Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

"Hurry up, Denny, this asphalt is hot!" Leo barked.

"Stay still, idiot." Denny said "idiot" under his breath. He shot the whole roll in record time.

Bonnie, thinking ahead, had taped bits of moleskin and padding on her one elbow and knee. She was on them as though she'd just hit the ground on her side. Still, the heat came through the padding.

Leo got up. "That's enough."

"We just started!" BoomBoom exploded.

The propped bicycle wobbled, falling with a metallic crash, spinning spokes throwing off sunlight.

Harry ran over, picked it up. Luckily there were no scratches.

"If that bike is broken, I'll kill you," BoomBoom, often the butt of Leo's high-school pranks, hissed.

"Don't get your ovaries in an uproar, Boom. If the damned bicycle is scratched I'll fix it. You know, here it is twenty years later and you still haven't learned how to lighten up."

"Here it is twenty years later and you still haven't grown up," she fired back.

Chris left her cone. This was too good to miss.

Bonnie, ever the pragmatist, walked over to Denny. "Think you got it?"

"Yeah, that asphalt really is too hot to shoot this picture. The first time we did this it was later in the fall, remember?"

"October." Harry rolled the bike over to the two of them. "We voted on senior superlatives mid-October."

"What a good memory." Denny couldn't remember what he'd eaten for supper the night before but then, given his past, a bad memory was a blessing.

"Remember when Leo made a crack to Ron Brindell in the cafeteria the day after the results were announced? Remember? Ron won Most Popular and Leo said they should shoot his picture in the locker room." Harry continued to wipe down the bike.

Leo had joined them. "Yeah."

Chris innocently asked, "Why'd you say that?"

"Ron was such a limp-wristed wimp. I said they should shoot him in the showers bent over with the naked guys behind him. He took a swing at me, that skinny little twit. I decked him and got a month of detention."

"Was he gay?" Chris wondered.

"He moved to San Francisco." Leo laughed as though that proved his point.

"That doesn't mean he was gay," Harry piped up. "I liked him."

"Yeah, you aren't a guy." Leo smoothed back his light brown hair.

"Speak no ill of the dead," Susan Tucker admonished as she picked up Bonnie's bike.

"Three of the superlatives are dead." Leo slipped his hands in his back pants pockets. "Maybe it's a bad omen." Then he imi-tated the Twilight Zone music.

"Ron and Aurora died long before now," BoomBoom, tired of Leo, said. Her alto voice carried over the parking lot. "As for Charlie, bad karma."

"He should have gone into pornographic films. Charlie Ashcraft, porn star. He would have been happier than as a stockbroker," Leo laughed.

"Funny thing is, he was a good stockbroker." Bonnie peeled off the moleskin.

"He was?" Leo was surprised.

"Prudent. He made a lot of money for people." Susan added, "Odd, how a person can be so reckless in one aspect of his life and so shrewd in another."

Marcy and Bitsy had joined them, Marcy adding to the conversation, "My husband says that men can compartmentalize better than women. There's a compartment for work, for family, for sex. It's easy for them." She'd taken to talking more fondly of Bill lately, perhaps to ward off gossip about her alleged relationship with Charlie. She was too late, of course.

Denny shrugged. "I don't know. Charlie must have had some thick walls between those compartments."

Harry took one of the bicycles, rolling it over to her red truck. She'd placed blankets on the floor of the truck bed so neither the bicycle nor the truck would get scratched. She wanted to buy a bedliner for the truck but hadn't had time to get one installed. She lifted the bike onto the dropped tailgate.

Chris came over. "Let me help."

"Okay, I'll hop in here and if you hop in on the other side we can lift it to the back. I've got ties to keep it from slipping."

"Who's taking the other bike?" Chris asked.

"Susan. It's her son's. Good thing. I'd hate to stack the bikes on one another. I think the first scratch to this truck will be a blow to my heart." She smiled. "Silly."

"Human." Chris wrapped yellow rope under the bike frame.

Bonnie and Susan walked over. "Are you going to dinner?"

"No," Harry responded.

"What about you, Chris?"

She turned to Susan. "BoomBoom told me she'd promised dinner to Bonnie and Leo since they had to drive a bit to get here. I don't want to intrude."

Susan said, "We've decided on Dutch treat. Come on. It will be fun. If for no other reason than to watch Leo torment Boom. Sure you don't want to come, Harry?"

"No, thanks. I've got chores to do." She tried to tolerate BoomBoom better these days but she'd not volunteer to spend time with her.

As she opened the door to the truck, Chris asked, "Denny asked me to dinner this Saturday. I don't know much about him. Is he an okay guy?"

Susan replied, "He's made a lot of bad decisions but, yeah, he's okay. At least he has learned from his messes."

Chris looked to Harry, who shrugged. "Go."

"He's divorced?"

"Years ago. I don't know why he married in the first place. They had nothing in common," Susan said.

"Date a lot of men, it helps refine your standards." Harry laughed. "Advice I should have taken myself."

"Thanks." Chris smiled, then walked back to Dennis, who was putting away his equipment. He smiled as she approached him.

When Harry arrived home she found that the washer in the kitchen faucet had been replaced, the weather stripping on the door was replaced, a blackboard hung next to the kitchen door, a box of colored chalk was suspended by a chain attached to the blackboard. Written in green on the blackboard was the message, "Taking Cuddles to the movies. See you in the morning. Pewter has something to show you."

"Pewts," Harry called.

A little voice answered from the living room. Harry walked in to find Pewter proudly guarding a skink that she'd dispatched. Mrs. Murphy and Tucker flanked the gray cat.

"I caught him all by myself," Pewter crowed.

"Sort of," Mrs. Murphy added.

"Pewter, what a good kitty." Harry petted her. She went outside to check the horses, finished up her chores with fading light, and went to bed, glad she wasn't forced to relive old times at dinner.

22

The phone rang at the post office at seven-thirty A.M. just as Rob Collier, the delivery man from the main post office on Seminole Trail, dropped off two bags of mail.

"Sorry I'm late. Fender bender at Hydraulic Road and Route 29." He tipped his hat as he jogged back to the truck.

Mrs. Hogendobber answered the phone as the cats dashed to the mailbags. "Crozet Post Office. Mrs. Hogendobber speaking."