To read Part 1, click here.

***

As is so often the case with former high school acquaintances at a glance, I remember the nickname and not the real one. But the high cheek bones and long, perpetually dumb-looking face immediately take me back to the playground, to the flying elbows and garbage low post moves of the man currently holding my pizza, “Patrick Ewing.

“Ski!?” Surprise. Question. My travel-dom stranger-ness instantaneously and finally shattered.

“Ewing!” Fact.

An awkward man-hug ensues as well as possible with the extra-large pie between us. A sort of straight-armed grasp of one another’s shoulders. Me, with my right hand underneath, supporting the pizza, most importantly…

“Thought I was delivering to your parents. You living at home again?”

“Uh, yeah. No. Not, exactly. Just passing through.”

Silence. Sizing each other up – literally – each thinking, ‘Damn, he’s put on weight.’ Each taking stock of the other ubiquitous phenomenon among ‘haven’t seen you since graduation’ pals: the surprising addition of hair to a familiar face. I can feel him eying my patchy sideburns, as I marvel at the fact that anyone would consciously grow a goatee.

“Guess you heard about what happened?”

“Yeah.” Me, with a strange, almost proud realization of personal loss becoming something of a current event, local gossip.

“You boys were still pretty tight?:

“I was with him right before. In New Orleans.”

“Shit, man. What happened?”

“We had a blast.”

I flash on drunken smiles in dark bars at 3am around the French Quarter. I flash on dangling feet, craving the dirt, just inches above the ground….

“Yeah, so uhh, we’re getting a barrel later down at the ‘zebo, if your not doing anything.”

“Shit! You still hang out there?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. Maybe private-school-asshole, Mr. I’m-gonna-write-a-big-book came roaring back with one simple exclamation, but I can barely contain myself. All the intervening years of errantly discarded joints, cigs, and police calls haven’t in some way rendered the gazebo – a 10 foot diameter wooden structure on the neighborhood pond, a high school mecca of bongs and brews – a charred heap or a condemned zone.

“Yeah. Sometimes.” Abashed, Ewing hangs his head. (Marv Albert: “And Ewing is hurt!”)

“Shit, man! I’ll be down.”

“Yeah?,” brightening, grinning up at me like he used to after we’d just run a pick-n-roll for the umpteenth time to close out some local Waukegan hoods in a 2-on-2 at the Township Center. And me, brightening too, flashing on Uncle John’s gift and hoping it was still safe in my checked bag.

“Shit, man, I’ll bring the weed.”

On the way back to the kitchen, plopping the 18-inch pizza on the granite-topped island, I take closer stock of the things around me, once taken for granted but now like looking through a Sharper Image catalog of life. Not even unattainable, but bafflingly unthinkable. A parallel to flashing on my favorite Brooklyn pies when I’m in my dingy pad, warming up a Tombstone. Stainless steel this, marble that. Hardwood. And the sparkle. And the smell. Pictures in actual frames. And then there is the ultimate sign of comfort and success: a garbage disposal.

Where does that garbage go? What class of people has to deal with it, and at what point? Shit runs down hill, but what if shit is just disposed of? Gone. Evaporated. Right there. Flip of the switch.

I ponder as I chew, sitting at the table, gazing around the kitchen. Doing indescribable – in some places illegal – things to the pizza squares in front of me…

Satiated after post-orgasm smoke on the big wooden deck under the gray skies, I make my way upstairs for a fresh t-shirt. In my old bedroom, yellowed curling newspaper clippings on the wall, desk and dresser bare, like always the compulsion needs to be filled: through my high school yearbooks I wander. Fingers over faces, tears at the corners of my eyes in spots, a laugh, a headshake. There is my ex-girlfriend, her still-intact virginity captured in bright-eyed pre-prom innocence. Back then, still believing in me. And then there is Kate. Kate is dead.

“Kate is dead,” I say aloud to myself, as if to make it more real. As if to make it sink in, after 8 years. A cat looks up at me from the floor, thinking me crazy, probably.

You don’t even know what death is.

Do you, cat?

Don’t you see me staring sometimes, just looking into thin air?

I always wondered about that.

(wide-eyed, looking over my shoulder)…

So…?

Man, you don’t wanna know…

Certain pages I skip over, not ready. Certain signatures in the back flap I avoid. There is Liz, almost done with med school these days, podiatry, I hear. What is podiatry? And there is Bryn, living in, what is it, Switzerland? And there is Ewing, again, here smooth-faced, brighter eyes, but the same expression. I used to be able to read it, like a book, I used to just know when he was going to cut to the basket. I think about him now, I think about joining him down at the ‘zebo. Burning one, patting each other’s beer guts and “‘Member when?”-ing, staring at the pond, warm Miller Lite out of a can. Comfort in numbers. Just like the old days…

But instead, fresh-socked and fresh-shirted, I find myself drifting back to the couch. Hauling the pizza box to the coffee table now for round 2.

Tomorrow the alarm will ring, no matter how many times I hit snooze. Even if I unplug the fucker, rip the cord out and Joe Pesci the little bitch into fragments. Stomp it good, and keep the curtains closed, the cats locked out, bury my head in a heaping mess of clean blankets. It will be ringing.

For tomorrow, I’ll be back home. Tomorrow I will take care of things. But mostly, if I try, it’s at arm’s length; and I ease back on the black leather, let it envelope me, reach for the pizza box, flip to HBO. Nearly 10 HBOs and movie channels I haven’t even heard of. I can’t remember what it’s like to have cable. The house is dark and loud with silence around me. And there will be ringing, and there will be shit to be seen to. I pull the cover up further, around my chin, a fleece-type thing, undoubtedly Alpaca or some fucking animal I can’t describe. I wrap myself in warmth and insouciance as rain tinks the windows on a cold Chicago March night, and tomorrow is far enough away.