I ended up spending most of the weekend with Zach watching old movies on TV.
One channel was showing a bunch of old detective flicks, “A Hard-Boiled Weekend” they called it. We watched The Maltese Falcon, Public Enemy, The Big Sleep, and a lot of others I don’t remember. It was hours and hours of tough guys smoking, drinking, and shooting each other. The movies were all in black and white, dark and kind of depressing, but then that pretty well fit with my own mental state that weekend. I felt like walking into some dark, smoky bar, ordering “a shot of bourbon, make it a double”, taking a drag off a cigarette and saying something like, “Dames. You can’t live with ‘em, you can’t live without ‘em.”
Except to me liquor tastes like lighter fluid and cigarettes make me want to barf.
So much for my career as a hard-boiled detective.
But since it rained for most of the weekend, there wasn’t much else to do and, Zach really got into the movies. Except for the shooting part. “I’ve seen what a firearm can do to a body and these movin pictures are not very convincing. Not that I’m complainin’ mind you. It’s not a sight that I care t’revisit.”
On Monday the rain had let up and by noon it was shaping up to be a fairly decent day.
I got out of the house and went for a walk before cabin fever drove me completely bonkers and I started narrating all of the mundane events my life in a Humphrey Bogart voiceover.
You could almost believe it was spring, even though it was only February. The sun was out and it was warm enough that I didn’t even need a jacket.
I walked into town and, just for the heck of it, bought an ice cream cone and headed for the town square.
Jeremiah Kratz’s ghost had staked out his usual spot, the bench across from old man Gierman’s statue. I was just bored enough to be willing to hang around and listen to him rant.
I sat down and went to work on my ice cream cone while old Jeremiah launched into a tirade about the evils of Henry P. Gierman, cackling gleefully as a small flock of pigeons used the statue for a toilet.
Looking around, I could see that I wasn’t the only cabin fever victim who was taking advantage of the sunshine.
Across the square, a couple of women were sipping coffee from paper cups while a herd of little kids chased each other around their feet. Not far from them, some guys I recognized from school were trying to stick heel flips on their skateboards. On the lawn, a circle of college students were playing hacky-sack.
Just then, Jeremiah Kratz halted in mid-rant and pointed. “Now there’s a fine thing,” he cackled. “Sure didn’t see nothin’ like that in my day, no siree.”
I looked in the direction he pointed. A couple young women, college students probably, were walking on the other side of the square. They were dressed casually, in stylish jeans and t-shirts. As they crossed the street and headed into the ice cream shop, I realized that it was the fit of their jeans that old Jeremiah had been admiring.
I couldn’t say that I blamed him.
“Jeremiah, you old lech,” I teased. “Aren’t you a little old for that sort of thing? Jeez, aren’t you a little dead for that sort of thing?”
“Never too old to admire a thing of beauty,” he intoned, “nor too dead neither I guess. Say how’s that ice cream? Never did get enough ice cream in my day. Didn’t have no money for that sort o’ foolishness back then, what with Henry P. Gierman grindin’ everybody under his thumb…”
As Jeremiah babbled on, I noticed the two women we’d seen earlier emerging from the ice cream shop. They began to cross the street head back toward the town square.
From a distance, they could have been sisters. They were about the same height and coloring, they were dressed similarly, and they both had the same kind of hairstyle, kind of layered like you see on all the magazine covers.
Nice.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I spend my days sitting on park benches ogling pretty girls. Sure, I look. I’m a guy; what can I say? But there was something about those two…
Every time I looked away, I felt my eyes being drawn back to them.
Then, “Marc!”
One of the women had her arm raised and was waving in my direction. A familiar voice called out, “Marc! Hey Marc!”
Amy?
“You can close your mouth now, Marc. I’m scared you’re going to swallow a bug.”
I closed my mouth.
But then I had to open it again to say, “Jeez Amy, I didn’t recognize you.”
Amy smiled. “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment. Marc, I’d like you to meet my Aunt Sylvia.”
I managed to shake her hand without embarrassing myself further. Aunt Sylvia looked almost exactly like Amy’s mother, a different hairstyle and all, but the resemblance was unsettling. After all, the last time I saw that face it was on a ghost.
Her Aunt gave a little laugh. “Amy, your friend here seems to be suffering from a mild case of shock. Maybe we should sit him down before he falls over and hurts himself.”
Amy giggled, took my arm and guided me to a nearby bench. We sat down.
Her Aunt Sylvia took a small bite of ice cream. She wiped her chin daintily and asked, “So Marc, what’s your take on our little project?”
“Your project?”
Amy smiled. “She means me. I’m her project. Aunt Sylvia arranged a total makeover for me…”
“Not that you needed it or anything,” interrupted her aunt.
“That’s not what you said when you met me at the airport,” Amy replied. “Then you were all, ‘My God girl! I’m going to have to have you fumigated before I let you in my apartment!’”
Aunt Sylvia laughed. “Oh come on, I wasn’t that bad. The word ‘fumigated’ never crossed my lips.”
“A minor detail,” Amy conceded, “but that was the gist of the greeting I got from you. Anyway, she took me shopping, got me an ‘emergency appointment’ with her hairdresser, bought me a ton of makeup…”
“Not that you’ll wear it or anything,” her aunt added.
“Hey, don’t rush me.”
“Amy,” I said, “you look great.”
“You aren’t going to miss Amy LaBlob?”
“I’ll adjust,” I answered.
Her aunt looked confused. “Who?”