If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

WHAT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY

2

Patti loved the ritual of driving to the grocery store. Down Ardmore Street the thick green leaves of the trees were just beginning to turn and the sky was very blue. Parking was good. Few people were here, and once in the store, she loved the smell of the bread aisle and she loved the food samples. She even loved the bag boys and bag girls and old people. There was something in the fluorescent light for her. Before she’d lost her teaching job, before she’d stopped leaving her home to work, she had never been able to admit this. Now she could admit how much fun it was to spend ten minutes going up and down the candy aisle before debating whether she should get a large Symphony bar, a Kit Kat or nothing at all.

She did not expect to see Chuck Shrader amongst the pasta.

“Seems like we’ve been here before,” she said.

Chuck, startled, smiled at her.

“Cat got your tongue, Mr. Shrader? I sure hope not since I’m paying good money for you to educate my son.”

“Good morning, Patti.”

“Afternoon, really. Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Well, Mom,” said Chuck, “this is my lunch hour and Jeff Cordino and his girlfriend are coming over to my place tonight, so I wanted to get everything right now.”

“I’ll be glad when they marry and get a place of their own so they can stop eating at everyone else’s,” said Patti.

“So,” Chuck did not comment on that, but lifted two glass jars, hefting them. “Prego or Ragu?”

“Neither. Tomato paste, garlic and water, bits of this and that.”

“I’m not handy in the kitchen.”

“Me neither,” Patti lied unconsciously, “but there are things you pick up.”

At the look on Chuck’s face, Patti said, “Okay, get Ragu.”

“Mushrooms or no?” Chuck raised an eyebrow.

“I’d say yes.”

“Then, no.”

Chuck placed the sauce with mushrooms back on the shelf, and Patti shook her head.

“Chuck, I’ve missed you,” she said at last. “Why don’t I see you anymore?”

“Patricia, you dumped me.”

“I was married,! and still am. And happily.”

Unconsciously she touched her wedding band.

“And you’re not doing so badly yourself with Faye on a string and everything.”

Chuck raised an eyebrow.

“I heard that she was willing to give up university and come here for you.”

“This is a small town, indeed,” Chuck remarked.

“Yes, Chuck. Yes it is.”

There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Chuck said, “I missed you too, Patti. I don’t know, I always thought that it would be really awkward talking to you.”

“And is it?”

“Well, aside from the fact that since the moment I met you, I’ve never known what to say to you... ” He let his sentence trail off, then said. “We should go to lunch sometime.”

“Sometime is always a bad date to make with people you’ve been estranged from. Let’s go now.”

“But, Patti, there’s no time! I’ve got to be back to school in forty minutes. We can’t even find a restaurant—”

Patti took Chuck’s wrist and declared, “Charles, there is always time for lunch.”

 

Patti Lewis hadn’t been born early enough for the Second Vatican Council to change her church practices, but she had grown up in a two flat in south Chicago with her mother, father and sister on the third floor, cousins on the second, and grandparents on the first, the whole place filled with mounted holy cards, angels, images of the Sacred Heart, portraits of Saint Rita with the thorn stuck in her head, Saint Anthony holding the Christ Child, the Blessed Virgin in a thousand woebegone poses and an altar in each apartment. All of this combined to make a girl not want to go near anything but fish on any Friday—forget that it was nowhere near Lent—and luckily the grocery store deli made excellent fried cod. That and a donut and a cup of coffee were heaven, and Chuck had commented that there was no time to stand in the long checkout line and pay for it, and then Patti wiping her hands on her old jeans, and said it was a good thing they’d eaten any proof that they needed to go through a eheck out line.

Which also necessitated a good confession.

And since she was feeling good, and since she was nearby, and since she didn’t really care for Father Jeff or Father Heinz, Patti rolled down the window and laughed as she drove toward Evervirgin.

 

 

Driving away from Evervirgin, Patti marked with a slight twinge of guilty satisfaction that if she needed a confessor, the priest had really needed a shrink.

“Or a change... or a cigarette,” she suggested to herself. The suggestion sounded so good, she decided to have one herself. There was another appointment at three, unusually late, but she only had two appointments this Friday, which was a rarity. Often Patti was surprised by the number of unhappy people in this little town.

She stopped at the library, and it had been a while since her last visit, which made her feel illiterate. She was looking for the fiction and feeling stupid. This one and this one could not help her. If she stopped any of these women to ask them where the fiction section was, Patti was sure they would look at her over their glasses and judge her with scorn. There was a man, but he was pale as a ghost and decked out in silver jewelry. He looked like he’d be attending a coven sometime soon.

Finally, when she had ended up in photography for the third time, Patti spotted a gangly, black haired young man in khakis with a little spot of beard under his lower lip, and a blue work shirt hanging out of his trousers. Despite the darker rings about his green eyes that made him look like a Byzantine icon, he was blissfully shelving books, and Patti decided he would be the perfect person to ask.

“Oh, we moved the section,” he said smiling at her. “Come on, let me show you where it is now.” He gestured to Patti congenially, and Patti marked his rangy walk, and his black goatee and thought that it would be nice if more people could be like this.

As they approached the fiction section, he touched the small of her back and steered Patti toward the shelves.

“Here you go. Let me know if you need anything.”

The way he smiled, the tone of his voice, even his touch made her feel a little tremor. She couldn’t help watching him walk away.

Patti realized just how little reading she had been doing, which was sort of alarming because she usually had enough free time on her hands to do nothing but read. She was in a mood to do so now, and gathered a stack of novels that she could scarcely see over, taking the elevator to the main floor and the checkout desk. She dropped off her books to a serious looking blond woman who began to scan them and ask, though Patti noticed she really didn’t care, how her day was. Trying to put as much heart into it as possible, Patti said her day was very good so far.

Only when the young man, who gave Patti a full smile, slipped behind the blond woman and gave her a gentle caress, did she liven up, and Patti realized that they must be a couple. He was working with a cart of books behind the counter and whispered something to the woman who laughed, her face coming to life as she went on scanning books and then looked up and gave Patti a living smile.

“Ms. Lewis, these will be due back in twenty-one days, here’s your receipt.”

“Thank you,” that man had made them both feel more alive, and she looked at the woman’s badge, “Marissa.”

Walking away from the library, Patti briefly wondered what kind of lover that long, tall black haired, wild man was. The electric in her lit to thinking of Chuck, remembering his kisses and suddenly she was flooded with desire and knew she would give Thom the night of his life.

Thinking of the book shelver who had awakened her to desire, the red in the trees and the slight chill in the air, Patti murmured, “That man’s got the touch. He’s contagious.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the empty stage of the empty Noble Red, Nehru Alexander took Brad’s guitar and strummed as he sang:

 

“I don’t feel like talking to you right now

And I can’t be bothered with hearing.

I’m a little worried about all this not doing.

My hands pick up the clay,

those hands have little to say as do my lips.

Sometimes this is enough.

So, I don’t talk to you, you, you, you

Oh, you! I just can’t talk these

Days.”

 

Brad Long, in his baggy blue shirt, felt almost useless without a guitar, reached for a cigarette before realizing it was a prop for his hands, and listened as Nehru played. Nehru always did the singing, him the playing, that Nehru was good at the guitar was a revelation.

 

 

“We have taken on the fullness of the morning

which became the fullness of the day

and now the deep dark golden evening comes slowly

on her way,

the next lines are all bad rhyme and sleep has more

to say than carefully crafted words.

 

So, I don’t talk to you, you, you, you

Oh, you! I just can’t talk these

Days.”

 

“Is that about me?” Brad said when Nehru was done.

“No,” Nehru said, giving him that look, the look that was not of someone ten years younger, but someone infinitely older and amused and always ahead of him.

“I have better things to do than stand up on a stage and sing veiled words about someone else on that stage to a crowd. If I have anything to say to you, Bradley, I’ll say it direct.”

“You haven’t actually said anything direct in a while,” Brad stood up and took his guitar.

“No,” Nehru said, very directly, “I haven’t had sex with you. I’ve been as direct as ever.”

“You broke it off.”

“I broke it off,” Nehru repeated, nodding.

“I told you I love you.”

“And then you went right back to Marissa’s bed.”

“Do you want me to leave her?”

“I want you to figure yourself out.”

“Nehru!”

“If you figured yourself out, you wouldn’t even have the audacity to ask a question like that.”

Brad put down his guitar.

“Nehru Alexander,” he began.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting on my knees.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I love you. Please don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad,” Nehru said, touching Brad’s cheek.

“But you know how when you were with Debbie, well, hell, even before that, you were looking for something, you were always discontent? You felt like you hadn’t found it—”

“What if I told you it was you?”

“Then,” Nehru thought for a moment, “I’d tell you part of it was me. But most of it is you. You still haven’t grown up.”

“Nehru!”

“If you were a grown up there would have never been a point where you were sleeping with me and Marissa, but since you cannot be the grown up, then I have to be.”