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“You want company?”
“I don’t think so”
Sheila nodded We had been together nearly a year I’ve never had a partner so in sync with ave my hand another I-love-you squeeze, and the warh me
Our front-door welco stolen froe, with a plastic daisy in the upper left-hand corner I stepped over it and strolled up Downing Place The street was lined with nuly ordinary aluray suit It itched in the heat The savage sun beat down like a druht that it was a wonderful day to decay An iht-the-world smile—the one before it all happened—flashed in front of my eyes I shoved it away
I knehere I was headed, though I doubt if I would have admitted it to myself I was drawn there, pulled by some unseen force Some would call itto do with closure I thought it was probably neither
I just wanted to look at the spot where it all ended
The sights and sounds of summer suburbia assaulted me Kids squealed by on their bicycles Mr Cirino, ned the Ford/Mercury dealership on Route 10, mowed his lawn The Steins—they’d built up a chain of appliance stores that were sed up by a bigger chain—were taking a stroll hand in hand There was a touch football gah I didn’t know any of the participants Barbecue sht from the Kaufmans’ backyard
I passed by the Glassh the sliding glass doors when he was six He was playing Superman I remembered the screarew up and became some kind of IPO-start-up zillionaire I don’t think they call him the Doof anymore, but you never know
The Marianos’ house, still that horrid shade of phleg the front walk, was on the bend Angela Mariano, our local bad girl, o years older than us and like so in her backyard in a gravity-defying ribbed halter top, I had felt the first painful thrusts of deep horela used to fight with her parents and sneak smokes in the toolshed behind her house Her boyfriend drove a motorcycle I ran into her last year on Madison Avenue in midtown I expected her to look awful—that hat you always hear happens to that first lust-crush—but Angela looked great and seemed happy
A lawn sprinkler did the sloave in front of Eric Frankel’s house at 23 Downing Place Eric had a space-travel-themed bar mitzvah at the Chanticleer in Short Hills ere both in seventh grade The ceiling was done up planetariu card toldat “Table Apollo 14” The centerpiece was an ornatepad The waiters, adorned in realistic space suits, were each supposed to be one of the Mercury 7 “John Glenn” served us Cindi Shapiro and I had sneaked into the chapel room and made out for over an hour It wasCindi did I reue caressed and jolted me in unexpected ways But I also re after twenty minutes or so into, well, boredo with a naïve “is that all there is?”
When Cindi and I stealthily returned to Cape Kennedy’s Table Apollo 14, ruffled and in fine post-s the croith “Fly Me to the Moon”), my brother, Ken, pulled ladly gave theht, as we lay on the bunk beds, Ken on the top,Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” (Ken’s favorite), my older brother explained to rader I’d later learn he was(a little too much eht, I always smile
“He’s alive”
I shook ton Terrace by the Holders’ old house This was the saet to Burnet Hill Elementary School There used to be a paved path between two houses to make the trip shorter I wondered if it was still there My mother—everyone, even kids, had called her Sunny—used to follow us to school quasi-surreptitiously Ken and I would roll our eyes as she ducked behind trees I s about her overprotectiveness now It used to e My brother was securely cool enough to let it slide I wasn’t