“See ya,” Steve calls out.
“Hey, thanks, man.”
And so it is that Henry Powell and Steve Wilson forge a relationship silently sealed with grass stains and sweat and a shared love of the game. After most practices, they hang back, tossing the ball back and forth to each other until their teammates are far away in the locker room or in cars heading home to pot roasts and mashed potatoes. Then the drills begin. Tosses turn to throws. Henry’s long legs take him up and down the field. Until Henry begins to anticipate what Steve will do next. Until it is so pitch-black that the ball is invisible. Henry straggles into the showers so tired he does not see the coach’s car still in the dirt parking lot.
Chapter four
1984
Mr. Beardsley passes, his voice directed at Ramon the stock boy but intended to alert Henry that he’s on deck, question wise.
“We’ll see you on Sunday, right, Ramon?” Ramon is sweating under a huge box of outerwear and therefore cannot answer properly.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Good.” Mr. Beardsley looks back down at the checklist that’s never far from reach. “Good.” A check next to an item that by Henry’s reckoning is most likely “make sure Ramon is coming on Sunday.”
“Roughly what time will you be getting there, Henry, do you know? Just roughly.” He tries to sound casual but Henry knows that whatever time he quotes him will be etched in a Moses tablet in Mr. Beardsley’s head so he answers carefully.
“About three or so.”
“Good.” Another check on the list. “Good. I’ll be in the back room if anyone needs me.”
Sunday is the annual company picnic, an excruciating event dreaded by both Henry and Ramon, the sole invitees not counting the UPS man, whose name is mumbled by all because no one is sure if it’s Robby or Bobby. But the UPS man never shows. This year Mr. Beardsley ventured a cheerful “You’re working too hard…obby,” varying the volume on the name. (R/Bobby managed an equally cheery combination head nod and shake accompanied by “Don’t I know it, don’t I know it” on his way out the door, hands never leaving his dolly).
Once Mr. Beardsley has wandered off, Henry dials his own phone number to recheck his answering machine. But the new toll-saver feature alerts him to the fact that he has no messages. Three rings. No calls.
He had really thought his brother would return his phone call this time. Brad knew very well he was at work and Henry had assumed he’d have taken the occasion of his not being home to leave a message, avoiding a conversation altogether. It had been three days since he had left the message on Brad’s answering machine in Portland, Oregon.
“Brad? Hey, it’s Henry. Um, I just thought you should know, ah, Mom’s not doing very well right now. She’s been asking about you a lot lately and I was wondering if you were thinking maybe of coming back for a visit. Just wondering. No big deal if you can’t. But Dad asked me to call you so I figured what the hell. Okay. Well. You have my number. Or you could just call the house. Hey, Brad? Come home, okay?”
“Hi, Henry.” Kevin Douglas appears smaller, thinner, than he did at Fox Run. He had been the yearbook editor two years in a row but was ousted senior year for picking the most unflattering faculty pictures he could find. He lived in the city but had inherited his family home in town. The last time Henry saw him they had been at the pharmacy and had both been preoccupied with getting their prescriptions filled, and Henry was concerned about keeping Kevin from seeing the ointment meant to curb the alarmingly dry flaky skin he’d developed on various parts of his body.
“Hey, Kevin.” Henry smiles as he replaces the receiver behind the desk. He comes out from behind the counter and shakes the delicate hand that is offered. “How are you?”
Henry claps Kevin on the back but the friendly gesture is mistaken for a malicious one as little Kevin Douglas is pushed forward and has to right himself on a rack of jackets.
“Oh, jeez, sorry,” Henry says. He guides him into the middle of the store where all the new arrivals have just been unpacked. Away from Mr. Beardsley and his picnic planning.
“So how’s it going?” Henry asks.
“Fine, fine,” Kevin says. Henry knows Kevin is waiting a moment for the business at hand to take precedence over small talk, which he has never mastered. “I’m looking for a suit,” he says. “Maybe something double-breasted? I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Double-breasted’s one way to go,” Henry says. “I like single, but that’s me. Double-breasted can be a little boxy if you don’t get the right one. Let’s look over here.”
Henry is hoping to dissuade Kevin, who will be further dwarfed by the extra fabric of a double-breasted suit. But he does not want to alienate him, especially after the unintended shove and because Kevin Douglas has always appeared nervous around him. Henry takes care to be gentler, quieter around him.
“Let’s see.” Henry bypasses the Pierre Cardin, trendy in the late sixties, holding on in the seventies, and now in the mid eighties, Henry thinks, sadly on its way out. “Are you looking for pinstripes? Solid? Okay. Good. Yeah, I like navy, too. Perfect. Here it is. How about this?” Kevin, after careful examination, carries Henry’s choice off to the dressing room.
“We do free alterations,” Henry calls after him. “Just so you know.” The back-clapping has poisoned the entire exchange: Henry would remind any customer of their alteration policy but now worries Kevin will think this a subtle reference to his size.
“I’ll take it,” Kevin says. He has not come out of the dressing room. Henry’s eyes shift from one side of the store to the other, thinking of what to do to rectify this misunderstanding.
“What’s that?” he asks, pretending not to have heard. Buying time.
“I said I’ll take it,” the tiny voice answers. “I’ll be right out.”
When Kevin Douglas emerges, Henry decides he will act as if the suit is a perfect fit.
“Good?” He looks at Kevin hopefully.
Kevin avoids his eye and hands the clothing over to be carried up to the cash register.
“Henry, my boy,” Ned Beardsley greets him, “what’s your poison?” His arm sweeps over the foam cooler, the generous host. Henry curses himself—he didn’t note when Ramon would be arriving and now he’s paying the price by being the first there.
“Beer’s fine,” he says.
“Beer it is,” Mr. Beardsley says. He pulls the pop top off before handing it over. “Aah,” he says, swallowing a sip of his own beer, “this is great. Isn’t this great?” He’s looking out from his apartment’s rooftop across others just like it, out into the distance. The tar of the rooftop has been painted an industrial silver-gray. The metal door that leads back into the building stairwell is propped open by a brick that has also been painted gray. There is a hibachi and an old radio that’s tuned to the easy-listening station Mr. Beardsley favors. But the wind carries the sound out, away from them. Henry notes the flank steak marinating in a long Pyrex baking dish, grateful it’s not the bratwurst his boss had served last year. An abnormally huge black fly circles the bowl of coleslaw, landing on the edge then rappelling down to test it with a stick leg.
“Yeah, it’s great,” Henry says. “Great view.”
“I’ll tell you,” Mr. Beardsley says, “I was so lucky to get this place. I’m not sure I told you about that. Did I?”
He had, but Henry feigned ignorance and interest, figuring the story, however boring he knew it to be, would require little in the way of response and would fill the time until Ramon arrived.
“Oooh, it’s incredible,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I didn’t tell you? I could’ve sworn I did. A lady comes up to me in the store one day, this really funny look on her face. I’m telling you, I couldn’t read it. You know me—I can usually tell in five seconds what they’re after but with this customer, nothing. So I waited. I let her come to me in her own way. That’s something that’s always good to try to do, by the way. Let them come to you. Anyway, she comes right up t
o me, doesn’t even try to look for something on her own, looks me square in the eye and says she has a strange request and hopes I won’t be too offended by it. Of course I won’t, I told her. I’d be happy to help with anything she might need, I said. She clears her throat and says she has to buy a sport coat for a dead man. Just like that. She looks at me and squints a little, like she’s not sure how I’ll take this news.”
Though Henry has heard this story multiple times and could even recite parts of it by heart, he politely raises his eyebrows and nods to his host.
“I tell her I am not in the least offended, that we have seen to the clothing at funerals in the past and that we’d be happy to help her. Then she asks me if I could come up to the apartment and measure him for it. Asks me to come measure him because he’s never had a sport coat or something like that. Or maybe he had one and he lost a lot of weight or something, I can’t remember that part but the bottom line is I agree to go over to his apartment, which I think is strange but who am I to question another’s culture, I think to myself. She seemed a bit exotic, if you know what I mean. So I assumed at the time that this was an ethnic thing where they don’t like funeral homes. This is what I’m thinking at the time.” He taps the side of his head, a visual aid now built in to the fabric of the story, it’s been told so many times.
“Anyway, I agree to meet her at the front of her apartment building and I go there right after I close up for the day. Remember I’m thinking it’s their religion or something. Maybe he’s laid out at their apartment instead of a funeral home for religious reasons. To each his own, I tell myself. We shouldn’t judge.”
Henry nods, shrugs and takes a gulp of his beer.
“So, I get there—you want another beer? Let me get you another one,” he says, eager for his audience to be totally focused on his story, not waiting patiently for it to be over in order to get another beer. He’s pleased at his own attentiveness.
“There you go. Anyway, I get there and she’s right out front, like she said she’d be. Everything’s going just as she said it would. Except that I notice her key chain is huge. One of those rings like jailors have in the movies, you know? I think it’s strange but I follow her in through the main door to the lobby. We go over to the elevator and while we’re waiting for it she thanks me again for doing this. She’s very grateful and so on. We get in the elevator and then we’re on the top floor of the building, walking down the hall to the apartment. That’s when I realize it’s not her apartment at all, she’s the superintendent of the building. She’s fishing through the keys on her ring, she doesn’t know for sure which key it is. That’s how I know.”
He explains his detective work to Henry as an aside. Many of his listeners must have wondered about this part so he has worked the explanation into the story.
“Anyway, she gets the door open and that’s when it hits me. The smell. I’m telling you, Henry, it almost knocked me over, the smell was so bad. I look over at her and she’s acting like she doesn’t notice a thing. So I take a gulp of air before I go in and try to hold it as long as I can. But how long can you hold your breath, you know? You’ve got to exhale sooner or later. So I try to breath in and out of my mouth. It works for a few steps but then I’m tasting the smell. Tasting it. Can you imagine? It was so strong it actually tasted. And there she is, motioning me to come over to this chair, where I can see the back of a man’s head. This isn’t right, I’m thinking. He’s not laid out all official-like. I get around to the front of the chair and I see what’s going on. She’s his landlord and he’s passed and she hasn’t called anyone about it! He’s sitting upright, his eyes are still open! For a second I think this might be a sick prank—like he might reach out and grab me or something. Like a Candid Camera thing. If it weren’t for the smell I would’ve thought that for sure.”
Henry senses this is where he should interject some thing verbal.
“So what’d you do?”
“I’ll tell you what I did.” Mr. Beardsley beams at the question, listlessly executed though it was. “I excused myself and practically ran out to the hallway. She followed me out. You’ve got to call someone about this, I told her. I’m ashamed to say I may have raised my voice. The police. The coroner. Someone. And she just looked at me like I was speaking a language she didn’t understand. Does he have any family? I asked her. She said no. Are you his landlord? I asked her. She said yes. That’s all. Just ‘yes.’ Like it’s twenty questions and I’m supposed to piece it all together. What about friends? Are there any friends of his you could call? None, she said. As it turns out he was a loner, stuck to himself mostly. He was old. Ninety, I believe.”
Mr. Beardsley takes a sip of his beer and luxuriates in his wonderful tale, so sure is he of Henry’s complete fascination.
“Wow,” Henry says.
“Wow is right,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I talked her into calling the police and we went back inside, where I figured I’d just stand by her for moral support—maybe she’s in shock or something, I think to myself at the time—but the way she looked at me…I couldn’t believe it, she still wanted me to measure him. She was standing by the phone, not saying a word, but standing there looking at me like it’s a bribe—she’ll call the police if I take his measurements. I’m sorry but if you’ve got an unreported dead man in one of your units—I think you’ve got bigger things to worry about than whether he’ll be dressed right in his casket. I don’t say that, I just think it. Of course I don’t say it out loud.”
“There he is!” Henry says with an emphasis that reveals he’s been wondering about Ramon’s arrival for some time now. He practically hugs Ramon when he sees him emerging from the stairwell onto the rooftop. The metal door clanks back in place next to the gray brick doorstopper. “He-ey, man!”
Ramon squints at Henry, who has never seemed so happy to see him.
“Mr. Rodriguez.” Mr. Beardsley’s demeanor shifts back into that of a host, jovial formality. But Henry knows he is slightly annoyed by the interruption so close to the story’s climax. “Good to see you, good to see you. What can I get you? I was just telling Henry here how I came to live here.”
Ramon’s eyes crinkle in a stifled smile of recognition—he now understands Henry’s false enthusiasm. Henry nods back with a miserable gulp of his beer.
“I know I’ve told Ramon this story,” Mr. Beardsley says with a clap on his guest’s back.
“Yeah,” Ramon clears his throat. “Yes.” He accepts the beer.
“So, to make a long story short—” he directs this back at Henry along with a pointed finger uncurled from the bottle neck “—turns out she’s crazy. Certifiable. She called the police to report him dead—I had to make a show with the measuring tape and let me tell you I almost lost my lunch doing it. The police showed up, asked a few questions and the next thing I know they’re taking her out to the cruiser, wanting to talk to her downtown, et cetera, et cetera. She’s nuts.”
Big gulp and Henry knows he’s rounding the corner into home plate.
“They hauled her off to some nut hut and her son took over. Anyway, I think about it—” again the visual aid indicates where his thoughts are taking place “—and I think the man’s place isn’t half bad. If you want to know the God’s honest truth, I was thinking that to myself even when I was measuring him—this place is great, I thought. So I let a few days go by, but I’ll tell you in this market you can’t wait too long, things get snapped up. I called the son and voilà!” Henry’s French teacher would have disapproved of the v pronounced as a w. Mr. Beardsley continues, “I’m signing a contract before he’s got all the old guy’s stuff cleared out. I looked around and told him I had half a mind to keep some of it, if it weren’t already spoken for and you know what the son said? Two birds, one stone. That’s what he said to me. Two birds, one stone. Great guy.”
Mr. Beardsley beams. “Soooo,” he says with a monologue-ending stretch, “you never know what a customer’s going to come out with, I’ll tell you what,” he says
. “Little did I know that day the woman came in the store I’d end up with a whole new life by the end of it.”
“Two birds, one stone,” Henry says, flush with happiness that the never-ending story has, in fact, ended. “That’s something.”
“Qué peso, Ramon?” Mr. Beardsley calls over to his other guest, unaware that Ramon Rodriguez doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish even if the greeting were correct.
The rooftop door clanks against the brick and Mr. Beardsley’s smile fades. “4-C,” he mutters.
“A-hem,” he loudly clears his throat, a signal Henry recognizes as being a precursor to Mr. Beardsley’s version of anger. “Can we help you?”
“No, thanks,” the woman says, unfurling an oversize beach towel that says “Love is…never having to say you’re sorry” underneath a cherubic cartoon couple holding hands. But before 4-C can grease up an arm with the baby oil she’s pulled out, Mr. Beardsley descends.
“Aah, hold up there. I signed up for roof use a month ago,” he says. “Check the sign-up sheet. I reserved the roof—what was it?—a month ago. Henry, Ramon? When did I first talk to you about the picnic? About a month ago, right? Anyway, you’ll see my name there, clear as day. Ned Beardsley. 14-D.”
“Okay, okay,” 4-C is folding up her towel. “Take it easy. No biggie. I’ll go to the park down the street.” It strikes Henry that 4-C looks like Patty Hearst from the side. Patty-pre-SLA not Tanya, he thinks, noting that 4-C’s breasts are not half as big as Patty Hearst’s.
Mr. Beardsley clears his throat, this time more gently. “Thanks,” he says. “If I hadn’t signed up it wouldn’t be a problem but I signed up and everything…” He trails off, unsure what to say, so unaccustomed to getting his way so easily. He brushes an invisible fly off his short-sleeve madras buttondown Henry knows was remaindered and finally set aside to donate to Goodwill before being rescued by his boss who praised its “classic cut” that would no doubt come back into style once all the hippies grew up and shaved, he said.