Tom Perrotta - The Wishbones

“Go on,” she repeated.

“It's the ring,” he said. “I can't afford to buy you a good one.”

The tension drained visibly from her face; she slumped back against the couch and shook her head.

“I don't care about the ring,” she told him.

“I do. You deserve a nice one.”

“I really don't care, Dave.”

“Well, I do.”

She terminated the discussion by reaching behind his head, pulling his face against hers, and kissing him in a way that normally would have made him forget everything else.

“Julie,” he said, when she finally came up for air, “I was wondering about something.”

“Hmm?”

“Do you have any photo albums I could look at?”

“Now?” she asked, kissing him again.

“Yeah,” he said. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“Right now?” she asked, tracing the grooves of his ear with her tongue.

“Uh-huh,” he murmured. “As long as it's not a problem.”

“This very minute?” she asked, sucking on his earlobe while tugging with gentle efficiency on his belt.

“Whenever,” he told her.

On the way to Phil Hart's wake, Dave told Buzzy about his engagement.

“That's great,” Buzzy said. He was wearing a black pinstripe suit with a black shirt and a skinny white leather tie, an outfit that made Dave vaguely embarrassed on his behalf. “I'm really happy for you.”

“You mean that?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“I don't know. I'm not sure it's such a great idea myself.”

“Why?” Buzzy turned to Dave with an expression of dawning comprehension. “Her old man answer the door with a shotgun?”

“Nothing like that.”

A couple of seconds went by. “So how'd it happen? You get down on your knees and all that crap?”

“I don't know.”

“You were there,” Buzzy reminded him. He looked at Dave more closely. “You were there, right?”

“I was,” Dave admitted. “I just didn't mean to do it.”

“Ah,” said Buzzy.

Dave's chest felt constricted, as though he were wrapped from armpit to navel in Ace bandages.

“I'm up the fucking creek,” he said. “She's already reserved the church.”

Buzzy laughed. “Tell her you have a gig that day.” When Dave didn't respond, he rolled his window down and spit a wad of gum into the street. “It was easier for me. Jo Ann was pregnant with Zeke. That kind of made the decision for me.”

Of all the Wishbones, Buzzy had come closest to the big time. In the mid-eighties he'd been part of Flesh Wound, a locally popular speed metal band that had been on the verge of signing with one of the major labels when the guy they were negotiating with got fired and the deal collapsed. Flesh Wound's lead singer and lead guitarist split off to form LasseratoR, which had since become a fixture on the local club circuit, but Buzzy had retired from serious rock ‘n roll in favor of marriage and family.

“Jesus,” said Dave. “Look at this.”

Warneck's Funeral Home looked like the scene of a good party. Cars lined both sides of the street in front of the imposing Victorian mansion; well-dressed people stood in clusters on the porch and lawn, taking advantage of the balmy evening.

Dave parked on a nearby side street. He and Buzzy walked in silence down a sidewalk sprinkled with a confetti of white blossoms already going brown along the edges. There was a greenish fragrance in the air, a soft springtime smell that made him nostalgic for high school, the feeling of endless possibility that stretched out in front of you every time you left your house on a night like this.

“Are you glad you did it?” he asked.

“What? Get married?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm forty-one,” Buzzy replied, after a brief hesitation. “I got a house, a wife and kids, and a job that doesn't make me want to buy a gun and go wreak havoc at the mall. I get to play music on the weekends and drink a couple of beers every once in a while. Things could be worse, Daverino. They could be a helluva lot worse.”

“I hear you,” said Dave.

A couple of teenage girls nearly bumped into them as they rounded the corner to Warneck's. The girls were nothing special, a pair of giggly fifteen-year-olds in baggy jeans and tight cropped shirts that exposed their navels, but Dave and Buzzy parted like the Red Sea to let them pass, then turned to watch them continue down the street, the air still vibrating from the mysterious power of their bodies.

“Damn,” said Dave.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Buzzy.

Just then, for no reason at all, the girls turned in unison and waved. They exploded into a fresh round of giggles when Dave and Buzzy waved back. Buzzy tugged on the sleeve of Dave's sport coat.

“Come on, let's go talk to them.”

“Okay,” said Dave.

Despite their agreement, both men remained motionless as the girls receded into the distance, finally disappearing around a corner. Without further discussion, Dave and Buzzy turned and walked the rest of the way to the funeral home.

Stan knew he was going to be late for the fucking wake, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to give Susie her goddam birthday present. That was the important thing. If Artie didn't like it, Artie could take his shiny saxophone and ram it up his managerial ass.

He uncapped the bottle of Jack Daniels between his legs and took a long pull, keeping his eyes trained all the while on the door of the handsome white clapboard house with the wraparound porch that doubled as the law offices of Joel Silverblatt, attorney-at-law.

“I'm Joel Shysterblatt,” Stan mumbled, “and if you suffer from hemorrhoids or tooth decay related to an automobile accident, I've got important information that you need to know.”

When she first started working for the guy, Susie had loved it when he did his Joel Shysterblatt imitation.

“That's him,” she'd say, covering her mouth to hold in the laughter. “That's Joel to a T.”

Then, all of the sudden, she didn't find it so funny anymore.

“Joel's a sweet guy,” she'd tell him. “He's not like you think.”

“Come on,” Stan would say. “The guy's a shyster. He gets rich off other people's misery.”

“You know what?” she'd tell him. “You don't know the first thing about the contingency fee system. It works to protect the little guy.”

“The guy's a shyster, Susie.”

“And stop using that word. It's anti-Semitic.”

She was probably already fucking Shysterblatt by the time she started talking like that, but Stan was living in a dreamworld. Susie was his wife. They'd been happily married (at least in Stan's opinion) for eighteen months. It never occurred to him that she might be even the least bit attracted to her boss until he came home from a wedding one Saturday night and found an envelope on the kitchen table with his name on it.

He lifted Susie's unwrapped gift off the passenger seat and studied it in the failing light. It was a framed enlargement of a picture taken on their honeymoon in Cancun. Stan couldn't remember who'd taken the picture, but he knew it couldn't have been him or Susie, since both of them were in it.

The subject is Susie, standing on the beach in a pink bikini, squeezing water out of her hair with both hands. She's smiling, and her evenly tanned skin glistens with tiny droplets of water. Behind her, the ocean glows a rich shade of turquoise. At the left edge of the image, a man's arm reaches into the frame, offering the woman a towel. The arm belongs to Stan.

He thought the picture captured something important about their relationship, something she needed to think about. If it hadn't been for the restraining order, he would've just walked into the office and laid it on her desk.