He thinks for a brief second of ignoring her, but it’ll be easier to get this over sooner rather than later, because it will happen.
He steps out from his office and sees the book club standing in the middle of his shop. Not a single one of them is perusing the shelves, because they’re not here for that. No, Mrs. Richardson would have made it abundantly clear the moment she got off the phone from hearing the latest juicy gossip about the bookshop owner and the waiter at the diner (most likely called over to her by Oscar himself, the worst gossip of them all). She would have gathered the book club within the hour and made a plan of attack.
There’s five of them, all in their forties, all wearing the prettiest of dresses of varying colors (green and red and blue and yellow and orange) with matching gloves and hats, their purses clutched at their sides. They are well put together, with only the latest fashions at their disposal. But not the extreme latest fashions, Mrs. Richardson assured him once, because they don’t wear pants, oh heavens no, can you even imagine women wearing pants? How loose their morals must be to wear pants. They’re called capris, and she said this with such disdain that Mike almost felt sorry for ever thinking progressively.
Mrs. Richardson eyes him speculatively as he walks out of the office, obviously judging him, as he knew she would. He’s wearing jeans and a plain white shirt, and he’s comfortable, this is what he always wears, but he’s sure she’s wondering just how loose his morals are and he wishes he’d at least thrown on a sweater or a jacket of some kind.
“Mike,” she says in greeting.
The four ladies spread out behind her giggle their greeting, whispering to each other as they glance back at him.
“Are we switching the days for the book club?” Mike asks, playing dumb.
Mrs. Richardson’s eyes narrow. “Of course not. Thursdays are strictly reserved for the garden club. You know this, Mike. We’ve had this discussion before.”
Unfortunately, Mike does know this because they have had this conversation before. Mrs. Richardson makes sure he knows their entire schedule on any given day for reasons he’s not quite sure of. He wonders if she does this to everyone in Amorea, or if he’s special.
“Then to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asks.
“That’s how you’re going to play it,” she says with a sniff.
He arches an eyebrow at her.
“You need to shave,” she announces, apropos of nothing.
He scowls at her. He’s not going to shave. Yes, maybe he needs to trim his beard a bit, but he’s not going to shave it off. “For?”
Mrs. Richardson sighs the weary sigh of the put-upon. “How you ever managed to get this far, I’ll never know.”
“Wing and a prayer,” Mike says.
“Pray?” she scoffs. “You? If I recall, when I asked you why you didn’t attend mass on Sundays with the rest of Amorea, you told me you didn’t believe in false deities.”
The ladies behind her make the sign of the cross.
“I’m not shaving,” he redirects, not wanting to go down that road again.
“Trim it at least,” she insists. “Clean yourself up. You look positively boorish. You have an impression to make.”
“I do? He already said yes—”
“On the town,” she says.
“I didn’t ask the town to a picnic, what the hell—”
“Language!” she trills. “Honestly, Mike, you’re in much more trouble than I feared. Tell me, what were you planning on making for this so-called picnic.”
“I’m not making anything,” he says. “Sean wants to do it.”
“Because you would have packed something like sandwiches.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sandwiches. It’s a picnic.”
“Sandwiches,” she says, eyes twitching. “Sandwiches.”
“You don’t know—”
“Oh, no. No, no, no, this will not do. I can see now that any decision-making shouldn’t be left up to you, not if you have plans to actually succeed. It’s obvious we will need to intervene. We will see you on Saturday morning, then.”
“Wait a goddamn minute—”
“That kind of foul talk will get you a bar of soap in your mouth, don’t think it won’t. Ladies, we have only two days. We have much to work on. Step to it. Don’t make me say it twice!”
They twirl in a cloud of flowery perfume and determination and are gone out the door before he can get another word out. Mike would chase after them, but it wouldn’t do any good. This is just the kind of place Amorea is. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. And to make things worse, the people of this town seem overly invested in making sure the proprietor of the bookshop and the waiter at the diner eventually get together.
Sean thinks it’s amusing.
Mike thinks it’s less so.
VI
HE’S CLOSING the door behind Happy, who might be a little drunker than he’d planned on getting at poker night. He’s with Calvin from the hardware store and Donald, the local barber, both of whom promise to get him home safely, even as Happy starts singing about the moon hitting your eye like it’s a pizza pie, because that’s amore, a song that’s less than a year old but that Mike’s already sick of hearing given that it’s everywhere. He likes Dean as much as the next guy, but not that much.
He’s chuckling as he shuts the door. He hears Oscar still out on the back patio, probably finishing off the cigar he’s been chewing on for most of the night. Mike’s walked away with ten bucks tonight, not a bad haul. More than he usually does with the card sharks he plays with.
Who are, of course, just as gossipy as his book club. The ribbing he took all night about finally getting his act together was nothing short of punishing. Happy had this impression of him, sputtering, “Sat-Sat-Saturday,” while bulging his eyes out and looking terrified. The guys found that to be the funniest thing to have ever been said (most likely aided by the Falstaff beer they’d been drinking for two hours by that point). Mike took his lumps, because he knew they weren’t being cruel. It’s just how things are with the guys, something that Sean has teased him for endlessly the few times he’s gone to poker night. It’s not his thing, but he sits there next to Mike sometimes, leaning over and whispering in his ear like he has no idea what he does to Mike. He says things like Three queens, that’s something right? and Happy’s got a tell, look when he touches his cheek and Boys and their games, as if he’s amused by them, as if he’s charmed and pleased by their very existence.
He’s thinking of Sean, so lost in thought about Sean that he almost doesn’t hear Oscar when he says, “Jesus Christ, his eyes are open.”
What an odd thing to say, he thinks.
He’s out through the sliding door and into the night, Tiki torches lit up around the patio furniture, Oscar lounging lazily in his chair, stogie lit and oozing smoke that curls up in the dark. If there’s anyone aside from Sean that Mike can relate to here in Amorea, it’s Oscar, and they couldn’t be more different. He doesn’t know why they gravitate toward each other, but they do, even if Oscar gives him the most shit about Sean. But Oscar loves Sean like a brother and is very careful with anyone who gets close to him. For a while there, it didn’t seem like Mike and Oscar would get along, but he thinks Sean said something to him. One day he was scornful at best and the next he was… well, less scornful, but Mike chalked it up as a win.
“Whose eyes are open?” he asks as he pulls the lawn chair away from the table and puts it next to Oscar before settling down. Oscar’s been distracted tonight, and noticeably so. Mike wonders at it and thinks how best to ask.
“Come again?” Oscar grunts.
“You said someone’s eyes were open. Right before I came out here.”
“How much you drink there, Mikey? I didn’t say shit.”
And that’s—it is what it is. He’s got a point. Mike laughed at Happy and the moon in his eye, but Mike’s feeling a bit loose, a bit warm. He feels good. Not so good that he’ll hate waking up in the mor
ning, but good enough that he’s mellow. He doesn’t allow himself to get like this often. Maybe it’s just the giddiness of the day, with everything that happened. He might have overindulged more than he usually does, but he’s allowed. He’s fine.
So could he have misheard something? Sure. Happy might have been singing even louder and he caught the edges of that. Or he could just be hearing things. The mind’s funny like that. Like it can make you hear things—voices, perhaps—that aren’t really there. It’s just how the brain operates. Projection.
And he might be a little drunk.
“You make a cheap date, white boy,” Oscar mutters, eyes closed, head tilted back.
Mike snorts. “Most likely.”
“Easy, too.”
“Hey now.”
Oscar grins as he puffs on his cigar, the burnt orange tip flaring in the dark.
They do this every now and then, just the two of them. Sitting next to each other, never really saying much. They get each other like that. Mike still has problems with his words sometimes, though he thinks he’s gotten better. He’s had to get better. He couldn’t be a business owner in a place like Amorea and not speak at all.
And then there’s Sean. Sean hasn’t met a word he doesn’t like, but that’s not to say he never stops talking. No, he knows exactly what to say and when to say it, and what to do to get Mike to respond. Mike’s always been helpless when it comes to Sean, ever since that very first day in the diner. He doesn’t mind, though. How could he? He’s got a date in the park with someone who might be his fella if he’s not already. Mike’s okay with talking.
But Oscar doesn’t make him. Oscar says he’s got an economy to his words, which really means that Oscar doesn’t like most people. He likes Mike. He loves Sean. He tolerates Walter. He ignores most of the rest unless they piss him off somehow. But most people don’t mind. “That’s just how he is,” they say. “That’s just Oscar for ya.”
Very rarely, though, Oscar does say something without being prompted.
It starts like this:
They’re quiet for a while, enjoying the night and each other. Soon Oscar will head out on home and Mike will start getting ready for bed. He’ll lie in the dark for a little bit, thinking (most likely overthinking) about how Saturday is going to go. What he’ll wear. What he’ll say. If he should tell a joke to try and make Sean laugh. What kind of food they should have. Maybe he can ask Oscar to whip up something special. Should he bring flowers? Everyone likes flowers, right? Doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman.
But that’s later. Now, it’s the Oscar and Mike show, and it’s as quiet as it always is.
Until.
Oscar says, “I’ve been thinking.”
Mike’s startled out of a little daydream where he and Sean are lying on the ground, watching the clouds overhead. He’s grateful it’s dark, because he’s blushing slightly. He thinks about Sean too much, he knows. He’s really got to get a hold on it.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he says, because Oscar expects that.
There’s a flash of teeth as Oscar grins around his cigar.
Mike waits, because he thinks this is different. It feels different. Sure, they can shoot the shit until the cows come home, but those three words—I’ve been thinking—aren’t something they usually say. It’s weighted. It’s heavy. It’s heavier.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
“Before you,” Oscar says, setting his cigar on the patio table, “it wasn’t the same. Things here weren’t the same.”
The cigar smolders as the smoke curls up. It smells sweet and it reminds Mike of something, but it’s just beyond his grasp, not quite on the tip of his tongue.
“How do you figure?”
“Just is, Mikey. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just talking out my ass here. Pro’bly what it is. I can remember a time when you weren’t here. It’s there. But it’s like it’s not, you know? I try, but it’s… hazy. Like smoke.”
Mike doesn’t know what he’s talking about, not really. He doesn’t know whether he should be worried or not. “You okay?”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “I’m in fat city, my friend. Cloud nine and all that.”
“Are you?”
Those teeth again. “Couldn’t be anywhere else, even if I tried.”
“I don’t—”
“There was this pretty honey,” he says, eyes drifting off into the dark, slightly unfocused and eerie in the flickering light from the torches. “Before you. She was stacked, you know? A real dolly. She worked at… I don’t remember. Funny how that is, I guess. I don’t think it matters, in the long run.”
“Oscar—”
“Hush, Mikey. I’m your elder and your better. I’m speaking.”
“Up your nose with a rubber hose,” Mike says, and Oscar laughs.
“Oh yeah,” he cackles. “Mikey’s got jokes now. Ba-zing, folks. Come one, come all, listen to the funny man, sure as shit, fo sho!”
Mike’s laughing too, but he’s not quite sure he gets what’s going on, because Oscar’s got a slight hysterical edge to him now, his eyes maybe a little wider than they should be, breath a little quicker than it normally is. He’s only a few years older than Mike, and he swears he’s got a good ticker (“I don’t actually eat the food I make at the diner, Mikey, Jesus Christ, no, what are you, insane?”) but there’s something happening now. Something he can’t quite put his finger on, so he’s laughing. He’s laughing with a man who, outside of Sean, is probably his best friend.
Their laughter dies an unnatural death and Oscar’s staring off into the dark again. He says, “Mikey, what was I saying?”
“Stacked honey,” Mike says quietly. “A real dolly.”
“Right,” Oscar says. “That’s right. She was… real great. We got to talking, you know? Here I was, trying to act like I was this cool cat, but she wasn’t taking any of it. Like she thought it was just a bit. She’d say, ‘I see you, Oscar Johnson. I see you all chrome-plated and cool. I see you even though you try and make me see something else.’”
Somewhere, in the dark, a bird calls, low and sweet, and Mike is chilled, because he’s thinking about a cloud of birds, a storm of birds, moving like they’re dancing, like they’re smoke and water.
“She saw me for my shit,” Oscar says. “Through the threads and the hep talk. She shot me down, you know? Real fast. And I was gone on her after that. I told her, ‘Baby, baby, baby, can’t you see? I ain’t no square. You’ve got me cranked, fo sho.’” He sighs then. “And she laughed at me, and maybe I was okay with that. So I dropped the act, I stopped trying to be something I wasn’t. She saw me. The real me. Not the actor. Not the spaz.” He’s fond when he says that last word, and Mike thinks it means something, something just for him. Something between Oscar and this honey who Mike’s never heard of before, and it’s odd. Because he knows everyone in Amorea, and he can’t figure out anyone it could be.
Which leads to a troubling thought that he’s having a hard time holding on to.
What if it’s someone outside Amorea?
Someone who’s somewhere else?
He understands the fundamental concept. He understands the possibility. But he can’t quite get there, because it’s something so outside the realm of possibility that it’s hard to think about. It almost hurts. It’s a pressure, a pain right behind his eyes, like a pulse, and he thinks of pushing it, like tonguing a loose tooth, because it hurts, yes, but it’s a good hurt.
But he doesn’t want to.
He thinks, Nah. Why should I do that?
He says, “She sounds like a good woman.”
“Yeah,” Oscar says. “She was.”
Mike wants to ask what happened to her. Where she went.
If she was dead.
And if she was dead, where she was buried.
Because there’s no boneyard in Amorea.
Why, that would just be macabre, wouldn’t it?
(And there’s that pain again, that loose-tooth pain, as he t
hinks, But then, where do we go when we die? It aches, that pressure. It aches.)
“I’ve been thinking,” Oscar says again.
Mike doesn’t tell him not to hurt himself, because he’s not sure Oscar already hasn’t.
“The mountains,” Oscar says.
“The… mountains?”
“Yeah,” Oscar says, sounding slightly irritated. “The mountains. The motherfucking peaks around us. The pile of rocks where it’s always snowy at the top. Those mountains.”
He knows what Oscar’s talking about. Everyone should. The mountains that surround Amorea are known to everyone. They’re picturesque. They’re perfect. White-capped and looming, always looming. Sometimes, the sun sets right behind them so wondrously that they look like they tower over Amorea, old guardians that protect Amorea from—
From. Huh. From what?
He thinks, The rest of the world.
What a peculiar thought that is.
The rest of the world.
“What about them?” he asks.
“Why don’t we ever go to them?”
“Go to them,” Mike repeats slowly, like he doesn’t quite understand the order in which the words have been presented.
Oscar sits up suddenly, back ramrod straight, eyes as wide as they’ve ever been, the edges white, pupils almost black in the dying light of the torches. “We could go right now.”
“Oscar—”
“We could. I can see it now, Mikey. We could go to them mountains.”
“It’s late,” Mike says. “And we both have to get up early.”
“It’s not late,” Oscar snaps. “It’s never too late.”
“I didn’t say it was too late,” Mike says, trying to be reasonable. “Just that it’s late right now. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah,” Oscar says. “A difference. I know about differences. This morning was different because I couldn’t remember her. But now I can. I’ve been thinking about her all day, Mikey. Little bits and pieces. All the livelong day.” He chuckles bitterly. “It’s funny, what you can lose without ever knowing you lost it. Do you know about loss? Do you, Mike?”
Mike does. Right? He’s sure of it. Everyone knows loss. It’s part of life. It’s part of living.