Rock Springs

Fireworks

Eddie Starling sat at the kitchen table at noon reading through the newspaper. Outside in the street some neighborhood kids were shooting off firecrackers. The Fourth of July was a day away, and every few minutes there was a lot of noisy popping followed by a hiss, then a huge boom loud enough to bring down an airplane. It was giving him the jitters, and he wished some parent would go out and haul the kids inside.

Starling had been out of work six months — one entire selling season and part of the next. He had sold real estate, and had never been off work any length of time in his life. Though he had begun to wonder, after a certain period of not working, if you couldn’t simply forget how to work, forget the particulars, lose the reasons for it. And once that happened, it could become possible never to hold another job as long as you lived. To become a statistic: the chronically unemployed. The thought worried him.

Outside in the street he heard what sounded like kids’ noises again. They were up to something suspicious, and he stood up to look out just when the phone rang.

“What’s new on the home front?” Lois’s voice said. Lois had gone back to work tending bar near the airport and always tried to call up in good spirits.

“Status quo. Hot.” Starling walked to the window, holding the receiver, and peered out. In the middle of the street some kids he’d never seen before were getting ready to blow up a tin can using an enormous firecracker. “Some kids are outside blowing up something.”

“Anything good in the paper?”

“Nothing promising.”

“Well,” Lois said. “Just be patient, hon. I know it’s hot. Listen, Eddie, do you remember those priests who were always setting fire to themselves on TV? Exactly when were they? We were trying to remember here. Was it ‘68 or ‘72? Nobody could remember to save their life.”

“Sixty-eight was Kennedy,” Starling said. “They weren’t just setting themselves on fire for TV, though. They were in Asia.”

“Okay. But when was Vietnam exactly?”

The kids lit the firecracker under the can and went running away down the street, laughing. For a moment Starling stared directly at the can, but just then a young woman came out of the house across the street. As she stepped into her yard the can went boom, and the woman leaped back and put her hands into her hair.

“Christ, what was that!” Lois said. “It sounded like a bomb.”

“It was those kids.”

“The scamps,” Lois said. “I guess they’re hot, too, though.”

The woman was very thin — too thin to be healthy, Starling thought. She was in her twenties and had on dull yellow shorts and no shoes. She walked out into the street and yelled something vicious at the kids, who were far down the street now. Starling knew nothing more about her than he did about anybody else in the neighborhood. The name on the mailbox had been taped over before he and Lois had moved in. A man lived with the woman and worked on his car in the garage late at night.

The woman walked slowly back across her little yard to her house. At the top step she turned and looked at Starling’s house. He stared at her, and the woman went inside and closed the door.

“Eddie, take a guess who’s here,” Lois said.

“Who’s where?”

“In the bar. One wild guess.”

“Arthur Godfrey,” Starling said.

“Arthur Godfrey. That’s great,” Lois said. “No, it’s Louie. He just waltzed in the door. Isn’t that amazing?”

Louie Reiner was Lois’s previous husband. Starling and Reiner had been business acquaintances of a sort before Lois came along, and had co-brokered some office property at the tail end of the boom.

Reiner had been in real estate then, along with everybody else. Reiner and Lois had stayed married six weeks, then they had gone over to Reno and gotten an annulment. A year later, Lois married Starling. That had all been in ‘76, and Lois didn’t talk about it or about Reiner anymore. Louie had disappeared somewhere — he’d heard Europe. He didn’t feel like he had anything against Louie now, though he wasn’t particularly happy he was around.

“Just take a guess what Louie’s doing?” Lois said. Water had started to run where Lois was.

“Who knows. Washing dishes. How should I know?”

Lois repeated what Starling said and some people laughed. He heard Louie’s voice saying, “Well excuuuse me.”

“Seriously, Ed. Louie’s an extraditer.” Lois laughed. Hah.

“What’s that mean?” Starling said.

“It means he travels the breadth of the country bringing people back here so they can go to jail. He just brought a man back from Montana who’d done nothing more than pass a forty-seven-dollar bad check, which doesn’t seem worth it to me. Louie isn’t in uniform, but he’s got a gun and a little beeper.”

“What’s he doing there?” Starling said.

“His girlfriend’s coming in at the airport from Florida,” Lois said. “He’s a lot fatter than he used to be, too, though he wouldn’t like me to say that, would you, Louie?” Starling heard Reiner say “Excuuuse me” again. “Do you want to talk to him?”

“I’m busy right now.”

“Busy doing what, eating lunch? You’re not busy.”

“I’m fixing dinner,” Starling lied.

“Talk to Louie, Eddie.”

Starling wanted to hang up. He wished Reiner would go back to wherever he came from.

“Helloooo dere,” Reiner said.

“Who left your cage open, Reiner?”

“Come on down here and have a drink, Starling, and I’ll tell you all about it. I’ve seen the world since I saw you. Italy, France, the islands. You know what an Italian girl puts behind her ears to make herself more attractive?”

“I don’t want to know,” Starling said.

“That’s not what Lois says.” Reiner laughed a horse laugh.

“I’m busy. Some other time, maybe.”

“Sure you are,” Reiner said. “Listen, Eddie, get off your face and come down here. Pll tell you how we can both retire in six months. Honest to God. This is not real estate.”

“I already retired,” Starling said. “Didn’t Lois tell you?”

“Yeah, she told me a lot of things,” Reiner said.

He could hear Lois say, “Please don’t be a nerd, Eddie. Who needs nerds?” Some people laughed again.

“I shouldn’t even be talking about this on the phone. It’s that hot.” Reiner’s voice fell to a whisper. He was covering the mouthpiece of the receiver, Starling thought. “These are Italian rugs, Starling. I swear to God. From the neck of the sheep, the neck only. You only get tips on things like this in law enforcement.”

“I told you. I’m retired. I retired early,” Starling said.

“Eddie, am I going to have to come out there and arrest you?”

“Try it,” Starling said. “I’ll beat the shit out of you, then laugh about it.”

He heard Reiner put the phone down and say something he couldn’t make out. Then he heard Reiner shout, “Stay on your face then, cluck!”

Lois came on the line again. “Baby, why don’t you come down here?” A blender started in the background, and a big cheer went up. “We’re all adults. Have a Tanqueray on Louie. He’s on all-expenses. There might be something to this. Louie’s always got ideas.”

“Reiner’s just got ideas about you. Not me.” He heard Reiner say to Lois to tell him — Starling — to forget it. “Tell Reiner to piss up a rope.”

“Try to be nice,” Lois said. “Louie’s being nice. Eddie—”

Starling hung up.

When he worked, Starling had sold business properties — commercial lots and office buildings. He had studied that in college, and when he got out he was offered a good job. People would always need a place to go to work, was his thinking. He liked the professional environment, the atmosphere of money being made, and for a while he had done very well. He and Lois had rented a nice, sunny apartment in an older part of town by a park. They bought furniture and didn’t save money. While Starling worked, Lois kept house, took care of plants and fish and attended a night class for her degree in history. They had no children, and didn’t expect any. They liked the size of the town and the stores, knew shopkeepers’ names and where the streets led. It was a life they could like, and better than they both could’ve guessed would come their way.

Then interest rates had gone sky-high, and suddenly no one wanted commercial property. Everything was rent. Starling rented space in malls and in professional buildings and in empty shops downtown where older businesses had moved out and leather stores, health-food and copy shops moved in. It was a holding action, Starling thought, until people wanted to spend again.

Then he had lost his job. One morning, his boss at the agency asked him back to his private office along with a fat woman named Beverley who’d been there longer than Starling had. His boss told them he was closing down and wanted to tell them first because they’d been there the longest, and he wanted them to have a chance for the other jobs. Starling remembered feeling dazed when he heard the bad news, but he remembered thanking the boss, wishing him good luck, then comforting Beverley, who went to pieces in the outer office. He had gone home and told Lois, and they had gone out to dinner at a Greek restaurant that night, and gotten good and drunk.

As it turned out, though, there weren’t any other jobs to get. He visited the other agencies and talked to salesmen he knew, but all of his friends were terrified of being laid off themselves and wouldn’t say much. After a month, he heard that his boss hadn’t closed the agency down, but had simply hired two new people to take his and Beverley’s places. When he called to ask about it the boss apologized, then claimed to have an important call on another line.

In six weeks Starling had still not found a job, and when the money ran out and they couldn’t pay the rent, he and Lois sublet the apartment to two nurses who worked at a hospital, and got out. Lois found an ad in the Pennysaver that said, “No Rent for Responsible Couple — House Sit Opportunity.” And they moved in that day.

The house was a ranchette in a tract of small, insignificant houses on fenced-in postage-stamp lots down on the plain of the Sacramento River, out from town. The owner was an Air Force sergeant who had been stationed in Japan, and the house was decorated with Oriental tastes: wind chimes and fat, naked women stitched over silk, a red enamel couch in the living room, rice-paper lanterns on the patio. There was an old pony in the back, from when the owner had been married with kids, and a couple of wrecked cars in the carport. All the people who lived on the street, Starling noticed, were younger than the two of them. More than a few were in the Air Force and fought loud, regular arguments, and came and went at all hours. There was always a door slamming after midnight, then a car starting up and racing away into the night. Starling had never thought he’d find himself living in such a place.

He stacked the dishes, put the grounds in the newspaper and emptied all the wastebaskets into a plastic bag. He intended to take the garbage for a ride. Everybody in the subdivision either drove their garbage to a dump several miles away or toured the convenience stores and shopping malls until they found a dumpster no one was watching. Once a black woman had run out of a convenience store and cursed at him for ditching his garbage in her dumpster, and since then he’d waited till dark. This afternoon, though, he needed to get out of the house, as though with the heat and talking to Reiner there wasn’t enough air inside to breathe.

He had the garbage set out the back door when the phone rang again. Sometimes car dealers called during lunch, wanting to talk to the Air Force sergeant, and Starling had learned not to answer until after one, when car salesmen all left for lunch. This time it might be Lois again, wanting him to come by the bar to see Reiner, and he didn’t want to answer. Only he didn’t want Lois going off somewhere, and he didn’t want Reiner coming over. Reiner would think the house with the pony was a comedy act.

Starling picked up the phone. “All right, what is it?”

An unfamiliar voice said, “Dad? Is that you?”

“No dads here, Reiner,” Starling said.

“Dad,” the voice said again, “it’s Jeff.”

A woman’s voice came on the line. “I have a collect call to anyone from a Jeff. Will you pay for the call?”

“Wrong number,” Starling said. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t Reiner still.

“Dad,” the voice said. It was a teenager’s voice, a worried voice. “We’re in awful trouble here, Dad. They’ve got Margie in jail.”

“No, I can’t help,” Starling said. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“This party says you’ve got the wrong number, Jeff,” the operator said.

“I know my own father’s voice, don’t I? Dad, for God’s sake. This is serious. We’re in trouble.”

“I don’t know any Jeffs,” Starling said. “It’s just the wrong number.”

Starling could hear whoever was on the line hit something against the phone very hard, then say, “Shit! This isn’t happening, I can’t believe this is happening.” The voice said something to someone else who was wherever he was. Possibly a policeman.

“It’s the wrong number,” the operator said. “I’m very sorry.”

“Me too,” Starling said. “I’m sorry.”

“Would you like to try another number now, Jeff?” the operator asked.

“Dad, please accept. Please, my God. Please.”

“Excuse the ring, sir,” the operator said, and the line was disconnected.

Starling put down the phone and stared out the window. The three boys who had blown up the tin can were walking past, eyeing his house. They were going for more fireworks. The torn can lay in the street, and the woman across the way was watching them from her picture window, pointing them out to a man in an undershirt who didn’t look like the man who worked on his car at night. He wondered if the woman was married or divorced. If she had children, where were they? He wondered who it was who had called — the sergeant’s kids were all too young. He wondered what kind of trouble Jeff was in, and where was he? He should’ve accepted the charges, said a word of consolation, or given some advice since the kid had seemed at wit’s end. He’d been in trouble in his life. He was in trouble now, in fact, but he hadn’t been any help.

He drove toward town and cruised the lot at the King’s Hat Drive-Inn, took a look in at the Super-Duper, then drove behind a truck stop. The garbage was with him in the hot front seat and already smelled bad despite the plastic. It was at the Super-Duper that the black woman had yelled at him and threatened to turn his garbage over to the police. Starling stopped back at the Super-Duper, parked at the side of the lot by the dumpster and went inside, leaving the garbage in the driver’s seat. A different black woman was inside. He bought some breakfast cereal, a bag of frozen macaroni and a bottle of hot sauce, then went back out to the car. Another car had driven in and parked beside his, and the driver, a woman, was sitting in view of the dumpster, waiting for someone who had gone inside. The woman might be another Super-Duper employee, Starling thought, or possibly the wife of someone in the back he hadn’t noticed.

He got in his car and drove straight out to a campground beside the Sacramento River, less than a mile from the house. He had come here and picnicked once with Lois, though the campground was empty now, all the loops and tables deserted. He pulled up beside a big green campground dumpster and heaved his garbage in without getting out of the car. Beyond the dumpster, through some eucalyptus trees, he could see the big brown river sliding swiftly by, pieces of yellow foam swirling in and out of the dark eddies. It was a treacherous river, he thought, full of perils. Each year someone drowned, and there were currents running deep beneath the surface. No one in his right mind would think of swimming in it, no matter how hot it got.

As he drove out he passed two motorcycles with Oregon plates, parked at the far end of the campground, and two hippies with long hair sitting on a rock, smoking. The hippies watched him when he drove by and didn’t bother hiding their dope. Two young women were coming out of the bushes nearby, wearing bathing suits, and one of the hippies gave Starling the black power salute and grinned. Starling drove back out to the highway.

The hippies reminded him of San Francisco. His mother, Irma, had lived there with her last husband, Rex, who’d had money. When he was in community college Starling had lived there with them for six months, before moving with his first wife across the bay to Alameda near the airport. They had been hippies of a certain kind themselves then and had smoked dope occasionally. Jan, his first wife, had had an abortion in a student apartment right on the campus. Abortions were not easy to get then, and they’d had to call Honolulu to get a name out in Castroville. They had been married six months, and Starling’s mother had had to lend them money she’d gotten from Rex.

When the abortionist came, he brought a little metal box with him, like a fishing-tackle box. They sat in the living room of the student apartment and talked about this and that, and drank beer. The man was named Dr. Carson. He told them he was being prosecuted at that very moment and was losing his license for doing this very thing — performing abortions — but that people needed help. He had three children of his own, he said, and Starling wondered if he ever performed abortions on his own wife. Dr. Carson said it would cost $400, and he could do it the next night, but needed all cash. Before he left he opened his metal box. There was nothing in it but fishing gear: a Pflueger reel, some monofilament line, several red-and-white Jitterbug lures. They had all three laughed. You couldn’t be too cautious, Dr. Carson said. They all liked each other and acted like they could be friends in happier days.

The next night Dr. Carson came with a metal box that looked exactly the same as the one before, green with a silver handle. He went into the bedroom with Jan and closed the door while Starling sat in the living room, watched TV and drank beer. It was Christmastime and Andy Williams was on, singing carols with a man in a bear suit. After a while a loud whirring noise, like an expensive blender, came out of the bedroom. It continued for a while, then stopped, then started. Starling became nervous. Dr. Carson, he knew, was mixing up his little baby, and Jan was feeling excruciating pain but wasn’t making noise. Starling felt sick then with fear and guilt and helplessness. And with love. It was the first time he knew he knew what real love was, his love for his wife and for all the things he valued in his life but could so easily lose.

Later, Dr. Carson came out and said everything would be fine. He smiled and shook Starling’s hand and called him Ted, which was the phony name Starling had given him. Starling paid him the money in hundreds, and when Dr. Carson drove off, Starling stood out on the tiny balcony and waved. The doctor blinked his headlights, and in the distance Starling could see a small private plane settling down to the airport in the dark, its red taillight blinking like a wishing star.

Starling wondered where the hell Jan was now, or Dr. Carson, fifteen years later. Jan had gotten peritonitis and almost died after that, and when she got well she wasn’t interested in being married to Eddie Starling anymore. She seemed very disappointed. Three months later she had gone to Japan, where she’d had a pen pal since high school, someone named Haruki. For a while she wrote Starling letters, then stopped. Maybe, he thought, she had moved back down to L.A. with her mother. He wished his own mother was alive still, and he could call her up. He was thirty-nine years old, though, and he knew it wouldn’t help.

Starling drove along the river for a few miles until the wide vegetable and cantaloupe fields opened out, and the horizon extended a long way in the heat to a hazy wind line of Lombardy poplars. High, slat-sided trucks sat stationed against the white skyline, and men were picking in the near fields and beyond in long, dense crews. Mexicans, Starling thought, transients who worked for nothing. It was a depressing thought. There was nothing they could do to help themselves, but it was still depressing, and Starling pulled across the road and turned back toward town.

He drove out toward the airport, along the strip where it was mostly franchises and consignment lots and little shopping plazas, some of which he had once found the tenants for. All along the way, people had put up fireworks stands for the Fourth of July, red-white-and-blue banners fluttering on the hot breeze. Some of these people undoubtedly lived out where he and Lois lived now, in the same subdivision. That would mean something, he thought, if one day you found yourself looking out at the world going past from inside a fireworks stand. Things would’ve gotten far out of hand when that time came, there was no arguing it.

He thought about driving past the apartment to see if the nurses who sublet it were keeping up the little yard. The nurses, Jeri and Madeline, were two big dykes with men’s haircuts and baggy clothes. They were friendly types, and in the real estate business dykes were considered A-Is — good tenants. They paid their rent, kept quiet, maintained property in good order, and held a firm stake in the status quo. They were like a married couple, was the business reasoning. Thinking about Jeri and Madeline, he drove past the light where their turn was, then just decided to keep driving.

There was nothing to do now, Starling thought, but drive out to the bar. The afternoon shift meant no one came in until Lois was almost ready to leave, and sometimes they could have the bar to themselves. Reiner would be gone by now and it would be cool inside, and he and Lois could have a quiet drink together, toast better cards on the next deal. They had had good times doing nothing but sitting talking.

Lois was leaning over the jukebox across from the bar when Starling came in. Mel, the owner, took afternoons off, and the place was empty. A darkgreen bar light shone over everything, and the room was cool.

He was glad to see Lois. She had on tight black slacks and a frilly white top and looked jaunty. Lois was a jaunty woman to begin with, and he was happy he’d come.

He had met Lois in a bar called the AmVets down in Rio Vista. It was before she and Louie Reiner became a twosome, and when he saw her in a bar now it always made him think of things then. That had been a high time, and when they talked about it Lois liked to say, “Some people are just meant to experience the highest moments of their lives in bars.”

Starling sat on a bar stool.

“I hope you came down here to dance with your wife,” Lois said, still leaning over the jukebox. She punched a selection and turned around, smiling. “I figured you’d waltz in here pretty soon.” Lois came by and patted him on the cheek. “I went ahead and punched in all your favorites.”

“Let’s have a drink first,” Starling said. “I’ve got an edge that needs a drink.”

“Drink first, dance second,” Lois said and went behind the bar and got down the bottle of Tanqueray.

“Mel wouldn’t mind,” Starling said.

“Mary-had-a-little-lamb,” Lois said while she poured a glassful. She looked up at Starling and smiled. “It’s five o’clock someplace on the planet. Here’s to old Mel.”

“And some better luck,” Starling said, taking a big first drink of gin and letting it trickle down his throat as slowly as he could.

Lois had been drinking already, he was sure, with Reiner. That wasn’t the best he could have hoped for, but it could be worse. She and Reiner could be shacked up in a motel, or on their way to Reno or the Bahamas. Reiner was gone, and that was a blessing, and he wasn’t going to let Reiner cast a shadow on things.

“Poor old Lou,” Lois said and came around the bar with a pink drink she’d poured out of the blender.

“Poor Lou what?” Starling said.

Lois sat down beside him on a bar stool and lit a cigarette. “Oh, his stomach’s all shot and he’s got an ulcer. He said he worries too much.” She blew out the match and stared at it. “You want to hear what he drinks?”

“Who cares what a dope like Reiner drinks out of a glass,” Starling said.

Lois looked at him, then stared at the mirror behind the bar. The smoky mirror showed two people sitting at a bar alone. A slow country tune started to play, a tune Starling liked, and he liked the way — with the gin around it — it seemed to ease him away from his own troubles. “So tell me what Reiner drinks,” he said.

“Wodka,” Lois said matter-of-factly. “That’s the way he says it. Wodka. Like Russian. Wodka with coconut milk — a Hawiian Russian. He say it’s for his stomach, which he says is better though it’s still a wreck. He’s a walking pharmacy. And he’s gotten a lot fatter, too, and his eyes bulge, and he wears a full Cleveland now. I don’t know.” Lois shook her head and smoked her cigarette. “He’s got a cute girlfriend, though, this Jackie, from Del Rio Beach. She looks like Little Bo Peep.”

Starling tried to picture Reiner. Louie Reiner had been a large, handsome man at one time, with thick eyebrows and penetrating black eyes. A sharp dresser. He was sorry to hear Reiner was fat and bug-eyed and wore a leisure suit. It was bad luck if that was the way you looked to the world.

“How was it, seeing Louie? Was it nice?” He stared at himself in the smoky mirror. He hadn’t gotten fat, thank God.

“No,” Lois said and dragged on her cigarette. “He was nice. Grown-up and what have you. But it wasn’t nice. He didn’t look healthy, and he still talked the same baloney, which was all before Jackie arrived, naturally.”

“All what baloney?”

“You know that stuff, Eddie. Everybody makes themselves happy or unhappy. You don’t leave one woman for another woman, you do it for yourself. If you can’t make it with one, make it with all of them — that baloney he was always full of. Take the tour. Go big casino. That stuff. Reiner stuff.”

“Reiner’s big casino, all right,” Starling said. “I guess he wanted you to go off with him.”

“Oh sure. He said he was off to Miami next week to arrest some poor soul. He said I ought to go, and we could stay at the Fontainebleau or the Eden Roc or one of those sharp places.”

“What about me?” Starling said. “Did I come? Or did I stay here? What about little Jackie?”

“Louie didn’t mention either one of you, isn’t that funny? I guess it slipped his mind.” Lois smiled and put her arm on Starling’s arm. “It’s just baloney, Eddie. Trashy talk.”

“I wish he was here now,” Starling said. “I’d use a beer bottle on him.”

“I know it, hon. But you should’ve heard what this little girlfriend said. It was a riot. She’s a real Ripley’s.”

“She’d need to be,” Starling said.

“Really. She said if Louie ran around on her she was going to sleep with a black man. She said she already had one picked out. She really knew how to work Louie. She said Louie had a house full of these cheap Italian carpets, and nobody to sell them to. That was his big deal he needed a partner for, by the way — not a very big market over here, I guess. She said Louie was thinking of selling them in Idaho. Good luck with that, I said. She said — and this would’ve made you laugh, Eddie, it would’ve truly — she said it’s a doggy-dog world out there. Doggy-dog. She was real cute. When she said that, Louie got down on the floor and barked like a dog. He dropped his pistol out of his whatever-you-call-it, his scabbard, and his beeper”—Lois was laughing—“he was like a big animal down on the floor of the bar.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Louie can be funny,” Lois said.

“Maybe you should’ve married him, then.”

“I did marry him.”

“Too bad you didn’t stay married to him instead of me. I don’t have a beeper.”

“I like what you have got, though, sweetheart.” She squeezed his arm. “Nobody would love me like you do, you know I think that. Reiner was just my mistake, but I can laugh at him today because I don’t have to live with him. You’re such a big mamma’s boy, you don’t want anybody to have any fun.”

“I’d like to have a little fun,” Starling said. “Let’s go where there’s some fun.”

Lois leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “You smell awfully nice.” She smiled at him. “Come on and dance with me, Ed. Justice demands that you dance with me. You have that light step. It’s nice when you do.”

Lois walked out onto the little dance floor and took Starling’s hand. He stood close to her and they danced to the slow music on the jukebox, holding together the way they had when he’d first known her. He felt a little drunk. A buzz improved a thing, he thought, made a good moment out of nothing.

“You’re a natural dancer, Eddie,” Lois said softly. “Remember us dancing at Powell’s on the beach, with everybody watching us?”

“You like having men think about you?” Starling said.

“Oh, sure. I guess.” Lois’s cheek was against his cheek. “It makes me feel like I’m in a movie, sometimes, you know? Everybody does that, don’t they?”

“I never do.”

“Don’t you ever wonder what your ex thinks about you? Old Jan. That was a long time ago, I guess.”

“Bygones are bygones to me,” Starling said. “I don’t think about it”

“You’re such a literal, Eddie. You get lost in the lonely crowd, I think sometimes. That’s why I want to be nice and make you happy.” She held him close to her so that her hard, flat hips were next to his. “Isn’t this nice? It’s nice to dance with you.”

Starling saw now that the bar was decorated with red, white, and blue crepe paper — features he’d missed. Little curlicues and ribbons and stars hung from the dark rafters and down off the shaded green bar lights and the beer signs and the framed pictures behind the back bar. This was festive, he thought. Lois had fixed it, it showed her hand. Before long a crowd would be in, the lights would go up and shine out, the music would be turned up loud. It would be a good time. “That’s nice,” Starling said.

“I just love this,” Lois said. Her head was on his shoulder. “I just love this so much.”

On the highway toward home, Starling passed the hippies he had seen at the campground. They were heading in now, the women on the rear seats, the men driving fast, leaning as if the wind blew them back.

In town, a big fireworks display staged by a shopping mall was beginning. Catherine wheels and star bursts and blue-and-pink sprays were going off in the twilight. Cars were stopped along the road, and people with children sat on their hoods, drinking beer and watching the sky. It was nearly dark and rain had begun to threaten.

“Everything’s moved out to the malls now,” Lois said, “including the fireworks.” She had been dozing and now she leaned against her door, staring back toward the lights.

“I wouldn’t care to work in one,” Starling said, driving.

Lois said nothing.

“You know what I was just thinking about?” she said after a while.

“Tell me,” Starling said.

“Your mother,” Lois said. “Your mother was a sweet old lady, you know that? I liked her very much. I remember she and I would go to the mall and buy her a blouse. Just some blouse she could’ve bought in Bullock’s in San Francisco, but she wanted to buy it here to be sweet and special.” Lois smiled about it. “Remember when we bought fireworks?”

Starling’s mother had liked fireworks. She liked to hear them pop so she could laugh. Starling remembered having fireworks one year in the time since he’d been married to Lois. When was that? he thought. A time lost now.

“Remember she held the little teenies right in her fingers and let them go off? That tickled her so much.”

“That was her trick,” Eddie said. “Rex taught her that.”

“I guess he did,” Lois said. “But you know, I don’t blame you, really, for being such a mamma’s boy, Eddie. Not with your mamma — unlike mine, for instance. She’s why you’re as nice as you are.”

“I’m selfish,” Starling said. “I always have been. I’m capable of lying, stealing, cheating.”

Lois patted him on the shoulder. “You’re generous, though, too.”

Rain was starting in big drops that looked like snow on the windshield. Lights from their subdivision glowed out under the lowered sky ahead.

“This weird thing happened today,” Starling said. “I can’t quit thinking about it.”

Lois slid over by him. She put her head on his shoulder and her hand inside his thigh. “I knew something had happened, Eddie. You can’t hide anything. The truth is just on you.”

“There’s no truth to this,” Starling said. “Just the phone rang when I was leaving, and it was this kid, Jeff. He was in some kind of mess. I didn’t know who he was, but he thought I was his father. He wanted me to accept charges.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

Starling looked toward the subdivision. “No. I should have, though. It’s on my mind now that I should’ve helped him. I’d just finished talking to Reiner.”

“He might’ve been in Rangoon, for Christ’s sake,” Lois said. “Or Helsinki. You don’t know where he was. It could’ve cost you five hundred dollars, then you couldn’t have helped him anyway. You were smart, is what I think.”

“It wouldn’t matter, though. I could’ve given him some advice. He said somebody was in jail. It’s just on my mind now, it’ll go away.”

“Get a good job and then accept charges from Istanbul,” Lois said and smiled.

“I just wonder who he was,” Starling said. “For some reason I thought he was over in Reno — isn’t that odd? Just a voice.”

“It’d be worse if he was in Reno,” Lois said. “Are you sorry you don’t have one of your own?” Lois looked over at him strangely.

“One what?”

“A son. Or, you know. Didn’t you tell me you almost had one? There was something about that, with Jan.”

“That was a long time ago,” Starling said. “We were idiots.”

“Some people claim they make your life hold together better, though,” Lois said. “You know?”

“Not if you’re broke they don’t,” Starling said. “All they do is make you sorry.”

“Well, we’ll just float on through life together, then, how’s that?” Lois put her hand high on his leg. “No blues today, hon, okay?”

They were at the little dirt street where the ranchette was, at the far end. A fireworks hut had been built in the front yard of the first small house, a chain of bright yellow bulbs strung across the front. An elderly woman was standing in the hut, her face expressionless. She had on a sweater and was holding a little black poodle. All the fireworks but a few Roman candles had been sold off the shelves.

“I never thought I’d live where people sold fireworks right in their front yards,” Lois said and faced front. Starling peered into the lighted hut. The rain was coming down in a slow drizzle, and water shone off the oiled street. He felt the urge to gesture to the woman, but didn’t. “You could just about say we lived in a place where you wouldn’t want to live if you could help it. Funny, isn’t it? That just happens to you.” Lois laughed.

“I guess it’s funny,” Starling said. “It’s true.”

“Whafd you dream up for dinner, Eddie? I’ve built up a hunger all of a sudden.”

“I forgot about it,” Starling said. “There’s some macaroni.”

“Whatever,” Lois said. “It’s fine.”

Starling pulled into the gravel driveway. He could see the pony standing out in the dark where the fenced weed lot extended to the side of the house. The pony looked like a ghost, its white eyes unmoving in the rain.

“Tell me something,” Starling said. “If I ask you something, will you tell me?”

“If there’s something to tell,” Lois said. “Sometimes there isn’t anything, you know. But go ahead.”

“What happened with you and Reiner?” he said. “All that Reno stuff. I never asked you about that. But I want to know.”

“That’s easy,” Lois said and smiled at him in the dark car. “I just realized I didn’t love Reiner, that’s all. Period. I realized I loved you, and I didn’t want to be married to somebody I didn’t love. I wanted to be married to you. It isn’t all that complicated or important.” Lois put her arms around his neck and hugged him hard. “Don’t be cloudy now, sweet. You’ve just had some odd luck is all. Things’ll get better. You’ll get back. Let me make you happy. Let me show you something to be happy, baby doll.” Lois slid across the seat against the door and went down into her purse. Starling could hear wind chimes in the rain. “Let me just show you,” Lois said.

Starling couldn’t see. Lois opened the door out into the drizzle, turned her back to him and struck a match. He could see it brighten. And then there was a sparkling and hissing, and then a brighter one, and Starling smelled the harsh burning and the smell of rain together. Then Lois closed the door and danced out before the car into the rain with the sparklers, waving her arms round in the air, smiling widely and making swirls and patterns and star-falls for him that were brilliant and illuminated the night and the bright rain and the little dark house behind her and, for a moment, caught the world and stopped it, as though something sudden and perfect had come to earth in a furious glowing for him and for him alone — Eddie Starling — and only he could watch and listen. And only he would be there, waiting, when the light was finally gone.