TOM PERROTTA

The Wishbones

For my parents

This must be the death of rock ‘n roll….

—Todd Rundgren

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Part 1 - May

Chapter 1 - The Wednesday-Night Showcase

Chapter 2 - We're Soooo Thrilled

Chapter 3 - You've Got a Friend

Part 2 - June

Chapter 4 - It's Your Wedding

Chapter 5 - A Religious Experience

Chapter 6 - Are You Dave?

Chapter 7 - By The Way

Part 3 - July

Chapter 8 - Carlos and Stevie Ray

Chapter 9 - This Sad Gift

Chapter 10 - Randy by Starlight

Chapter 11 - Shiny Angels

Part 4 - August

Chapter 12 - War Pigs

Chapter 13 - Karma House

Chapter 14 - Wursthaus

Chapter 15 - You Still Here?

Part 5 - September

Chapter 16 - Fifteen Years in Fifteen Minutes

Chapter 17 - Dream of A Lifetime

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

THE WEDNESDAY-NIGHT SHOWCASE

Buzzy, the bass player, had a suspended license, so Dave swung by his house on the way to the Wednesday-night showcase. Buzzy did quality control for a company that manufactured prosthetic devices, and lived with his wife and two kids on a street of more or less identical split levels that must have seemed like an exciting place in the days before the British Invasion, back when Kennedy was President and Elvis was King. Buzzy was the only member of the wedding band who was married, a fact whose irony did not escape the notice of his fellow musicians. Artie, the sax player and manager, had just broken up with a girl who danced at Jiggles. Stan, the drummer and sometime accordionist, was sleepwalking through a painful divorce. Ian, the singer/keyboardist and all-around showman, was living at home with his parents, as was Dave, who handled rhythm guitar and background vocals.

Buzzy was waiting by the curb, a scrawny, pony tailed guy in a tuxedo and Yankees cap, with a beer in one hand and a guitar case in the other. He stowed his bass in the backseat, on top of Dave's Les Paul, and climbed in.

“Daverino,” he said, tilting the beer can in salute.

“Buzzmaster.”

Dave shifted into gear and headed for Central Avenue. The silence in the car was mellow, uncomplicated. Buzzy took a swig from the can and smacked his lips.

“Yup. Another Wednesday-night showcase.”

“You ready? The people are counting on you.”

Buzzy thought it over for a couple of seconds, then nodded.

“Coach,” he said, “I'm gonna play my heart out.”

Dave snorted his appreciation. The guys in the band liked to joke about the showcase, but they were careful not to complain—bookings had doubled since Artie found them the slot. And besides, goofy as it was, the showcase turned out to be a real time-saver: instead of scheduling separate auditions for every interested couple, the Wishbones could just tell prospective customers to come to the Ramada every third Wednesday of the month.

“You going out afterward?” Buzzy crushed the can in his hand and dropped it on the floor. “I'm in the mood for a few beers.”

“I can't. I'm supposed to go over to Julie's.”

“Hey.” Buzzy didn't bother to conceal his surprise. “You guys really getting back together?”

Dave didn't feel like going into the details. He had made a mistake telling the guys what had happened in the first place. He should have known he'd never hear the end of it. Now the incident had become part of band lore, like the night Ian got propositioned by the mother-of-the-bride, and that time Artie got his lights punched out by a Puerto Rican DJ.

“We've been talking on the phone. She says her parents aren't so upset anymore.”

Dave kept his eyes on the road. He didn't have to look to know that Buzzy was smirking.

“I wish I'd been there, man. Just to see the look on their faces.”

Dave grimaced. The look on their faces was the last thing he wanted to think about.

“We've been going out for a long time. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“A long time?” Buzzy seemed to be deriving great pleasure from the conversation. “Fifteen years, Dave. You've been going out with the woman for fifteen years. Since your sophomore year of high school.”

$5.99 BUFFET, proclaimed the marquee outside the Cranwood Ramada. SHOWCASE OF MUSICAL TALENT. Dave pulled into the sparsely occupied lot, glad for the opportunity to change the subject.

“Looks like a slow night.” He put the car into park and shut off the ignition.

Buzzy wasn't about to give up so easily. “What are you going to say to her parents?”

Dave undid his seat belt and opened the door. It was a lovely spring night. Leaving the guitars for Buzzy, he stepped out of the car and started walking at a brisk pace toward the entrance of the Sundown Lounge. Buzzy had to run to catch up with him, the hardshell cases banging like luggage against the outside of his legs.

“Bring flowers,” he advised, panting a little from the exertion. “You'll need all the help you can get.”

Sparkle was Hearing the end of their set when Dave and Buzzy entered the lounge. Their lead singer, Alan Zelack, was strutting across the stage in his red sequined tux, belting out “My Girl” in the heavy-metal falsetto he'd perfected during years of touring with the Misty Mountain Revue, a wildly successful Led Zeppelin tribute show. Now everything he touched came out sounding like Zeppelin, from Sinatra to the Hokey Pokey.

Artie and Ian were sitting at a table in the corner, looking like a couple trapped in a bad marriage. Both of them seemed relieved by the arrival of some new blood.

“Guess what?” Buzzy said, before they'd even had a chance to settle into their chairs. “Dave's going over to Julie's later on.”

“No way,” said Ian.

“Bullshit,” said Artie.

Dave held up both hands in a futile plea for restraint.

“Don't ask. It's none of your fucking business.”

But it was already too late. The story had moved into the public domain. Artie turned to Ian, smiling nervously.

“Mr. Müller, sir? I'm not sure if you remember me. I'm Dave … Dave Raymond?”

Ian inhaled through his teeth, looking puzzled. “Sorry, Dave. The name doesn't ring a bell.”

“You know,” Artie added helpfully, “the guy you caught poking your daughter?”

Ian clapped himself in the forehead. “Oh, that Dave. How could I have forgotten. Come on in. Honey, guess who's here?”

Even Dave had to laugh at that. All day long he'd been dreading the thought of having to face Julie's parents. He'd run through a number of scenarios in his head, but none of them included the possibility that he'd have to jog their memories about the circumstances of their last meeting.

“If they don't recognize you,” Buzzy suggested, “you can always try pulling your pants down.”

Dave's bandmates traded high fives as Sparkle launched into “Stairway to Heaven,” their final song of every showcase performance. It was the secret of their immense popularity, the ultimate sales pitch to a generation that couldn't imagine a special occasion that wouldn't be made even more special by a faithful live version of what radio station after radio station had determined to be “the most popular song of alltime.”

“Fuckin’ Stairway,” mumbled Artie.

Ian glanced at the stage. “Look at that fool.”

Zelack was sparkling in the spotlight, eyes closed, mouth pressed lovingly to the mike as he crooned the immortal gibberish about hedgerows and spring cleaning. Dave pushed his chair away from the table.

“I can't listen to this shit,” he said, to no one in particular.

It Was better outside. The night was quiet and the air seemed reasonably fresh for this part of the world. Dave sat down on the curb by the fire lane and stared at the lopped-off moon glowing dully above the Parkway overpass. He liked being part of the Wishbones, and he liked the other guys in the group, but sometimes the showcase got to him. It was more the atmosphere than anything else, the unmistakable odor of mediocrity that seemed to be as much a part of the Sundown Lounge as the paper tablecloths and the green leatherette menus.

Alan Zelack pissed him off too, and it wasn't just the sequined tuxedo or his idiotic falsetto. Four years earlier, Dave had auditioned for the Misty Mountain Revue. He wasn't a huge Zeppelin fan, but he was unemployed at the time and would've killed for a chance to make some money playing rock ‘n roll on a regular basis. He kicked ass at the audition, nailing the “Heartbreaker” solo note for note, every bend, hammer, and blast of feedback accounted for. But he didn't get the job.

“You've got the chops,” Zelack told him afterward. “There's no doubt about that. But this is show business. You've got to look the part.”

The sad thing was, Dave knew he was right. Zelack looked like a rock star. He was tall and whip thin, with high cheekbones and the mutant jaw of a born singer. Dave, on the other hand, just looked like a regular guy. He was an inch or two shorter than average, maybe a bit on the stocky side. Once, out of curiosity, he'd squeezed himself into a pair of leather pants, and it hadn't been a pretty sight.

Tonight, though, he had bigger things to worry about than his inability to pass for Jimmy Page. The guys could laugh all they wanted; Dave was the one who was going to have to walk into the Müllers’ house and try to conduct some sort of halfway civil chitchat with people who wouldn't have to use their imagination to picture him hopping from foot to foot, naked except for a hot pink condom.

It was ironic in a way. He and Julie had been having sex since they were sixteen. They had been reckless back then—no self-restraint, no birth control, no common sense. They used to screw in the basement rec room with her parents right upstairs, snoring in dreamland. If they were going to be caught, they should have been caught back then, at the height of their passion, back when they used to stare at each other's bodies in stupefied amazement, and compete to see who could say “I love you” more times in a single night. It didn't make any sense to be caught now, when they'd already been through an abortion, four different breakups, mutual infidelities, and so many bitter discussions about the future that they didn't bother to talk about it anymore. Not now, when Julie suffered from a more or less chronic yeast infection that had turned their lovemaking into a polite and tentative activity, full of murmured questions and apologies. Not now, when it was embarrassing enough just to be over thirty and still fucking in the rec room.

But Mr. and Mrs. Müller didn't care about any of that. They were supposed to have been in Atlantic City that afternoon, but Mr. Müller had forgotten his wallet, and hadn't realized it until two hours into the drive. So they'd just turned around and come on home—what else was there to do?— only to find their youngest daughter on her hands and knees on the rec room floor, and Dave kneeling behind her, singing along with the unbearably loud music blasting from the stereo (John Mellencamp, Julie's favorite), the volume of which had apparently concealed the noise of their arrival.

What transpired after that remained mercifully fuzzy in Dave's memory. All he really remembered was the bloodless shock on Julie's mother's face as he scrambled to his feet, his penis shrinking rapidly inside the neon condom (a random selection from a novelty assortment he'd purchased in Greenwich Village), only to discover that his right foot had fallen asleep.

“Mrs. Müller,” he'd assured her, reaching down like Adam to conceal his shame while unsuccessfully trying to balance on his left foot, “this isn't what you think.”

A Car door slammed. Dave looked up and saw a bulky, apparently perturbed man come jogging across the parking lot in a tuxedo. As he drew closer, Dave heard him mumbling to himself as he fumbled with the hooks of his cummerbund.

“Slow down,” he called out. “You're not late.”

Stan stopped running and peered in the direction of the voice, shading his eyes with one hand as though it were daytime.

“Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“You got any better ideas?”

Stan's only response was to trudge over to the curb and sit down. After a couple of seconds he exhaled wearily and stretched his legs out in front of him, revealing a pair of battered work boots protruding like loaves from the cuffs of his black trousers.

“Artie's not going to like that,” Dave pointed out.

“I lost my good shoes,” Stan explained. “I turned the damn house upside down trying to find them. That's why I'm late.”

“Don't sweat it. It's only the showcase.”

“I looked everywhere,” Stan continued, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice. “I mean, what did they do? Get up and take a walk without me?”

Stan had been a wreck for the past couple of months, ever since his wife announced that she was leaving him for her boss, a fifty-five-year-old lawyer with strange puffy hair who appeared in his own TV commercials, encouraging viewers to consider legal remedies for a host of everyday mishaps and conditions. Never the most reliable guy to begin with, Stan had lately been screwing up on a scale that was beginning to jeopardize his situation with Artie, who insisted on running the Wishbones like a business. He'd been late for two gigs in the past month (once because he'd locked his keys in his car, and once because he'd driven all the way to the Royal Oak before remembering that the reception was actually at the Blue Spruce); on a third occasion he'd shown up on time, but without drumsticks.

“I don't try to fuck up,” he explained, as if Dave had inquired about this possibility. “I've just got a lot on my mind right now.”

“No problem.” Dave patted him on the shoulder blade. “It happens to everyone.”

Stan nodded for a long time, as though the secrets of the universe were being revealed to him one by one.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Tell that to Artie.”

Phil Hart and His Heartstring Orchestra were tuning up on stage #2 when Dave returned to the lounge with Stan's hi-hat in one hand and drum stand in the other. Sparkle was breaking down their equipment on stage #1, and when they were finished, the Wishbones would begin setting up. The two stages—one at either end of the lounge—were the key to the smooth operation of the showcase.

As always, Phil and the boys opened with a surprisingly spunky version of “Celebration,” by Kool and the Gang—surprising, because with the exception of the drummer (Phil's grandson, a pockmarked recovering drug addict named Joey), everyone in the combo had more or less vivid memories of the Hoover administration. Walter, the piano player, whose hands shook terribly when he was doing anything but tickling the ivories, was rumored to be eighty-two years old.

Despite their age, powder blue uniforms, and schizoid repertoire, the Heartstring Orchestra was made up of real musicians, old pros from the Big Band era (the reed player's twin brother had apparently toured for a couple of years with Tommy Dorsey). When they shifted away from disco standards to songs that were better suited to their talents—“Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” “Paper Doll,” “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy”— you couldn't help but notice a change of weather inside the Sundown Lounge. Fingers started snapping; heads began to bob. It wasn't unusual to see a natty-looking older couple—the Orchestra specialized in second and third marriages—put down their drinks and take a graceful turn around the dance floor.

Phil Hart himself wasn't the greatest singer in the world, but he was a true showman. The man had style. Dave always took a moment to admire his distinctive way of moving onstage, a high-elbowed liquidy sway that was the essence of geriatric cool. If you asked, Phil would happily reveal the secret of his remarkable vitality.

“Artificial hips!” he'd exclaim, shaking his head at the marvels of modern technology. “I can wiggle again!”

One of the things Dave liked best about the wedding band was its efficiency. They could set up in twenty minutes and break down even faster than that. Some of the rock bands he'd played in had been weighed down by so much equipment that he'd felt more like a roadie than a musician. Lockjaw was the worst offender. He remembered an outdoor Battle of the Bands where they'd taken four hours to set up for a forty-five-minute performance marred by such earsplitting shrieks of feedback that even the die-hard headbangers in the audience were squeezing their ears, begging for mercy. (Lockjaw came in fifth out of five bands and dissolved a few months later.)

The Wishbones made music on a more human scale. Dave had joined the band with a number of reservations—the uniforms, the cheesy tunes, Artie's reputation as a ballbuster—but he quickly came to realize that the rewards went far beyond the two hundred dollars he got for playing a four-hour gig.

It turned out, amazingly enough, to be a blast. People drank at weddings. They danced like maniacs. They clapped and hooted and made requests. Every now and then, when the chemistry was right, things got raucous. And when that happened, the Wishbones knew how to crank up the volume and rock, with no apologies to anyone.

Dave had friends who were still chasing their dreams, playing in dingy clubs to audiences of twelve bored drunks, splitting thirty-nine dollars among four guys at the end of the night, then dragging themselves home at three o'clock in the morning. He saw the best of them growing exhausted and bitter, endlessly chewing over the thankless question of why the world still didn't give a shit.

Dave himself still hadn't completely surrendered his dream of the Big Time, but he had moved it to the back burner. Someday, maybe, the perfect band would come along, a band so good that no one would be able to say no to them. Until then, though, Dave was a Wishbone, and it was a helluva lot better than nothing.

Afterwards, because the event came to seem so significant in retrospect, he sometimes found himself trying to reconstruct it in his memory, as though the smallest detail might hold the key to some larger mystery.

The Wishbones had just finished setting up when the Heart-string Orchestra broke into “Like a Virgin,” their next-to-last tune of the night. If Madonna had happened to wander into the Sundown to check out the showcase, Dave thought she would have approved. Phil Hart gave the song a hilarious deadpan interpretation, as though it had never entered his mind that some people might find it amusing to see a seventy-three-year-old man with artificial hips doing a dignified shimmy at the mike stand as he sang about being touched for the very first time.

Dave leaned his guitar against his amp and stepped down from the rickety wooden platform that served as stage #1. He waved to the waitress, a brassy-haired woman of indeterminate age named Hilda, and mimed the act of bringing a glass to his mouth. Hilda nodded, but moved across the lounge in the opposite direction to wait on some paying customers, a young couple holding hands across the table and gazing at each other with that blissful prenewlywed intensity that would somehow evolve over the next two decades into the vacant stares of the long-married. It wasn't until Ian sidled up to him a few seconds later that Dave realized he'd been frozen in place, the invisible empty glass still tilted to his lips.

“Mick Box,” said Ian.

“Shit,” said Dave.

At every Wishbone function, Ian tried to stump Dave with a piece of rock trivia. He specialized in obscure British musicians from second-rate bands of the early seventies.

“Take your time,” Ian taunted. “It'll come to you.”

“Mick Box,” Dave chanted. “Mick Box … Mick Box … Mick Box …”

“You probably haven't thought about this band for fifteen years.”

A face began to take shape in Dave's mind. Narrow, ferrety features. The obligatory hair.

“I'm seeing a mustache,” he said.

“If it's a Fu Manchu, you're definitely getting warmer.”

“I want to say Mott the Hoople, but that's Mick Ronson.”

Dave's eyes strayed around the lounge as he attempted to place the mustachioed Mick in a band he hadn't thought about for fifteen years. Up on stage #2, Phil Hart was twisting his way through a musical interlude in “Like a Virgin.” On stage #1, Artie was lecturing Stan about proper Wishbone attire, frowning and jabbing his finger in the direction of the offending work boots. Stan kept nodding like a kid, mouthing the words, “Okay, okay,” over and over again.

“I give up,” said Dave. “Is it Slade?”

“Close,” groaned Ian. He winced as though pained on Dave's behalf. “Mick Box was in Uriah Heep.”

“Damn. I used to love Uriah Heep.”

“Easy Livin',” agreed Ian. “One of the great tunes of all time.”

“Mick Box,” laughed Dave. “What the fuck kind of name is that?”

In the middle of the lounge, the gazers were still enraptured with one another while Hilda stood by, pencil in hand, looking bored. At a nearby table, Alan Zelack touched wineglasses with a ridiculously beautiful woman in a slinky black dress who appeared to have materialized out of nowhere. With the sixth sense of a complete asshole, Zelack turned slowly, grinning with triumphant smugness, and raised his glass in greeting. Dave pretended not to notice.

“What the fuck kind of name is Uriah Heep?” Ian wondered.

That was when it happened. Dave looked up just in time to watch Phil Hart stop singing in the middle of the final chorus. A look of mild surprise passed across his face—recognition, Dave would later decide—as he turned slightly to the left. He wobbled— there was no other word for it—and the microphone slipped through his fingers, bouncing off the stage with a percussive cough of static.

Joey stopped drumming and looked around in alarm. Phil remained upright for a moment, empty-handed and wonder stricken, before sinking, almost gently, to his knees. Walter kept pounding his electric piano, oblivious to everything but the final measures of the song. Phil's eyes got big. He flung his arms wide like Al Jolson, as if to embrace his fate, and then pitched suddenly forward, landing facedown on the stage in a position he never would have chosen if he'd been offered even the slightest amount of choice in the matter.

Two hours later, drained and without flowers, Dave pulled up in front of Julie's house. He sat in the car for a few minutes listening to the engine tick, trying to work up the energy to open the door.

For the first time in his life, he had actually watched someone die—a man he liked and admired—and for the moment, at least, everything else seemed insubstantial, not fully serious. The thought of facing Julie's parents no longer disturbed him. Instead he felt a strange tenderness, as though he were preparing to visit them in the hospital.

It hadn't taken Phil Hart a long time to die, but an eternity seemed to have passed between the moment of his collapse and the arrival of medical assistance. At first the whole room seemed paralyzed, as though everyone were simply waiting for Phil to leap up and finish the song. Finally, Mel, the arthritic sax player, bent down with visible difficulty and retrieved the fallen microphone.

“Phil's hurt,” he announced, in a voice too calm for the circumstances. “Would someone be kind enough to call an ambulance?”

The Sundown burst into a hectic flurry of motion, with people scattering in several different directions at once, shouting for a telephone. Dave and Ian rushed across the lounge to check on Phil.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” Mel inquired. “How about a nurse?”

By the time Dave reached the edge of stage #2, Joey had already emerged from behind his drum kit, rolled Phil onto his back, and begun loosening the buttons of his ruffled shirt. Phil submitted patiently to these ministrations, his awestruck face turned to the ceiling. Even then, from a distance of about ten feet, Dave could see that he was gone.

“Grampa,” Joey implored him. “Grampa, please.”

“Is there a doctor in the house?” Mel repeated. “Does anyone know CPR?”

Dave hunched his shoulders and took a step back from the stage, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. He had taken a CPR class in high school, but all he remembered was that Ralph Vergiliak had pretended to hump the dummy, earning himself a week's detention.

“Grampa.” Joey's voice was stern now, as though he were scolding the dead man for his lack of cooperation. He grabbed hold of Phil's shoulders and gave them a hard shake. “Come on now, Grampa.”

From the corner of his eye, Dave caught a brilliant flash of red. Before he understood what he was looking at, Alan Zelack had rushed across the stage, shoved Joey out of the way, and begun CPR. The whole sequence came back to Dave as he watched—the head tilt, the sweep of the mouth with one finger, the pinching off of the nostrils. The multiple chest compressions for every breath of air.

Zelack performed these actions with ostentatious competence, his blond hair flying, his red tuxedo shooting off tiny urgent flares. Dave's first, ungenerous impulse was to resent him for hogging the spotlight even in a tragedy, but that quickly passed, replaced by a grudging sense of respect. Like everyone else gathered around the stage, Zelack must have known that Phil was already dead. And yet he kept trying fiercely to bring him back, pumping his chest and filling his lungs, minute after interminable minute, until the ambulance finally arrived, and Phil's body became the property of professionals.

The Wishbones played their set anyway. They thought about canceling, but a couple had traveled all the way from Belvidere with their wedding consultant to check them out, and didn't want to have make the trek again. As a courtesy to them, Artie decided that the show must go on.

Dave felt a little weird about it, but as soon as he strummed the first chord of “Jailhouse Rock,” his reservations vanished. The music jolted him like an electric shock. It seemed to pass through his body on its way from the guitar to the amp, cleansing him, reminding him of how good it felt to be alive.

And it wasn't just Dave, either. Buzzy, who usually stood stone-faced and motionless while he played, was grinning with amazement, rocking from side to side as he plucked out the pulse of the song. Ian had abandoned his usual two-bit Elvis impersonation and was singing like he meant it, while Stan pounded the drums as though exorcising the demons from his life. Even Artie caught the wave. The solo jumped out of his horn, every note of it a fresh squawk of pleasure. It seemed to Dave that the song had never existed before, that they'd invented it on the spot.

Somehow they kept the momentum for ten more tunes, finding something real in even the tiredest old standards. When they had run the gamut of their repertoire, from disco to pop, from polka to R&B, Ian surprised them all by breaking into one last song on his piano, something the Wishbones had never done before.

“This is for Phil,” he said. “Rest in peace, brother.”

The chords were simple, and Dave recognized them right away. He hadn't played “Knockin’ on Heaven's Door” since high school, back when he was lead guitarist in a band called Exit 36. Listening to the words now, colored as they were by death, Dave wondered what they could have meant to a bunch of teenagers in a suburban garage in 1979, kids whose idea of heaven was half an ounce of Colombian Gold and a girl with big tits to smoke it with.

But then he stopped wondering and gave himself up to the song. He closed his eyes and sang the chorus with every ounce of strength in his body. It was a blessing. Rest in peace, brother.

Julie answered the door in gray sweatpants and a baggy orange T-shirt. In her hand was a fat paperback with a tortilla chip marking the page.

“You lucked out,” she whispered, jerking her thumb in the direction of upstairs. “They went to bed.”

As he had on countless nights before this one, Dave followed her down the carpeted stairs to the rec room. As always, Julie left the door open, a somewhat discredited token of good faith to her parents. He pulled off his tuxedo jacket and draped it over the armrest of the brown-and-beige-plaid couch.

“Sorry I'm late. Things got messed up at the showcase.”

She shrugged. “It's probably better this way. They still haven't really forgiven you. Or me, for that matter.”

“You can't really blame them.”

Julie didn't respond one way or the other. She plopped down on the couch and stretched her legs out in front of her, resting them on the coffee table next to the bowl of chips that had supplied her bookmark. One leg of her sweatpants was pushed all the way up past her knee, while the other one extended down to her ankle. She put her hands behind her head and smiled up at him.

“So what happened at the showcase?”

Dave opened his mouth to tell her about Phil Hart, but something went haywire in his brain. He looked at her and thought how pretty she was, smiling up at him, rubbing her heel over her bare shin, waiting for his answer. He thought of how much they'd been through together, and how crazy he was to imagine that he would ever want more from life than she'd be able to give him. He spoke without intending to, and didn't really gauge the significance of his words until it was too late, until she was already off the couch and in his arms.

“Let's get married,” is what he'd told her.

WE'RE SOOOO THRILLED

He woke the next morning with a consciousness—it felt something like a hangover—of having made a terrible mistake. He couldn't figure out how it had happened, how he'd allowed years of resolve to crumble in a single moment of weakness. In the half darkness of his bedroom, he fantasized about calling and rescinding the offer.

“I'm not ready,” he'd explain. “I don't have a steady job or any money in the bank. You deserve someone more reliable, a husband you can count on.” He figured he'd leave out the part about not believing himself capable of a lifetime of sexual fidelity.

“So why'd you do it?” she'd ask, more curious than upset. “Why'd you propose if you didn't mean it?”

“I—I really don't know. I was just in a weird mood or something.” He could hear the lameness of his excuse. “I love you, but I'm just not prepared for this.”

The imaginary Julie listened carefully, her brow knitting into wavy lines of concentration. “I understand, Dave. It would be crazy for us to get married right now. But I do want to continue having sex with you.” Her voice dipped into a more sultry register. “In fact, I want to have sex with you right now.”

He threw off the covers and forced himself to get out of bed. This was no time to get sidetracked. He really did have to figure out a way to tell her that he hadn't actually meant to pop the question (though it wasn't even a question, now that he thought about it), but had somehow taken leave of his senses as a result of Phil's sudden death and that pushed-up leg of her sweatpants …

It wasn't going to be easy, he could see that. But maybe he wouldn't have to convince her. Maybe Julie was having second thoughts, too. Maybe she'd opened her eyes that morning and had the same realization as Dave—that they were acting rashly, that this was precisely the wrong time to be making such a momentous decision. He resolved to go downstairs, have a cup of coffee, and call her at the office. It was entirely possible that they could straighten out this mess in a matter of minutes, and maybe even laugh about it afterwards.

As usual, he had the house to himself. His mother left at seven to catch the train to Newark, and his father left at eight for his part-time retirement gig as a deliveryman for a local printer who called himself “Mr. Speedy.” Dave did the same sort of work, driving on a freelance basis for a courier service owned by Artie's brother, Rick. Mostly he worked afternoons, but his schedule was erratic. Some days he drove for three hours, some for twelve. It all depended. Some days he didn't work at all.

He should have been used to it by now, but being alone in the house on a weekday still made him feel like he was back in high school and had just put one over on his parents. All sorts of exciting and illicit behaviors offered themselves up for consideration. He could smoke a joint, phone an escort service, fry up a whole box of breakfast sausages. In the end, though, all he ever did was sit down in front of the muted TV and strum his acoustic guitar.

On the way to the coffeemaker, he stopped to read the note his mother had left on the kitchen table. She never failed to dream up an errand or two to fill his morning, as though she couldn't bear the thought of a grown man alone for a few hours with absolutely nothing to do. But today's message was completely er rand-free.

“CONGRATULATIONS!!” it said. “We're soooo thrilled. Julie's a wonderful girl.” Then, at the bottom of the page, in tiny letters: “P.S.— It's about time.”

His mother answered on the second ring. “Mr. Nordberg's office.” There was a singsong lilt in her voice, a sunny, professional note that still caught him off guard after all these years of calling her at the office.

“It's me,” he said.

“HELL-loo,” she cooed, shifting to a more maternal, but equally cheerful tone. “I was just about to call. Your father and I are so happy, honey.”

“How'd you find out?”

“Dolores called this morning, right before I left. Didn't you hear the phone?”

“I must have slept right through it.”

“Have you picked a date?”

“Not yet.”

“September's a good month.”

“This September?”

“August is too hot. And lots of people are away. I think you should hold off till September.”

“You mean four months from now?”

“It's May now, so let's see … June, July, August … Four months sounds about right.”

“That's a little soon, don't you think?”

His mother laughed. “When you've been dating the girl for fifteen years, honey, you don't need a long engagement.”

“Mom,” he said, making an effort to control his exasperation, “we haven't been going out for fifteen years. Everybody says that, but it's just not true.”

“On and off,” his mother said, correcting her error. “Fifteen years on and off.”

“Okay, whatever. It's really not worth arguing about.”

“Anyway, for what it's worth, I still think September is a good month.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

A brief silence ensued. When his mother spoke, her voice had dwindled into a worried, confidential whisper. “She's not … in trouble, is she?”

“In trouble?” Dave teased. “You mean with the law?”

“Ha ha,” she replied.

“Not that I know of.”

“Good.” Another phone rang at her end of the line. “I have to grab that, honey. Bye.”

“Okay,” he told the hum that had replaced his mother. “Talk to you later.”

Julie Called before he'd swallowed his second sip of coffee.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“Oh, hi.”

“What's wrong?” she asked quickly. He caught the barely perceptible note of fear in her voice.

“Nothing.”

“You don't sound too good.”

“I'm fine.”

“Are you sure?”

He saw the opening, but couldn't bring himself to take it. The kind of talk they needed to have, you couldn't do over the phone, he realized, especially during business hours.

“I didn't get to tell you last night. Phil Hart died at the showcase. He collapsed right onstage.”

“Phil Hart?”

“You know,” Dave told her. “Phil Hart and His Heartstring Orchestra. The guy with the artificial hips?”

“He collapsed onstage?”

“Right in the middle of'Like a Virgin.’ I'm not sure if it was a stroke or coronary or what.”

“God, Dave. That must have been awful. Why didn't you tell me?

“I don't know. I guess I didn't want to spoil the mood.”

“That was sweet of you.” She sounded vaguely perplexed.

Dave didn't answer. He just sat there, staring at the nutritional information on the side panel of a box of Cheerios, marveling at his own cowardice.

“I love you,” she said.

“Yeah.” He massaged an eyelid with two fingers. “Same here.”

“Oh, by the way,” she said. “You're invited for supper tonight. My parents want to celebrate.”

He forced himself not to groan. “What time?”

“Seven?”

“Okay.”

“There's so much planning to do,” she said happily. “I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“By the way,” she added, “what do you think of September?”

Dave had two courier runs that afternoon—a quick in-and-out to Wall Street, followed by a trip to Morristown to drop off some X rays at a doctor's office. He liked driving for a living, especially since it meant he got paid for time spent listening to tunes on his car stereo. There was no better way to experience music, cranking the volume as high as it could go in an enclosed space, singing at the top of his lungs as he zigzagged like a stuntman through slow-moving traffic on the Pulaski Skyway. He could never understand how people managed to survive entire days cooped up in an office, with nothing to listen to but ringing phones and hushed voices. Even worse, a few of the places he visited had piped-in Muzak, the sound track of living death. Just thinking about it gave him the willies.

Another cool thing about his job was that it brought him into the city two or three times a week. Manhattan was always a jolt of crazy energy, a reminder that life wasn't meant to be safe or easy, the way it was in the suburbs. Dave even appreciated the stuff that gave most drivers headaches—the insane cabbies and squeegee men, the pedestrians who swarmed around his car at red lights like ants around a piece of candy, the whistle-tooting bike messengers and Rollerbladers who zipped past his windshield in suicidal blurs. Just making it in and out of this mess in one piece qualified as a triumph, an achievement he could carry around for the rest of the day.

Sometimes he wondered if things would have turned out differently if he'd moved into the city after dropping out of college instead of drifting back to his parents’ house and the routine of familiar places and faces that had consumed his life ever since. Maybe it would have sharpened him somehow, having to live in a dingy, roach-infested shoe-box apartment, eating canned soup and SpaghettiOs, following in the footsteps of Dylan and Lou Reed and Talking Heads and the zillions of wannabes who'd journeyed to the city to test themselves against the myth Sinatra sang about. It wasn't something he brooded about, just a possibility he turned over in his mind every now and then when he found himself trying to answer the thorny question of how it was he'd ended up a Wishbone instead of a star.

In the car, he was able to consider his predicament more clearly, without the edge of panic that had clouded his morning thoughts. The first thing he realized was that it wasn't the idea of marrying Julie that frightened him; it was the idea of being married, of joining this big corny club of middle-aged men that included his father, Julie's father, his uncles, and every scoutmaster, Little League coach, and volunteer fireman he'd ever known. There were some exceptions—Bruce Springsteen and Buzzy came to mind— but in general, marriage seemed to require that a man check his valuables at the door: his dreams, his freedom, all the wildness that had defined the secret part of his life, even if, like Dave, he wasn't all that wild in reality.

It was easier if you were a woman. Women were supposed to want to get married, to go through life with a husband and children. A man's job, as far as Dave could see, was simply to resist for as long as possible before surrendering to the inevitable. You didn't have to play guitar in a wedding band to know that there was something at least slightly pathetic about a bridegroom.

Beyond his personal fears, though, he identified a deeper, more philosophical question: Was marriage something you chose, or was it something that happened whether you wanted it to or not, one of those mysterious, transforming events on the order of birth and death? The no-brain answer, of course, was that you chose. You were an adult in a free country; there were no arranged marriages in America. You didn't have to do anything you didn't want to.

He accepted all that, but on another level, it was hard to say that he and Julie had actually chosen each other in some rational, adult way. Fifteen years ago—half their lifetime—she had walked up to him in the hallway of Warren G. Harding Regional High School and told him that Exit 36 had put on a great show at the spring dance and predicted that they would someday be famous. A week later he took her to see Midnight Express. Two months after that they split a six-pack purchased by her older sister's boyfriend and had sex for the first time. It just happened, in some urgent hormonal haze that had little to do with concepts like choice or intention, and they hadn't been free of each other since. And now, apparently, unless he thought of something fast, they were going to get themselves married.

Dave's father Sat at the table in his Mr. Speedy baseball cap, reading the Daily News with the almost religious thoroughness he devoted to every edition. It seemed to Dave that he pored over every word of it—the advertisements, the classifieds, the bridge column, all twelve horoscopes. Reading the newspaper filled most of Al Raymond's spare time; it was his version of a hobby.

“Hey,” he said, looking up with a smile that was surprised and satisfied at the same time. “Congratulations. Your mother told me the good news.”

“Word travels fast.”

“You had her worried there for a while, Dave. She didn't think Julie would stick around long enough for you to make up your mind.”

“It wasn't a matter of making up my mind. I just didn't feel ready.”

“No one feels ready. It's the same with having kids. You just jump in and start treading water. If everybody waited until they were ready, we wouldn't need express lines at the supermarket.”

Since his retirement, Al had emerged as something of an armchair philosopher, full of cryptic insights into the workings of the world. It was a development that surprised the whole family. Dave still came home half expecting to find the old Al lurking behind his paper, the grumpy exhausted chief of maintenance at the county courthouse, the human jukebox of grievances.

“So what do you think about marriage?” Dave asked, sorting through the junk mail on top of the microwave.

“About what?”

“Marriage.”

“Julie's great,” his father replied. “I hope you'll be happy together.”

“I didn't ask about Julie. I asked what you thought about marriage.”

“What? The institution in general?”

“Yeah. I mean, you've been married for thirty-six years. I figure you might have formed an opinion by now.”

His father studied him for a few seconds, apparently trying to decide if he was serious.

“Come on,” he said, chuckling uncomfortably. “Quit pulling my leg.”

Until that evening, Dave had never given serious consideration to the matter of inlaws. He'd known Jack and Dolores Müller for a long time—almost as long as he'd known their daughter—and paid them the wary respect due the parents of the girl you're sleeping with, but it hadn't occurred to him, except in the vaguest, most fleeting way, to think of them as relatives, people whose lives might one day be intimately and inextricably caught up with his own. Inlaws were people you were required to visit on holidays, people whose genes your children would inherit, people who might—it happened all the time, he realized with dismay—end up, for one reason or another, living in your house.

Mrs. Muller answered the door in a ruffled apron, the bib of which was emblazoned with the image of an eggplant. Despite her manufactured smile, the air between them was instantly thick with embarrassment; Dave had to resist an impulse to place his hands over his crotch. Stepping through the awkwardness into the house, he greeted his future mother-in-law with a clever approximation of a hug.

“Congratulations,” she said, rallying a little. “We're so pleased.”

“Thanks. It's kind of amazing, isn't it?”

“I'll say,” Mrs. Müller agreed, her voice suddenly full of conviction.

Julie was in the kitchen, tenderly probing a casserole with a very large fork. She was wearing gingham oven mitts and a gingham apron over a black floral print dress that was one of Dave's favorites (she occasionally “forgot” to wear underwear with it, a lapse that thrilled him beyond words). Still clutching the fork, she rushed across the room to embrace him. Her skin was clammy; she smelled of meat and Obsession.

“You're gonna love this,” she said. “We made all your favorites.

Dave had never seen her in an apron before, and the effect was disconcerting, especially with her mother standing so close by, also in an apron. The two of them shared a facial resemblance so strong that you could almost imagine them not as mother and daughter, but as the same person at two different stages of life.

Dave had heard the joke about taking a long hard look at your prospective mother-in-law before deciding to get married, but he'd never given it a second thought. It was one of those pearls of marital wisdom a certain type of middle-aged guy like to dispense, something Henny Youngman probably said on Johnny Carson back in 1963.

But now he looked at Julie and Dolores and wondered. Was it possible that Mrs. Muller had once possessed a body as curvy and stirring as Julie's? If so, when had it changed? Was it a gradual transformation, or did it happen overnight? He made a mental note to ask Julie to show him the family photo albums. It was never too early to start bracing for the future.

“So,” he said, gazing around the kitchen with feigned interest, “anything I can do?”

“I don't think so,” said Julie.

“Why don't you go downstairs,” Mrs. Müller suggested, in a tone that made it clear he had no choice in the matter. “Jack wants to have a drink with you.”

Dave shot a quick, pleading glance at Julie, but she refused to save him. Shrugging an insincere apology, she shooed him out of the kitchen with a puffy, checkered hand.

Downstairs, Mr. Muller was waiting on the couch in a tweed jacket and striped tie. He had a glass of scotch in one hand and a thoughtful expression on his face. Except for the metronomic tapping of his right loafer on the carpeted floor, he seemed utterly calm, as though he would've been pleased to sit for hours dressed up like that in a dim and quiet basement.

“Make yourself a drink,” he said, gesturing toward the bar in the corner, on top of which rested an array of bottles, a bowl of lime sections, and an ice bucket that turned out to be empty when Dave lifted the lid.

Grateful for the diversion, he poured himself a stiff vodka tonic. Given that he and Mr. Müller usually made it a point to steer clear of each other, he was somewhat alarmed by the formality of the situation. A roster of unpleasant questions unfurled itself in his mind. What kind of life could he offer Julie? What was the state of his finances? Could he foresee a day when he might be able to afford a house or children? Dave knew all the questions; they were the same ones he'd posed to himself when he'd needed to talk himself out of marriage in the past. Nonetheless, it was galling to have to justify his life to Mr. Müller. He dropped a chunk of lime into his drink and vowed not to apologize for the choices he'd made.

For some reason, the couch was the only piece of furniture in the rec room, so he had no alternative but to sit down a cushion's distance away from Mr. Müller, who was examining Dave's ratty jeans and dirty Converse All Stars with an expression of careful indifference. Dave wished that Julie had warned him that her family was dressing up; he might've at least shaved and given a little more thought to his wardrobe.

“Cheers,” he said, raising his glass in a halfhearted toast.

Mr. Müller returned the gesture without enthusiasm, then pointedly cleared his throat. “I think we need to talk.”

“Okay.”

Mr. Müller swirled the scotch around in his glass. He looked vaguely pained, as though he were trying hard to remember a name. “You've been hanging around Julie for a long time,” he observed, “but I don't feel like I know you. I haven't gotten a handle on … How should I say this? Your angle on the world.”

“Obtuse,” Dave replied, his nerves getting the worst of him.

Mr. Müller cupped one hand around his ear like Ronald Reagan. “Excuse me?”

“Obtuse,” Dave repeated, enunciating more clearly. “I was trying to make a joke. It's a kind of angle. More than ninety degrees?” He tried to illustrate the concept with his hands, but ran into some unexpected difficulty.

“I see,” Mr. Müller replied, attempting to look amused. “Obtuse, acute.”

“Right,” said Dave.

“Geometry,” Mr. Müller said approvingly, as though the subtleties of Dave's remark had finally fallen into place.

“Exactly.”

Mr. Muller polished off his drink and set the glass down on the coffee table with a decisive smack.

“Do you like to fish?”

“Excuse me?” said Dave.

Mr. Müller reformulated the question.

“Fishing,” he said. “Do you like it?”

“Not really. I went a couple of times as a kid, but then I got the hook caught on my eyelid one time, and I pretty much lost interest after that.”

“That'll do it,” Mr. Müller agreed.

“What about you?” Dave ventured after a moment or two of silence. “Do you?”

Mr. Müller gave the matter some thought. For his age, he was a good-looking man, tall and lean, with a boyish shock of gray hair falling over his forehead. He looked senatorial, Dave thought, although his brief entry into the political arena had been a disaster. After losing three close races for a seat on the Darwin school board, he'd bowed to the wishes of the Republican Party and made way for another candidate.

“Never did much for me,” he admitted. “It's bad enough watching them die, but then you have to clean them. Grabbing a handful of slimy guts just isn't my idea of R & R.” He retrieved his glass from the table. “Mind if I have another?”

“Be my guest,” Dave told him.

Mr. Müller got up and poured himself a generous drink. Julie sometimes wondered out loud if her father had a drinking problem, if that was why his career had stalled and he'd ended up as a low-level manager at Prudential instead of the bigwig executive he seemed cut out to be.

“Why did you want to know?” Dave asked.

Mr. Müller eased himself back into his seat. He tasted a mouthful of the scotch as though it were a fine wine. “Know what?”

“Why did you ask me if I liked to fish?”

“Just curious. I was wondering what you do for fun. If you have any hobbies and so forth.”

Dave shook his head. “Just the music, but that goes way beyond a hobby. It's the only thing I really care about.”

“Julie tells me you're in a wedding band.”

“The Wishbones. I've been playing with them for two years.”

“Good money in that?”

Here it comes, Dave thought.

“Not bad, actually. About fifty bucks an hour when you break it down.”

“Must be interesting,” Mr. Müller observed, “going to all those weddings.”

Dave nodded. “You learn a lot about people.”

“I bet.” Mr. Müller shoved one hand into his pants pocket and jingled some change. “What about DJs? Give you much competition?”

“Not really. There's no real substitute for live music.”

Mr. Müller gazed contemplatively at his beverage. “A kid I work with is a DJ. He calls himself Rockin’ Randy or some such.”

Before Dave could reply, Julie opened the door and poked her head into the room.

“Dinner,” she told them.

Mr. Müller jumped up from the couch like he'd heard a gunshot.

“Chowtime,” he said, looking deeply relieved.

Later, after her parents had gone to bed, Dave and Julie went down to the rec room to watch TV. Dave channel-surfed for a while, stopping to watch an Amy Grant video on VH1. He'd never told anyone, but he thought Amy Grant was the sexiest woman alive. The fact that she was born-again just made fantasizing about her that much more exciting.

Julie snuggled up next to him like they were back in high school. “Well,” she said, “that wasn't so bad, was it?”

Amy Grant was dancing against a chaste white background, wearing a succession of cute hats, looking like she was having the time of her life. That was the secret of her appeal, Dave realized. She just seemed so ecstatically happy to be herself, beautiful and dancing on VH1.

“Was it?” Julie asked again.

“The food was great. You outdid yourself.”

“My parents were good, too, don't you think?”

“They were fine.”

In fact, the evening had been fairly painless, much easier than Dave had expected. Mr. and Mrs. Müller were surprisingly civil with each other, and Julie hadn't snapped at them once. No one made even a veiled reference to the sex incident. Julie slid her index finger between two buttons of Dave's shirt.

“It's amazing how excited they were when I told them. How did your parents take it?”

It had always interested Dave how some artists were able to make videos that captured their sensibility, while others couldn't even come close. As a general rule, the cooler you were, the less likely you were to succeed on video. You couldn't really imagine Chrissie Hynde or Natalie Merchant dancing around in twelve different hats.

“Dave.” Julie snatched the remote from his hand, erasing Amy from the screen. “I asked you a question.”

“Sorry. I got a little distracted.”

“What's wrong? You act like something's bothering you.”

He swallowed hard. It was now or never.

“There is,” he confessed.

She moved away from him, sitting up straight and watching him with an alertness that was fierce, almost animal.

“What?”

“I feel awful about this.”

“Go on,” she said. There was the faintest quiver in her voice.

All at once, he knew he couldn't do it. He'd never be able to. They'd live together for fifty years and be buried side by side before he'd be able to explain that it was all just an accident.

“Go on,” she repeated.

“It's the ring,” he said. “I can't afford to buy you a good one.”

The tension drained visibly from her face; she slumped back against the couch and shook her head.

“I don't care about the ring,” she told him.

“I do. You deserve a nice one.”

“I really don't care, Dave.”

“Well, I do.”

She terminated the discussion by reaching behind his head, pulling his face against hers, and kissing him in a way that normally would have made him forget everything else.

“Julie,” he said, when she finally came up for air, “I was wondering about something.”

“Hmm?”

“Do you have any photo albums I could look at?”

“Now?” she asked, kissing him again.

“Yeah,” he said. “If it's not too much trouble.”

“Right now?” she asked, tracing the grooves of his ear with her tongue.

“Uh-huh,” he murmured. “As long as it's not a problem.”

“This very minute?” she asked, sucking on his earlobe while tugging with gentle efficiency on his belt.

“Whenever,” he told her.

YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND

On the way to Phil Hart's wake, Dave told Buzzy about his engagement.

“That's great,” Buzzy said. He was wearing a black pinstripe suit with a black shirt and a skinny white leather tie, an outfit that made Dave vaguely embarrassed on his behalf. “I'm really happy for you.”

“You mean that?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“I don't know. I'm not sure it's such a great idea myself.”

“Why?” Buzzy turned to Dave with an expression of dawning comprehension. “Her old man answer the door with a shotgun?”

“Nothing like that.”

A couple of seconds went by. “So how'd it happen? You get down on your knees and all that crap?”

“I don't know.”

“You were there,” Buzzy reminded him. He looked at Dave more closely. “You were there, right?”

“I was,” Dave admitted. “I just didn't mean to do it.”

“Ah,” said Buzzy.

Dave's chest felt constricted, as though he were wrapped from armpit to navel in Ace bandages.

“I'm up the fucking creek,” he said. “She's already reserved the church.”

Buzzy laughed. “Tell her you have a gig that day.” When Dave didn't respond, he rolled his window down and spit a wad of gum into the street. “It was easier for me. Jo Ann was pregnant with Zeke. That kind of made the decision for me.”

Of all the Wishbones, Buzzy had come closest to the big time. In the mid-eighties he'd been part of Flesh Wound, a locally popular speed metal band that had been on the verge of signing with one of the major labels when the guy they were negotiating with got fired and the deal collapsed. Flesh Wound's lead singer and lead guitarist split off to form LasseratoR, which had since become a fixture on the local club circuit, but Buzzy had retired from serious rock ‘n roll in favor of marriage and family.

“Jesus,” said Dave. “Look at this.”

Warneck's Funeral Home looked like the scene of a good party. Cars lined both sides of the street in front of the imposing Victorian mansion; well-dressed people stood in clusters on the porch and lawn, taking advantage of the balmy evening.

Dave parked on a nearby side street. He and Buzzy walked in silence down a sidewalk sprinkled with a confetti of white blossoms already going brown along the edges. There was a greenish fragrance in the air, a soft springtime smell that made him nostalgic for high school, the feeling of endless possibility that stretched out in front of you every time you left your house on a night like this.

“Are you glad you did it?” he asked.

“What? Get married?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm forty-one,” Buzzy replied, after a brief hesitation. “I got a house, a wife and kids, and a job that doesn't make me want to buy a gun and go wreak havoc at the mall. I get to play music on the weekends and drink a couple of beers every once in a while. Things could be worse, Daverino. They could be a helluva lot worse.”

“I hear you,” said Dave.

A couple of teenage girls nearly bumped into them as they rounded the corner to Warneck's. The girls were nothing special, a pair of giggly fifteen-year-olds in baggy jeans and tight cropped shirts that exposed their navels, but Dave and Buzzy parted like the Red Sea to let them pass, then turned to watch them continue down the street, the air still vibrating from the mysterious power of their bodies.

“Damn,” said Dave.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Buzzy.

Just then, for no reason at all, the girls turned in unison and waved. They exploded into a fresh round of giggles when Dave and Buzzy waved back. Buzzy tugged on the sleeve of Dave's sport coat.

“Come on, let's go talk to them.”

“Okay,” said Dave.

Despite their agreement, both men remained motionless as the girls receded into the distance, finally disappearing around a corner. Without further discussion, Dave and Buzzy turned and walked the rest of the way to the funeral home.

Stan knew he was going to be late for the fucking wake, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to give Susie her goddam birthday present. That was the important thing. If Artie didn't like it, Artie could take his shiny saxophone and ram it up his managerial ass.

He uncapped the bottle of Jack Daniels between his legs and took a long pull, keeping his eyes trained all the while on the door of the handsome white clapboard house with the wraparound porch that doubled as the law offices of Joel Silverblatt, attorney-at-law.

“I'm Joel Shysterblatt,” Stan mumbled, “and if you suffer from hemorrhoids or tooth decay related to an automobile accident, I've got important information that you need to know.”

When she first started working for the guy, Susie had loved it when he did his Joel Shysterblatt imitation.

“That's him,” she'd say, covering her mouth to hold in the laughter. “That's Joel to a T.”

Then, all of the sudden, she didn't find it so funny anymore.

“Joel's a sweet guy,” she'd tell him. “He's not like you think.”

“Come on,” Stan would say. “The guy's a shyster. He gets rich off other people's misery.”

“You know what?” she'd tell him. “You don't know the first thing about the contingency fee system. It works to protect the little guy.”

“The guy's a shyster, Susie.”

“And stop using that word. It's anti-Semitic.”

She was probably already fucking Shysterblatt by the time she started talking like that, but Stan was living in a dreamworld. Susie was his wife. They'd been happily married (at least in Stan's opinion) for eighteen months. It never occurred to him that she might be even the least bit attracted to her boss until he came home from a wedding one Saturday night and found an envelope on the kitchen table with his name on it.

He lifted Susie's unwrapped gift off the passenger seat and studied it in the failing light. It was a framed enlargement of a picture taken on their honeymoon in Cancun. Stan couldn't remember who'd taken the picture, but he knew it couldn't have been him or Susie, since both of them were in it.

The subject is Susie, standing on the beach in a pink bikini, squeezing water out of her hair with both hands. She's smiling, and her evenly tanned skin glistens with tiny droplets of water. Behind her, the ocean glows a rich shade of turquoise. At the left edge of the image, a man's arm reaches into the frame, offering the woman a towel. The arm belongs to Stan.

He thought the picture captured something important about their relationship, something she needed to think about. If it hadn't been for the restraining order, he would've just walked into the office and laid it on her desk.

“Happy Birthday,” he would've said. Nothing else. And then he would've walked out.

He still couldn't believe she'd slapped him with that court order. He hadn't been violent with her except that one time, and even then, he'd only put her in the headlock to try to get her to listen. At the hearing, she'd accused him of stalking her and making death threats. On Joel's advice she'd taped his phone calls and kept a log of the time he spent spying on her from his car. Stan was surprised to learn that he'd called her on fourteen separate occasions on Valentine's Day, each time saying the exact same thing before hanging up: “Till death do us part, Susie. Till death do us part.” (He'd been drinking that day, and could only remember calling her five, maybe six times at the most.)

Stan explained that he'd only been reminding her of her wedding vows, but the judge—probably an old law school chum of Shysterblatt's—had ruled in Susie's favor. So now Stan wasn't allowed within a hundred feet of the woman he'd married and still loved with all his heart. That was the fucking legal system for you.

At five after seven, Joel Silverblatt emerged from his office and walked across the street. He tapped on the driver's-side window of Stan's LeBaron. Stan rolled it down.

“Go home,” Silverblatt told him. “We just called the police.”

“The police can't do anything. I'm more than a hundred feet away.”

“You're drunk. You're sitting in your car with a bottle of whiskey. You want to lose your license on top of everything else?”

“Everything else?” Stan repeated incredulously. “You mean like my wife?”

The evening was breezy; Silverblatt reached up with both hands to protect his hairdo from the elements. He was a rubber-faced guy with a fleshy nose and dark circles under his eyes from trying to keep up with a woman half his age.

“Go home, Stan. Go anywhere. Don't you have someplace else to be?”

Stan thought of the wake. He thought of Artie, and of the cops on their way. He thought of Susie in Mexico, ocean water streaming from her hair. Suddenly he felt tired, too tired for any more trouble.

“I'll go,” he said. “On one condition.”

“What's that?”

Stan poked the picture into Silverblatt's tummy. “Give her this. It's her birthday present.”

With obvious reluctance, Silverblatt accepted the photograph. Stan started his car.

“It's our honeymoon,” he explained. “That's me holding the towel.”

“I'm sick of this bullshit.” Artie pushed up the sleeve of his double-breasted Armani-style suit to consult his nearly authentic Rolex. He held up his thumb and forefinger, spaced about an inch apart. “Stan's about this fucking close to being an ex-fucking Wishbone.”

“Come on,” said Dave. “It's a wake. What's the difference if he's here or not?”

“What's the difference?” Artie asked. “I'll tell you what's the difference. A band's only as strong as its weakest member. If one guy is a fuck-up, the whole group's in trouble.”

“Did you see Sid and Nancy?” Ian cut in. He was dressed like a professor on TV, tweed jacket over a black turtleneck. The jacket even had patches on the elbows. “It's just like what you're talking about.”

“Didn't see it,” said Artie.

“I did,” said Dave.

“Sid and Nancy?” Buzzy seemed distressed. “The one about the waitress?”

“Waitress?” Ian went cross-eyed and stuck out his tongue. “What planet are you from?”

“Sid Vicious,” Dave explained. “The guy in the Sex Pistols.”

“Good flick?” asked Buzzy.

“Excellent,” said Ian. “You should rent it sometime.”

“I liked The Doors,” Buzzy told him. “You were right about that one.”

“Oliver Stone.” Ian nodded as though the director were a friend of his.

“You liked that?” Artie said. “How could you like that crap?”

“I liked the scene in the elevator,” Buzzy said, grinning at the memory. “The one where he gets the blow job.”

“The guy was a poet,” said Ian. “An honest-to-God fucking poet.”

“Big deal.” Artie shook his head in disgust. “He writes a few good songs, shows the world his dick, gets fat as a pig, and drinks himself to death. That's the whole movie.”

“He was trying to make a point,” Ian countered.

“Oh yeah?” said Artie. “What point is that?”

Ian thought it over for a few seconds, then shrugged.

“Beats me,” he said. “I still think it was a pretty cool movie.”

Nobody said anything for a while. Artie checked his watch again and muttered something about Stan being a total fucking zero. Ian knelt down and rubbed a spot of dirt off his cowboy boot. Dave watched a teenage boy help a frail old woman up the steps of the funeral home and wondered why a grown man would make himself miserable over something as simple as marrying the woman he loved. Buzzy slapped himself in the forehead.

“Frankie and Johnny.” he said, his face lighting up with relief. “That's the movie I was thinking of.”

Phil Hart was laid out in the clothes he'd died in, the satin-lapeled, powder blue uniform of the Heartstring Orchestra. On a nearby table, surrounded by elaborate bouquets and floral wreaths, a boom box played a tape of Phil singing “Summer Wind,” accompanied by a piano.

Dave had never been to a wake with music before, and he thought it made a real difference. Instead of the grim focus on the casket he'd encountered in the past, there was a relaxed, almost cheerful atmosphere in the viewing room. People were mingling; a low hum of conversation filled the void between the living and the dead. If you closed your eyes, you might have thought you'd wandered into a cocktail party by mistake.

The Wishbones joined the line of people waiting to file past the coffin and offer their condolences to Phil's family, who were gathered along the opposite wall in a wedding-style receiving line. Dave was surprised to see the surviving members of the Heartstring Orchestra, also in uniform, standing shoulder to shoulder with Phil's wife and grown children, as though all of them—not just Joey Franco, but Walter and Mel as well—were blood relatives of the dead man, instead of guys he'd played in a band with.

“Candy Man” followed “Summer Wind.” Dave thought it was a peculiar song to be playing at someone's wake—he remembered hearing somewhere that it was actually about a drug dealer— but it seemed to have some sort of special meaning for the people in the receiving line. As soon as it began, the attention in the room shifted to Phil's widow, a tiny, white-haired woman with delicate features and a dazed expression on her face. She dabbed at her eyes with a pale green Kleenex, then whispered something to the overweight man standing next to her. The man, who must have been her son, smiled like he was going to cry and said something in response that sent a ripple of amusement down the line. Ian poked Dave in the ribs.

“Daryl Dragon,” he said.

“What?”

“Daryl Dragon.” Ian looked smug. “I'll be amazed if you get this one.”

Dave was in no mood for trivia, but he didn't want to hurt Ian's feelings. He pretended to think about Daryl Dragon while watching the activity on the other side of the room. Phil's widow began to sob quietly, as did Mel, the sax player in the Heartstring Orchestra. He buried his face in his hands while Joey Franco patted him awkwardly on the arm. Walter, the piano player, reached into his inside coat pocket with one trembling hand and pulled out a crumpled handkerchief. An obscure synapse fired in Dave's brain; two lost faces spiraled up at him from the dark swamp of oblivion.

“The Captain,” he said.

Ian's mouth dropped open. Despite his best efforts, Dave felt a smile spreading across his face. Mel blew his nose into Walter's handkerchief; the sound of it was audible across the room.

“Daryl Dragon was the Captain in the Captain and Tennille.”

“Son of a bitch.” Ian ran his fingers through his hair in a way that expressed his total amazement. “They should put you on Jeopardy.”

The first thing Dave noticed when he stepped up to the coffin was the microphone someone had tucked between Phil's crossed hands and white shirt, as though he'd been booked for a couple of gigs in heaven and wanted to arrive prepared. The unexpected sight of it—black, sleek, technological—made him wonder if, centuries from now, long after Phil himself had returned to dust, archaeologists from another civilization might dig up his grave and discover a pair of artificial hips and a microphone.

Dave never knew how to behave when confronted with the bodily presence of the dead. He didn't believe in God—at least not in a God who had nothing better to do than eavesdrop—so prayer seemed like a hollow gesture. Touching the corpse didn't strike him as an appealing option, either. So he just stood there, looking down at Phil, listening to his disembodied voice singing “You've Got a Friend,” and wondering why it was that the people in charge of these things had decided to use such a thick coating of powder on his face.

It seemed to him that Phil had a lot to be grateful for. He had lived a relatively long, relatively healthy life, and had remained active and clearheaded right up to the end. He had lasted long enough to make music with his grandson, and had died doing the thing he loved best. Everyone should be so lucky.

An image took hold of Dave's mind, a vision so vivid it was almost an out-of-body experience. He saw himself standing by his own coffin, gazing down at his own peaceful face. Julie stood nearby, a brave, still-attractive old woman surrounded by supportive children and the remaining Wishbones. There was music in the room, and a sadness muffled by soft music and conversation.

Ian cleared his throat, signaling Dave to move on, but he didn't feel like moving. If Ian hadn't kicked him in the ankle with the toe of his cowboy boot, he might have lingered there indefinitely, basking in the promise Phil seemed to offer of a long, satisfying life and a sudden, painless death.

Stan could only think of one thing sadder than a car with the keys locked inside, and that was a car with the keys locked inside and the engine still running.

A car like his own.

At least this time it was parked in front of his own house in the early evening, instead of after midnight in a godforsaken rest area somewhere north of Passaic. That was something to be grateful for.

He put his hands on the hood of the LeBaron and felt the living throb of the engine vibrate up his arms. It was time to pull himself together. Time to stop drinking, stop losing things, stop showing up late all the time.

Mostly, though, it was time to stop obsessing about Susie. Her nice round ass in his hands. Her sweet little tits. The way she clenched her teeth and whimpered like a puppy when she was about to come. The tattoo of a strawberry on her shoulder blade. Her habit, when the mood was right, of calling him “Garbanzo Bean.”

Hey, Garbanzo Bean, what's for supper? Gimme a kiss, Garbanzo Man. Don't be such a Garbanzo.

Garbanzo Bean. No wonder he locked his keys in the car and forgot what day it was.

He didn't have to walk far to find a decent rock, one that felt cool and substantial in his hand. He aligned himself with the target, wound up, and let fly. The rear driver's-side window exploded with a soft crumpling sound, showering the interior with broken glass.

Stan leaned into the car, reaching around the steering wheel to turn off the engine. Better me than some fucking car thief, he thought, shoving the keys into his pocket and glancing uneasily at the cloudless sky.

Warm water. He held his face in the pulsing stream, remembering the pleasure he'd felt as the rock erased the window. It was the kind of thing he could imagine doing again and again and again.

Climbing out of the shower, he felt alive again, nearly refreshed. The idea of spending his wife's twenty-seventh birthday at an old man's wake no longer seemed like a cruel joke. He thought about asking Dave and Buzzy to go out with him afterward, maybe to a club with music, or to one of those restaurant bars where the pretty secretaries went, hoping to meet a nice guy.

Why not? he thought. I'm a nice guy.

He opened the closet door and looked inside. It seemed so empty in there without Susie's clothes, the multicolored jumble of skirts and blouses, some of them sheathed in filmy plastic from the cleaners. After she left, he tried to rearrange his stuff to fill the available space, but the effect was vaguely disturbing, like a smile full of missing teeth.

He couldn't remember if he was supposed to dress like a Wishbone for the wake or not. Artie had mentioned something about it on the phone, but Stan hadn't really been listening.

Just to be on the safe side, he decided to go for the tux. Reaching for the hanger, he looked down by reflex and saw his missing dress shoes gleaming on the closet floor, right where they were supposed to be. The sight of them made his mouth taste funny.

Freshly dressed and mostly sober, he swept the glass off the front seat, climbed into his car, and set off into the night. The DJ on K-rock said it was the beginning of a commercial-free hour, one of those everyday events you couldn't help thinking of as a good omen.

He was coming down Central Avenue in West Plains, singing along with Melissa Etheridge, when it occurred to him that he didn't know where he was going. He had a clear memory of Artie saying, “We'll meet at the funeral home around seven,” but nothing beyond that. Not a word about which funeral home on what street, or even what town.

An unpleasant chill spread up the back of Stan's neck. He saw himself at that moment—a man in a tuxedo, driving nowhere in a car with a broken window—and was overcome by a feeling worse than simple embarrassment. For a few seconds he toyed with the idea that he was losing his mind.

In his heart, though, he didn't really believe it. He was just going through a bad patch, the kind of situation that took a toll on your day-to-day functioning. What he needed was some understanding, a little encouragement, a few kind words. Most of the guys in the band were sympathetic, especially Buzzy and Dave. Ian was okay too, though Stan hadn't been able to take him seriously for a long time now, ever since he'd learned that his real name was Frank. “Ian” was a stage name, borrowed from the lead singer in Jethro Tull. It was the kind of thing you didn't want to know about a grown man you thought of as a friend.

The problem was Artie. A decent manager would have patted him on the back and tried to help him through the mess. But Artie wasn't like that—Stan understood that now. Artie was a shark, the kind of guy who'd risk his life crossing a busy highway just for the chance to kick you while you were down.

Phil's widow had stopped crying by the time Dave shook her hand and told her how sorry he was. She introduced herself as Rose Cardini.

“Cardini?” he said. “Phil's last name was Cardini?” She looked amused. “What did you think it was?” “Hart,” he replied, feeling foolish as soon as he said it. “Back when he started out, most of the Italian performers changed their names to sound more American. That's how you got Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, people like that.” “Not Sinatra, though.”

“That's true,” she said. “Sinatra was the exception.” On the boom box, “You've Got a Friend” segued into “Danny Boy,” and Mrs. Cardini seemed to lose track of the conversation. Her blue eyes clouded over; she craned her neck as though looking past Dave to a taller person standing behind him. Softly at first, but then with more confidence, she began humming along with her husband's voice, effortlessly harmonizing. After just a few bars, though, she stopped. The alertness returned to her face. “We were married for fifty-two years,” she said, gazing in wonder at her own hands. “Can you imagine that?”

Dave shook his head; he couldn't.

“On long car trips, we used to sing to pass the time. ‘Danny Boy’ was one of our favorites.”

“It's a great song.”

“He seemed so healthy,” she said. “I thought we had a few more years.”

At the Other end of the line, Dave held out his hand to Joey Franco. They'd known each other since they were kids without ever really being friends. Joey had gone to Catholic grammar school and was already deep into drugs by the time he arrived at Harding High.

“I'm sorry,” said Dave.

Before the words were out of his mouth, Joey's arms were around him, squeezing hard. Dave grunted in surprise, surrendering to the embrace.

“Dave,” said Joey.

“Joey,” said Dave.

Dave had always tried to keep his distance from Joey—it was as much his bad skin as the fact that he'd been a junkie— but it felt okay to hug him inside the funeral home. Joey was sobbing now, the muscles in his back jumping beneath the fabric of his suit.

“Dave,” he said again.

“Joey.”

“Believe me,” Artie said, when the Wishbones had reassembled on the lawn outside the funeral home, “the Heartstring Orchestra is history.”

“Not necessarily,” said Ian. “All they need is a new front man.”

“Where they gonna find another seventy-year-old front man?”

“Why does he have to be seventy?” Buzzy inquired.

“Because they're a concept band.”

“Concept?” said Ian. “What concept is that?”

Artie stared at him like he was an idiot. “Whaddaya mean, what concept?”

“Whaddaya mean, what do I mean?” Ian shot back. “I asked what concept.”

“They're a bunch of old guys,” Artie explained. “That's the fucking concept.”

“What about Joey?” Dave asked.

“What about him?”

“He's our age.”

“That's right,” said Artie. “And if Stan doesn't get his shit together, maybe Joey wouldn't mind a chance to play with some guys who don't belong to the American Association of Fucking Retired People.”

“That's a good organization,” Buzzy told him. “Don't knock the AARP.”

“Mel's a pretty hot sax player,” Ian pointed out. “Maybe we could use him too.”

“Eat me,” said Artie.

They were Still standing on the lawn ten minutes later when Alan Zelack pulled up in front of the funeral home in his red Mitsubishi Eclipse, which Artie liked to mock as a “poor man's Porsche.” In a soft voice, Ian began singing “Stairway to Heaven” as Zelack climbed out of the car, pausing in the street to straighten his tie and run his fingers through his expensive haircut. Dave remembered him breathing into Phil's mouth, pressing on his chest.

“Hey, guys.” Zelack seemed delighted by the opportunity to stop and chat. “It's a shame about Phil, huh?”

“You did a good thing the other night,” Dave told him. “The mouth-to-mouth and all.”

Zelack shrugged. “My father died of a heart attack a couple years ago. Shoveling snow. He died right there on the sidewalk. Nobody in the whole neighborhood knew CPR.”

“Shit,” said Buzzy.

“What can you do?” said Zelack.

The conversation dropped off a cliff. Zelack's glance strayed to the front door of the funeral home. He didn't look all that eager to go inside.

“Hey, Alan,” Artie said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Who was that fox you were with the other night?”

“Oh.” Zelack grinned like a guy who'd just hit the lottery. “That's Monica. I met her at a gig a couple weeks ago. She was the maid of honor.”

“Monica.” Artie shook his head at the injustice of it all. “Figures she'd have a name like that.”

Zelack rubbed his chin with the tip of his thumb. “I'm in love, man. I'm so fucking in love I can't believe it.”

Dave looked at the ground. He felt a hollowness in his abdomen, a sensation something like a hunger pang. He forgot about it when Buzzy slapped him on the back.

“Speaking of the L-word,” he said, “our man Dave here has an important announcement.”

“No way,” said Ian.

“No fucking way,” said Artie.

“It's true,” Buzzy insisted. “Little Daverino's getting married.”

Dave nodded to confirm this information, a little uncomfortable about suddenly being made the center of attention. Smiling as graciously as he could, he stood on the plush lawn of the funeral home and accepted the congratulations of his friends and colleagues.

The first funeral home Stan visited was full of grief-stricken uniformed cops. In the second one, all the mourners spoke Spanish. The third happened to be located just a few blocks from Feeney's, a corner bar in Cranwood with one of the best jukeboxes around.

It was early, and the place was nearly empty. He dropped a couple dollars’ worth of quarters on Merle Haggard and George Jones, then pulled up a stool and called for a Jim Beam on the rocks. He could only tolerate country music under certain circumstances, and this was one of them.

Since joining the Wishbones, Stan had grown accustomed to drawing stares in public places. This time they came from an older gentleman a few stools down, a dapper, pickled-looking guy in a mustard-colored suit.

“What happened?” he asked, eyeing Stan's tux with sympathetic curiosity. “She leave you at the altar?”

Stan wanted to laugh, but the sound never quite made it out of his throat.

“She should've,” he said, tossing back his drink in a single gulp. “It would've saved a shitload of time.”

He pulled Up in front of Warneck's Funeral Home at a few minutes past nine. Except for a lone figure sitting on the front steps, the place looked empty, closed for the night.

Squinting into the darkness, he recognized the guy on the steps as one of the old farts from Phil Hart's band. Walter, the piano player, the one he privately thought of as “Shaky.”

He got out of the car and headed up the front walk. The old man watched him from the steps, a shock of white hair framing the vague outline of his face.

“Hey,” said Stan. “Am I late?”

“Depends for what.”

“The wake.”

“You missed it. Viewing hours are from six to eight.”

“Were the Wishbones here?”

The old man cleared his throat with a violence that made Stan cringe. “The who?”

“The Wishbones. The band that plays after you at the showcase. I'm the drummer.”

“You guys really call yourselves the Wishbones?”

“Yeah.”

Walter whistled through his teeth, as though a pretty girl had just walked by. “Where'd you find a stupid name like that?”

Stan didn't answer. He'd always thought the Wishbones was a perfectly good name for a band. Walter reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. It was painful to watch him extract one and guide it to his lips. Stan had to look away when Walter brought out his lighter. He didn't turn back until he smelled the smoke.

“Your friends left about an hour ago,” Walter reported.

“Figures.” Stan shook his head. “I'm having one of those days, I'd forget my dick if it wasn't screwed on.”

Walter coughed out a dry chuckle. “My age, I'd be grateful for a day like that.”

A sudden image struck Stan like a wave of nausea. Susie drinking champagne in a fancy restaurant. Black dress, bare shoulders. Happy Birthday. He made a noise.

“You okay?” Walter asked.

“Not really. Mind if I sit down?”

He felt a little better once he unhooked his cummerbund. He hated the frigging thing, the way it squeezed all the air out of him. Walter sat beside him, thoughtfully gumming his cigarette.

“This must be a tough time for you,” Stan observed.

“How so?”

“You know.” He pulled the cummerbund out from under his jacket and laid it on the steps. “This thing with Phil. It must have been awful for you.”

Walter worked his cigarette like a baby sucking a bottle. “Phil was an old man. Everybody's got to go sometime.”

“Still, watching a friend die in front of you like that …”

“We had our differences,” Walter said curtly.

“What kind of differences?”

“Creative.” Walter ejected the cigarette from between his lips. It landed on the sidewalk in a small shower of sparks. “I thought the band was starting to get a little stale.”

“How long were you together?”

“Too fucking long. Thirty-three years I took orders from that sonofabitch. I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

Stan didn't bother to pretend he was shocked. He'd been a musician long enough to know how it could come to this. There were nights when he'd lain awake writing Artie's obituary in loving detail, nights when he'd imagined committing murder.

“Can you do me a favor?” Walter asked.

“What's that?”

“Help me find my car.”

“Whaddaya mean, find your car?”

Walter gestured at the world spread out in front of them. His voice was small now, a little bit frightened.

“It's around here somewhere,” he said.

IT'S YOUR WEDDING

“I think I'm going to ask Tammi to be my Maid of Honor,” Julie told him on their way to the mall on Saturday morning. “I'm just worried that Margaret's going to be upset.”

“She'll still be in the wedding, right?”

“Of course. But you know how she is. Any little thing could set her off. And the last thing we need is a disgruntled bridesmaid.”

She shook her head as though exasperated, but Dave wasn't fooled. He could see how happy she was to be talking about the wedding. Her face glowed with it; she spoke in a bright girlish voice he hadn't heard for a long time. It was gratifying to know that he could be responsible for such a major improvement in her mood, though it made him wonder if he hadn't been equally responsible for the mild depression that had plagued her for the past couple of years. He'd blamed it on the fact that she'd been unable to find a public school teaching job, despite her degree in Elementary Ed, and instead seemed resigned to a career in customer service. But maybe that was only part of her problem, and maybe not even the most important part.

“Do what you want,” he told her. “It's your wedding.”

She pulled down the sun visor and studied her face in the little mirror, puckering her lips as though preparing to kiss the glass.

“Ever since she got married, all she wants to do when we get together is complain about Paul. I mean, sometimes I just want to say, ‘Look, Margaret, if the guy's such a jerk, why don't you just divorce him?’ “

Dave punched on the radio and began fiddling with the tuner to dramatize his lack of interest in Margaret and Paul. Julie pretended not to notice.

“He's like from another era. She works longer hours and makes more money than he does, but it never even occurs to him to pitch in around the house.”

The radio was a Saturday-morning wasteland. The best song Dave could find was “Movin’ On” by Bad Company, a band about whom he had profoundly mixed feelings. As stale and mediocre as they seemed now, he could never forget what it had meant to hear them for the first time in Glenn Stella's bedroom in 1975—like being struck by lightning, visited by some rock ‘n roll version of the holy spirit. He'd walked home in a daze and announced to his parents at the supper table that he needed a guitar.

“You know what he does? He just sits in front of the TV playing his stupid computer games while she vacuums around his feet.”

“You think she should divorce him because of that?”

“That's as good a reason as any, considering that he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

“He's not so bad,” Dave said, defending the guy out of some vague sense of gender loyalty, even though he despised him even more than Julie did. “He probably does a lot of chores around the house. Mowing the lawn and whatnot. Taking out the garbage.”

“That's not the worst of it.” Julie lowered her voice, in case people in passing cars might be trying to eavesdrop. “He insists on having sex with her every night, right after the weather report on the eleven o'clock news.”

“Every night?”

“That's what she says.”

“Even when she's sick?”

“I'm sure there are exceptions,” she conceded. “But the basic pattern is every night.”

Dave gave a small shiver of disgust that was only partly for Julie's benefit. Paul was a 240-pound furniture salesman who collected baseball cards and believed that Hotel California was one of the high points in the history of human civilization. Margaret was a formerly pleasant person whose personality had been ruined by constant dieting; Dave couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her when she wasn't carrying around a plastic baggie full of carrot slivers. The thought of the two of them having sex was almost as difficult to get his mind around as the thought of his parents getting it on in a motel room while vacationing at Colonial Williamsburg.

Julie pulled down her bottom lip and inspected her gum line in the mirror. Then she pulled up her top lip and did the same.

“He claims he can't get to sleep without it. If she says no he whimpers and thrashes around until she finally gives in just to get it over with.”

“Aren't there laws against that?”

“Every night,” Julie said, her voice touched by wonderment. “Imagine watching the news with that hanging over your head.”

A life-sized Cardboard cutout of Mr. Spock greeted them as they entered the mall, the normally expressionless Vulcan smiling enigmatically as he extended the live-long-and-prosper salute to the earthlings who drifted past, “MEET SCOTTY!” said a cardboard poster attached to Leonard Nimoy's cardboard shirt. “2 P.M. TODAY.”

It wasn't yet eleven-thirty, but a large contingent of Star Trek buffs had already begun forming a line in front of an empty table in the mall's central plaza. The table was surrounded by cardboard cutouts of Captain Kirk, Bones, and Lieutenant Uhura, who looked as sexy as ever in her skintight, probably somewhat itchy polyester uniform.

They had to cut through the line on their way to the escalator, drawing a surprisingly huffy response from a man in a plaid short-sleeved shirt who must have thought they were trying to usurp his position. Most of the people in line were nerdy-looking men, though Dave did notice a sprinkling of obese women and a number of people in wheelchairs, some of them severely disabled. It made sense, now that he thought about it, that Star Trek, and especially Scotty, might hold a special appeal for people who found themselves at odds with their own bodies.

They stepped onto the escalator and began their slow, effortless ascent. Julie gazed down at the Trekkies and shook her head.

“It's sad,” she whispered.

“What?”

“That,” she said, gesturing at the lower level. “All of it.”

Dave didn't answer. He had never cared for Star Trek and wouldn't have wanted to spend the better part of a beautiful Saturday stuck inside the mall, but he'd stood on enough lines for concert tickets in all kinds of weather—sometimes even camping out for really important shows—to feel an instinctive sympathy for the people below. They didn't seem particularly sad or strange to him. They were just waiting for Scotty.

“With diamonds,” Kevin explained, “you got four basic variables to consider. You got size, you got cut, you got color, and you got clarity. Within each of these categories, you got separate variables to consider.”

Kevin was a pixieish man in a brown suit, maybe forty years old, with curly gray hair slicked back behind his ears and an orangey tan whose origins could probably be traced to somewhere other than New Jersey. Dave made an effort to look fascinated as he droned on about point size, empire cuts, and the alphabetical grading scale for color, but his mind had already begun to wander. He almost wished he were downstairs, standing in line. At least then he'd have something to look at besides pale pink walls, diamond rings, and Kevin's tropical explosion of a necktie.

“The range is enormous,” Kevin said, in response to a question from Julie. “The vast majority of diamonds aren't even precious stones per se. They're used for industrial purposes.”

Kevin paused for a reaction, so Dave dutifully pretended to be impressed by this information, though he really didn't give a shit about it one way or the other. The whole concept of engagement rings struck him as an enormous scam perpetrated by the jewelry industry to force you into making the single most expensive useless purchase of your entire lifetime just to avoid looking like a cheapskate to your future wife, her family, friends, and co-workers.

“But let's face it,” Kevin said, finally bringing his filibuster to a close, “unless you have a lot of money to spend, most of what I just told you isn't going to be directly relevant to your purchase. You're not going to be in the market for some flawless oval-cut diamond of exceptional luster. You'll be looking for a decent-quality round-cut stone, maybe in the H-I-J range.”

“What do you mean by a lot of money?” Julie asked.

This question appeared to cause Kevin a certain amount of difficulty. His face cycled through a number of contortions before settling into its default mode of enthusiastic sincerity.

“It's all relative, you know what I'm saying? I mean, you can get a ring like these here for four, five, maybe six hundred bucks.” He caressed the air above the left side of the display case; the rings below were sad-looking specimens with stones that resembled pumped-up grains of salt. His hand drifted to the other end of the case, where rocks the size of molars glittered smugly in elaborate settings. “Or you could spend upwards of five grand on one of these.”

“We're somewhere in the middle,” Julie told him.

Dave paid closer attention as Kevin removed individual rings from the case—insurance regulations didn't permit him to exhibit more than one at a time—and quoted prices in the range of fifteen hundred dollars. They had entered the store committed to paying no more than a thousand, but their threshold seemed to have risen in the meantime.

“I really like this one,” Julie said, referring to a round-cut sixty-pointer that would run in the neighborhood of sixteen hundred transferred to a plainer setting. “There's something about it.”

“That's a quality stone,” Kevin said quickly. “You have a really good eye.”

Julie spun her swivel chair to face Dave, the ring cupped like an offering in the palm of her hand, her expression a complicated blend of excitement and apology.

“What do you think?”

Dave took the ring and held it up to the light. The diamond was small but radiant, shooting off pinprick flares of brilliance.

“I know it's expensive,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn't rush into anything.”

He could've told her to hold off, to shop around and compare prices, but that would've just been prolonging the ordeal. She had found a ring she would be proud to show off to her friends, a ring that would reflect well on him as part of the union it symbolized. Compared to that, a few hundred dollars didn't seem worth quibbling over, even if it meant he'd have to kiss good-bye any hope of buying the vintage Telecaster he'd been eyeing over at Riccio's Music.

“Get it,” he told her.

“Really?” She seemed almost disappointed by the ease of his surrender. “You mean it?”

She started to smile, but something happened to her face before she got there. She made a sudden gulping noise, and the next thing he knew she was sobbing against his face, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. Pinned against his chair, Dave realized he was choked up as well. If making her happy were so easy, why had he gone out of his way to disappoint her for so long? Why had they wasted all those years?

“Oh, sweetie,” she said. “It's so beautiful.”

“Jules.” His fist closed around the ring as he rubbed his knuckles up and down the back of her neck.

“Congratulations.” Kevin reached across the display case to give him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “You made an excellent choice.”

“So tell me,” Kevin said, making salesman's small talk as he wrote up their order, “how long have you two been going out?”

Dave groaned to himself. This wasn't a subject he felt comfortable discussing with strangers.

“A long time,” he said.

“How long is long?”

He shot a quick warning glance at Julie, but it was too late.

“Fifteen years,” she said.

Kevin looked up from the paperwork, smirking like a guy who appreciated a little good-natured kidding around.

“Come on,” he said.

“It's true,” Julie insisted. “We've been going out since our sophomore year of high school.”

Kevin turned to Dave for confirmation, looking at him for the first time as though he were an actual human being, rather than a Visa card with legs.

“On and off,” Dave told him. “Fifteen years on and off.”

“That's amazing,” said Kevin.

Julie put her arm around Dave's waist and planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

“We didn't want to rush into anything,” she explained.

Dave took Julie's hand as they stepped off the escalator, something he almost never did in public, especially since they'd had a fight about it a few years earlier. (“Would it kill you to hold my hand once in a while?” she'd asked. “Yes,” he'd replied, after devoting some serious consideration to the matter. “I think it would.”) She seemed so grateful for the gesture that she passed up the opportunity to comment upon his courage in the face of near-certain death.

“I'm really happy about the ring,” she told him. “I know you think it's silly, but it means a lot to me.”

“I'm happy too,” he said, and was pretty sure that he meant it. “You deserve something nice after putting up with me for fifteen years.”

“On and off,” she said, cheerfully supplying his favorite disclaimer. “Fifteen years on and off.”

He never meant for the phrase to sound as grudging and nitpicky as it apparently did; it just seemed important to remind people that they hadn't actually been seeing each other for fifteen years without interruption. Some of the gaps in their relationship were minor and forgettable, but others were of a different order of magnitude—-Julie's last two years of college, for example, which she'd spent practically living with this jerk who dumped her when he got accepted to law school, and the ten-month affair Dave had had a few years back with a married woman whose husband traveled a lot. In Dave's mind, these two episodes divided up his history with Julie into three separate eras —in effect, three separate relationships: Young Love, The Post-Brendan Reconciliation, and Everything after Maryanne. That was what he meant by on and off.

They were halfway to the exit when someone called his name. He turned toward the line of Trekkies—it had nearly doubled in size during their time in the jewelry store—unsuccessfully scanning the crowd for a familiar face.

“Over here.” A hand waved through the air. “Dave.”

Once he spotted Ian, Dave wondered how he'd missed him. Surrounded by people not particularly distinguished by their good looks or the care they'd devoted to choosing their clothes that morning, he stood out like a swan among the pigeons. Tall and always well dressed, Ian had the kind of physical presence that often led strangers to mistake him for some kind of minor celebrity—a bit player on soap operas, or maybe a second-string professional athlete.

“Hey,” he said. “Talk about coincidences. What are you guys doing here?”

“Engagement ring,” said Dave.

Ian looked at Julie's hand. Julie shook her head.

“We just picked out the stone. The actual ring won't be ready for a week or so.”

“Well, congratulations,” he told her. “You're marrying one of the finest rock trivia minds in the Tri-State area.”

“I know,” Julie said. “All the other girls are jealous.”

“What about you?” asked Dave. “Since when are you such a big Star Trek fan?”

“I'm not. I was just shopping for some summer clothes. But then I saw the line and thought, what the hell? Might as well meet Scotty.”

“He's not showing up for another couple of hours,” Julie warned him. “That's a long time to wait.”

Ian shrugged. “I didn't really have anything planned for this afternoon anyway. It's either this or help my dad clean out the gutters.”

“It's a beautiful day,” she told him. “We're thinking of having a picnic up at Watchung.”

She said this as though extending a tacit, no-pressure invitation for Ian to tag along, but he didn't seem to notice the offer.

“I've got to get out of that house,” he said, more to himself than to Dave or Julie. “My parents are driving me nuts.”

“Join the club,” said Dave.

“Tell me about it,” said Julie.

“Yeah,” said Ian, “but you guys can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't even think I'm inside the tunnel yet.”

Dave patted him on the arm and said he'd see him at the wedding that night.

“Five o'clock at the Westview, right?”

Dave nodded.

“See you then,” said Ian. “Have a good picnic.”

“Say hi to Scotty,” Julie told him.

On the way out of the mall, Dave saw that Mr. Spock had been knocked over and trampled, probably by some unruly teenagers. He lay flat on his back, still smiling gamely despite the waffles of dirt that covered his face and body with a thoroughness that could only have been intentional. Dave thought about propping him up, but decided it was none of his business.

“Do you think he's gay?” Julie asked, as they exited the parking lot, merging with the traffic on Route 1.

For a split second, he thought she was referring to Leonard Nimoy, who seemed more asexual than anything else, at least on Star Trek. But then the fog cleared.

“Who?” he said. “Ian?”

“No.” She rolled her eyes. “Leonard Nimoy.”

Dave ignored her sarcasm and pondered the question. He wanted to say, “Of course not,” but realized the moment he thought about it that he didn't know very much about Ian's personal life. In the two years they'd been Wishbones together, Ian had mentioned a couple of ex-girlfriends. He didn't seem to be actively searching for a new one, though, nor was he more than mildly flattered by the number of women who came on to him at weddings (including the legendary mother-of-the-bride). Dave had always assumed that this was because he was used to the attention and accepted it as his due, the way a beautiful woman got used to being stared at every time she walked down the street. But now he wondered.

“I don't know,” he said. “Do you think he might be?”

She shrugged. “He's just so different from the rest of you.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, he's really handsome. And he's got such good taste in clothes.”

“Thanks a lot.”

She patted his knee. “You know what I mean.”

Dave didn't argue. He knew exactly what she meant. Ian was better-looking than the rest of the Wishbones. That was why he was the front man. Generally speaking, people didn't go for ugly singers. The rest of the band could look like a bunch of space aliens and burn victims for all anyone cared, but the singer had to meet certain minimum standards of attractiveness.

“It doesn't matter to me one way or the other,” she assured him, “but if he's not gay and he's not going out with anyone, I'm wondering if he might hit it off with Tammi.”

“Ian and Tammi?”

“It's just an idea. She hasn't gone out with anyone for a long time now. I think she's ready for someone new.”

Dave liked Tammi a lot, but he couldn't quite see her with Ian. Tammi was funny and cute in a tomboyish sort of way, the kind of person who knew how to make a joke at her own expense. The longer Dave knew her the more attractive she had come to seem to him, but her appeal was subtle, often lost on people meeting her for the first time. Dave figured Ian to go for someone a little more eye-catchingly glamorous, more like Zelack's new girlfriend, Monica.

“It's never a good idea to fix up your friends,” he pointed out. “Somebody always ends up with hurt feelings.”

“We just have to find some natural way to introduce them,” she mused. “That's the trick with these things. It can't feel like a blind date or it's doomed from the start.”

He pulled up to a tollbooth on the Parkway entrance ramp and tossed in thirty-five cents. The exact-change basket was plastered with decals for local bands he had never heard of—the Eggheads, Screaming Willie, Storm Drain. They just kept popping up, these bands, mushrooms of suburbia. Everyone and his brother chasing after the same old dream.

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