Dance Real SlowONECalvin eats dirt. He never actually swallows it, just places loose clumps onto his tongue and sucks, I think. It reminds him of the powder I sprinkle into his milk--dark, chocolaty. Often, I grab the back of his head, forcing him to spit it out, squeezing his tongue like an anchovy and stroking it with the corner of my shirt. Mostly, I worry he may choke on a stone or stick, like this afternoon, when I found him coughing, hacking up muddy phlegm that clung like a web to his lower lip. I reached into his mouth, hard, pulling out a twig pressed against his uvula. He knows better, my son, but he is still young and needs to be watched.
The sky quiets with deep orange and loose, heavy smudges of purple. A small patch of well-trodden dirt rests at the bottom of a low, sloping incline, carved from a field thick with tall, slender sheaths of wheat. Standing alone, just above this push of gold, sits a twisted piece of maple, one foot wide and ten feet high. A weatheredplank is nailed in at its top, the flat side perpendicular to the ground, with a rusted basketball rim jutting out an inch or so below-center. The rim is slightly bent and uneven in places. Soiled fragments of net hang still, like grapes.Poised beyond, where the grass starts tanned and stiff, I lie cross-legged, holding a long-necked bottle of beer pressed between my thumb and lower forefinger. I take a sip. The beer is warm and I let it stay in my mouth for a while before swallowing. Calvin looks briefly in my direction before hoisting another shot toward the battered backboard. The ball is much too large for him and after he releases it the momentum causes him to fall backwards, on his ass. The ball makes a tiny parabola, arcing well short of its target and thumping into the dirt. Calvin has been at this for almost ten minutes and I can see that he is getting tired. Again, he lifts himself, dragging the toes of his sneakers as he moves to retrieve the ball. He leans over, placing his cheek against its worn leather surface. A miniature ostrich."You want some dessert?" I yell.He does not answer. He just stays there with his little Jockey short waistband hiked several inches above his blue jeans. I take another drink of beer and adjust myself, lifting the right side of my rear and resettling it on the ground. Finally, he takes one hand off the ball and reaches for something in the shadows. He turns so that his back is now completely toward me and then stands, lifting both hands to his chest. After a moment he pivots and faces me."I'll eat some ice cream," he says, matter-of-factly."I'm sure you will."He begins walking in my direction, pressing his right hand gently against the pocket of his T-shirt."Where are you going?" I ask.He stops and rubs his chin with the heel of his hand. He scrunches in his forehead, tight."What'd you forget?"Calvin heads back to get the ball. He holds it out front, against his stomach, like a pregnant woman's belly."Got it?" I ask, pouring the last finger or so of beer into the prickly peppergrass.He nods and the two of us walk up to the house. Midway, Calvin stops and places the ball down at his feet. He lets out a slight breath and then picks the ball up and begins walking again. When we reach the porch he drops it into a large wicker basket beside the door, right on top of a small orange football, a plastic lemon attached to a black cord that wraps around your ankle so that you can swing the lemon with one leg and skip over it with the other, and a twisted pair of convenience-store sunglasses.In the light of the kitchen I can see Calvin is filthy. He has bruises of dirt above both cheeks and a broad band of dust horseshoed about the front of his neck."We're gonna clean up a bit before ice cream," I say, placing my hand over his shoulder blades and guiding him to the stairs. In the bathroom he pulls out a small stepladder below the sink and climbs up, removing a washcloth from the rail."I think we're gonna need a shower here, pal," I tell him.He is not listening. He is on his toes, stretching to reach the faucet knobs, his pelvis pressed against the base of the sink. I grab him from behind, sliding my hands into his armpits and lowering him to the floor."Straight up," I say, grabbing the sleeves of his shirt. He cocks his head and looks away, at the window behind me. Slowly his arms become rigid above his head, hands opening like sunflowers."What's this?" I ask, feeling a wet spot. I spread his shirt over the countertop, lightly touching a smear of dampness below the pocket. I reach in and remove a small brown slug."Jesus. What are you doing with this, Cal?"He is now staring down at his bare stomach. It is taut and tanned and he is pulling at a fold of skin above his belly button."Where did you get this?""Playing basketball," he says, his chin still on his chest."Well, don't pick these up anymore. They're dirty and icky and I don't want you handling them. Understand ?"He gives a little nod."What'd you want with this, anyway?" I ask, wrapping the slug in a ribbon of toilet paper and flushing it."I don't know. I just wanted it," he says, his voice trailing off near the end."Slugs are the same as worms, Cal. Remember what I told you about worms? Worms are not pets. Neither are slugs. People don't get up in the morning to take their slugs for a walk. They're nasty."I slip my hand into the front of his jeans and yank him over, unfastening the top button."Up," I say, tapping the edge of the tub. He sits, holding my shoulder for support, while I pull off his pants and underwear. I undress quickly, leaving my own clothing in a pile beside Calvin's. The two of us step into the tub, Calvin grabbing the back of my knees. Pointing the nozzle down, I turn on the shower, adjusting the water temperature before I lead him around front. He hands me the soap and I wash his face, his back. I pour a dollop of shampoo into my hand and then wipe some of it into his hair and the rest into mine."Okay, eggbeater," I say, lathering my scalp. Calvin does the same, squeezing his eyes closed as pencil-thin streaks of shampoo channel down the front of his face. After a few minutes I wrap my arm around his hips and lift him, tilting the back of his head into the widening spray of the shower nozzle. His hands are cupped over his eyes. I bury my fingers in his hair, fanning out the remainder of shampoo; I shift my elbow over his waist, away from his sardine-sized penis flicking beneath the water's thin shimmer."That's it," I say, pulling back a corner of the curtain. "Use your blue towel, the one next to the hamper."I rinse off and then step out, gathering my hair into a stubby clump at the base of my neck and squeezing the excess water down my back. Calvin has left moist footprints, the size of a large dog's paws, on the bathroom mat."Calvin, come back here."He returns to the doorway, naked and dripping."Did you dry yourself?"He shrugs."Come here."I remove the towel from around my waist and give him a once-over, rubbing his face as I might a shoe. He moans, but only for a moment."Okay, now I want to put some powder on you," I say, sprinkling the powder onto my palms and touching him where he chaffs: underneath his arms, between his thighs."Pajamas," I yell to him as he starts down the hallway. "And bring your towel back in here."
Calvin sits on the counter beside the stove, his feet dangling, tapping against the cupboard door beneath. He is holding two teaspoons like drumsticks across his lap. He watches me pry out large wedges of ice cream and knock them into our dishes."I want sauce," he says, banging the spoons together."We don't have any. We'll get some more the next time we go shopping.""Let's go now.""We're not going now," I say, running hot water over the serving spoon. "It's too late. The store is closed.""Why?""What'd you mean, why? Because the people who run stores have to go home to their families, too. Shouldn't they get to have dinner?"Calvin is still for a minute, digging the edge of a spoon into the spongy roll of skin behind his chin."They can eat," he says. "Just not when we want sauce."I smile. "I'll let them know that.""Let them know," he starts, climbing down. "For next time."The two of us sit at the table and eat our bowls of French vanilla ice cream. Calvin uses his spoon like a spade, grabbing it down low near where the handle vanishes into the flat well of metal. The ice cream is turning soft and it has begun to slither its way around Calvin's wrist and up his arm."Maybe we should have showered afterwards," I tell him, reaching over to wipe the hollow, open side of his elbow.His hair is almost dry, spiky and tight above the rise of his forehead, stiff as straw. It is yellow, with clefts of brown buried deep and random."Done?" I ask, taking both bowls to the sink."Well," he says, his chest wavering with quick, short breaths. "Well, do we have more? 'Cuz I could eat more."No more tonight. You've had plenty.""Yeah, but ... but." He moves over to my side, his hands sticky and anxious, twisting above his waist. "If I ... maybe ... I'll just have a little.""You won't have a little. It's getting late and--here"--I hand him a damp towel--"wipe up. You've got ice cream all over yourself."I am reminded of a time before Kate left, when she was still pregnant and we were visiting my parents in Ohio. It was late November, before Thanksgiving, andthe air had just turned cold. Kate and I had decided to take a drive in the country, away from Lakeshire, away from Cleveland. After a while we pulled off to the side of a small gravel road, beside a narrow bend in the Chagrin River, and sat in the car watching the water run from black to foamy white and then back to black again. I stroked her arms, which were draped steady over her bloated belly. We didn't talk for a long time, resting still, listening to the rush of water through her open window. Finally, Kate turned to me and said in a low, throaty whisper that she needed something. I leaned over, moving my hand to the softness below her breasts, and kissed her on the neck and then full on the lips. We kissed deep and wet for a few more minutes, my hand moving down, brushing over the embryonic Calvin on its way to Kate's inner thighs. Then she started to laugh, saying this isn't what she had in mind when she said she needed something. What she had wanted was something sweet, like pudding or ice cream.There was a small New England-style town called Gates Mills about a half mile from where the car was parked, and Kate waited while I went off to surprise her. The houses were clean and white, with slate roofs and a common white fence that held off the road. I attended high school not far from there, and in the spring, before baseball practice, we would drive to Henry's, a general store, where we would buy bubble gum, chewing tobacco, sunflower seeds, and sodas. I hated the chewing tobacco, so I bought licorice, which turned my spit brown without making me ill.Henry's was still there, unchanged, and I left itmuch as I had in high school, with a paper bag of two-cent candy: mostly caramels, peppermints, red-hots, and jawbreakers; and a pint of mocha chip ice cream, which was Kate's favorite. On my way back to the car it began snowing heavy flakes, big as feathers. Kate was standing down by the river, breath pushing in bursts from her face. I came up behind, taking her gently by the elbow and then the forearm. She told me my teeth and lips were red. I opened the bag and pointed inside and she nodded as we walked back to the car. I had forgotten to get spoons, so we carved out chunks of ice cream using keys. And when we were finished we went back to the river and washed off, using a T-shirt I had in the trunk to dry ourselves. At one point, while Kate was bending low to cup the cold water to her mouth, snow settling evenly on her hair and shoulders, I remember thinking I loved her more than anyone else, more than I could possibly love anyone else. That I would never stop loving her. But, of course, I was wrong. I could love someone more. And, indeed, we could stop loving each other. For as powerful and encompassing as love is, during brief moments, it turns fragile, needing desperately to be protected.
Calvin and I finish in the kitchen and I take him upstairs to bed. From the time he was a baby, he has always been easy to put to sleep; it has never been a struggle.Calvin's room is across the hall from mine, next to the bathroom. It is bright and spare and I have promised to paint large dinosaurs on the walls in green and purplewhen I have the time. He also wants a big blue barn beside the doorway, below the end of his bed. I have told him that most barns are red, or at the least brown, but he seems unfazed, stoic. He wants his blue.I close the window while he brushes his teeth. He is good about this, too, never needing to be told. He slides into bed and I pull the covers up close to his face. Leaning over, I kiss him lightly on the cheek and nose and whisper I love him.
The air is thin and active, pushing V-shaped parts into the front of my hair. I stand on the porch smoking a cigarette, breaking the ashes off against the wooden railing. The final draft of Roby Edwards's last will and testament sits flapping on the end of an aluminum-and-vinyl lawnchair. I did not go to law school to ensure that the estate of the third largest landowner in eastern Kansas was equitably divided among his family; things have simply worked out that way.At 41,094, Tarent, Kansas, is the seventh largest city in the state--just ahead of Hutchinson and behind Salina. Tarent is twenty-two miles west of Lawrence, where the University of Kansas is located, and about sixty miles east of Kansas State, which is in Manhattan. The route to either is easy. Manhattan is 70 West into Topeka, then switch over to 50. Lawrence is 50 East all the way. I drive to one of the schools weekly to use the law library. Tarent's public library is small, and most of its legal section concerns itself only with basics. Exactly three and one quarter shelves of it, beginning with William B. Anderson's 1964 manual entitled ConstitutionalLaw and ending with Jerome Wiley's twice checked out Defense for Hard-Core Offenders. There are also quite a few legal volumes at the firm I work for, Blyth & Blyth, although we, too, are small. Just three lawyers, including myself.I met Harper Blyth at Michigan, during my second week of law school. He lived down the hall from me in one of the few single rooms in our dormitory. I remember first encountering him after returning from a student-union showing of It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, which seemed to be a strange film for the university to play in late September. My roommate was Michael Bennett and the two of us were walking up the stairway to our floor. Michael was telling me how during Christmas his sophomore year of high school he had mononucleosis and was bedridden for nearly five weeks. He said the local television stations in Richmond, Virginia, where he was from, had shown It's a Wonderful Life nine times during that period and he had watched every airing. All except the last twenty minutes of the seventh broadcast, when he passed out from the codeine pills they had given him for his swollen throat. His girlfriend at the time had brought over a giant stuffed frog and placed it above the television set. The frog had a sign around his neck that read "Get Better Quick," but his younger brother had crossed out the word "Quick" and had written next to it in red marker "Dick." So now every time Michael sees It's a Wonderful Life he can't help but think of the obscene frog once perched on his television.Michael had just finished telling this story and thetwo of us were on our floor, standing next to a soda machine, when we heard a low-pitched crack, like the sound of an ax striking wood, followed by the breaking of glass. We heard someone yell out he was sorry, that it was his mistake. Michael and I moved around the corner, looking down the long hallway. Near one end, alone, Harper Blyth was sweeping shards of glass from a fire-extinguisher cabinet into a pile against the wall. He was using a polo mallet like a push broom. He was dressed in complete polo attire: a white helmet and jodhpurs, a navy shirt with a thick horizontal bar of white across his chest, and large brown riding boots. "What the hell are you doing?" asked Michael."Oh. Well--" Harper looked around for something to whisk the glass onto, like a newspaper. "See, it's my birthday and--you wouldn't know where I could get a dustpan?""You're dressed like that because it's your birthday?" said Michael.I handed Harper a magazine someone had abandoned on a chair."Thanks," he said, opening the magazine to the middle, where the staples rise like Braille. "No--or yes, I guess I am dressed like this because it's my birthday. Actually, my father sent the stuff.""A present?""Yeah.""Do you play?" asked Michael."Nope," Harper said, balancing the broken glass, piled in sparkling heaps, over to a trash barrel. "In fact,I don't think I've ever even been on a horse. Except maybe when I was little, at one of those riding zoos or someplace."At that point, I did not think I would ever have much to do with Harper Blyth. Not for any particular reason, other than I didn't think he was the kind of person with whom an aspiring attorney should associate.
When I wake up, Calvin is standing at the foot of my bed, wet again. The rain is steady, like an engine, and Calvin has gone outside in only his pajama bottoms and a large sombrero that my mother brought back from Mexico."You're not normal," I tell him, into my pillow."Are you gettin' up?"He moves around to the side of the bed, near where my face is mashed against the stiff ridge of the mattress."Why did you go outside?" I ask him softly."To get Moonie," he says, lowering his head to see if my eyes are open. Moonie is our neighbor Mrs. Grafton's cat. I lie still, breathing easy for several minutes. Finally, I roll from my side onto my back, staring straight up at the stucco ceiling."Calvin, where is Moonie?"Calvin reaches over, grabbing the blanket above my chest and hoisting himself on the bed. He lifts up his leg, straddling my stomach, his knees pressed firmly against my rib cage."Oh, she's okay.""Where's okay?""She's drying off," Calvin says, shoving his wet face onto my shoulder, the sombrero slipping down the side of his back. "In the basement. With the clothes.""Good," I say. "With the clothes."I remain motionless for a few moments longer and then, as if on command, sit up, erect, knocking Calvin backwards onto my shins. I hurl from bed and run down both flights of stairs, until I reach our laundry room. The dryer is off, but I open the door anyway, peering inside. Calvin is behind me."Sheesh, Dad," he says, his hands cupped together above his groin.My chest slows as I stand. Looking across the room, I can see the clothesline is moving, rocking uneasily with the awkward rhythms of an EKG. There is a gray laundry bag hanging from the line, six clothespins fastening it along the top. Moonie is struggling to escape, her tiny claws tearing at the nylon. A stool sits off to the side with a puddle, smooth as linoleum, centered at its base. I undo the bag, and as I pull apart the drawstrings, Moonie scurries across the hard cement floor, trying to find a place to hide. A place to hide from my son."See, Calvin," I say, taking him by the elbow and leading him toward Moonie. "Now she's scared of you.""She ain't a-scared. She just wants to play or something."The two of us walk out of the laundry area, into an adjoining room that is dark and mostly empty except for six or seven large boxes stacked in a far corner. Calvinruns ahead, and when he reaches the boxes, he falls to his knees and starts crawling on all fours. He is making a squeaking sound, calling out for Moonie. The cat wants nothing to do with Calvin and she digs into one of the rear boxes and begins scaling it until she slips over the edge and inside. I reach down, placing my hand below the cat's front legs, pulling her free. Her claws are caught on a sweater and she brings it halfway out before it drops loose. Calvin comes over to me, taking the cat into his arms, against his chest."See, she's not scared."The cat looks terrified and she struggles to climb away from Calvin--across his shoulder and down his back. But Calvin is quick and he adjusts Moonie along his sternum."Does Mrs. Grafton know you have Moonie?" I ask, picking up the sweater."I s'pose," Calvin says."Suppose nothing. You take her back over there."I lift the wool sweater to my face, inhaling deeply when it reaches my nose. Beneath the pungent ammonia stench of mothballs, it smells faintly of Kate."Here," I say to Calvin. "Slip this on.""That's not mine.""I know," I answer, holding Moonie in one hand while I pull the sweater down over Calvin's head. I roll the sleeves up several times. "It's your mother's."He is unimpressed. He takes back the cat and walks toward the staircase, the hem of the sweater flapping a few inches above his feet."And before you go over there, put on your boots."He lets out a small huff and then climbs away.
This morning her hair is pulled back tight, into a small blond plume at the back of her head, fastened with a floppy, oversized ribbon. She is wearing a white blouse beneath a pair of coarse, new overalls. Calvin waves to her from the passenger seat of the car."Listen, I'm coming by early today--remind Charlotte," I say to him, combing the hair out of his face with my fingertips. "I told her last night, just remind her."Meg is still standing in the doorway, adjusting one of the overall straps against her shoulder. She is Calvin's closest friend. Her mother, Charlotte, watches the two of them most days, while I am at work. Kneeling up, Calvin kisses my cheek and then slams the door behind him. Both Meg and I watch as he navigates the soggy pathway to the house. Part of me imagines that Meg wants to see Calvin slip, landing face-first in a kidney-shaped puddle of creamy mud. She has a dark side not normally so well defined in a child her age. Once, I saw her squish a ladybug beneath her thumb and then smear it down her nose, like war paint. Another time, she took a barbed pine branch and wrapped it around her neck, a fallen crown, yanking until it turned her throat red with irritation. Charlotte hopes she will outgrow this behavior and, truthfully, so do I.When Calvin reaches the porch, he turns and gives me a forward nod, as he does most mornings, as if to say, "Go on, already."The car's stick shift sometimes has trouble with reverse,like today. You have to move it into neutral and shake it with quick, short snaps of your wrists, as if making popcorn in a pot. The car is a cream-colored 1966 Volvo station wagon that belonged to my maternal grandfather, Sanford Blaine. He gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday, four months before he moved from Akron to Phoenix. My father did not want me to have it; he didn't think I needed a car and he certainly didn't think I was responsible enough to own one. So, the day after my grandfather brought it over, my father took a baseball bat and caved in both the front and rear windshields. He told me when I could afford to have them replaced I could drive the car. He also told me to sweep up the glass. It took me nine weeks, working two jobs --one before school and one after--before I got new windshields. Three days after I was driving again, the carburetor went. That took me another five weeks to replace.I pull onto Kenimore, which is a long two-lane stretch of road that fills most of Tarent. It will take me to Mercer Street, at the center of town, a block from my office. My father was like that, with the windshield and all. He was used to getting his way and making a point in doing so.When I was nine months old he quite suddenly moved the family from Des Moines, Iowa, to Lakeshire, Ohio, outside Cleveland, and in the twenty-six years that followed he served as the men's head basketball coach at Eastern Ohio University. He took the Eagles to fourteen straight NCAA basketball tournaments, eighteen overall. He also won a national championship, in 1979,and was runner-up two other times. I have his national championship ring in a blue velvet box at the back of my underwear drawer, along with a St. Michael's medallion that was given to him when he was born, and a knuckle of mashed gold--unrecognizable as his wedding band. It had once gotten caught in a lawnmower, along with his finger, and he never bothered to have it restored.
World's Loudest Frog reads the cardboard sign, written in dark green marker and stapled to the side of a small wooden crate resting near the walkway to my office. A thin-limbed boy is kneeling in lemon grass, stroking the aforementioned frog with his bony fingers."He's not feeling so good," says the boy as I pause before passing."I'm sorry to hear that.""Gave him too many crickets. He likes water bugs better.""He's loud, though, huh?"The boy curls his lower lip and shrugs."Loud enough, I guess."Richard Blyth, Harper's older brother and the senior member of the firm, is sitting on a couch in our office's waiting room, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He has a magazine butterflied open across his lap and when I walk in he looks up and nods."Good morning, Gordon," he says, taking a long swallow from his cup.I smile and pass, plucking two yellow message slips from the rack beside our secretary Mary's desk."Wait, I'm just finishing another," Mary says. She puts down her pen and waves the ink dry before surrendering the slip. "It's from Joyce Ives. She also called right after you left last night, said she was going to get you at home.""She didn't.""Good," Mary says, folding her arms across her chest. "She sure can be bothersome."I tell Mary she is right and then head down the hallway, peeking into Harper's office. He is on the phone, but he motions me in, raising an index finger to let me know that he'll only be a minute. On the far wall, there is a framed painting of a girl lying alone in a large maize-colored field. Harper had a similar print hanging above his bed in law school, and whenever I went over to his room, I imagined that the picture must be what Kansas looked like--that it reminded Harper of home. But, actually, Kansas doesn't look much like the picture at all. At least not the parts of Kansas I've seen. Kansas is not nearly as flat, and it's a lot greener.Harper hangs up the phone and then leans back into his chair, locking his fingers behind his head."I want you to do something for me," he says. "I want you to take Joyce Ives's case."My lungs fill several times before I respond. "We talked about this. As a matter of fact, you're the one who told me that I'd be crazy if I did take it.""I know, I know. But do me this favor: call her--talk to her. Tell her you'll take it.""Harper, you know this case? She's insane. Her husband was cheating on her with a waitress at Gooland's,so Joyce followed him there, on his lunch hour or something, and then drove her car through the fuckin' front of the restaurant. Not only is she not willing to pay for the damages she caused to Gooland's--which, I understand, is in the neighborhood of twelve thousand dollars--but she's suing to recoup her costs for the crushed car and for money she spent on hospital bills. From what I hear, she suffered a pinched nerve in her neck and lacerations to her face when a couple of cinder blocks shattered her windshield."Harper removes a cigar from a polished mahogany humidor on the corner of his desk. He pulls a black clipper from his top drawer and snips off the end of the cigar, brushing the thumbnail-sized nub onto the floor."This is not a good case," he says, rolling the cigar against the center of his tongue, forming a saliva-filled trough. "I am certainly aware of that. But do this for me. I have my reasons.""Are you going to tell me what those reasons are?"Harper holds the cigar gently between his teeth, moving the flame of an orb-shaped lighter toward the blunt tip."I will," he answers, making the word "will" sound more like "with" as his tongue knocks against the soft butt of the cigar. "Just not yet." His face disappears behind a funnel of smoke and I move toward the doorway, turning back before I leave."What's your brother doing in the waiting room?" I ask."He's reading. Buster Horry complained to him the other day about our assortment of magazines, said therewere too many for women. Richard said they were divided evenly, fifty-fifty. But it seems Buster categorizes any publication that doesn't solicit advertising for manure spreaders as being for women."
An enormous piece of clear plastic is held by uneven sections of silver duct tape over the outside wall of Gooland's. It shields a hole roughly the size of a Dodge Dart. A small piece of the plastic is dog-eared above the upper left-hand corner, winking in the breeze. High, away from the damage, a wooden sign spells out Gooland's vertically, from top to bottom, in red block letters. At its base, in horizontal blue cursive, it says: Breakfast Served Anytime. Inside, a space heater rests beside the unwanted opening, its coil red-faced and throbbing. A long linoleum counter bisects the far end of the restaurant, behind seven swivel-top stools. Eight tables are pressed tight against the side walls--four on each side --and six more tables are arranged about center-floor. Squeezed into white polyester, a waitress leans against the cash register while leafing through the newspaper. Only a couple of the tables are occupied.I sit at the counter and another waitress appears from the kitchen. She is wearing the same dress as the first waitress, but she has a thick cardigan sweater over-top."Coffee?" she asks.I nod and place my briefcase on the stool at my right."Eggs are good today. The new grill's just broken in," she says, placing a saucer and cup in front of meand filling it with coffee. "For the first few days everything tasted sort of funny--metallic."She sets a folded napkin on the counter. "Let me get you some silver. We just did a set."My father ate breakfast most mornings of his adult life in a diner much like Gooland's. It was perched on a sleepy ridge overlooking Lake Erie, and on more than one occasion I heard him say to Sara, the restaurant's proprietor and chief cook, that the best thing that could happen to the old place was for it to crumble off the side of the earth and dissolve into the lake. After hearing this, oftentimes Sara would come out from behind the plasterboard wall that separated the kitchen from the eating area, and shove my father against the inside of his corner booth. She would settle down next to him, her apron hiked up above her dimpled brown knees, and explain why it wouldn't do to have her restaurant resting beneath the waves. She would always finish by saying, "'Sides, Hap, if this place wasn't here, you'd have nowhere to go."The waitress comes back, wiping the silverware dry with a cloth napkin before laying it out. I stir cream into my coffee with the still-warm teaspoon and ask to see the manager."Is there something wrong? You ain't had nothing but coffee.""No, everything's fine. Business."Frankie Larch is tall with stooped shoulders and a narrow, crooked spine that cups slightly below his neck. He comes out from a small office behind the kitchen and takes the stool at my left, swinging his long legs awayfrom the counter and into the center of the restaurant. He is wearing a newly pressed blue button-down and khaki slacks that pull up an inch or so too short. He touches a lonely patch of stubble at the base of his chin, brushing it with his fingertips as if willing it to expand and cover the rest of his face."Gordon," he says, nodding. "I knew you'd be out here sooner or later. She told me you'd probably be handling this for her."I shrug and turn to retrieve my briefcase."Hey, I understand it's only business. So I won't hold it against you. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think you're gonna do too well with this one.""You know, Frankie," I start, removing a yellow legal pad. "I think a lot of people feel that way."Frankie inherited the restaurant from his mother, Ellen Gooland. He has been running it pretty steadily for nearly ten years without much trouble, until Joyce Ives. The two of us get up and move over to a side table, the waitress bringing me a fresh cup of coffee and Frankie a glass of Pepsi."Rob was seeing one of my waitresses--Carol," Frankie says, looking over his shoulder. "She ain't here now. But Rob had been coming in real regular during her shifts, for about six months or so. I figured everyone knew--I mean, it's not like they acted hush-hush. Christ, I saw them holding hands a bunch of times. They even kissed each other goodbye--depending on who was around.""Did you ever say anything to Carol?" I ask."Naw. It's none of my business who she sees andwho she don't. As long as she shows up on time and does a good job."Frankie removes a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and offers me one, lighting both cigarettes with the same match. I inhale deeply and after several seconds begin to feel a rush."So, tell me about that afternoon.""Well, there ain't really all that much to tell. I was standing"--he pauses and turns, pointing toward a glass case beside the cash register that holds mostly chewing gum, candy bars, and cheap cigars--"there. I remember I was talking to Kyle Freeder about this new television set he got. And all of a sudden I hear this grinding noise--actually, it was more of a scraping. Like a snowplow on hard pavement. After that, the whole wall comes in with the front end of her Dodge.""And then what happened?""Before or after Rob pissed in his pants?" Frankie says, grinning. "No. Really, I'm not sure. I remember Joyce getting out, real calm-like. At that point I thought she might have had an accident, that something may have gone wrong with the car. But it was pretty quiet." He lights another cigarette with the stub of his last. "You could hear some pieces of glass falling and things settling, but it was basically quiet. Joyce walked over to Rob, plain as pancakes, and said, 'I saw you from outside.' She handed him the keys and said, 'You can drive it home, when you come to get your things.' And that's it. She turned and left--Rob just standing there with the car keys hanging from his finger."I sigh, clipping my pen to the legal pad and returning them both to my briefcase."There were a good many people in here. We're real lucky no one was hurt."I thank Frankie for his time and slip a dollar underneath my coffee cup. Outside, the sky has started to clear and the air is warming--a final feverish cough before fall. Frankie follows me into the doorway, leaning down to switch off the space heater.I fold my suit jacket over the passenger seat and sit still for a few moments, hand atop the stick shift, keys in my lap. Jiggling the stick, I practice sliding it down toward reverse.Copyright © 1996 by Michael Grant Jaffe All rights reserved Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd First edition, 1996