“It’s not dumb,” said Lillith quietly.
“What?” said Tina.
“It’s not dumb. I’ve seen him.”
“Seen who?” said Franklin.
“The guy who disappeared, Leon Meed. At a show at the Fricatash last Friday. He was talking to that girl Eve you know she’s going out with Ryan Burghese? and then he disappeared.” As Lillith said this she looked at the table in front of her and saw an ampersand crack in the table’s surface.
Tina waved her white dish towel at her manager like a peace offering and stood up. “Very funny. I’ll see you later.”
Lillith didn’t indicate in any way that she was joking, and when Tina left Franklin said, “You’re not serious.”
“I am. You can not believe me but I saw him. And if other neopagans are saying that Leon’s on the Astral Plane, then that makes sense to me.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before now?”
“I thought it was because I was drinking. I thought, I don’t know what I thought. But the point is we’ve got to help bring him back if that’s what Kathy’s saying. We’ve got to cast the spell.”
“You’re becoming a Wicca fundamentalist.”
“No, I’m not.”
Franklin said, “Hmm.”
Lillith said, “Hmm.”
Then they smiled and they’d been best friends since they were five-year-olds and there were some things that they instantly forgave in each other.
“Jim!” said Shane. The third annual Boys in the Wood racquetball tournament was in midcontest at CalCourts, where Shane Larson and Jim Sturges stood next to each other in line to get shower towels from the front desk. Broad-bottomed women in stretch pants and sports bras strode purposefully to their aerobics workouts and weight-diminishing sauna sessions. Their thighs and hair were massive. Televisions tuned to different twenty-four-hour sports channels perched on all four walls like bird nests, a permanent squawk, competing for the attention of exercisers and exercise-hangers-on standing below, where the semifinals of the racquetball C division were about to begin on courts 3, 4, and 5, and the judges were being asked over the PA system to take their positions in the observation areas. “Man,” said Shane, raising his voice a chirpy octave, “it’s been forever. Where are you living these days? I’m married, did you know that?”
Shane was a changed man. He knew Jim would be expecting the old Shane: the Shane with skinhead leanings who sometimes beat up middle-aged men with families just because they were middle-aged men with families, the Shane who’d once dropped seven hits of acid and baseball-batted his way into a Rolls-Royce parked implausibly in downtown Eureka in order to defecate on its virgin-calf leather upholstery before being arrested. But eight transformational years had passed since they’d seen each other, during which Shane had embraced his family’s Mormonism, the Larson faith for three generations already, and become an upstanding citizen.
“I didn’t know that,” said Jim, smiling mechanically. “Congratulations.”
He has no idea how far I’ve come, thought Shane, who dispensed with the small talk by saying, “I’ve stopped drinking and smoking and extramarital sex.” He stared penetratingly at his old friend. “Those were a fool’s paradise.”
“I see,” Jim said.
But did Jim see? Could he comprehend the metamorphosis? He’d never been as ultraviolent and antisocial as Shane, and in fact he’d been something of a wet blanket about fighting and unprovoked cruelty back in high school, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been a sinner. Because he had. Jim had fornicated with abandon. He’d drunk alcohol to the point of bodily harm. He’d had godless ways. And although time could also have changed him, Shane didn’t think it had. No, Shane didn’t see salvation in Jim’s tired, distracted face.
Shane said, “I’m working now for Morland Memorial Services. It’s customer relations, some floor sales. I’m selling caskets mainly, but recently I’ve been getting contracts to do land plots. It’s a growth industry. The baby boomers are nearing their time. What’d you say you’re doing?”
Jim got his towel from the putty-chinned receptionist and gave it a quick inspection. “I’m in Los Angeles. Just home visiting for a while.”
Shane tried not to think about Jim’s inability to appreciate how far he’d come since they’d known each other in high school—because it was a major failure of imagination—and instead he thought about the business opportunity presenting itself. Let the past be the past. His great insight was: friends and acquaintances could be customers, and vice versa. “I know what you’re probably thinking in LA,” he said. “You’re probably worried because you have no idea where to be buried in such a huge city, right? I mean, down there where you don’t know anybody and everything’s so anonymous. It’d scare me to death if I was you.”
Jim stared in the direction of the change room and said, “Honestly I haven’t thought about it.”
Shane tucked his towel under his arm. “That’s what I’m saying. Why would you when the thought’s so scary? Being buried in some big city all alone? Jim, you’re going to want to come back to Eureka when you die, where your roots are. I think we should talk about this; I think it could be good for us. How long are you in town?”
Jim pivoted on one foot, his body aching toward the showers. “Not long,” he said.
“Let me give you my card.” Shane pulled out a buttermilk business card with blue embossed lettering: Shane Larson, Associate Sales Representative, Morland Memorial Services, 555-2432. “What’s your number in town? I’ll call you.”
“Actually I’m busy for the rest of my visit, so I’ll have to get ahold of you later.”
Shane, knowing that Jim hadn’t a clue how to conduct himself righteously in the eyes of God, that he was, spiritually speaking, a directionless person in need of guidance, said, “I have a better idea. We’ll talk it over in the shower. I can get you a great price on a site right now. You like the Humboldt Overview Cemetery? Who doesn’t, right? Imagine a place on the hill there, overlooking the bay, in a gorgeous casket made of beautifully contrasting white pine and mahogany, and with a crisp gold satin lining. Think solid mahogany swing-bar handles and sliding lid supports. Jim, I could take you down to the store after we shower and show you the displays and we could settle this today. Can you imagine how good you’d feel?”
Shane was really in the zone now, was in one of his total empathic mind melds, for despite his religious advantage over his erstwhile friend, he was Jim Sturges at that moment, seeing what he saw, anticipating the relief of putting the whole burial question to rest and maybe opening himself up to a higher power.
“Thanks,” Jim said, “but I really don’t have time.”
“It isn’t for me that I’m asking this. It’s for you.”
“I’m sure it is, but seriously. I’m not interested.”
Shane closed the gap between them by six inches and spoke quietly, confidentially, importantly, as sports commentators droned in the background, “Jim, death isn’t one of those things you can afford not to think about. You may want to, and you may get away with it in the short term, but it’s there waiting for you. I don’t know if you know this but I’ve become a Mormon, and that’s because I had a big realization a few years ago that we’re not here forever. I know what you’re thinking, news flash, right?”