Second Chance (7 page)

"Don't change the subject. We were talking about getting you laid."

"Oh, hell, I get
laid
. I just don't get
married
. Never found a man strong enough to keep up with me for
more'n
a few nights. Men don't like strong women. We scare 'em away."

They drove for a while before
Sharla
spoke again. "You know how many of us are gonna be at this shindig?"

"Only eight or nine," Eddie said. "Woody invited over a dozen, but some people couldn't come."

"Not into nostalgia, huh?"

"Maybe. Or not into necrophilia."

Sharla
was silent for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"I mean lost loves. The same kind of thing that's currently running through my own dear little gay community. Those not lost, but gone before."

"Like Tracy . . . and Keith."

Eddie nodded. "And Dale, too."

"Dale,"
Sharla
said thoughtfully, as though she had not thought about him for a long time. "God, he was nice. I really liked him."

It had been impossible not to like Dale
Collini
. He had been two years older than most of them, but taught English at a nearby high school, and so had remained active on campus. Dale and his wife came every weekend to parties at the apartment.
Sharla
heard later that they had divorced. "How did he die, anyway?" she asked Eddie.

He gave a theatrical sigh. "It was a year after he and Karen split up. He was going to Pitt to get a theatre degree—you know he always wanted to be an actor—and one weekend he just got sick, went to the hospital, and died that night. Leukemia. You never know, do you? You just never know . . ."

"Are, uh . . .”
Sharla
cleared her throat. "Are you okay?"

Eddie turned and looked at her with a wry smile. "You mean HIV-negative? Yes, fortunately I am, and I intend to stay that way. I have been living with a wonderful friend and lover for the past eleven years, and we are both negative and very, very monogamous. Unlike some ebony-skinned sluts I could name."

Sharla
laughed. Eddie had the gift of saying the most outrageous things without offending. "So you bring any old clothes along for this thing?" she asked him.

Eddie shook his head. "I don't have a thing left from back then. I'll have to depend on Woody's sartorial taste—which may be dangerous. How about you?"

"Still got my fatigues."

Eddie chuckled. "You mean that old camouflage suit?"

"Don't laugh, honey. You can't fight a war against the imperialist, racist pigs without the proper uniform. Besides, a lot of revolutionary anger got sweated into those threads. Who knows, I put 'em on, I might feel like
offin
' Whitey again." She turned and looked at Eddie solemnly. "Maybe you better watch your ass."

Then they both began to howl. Eddie laughed until tears came, and
Sharla
pounded the steering wheel as they drove on to Iselin.

~*~

"Town's sure changed," Judy McDonald observed as Curly Rider drove down Lincoln. Curly had flown to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles the night before, then picked up Judy at the airport in the morning. "Do you get back here at all?"

"Came to homecoming about ten years ago, but that's it. With my business, things come up."

"What do you do? Commercials?"

"Some. A lot of corporate films and videos. I try to keep the company small. That way I get to do everything. You and Frank get back much?"

"No. It's been ages." She sighed. "And now we come all the way back for a costume party."

Curly turned the car left onto Ninth Street, then pulled into the parking lot, where he saw two men muscling a beer keg out of an
English Brothers Beverages
truck. "Hot damn, a
kegger
," he said.

They preceded the men up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door. Frank opened it, but instead of letting them in, he stepped into the hall and closed the door, then kissed Judy and shook
Curly's
hand. "Sorry," he said, "but Woody doesn't want anybody seeing the place before tonight."

"Oh," said Judy, "and I suppose he's going to get all the food and drink ready himself?"

"Don't worry about that," Frank said, and grinned. "Here comes some of the drink now."

The two men had the keg in the entryway on the hand truck. "These steps gonna hold?" one called up.

"They never broke before," Frank said. "Let us get down first, okay? Don't want the whole building falling on us too."

"Where are we going now?" asked Curly when they were in the parking lot.

"The motel," Frank said. "I'll make sure everybody's here and has their clothes, and then we can have dinner."

"Good, I'm starved," said Judy. "How about Bruno's?”

“Great," said Curly. "They used to make the best manicotti in western Pennsylvania."

Frank led the way to the cars. "Maybe the rest will want to join us."

"How about Woody?" said Judy.

"No, he's too excited to eat. He'll see us tonight."

~*~

I should have kept them apart, Woody thought. I should have arranged it so that the first time they all saw each other was here.

He sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, looking at his handiwork. There were only a few more things to do—light the incense and the candles wedged in the
Mateus
bottles, put the ice and fruit in the sangria, set out the chips and the pretzels, all the things that Tracy would help him with . . .

No, that wasn't right, was it? Tracy wasn't here. Tracy was still dead.

He thought about putting on a record, then decided against it. Wait till they come. He couldn't do it alone.

Do what?
he wondered.
Go back?

"Shit," he said aloud. You couldn't go back. It was a party, that was all, remember, just a party.

And then he thought that it was all right, that he shouldn't have kept them apart after all, that the first things they would want to talk about were what they had been doing since they last saw each other, and they would show the pictures of their children who hadn't existed in 1969, and tell about their jobs and what happened to their parents who the others would maybe remember, probably not, and it could go on for
hours
like that, and better to have them do that over dinner at Bruno's or the Harris Tea Room or
Parini's
or wherever they went. Much better for them to hash all of that out before they got here, and have a few drinks together so that they'll all feel mellow and nostalgic and
sixties
, and then the party can start, yes, then it can really start, and Tracy . . .

Stop it. Just stop it, there is no more Tracy. Just wait. Just wait for them and remember, just a party, just a party, and it won't be long now until they're all here and it can start.

But oh God, oh
Jesus
, it's been a long time coming . . .

And he waited for it with the excitement and terror of a child in the darkness of Christmas morning, a child who wants a certain gift so much that he fears he will die if he does not receive it.

Chapter 7

It was 8:30 when two cars pulled into the parking lot behind 4 South Ninth Street. It was nearly dark, and as the seven people climbed out they heard the sounds of The Mamas and the Papas' cover of "Dedicated to the One I Love" in the evening air. Looking up, they saw the windows of the apartment glowing blue against the dark brick of the outer walls. The light moved at times, and Diane whispered, "Candles," as though she had just set eyes on the Holy Grail. "When's the last time I've been to a party lit by candles?"

"You smell that?" Alan said, just as quietly. "Isn't that incense?"

"Sandalwood," said Frank. "The kind we always used."

"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Judy said, giggling, and no one disagreed with her.

When Woody opened the door, he smiled beatifically at them, sweeping over them with his gaze, registering each face, his own beaming in the harsh glare of the hallway light, the dark beard wreathing cheeks flushed with excitement.

"God, is it good to see you," he said, and they embraced in one huge lump, everyone hugging at once, and laughing, chattering, kissing, they moved like that into the room, into the haze of incense smoke and the babble of old music and their own happy voices, and for a while it seemed to all of them that they had truly come home again.

"You all look beautiful," Woody said, going from one to the next, holding, touching cheek to cheek, awash in friends, drowning with delight in them, and tears of joy touched their eyes as they looked and felt and scented the air and marveled at the masquerade that had taken their eager minds back.

Woody felt himself grasped from behind, and turned to look into Frank's misty eyes. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you, man. This is . . . shit,
outasite
." He laughed and hugged Woody again. "I love ya, man."

~*~

Judy McDonald looked around the room in wonder. How, she wondered, had he gotten so close to what it had been like before? My God, there was the little TV in the corner, and the posters, exactly where they'd been.

She moved with the others into the dining room. Even if it hadn't been otherwise perfect, the bucket of Sangria on the white metal table would have made it so, a bucket, as prescribed, filled with red wine and soda, chunks of frozen fruit bobbing on the surface like . . . yes, like body parts. "
Dammit
," she said to Eddie, who turned to her in surprise. "I've never been able to touch this stuff since you said it looked like the discards tank in a dissecting room."

Everyone laughed, and Eddie threw up his hands in dismay. "God, dear, that was nearly a quarter century ago! You sure know how to hold a grudge."

She laughed and hugged him, kept looking around, moved with the others as they made their amoebic way through the chambers.

~*~

The bathtub brought appreciative chuckles, packed as it was with ice cubes, in the center of which was a huge, dented keg with a ceramic Iron City tap. "I thought these taps were plastic now," Alan said.

"It's the distributor's," Frank explained. "Collector's item. Don't break it or he'll shit."

They made their way up the hall, sticking their heads into the bedroom as they passed, then slowly moved back into the living room, where the candles made their shadows flicker on the walls and ceiling. It was dark outside, except for the street lamp that shone through the window at the end of the room, and they began to form into smaller groups, talking about the perfection of the illusion, and their own wardrobes.

Sartorially, they looked like they did twenty-four years before.
Curly's
penny loafers, straight-legged chinos, and plain, off-white shirt made him the gentle jock of yore, with the only concession to fashion being the long peaked collars of the shirt, which he began to curl up and chew on.

"Do you still eat your collars at work?" asked Alan.

"Nope. Too short. At least I don't look like Marianne Faithful. Or are you supposed to be Melanie?"

Alan stuck out his tongue and flounced the ruffles that ran down the front of his orange and purple paisley shirt. "You never did understand
haute couture
. It's always the male who has the bright plumage."

“Jesus, where does that leave me?" said Eddie, lighting a cigarette and looking down at his pin-striped button down shirt and navy slacks. "Was I really this dull, Woody? I look like a gym teacher, except for the cowboy boots."

"Sorry, Eddie," said Woody, "but that's what you wore."

"That's what I
still
wear, except for the boots. They always gave me blisters," Eddie said, a little laugh bursting from his mouth with the smoke. "Well, better this than Mister
Carnaby
Street," he said, nodding to Alan. "Although Woody looks equally Love Generation without being garish, Alan. Of course the fact that he's still built like Jim Morrison doesn't hurt."

Woody grinned. The clothing felt good, not at all like a costume. The brocade vest swung free, the loose, tunic-like black shirt was comfortable, the
concho
belt rode easily on his hips. If he had been wearing leather pants instead of black jeans, he might indeed have resembled an older Jim Morrison, a Morrison who had not died in Paris in 1971, who had lost a little of his dark hair from the front, but replaced it with a full though neatly trimmed beard.

"Hell," Woody said, "we all look good, but the ladies . . . excuse me . . . the
chicks
look great."

"Groovy," said Curly, getting up and heading toward the rear of the apartment.

"
Such
a way with words," Eddie said.

But it was true, Woody thought. The women did look groovy. He had been afraid that fortyish women dressed like sixties teenyboppers might have been ludicrous, but it wasn't. The women glowed. It was as if they had slipped on their youth with their clothing. He had forgotten what a little pixie Diane had been. The few times he had seen her since college, she had seemed mousy, dull, crushed by life. But now, as she sat there smiling, her loose muslin blouse showing the contours of her braless breasts, tight jeans hugging her thighs, she actually looked desirable, the quintessential free-love hippie waif.