“Boy,” Robert said, “you’re gonna be fine up there.”
They had ordered beers and were sitting at a small table for two off in a quiet space, as quiet as could be found in a noisy restaurant/bar in downtown Columbus. People around them, they could hear, were still talking about the Buckeyes’ romp, what had happened on Saturday which had been the Bucks’ first game of the season, mostly a walk over as very often those first games were.
Still, it had made for great business in both Suburban East and Suburban West, so, as both Bill and Robert talked about it, Bill’s last Saturday night had been busy start to finish.
Which, Bill said, was the best way to go out. A quick, deep-down hug with Mary P, an even quicker lukewarm hug with Bea, shakes of the hands with Henry Lee, Esserine and Tommy. Kisses for Lorraine and Victoria, Lily and Brooklyn, and then a more intimate moment with Arlene who’d insisted he take her phone number, which he already had.
And that was that.
“You are one of the best broiler cooks I’ve ever seen,” Robert said. “You be working inside a week once you start looking.”
When Robert said that, Bill remembered the conversation with Trish, now so long ago, it seemed, even though it wasn’t but about a year and a few months.
Nothing worth much in this world. She had asked what he was reading when she came in the door that night and he said something to that effect. It was true too.
He’d been reading some required stuff for his philosophy class. Later in that conversation with Trish he would tell her that he was friends with his recitation instructor, a grad assistant.
“What kind of friends?” she would ask.
Get-high-together friends, Bill told her, and he told her he’d lived with him and his girlfriend, Hank and Paula, for several months after breaking up with his live-in girlfriend, Pam. Hank and Paula lived over on the next street, literally. Norwich and Northwood were two consecutive streets up on the north end of campus just a few blocks up from the horseshoe, close enough to the Bucks’ stadium such that they got parked in, blocked off by cars on home-game days.
Trish said she recognized him, his friend Hank. He was already going bald, even as a young grad student in the doctoral program in Philosophy. She had noted that. But mostly it was his big, bushy beard and how he bounded in and up the stairs at all different times, sometimes late at night. She said Patsy had his class and was failing.
“I can’t fail,” Bill said. “I’m getting a A+. And next semester too cause I know who my recitation instructor is gonna be and we’re getting high together too.”
“That’s messed up,” Trish said.
“Not really,” Bill said. “We have a deal, which is why I’m doing the reading. Deal is that I ace every test and all the papers better than anyone else. That way, if my work is more than A+ exemplary, if it can pass muster, no one can say shit.”
“That’s messed up even more.”
“Was either make the deal or give up the friendship.”
“They should just give you the grade then.”
“That would be messed up,” Bill had said.
Then, as Bill recalled it sitting there with Robert, he’d said to Trish, “Let’s see what kind of grade I can earn with you.”
“You really think that?” Bill asked Robert.
“Boy, please! Not only will you be working, but you’ll have your choice of jobs and whatever one you take, they’ll be lucky to have you.”
They drank two beers. Then it was time to say goodbye. Saying goodbye was a bittersweet moment, one Bill had dreaded and Robert too, so he would find out when Robert told him this.
