of 1978 will remain photographically burned on the yearbook that is his brain.
“That guy’s crazy,” he is saying, “drunk off his ass in some Mexican place, calling me. Jesus.” Another admiring chuckle from Neal Peterson as his credit card slides back into place alongside another that reads License to Chill along the top, a Carlos & Charlie insignia underneath rattan-style letters spelling out Panama City. “You gotta come out with us, man. We’re hitting Blackie’s later. Mills’ll be there. And Smith-er-eens. And Figger. Remember him? He was two years ahead of us? Newton’s his last name—you know him. Yeah, you do. He’s the one with the sleepy eye who got the shit kicked out of him outside Carvel’s after that Homecoming game, whatever year that was. Remember? How could you not know Newton? Anyway, come out tonight. Blackie’s at ten. Catch you later, Powell!” His finger pointing, thumb cocking an invisible trigger, while the other hand lowers his Ray Bans back down off the top of his head to the bridge of his nose before pushing at the door clearly marked Pull.
The store windows at Baxter’s have sheets of amber plastic coating on the inside, to protect clothes from the sun’s destructive rays, but Henry sees, when Peterson hurries out the door after his girlfriend (humbled, he thinks, by the pushing-not-pulling thing), it’s cloudy out, stormy even, rendering Peterson’s sunglasses useless. But if Sonny Crockett wears sunglasses on dark days, Henry smirks to himself, so does Neal Peterson.
Henry detaches the pink copy of the guest check and folds it into the pinned-up slacks. Anticipating a long empty day, he sets the bundle aside so he’ll have something to do later.
The truth is Henry does know Newton. Figger. A man-child who had facial hair in eighth grade and told everyone Henry had VD when Henry refused to give him his A+ paper on Tess of the D’Urbervilles in ninth grade.
Of course he knows Newton.
The VD rumor caught fire and Henry found himself at home watching The Rockford Files while his fellow ninth graders were pouring Hawaiian Punch into small plastic cups at the Homecoming dance (their first dance ever). A week later he was at the water fountain and heard Melanie Parks say, “Ew, I’m using the fountain downstairs instead,” and was certain from her tone it was fear of contagion that scared her Fair Isle–sweatered self away. At first he reasoned that they may think he has VD, but at least—he told himself—at least that meant he wasn’t a virgin. The very word reeked of ignominy and disgrace. As if anticipating this train of thought, though, Figger Newton told everyone Henry contracted VD through sex with his cousin.
“Why aren’t you out, dork?” Henry’s older brother, Brad, asked the Saturday night following the Homecoming dance. He had come up from behind Henry and flicked him on the head before plopping down on the other end of the couch.
“Why aren’t you out?”
“Good comeback, spaz,” Brad said. “Seriously, what the hell’s the problem with you?”
Both were staring ahead, carefully avoiding anything that might imply the conversation mattered.
“I don’t have a problem,” Henry said. “What’s your problem?”
Chico and the Man is a repeat.
“Is it that Figger fuck?”
Henry winces at his brother’s use of the word fuck. Brad has a harsh way of saying it. His teeth really cut into his lower lip before pushing out the for something but it always sounds worse coming from him and anyway it’s none of his business and he’s setting me up, I can just feel it, he thought at the time.
“Why do you care?” Henry said.
“I don’t want a freakazoid for a younger brother, that’s why,” Brad said.
Henry notices that there was a pause before Brad said this. And he could have sworn Brad had glanced over at him. In earnest. Like he really might have cared. A slight pause, but then with Brad sometimes it was what he didn’t say.
And before Brad left, the conversation abandoned just like that, dangling in between them, Henry felt an impulse to cry and to hug his brother, so grateful for the sibling talk, so filled with love that he, momentarily at least, forgot his social misery. The feeling was quick, like a skipped heartbeat. Once it passed Henry got up to change the channel.
The sensor running underneath the floor mat just inside Baxter’s front door has triggered the chime that to Henry sounds like the doorbell at his Aunt Millicent’s New York apartment. That apartment, a shabby walk-up in Greenwich Village, always sick with the smell of cumin and curry and God-knows-what-other Indian spices Aunt Millicent experimented with, fancying herself the sophisticate of Henry’s family. “Just because she went to India once twenty years ago,” his mother muttered every time her sister appeared wearing skirts fashioned out of sari material. Aunt Millicent also says “ciao” instead of “goodbye,” tells them she’ll “ring” them later and signs her letters and cards “cheers.”
“Can I help you?” he asks, knowing that if Mr. Beardsley were here he’d get a lecture about enunciation and eye contact.
“Just looking,” the woman says, fingering the circle of shoulders fanning out from the easy-sportswear display in the center of the store, Mr. Beardsley’s attempt to remind this generation that sport coats are, in fact, leisure wear. “Casual Fridays ruined us all,” he lamented to Henry when they set the sign in the middle of the rack. “Used to be no man worth his salt would enter a workplace in anything less than a suit and tie,” he said, sifting one by one through each jacket, making sure the tiny bright upside-down-cupcake markers indicating size matched the actual garment—”Nothing worse than landing on the perfect jacket and finding out it’s not your size after all,” he’d say.
Along with sport coats, easy sportswear consists of cotton chinos (straight-legged with one-and-a-quarter-inch cuff), wide-wale corduroys (some embroidered with golf clubs, ducks or whales for the clubby inclusion they suggest), a large variety of oxford cloth shirts (“The largest in three counties,” Mr. Beardsley would proudly point out), and a wide selection of classically styled sweaters that are instantly recognizable and therefore comforting to a certain set of customers wary of anything new, anything that varies wildly from what their forebears wore. And so a man could purchase a V-neck tennis pullover, cream-colored with navy and maroon stripes around both the neck and hem. Which is to say he could easily duplicate the Gatsby style his own father had cultivated, complete with red crepe–soled white ducks and the proper white flannel trousers to match. Also for sale, an exact replica of the ubiquitous L. L. Bean Norwegian sweater, navy with white flecks evenly distributed throughout, promising to repel water should the wearer find himself caught in a downpour without a corduroy-collared field jacket, found not so far away in the outerwear section.
Henry tries to busy himself with the week’s receipts so his customer doesn’t think he is smothering. Mr. Beardsley stalks customers toward the end of every month, so eager is he to bring the numbers up, somehow failing to see a connection between the too-polite, breezy “no thanks, just stopping in for a sec” and the backing toward the door. Henry sees it and winces, knowing he’d do the exact same thing in their shoes. At least they’re polite to him, he always thinks. At least they’re not simply walking out. Mr. Beardsley does not notice.
“Will this be all?” Henry says, reaching for the three-pack (spelled p-a-k) of Hanes undershirts, size small, and the thin box of twelve one-hundred-percent-cotton handkerchiefs. Though he has been trained to use the new bar code detector meant to simplify transactions, the bar code won’t catch the attention of the laser line in the wand.
