The grill-woman at the barbecue joint greeted him by name and the men and women around it made space for him. It was friendly and companionable, and after a moment Francis wandered up with a couple of his proteges. They carried boxes of beer.
“Hey hey,” Francis said. “Home again, huh?”
“Home again,” Perry said. He wiped rib-sauce off his fingers and shook Francis’s hand warmly. “God, I’ve missed this place.”
“We missed having you,” Francis said. “Big crowds across the way, too. Seems like you hit on something.”
Perry shook his head and smiled and ate his ribs. “What’s the story around here?”
“Lots and lots,” Francis said. “There’s a whole net-community thing happening. Lots of traffic on the AARP message-boards from other people setting these up around the country.”
“So you’ve hit on something, too.”
“Naw. When it’s railroading time, you get railroads. When it’s squatter time, you get squats. You know they want to open a 7-Eleven here?”
“No!” Perry laughed and choked on ribs and then guzzled some beer to wash it all down.
Francis put a wrinkled hand over his heart. He still wore his wedding band, Perry saw, despite his wife’s being gone for decades. “I swear it. Just there.” He pointed to one of the busier corners.
“And?”
“We told them to fuck off,” Francis said. “We’ve got lots of community-owned businesses around here that do everything a 7-Eleven could do for us, without taking the wealth out of our community and sending it to some corporate jack-off. Some soreheads wanted to see how much money we could get out of them, but I just kept telling them—whatever 7-Eleven gives us, it’ll only be because they think they can get more out of us. They saw reason. Besides, I’m in charge—I always win my arguments.”
“You are the most benevolent of dictators,” Perry said. He began to work on another beer. Beer tasted better outside in the heat and the barbecue smoke.
“I’m glad someone thinks so,” Francis said.
“Oh?”
“The 7-Eleven thing left a lot of people pissed at me. There’s plenty around here that don’t remember the way it started off. To them, I’m just some alter kocker who’s keeping them down.”
“Is it serious?” Perry knew that there was the potential for serious, major lawlessness from his little settlement. It wasn’t a failing condo complex rented out to Filipina domestics and weird entrepreneurs like him. It was a place where the cops would love an excuse to come in with riot batons (his funny eyebrow twitched) and gas, the kind of place where there almost certainly were a few very bad people living their lives. Miami had bad people, too, but the bad people in Miami weren’t his problem.
And the bad people and the potential chaos were what he loved about the place, too. He’d grown up in the kind of place where everything was predictable and safe and he’d hated every minute of it. The glorious chaos around him was just as he liked it. The wood-smoke curled up his nose, fragrant and all-consuming.
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I’d retire and settle down and take up painting. Now I’m basically a mob boss. Not the bad kind, but still. It’s a lot of work.”
“Pimpin’ ain’t easy.” Perry saw the shocked look on Francis’s face and added hastily, “Sorry—not calling you a pimp. It’s a song lyric is all.”
“We got pimps here now. Whores, too. You name it, we got it. It’s still a good place to live—better than Miami, if you ask me—but it could go real animal. Bad, bad animal.”
Hard to believe, standing there in the wood-smoke, licking his fingers, drinking his beer. His cold seemed to have been baked out by the steamy swampy heat.
“Well, Francis, if anyone knows how to keep peace, it’s you.”
“Social workers come around, say the same thing. But there’s people around here with little kids, they worry that the social workers could force them out, take away their children.”
It wasn’t like Francis to complain like this, it wasn’t in his nature, but here it was. The strain of running things was showing on him. Perry wondered if his own strain was showing that way. Did he complain more these days? Maybe he did.
An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Perry drank his beer, morosely. He thought of how ridiculous it was to be morose about the possibility that he was being morose, but there you had it.
Finally his phone rang and saved him from further conversation. He looked at the display and shook his head. It was Kettlewell again. That first voicemail had made him laugh aloud, but when they hadn’t called back for a couple days, he’d figured that they had just had a little too much wine and placed the call.
Now they were calling back, and it was still pretty early on the West Coast. Too early for them to have had too much wine, unless they’d really changed.
“Perry Perry Perry!” It was Kettlebelly. He sounded like he might be drunk, or merely punch-drunk with excitement. Perry remembered that he got that way sometimes.
“Kettlewell, how are you doing?”
“I’m here too, Perry. I cashed in my return ticket.”
“Suzanne?”
“Yeah,” she said. She too sounded punchy, like they’d been having a fit of the giggles just before calling. “Kettlewell’s family have taken me in, wayward wanderer that I am.”
“You two sound pretty, um, happy.”
“We’ve been having an amazing time,” Kettlewell said. His speakerphone made him sound like he was at the bottom of a well. “Mostly reminiscing about you guys. What the hell are you up to? We tried to follow it on the net, but it’s all jumbled. What’s this about a story?”
“Story?”
“I keep reading about this ride of yours and its story. I couldn’t make any sense of it.”
“I haven’t read any of this, but Lester and I were talking about some stuff to do with stories tonight. I didn’t know anyone else was talking about this, though. Where’d you see it?”
“I’ll email it to you,” Suzanne said. “I was going to blog it tonight anyway.”
“So you two are just hanging around San Francisco giggling and walking down memory lane?”
“Well, yeah! It’s about time, too. We’ve all been separated for too long. We want a reunion, Perry.”
“A reunion?”
“We want to come down for a visit and see what you’re doing and hang out. You wouldn’t believe how much fun we’ve been having, Perry, seriously.” Kettlewell sounded like he’d been huffing nitrous or something. “Have you been having fun?”
He thought about the question. “Um, kind of?” He told them about his travels, a quick thumbnail sketch, struggling to remember which city he’d been to when, leaving out the crazy sex—which came back to him in a rush, that night with Hilda in the coffin, like a warm hallucination. “On balance, yes. It’s been fun.”
“Right, so we want to come down and have fun with you and Lester. He’s still hanging around, right?”
Lester had told him about the history he had with Suzanne, and there was something in the way she asked after Lester that suggested to Perry that there was still something there.
“You kidding? You’d have to pry us apart with a crowbar.”
“See, I told you so,” Suzanne said. “This guy thought that Lester might have gotten bored and wandered off.”
“Never! Plus anyone who follows his message board traffic and blogs would know that he was right here, minding the shop.” And you’re reading his blog, aren’t you, Suzanne? He didn’t need to say it. He could almost hear her blush over the line.
“So how about tomorrow?”
“For what?”
“For us coming to town. I’ll bring the wife and kids. We’ll rent out a couple hotel rooms and spend a week there. It’ll be a blast.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We could get the morning flight and be there for breakfast. You got a good hotel? Not a coffin hotel, not with the kids.”
Perry’s heart beat faster. He did miss these two, and they were so punchy, so gleeful. He’d love to see them. He muted his phone.
“Hey, Francis? That guesthouse down the road, is it still running?”
“Lulu’s? Sure. They just built another storey and took over the top floor of the place next door.”
“Perfect.” He unmuted. “How’d you like to stay in a squatter guesthouse in the shantytown?”
“Um,” Kettlewell said, but Suzanne laughed.
“Oh hell yes,” she said. “Get that look off your face, Kettlewell, this is an adventure.”
“We’d love it,” Kettlewell said.
“Great, I’ll got make you a reservation. How long are you staying?”
“Until we leave,” Suzanne said.
“Right,” Perry said and laughed himself. They were different people, these two, from the people he remembered, but they were also old friends. And they were coming to see him tomorrow. “OK, lemme go make your reservations.”
Francis walked him over and the landlord fussed over the two of them like they were visiting dignitaries. Perry looked the place over and it was completely charming. He spotted what he thought was probably a hooker and a trick taking a room for the night, but you got that at the Hilton, too.
By the time he got home he was sure that he’d sleep like a log. He could barely keep his eyes open on the drive. But after he climbed into bed and closed his eyes, he found that he couldn’t sleep at all. Something about being back in his own room in his own bed felt alien and exciting. He got up and paced the apartment and then Lester came home from his date with the fatkins nympho, full of improbable stories and covered in little hickeys.
“You won’t believe who’s coming for a visit,” Perry said.
“Steve Jobs. He’s come down from the lamasery and renounced Buddhism. He wants to give a free computer to every visitor.”
“Close,” Perry said. “Kettlebelly and Suzanne Church. Coming tomorrow for a stay of unspecified duration. It’s a reunion. It’s a reunion you big sonofabitch! Woot! Woot!” Perry did a little two-step. “A reunion!”
Lester looked confused for a second, and then for another second he looked, what, upset? and then he was grinning and jumping up and down with Perry. “Reunion!”
He felt like he’d barely gotten to sleep when his phone rang. The clock showed six AM, and it was Kettlebelly and Suzanne, bleary, jet-lagged and grouchy from their one-hour post-flight security processing.
“We want breakfast,” Suzanne said.
“We’ve gotta open the ride, Suzanne.”
“At six in the morning? Come on, you’ve got hours yet before you have to be at work. How about you and Lester meet us at the IHOP?”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Come on! Kettlebelly’s kids are dying for something to eat and his wife looks like she’s ready to eat him. It’s been years, dude! Get your ass in the shower and down to the International House of Pancakes!”
Lester didn’t rouse easy, but Perry knew all the tricks for getting his old pal out of bed, they were practically married after all.
They arrived just in time for the morning rush but Tony greeted them with a smile and sent them straight to the front of the line. Lester ordered his usual (“Bring me three pounds of candy with a side of ground animal parts and potatoes”) and they waited nervously for Suzanne and the clan Kettlewell to turn up.
They arrived in a huge bustle of taxis and luggage and two wide-eyed, jet-lagged children hanging off of Kettlewell and Mrs Kettlewell, whom neither of them had ever met. She was a small, youthful woman in her mid-forties with artfully styled hair and big, abstract chunky silver jewelry. Suzanne had gone all Eurochic, rail-thin and smoking, with quiet, understated dark clothes. Kettlewell had a real daddy belly on him now, a little pot that his daughter thumped rhythmically from her perch on his hip.
“Sit, sit,” Perry said to them, getting up to help them stack their luggage at either end of the long table down the middle of the IHOP. Big family groups with tons of luggage were par for the course in Florida, so they didn’t really draw much attention beyond mild irritation from the patrons they jostled as they got everyone seated.
Perry was mildly amused to see that Lester and Suzanne ended up sitting next to one another and were already chatting avidly and close up, in soft voices that they had to lean in very tight to hear.
He was next to Mrs Kettlewell, whose name, it transpired, was Eva—“As in Extra-Vehicular Activity,” she said, geeking out with him. Kettlewell was in the bathroom with his daughter and son, and Mrs Kettlewell—Eva—seemed relieved at the chance for a little adult conversation.
“You must be a very patient woman,” Perry said, laughing at all the ticklish noise and motion of their group.
“Oh, that’s me all right,” Eva said. “Patience is my virtue. And you?”
“Oh, patience is something I value very much in other people.” Perry said. It made Eva laugh, which showed off her pretty laugh-lines and dimples. He could see how this woman and Kettlewell must complement each other.
She rocked her head from side to side and took a long swig of the coffee that their waiter had distributed around the table, topping up from the carafe he’d left behind. “Thank God for legal stimulants.”
“Long flight?”
“Traveling with larvae is always a challenge,” she said. “But they dug it hard. You should have seen them at the windows.”
“They’d never been on a plane before?”
“I like to go camping,” she said with a shrug. “Landon’s always on me to take the kids to Hawaii or whatever, but I’m always like, ‘Man, you spend half your fucking life in a tin can—why do you want to start your holidays in one? Let’s go to Yosemite and get muddy.’ I haven’t even taken them to Disneyland!”
Perry put the back of his hand to his forehead. “That’s heresy around here,” he said. “You going to take them to Disney World while you’re in Florida? It’s a lot bigger, you know—and it’s a different division. Really different feel, or so I’m told.”
“You kidding? Perry, we came here for your ride. It’s famous, you know.”
“Net.famous, maybe. A little.” He felt his cheeks burning. “Well, there will be one in your neck of the woods soon enough.” He told her about the Burning Man collective and the plan to build one down the 101, south of San Francisco International.
Kettlebelly returned then with the kids, and he managed to get them into their seats while sucking back a coffee and eating a biscuit from the basket in the center of the table, breaking off bits to shove in the kids’ mouths whenever they protested.