"See? I can't reach that thing from here, can I? They think I have nine-foot arms? By the time I press the plate, get myself back over to where I can go through the doors, the doors would be closing. Stupid! Yeah, well, I'm going to write somebody a real lollapalooza of a letter when this is over. Now tell me again what we're going to do here, while I tell you that we do none of it until we've sampled their snack bar. I'm thinking pizza."
"Which we will not consume using a knife and fork," Alex informed her as he held open the door for her (the push-plate didn't seem to be working), and she pushed her way into the noise and heat and disinfected-shoes smell of one of the least-favorite haunts of her youth. That was probably because the only bowling trophy she had ever won was as Most Improved Bowler. Which wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't improved from a score of thirty-one to finally, for one game of the whole season, breaking one hundred and fifty.
Erin was the bowler of the Kelly family. She'd copped more than a dozen trophies, twice as many ribbons, and their father's undivided time two nights a week and Saturdays.
Maggie figured she probably should forgive her sister for that. Forgive, and move on. Yes, definitely she had to write to Erin about what was happening on the home front, that it might even soon be safe to come home. Maybe even call her, and not just write to her. Eeeww, that thought hurt ...
"Maggie, did you hear me?"
"Hmm? Oh, right. Not with a knife and fork. I've only been telling you that for months. It tastes better when you just pick it up and shove it in your mouth. Now try it with some french fries rolled up inside. Trust me—pure gourmet. Snack bar's to our right."
"Perhaps we might try the bar, instead," Alex suggested, pointing to a flashing sign that blinked red and blue, not too inventively, The Eleventh Frame. "That's where Henry Novack encountered the members of the Majesties, remember?"
"Drinking beer before they get their practice games in? I don't think so. These are dedicated athletes, or whatever you call bowlers. We'd have a better chance of seeing one of them in the snack bar. Ah, smell that? Thank God garlic can overcome any smell, even that of rented bowling shoes."
They settled in at the counter, all the plastic booth seats already occupied, and Maggie quickly ordered two slices for herself and two more for Alex. And two fountain Cokes. She loved fountain Cokes, and since the snack bar hadn't seemed to have changed in fifteen years, she hoped the Cokes hadn't, either.
"Maggie Kelly, right?" the woman behind the counter asked as she put down the sodas and pulled a pair of straws from her apron pocket. "Heard about your dad. Cops let him go?"
Maggie smiled weakly at one of the many nemeses of her youth. "Hi, Mrs. McGert. Yeah, they figured out he didn't do it."
"Not the way I heard it. I heard they just didn't have enough to go to trial with, like that, you know? Probably pick him up again in a week or two, that's what my Jerome says. Is he going to show up here? I wouldn't, if I was him."
"Mrs. McGert, Dad's bowled here for as long as I can remember, and I never heard him say one bad word about you. You've worked behind this snack bar for as long as I can remember, and you've been bad-mouthing him to everyone who comes in this place ever since Christmas Eve, haven't you? Sure, you have. But that's okay, because I've learned something these past few days—forgive your past, and move on. So I'm going to forgive you, Mrs. McGert, and move on."
"Uh ... yeah ... you do that," the woman said and looked at Alex, shrugged. "She was always a weird kid," she told him and then turned her back to go get their pizza.
At which time Maggie quickly but carefully pulled off the paper at the top of her straw, eased the paper down the straw a good two-thirds of the way (she'd experimented, and two-thirds of the way gave her optimum control), put the exposed end of the straw to her mouth, took careful aim ... and blew the paper sleeve directly at Mrs. McGert's broad backside.
"I've still got it. Direct hit."
"Hardly a challenge, with apologies to Mrs. McGert's massive posterior. I thought I heard you say you were going to forgive your past and move on."
"Not without a parting shot, I wasn't," Maggie said, prudently losing her smile as Mrs. McGert slid paper plates in front of them. "You know, crazy as this is, what with Dad still not out of the woods, I'm really enjoying myself. Maybe I ought to come home more often? Nah, that'd be pushing it, huh?"
"As you seem to revert to near childhood on such occasions—and keeping in mind your own admission that you were not an easy child—yes, I would concur. Ah, and here comes my friend of the other day, Mr. Joseph Panelli, and look who is with him, sweetings—the footballing hero himself."
Maggie turned on her stool, her mouth still filled with the pizza she'd yet to bite through entirely. "Barry Butts," she said around the slice, and then bit down hard, the hot tomato sauce quickly burning the roof of her mouth. "Ow-ow-ow," she said, holding her mouth open as she swiveled toward the counter once more. "Coke. Ah need Coke," she said, grabbing her glass and sucking hard on the straw.
"Congratulations, sweetings. I do believe you've caught Mr. Panelli's attention." Alex stood up, extending his hand to the captain of the Majesties. "Joe, m'man, good to see you again!"
"M'man?" Maggie muttered. "Cripes, I have to get the man out of Jersey. Fast."
She turned around again in time to see Alex and a redheaded man about her dad's age shaking hands while Barry Butts looked on from a few feet away.
"Maggie? Maggie Kelly?" Barry said in that aw-shucks voice she remembered from high school. At the time, she'd thought he was the modest sports hero. Now she thought he was as fake as a three-dollar bill. "Lisa told me you'd been by to see her. And your friend, too, right?"
Ah. There may have been a little bit of an edge to his last statement, Maggie thought as she wiped her hands on a paper napkin and then shook hands with the one-time captain of the football team. The man had a grip like an iron vise. "Yeah, we did. God, it was good to see her. Sorry we missed you, but Lisa said you were at work?"
"Right. Not a lot of call for bikes in the wintertime, but I have to do repairs, stuff like that. You remember my dad's bike rental shop? Bikes, trikes, two– and four-seater surreys? Put your butt in a Butts? We do Rollerblades and skateboards now, too, and body boards. But the bikes are still the Number One rental."
"Do I remember? Like anyone could ever forget that fantastic slogan, huh? Still down at the north end of the Boardwalk, right, in the older part of town?" Maggie said, her cheeks starting to hurt because she had to fight to keep the smile on her face. After all, if Alex was right, Barry Butts had recently killed a man. And framed her father for the murder. And might want to kill her father. And was a bastard to her good friend, Lisa.
Well, she could think of Lisa as her good friend if she wanted to, damn it!
"Yeah, still in the same spot. Forty-two years now. Mom's been gone a long while, and Dad died a couple of years back, and it's mine now. The business, the house. I thought about moving away, years ago, after high school. But you know the saying—I'd rather be the big fish in a small pond, heh-heh. I have it good here."
In the back of her mind, Maggie was humming that Bruce Springsteen song, Glory Days. Barry and Lisa could have done walk-ons in the video ...
"You and Lisa have it good," Maggie corrected smoothly, pulling herself back to attention. "Your mom? Gosh, I remember your dad, but I don't think I remember your mom."
"Like I said, she left a long time ago," Barry said, a tic beginning to work in his cheek.
Maggie took the words, and the tic, as evidence that she and Alex were on the right track. Barry's mom had run off, so Barry was extra-possessive of Lisa, making sure she didn't do to him what his mother had done to him. Wow. Maggie's parents may have screwed her up some, but Barry had her in that department, hands down.