Lewis Switzer regarded the world around him as he did himself: with a grand benevolent satisfaction. That the air hinted at impending rain worried him as little as did his own faults, and he found nothing displeasing about the slightly shabby park around him (as it included the limber limbs and interestingly torn shorts of the young lady currently rounding the track.)
He had always found something reassuring in the onset of autumn. No doubt it went back to Kindergarten, where you learned the new year started neither in January nor April but in September. He should have been a teacher or professor himself, he supposed, but selling used books was somewhat in tune with the old rhythm. The bookstore experienced rebirth about when the campus did.
Not that slack or busy seasons worried him. The store served to occupy his time in retirement, a congenial rectangle of calm after the madness of managing several links of a chain bookstore. Once he had worried about quarterly statements, about unlocking doors precisely at ten: things that had nothing to do with the natural rhythms of life.
Now, since the life of a dealer in used books need not start before noon, he could come here and study the users of the track as he pleased. The freshmen had yet to discover the track: they would start to appear after the college teams really started to monopolize the track on campus. They would come by twos and by threes, stripping off sweats to cries at the cold and the wind and giggles at the danger of dashing around in shorts in a park so far from home. Sophomore women, still largely in twos and threes, would ignore them or give advice, whichever flattered their air of sophistication and experience. Juniors or seniors were more often found running alone, or in the company of a congenial Significant Runner.
Lewis thought the male runners were similar, but couldn’t tell them apart. In fact, he couldn’t tell the male runners apart much at all, unless one was in the company of a female runner who interested him. Best after all, he supposed, that he had not become a professor; he would have been discharged long ago, and for just cause. There were no faculty rules for book dealers. So he could retain what income he made at the store, with his savings and pension, to be apportioned among his second and third wives, along with his dwindling number of minor offspring.
As the weather was pleasant, the recollection of his wives and children also pleased him. In days to come, when he was gone, the boys might very likely amble here as he liked to do, and enjoy the scenery as he had always done. What became of the store and savings did not concern him nearly so much as the hope that he could bequeath to his sons and daughters the pleasures of such autumn mornings.
“Puget!”
A dog he had not noticed was charging onto the grass, following the scent of a pizza crust Lewis had had no reason to observe before, even if it had been there. He pulled back against the fence to let the dog pass, if the dog was so minded.
“Sorry!”
The dog was not hostilely inclined, so Lewis was at liberty to consider the woman with the animal. She was tallish, roundish, rather too old, but not way too old, and she had a pleasant smile of apology.
“Oh, I like dogs,” he told her. Puget, who had put on an unexpected burst of speed, now just as irrationally stopped short. He frowned at the spot where he was sure that pizza smell was and sniffed around the grass for it. No one noticed that it had bounced into the air some six or seven feet. On the other side of the fence.
Shirley checked the ground to be sure Puget wasn’t gobbling up trash, and then checked the stranger Puget had nearly bowled over. This was a man of medium height, in a worn tweed suit. His nose was aquiline, his eyes large and commanding, his hair—where it appeared—salt and pepper, a phrase she had not, now she thought of it, heard for years. Manners, she supposed, kept people from using it around her.
A grave dignity showed in his smile: a professor at the local college, she supposed. Going further, she decided he was likely an English professor. Something in his face put her in mind of Dr. Salter, who liked to quote line upon line of the juicier sections of Chaucer to the women in the front row of English 101.
“I have a schnorkie, myself.” Force of habit, Lewis decided, had made him strike up a conversation with a woman he rather wished wasn’t there. One of the runners might seem them together and assume this was his wife. She looked old enough…too old, he hoped. Still, his appeal to the freshmen was as a father figure.
She had been leaning down to address the dog, but the word caught her attention. “I beg your pardon?”
“A schnorkie. Part Yorkshire terrier, part Schnauzer. Schnorkie.”
She laughed. “I do like that word. Schnorkie. She tugged on Puget’s leash to encourage him to stay. She had come to town, after all, to talk to some of the local characters. This character seemed willing to talk.
“Some words do just roll off the tongue. Rhodomontade. Candelabrum. And Wirbelsturm: that’s German for cyclone.”
Shirley’s head moved slightly to one side unconsciously mimicking Puget. “I know that. In fact, that was my maiden name.”
Her head drew back and her shoulders came up as the man leaned in, staring. She looked to the small canister of pepper spray on the handle of the leash/
“Charley?” he demanded.
It had been a matter of decades since anyone had called her Charley, a nickname her stepfather had given her. On informing her mother’s new husband that her name was Shirley, not Charley, he had replied, “Yes, but I am not a priest and I refuse to preside over a Temple.” Joke and man were endeared to her at that moment, and in the same moment one of nine Shirleys in the second grade that year had cheerfully become Charley.
“Ye-es.” The man was standing back now, looking her over as if not entirely pleased by a discovery. “It is. Charley Wirbelsturm.”
“It used to be.” She studied his face. “And you would be….”
He turned his head, looking toward the dusty track. “Do you remember walking through Robertson’s Woods just as the rain started?”
Her lips drew in. “Well, no.”
He raised his chin, still pointed to the track, as if his profile was supposed to assist her recollections. “Do you remember a little white box with a little gold ring inside?”
“Not really.” The profile was telling her nothing.
His lower lip slid forward just a bit. “Green velvet lining in the box?”
Puget wanted to move on, and so did Shirley. “I’m afraid I>>>>”
She moved one foot forward, but his face came toward hers again. The lips started to move, but he stopped whatever he had been about to say. His shoulders dropped a bit, and he sighed.
“Do you remember me sticking two footballs under my sweater to imitate Professor Flowers, not knowing she’d just walked into the room?”
“Lew!” she exclaimed, making Puget’s head come around.
“I knew it.” His voice was suffused with gloom. “They’ll scratch that on my tombstone.”
“Ha!” She took a step forward. “Your hair! What became of it?”
“Mmf.” He turned to the track. “For all you know I lost it after graduation and I’m just now regaining it.”
“Rogaining it, I suppose.” She chuckled. “Of course it is you. But I haven’t seen you in….” The hand she had been moving between Puget’s ears came up to point. “You skipped the class reunion last month>”
He shrugged. “I only attend the ones ending in zero or five.”
“Lew, it was the fiftieth!”
His shoulders came up as he turned to stare. “Was it? Really? But that ends in th.”
He put a hand down for the suspicious dog to sniff. “If it comes to that, Charley, you had more hair in those days, too.”
She patted herself behind the left ear. “Well, I started bald, so I figure I’m still ahead of the game.”
She looked him up and down. How like Lew to wear tweed in September. In college he had always, always worn those cardigans, thinking they made him look British and thus more intellectual. Which they had actually, if you were a simple underclassman and not very sophisticated. She supposed that was why she had picked him from among all the would-be athletes with letter sweaters and would-be beatniks with beards.
Lewis looked at his foot as an ice cream container, perhaps dislodged from the grass by a doggy forefoot, rolled in front of him. “Do you still have your collection of all those napkins they rolled around the nineteen-cent cone at Joe O’Neota’s”
She flashed shining teeth at him. Hers? Yes, of course, drat the luck. He’d seen them too many times to mistake them. “No, I sold the whole collection to my daughter. She insulated her house with them.”
She’d put on some weight, he thought. Not so much as little Jenny Calhoun, he supposed, who had been going to make a big noise as a dancer. Last time he’d seen Jenny, she was still capable of making a big noise, but only if she fell down on the dance floor.
“Say, did your brother ever….”
“He did, but it didn’t last.” She reined in Puget, who was taking a close interest in that ice cream cup. “Now he runs a Vegan Tx-Mex place in Iowa: The Greenest Taco.”
Both of his chins withdrew into his neck. “They served us green tacos at the Gran Mexicano, but we never ate them.”
Shirley nodded in sorrow. “I tried to explain that to him, hut he didn’t get it.”
“You always were quick.”
“After eating a green taco, yes.” Her head tipped to one side. “There was a time when I was fast.”
“That’s what they tried to warn me about, but I ignored them, and lost my reputation.”
“As I recall your reputation, that was just as well.” Lewis thought her face had gone a bit stiff. “Do you hear much about the others?”
He thought this over. “Well, there was a story about Myrtle going to a special clinic in Switzerland, and taking classes so that now her private parts can whistle The Star-Spangled Banner. Have you heard that?”
Her face was now thoroughly frigid. “I have not.”
Lewis’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, you must have! It’s our national anthem!”
Shirley pressed the butt of her left hand against her forehead. “So that was you, then?”
“Who?”
“That killed vaudeville?”
“Not I, Prosecutor. Those DNA tests were contaminated.” His drawl was casual, unconcerned. But his thought was, “How pleasant: not at all as awkward as last time.”
Her thoughts were running along the same lines. “He was so stiff at that reunion. Maybe he’s growing up at last. Better not to tempt fate.”
“Well, Puget will be wanting to move along,” she said. She gave the leash a little tug, but Puget himself seemed to be studying something on the ground next to the fence. He started in the direction opposite to the pull, and took her a step forward, himself bouncing the man against the wire of the fence.
“Puget!” she snapped. The leash got a fiercer pull. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Not at all.” Lewis reached down to pat the dog again, turning to try to see what the dog had lunged for. All he saw were new white lines painted on the ball diamond. “He didn’t get far, poor puppy. He didn’t know he was dealing with the only girl trombone player in the marching band.”
“Gloriosky!” Round eyes rolled up. “The one who turned left instead of right and wound up marching thirty yards backward.”
His upper teeth showed in a grin. “The one who used to sneak out after halftime, climbing the fence so Macfarlane wouldn’t catch us.”
She scowled. “I remember you giving me a boost.”
“So that’s why you always made me go over first after that.” He sighed. “Of course, we missed some thrilling last second losses by our heroes on the gridiron.”
“Pneumonia would have been a small price to pay for the excitement.” Shirley shifted the leash to her other hand. “So what are you doing now, Lew?”
“This and that.” Shrugging, he leaned back against the fence. “Took an aptitude test and found out what I’m most qualified for is retirement.”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
There was the slightest twitch of her upper lip. “I was going to.”
Lewis grinned in appreciation, but thanked the powers that were that this affair had not gone as far as it might have. Living with Charley would have been a constant competition. He bounced his back against the fence. Not that he wouldn’t have won, of course, but even if you did have the fastest car in town, you didn’t want to be racing ALL the time.
“Well.” After one more bounce, he stood free of the fence. “I suppose you have other….”
Both heads jerked around as a sound system in a passing car lost all control, volume shifting so suddenly that it apparently shocked even the young woman driving. The melody was heavy on drums, though the lyrics screamed that the singer lived to dance and danced to live and why not come dance while the music was still playing?
Lew snorted as the car passed by. “Still got your tap shoes, Charley? Or are you too young to have been there when we won the freshman talent show?”
Shirley rolled her eyes and urged Puget onward. “I decline to recall that much corn before breakfast.”
“Goes against the grain?” Lewis moved as Puget’s head swung down toward something invisible but obviously interesting. “But you do remember how Steve tried to be cool by switching his piano selection at the last minute and not only came in last and got himself suspended.”
This time Shirley had to tip her head back to roll her eyes as far as the memory required. “Little Richard he was not.” Her head came back down. “And he went to seminary. Where’d you go, Lew, after? You never sent much to the reunion booklets.”
She stole a glance: his head was up and square with his shoulders. “I did some time in the military.” His eyes met hers. “Intelligence, of course.”
Shirley didn’t see where of course came into this. “Washing secrets out of garbage cans?”
He shook a finger at her. “That was only the first six months. Then I moved up.”
Her chin came out. “Emptying garbage cans?”
“If you really want to know…..” He lowered his head and his voice, and looked up and down the sidewalk. “At the end I was pasting newspaper and magazine clippings into classified scrapbooks.”
Puget looked up in alarm as his mistress clapped her hands and cried, “Ooooh! A war hero!”
Lewis raised his nose. “Shows what civilians know. It took me two years working as a clipper before I moved up to paster.”
Her head swung back and forth now, as if her neck was loosening under the impact of these revelations. “Lew, whatever made them take you, with your record? And your beard?”
His lips pursed. “You laughed at it.”
She laughed now. “I think I have a picture of that yet. You looked like you dusted your chin with cocoa.”
Lew’s face stiffened. The memory was too intense for him to notice what sounded like four tiny tongues clicking in exasperation.
“You have that next to the picture from the Christmas concert?”
Mirth dropped from Shirley’s eyes. Her upper lip drew back to expose her teeth again. “Just that one of the black eye you had next day. What did you mean by stepping on the lead angel’s train?”
His nostrils flared. “How was I supposed to guess lead angels didn’t wear underwear?”
Her eyes jerked away from his; she snorted. “I was going to spring that on you later.”
His eyebrows came up. “Spring is exactly the word that came to mind as the angelic robe started down.”
She caught her underlip with her upper teeth. Charley had always done that: always. “I wish I had pictures,” he went on. “I didn’t have time to appreciate the full effect with you swinging at me.”
So no one had cured Lew of that superior nod; Shirley yanked Puget away from the fence and back to the sidewalk. “Well, it didn’t ruin my blossoming musical career. Would you believe I was asked to sing lead for Claudia and the Carhops?”
“Not for thirty seconds.”
She smiled. “You’re getting smarter, Lew. I taught you well.”
She turned away. Her plan was to continue right across the street and back to the hotel. While she was planning this, however, Puget decided to pursue a scent which took him to the wrong side of one of the big green garbage cans. By the time Shirley recognized this, the can was on its side, sending the night’s supply of chicken bones and pizza boxes onto the sidewalk, to Puget’s obvious delight. This quite ruined her exit.
“You, Puget,” she said, hauling on the leash and the rim of the can at the same time, “Are a dog.”
Lew squatted to gather in two straws and the box from a Booty Burger Berry Bomb. “Huh. Just like Campus Clean-Up Day.”
“Campus Clean-Up!” Shirley snatched a drumstick away from Puget’s opening outh. “We were always assigned to the woody end of campus. And you stole leaves from my pile.”
Lew frowned at a cigar butt before flicking it up into the can. “Did I? Doesn’t sound like me. You’d think I’d wait until you had them all raked up and then jump in.”
Shirley raised an eyebrow at a battered issue of Stripes Magazine before flinging it after the cigar butt. “There was a prize for the biggest pile of leaves. A Pogo book, usually, or Peanuts.” She reached down for some wing bones, looking up to make sure he recalled this.
“That’s right.” He delicately lifted a half-eaten chicken breast into a Booty Buddy Box. “I was also hot for literary adventure.” His drawl slipped a little as he went on, “I thought about carving our initials in a tree, but I didn’t know how. Anyway, our faculty advisor wouldn’t have appreciated the damage to campus infrastructure.”
This Ranch Wagon cup was already biodegrading. “Lew, you would never have stopped at initials. You were the epic poem type.”
Lew sat back on his haunches. “I was, wasn’t I? I think my favorite was the one that started ‘Oh, Tempting seductress!” He bounced a Chicken Smidgeon cup into the can. “Or was it “Oh, Seductive Temptress!’?
Shirley snagged two ribs from a broken umbrella and one from Barrett’s Ribs. “You wrote that you would remember you existed by thinking of me.”
Lew was studying a battered plastic bag. “Did I write that?”
She rose, tugging some of the wrinkles from her tidy suit. “Somebody did. If it wasn’t you, it should have been.”
With Lew still crouching in the scraggly glass, Shirley had an excellent view of his bald spot. When the can was blocking him from view (and with no mirror handy) she had begun to believe that she was what she had been. A wisp of lost future passed across her vision, and was gone.
She turned away with a little sigh. “And there was always a football game to follow Campus Clean-Up. And we always lost.”
“That’s why they stopped having Campus Clean-Up. It wasn’t complaints from the professors or the janitors: the coaches wanted to break the curse.” Lew rose from his crouch, refusing to grab the can for support no matter how much his knees complained. “You know, the college team here has a home game tonight if you’re staying that long. I could….”
Humans and dog cringed at the sudden blast of a whistle. “Car alarms!” snarled Shirley, looking up the street. “I’d better not. Nice seeing you, Lew.” She turned away in time to miss seeing a metal whistle fly through the air as if kicked. Then her head turned back over her shoulder. “Besides, I know what happens at those games.”
Lew raised an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you mean.”
She winked at him. “Casey Busso.”
“Casey!” He hadn’t thought of Casey in years, perhaps because laughing that hard was bad for his back. “That can’t happen here. I’m sure the world can’t afford teo casey Bussos in one century. If it could afford one.”
She turned around and came back, shaking a finger. “You put him up to that, you devil!”
“Now now.” He shook a finger right back at her. “The Student Government cleared us on inquiry.”
“Student Council.”
“Oh, to be sure.” He nodded, folding his hands together. “I always called it Student Government just to be difficult.”
Her lower lip stuck out to expel a long breath past her upper lip. “That was a lot of shouting over nothing.”
“Not exactly nothing, Charley. Pour dignity was involved.” He leaned against the fence again. “Student Councils were for immature little high school kids. There we were, savants of nineteen and twenty, worthy to be called a Student Government.”
“Everyone was so ferocious about it.” She shook her head. “It was silly.”
“That, too.” He looked off toward the track, but his eyes slid toward her. “Not if you read Vera veritas, of course.”
“Vera Veritas was silly, too. Half the newspaper staff suspended for refusing to say who was writing under that name.”
Lew nodded. “And new rules for the paper, too. Ten years later, there’d’ve been riots.”
Shirley moved the leash to her free hand again. “It made the administration as silly as the rest of us. After all, Vera Veritas was on THEIR side. That was what the article was really about: leave the name of the Student Council alone and work on the big issues, like who was the band going to be at the Snow Ball.”
“It was her style,” he said. “She could make you mad whichever side you were on.”
“That’s a writer with style.” Shirley studied a spot between Puget’s ears. “That line about the difference between good counsel and Student Council was nice. You steal it somewhere or think of it yourself?”
Lew pulled himself upright. “Me? I started the petition to rename it Student Government. Nearly got suspended myself. Again.” He wiggled his shoulders as if trying to work out a muscle cramp. “I always thought YOU wrote Vera Veritas, Charley.”
“Me?” Her head came up. “I was the one who kept demanding the Student Council investigate her!”
“I know. You brought me THAT petition.”
She frowned. “They never talked about suspending me. Maybe because I was on the Student Council. Huh!” Her eyes rose. “Who was it, then? John Memos? No, I bet it was Flo.”
“Flo?”
“Florence Shoe. You remember: red hair, so tall….” She started to put her hand out into the air, and dropped it to one hip instead. “Lew, are you really telling me it wasn’t you?”
He held up both hands. “I thought all along it was you, especially with what you…what Vera Veritas said about…. I thought you’d changed your mind about…the whole damn everything. I was…. Well, what about Bob Rivers?”
Shirley shook her head and kicked at a Chicken Smidgeon they’d missed, not noticing this put it closer to Puget’s ready jaws. “And I was positive it was you. I didn’t blame you for switching sides, because I knew if you thought of something really funny to say, you wouldn’t let principles get in the way. What about Gabriel printler?”
“Bob Rivers,” he said, with a definite nod. “Well, now, Gabriel might’ve….” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t kid me at this point, Charley? Couple of those jokes had you written all over them.”
She stepped back to study his eyes. “And I thought it was YOUR delicate satiric sledgehammer. I did feel….” She blinked. “It doesn’t matter. I wonder what they DO call it now.”
Of course it hadn’t really mattered, Lewis supposed. He hadn’t ever really thought, in basic terms, “Well, if Shirley’s going to give me a petition to sign and then make me look like a fool in the newspaper, I don’t want to talk to her.” But it might’ve been in the back of his mind.
She broke into this reverie by moving down the sidewalk again. “I need to get Puget back.”
He nodded. “Where are you staying?”
“The Sun-Inn takes dogs.”
“Good for the Sun-Inn.” He came forward to pat the dog again. “How…long are you in town?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. What time’s the game?”
“One.” He came up alongside her. “How’d you come to land on this bump in the road anyhow?”
She ran a hand up her neck into her hair. “I sort of inherited a spot on the Board of Trustees of the Pont-a-Methon Museum when my husband died. I was going to be passing north of here, and I thought I might actually attend a meeting, and maybe see this park people keep writing letters about.”
Lew took hold of one of her elbows. “Let me tell you a few things about this park, Charley. I don’t know if you remember seeing a letter I wrote about it but….”
“Of course I remember you,” she said, frowning. “Whatever did you think?”
“No, I said remember a letter from me.” He took a deep breath. “I do like that perfume of yours.”
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