The Rough Road Home: Stories by North Carolina Writers

Chapter 1: The Oasis

ALICE ADAMS

In Palm Springs the poor are as dry as old brown leaves, blown in from the desert — wispily thin and almost invisible. Perhaps they are embarrassed at finding themselves among so much opulence (Indeed, why are they there at all? Why not somewhere else?), among such soaring, thicktrunked palms, such gleamingly white, palatial hotels.

And actually, poor people are only seen in the more or less outlying areas, the stretch of North Canyon Drive, for example, where even the stores are full of sleazy, cut-rate goods, and the pastel stucco hotels are small, one-story, and a little seedy, with small, shallow, too-bright blue pools. The poor are not seen in those stores, though, and certainly not in even the tawdriest motels; they stick to the street; for the most part they keep moving. A hunched up, rag-bound man with his swollen bundle (of what? impossible to guess) might lean against a sturdy palm tree, so much fatter and stronger than he is — but only for a moment, and he would be looking around, aware of himself as displaced. And on one of the city benches a poor woman with her plastic splintered bag looks perched there, an uneasy, watchful bird, with sharp, fierce, wary eyes.

A visibly rich person would look quite odd there too, in that nebulous, interim area, unless he or she were just hurrying through — maybe running, in smart pale jogging clothes, or briskly stepping along toward the new decorator showrooms, just springing up on the outskirts of town. In any case, rich people, except in cars, are seen in that particular area of Palm Springs as infrequently as the very poor are.

However, on a strange day in early April — so cold, such a biting wind, in a place where bad weather is almost unheard of and could be illegal — on that day a woman all wrapped in fine pale Italian wool and French silk, with fine, perfect champagne hair and an expensive color on her mouth — that woman, whose name is Clara Gibson, sits on a bench in what she knows is the wrong part of Palm Springs (she also knows that it is the wrong day for her to be there), and she wonders what on earth to do.

There are certain huge and quite insoluble problems lying always heavily on her mind (is this true of everyone? She half suspects that it is, but has wondered); these have to do with her husband and her daughter, and with an entity that she vaguely and rather sadly thinks of as herself. But at the moment she can do nothing about any of these three quite problematic people. And so she concentrates on what is immediate, the fact that she has a billfold full of credit cards and almost no cash: a ten, two ones, not even much change. And her cards are not coded for sidewalk cash withdrawal from banks because her husband, Bradley, believes that this is dangerous. Also: Today is Tuesday, and because she confused the dates (or something) she will be here alone until Thursday, when Bradley arrives. The confusion itself is suspicious, so unlike her; was she anxious to get away from her daughter, Jennifer, whom she was just visiting in San Francisco? Or, did she wish to curtail Bradley’s time alone at his meetings, in Chicago? However, this is not the time for such imponderables. She must simply decide what to do for the rest of the afternoon, and where best to go for dinner — by herself, on a credit card; the hotel in which she is staying (the wrong hotel, another error) does not serve meals.

And she must decide whether or not to give her last ten dollars to the withered, dessicated woman, with such crazed, dark, terrified eyes, whom she has been watching on the bench one down from hers. A woman very possibly her own age, or maybe younger; no one could tell. But: Should she give her the money, and if so how? (It hardly matters whether Clara is left with ten or two.)

And: Why has this poor woman come to Palm Springs, of all places? Was it by mistake? Is she poor because a long time ago she made a mistaken, wrong marriage — just as Clara’s own was so eminently right? (Marriage, for women, has often struck Clara as a sort of horse race.) But now Clara passionately wonders all these things about this woman, and she wonders too if there is a shelter for such people here. From time to time she has given money to some of the various shelter organizations in New York, where she comes from, but she has meant to do more, perhaps to go and work in one. Is there a welfare office with emergency funds available for distribution? Or have all the cuts that one reads about affected everything? Lots of MX missiles, no relief. Is there a free clinic, in case the woman is sick?

Something purple is wound among the other garments around that woman’s shoulders: a remnant of a somewhat better life or a handout from someone? But it can’t be warm, that purple thing, and the wind is terrible.

If Clara doesn’t somehow — soon — give her the money, that woman will be gone, gone scuttering down the street like blown tumbleweed, thinks Clara, who is suddenly sensing the desert that surrounds them as an inimical force. Miles of desert, which she has never seen before, so much vaster than this small, square, green, artificial city.

Clara’s plane had arrived promptly at 10:10 this morning, and after her first strange views of gray, crevassed mountains, the airport building was comfortingly small, air-conditioned (unnecessary, as things turned out, in this odd cold weather), with everything near and accessible.

The first thing she found out was that the plane from Chicago, due in at 10:30 (this reunion has been a masterpiece of timing, Clara had thought) would not arrive until 11:04. An easy wait; Clara even welcomed the time, during which she could redo her face (Brad, a surgeon, is a perfectionist in such matters), and reassemble her thoughts about and reactions to their daughter. What to tell Brad and what to relegate to her own private, silent scrutiny.

Should it be upsetting that a daughter in her early thirties earns more money than her father does at almost twice her age, her father the successful surgeon? (Clara has even secretly thought that surgeons quite possibly charge too much: Is it right, really, for operations to impoverish people? not to mention rumors that some operations are not even necessary?) In any case, Jennifer, a corporation lawyer, is a very rich, very young person. And she is unhappy, and the cause of her discomfort is nothing as simple as not being married — the supposedly classic complaint among young women of her age. Jennifer does not want to get married, yet, although she goes out a great deal with young men. What she seems to want, really, is even more money than she has, and more things. She has friends of her own age and education who are earning more money than she is, even, who own more boats and condominiums. This is all very distressing to her mother; the very unfamiliarity of such problems and attitudes is upsetting (plus the hated word Yuppie, which would seem to apply). Resolutely, as she sat there in the waiting room, Clara, with her perfectly made up face, decided that she would simply say to Brad, Well, Jennifer’s fine. She looks marvelous, she’s going out a lot but nothing serious. And she’s earning scads of money. (Scads? A word she has not used nor surely heard for many years, not since the days when she seemed to understand so much more than she seems to now.)

Brad, though, was not among the passengers from Chicago who poured through the gate in their inappropriate warm-weather vacation clothes, swinging tennis rackets, sacks of golf clubs.

Clara sat down to think. Out of habit, then, and out of some small nagging suspicion, she checked her small pocket notebook — and indeed it was she who had arrived on the wrong day, Tuesday. Brad would come, presumably, on Thursday.

Just next to her yellow plastic bench was a glassed-in gift shop where she could see a shelf of toy animals, one of which she remarked on as especially appealing: a silky brown dog about the size of some miniature breed. Now, as Clara watched, a woman in a fancy pink pants suit came up to exclaim, to stroke the head of the toy. A man, her companion, did the same, and then another group came over to pet and to exclaim over the adorable small false dog.

Clara found this small tableau unaccountably disturbing, and on a sudden wave of decisiveness she got up and went out to the curb where the taxis and hotel limousines assembled. She asked the snappily uniformed man about transportation to the Maxwell. Oh yes, he assured her; a limousine. And then, You know there’re two Maxwells?

No, Clara did not know that.

His agile eyes appraised her hair, her careful face, her clothes. Well, I’m sure you’d be going to the Maxwell Plaza, he concluded, and he ushered her into a long white stretch Mercedes, in which she was driven for several miles of broad palm-lined streets to a huge but wonderfully low-key hotel, sand-colored — the desert motif continued in cactus plantings, a green display of succulents.

At the desk, though, in that largest and most subdued of lobbies, Clara was gently, firmly informed that she (they) had no reservation. And, Could Mrs. Gibson possibly have booked into the Maxwell Oasis by mistake? This of course was the Maxwell Plaza.

Well, indeed it was possible that Clara had made that mistake. However, should anyone, especially her husband, Doctor Gibson, call or otherwise try to get in touch with her here, at the Plaza, would they kindly direct him to the Oasis, which is (probably) where Clara would be?

The Maxwell Oasis is out on North Canyon Drive, not far from the bench on which Clara was to sit and to observe the windblown man and the fierce-eyed, purple-swathed bag lady.

The Oasis is small, a pink stucco, peeling, one-story building, with a small blue oblong pool. All shrouded with seedy bougainvillea. And it was there, indeed, that Clara by some chance or mischance had made a reservation. But for Thursday, not Tuesday, not today; however, luckily, they still had a room available.

In the lower level bar of the Maxwell Plaza, though, the desert has been lavishly romanticized: behind the huge, deep, dark leather armchairs are glassed-in displays of permanently flowering cactus, interesting brown shapes of rocks, and bright polished skulls (not too many skulls, just a tasteful few).

Clara, after her meditative, observant afternoon on the bench, decided that it would make some sort of sense to come to this hotel for a drink and dinner. But just now (so out of character for her) she is engaged in telling a series of quite egregious lies to some people who are perfectly all right, probably, but who have insisted that she join them for a drink. A couple: just plain rich, aging people from Seattle, who assume that a woman alone must be lonely.

Of course I’ve always loved the desert, has been Clara’s first lie. The desert on closer acquaintance could become acutely terrifying is what she truly thinks.

She has also given them a curious version of her daughter, Jennifer, describing her as a social worker in East Oakland, "— not much money but she’s very happy. And she has been gratified to hear her companions, Oh, isn’t that nice! So many young people these days are so — so materialistic. What is it they call them? Yuppies!" Beaming at Clara, who is not the mother of a Yuppie.

The only excuse that Clara can make for her own preposterousness is that their joining her was almost forcible. She was enjoying her drink alone and her private thoughts. She was recalling what happened earlier that very afternoon, when, just as she was reaching into her purse for the ten-dollar bill which, yes, she would give to the bag lady (who fortunately seemed to have dozed off on her bench) Clara remembered the hundred secreted (always, on Brad’s instructions) in the lining of her bag. And so, tiptoeing (feeling foolish, tiptoes on a sidewalk) Clara slipped both bills down into the red plastic bag, out of sight.

She had been imagining, thinking of the woman’s discovery of the money — surely she would be pleased? She needed it for something? — at the very moment these Seattle tourists came and practically sat on top of her.

Clara had been thinking of how Brad would have objected. But what will that woman do with it, he would have wondered. Suppose she has a drinking problem? Clara recognizes that she herself does not much care what the woman does with her money; she simply wanted to make the gift of it. It will do no harm, she believes — although pitifully little good, so little to assuage the thick, heavy terribleness of that life, of most lives.

And then she heard, Well, you can’t sit there drinking all by yourself? You must let us join you.

Aside from their ill-timed intrusiveness, these people are annoying to Clara because (she has to face this) in certain clear ways they so strongly resemble herself and Brad. The woman’s hair is the same improbably fragile pale wine color, her clothes Italian/French. And the man’s clothes are just like Brad’s, doctor-banker-lawyer clothes (Nixon-Reagan clothes). The couple effect is markedly similar.

And so, partly to differentiate herself from these honest, upright, upper-middle-class citizens, Clara continues to lie.

No, my husband isn’t coming along on this trip, she tells them. I like to get away by myself. And she smiles, a bright, independent-woman smile. My life in New York seems impossible sometimes.

As she thinks, Well, that is at least partially true. And, conceivably, Brad too has confused the dates, and will not show up for some time — another week? I could be here by myself for quite a while, Clara thinks, though she knows this to be unlikely. But I could go somewhere else?

No, she says to the couple from Seattle, she is not going to have dinner in this hotel. She has to meet someone.

Actually Clara on the way here noticed a big, flashy delicatessen, a place that assuredly will take her credit cards. But, a place where a bag lady might possibly go? A bag lady with a little recent cash? Very likely not; still, the very possibility is more interesting than that of dinner with this couple.

Clara stands up, and the gentleman too rises. Well, says Clara, I’ve certainly enjoyed talking to you.

Which she very much hopes will be her last lie for quite some time, even if that will take a certain rearrangement of her life.

Chapter 2: The Reunion

MAYA ANGELOU

Nobody could have told me that she’d be out with a black man; out, like going out. But there she was in 1958, sitting up in the Blue Palm Café, when I played the Sunday matinee with Cal Callen’s band.

Here’s how it was. After we got on the stage, the place was packed, first Cal led us into D. B. Blues. Of course I know just like everybody else that Cal’s got a thing for Lester Young. Maybe because Cal plays the tenor sax, or maybe because he’s about as red as Lester Young, or maybe just cause Lester is the Prez. Anybody that’s played with Cal knows that the kickoff tune is gotta be D. B. Blues. So I was ready. We romped.

I’d played with some of those guys, but never all together, but we took off on that tune like we were headed for Birdland in New York City. The audience liked it. Applauded as much as black audiences ever applaud. Black folks act like they are sure that with a little bit of study they could do whatever you’re doing on the stage as well as you do it. If not better. So they clap for your luck. Lucky for you that they’re not up there to show you where it’s really at.

Anyway, after the applause, Cal started to introduce the band. That’s his style. Everybody knows that too. After he’s through introducing everybody, he’s not going to say anything else till the next set, it doesn’t matter how many times we play. So he’s got a little comedy worked into the introduction patter. He started with Olly, the trumpet man. . . . And here we have a real Chicagoan . . . by way of Atlanta, Georgia . . . bringing soul to Soulville . . . Mr. Olly Martin.

He went on. I looked out into the audience. People sitting, not listening, or better, listening with one side of their ears and talking with both sides of their mouths. Some couples were making a little love . . . and some whites were there trying hard to act natural . . . like they come to the South Side of Chicago every day or maybe like they live there . . . then I saw her. Saw Miss Beth Ann Baker, sitting up with her blond self with a big black man . . . pretty black man. What? White girls, when they look alike, can look so much alike, I thought maybe it wasn’t Beth. I looked again. It was her. I remember too well the turn of her cheek. The sliding way her jaw goes up to her hair. That was her. I might have missed a few notes, I might have in fact missed the whole interlude music.

What was she doing in Chicago? On the South Side. And with a black man? Beth Ann Baker of the Baker Cotton Gin. Miss Cotton Queen Baker of Georgia . . .

Then I heard Cal get round to me. He saved me for the last. Mainly cause I’m female and he can get a little rise out of the audience if he says, as he did say, And our piano man is a lady. And what a lady. A cooker and a looker. Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce to you Miss Philomena Jenkins. Folks call her Meanie. I noticed some applause, but mainly I was watching Beth. She heard my name and she looked right into my eyes. Her blue ones got as big as my black ones. She recognized me, in fact in a second we tipped eyelids at each other. Not winking. Just squinting, to see better. There was something that I couldn’t recognize. Something I’d never seen in all those years in Baker, Georgia. Not panic, and it wasn’t fear. Whatever was in that face seemed familiar, but before I could really read it, Cal announced our next number. Round ’bout Midnight.

That used to be my song, for so many reasons. In Baker, the only time I could practice jazz, in the church, was round ’bout midnight. When the best chord changes came to me it was generally round ’bout midnight. When my first lover held me in his arms, it was round ’bout midnight. Usually when it’s time to play that tune I dig right in it. But this time, I was too busy thinking about Beth and her family . . . and what she was doing in Chicago, on the South Side, escorted by the grooviest looking cat I’d seen in a long time. I was really trying to figure it out, then Cal’s saxophone pushed its way into my figurings. Forced me to remember Round ’bout Midnight. Reminded me of the years of loneliness, the doing-without days, the C.M.E. church, and the old ladies with hands like men and round ’bout midnight dreams of crossing over Jordan. Then I took thirty-two bars. My fingers found the places between the keys where the blues and the truth lay hiding. I dug out the story of a woman without a man, and a man without hope. I tried to wedge myself in and lay down in the groove between B-flat and B-natural. I must of gotten close to it, because the audience brought me out with their clapping. Even Cal said, Yeah baby, that’s it. I nodded to him then to the audience and looked around for Beth.

How did she like them apples? What did she think of little Philomena that used to shake the farts out of her sheets, wash her dirty drawers, pick up after her slovenly mama? What did she think now? Did she know that I was still aching from the hurt Georgia put on me? But Beth was gone. So was her boyfriend.

I had lived with my parents until I was thirteen in the servants’ quarters. A house behind the Baker main house. Daddy was the butler, my mother was the cook, and I went to a segregated school on the other side of town where the other kids called me the Baker Nigger. Momma’s nimble fingers were never able to sew away the truth of Beth’s hand-me-down and thrown away clothing. I had a lot to say to Beth, and she was gone.

That was a bring-down. I guess what I wanted was to rub her face in See now, you thought all I would ever be was you and your mama’s flunky. And See now, how folks, even you, pay to listen to me and See now, I’m saying something nobody else can say. Not the way I say it, anyway. But her table was empty.

We did the rest of the set. Some of my favorite tunes, Sophisticated Lady, Misty, and Cool Blues. I admit that I never got back into the groove until we did When Your Lover Has Gone.

After the closing tune, Lester Leaps In, which Cal set at a tempo like he was trying to catch the last train to Mobile, was over, the audience gave us their usual thank-you, and we were off for a twenty-minute intermission.

Some of the guys went out to turn on and a couple went to tables where they had ladies waiting for them. But I went to the back of the dark smoky bar where even the occasional sunlight from the front door made no difference. My blood was still fluttering in my fingertips, throbbing. If she was listed in the phone directory I would call her. Hello Miss Beth . . . this is Philomena . . . who was your maid, whose whole family worked for you. Or could I say, Hello Beth. Is this Beth? Well, this is Miss Jenkins. I saw you yesterday at the Blue Palm Café. I used to know your parents. In fact your mother said my mother was a gem, and my father was a treasure. I used to laugh ’cause your mother drank so much whiskey, but my Momma said, Judge not, that ye be not judged. Then I found out your father had three children down in our part of town and they all looked just like you, only prettier. Oh Beth, now . . . now . . . shouldn’t have a chip . . . mustn’t be bitter . . . She of course would hang up.

Just imagining what I would have said to her cheered me up. I ordered a drink from the bartender and settled back into my reverie. . . . Hello Beth . . . . . this is a friend from Baker. What were you doing with that black man Sunday? . . .

Philomena? Remember me? She stood before me absorbing the light. The drawl was still there. The soft accent rich white girls practice in Georgia to show that they had breeding. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Did I remember her? There was no way I could answer the question.

I asked Willard to wait for me in the car. I wanted to talk to you.

I sipped my drink and looked in the mirror over the bar and wondered what she really wanted. Her reflection wasn’t threatening at all.

I told him that we grew up . . . in the same town.

I was relieved that she hadn’t said we grew up together. By the time I was ten, I knew growing up meant going to work. She smiled and I held my drink.

I’m engaged to Willard and very happy.

I’m proud of my face. It didn’t jump up and walk the bar.

She gave a practiced nod to the bartender and ordered a drink. He teaches high school here on the South Side. Her drink came and she lifted the glass and our eyes met in the mirror. I met him two years ago in Canada. We are very happy.

Why the hell was she telling me her fairy story? We weren’t kin. So she had a black man. Did she think like most whites in mixed marriages that she had done the whole race a favor?

My parents . . . her voice became small, whispery. My parents don’t understand. They think I’m with Willard just to spite them. They . . . When’s the last time you went home, Mena? She didn’t wait for my answer.

They hate him. So much, they say they will disown me. Disbelief made her voice strong again. They said I could never set foot in Baker again. She tried to catch my eyes in the mirror but I looked down at my drink. I know there’s a lot wrong with Baker, but it’s my home. The drawl was turning into a whine. Mother said, now mind you, she has never laid eyes on Willard, she said, if she had dreamed when I was a baby that I would grow up to marry a nig . . . a black man, she’d have choked me to death on her breast. That’s a cruel thing for a mother to say. I told her so.

She bent forward and I shifted to see her expression, but her profile was hidden by the blond hair. He doesn’t understand, and me either. He didn’t grow up in the South. I thought, no matter where he grew up, he wasn’t white and rich and spoiled. I just wanted to talk to somebody who knew me. Knew Baker. You know, a person can get lonely. . . . I don’t see any of my friends, anymore. Do you understand, Mena? My parents gave me everything.

Well, they owned everything.

Willard is the first thing I ever got for myself. And I’m not going to give him up.

We faced each other for the first time. She sounded like her mother and looked like a ten-year-old just before a tantrum.

He’s mine. He belongs to me.

The musicians were tuning up on the bandstand. I drained my glass and stood.

Mena, I really enjoyed seeing you again, and talking about old times. I live in New York, but I come to Chicago every other weekend. Say, will you come to our wedding? We haven’t set the date yet. Please come. It’s going to be here . . . in a black church . . . somewhere.

Good-bye Beth. Tell your parents I said to go to hell and take you with them, just for company.

I sat down at the piano. She still had everything. Her mother would understand the stubbornness and send her off to Paris or the Moon. Her father couldn’t deny that black skin was beautiful. She had money and a wonderful-looking man to play with. If she stopped wanting him she could always walk away. She’d still be white.

The band was halfway into the D. B. Blues release before I thought, she had the money, but I had the music. She and her parents had had the power to hurt me when I was young, but look, the stuff in me lifted me up high above them. No matter how bad times became, I would always be the song struggling to be heard.

The piano keys were slippery with tears. I know, I sure as hell wasn’t crying for myself.

Chapter 3: Hugh

DAPHNE ATHAS

I first met Hugh Cox in Wilson Library, there being no Davis-Royall then, when he came up to me and said he’d heard my reading at a Bull’s Head Bookshop Tea where Muriel Mebane introduced my first novel, The Smell of the Dark, and a woman had come up afterward and warned me not to be like Virginia Woolf and kill myself. I’d told her defensively: "I identify with Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter," being spooked by the thought that long noses might mean propensity to suicide.

Hugh was writing one story a week in the Wilson reference room. We joked about the creaking oaken chairs which looked like upside-down behinds, protuberances to fit crevices. He’d just sold stories to Harper’s, The Atlantic, and to Collier’s. He said he always knew when I was in the library — he heard me creaking. I invited him to my house. I was sponging off my family till I finished my second novel. He was starting a novel, he said.

In our living room a week later he told me about the misprint on page 39 of my book. Where it was supposed to be She stroked her thin elbows, they had put a g after the thin. She stroked her ‘thing’ he quoted with his Georgia accent, plopping the syllable out of his mouth like a tobacco wad into a can.

I’d never thought of writers as jokers. To me writing meant Truth of Life, but from that moment I knew I was going to introduce him to Lake who’d been my friend for a year. She was a sensitif, poet and aristocrat who’d had TB like Keats, Katherine Mansfield and Hans Castorp, and been in a sanitarium and had her dishes scalded. She lived in a cinderblock hut named Hiroshima in a field opposite Moody’s Gas Station at the fork in Carrboro. I knew he’d be fascinated with her and vice versa.

Lake, Hugh and I had already been out in life, Lake in Chicago, Hugh in Trinidad in the army as a meteorologist on the Green Project deploying troops from the ETO to the Pacific War Zone, and me in New York typing for the Office of War Information. Our return to Chapel Hill had coincided with the GI Bill — Hugh was on it — and the town was exciting, bursting with intellectually serious veterans, real men, older than the beer-frat types before the war. But for us it was retread. We’d been here before, studied here, and now we were back, living cheap, trying to finish our novels while we waited for one thing: to get to Europe.

Whenever Lake didn’t want people to visit, she strung red or yellow yarn across the door like a spider web. But it was all clear today, so we knocked and waited. When she came to the door, my advance hype had so intimidated Hugh, who was shy really, that he couldn’t think of anything to say. We stood there nervously and then went in. He still couldn’t think of anything to say.

Diagram yourself, I told him.

He was shocked. She was too.

Diagraph, he corrected.

It was the We of Me Era. We were into identity. Hugh said I’d gotten my first novel out of Muriel Mebane’s garbage can. So much for its being autobiographical. I retorted his name was really Harold Huguenot Cox which was true, he just called himself Hugh because he hated Harold Huguenot, especially Harold, but that if it were me, I’d call myself Hugue Not. Lake said it sounded like an oversized tie that you couldn’t untie. That clinched their friendship so Hugh told how he and his sister Harriet had once got so mixed up that she’d gone to a psychiatrist and he’d gone with her and she was so scared that when the psychiatrist asked her her name she answered: I’m Harold and I think I’m growing a beard. So, he added: I’m going to transpose my names around and go by the name Cox.

Do you think I look like Alfred E. Neumann? he used to ask us. We told him we didn’t think so, he didn’t have crossed eyes, and his ears weren’t all that big. But he identified all the same and often those days talked about Alfred E. Neumann. He pretended to be proud of his wrists. He took to stroking his arms saying, Don’t I have magnificent forearms? And: Don’t you hate fat wrists? My wrists are elegant because of these hollows below my wrist bones. They were. He was a weight lifter and swimmer.

That winter was so cold that in our badly heated houses our fingers froze on the typewriter keys. We conned offices out of the churches, Hugh in the Presbyterian, Lake in the Baptist and me in the Episcopal, but Lake didn’t want the Baptist, so she got the basement of the Chapel of the Cross while I was in the choir-robe room on the second floor where I had to ward off presences emanating out of the robes hanging on hooks. Late afternoons we would find each other in town. Lake was the only one with a car, so it was easy to track her down. We smelled each other out. Hugh said he always knew where Lake and I were because of the smell of kerosene.

One late afternoon at Ptomaine Tommy’s we huddled over our coffee.

What’s the best first line of any novel you’ve ever read? Hugh asked, holding his hands tight around the mug to warm them.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderlay again, I said.

It happened that green and crazy summer, said Lake.

These were too easy to guess.

I remember that my heart finally broke in Naples, Hugh said, making our future subsume our past in one fervent