Maureen and Sylvia

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

Gary backed out of the room and out the back door.

What was all this stuff about college? Fuzzy going to college? He couldn’t even pass eighth grade algebra. And the way Angela was sitting there, right next to him and the way she was looking at him, at Fuzzy. They hadn’t even started high school. Life was going by too fast. And, as far as he could see, the world was not changing, except maybe for flying cars and stuff like that. He walked down the street, shuffling along the gutter, kicking a stone forward a few feet and then kicking it again.

He didn’t want to go home. There was nothing to do. He walked in another direction, down Maple Street which was Angela’s street, past her house, then three doors down past Maureen’s house. The O’Reillys had a big porch. Maureen’s head popped up, and she waved. He didn’t.

He walked to the park, sat on a swing, but didn’t swing, then turned around and walked past Maureen’s house again. Maureen was still sitting there but this time she didn’t wave. Probably reading a book. He knew she read books. He could see just the top of her head. She was just sitting there on her porch, reading. He kept walking past Angela’s again. He wondered how long she would stay at Fuzzy’s. Then he walked to the Catholic church corner and then back again, toward home. When he got to Maureen’s, he turned, casually put his hands in his pockets, and walked up her front walk. “Hi,” he said.

She sat up. She acted surprised. “Hi, Gary.”

“Um,” he said. “Well, actually, I was just heading down to Beckman’s for a phosphate. You want to come?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?” She stood and threw her book on the swing. She was taller than she looked on her bike, but a little shorter than he was. She was wearing shorts. Her legs were tan. She used be short and stocky and sloppy with bruises all over. She brushed some fine clean red hair away from her face. She had freckles across her pug nose. It seemed like only her nose was the same from when they used to shoot baskets, when she was a tomboy. “Where’s Fuzzy?” she said.

“I dunno.”

They walked together past the apartments where the “gypsies” lived. That’s what some people called them, but of course they weren’t gypsies, just poor people. Beckman owned these ramshackle apartments and the town fathers were always after him to keep them in repair or at least cleaned up, but he never did. Then they cut behind the Baptist church, past the “graveyard” where the railroad cars beyond repair had been rusting for years, then past the paper mill, exuding odors from its huge vat of toxic chemicals, kept boiling day and night, endlessly breaking down old magazines, newsprint, and rags into pungent slurry. Some people complained about the smell which drifted over the town, but for Gary, it would not be Pottville without it. They emerged onto downtown Main Street from behind Bank-em-Easy’s Cigar Store, where it was said you could place bets on horse races or just about anything else.

They walked in silence all the way to Beckman’s. She didn’t ask any questions, like why he had just walked past her house three times when he said he was going to Beckman’s or why on Earth he decided to talk to her for the first time in a long time when she always smiled at him in school and he always ignored her. It didn’t seem to bother her that they didn’t say anything to each other.

Beckman came over and was all smiles. “Well, well, well,” he said, and he wouldn’t take any money for Maureen’s cherry Coke. He let Gary pay for his vanilla phosphate.

As they left Beckman’s and headed down Main Street, she said, “He’s so nice, but he has that funny hair.”

He told her what Fuzzy had said about the skinned mouse, except he didn’t say that Fuzzy was the one who said it and she laughed and laughed. “Oh, Gary, that’s terrible.” And they looked at each other.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Sure you are,” she said, still smiling.

Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

Pages: 1 2 3 4