Dan Wakefield - Home Free

“Good title, man,” Gene said.

What could you say?

“They changed it,” said Barnes.

“To what?” asked Lou, coming in with drinks.

“To that,” he said, pointing at the book. “My title was Coming Out to Die .”

“Can they do that?” Lou asked.

He coughed, nodding accusingly at the book.

“They did,” he said.

“Listen, everybody,” Gene said, “I hate to interrupt the fun and all, but is anyone going to be interested in having any dinner before the evening is out?”

“Thanks, but I’ll just finish my drink,” said Barnes.

“No, no, I’m sure there’s plenty,” Lou said. “Isn’t there, Gene? If there isn’t, we’ll just divide what we have. Share and share alike, right?”

Gene took a big slug of his martini.

“Right on, sister. Anything you say.”

“Listen,” said Barnes. “I oughta go,”

“No! You haven’t got your profits back,” Lou said. “What is it they call them?”

“Royalties.”

“See? You’re way behind. Still in the red. The dinner’ll put you ahead.”

Rather than listen to more of this bull Gene plunked an extra plate on the table and brought out the shriveled roast and the fallen pudding.

“Wow,” said Lou, “a real roast! What’s that other thing?”

“It used to be Yorkshire pudding,” said Gene.

“You cook a lot?” Barnes asked.

If this was one of those guys who thought men who liked to cook were fags, he was going to get a cold Yorkshire pudding in his mug.

“Whenever I can,” Gene said. “I happen to dig it.”

“Wish I could do it,” said Barnes. “Tired of Van Camp and his goddam pork and beans.”

Lou complained the roast wasn’t rare.

“It was about an hour ago,” Gene said, “while you were farting around at Gatsby’s.”

“What does that mean, ‘farting around’?” said Lou, putting her knife and fork down.

“Hey,” Barnes said, “I like it this way. No shit. This is great.”

“It means whatever you think it means,” Gene said.

“Can’t stand rare myself,” said Barnes. “The more done the better. Well is well with me.”

“I don’t call having a drink with a friend ‘farting around,’” said Lou.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you and he were old friends.”

“I didn’t say ‘old’ I said ‘friends.’”

“Well,” said Barnes, wolfing down a last hunk of burned beef and jumping up from the table, “I really gotta be going now. Hope you’ll both come over sometime. I’m on the Hill. Name’s in the book. I’ll open a can of beans or something. Anyway, drinks. Really. Anytime.”

He made his escape, leaving Gene and Lou at battle stations.

“That was some hospitality,” she said.

“I’m supposed to feed every pickup you drag home?”

“I didn’t drag him anywhere and he wasn’t a pickup.”

“What was he then?”

“A friend, goddam it. Or might have been. Don’t you understand about that? Just because we locked ourselves up and didn’t see anyone in Urbana doesn’t mean I’m going to do that here. We need friends. People. Otherwise we’ll smother each other.”

She persuaded him she wasn’t out to make the guy nor did she have any such ideas or why the hell would she have brought him home anyway?

He took a deep breath and said he was sorry he’d thought such things.

She apologized about being late and not calling.

He said he guessed she was right about having friends.

She said then why not start with Barnes?

Gene thought that sort of brought things right back to his feeling she picked the guy up or let him pick her up because she had some kind of thing for him.

He didn’t say that, though.

He said “Why not?”

Gene had to admit that in one way Barnes was the perfect choice for a friend.

If anyone needed one more than they did, he did.

Living all alone in this dramatic duplex pad, high long windows looking on rooftops, spires and chimneys clustered around like a lump of London, the Charles River glinting down in the distance.

The sleek low Scandinavian furniture looked out of place.

So did Barnes.

He seemed to be sort of lurking there.

On both sides of the fireplace boxes were stacked used grocery and liquor boxes full of books.

“Why don’t you unpack them?” Lou asked, looking at titles.

“Sure, man,” Gene said, “I’ll build you some shelves.”

What were friends for?

Barnes looked embarrassed, scratched his head.

“I like it this way,” he said. “When you put up your books on the shelf it seems permanent. This way I feel I’m free to pick up and go.”

“Maybe sometime you’ll feel free to stay,” Lou said.

“Maybe. Sometime.”

Lou said they liked his book, which was true. It was funny. Not the murder, the people and what they said.

Barnes brightened, brought out a better bottle of brandy.

It was somewhere toward the end of that one he told them how he went a year to something called The Iowa Writers Workshop to learn how to write The Great American Novel but had to drop out and make some bread doing newspaper work. When he finally got to the novel he didn’t care anymore if it was great or even American he just wanted out of the newspaper business, he had OD’d on asking people questions all the time. A “real writer” he knew in Denver sent Barnes’s book to his literary agent who sold it as a paperback original mystery with a big enough advance so Barnes could split and have enough time to live while he wrote another one. When he got the check he went straight to the airport, looked at the list of departing flights on the first TV monitor he came to, and picked one.

“Why Boston?” Lou asked.

“It sounded old. That’s how I felt.”

He said he was thirty-four then but that was six months ago so he must be thirty-four and a half, and felt he was going on forty.

“Don’t sweat it,” Lou said. “Two years I’ll be thirty.”

Gene couldn’t tell if that was consolation or kind of a come-on.

Barnes didn’t even seem to hear. He was lying on the floor propped against his couch, belting the brandy, when suddenly he sat up straight, stuck his arm in the air, and said, “I will never again ask anyone what he has for breakfast or thinks of the President or does in his spare time.”

Then he slumped, as if shot, inert on the floor.

Snore.

They arranged him on the coach, brought blankets from the bedroom, tucked him in, turned off lights, tiptoed out.

Gene figured they had a friend. He was glad, since Lou wanted some.

It was cool with Gene that Lou didn’t take him to faculty affairs or bring home academic colleagues. She decided and he agreed it was best to keep her two lives separate, home and work, since her living with a guy who was not only four years younger but naked of any degree would not do much for her own image. Besides, she said after teaching and going to committee meetings all day she was tired of talking academic.

Students and their parties were a different ball game. Lou was the kind of teacher they liked to invite and she liked to go. These were not finicky faculty cocktail sherries but casual sprawls, everything comfortable. She didn’t mind taking Gene, either, all she had to do was say “This is my friend, Gene” and that was the introduction, no need for name-rank-social-serial number, where are you from or going.

They took along Barnes to a student party over on Phillips Street, the back side of Beacon Hill where students and dropouts and rundowns lived alongside Chinese laundries, secondhand TV sales-repair stores. Mellow old Mamas and Papas music was asking you to “Look Out Any Window,” the crowded living room fragrant with grass and sweet wine. Barnes was disappointed he didn’t bring booze but found a nice bubble-gum-popping girl named Nell who dredged him up some old Mr. Boston Lemon Flavored gin from out of the depths of the kitchen.