Dan Wakefield - Home Free

“What happened?”

Gene came out of the kitchen grinning, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“Grades came in the mail today. From summer.”

“You passed!”

“ Passed? That’s an insult. Pulled down six hours of A.”

“Far out!”

They toasted with Rhine Garten Chablis, sitting on the floor. They hadn’t got used to the new couch yet, except as a place for piling stuff.

“If I keep on truckin, I’ll finish in February. Finally.”

“It’s great, babe. Really.”

“It’s a load off.”

“Your father—he’ll be so pleased.”

“Too late for that. Relieved, maybe.”

“Maybe you should call him?”

“No. Not till it’s over. Not till I’ve got it right here in my hand with my name on it. I’ve talked big before.”

She leaned over and kissed him.

“He’ll really be glad. And me, too. For you.”

Gene filled their cups again, smiling as he raised his.

“No more something, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. What the ‘something’?”

“Hmm?”

Lou looked preoccupied and distant.

“Hey,” Gene said, “where are you?”

“Huh? Oh. Just thinking.”

“Of?”

She took out a cigarette, lit it, tilted her head back, blew a long slow stream of smoke at the ceiling.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do?”

“When?”

“When you get your degree.”

“I dunno. Maybe have a blast. Not just booze, though. Food and all. Maybe bouillabaisse. A whole fuckin vat of bouillabaisse. Keep the mother on for days, keep addin to it, a goddam marathon bouillabaisse for—”

“ Fuck the bouillabaisse!”

Gene’s head jerked back as if he’d been hit without warning.

“What the goddam hell? You don’t like bouillabaisse all the sudden? Fuck it, I’ll take the whole thing I made for tonight and dump it in—”

“Goddam it I’m not talking about bouillabaisse , for the love of fucking Christ.”

“Well, begging your goddam pardon, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what I asked you, which was what are you going to do when you graduate?”

“What do you mean by ‘going to do’?”

“I mean what anyone means when they ask anyone what they’re going to do when they graduate. I mean what work are you going to do?”

“Why the hell you so uptight about my working all the sudden? Haven’t I worked ever since we been here?”

“I don’t mean those kind of jobs.”

“Oh, you mean ‘those kind of jobs’ that helped feed us and sent me back to school aren’t good enough anymore?”

“They’re perfectly fine when you’re going to school.”

“And when you get out they’re not good enough?”

“No, as a matter of fact, they’re not.”

“Why the fuck?”

She took a deep breath and spread her hands on her skirt, steadying.

“Gene. Please. Listen.”

“I am.”

“OK. What do you want? For your life?”

“This. I don’t mean arguing. I mean living with you. That’s what I want.”

“That’s not enough,” she said fiercely.

“Isn’t that for me to decide?”

“Not if you refuse to be adult about it.”

“Oh. I’m not being a good grown-up citizen. I guess I should go out and hustle my ass into the IBM training program.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“That’s how it sounds.”

“Forget it, then.”

“I’ll sure as hell try to.”

Lou got up and walked to the window.

She sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Gene. I didn’t mean a scene.”

He went to her, touched her.

“Me, too,” he said, “either.”

They kissed, tentative, and tried to change the subject. But it stayed there, in the room with them, invisible and real.

Something else hanging over me , Gene thought.

He began to suspect there always would be. You got rid of one, the next dude popped right in to take its place.

At dinner Lou said the bouillabaisse was especially good. Gene said he’d used a new recipe, one with fennel seed in it. There was silence again. They could hear each other eating.

Gene hadn’t been the only one who had got it on in the summer. While he was pulling down his six hours of A, Lou was wrapping up her doctoral thesis. Nell not only did her social work thing in Appalachia, she came back looking healthy and tan. Barnes emerged from his one-room Cape Cod cottage more sallow than ever but he had his new mystery finished. Thomas hadn’t done anything, but he hadn’t tried.

But the one who came off the season like a real champ was Flash.

After his summer of low-overhead living and high-volume sales in the boondocks he returned to Boston in triumph, renting a bachelor’s pad with ocean view in the swinging new Harbor Towers apartment complex, and business space in a fashionable row of newly renovated offices on the Wharf.

The first official undertaking of Flash’s new business was a party to launch it.

Gene said he and Lou would be honored to attend, but just out of curiosity, what was the business?

“Professional sports,” Flash said.

“Any special one?”

“Very special. It’s new.”

“You mean you made it up?”

“No, no, what kinda crap is that? This is an established, historically traditional sport. I meant new in the pro field. This is a sport with class. Background. Originated in Scotland, old buddy, the country that gave us golf. Which happens to be the most popular sport in the English-speaking world.”

“So what’s this one?”

A pause. Flash pronounced the word with as much drama as anyone could drag out of two syllables.

“Curling,” he said.

“Curling?”

“It’ll soon be a household word.”

“I think I heard of it. Where a guy tries to keep running on top of a log without falling in the water?”

“No, no, dummy that’s birling . Log birling. That’s an individual competition.”

“What’s curling?”

“A team sport. Played on ice. You mainly need brooms and what they call the ‘stone.’ Equipment costs will be low, which of course is a plus factor in establishing franchises for the league.”

“There’s a league already?”

“The North American Curling League. I am league president, as well as owner of the Boston franchise.”

“Far out,” Gene said.

He meant it. When Lou got home she said she’d never heard of curling and Gene said maybe it only existed in Flash’s head. Lou decided to look it up in the old World Book Encyclopedia Thomas had given them and damned if it wasn’t there. Curling. It had four-man teams that slid or “curled” a heavy stone or iron to a mark called a “Tee” on an ice rink. The rink was supposed to be 138 feet long and 14 feet wide. There were rules and regulations, the whole bit. It even started in Scotland.

Lou said she thought it sounded kind of dull.

Gene was just amazed it existed.

The party in Flash’s new office looked like a combination of the Miss Universe Contest and the annual convention of the Massachusetts Elks club. The former group were personal friends of Flash, the latter potential investors. The only furniture in the office was what proved to be a Ping-Pong table covered with a bedspread on which were set two giant punch bowls. Behind it were a pair of tan blonde beauties wearing red miniskirts, white blouses, high-heeled black boots, and identical sashes of red silk emblazoned with the gold letters N E A E A. On the walls were a map of the United States with a red pin stuck into Boston, and a gold-framed black and white photo of Flash in a basketball uniform, frozen in the act of a jump shot.