The Youth & Young Loves of Oliver Wade: Stories (28 page)

Summer moved on in ways large and small. Boston and its
magical paintings filled the news worldwide. I turned twenty-eight in August
and soon afterward found a gray hair in my mohawk, and then one on my chest. I
worked, I dated, I took pictures for pay and for fun. There was lots to take
pictures of after Paint Day. The city went to war with the paintings at first,
scratched at them as if they were an infection on its skin. But they were more
like tattoos than infections—they couldn’t be removed, and they
vanquished any attempt at whitewashing by turning the cover-up paint into dripping
gray goop. The city found no cure but acceptance, which grew over time into a
sort of mysterious love. I took special pride in photographing the paintings
because I knew something about them that no one else knew. And I loved them,
too—had maybe loved them first.

Summer turned to fall, turned to winter. R.E.M. stuck to
their disbanding, and I wore out my brain on that last new song. And spring.
Shelley moved in with her fiancé and I traded the apartment Angel had helped me
choose for one I chose all by myself. And summer again. One year.

***

I didn’t recognize the phone number. It was local, though.
It lit up my phone on a Thursday evening. I was home cleaning the cage of the
rabbit Shelley had bought for me because she worried I’d be lonely in my new
apartment. Bruno was sitting on the couch lazily gnawing a carrot, dumb and
endearing as my old friend and his namesake; a woodchip clung to his silky
brown ear. I switched off the vacuum and answered the phone.

“Ollie Wade?” A guy’s voice.

“Yes?” I picked the woodchip off Bruno and flicked it away.

“Hey Ollie, this is Fletcher Bradford. I don’t know if you
remember.... We, uh, met on Paint Day, on the T. During the blackout?”

I was surprised, to say the least, but tried not to show it.
“I remember.”

“Oh, cool! Yeah, you gave me your business card. You asked
if I wanted to grab coffee sometime.”

“That was a year ago,” I laughed. “I sort of gave up on you,
Fletcher, to be honest.”

A long pause. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s
just that, after Paint Day my life got pretty complicated. My family life, I
mean. And I just— I needed some time to sort things out. I haven’t dated
since then, Ollie. I never forgot about you.”

“I seem to be pretty unforgettable to you somehow.”

He laughed nervously. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d
still want to get together sometime?”

“Actually,” I said, “I’m married now.”

There was a longer pause, which I didn’t interrupt. I guess
I was punishing him for making me wait a whole year. I didn’t know why I was,
and I didn’t like that I’d done it.

“Oh,” he said. “You are?”

“No, I was teasing, I’m sorry. I’m single. What did you, uh,
have in mind?”

“You had me going there for a second.”

“Sorry, Fletcher.”

“Are you doing anything for Fourth of July?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Ever been to the Esplanade, for the fireworks?”

“A couple years ago. My old roommate Shelley and I went.”

“Oh, nice. Did you find a good spot to watch from?”

“It was OK. We were pretty far away from the action. We
couldn’t hear the Pops concert at all.” I grabbed my laptop and opened
Facebook, typed
Fletcher Bradford
in
the search; I’d never known his last name. He was there at the top of the
results.

“My friend Jamar will be visiting his brother Robbie with
our son for the weekend,” Fletcher went on, “so it’s just me around here. I
want to go to the fireworks and I was hoping you wouldn’t make me go stag.” He
paused. “Sorry, is this weird, after all this time?”

As I clicked through his Facebook profile, I said, “It’s not
weird. Are you still as cute as you were during the blackout?”

He laughed. “I guess I look the same, for whatever that’s
worth.”

“Then I’d like to go.”

“Awesome,” he said. “I like to be right up front, near the
Hatch Shell. That cool with you?”

“It’s cool but I imagine we’d have to get there pretty early
to get that close?”

“We need to get there about sixteen hours early, actually.”

I laughed. “
Sixteen
hours?”

“Is that too much commitment for a blind date? This is
basically a blind date, it’s been so long.”

“If you’re no fun I’ll just slip away into the crowd.”

He laughed. “Fair enough. Let’s say 4:30 a.m. on Saturday at
the Hatch Shell?”

I agreed to it and we hung up. Bruno was still eating his
carrot. I looked at him and whispered, “What the fuck?”

***

The subway wasn’t running so early so I had to take a cab.
Although Fletcher had texted to make sure I was awake I had a hunch he wouldn’t
actually show up. This had to be some kind of weird joke, though I couldn’t
imagine why he’d play it. But it was a holiday and I had nothing else to do, so
why not.

The cab let me out at the corner of Beacon and
Storrow
, on the sidewalk in front of a Shuster College
dorm. With a trail of other people I walked across that funny orange footbridge
to get to the Esplanade, where the Hatch Shell, already decked out in
red-white-and-blue bunting for the Pops concert, loomed in the dawn. The air
was cool and moist but it probably wouldn’t stay that way for long. I had a
backpack of supplies for a full day in the hot sun. Everyone else was weighed
down with survival gear, too. They were gathering around the outside of the
oval of lawn in front of the Hatch Shell. The oval was cordoned off with
segments of metal fence. A few cops stood inside the fence, talking to each
other and to the people on the other side waiting to get in.

I didn’t see Fletcher. I pulled out my phone and texted,
I’m at the Hatch. Are you?

He texted back,
I’m
lined up near the fence. Sorry, I can’t move or I’ll lose our place. Walk the
perimeter & you’ll find me
.

This time, for a change, I saw him before he saw me. He was
standing at the back of the oval, looking across the grass, his thumbs hooked
in the shoulder straps of his backpack. His arms were thin but nice. His hair
was longer than last year and he had yellow sunglasses perched on top of his
head. He was wearing a white sleeveless t-shirt with the Brazilian—I was
pretty sure it was the Brazilian—flag on the chest, which seemed odd
because everyone around him was decked out in America’s colors. He also was
wearing khaki shorts and black sneakers that reminded me of Angel.

I called his name. He turned and grinned as his eyes swept
the crowd. I waved.

“Ollie! Hey!” He motioned for me to come over, and I did,
though I felt funny moving past people who’d gotten there earlier, as though I
were cutting in line—though it was more of a cluster than a line. It
seemed no one knew exactly where the fence would open and they were hedging
their bets.

For a second Fletcher and I looked at each other, sizing
each other up, comparing reality to memory and Facebook. He looked more casual
than I remembered, looser, somehow more exotic, more sure of himself.

“You lost your mohawk,” he said with a twinge of
disappointment. He moved in to give me a hug that was awkward just until we
touched, and then felt nice.

“Yup, it’s history.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I had
it five years, that was long enough. Time to grow up, you know?”

“I liked it,” he said. “Not that you’re less cute without
it.” He nudged my arm with his elbow and I noticed a row of letters tattooed on
his inner forearm.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “So should I, uh,
be concerned about that shirt of yours?” I leaned closer and added, teasing, “Aren’t
you worried they’ll tar-and-feather you for wearing that flag on a day like
this?”

“For Brazil?” he laughed. “I don’t think so? Maybe if it was
England’s, that might be a little treasonous.” He patted his chest. “I got it
last winter. I went to visit my friend Vinicius in São Paulo.” There was an
unmissable
sparkle in his eyes when he said it.

“Is Vinicius a—special someone?” I said.

He laughed. “Oh, he’s very special,” he said with a touch of
sarcasm. “We’ve gotten so close I’d think it was icky if I ever saw him naked.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Good to hear.”

Behind us the crowd was building. So many people. I could
barely believe it, because it wasn’t even 5:00 a.m.

“So what exactly is about to happen here?” I asked.

“Well first,” Fletcher said, looking down at my feet, “can
you run in those flip-flops?”

“I’ve run marathons in these flip-flops.”

“But seriously. We’ll need to run.”

“Oh. OK. I guess so?”

“Everyone here, all these people, they all want that spot up
front. Front-row center.” He pointed. “And when this gate opens at 6:00 they’re
all going to be running for that one spot. But trust me, Ollie, we’re the ones
who’re going to get it.”

A lady next to us wearing a Statue of Liberty hat, green
foam spikes drooping in the dewy air, shook her head and said, “
Nuh
uh, honey.”

Fletcher had a blue blanket strapped to his backpack. He
unbuckled it and shook it open between us. It had the Shuster College logo
embroidered on one corner and was worn thin in the center, as if from too many
picnics.

“Now the goal,” he told me, “is to cover as much grass as
possible when we get to our heaven spot up there.” He pointed again to the
front row. “Whatever square-footage we can claim will be our territory for the
whole day. The more space the better, you know? I’m sure you don’t want me to
have to sit on your lap all day.”

I smirked to indicate that wouldn’t be so bad, and he
smiled.

Meanwhile one of the cops standing inside the oval had
approached the fence about ten feet from where we were standing.

She cupped her hand to her mouth. “We’re going to open the
gate momentarily,” she shouted. “Please remember, folks, there ain’t nothing
you can see from the front row that you can’t see from where you already are.”
And that was true, technically, but it wasn’t really the point, was it? No one
had gotten here when it was still dark for the tenth row, or even for the second
row.

Fletcher and I put on our backpacks and took firm holds of
opposite ends of his blanket.

A moment later two cops pulled open a gap between two
segments of fence—narrower than probably anyone was expecting, but lucky
for the lady in the Statue of Liberty hat, who happened to be right in front of
it. She barreled through with a blanket over her shoulder and a suitcase on
wheels that bounced in the grass behind her.

“Go
go
go
!”
Fletcher yelled, laughing, pushing me after her.

I slipped through the gap with him on my heels a blanket’s
distance away. A wave of people flooded in behind us, all racing for the front
row. I could feel my flip-flops sliding around between the grass and my feet. I
knew that if one fell off I’d never see it again.

“Liberty lady can
move
,”
I shouted, and Fletcher laughed. She was maintaining her lead.

Tethered by the blanket between us, Fletcher and I moved
toward and away from each other as we ran, sometimes tugging at the blanket’s
extremes, sometimes bumping together with a twisted pile of it between us.

Thirty feet from the front row, Liberty lady tripped and
lost her balance and seemed to careen for like fifteen feet before finally
crashing on the grass. The impact popped the pointy green hat off her head and
it zinged away like a foam ninja star.

I started to stop but Fletcher yelled, “Leave her leave her!”
And he and I literally jumped over her as she was pounding the grass angrily
with her fist.

I arrived at front-row center and dropped the blanket and
tagged the crowd-control fence there in front of the Hatch Shell with a slap of
my hand, feeling like I’d won the race, forgetting we still needed to claim our
turf. Behind me Fletcher was scrambling on his knees, yelling “Ollie
Ollie
Ollie
!,” frantically
spreading the blanket on the grass.

I dove past him onto my stomach onto the blanket and pushed
the fabric to the farthest reach of my fingertips, just as another dude slapped
his own blanket down. It covered my forearms and a portion of my blanket and I
said, “Beat
ya
!” And he frantically yanked his
blanket away to claim grass in the other direction.

When I turned around again Fletcher was already lying on our
blanket, on his side with his backpack still on, breathing heavy, and he looked
sexy with his bare arms and shoulders shining with sweat.

“Nice work, Ollie,” he gasped. He held up his hand and I
shook it, hot and slippery.

Around us, as far back as I could see, in what had been
green lawn sixty seconds ago, there wasn’t a blade of grass left visible. The
Esplanade was a patchwork quilt of blankets. Liberty lady was ten feet back.
She’d managed to spread her blanket to the size of a bath towel and was sitting
in the middle of it opening her suitcase. Fletcher and I had the best seat in
the house. What had he called it? Our heaven spot.

***

The sun rose. To our left the Charles River glimmered
along the Esplanade, sending popinjays flitting across the huge wooden bowl of
the Hatch Shell.

Our blanket—today our whole world—was five feet
by seven feet. We organized ourselves and settled in; it was like playing
house. Here was the corner where we put our shoes, here was the end where we
opened Fletcher’s umbrella to cast some shade, here was our supply of water and
snacks; our backpacks became pillows. At the foot of our blanket was one
segment of the waist-high metal fence that separated the crowd from the walkway
in front of the Hatch Shell. Behind us was a young family who had pitched one
of those lean-to tents people use at the beach. On our left was a young girl
and her middle-aged father working a crossword (the girl made me think of
Abbey, as most of them do), and on our right a young straight couple in
matching Red Sox t-shirts dumped ice into a cooler. I took out my camera and
snapped a few photos of the stage, of the big rolling TV cameras, of the
patchwork quilt behind us, and of Fletcher when he wasn’t looking.