“I’ll give you until I count to ten to get your hat and run.”
He stood between the two cold ladies on the dark porch. Summer and autumn both were gone now. An invisible snow fell upon his shoulders and a wind came up from the interior of the house.
“How did this all happen?” He turned in a circle to the world, slowly. Somehow, to Helen, he seemed like a man on a shore and a boat, carrying her, the house that is, drawing out into the autumnal sea and nobody waving good-bye, but everyone separating forever. She could not quite decide whether he was handsome or ridiculous. The great horn of the sea was blowing and the ship moved away faster, leaving him stranded on the lawn, picking up his hat, looking into it, as if to see his entire life ahead of him, and the size of it was very small and the price tag was low indeed. His hands shook. He was drunk with shock. He reeled. His eyes wobbled in his pale face.
“Good night, Mister Larsen,” said Helen, hid in the dark.
Lydia was swinging in the swing, silent, breathless now. Not laughing or crying, just letting the dark world ride in stars one way, and the white moon another, just a body in a whirling arc, her hands at her sides, the tears drying on her face in the wind that she stirred by sailing.
“Good-bye.” Mr. Larsen stumbled and fell, half across the lawn. He sat there a moment, as if he were drowning, putting his hands up in the air. Then he got up and ran away down the street.
After he was gone, Helen opened the door and came slowly out to sit in the swing.
They rocked for about ten minutes that way, silently. Then Helen said, “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can stop loving him?”
They swung in the night.
“No.”
A minute later Lydia said, “I don’t suppose there’s any way for you to find a way to love him, is there?”
Helen shook her head.
The next idea to come to them was shared. One started and the other finished it.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way—”
“—he could stop loving you, Helen.”
“—and love you instead, Lydia?”
>
They gave the swing a push in the grape-arbor night, and after the fourth swing back and forth, they said, “No.”
“I can see us,” said Helen. “Good God. Twenty, thirty years from now. You and me out walking for an evening downtown. Us walking along Main Street, talking, alone. And coming to the cigar store. And there he is. There’s John Larsen, all by himself, under the cigar store light, unwrapping a cigar. And we sort of slow down and he stops lighting the cigar when he sees us. And I look at him the way I look at him now. And you look at him the way you look at him now. And he looks at you the only way he can look at you. And at me the fool’s way he looked at me tonight. And then we sort of stand there and you and I nod. And he puts up his hand and tips his hat. And he’s bald. And we’re both gray. And we walk on. Arm in arm. And do our shopping and spend the evening around town. And when we come back, two hours later, on our way home, he’s still standing there, alone, looking off into nothing.”
They let the cat die.
They sat there, not moving, thinking of the next thirty years.
THE MAFIOSO CEMENT-MIXING MACHINE
2003
BURNHAM WOOD, I never knew his real name, led me into his splendid garage, which he had converted into a workplace/library.
On the shelves stood the complete works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, bound in rich leather, with gold epaulettes.
My hands itched as I studied this incredible collection, part of a literary experiment he was planning.
Burnham Wood turned from his amazing library, winked, and pointed at the far end of his vast garage.
“There!” he said. “My ironic machine with a peculiar name. What?”
With no particular emotion I said, “It looks like one of those trucks that revolve on their axis every ten seconds, churning cement slag on its way to pouring new roads.”
“Touché!” said Burnham Wood. “It’s my Mafioso Cement Mixer. Look around. There’s a relationship between it and this library.”