron, eyes like fireworks now.

Her smile spread from her mouth to her ears and she said, “That’s why I want you to come with me.” Then she glanced back and forth quickly and said, “Remember your cat poem?”

Ron nodded, and his mind flashed on Leni in his kitchen, slinky, inquisitive and devoted to him. He recited, “A piece of cheese very small, curled up on its end and stuck to the floor, attracted a black cat with licked white paws.

Raw chopped meat excited her more, and she made sounds for more

I was ecstatic, I wanted her to stay, so I gave her some more cheese

She licked it; she liked it,

Better than the first piece that she’d seen

I had made a friend that I could keep and tell her so out loud

She would agree, nod her head and make such friendly sounds

I dropped some bread, she gave it a clout

Raised her head licked her chin

Turned around and walked out”

“I want to draw it,” said Zoe. “I can see her.” Ron recited the poem again and again as Zoe drew.

 

 

Sitting at a desk that Zoe gave him, a blonde oak blank door frame laid over a set of custom made saw horses, Ron opened the Literature book to Canterbury Tales. Immediately, he was flooded with memories of the stage. He was playing Henry II and his partner for the scene was Thomas Becket, played by Todd Crumbly, who later became known as The Crumb after her flipped subsequent to being caught selling joints out of a rooming house in Elizabeth. He’d flipped on Chris and some other people but this was before that and before he discovered his guitar and heavy dope. Ron circled him hissing and screaming like a predator while Todd stood there looking vulnerable and contrite.

Canterbury Tales was about what happened after Henry had Beckett stabbed to death and he become a martyr. Ron absorbed the pages and the details of the Prologue. He saw how the ways that labor was divided were important things for his students to see. The colors they wore and the imperfections used to describe them gave the characters the substance and humanity that Ron wanted to communicate to his kids.

Naked,   Zoe was drawing with charcoals; pad on her lap knees bent up, hair tangled and an aura to the movements of her arm. Her pink and straw colored body was intent on creation.

Ron stared back to the page and as he read about the Oxford Cleric, and The Squire and The Cook.  He imagined each of them fucking her. He saw her lifting herself up to the pounding thrusts of each of their detailed, clothed bodies and he wanted to be all of them and still be himself. Then he put his book aside and wrote for himself.

 

 

 

Chapter 16

Ron Tuck knelt on the kneeling board with his hands folded and draped across the back of the pew in front of him. He was singing as if an angel were listening. His eyes roamed from the face of Sister Bernadette Catherine up to the old altar that was more there as a storage facility, now that the priests had been turned around and a new altar, more a large stone table, had been installed so that the congregation could see what was once hidden and whispered over in secret. The smell of the church sent him back to childhood and the way that he and his friends had gone to mass and stared at the rear ends of the girls in the rows in front of them while the girls smiled knowingly at each other and shifted on their knees and clenched their cheeks on and off to give the boys a little show. He did not want to look at his students that way and so he sang with elevated eyes and his head lifted upwards to the stained glass windows in back of the altar and the mural that must have been over 100 feet in the air.

It was First Friday morning and the school had gone to celebrate the mass that was held mostly for them on that day each month while school was in session. Bernadette Catherine was in charge of the choir of girls’ voices and their songs. She beamed as they sang and moved her raised arms in slow, well timed figure 8’s. Ron tried his best to sing as well as he was able, both for her and to set an example for his kids about how it was necessary to open one’s mouth when singing. He tried to breathe from his solar plexus and move his stomach to the cadence of the songs. “Holy. Holy, holy, God of Power and Light, Heaven and earth are filled with your Glory, Hosanna, in the highest…” He felt like he was making eye contact with her when they sang and that she could see him trying so hard for her.

Two days earlier, at the convent for dinner with the rest of the lay faculty and the nuns, she had asked him about his faith. They had saved a surprise for him and re-introduced him to Sister Grace Natari, who had been his 7th grade teacher when he had first come to the school. Sr. Grace had remembered Ron and said that she was glad to see him back with their church. She told the story about how Ron had been the first Protestant boy that had ever been allowed to attend the grammar school because his mother had met one of the priests while she was in the American Legion hospital. She told them about how Ron had  gotten into trouble with the police and how his mother had come to the church and “begged” to have him admitted because he was on a path that was leading to no good. She smiled recalling how Ron had known scripture and how all the nuns had wanted to convert him to the true faith.

Ron winced when his mother was associated with begging, but he knew that it was true. He had been in trouble. His mother had gone and asked that he be allowed to go to school there. What the nuns didn’t know was that the detectives had given Marjorie the choice of either getting Ron into that school or sending him to a reformatory called Jamesburg.

Dinner was spread across five different tables and there had been bottles of wine and salad and chicken and roasted potatoes and string beans. Some of the lay faculty had known enough to bring their own bottles of wine to contribute to the meal. Ron was oblivious to this tradition and because he didn’t go to the faculty room for lunch, no one had told him that it was expected. The nuns suffered the lack of contribution patiently and with tight lipped perseverance. Some of them were sure that manners were not something that could be expected from this disturbingly popular young man.

When they prayed before dinner, Ron blessed himself with the others, feeling less awkward than he had before. He ate slowly not wanting to appear overly hungry. There was polite talk at the tables and soft bouncing polite laughter. Ron grinned and talked, not noticing that he was the only lay person seated at his table. He did not know that the table arrangements were a thing that was the object of discussion before the dinner and that some of the nuns had wanted very much to sit with him and others had expressed a desire to sit anywhere else rather than with him.

The mass reached the point of communion and the girls dutifully filed up to receive. Ron was unsure about what to do. Part of him wanted to move up, to be an example for his students. But what kind of an example would a lie be? What kind of example was he able to provide spiritually anyway? Wasn’t it all a lie when it came to that?

Ron got up and moved down the aisle towards the priest. He was determined to take the wafer in the new fashion and not to open his mouth and stick out his tongue as he had been taught. He cupped his hands hoping against hope that he was doing it right and looked into the thin worn face of the silver haired priest who seemed to hesitate for an instant before placing the wafer in his hand. Ron took it and was surprised by the lack of magic that he felt on his tongue. A cascade of memory voices used to flood him about not letting it touch his teeth and certainly not chewing it. The host was to remain on his tongue until it dissolved.

At the convent, Ron noticed that as the evening grew later that the voices around him got looser and the faces of the people became pink and red. The laughter was easier now and when Ron looked up he saw that some of the people had already left. Sister Bernadette Catherine took his hands and said softly, “When the weather gets bad Ron, you can stay here with us if it becomes necessary.”

Chapter 15

 

On Sunday morning, he left early with Zoe and drove her up to her father’s house and then headed over to see Quimpy. The plan was that he would call her later. Zoe had said that his fire should earn him a day off, but Ron didn’t want a day off. He was yearning to be Mr. Tuck on Monday morning.

Quimpy opened his door smiling and bobbing his head. “I just finished making this guacamole and shrimp thing and we got chips and some great exotic buds to smoke.”

“Games start yet?” said Ron, not sure who was playing or what time it was.

“Just about,” said Quimpy.

Then Ron told him about the fire and what he wanted to accomplish with Zoe. He left out the feeling of the flames on his face and concentrated on the things that he had lost. Quimpy was comfortable in that territory. The living room was a jumble of street furniture and dusty antique tables and stacks of magazines and books. Ron saw that in one corner Quimpy was replaying the Fischer-Spasky matches on a board that was set up with a book about the championship. Ron looked at it but didn’t touch anything. In another corner was another desk set up with stuff on the Kennedy assassination. Quimpy had been in contact with this newspaper guy from Dallas and there were his newsletters and their exchanged letters along with a yellow legal pad of notes and books that had been written about what had gone on. Six Seconds in Dallas, next to Whitewash and Rush to Judgment and a strange book called the Rich and the Super-Rich were lying in these piles.

Quimpy noticed Ron looking and said. “Lamar Hunt, now

there’s an evil mother-fucker. Texas oil money and connected in unbelievable ways.”

Ron nodded. He didn’t know who Quimpy was talking about. The one thing that he did know was that if Quimpy thought that it was important that it probably was. It was Quimpy who had been Ron’s early mentor, before there was a Lashly and before he became Mr. Tuck. It was Quimpy who had realized that Ron was smart enough to grasp things and began to show him the music of Lightin’ Hopkins and Phil Ochs and the talking albums of Mark Twain made by Hal Holbrook.

Now Ron flopped down into a bean bag chair as Quimpy opened a small jelly jar, one of the 30 small jelly jars that he had had sealed from the best pot that they had smoked over the last few years. Ron admired Quimpy’s ability to collect and preserve things, even if wherever he lived did seem to have a musky dusty smell that spread across everything.

Midway through the first game, Quimpy stroking his beard said, “I know a studio apartment that might be available right now. It’s in Bloomfield and the guy isn’t staying there anymore. He left his wife and then got cold feet and went back to her. Everything that you need might be right there, if you can cover the monthly nut.”

Chapter 14

When Ron called Zoe, he was politely told by her mother that Zoe was not at home and that she really didn’t know when Zoe would be back from Boston. Yes, she would leave a message.  Ron took a deep breath and said, “Please tell her that I’m not going to back at my apartment.”  Then he looked around at Rahway and said, “Tell her to please leave a message for me at Laureen’s.”

Mrs. LaDue said, “I’m not sure that she’ll be home this evening.”

Ron could not help but smile at her assumption and said with a grin that almost showed through the telephone, “That’s ok. She can leave the message here anytime over the next few days.”

Then he hung the phone up on its wall cradle and walked back through the kitchen passed the very clean sink and  down the step into the living room, moving the length of the long, very large room he moved straight to Laureen’s door and knocked lightly.

“Come in,” said Laureen.

Ron pushed the door open; she was sitting in a chair that was tucked in a corner by the window. It was a low chair and covered with soft brocade of off white linen. She was reading a book that she closed when Ron came in.

“I just need a few minutes,” he said.

“Sure.”

Ron moved and sat down on her bed. He let his eyes travel around the room. It wasn’t the same color as when he and Robin lived in it and the double beds that Warren had strapped together were in his room now.

“Is it gonna freak you out if I take Warren up on his offer?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think that I’ll like living with you. You carry too much baggage of too many memories that you never let me forget, Ron.”

“I know. And me being me is not an easy thing for you.”

Laureen laughed. “That’s certainly true.”

“I’m gonna do my best to find a place quickly. I really don’t want to stay here. I’m worried about Chris and how it will make him feel.”

She laughed again. “Do you think that Chris would be worried about you if the roles were reversed?”

Ron didn’t want to answer that. The roles weren’t reversed and he knew that Chris would not take that into consideration but they weren’t the same people. He had never been Chris, could never have been Chris. “That doesn’t really matter.”

“So you are just going to spring this on Zoe?”

“We’ve talked about it.” Ron lied. There had been the short conversation that wasn’t really a conversation at all.

“She’s fragile,” said Laureen. “She is the craziest person that I know and that is really saying something. If you use her as someone to make Robin jealous, it will just tear her to pieces and if you do that, I’ll never forgive you.”

Ron looked straight into her face with his green eyes. He gave her a deep gaze that she did not meet. “We’ve all done unforgivable things,” he said.

“See, that’s what I mean, Ron. You do that to me all the time.”

“Ok,” he said “I’m being defensive. But I’m not interested in fucking Zoe or anyone else over and that includes you. We used to be friends.”

“We still are friends,” she lied.

“Do you have the number at Zoe’s sister’s house?”

“No,” she said, lying again. “But I might be able to get it.”

“I just don’t want her to keep calling my apartment and getting no answer.”

Laureen thought that after he left, she would call and give Zoe’s older sister the whole story and they could figure out how they wanted to handle this.

Ron said, “OK, listen, I’ll just try and stay out of your way and make this as painless as possible for you.”

“Where do you think you’ll live?”

“Somewhere north of here, closer to my school.  I want to be close to those kids.”

“That’s fine,” said Laureen, without any interest in which kids and which school he was talking about. She knew that he had taken a job teaching but figured it was definitely a temporary thing.

“If you get the number, leave it for me on the refrigerator.”

When he walked back through the living room, classical music was on the stereo and Warren was sitting on his couch with a couple of piles of papers and books stacked neatly on the table in front of him. It felt off balance in a way that made Ron both at ease and uneasy. That’s what Warren always did to him. He knew that he could have gone to the car and got his book bag and gotten some much needed work done, but the idea of sitting in the same room while Warren controlled the environment made him want to rebel against the control.

Warren looked up smiling and said, “Did you have a good conversation with Laureen?”

“She’s going to get a message to Zoe for me said Ron.

“I’m going into the city in just a little bit and then the place is yours. You can have either one of the back rooms.”

Ron nodded and said, “Thank you, again. I’ll be back later.” He walked out the back door and listened to the very familiar sound of the chimes as it closed and get into his car and backed out of the driveway and onto St. George’s Avenue.

He drove over to the college by a familiar route. He knew all of the approaches and on Saturday afternoon it was a clear sail. He wasn’t as sad about the apartment as he thought he would be. The truth was that he always felt half in the hall there and when his landlady had told him that she could get “a good whiff” of his pot in the side alley, he wanted to get out. He did not, however, wish to be burned out.

He wondered if the fire was inside of him still. He had stared into it. It would have hurt him; it would have eaten him if it could have. Then a strange thought occurred to him. Why hadn’t it attached to his bed linens? They were certainly flammable. Why had it spread across the top of the couch portion of his hide-a-bed without spreading down around him? Why hadn’t he been burnt?

Ron thought about whether or not he was lucky. He wasn’t lucky the way that his father was lucky, but his Dad had more skills than he had. He had earned his skills with lots of bruises. Ron had gotten what he inherited there and not done much with it, except for football.

It was the fall and Ron didn’t know anything about what the Giants were gonna do. He hadn’t followed a team in a long time. Football had grown to mean his knees and what he could no longer do. He had been as good a football player when he wasn’t hurt as anyone, well almost anyone. Maybe the game was a part of things he had lost. Maybe Robin was another part of what he had lost. Maybe Welmont was gone too, like the Kennedys and Martin King, and the Viet Nam War. Maybe at 25, he was old enough to have some things be a part of history.

Ron drove passed the college and kept going. This was also a part of history and then he found the car pointed in the direction of Westfield. Colonial Westfield with its snobbery and the history of two people who thought about the most in his life: Chris and Robin. The thought that struck Ron next was that neither one had heard from him since the fire. Robin, as it turned out, had known and had tried to help but Chris knew nothing about any of it.

Laureen was able to reach Zoe easily. First she called Barbara and filled her in. Her friend sounded worried about her sister. “Do you think that he cares for her?”

Laureen answered, “I think that he believes that he does, which is not the same thing, particularly with Ron.”

“She’s crazy about him,” said Barbara.

“Ron isn’t the artist that she is, at least I don’t think he is, but he gives off this feeling of being able to protect the people that he cares for. They might be good for each other.”

“What do you think I should do, Laureen?”

“Give them a chance. Maybe they really are in love.”

“Maybe just she’s in love and he is getting laid regularly.”

“I don’t think that’s him. I think he’d like to think that’s him but I don’t think that it is.”

Ron circled through Westfield slowly. He drove along Palsted and then over to Robert and then around through the center of town. It looked very pristine and secure. He thought about his time there and how he had never felt like anything more than a loose thread on the fringe of the piece of material that made up the fabric of this place.

Heidi answered Laureen’s call on the second ring. Her voice sounded young and filled with spirit. It made Laureen grin. “Heidi, this is Laureen, how are you?”

“I’m more than terrific, Laureen, how are you?”

“I was wondering if Zoe was there.”

“Sure, hold on.”

It took a long minute for Zoe to come to the phone. Her voice sounded strong although not as exuberant as Heidi’s voice had sounded. “Hi Laureen.”

“Zoe, Ron’s looking for your number.”

Zoe almost squealed in delight. “I’ve been trying to call him. Is he there?”

“He had a problem. He’s alright but he had this fire that burnt up his apartment.”

“He had a fire,” repeated Zoe, “but you’re sure that he’s OK?”

“He seems fine, a little worse for wear maybe but fine. Zoe, he wants to get in touch with you and he’s going to ask you to live with him.”

There was a long pause and then a small voice said, “I want to live with him.”

“Zoe, Ron’s got a lot of baggage.”

Another long pause followed by, “I want to talk with him now.”

Ron headed his car back towards Rahway. Springsteen was singing Jungleland on his radio and his thoughts drifted along the line of the music. He needed to call New York. He needed to call Zoe.

Returning to Rahway, Ron found the back door open and walked in with the sound of the jingling bells over his head. For a second he thought that it must be what a jester’s hat sounded like in a king’s court, a bit of a fool. On the refrigerator was a note that read, “Spoke with Zoe, she’ll be back tonight, she’ll call you as soon as she gets in.” Ron smiled and opened the refrigerator where the note had been tacked. Except for the crumb bun with his Mom, he could not remember the last time that he’d eaten. There was nothing that he wanted to eat in the frig and so he started brewing a pot of coffee and sat at the oval oak table and rolled joints.

With a hot mug of coffee in one hand, a joint in the other and the phone tucked under his chin, he listened to the phone ring in Chris’s apartment.

“Hello,” said Chris in a voice that seemed almost surprised that someone was calling him.

“Hey Chris, it’s Ron.”

“Hey, what’ happening?”

Ron took a dramatic breath and said, “Well, let’s see…I got burned out of my apartment late last night and it looks like I’m going to have to spend a little time in Rahway with Snake and Sheriff.”

“You got what?” said Chris.

“I had this electrical fire, Chris. It burned up almost everything.”

“Are you OK,” Chris’s voice sounded tremulous.

“Yeah, aside from being homeless, I’m fine.”

“What are you goin’ to do? I mean, do you need help?”

“As usual” said Ron, “I need lots of help, but for now. I’m going to stay in Rahway and see about getting an apartment with Zoe.”

Chris didn’t acknowledge what Ron said about Rahway. It was almost as if it didn’t register. Ron waited for him to bring it up and then saw that he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Ron loved that about Chris. It was something that he wouldn’t have been able to do.

Dragging on the joint and walking back out to his car, Ron walked the book bag back into the kitchen. Although he hadn’t checked, it felt like he was the only one there. He dusted off the bag and got some damp paper towels and tried to rub the remains of the fire off of his work. Then he opened the bag and began to prepare. A second and then a third cup of coffee and the second of the joints and he was deep into his work when he heard the announcing jingle of bells. Laureen walked into the kitchen followed by Zoe and Barbara.

Laureen said, “I see that you’re recovering nicely and making yourself at home.”

Ron didn’t answer her cause in the next seconds Zoe was in his arms and squeezing him with her body and shamelessly rubbing herself against him in front of her sister and her sister’s friend.

Watching them together, Laureen turned to Barbara and said, “Well this is obviously no time for conversation.” Then the two girls laughed as Ron and Zoe kissed and stroked and held each other, seemingly oblivious to them.

In Ron’s room, they fell onto his bed and she whispered, “It feels like forever since you held me, can you just stick it in me right now?”

Ron did and they came hard together and then they lay in each other’s arms, him feeling relieved of a tension that he hadn’t realized was building inside of him. She wondered if this was the time that he had impregnated her. “Do you want to live with me?” said Ron.

“I want to live with you and make babies with you,” answered Zoe.