Dan Wakefield - Home Free

He sat in the Public Garden till a little after ten and then went to Adams House. Just for old-times sake he took Marcia a cup of coffee.

“What happened?” she asked him with a look of uncustomary alertness.

“I must resign my position,” he said. “But you tell em. OK? Or don’t tell em. They’ll figure out. It’ll just be our secret, you and me. Or I?”

Marcia helped him out of the office quietly, carefully, gave him two dollars and told him to promise her he’d take a cab and go home and sleep.

“Can’t,” he said. “Go home. No home. Can’t go home to no home.”

“Well—will you take the key to my apartment? Go there and sleep? I’ll come at lunchtime and check on how you are.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “You’re fine, too. Don worry bout a thing.”

He waved, looking back over his shoulder.

“Be careful!” she called after him.

Suddenly he really was tired. He couldn’t go home, no home, he didn’t want to see friends, he didn’t want to sleep on a park bench because some cop might mess with him, then he remembered how the winos used to sleep in the hallways of the buildings by their old apartment on Carver Street. It sounded like a terrific idea. He crashed in the hallway of the building they used to live in. Sentimental to the last. Tenants stepped over him. It seemed poetic justice.

He slept till around three in the afternoon, then got up and brushed himself off and went to the bar with the hillbilly music jukebox. He drank beer there till six, then went to Mitzi’s place. Call upon his lover.

“Ohshit,” she said when she saw him.

He collapsed in a chair, smiling.

“What do you want?” she asked. She didn’t sit down.

“Drink,” he said. “Martini maybe?”

“You’ve had too many.”

“One more.”

“Get out,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you stink.”

He sniffed and grimaced, wiped his hand across his face and straightened up a little.

“Yeh,” he said. “Guess you’re right.”

He swallowed, blinked, and stood up.

“Bye,” he said.

“Do me a favor,” Mitzi said.

“Sure, baby. Anything.”

“Don’t come back.”

He nodded.

He didn’t know how he got to The Crossroads. He didn’t know the new bartender there, but some of the regulars recognized him, said Hi. He had four stingers before he felt the world tilt without warning and he fell off his stool. Two of the regulars were above him, and the bartender was wiping his face with a wet rag.

“You’re givin a bad name to an honorable profession,” the bartender said. But not like he was mad.

“Sorry,” Gene said.

“These gentlemen say they will take you home. You live around here, don’t you?”

“No. Used to.”

“Where do you live now? What’s the address?”

“Isn’t one. I don’t live anywhere.”

The bartender sighed. One of the regulars said, “Call that guy Flash …”

That’s the last thing Gene remembered.

He woke up and there they all were, floating above him. All but Lou.

There was Barnes and Nell, Thomas and Flash and a honey-blonde who must be Flash’s latest stewardess.

Gene wondered, with faint curiosity, whether he had died. That would mean his friends had died, too. Everyone but Lou. She was still fucking that crisp-looking sonofabitch with the bow tie, back down on earth. But everyone else had died and gone to—Barnes’s place? It looked like it. The high ceilings. Books still in the boxes. So that’s what happened. You died and went to Barnes’s place. Gene started to smile, but it hurt.

“He’s alive,” said Flash.

Gene winced and whispered, “No.”

“You’ll make it,” Barnes said.

“Why?” Gene asked.

“Cause you’re comin up to Maine with us.”

“Home?”

“No. We didn’t find it. This is just a trip.”

“A trip,” Gene repeated. “What kind?”

“Vacation,” Flash said. “You’re goin on vacation.”

“Who?”

“You and Barnes and Nell. Me and Francie here got business in town.”

“It’s gonna be a good trip, man,” Nell said. “We all need one.”

“Yeh,” Gene said. “Trip.”

He closed his eyes, remember the music, the “Helplessly Hoping”:

Did you trip at the sound of goodbye-eye-yi?

“Tripped,” he said.

Linda Ronstadt was singing “Long Long Time.” Not in person of course. A new album. Volume turned up to the peak.

Gene was glad it was Linda Ronstadt, not someone soppy or sickly sweet. Strong. Gutsy. Belting it out.

Her voice didn’t seem just to come from the house but out of the earth, over the water into the rickety little town and the scrubland and forest beyond it.

Something was cold against his hand and he opened it and fitted his fingers around another beer.

“Thanks,” he said, not knowing to whom, and kept his eyes closed.

Everyone there seemed to know what he needed right now and didn’t need.

He didn’t need to talk.

Not yet.

The wind felt clean and the lapping sound of the water was reassuring. At high tide the water came right under the porch, and at low it faded way back out into the main body of itself, leaving a stretch of brilliant green sea grass and stones. It was a tidal river, fed by the sea. He hadn’t known they had them.

He was lying in a hammock on the porch of this house perched over the tidal river and people were putting cold cans of beer in his hands. The sun was warm on his face, on his closed eyes.

He was in Maine.

His friends had brought him.

Yeh. Suited him fine.

Every so often he thought of Lou—not thought of exactly, but a picture of her, bright Kodachrome, would flash in his mind, a shot of her caught while walking or smoking or laughing or asleep, frozen in the frame at some familiar angle, and the sight of each such shot caused a sudden pain, like a sharp little dental pic hitting a nerve.

He concentrated on keeping his mind blank, a clean piece of slate. He focused on sipping the beer and hearing the record where it talked about planting seeds and chopping down trees and making your own island.

Yeh.

You and me, Linda.

Gently rocking.

He fell in and out of sleep, letting things happen around him. Footsteps. Voices. Barnes and Nell. Others. None. No one. Nothing.

The next day he was ambulatory.

The house belonged—at least for the summer—to some friends of Nell named Jerry and Monica who graduated from Northeastern and after a year doing straight career-type jobs in Boston decided they’d rather move to Maine and take whatever work they could find and save up to buy themselves some land. They knew they could never afford anything here around Damariscotta, it was on the coast and only a couple hours from Boston, but in terms of summer work it was swell. For managing a sandwich and soft drink concession up the beach they got a percentage of profits and this cabin-like sort of shack with the porch out over the tidal river rent free. Monica looked intense behind her granny glasses, brown hair pulled back tight and neat from a fair, nontannable face without makeup. She was sort of like the strategist. Jerry had curly blond hair and a big smile all the time and liked to putter around and fix things.

Monica was saying to Barnes that when they started looking in earnest for land they’d go up north and inland, that’s where you still could find the good values.

“ You can,” Barnes said forlornly, “ I couldn’t. I’m the only guy in the country couldn’t find some damn land bargain in Maine.”

“Forget it, man,” Nell said, giving him a solace squeeze.