I slapped my forehead with my hand.
“What,” she said, “you could have had a V-8?”
“I just remembered. I have a picture of me and Mildred.”
“Mildred?”
“Mildred Calloway. Our waiter took a picture of us on my cell phone.”
“At Switch?”
“Uh huh.”
“Why?”
“This is sort of embarrassing,” I said, working it shamelessly, “but Mildred thinks I’m cute. She wanted to forward a picture of us to her girlfriend in Seattle, so she could pretend she had a hot date with a younger man.”
“Gimme the phone,” Kathleen said. “I want to see the picture of you and the babe.”
I clicked through some images on my phone and passed it to her.
“Here you go,” I said.
When Kathleen saw the photo her face lit up.
“Aww,” she said. “Mildred’s
“You’re cuter,” I said, just to prove there was no depth to which I wouldn’t sink.
“Look at that smile,” she said. “You can tell she’s having a ball. Aww, you’re a good sport, honey.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that the seafood tower in the background?”
“It is. I should have gotten a close up for you.”
Before giving me the camera back she clicked the advance button to see if there were any additional pictures. There weren’t.
Then she clicked back one, to check the previous picture, which happened to be a shot of her and Addie playing during the in-home visit with the adoption lady, Patty Feldson.
“I didn’t know you took this picture,” Kathleen said.
“I couldn’t help myself,” I said. “It was a great moment for us.”
She smiled the most wonderful smile and said, “I love the way you said that: Us.”
Kathleen looked sad for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d been cheating on me.”
“With Mildred?”
“No, honey. With some hot babe from Vegas. And all the time you were just being a nice guy. Can you believe I wouldn’t trust you? How crazy is that?” she said.
“So,” I said, looking at the door that led to her bedroom. “You think maybe we could…”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’m worried you might be thinking of Mildred while making love to me.”
“What?”
She burst into laughter and dragged me to bed.
At the most appropriate point thereafter, I murmured “Mildred,
Kathleen laughed and said, “Maybe you
“Why’s that?”
“So you can see what it feels like to have old age creeping up on you.”
Chapter 23
The Huntington, West Virginia sky was dark and menacing, like an angry panther pacing its cage. Mourners kept a wary eye on the rumbling thunderheads, with good reason: lightning had already killed one golfer the day before, less than a mile from this very spot. Which meant some of these people would have a second chance to wear their black suits this week.
Jerry Beck, father of Charlie and devoted alumnus of Marshall University, had years ago purchased several prime burial plots under a giant, black-barked chestnut oak tree in Spring Hill Cemetery near the Marshall Memorial.
Jerry had been proud to score such elegant eternal accommodations at the time, only he didn’t figure to need them so soon.
The Marshall Memorial honors the football team, coaches and supporters who perished in the famous plane crash of 1970. Like the Memorial and the oak tree, Charlie’s grave site was located on the highest point of the cemetery, overlooking the City of Huntington and the Marshall University campus. Kimberly, Kathleen and I followed the mourners up the hill. As we passed the Memorial I noticed six unmarked graves commemorating the plane crash victims whose remains were never identified.
I wondered how many of Charlie’s victims had never come forward to be identified. I wondered if Kimberly might have been the next. I gave her hand a squeeze.
More than two hundred people showed up for the burial, making it the largest turnout I’d ever seen. Had the weather been better, twice as many might have shown. Kimberly attributed the large numbers to Charlie’s popularity, but I suspected it was something else. I mean, you don’t have to be a local to figure out which way the shit rolled in this part of the country. In West-by-God-Virginia, it rolled downhill, starting with the governor and Jerry Beck.
I was appropriately somber for the occasion, but it didn’t keep me from noticing things. Like how many people had shown up, how many kept glancing at the sky and how many men were holding purses.
I wore a dark suit and black aviator sunglasses, and held my arm around Kimberly and did my best to comfort her. Kimberly was having a rough time. She kept sobbing and burying her face into my side. The wind whipped the women’s dresses mercilessly, and those who wore hats needed both hands to keep hat and dress in place—which explained why so many husbands held their wives’ purses.
