Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

I did remember, but I didn’t have to tell Mickey. He didn’t really need an answer.

“That’s our lives. That’s Nostalgia with a big ‘N,’” he said. “Comic books, movies, television, Mickey Mantle, Frankie Avalon, mom baking fish every Friday night, and my Uncle Walt always coming over for it wearing a tie.”

“Nostalgia,” I said.

“The history of each of our lives,” said Mickey.

“You’re a philosopher, Mickey,” I said

“Take a button. On the house,” he said, nodding at the bowl between us.

I went through the buttons and found one I wanted. Then I bought more items Mickey Donophin was happy to show me.

I left Mickey carrying a large, full paper bag and headed for Flo’s house. It was after four.

Adele answered the door, baby in her arms, smile on her face. Adele had lost all of her baby fat but not the memory of what she had been through. Adele was tough. Mother murdered by her father. Father who molested her and sold her to a pimp, also murdered, betrayed and made pregnant by a man she trusted. And there was Adele, pretty, blond, baby in her arms, smiling.

“Lew,” she said. “Come in.”

I followed her inside and closed the door.

“Just finished feeding Catherine,” she said, holding up the baby named for my wife. “Want to hold her?”

It was less a question than an order. I put down the bag I had brought in and she handed me the baby.

“Diet Dr Pepper all right?” Adele asked.

“Sure,” I said, moving into the living room with the baby in my arms.

Catherine looked up at my face, eyes wide, scanning, tiny wrinkled fingers fidgeting.

“Burp her,” Adele called from the kitchen.

I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her back. Flo had shown me how to do it. It took three pats before I heard the small burp and felt a minute twinge of triumph.

“Flo’s out,” Adele said. “Got her license back, thanks to you. She’s shopping.”

She put a coaster and a glass of Diet Dr Pepper with ice on the coffee table in front of me. Then she took the baby.

“School?” I asked.

“Easy,” she said, holding the baby to her chest and crossing her legs on the sofa.

I sometimes found it hard to remember that Adele was only sixteen.

“Got something,” I said, getting the bag I had brought in and placing it next to my bubbling glass of Dr Pepper.

I fished into the bag and came up with a rattle. It was purple and white plastic. I handed it to Adele, who looked at the picture on it and said, “Who’s Clarabelle?”

“A clown,” I said. “From an old television show for kids.”

“Weird looking, isn’t she?”

“Clarabelle was a man,” I said.

“That is weird.”

“Sorry.”

“Sometimes I like weird,” she said, placing the handle of the rattle in Catherine’s right hand. Small pink fingers clutched it tightly and accidentally shook it. The little pellets inside gently clacked. Catherine’s eyes turned toward the rattle.

“Something for you too,” I said, going back into the bag.

I handed her the foot-long cylinder. She turned it over in her hand and read the words on the side next to the picture of the rocket ship.

“Tom, Corbett, Space Cadet?” she asked.

“Another old television show. It’s a kaleidoscope.”

“I gotta say you come up with some weird stuff.”

She held the kaleidoscope up toward the window, closed one eye, and looked into the small round circle. She twisted it a few times and put it down with a smile.

“I like it,” she said. “You are a strange man, Lewis Fonesca. You get something for Flo, too?”

I went back into my bag and came up with a 33 ^1?3 album cover. I showed the cover to her. It was black-and-white with the photograph of a plain-looking man playing a guitar. The only words on it were “Hank Williams.”

“Hank Williams?” Adele said.

Catherine shook the rattle again.

“Flo will understand. The record’s in perfect condition. I’ve got to go.”

“Coming back later? Flo’s bringing back barbecue from that shack she knows on Martin Luther King.”

“Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve got to rescue a man from a castle.”

“Just another day’s work,” she said.

“Another day,” I said.

“Take care of yourself, Lewis,” she said, getting up as I did and moving close to kiss my cheek. “Notice anything?”

“What?”

“My language,” she said. “Flo and I have cleaned up together. Take care of yourself.”

She smiled and looked at Catherine, who was trying to focus on the rattle.

“How are things really going?” I asked.

“Hard,” she said. “I don’t really fit in. It’s not the baby. I’m just not a kid like the rest of them. I pretend. I get along and everyone knows about Catherine and they’re cool with it. See, I can even say words like ‘cool’ when I remember. But I don’t have any real friends but you and Flo. I’m not complaining. That’s fine with me, but it’s not easy. You understand?”

“What about that boy you were seeing? The one who worked at Burger King?”

“He graduated,” she said. “He’s at the University of Florida. He calls me when he’s back here, but Lew, he’s still a boy. Maybe things will be different when I go to college, but that’s two years away.”

“Where are you thinking of going?”

“Lewis,” she said. “I’ve got a baby. The University of North Carolina isn’t going to let me go to classes with a two-year-old. Flo said she’d come with us wherever we went if I wanted her or she’d pay for a nanny.”

“You don’t have to think about it for a while,” I said.

“I do,” Adele said, touching the baby’s cheek. “You see, for fifteen years I didn’t have a future. Now that I’ve got one, I want to think about it.”

And I, I thought, had a future for almost forty years and now had only a past and a present.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“Kids to help, bad guys to catch?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I said.

“Say, how about you come over Sunday,” she said. “We’ll grill stuff. Bring Ames, your friend Sally, and her kids. Flo’ll love it.”

“I’ll get back to you,” I said.

I had vaguely planned, if I lived to Sunday, to sleep it away. It had been almost two days since I had slept, and Sundays were the hardest days for me. They held more memories than other days.

I was back at the Texas Bar and Grill twenty minutes later.

The Texas was busy. The buffalo and steer heads on the wall looked content. Johnny Cash sang out that he was walking the line and keeping his eyes wide open, and Ames was talking to someone on the telephone at the bar.

“Your lucky day, Lewis,” said Ames, as he put the phone down but didn’t hang it up. “Got a fella on the phone, Snickers. Got a sweet tooth. Says he broke into the Hoffmann place two years back, doesn’t want to talk about it. But he says he’ll get you in and out if the price is right.”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and asked Ames, “How much should I offer him?”

“Snickers owes Ed,” Ames said, looking at Ed Fairing, who was leaning over a table across the room and laughing along with two customers. “A couple of hundred if you can get it,” said Ames. “But he’ll take less. He owes Ed.”

“Two hundred,” I told Ames.

Ames picked up the phone and said, “Man I was telling you about says two hundred.”

Pause. Ames covered the mouthpiece and said, “Two hundred and twelve and the bar bill.”

“Two hundred and twelve?”

“Doesn’t want it to seem like he comes cheap on the first offer.”

“How big is his bar bill?”

Ames asked and put the phone aside again.