Chapter 15
Wendy Tower’s apartment was warm and filled with the smells of sea and spices. As she attended to final touches in the kitchen, Chuck and Stan sat in the living room. Stan had a smile on his face, a Cupid grin. With his eyes Chuck warned Stan not to say anything
or else.
Stan’s smile widened.
Keep it up, baby brother and I’ll give you a wedgie. This whole thing didn’t feel right, it was like a boat listing and it would keep on till it capsized. But Chuck was sick of things not feeling right. He had to get over what he couldn’t change, namely the past. Now was as good a time as any. Grit your teeth and just do it, pal.
A Native American-style artwork—beads and feathers on a buff backdrop—hung on one wall, right over a small entertainment center with a TV, receiver, and set of small speakers. He remembered an old joke about Indians without electricity, having to watch TV by firelight. The joke did not make him smile. For some reason he felt the juxtaposition of the two images was just not right. Things were together that shouldn’t be.
Or maybe he was just nervous. Standing outside Wendy’s door, only a few short minutes ago, he felt like he was sixteen and going out for the first time with a pretty girl, hoping he wouldn’t come off like a doofus with pimples and non-matching socks.
Now, inside, seated, he was still trying to work himself into fitting here, being comfortable. He knew it was the knife guy and the fire and the stirring up of his bruised and battered psyche, but come on! He couldn’t let things outside him dictate his every move forever.
Wendy had music going from an iPod in a dock. Somebody that sounded like Nat King Cole was singing. And then Chuck reminded himself that no one sounded like Nat King Cole except Nat King Cole. He smiled at last.
On the coffee table was the big book
Baseball,
from the Ken Burns documentary. Chuck and Stan loved it when it first appeared, watching it together while eating popcorn and peanuts and even hot dogs. “You a baseball fan?” Chuck said toward the kitchen.
“Totally,” Wendy said.
“Me, too,” Stan said. “I’m Stan the Man.”
Wendy appeared at the pass through. “That was Stan Musial’s nickname.”
“Yes!” Stan said.
“One of the greats,” Wendy said.
“You know about Musial?” Chuck said.
“My grampa is a die-hard Cardinals fan. He told me so many Stan the Man stories I began to think he came from Mount Olympus.”
“No!” Stan said. “Donora, Pennsylvania. Born November 21, 1920. Stanislaw Franciszek Musial. Career batting average .331. Hit total, three thousand, six hundred and thirty. Four hundred and seventy-five career home runs.”
“Wow!” Wendy said.
“Ask me about Dizzy Dean,” Stan said.
Chuck put a hand on his brother’s arm. “Maybe after dinner—”
“Real name Jerome Herman Dean, or Jay Hanna Dean. Career Earned Run Average 3.02. Win-loss—”
“Thank you, Stan,” Chuck said, squeezing the arm.
“Ow,” Stan said. He took his arm back and rubbed it.
“I’ll ask you more later, Stan,” Wendy said. “You’re amazing.” She went back to the kitchen.
“I’m amazing,” Stan whispered hard, in firm rebuke.
“So true,” Chuck said.
“She likes you.”
“Slow down, Stan the Man.”
“I’ll look away and you can kiss her.”
“Almost ready,” Wendy called from the kitchen.
“See?” Stan said.
“She meant the dinner,” Chuck said.
Stan punched Chuck’s shoulder, with a little extra oomph than usual. “I was just joking you. You think I’m stupid or something?”
What was no joke was the
paella de marisco.
In presentation and aroma and, most important, taste. As they all finally sat around the table, Chuck lifted his wine glass. “Here’s to baseball, fine food, and good company.”
Wendy smiled and joined the toast, as did Stan with his preferred drink, 7-Up.
Then Stan said, “Do the knife trick.”
“What’s that?” Wendy said.
“Nothing,” Chuck said.
“Chuck does magic!”
“
Did
magic,” Chuck said. “A long time ago.”
“Oh please,” said Wendy. “Do it.”
He did not want to do it. He did not want to do any of those little magic tricks he’d done as a kid, then for awhile at a bar during the summer after college. He got to be pretty good, and the tricks rendered Julia open-mouthed the first time she saw them. To do them again was going to bring that last memory back in full color.
“I’d really like to see it,” Wendy said. She wasn’t to blame for anything in his life. And he was her guest. He could do it, sure, and maybe get past the memories. Maybe Julia would have wanted him to.
“All right,” Chuck said. “Please notice that my hands will not leave my arms at any time.”
“He
always
says that,” Stan said.
Chuck placed both his hands over his knife, slid it toward him and off the table, into his lap. He kept the motion smooth and put his hands up to his mouth and pretended he was swallowing the knife.
But as he did the knife slid off his lap and hit the floor with a
clank.
“Oops,” Stan said.
Chuck had not blown that trick in twenty years. He looked at his hands like they were foreign objects who had betrayed him.
Wendy laughed good-naturedly. But when Chuck looked at her, she stopped laughing.
A cold blade was slicing through Chuck then. He had dishonored Julia’s memory after all. Maybe she
wouldn’t
have wanted this. Maybe her ghost knocked the knife off his lap. This was all just too soon. Only seven months since her death. He shouldn’t have come. When was the last time he actually felt normal? He tried to recall it, and it was like searching for a box in a dark warehouse with all the fuses blown and the lights out. It was somewhere, in a corner maybe, but which one?
Everybody seemed to sense it, not talking, one of those lulls in a conversation that makes everyone think they’re in an elevator with strangers.
Thankfully, there was a knock at the door.
“Excuse me,” Wendy said, getting up from the table.
“She likes you,” Stan whispered.
“Enough,” Chuck said.
“She’s a good cook,” Stan said.
“Huh?”
“I could tell her about the specials, and she could cook them for you.”
“Stan––”
“Fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a dollar ninety-nine a pound.”
“How about I skin you, Stan? And make you boneless?”
“Ha ha, jacky-daw.” That was Stan’s own phrase, had been ever since he’d read a bird book when he was ten and saw jackdaws and figured out the singular rhymed with
ha ha
. It drove Chuck crazy for awhile, everything was
ha ha jacky-daw
for months.
And then Wendy was in the room again. Behind here were the two detectives who’d questioned Chuck earlier at the school. Epperson and Mooney.
Epperson said, “Charles Samson?”
Just like his mother used to sound when he was in trouble. Chuck stood. Maybe they had some news about the house.
“I am placing you under arrest,” she said.
Stan jumped so fast out of his chair he almost knocked the table over. Two water glasses fell.
Mooney came at Chuck with the bracelets. “Turn around,” he said.
“What is this?” Chuck said.
“You are under arrest for the manufacture of methamphetamine,” Epperson said.
“What?”
The next few moments were a haze of insane noise. Stan shouted, Chuck told Wendy to get Stan back to the motel, Wendy said she would, Mooney told everybody to be quiet. Chuck told Wendy to tell Ray Hunt he might miss school tomorrow. She said she’d do that, too. Mooney said be quiet again.
Then they were out the door, with Mooney squeezing Chuck’s arm hard, pushing him toward the stairwell. Apartment doors opened and people peeked out, like a Whack-a-Mole game.
Stan’s voice echoed down the hall. “You’ll never get away with this, you dirty coppers! Never!”