"Tony. You go on," he said with a glance over his shoulder. "Peter and I'll be out for awhile, down at the park or something. If the phone rings just let the machine catch it, okay?"
Tony stared at him, then nodded. "Sure," he said. "Thanks, man."
He turned, stopped to look back. Peter was framed within the doorway, kneeling in front of his Legos. The TV hummed at his back, a fuzzy red figure twirled around the moon, words formed and changed on the screen.
"Bye Peter." Tony waited to see if the boy would look up, if that mad rush of feeling would overcome him again.
It didn't. Peter remained where he was, making his patterns: yellow blue yellow blue. Yellow.
"Bye bye," murmured Tony. He swiped a long strand of unwashed hair from his face; then turned and walked down the corridor to Brendan's room.
In the weeks that followed they fell into a surprisingly easy routine. Surprising because in all their years of knowing each other, Brendan and Tony had never actually lived together. Oh, there had been numerous occasions when one or the other had been bounced out by a girlfriend, or a group house had gotten just too crazy even for Tony's patience. And certainly there had been plenty of drunken evenings when Brendan had passed out on Tony's sofa or floor, or vice versa. And so Brendan had always assumed—extremely very wrongly, as Tony quickly pointed out with a hurt look—that Tony was a slob.
In fact Tony was exceedingly, even excessively, neat. He cleaned dishes immediately after washing them; he picked up damp towels and hung them over the shower rod to dry, and later folded them carefully, in three parts, and replaced them on the towel rack. If Brendan put his half-full coffee mug down somewhere and forgot about it, the next time he'd see it would be in the dishwasher, or back in the cupboard. Each section of The Washington Post was in the recycling bin as soon as it was read, and sometimes even sooner.
"You know, Tony, I was saving that Redskins article," Brendan said the Sunday before Thanksgiving, aggrieved to find the sports section gone a few hours before game time. "Christ, you're worse than my mother! Were you always like this?" Brendan gave his friend a suspicious look as Tony sorted through the CDs in the living room. "I thought you were a slob. Like me," he added, yanking the offending sports section from the recycling bin.
"No way, man."
"Yes, way—what about all those places you lived? What about your place with Kimberly? That was disgusting."
"Wasn't me, man." Tony shook his head. "That was her. That was all of them. I just like messy women," he said, shrugging. He held up a CD and struck a thoughtful pose: Marcus Welby, Punk Rocker. "I think they're better in bed. Haven't you ever noticed? Big Fat Slob Equals Great Head."
Brendan laughed. "Oh. That's what I've been doing wrong."
"Sure, man. Problem is, eventually, you just can't find 'em."
"You mean like, all the good ones are taken?"
"No, man—I mean, like, Kimberly's place was such a fucking pigsty, it took me a week to figure out she'd gone off with Roy." Tony turned back to the stack of CDs. "And you know, these days I'm so wired when I get home from work in the morning—it's like when I used to play. Takes me a while to wind down. It calms me, straightening stuff. And I mean, what's your fucking problem?" He glared over his shoulder at Brendan. "Cleaning up is a lot more productive than shooting smack."
Brendan hooted. "Is that what you told your students? 'This is Tony Maroni for a Drug-Free America. Clean your'—ouch!"
He ducked as a CD went skimming past his head. "Go watch your Foreskins game!" yelled Tony. "Let me clean in peace!"
They went out to dinner that night after the game, Tony's domestic abilities not extending as far as cooking food. Peter was at his mother's until Wednesday, when Brendan would pick him up for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
"How come you got the night off?" he asked Tony, dousing his salad with balsamic vinegar. "I thought Gigantor was open for all major holidays."
"They are. But I said I'd cover for Jason so he could go see his girlfriend in Charlottesville." Tony picked up a french fry, dabbed it in ketchup and drew a little heart; erased it and ate the fry. "Wish I had a girlfriend," he said. "We still on for Cousin Kevin's?"
"Far as I know. Kevin says Eileen's bought a five-hundred-pound turkey and upset the Chicago trading floor by sucking up cranberry futures. So I guess we're expected."
Tony laughed: he loved Eileen. "You think she'll do that thing again with the little teeny pumpkins and jalapeño cheese? And the girls doing their Irish dancing?"
"Jesus, I hope not. Kevin said come any time after ten, so we can catch some of the parade. And we're supposed to bring cider."
"Cider?"
"Yeah—" Brendan pulled an ATM receipt from his pocket and squinted, trying to read something scrawled there. "Magyar Farms Organic Flash-Pasteurized Cider. Four gallons."
"Wow. Flash Pasteurized." Tony leaned back in his chair and grinned. "Thanksgiving. I can't hardly wait. Remember when we were kids, watching the parade and stuff? And that story your Uncle Tom always told, about the turkey who ate the Pepperidge Farm Man?"
Brendan laughed. "I forgot about that."
"And Chip Crockett … Remember how Captain Kangaroo always used to have Thanksgiving dinner, like a real formal dinner—you know, Mister Green Jeans and Dancing Bear saying Grace with all the silverware and good china. And so Chip Crockett started doing that thing with Ooga Booga and Ogden Orff trying to stuff a kielbasa?"
Brendan speared a cherry tomato and shook his head. "Jeez, Tony. How the hell do you remember that stuff?"
"Chip Crockett Web page, man! It's like a memory enhancer. Or a time machine, or something." He hesitated, recalling that weird charged moment with Peter; thought of mentioning it to Brendan, but instead said, "Like when you smell something, or hear something—a song, or the way a balloon smells—and all of a sudden you flash back to when you were really, really little? Like Peter's age? But you can't remember exactly what it is that you're remembering, because you were so young then it was before you started remembering things. It's like that."
Brendan stared at him blankly. "Balloons?"
"Sure!" Tony leaned back a little too enthusiastically in his chair, nearly tipped before he came crashing back down. "Oops. Yeah, balloons."
"Tony? What the hell are you talking about?"
"I told you: Chip Crockett's Web page! It's all there. All that stuff you thought you forgot when you grew up—"
"Like where I put my Casey Stengel baseball cards?"
"Absolutely. And all those Bosco commercials? And Cocoa Marsh?" Tony pushed aside Brendan's salad and leaned across the table. "It's all in there. Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Enemee Electric Organs. Diver Dan and Baron Barracuda. 'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha.' Ooga Booga. Ogden Orff. Everything."
"Right." Brendan closed his eyes, opened them, and slid his salad plate back where it belonged. "You know, Tony," he said between mouthfuls of mesclun and seared porcini mushrooms, "doesn't it ever strike you that some of this stuff is—well, sort of useless?"
Tony looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"All this baby boomer detritus. Beatlemania. Mickey Mouse Club hats. Three Stooges T-shirts. It's all bullshit. They're just trying to sell you shit. It's all one big fucking infomercial."
"But that's not what I'm talking about." Tony shook his head, hair whipping round his face. "I'm talking about the stuff that was lost—all those people you never heard of again. Like Chip Crockett. All those puppets he made, " he said plaintively. "And his characters. Ogden Orff. I mean, there's nothing left but these little tiny ten-second videoclips, but he's there, man! He's still alive!"